Post-landing Activities

Stand-up EVA

 

Preparations for the Stand-Up EVA

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1996 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Last revised 30 September 2014.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 2 min 18 sec ) by David Shaffer

106:11:05 Scott: Houston, Falcon.

106:11:08 Allen: Go ahead.

106:11:14 Scott: Say, I think we need a couple of words on the PLSS stowed on the cabin floor. We've got the two pins out on the side and can't seem to get it up. Do you have any good words on that?

106:11:27 Allen: Stand by, Dave.

106:11:31 Scott: Okay.

[Comm Break]

[Jim's PLSS is stowed on the floor between them, in front of the hatch, and is held in place by removable pins. Dave's PLSS is stowed at his left shoulder on the cabin wall. They are in the middle of the left-hand column of Surface 2-1, preparing for the Stand-up EVA or SEVA. They will not be wearing the PLSSs for the SEVA but, rather, will remain hooked up to the LM ECS (Environmental Control System). They are merely getting Jim's PLSS out of the way.]

106:12:53 Scott: Go ahead.

106:12:54 Allen: Rog; Dave. We suggest you try, first, holding the bracket at the front, in place, while you push the PLSS aft and jiggle it.

106:13:09 Scott: Okay.

[Comm Break]

106:16:16 Allen: Falcon, Houston. Any luck with the PLSS?

106:16:23 Scott: Oh, Rog. Sorry. Yes. We got it up; that worked fine. (Long Pause)

[Scott - "If you have a problem, the easiest thing to do is to tell the guys in Houston, because they have this army of people who are addressing problems. Rather than fuss with something and try and solve it yourself, it was a lot easier and more effective to say, 'Hey Joe, I got a little problem.' Then, we could go on and do something else, knowing full well that the army back there would go work the problem."]

[Jones - "And the one guy or the two guys who really knew about that stuff and had designed it and fussed with it..."]

[Scott - "Would fix it. That was a beauty of the system. If we ran across something we didn't understand, we could probably have figured it out. But why bother when you have real experts standing by to help you while you go on to other things. Every contractor had a backroom and everybody in the country was tied in and, if you have a problem, you have instantaneous response from the best people in the world."]

106:16:53 Scott: It sort of was.

[Long Comm Break]

[Scott - "Because I didn't tell them we got it fixed, the guy who passed up the instructions way back there in a backroom somewhere is sitting there saying 'Well, what happened!?' And of course, on board, we got it up, it's working fine, so we pressed on, and forgot to tell them that it worked."]

[Jones - "There was a lot more going on in the spacecraft than what we hear here."]

[Scott - "There was a lot more going on in the world. Everywhere. The voice tape is brief, skimpy, incomplete, but continuous."]

[Jones - "And it's a hook to hang a lot of other stuff on."]

[Scott - "I didn't realize there was so little there. I never listened to it. I mean, why would I ever listen to it? Nobody ever gave me a copy. It was over. But today, in listening to it, I realize that you (listeners on Earth) didn't get to hear very much."]

[Jones - "Now, you guys were probably less talkative on the way down than anybody else."]

[Scott - "We were busy."]

[Jones - "Now, that's not true when you're outside. There's nobody who's as chatty as Pete and Al and Gene and Jack. That's just the way they are. But, once you get outside, the Apollo 15 record is much fuller."]

106:23:33 Irwin: Go ahead there, Joe; this is Hadley Base.

106:23:37 Allen: Dave and Jim, while you're working there, thought you'd be interested in the report that the SIM bay is giving us some remarkable data. It seems to be working beautifully.

106:23:51 Irwin: Good; we're hoping we can compete with it.

[Very Long Comm Break. The SIM bay is the Scientific Equipment Module on the Command Module. During this Comm Break, Dave and Jim are preparing the equipment they will need or the Stand-up EVA, getting the cameras ready, getting out the Lunar Extravehicular Visor Assemblies (LEVAs), applying an anti-fogging agent to the inside of their bubble helmets, etc. Dave's next transmission indicates that they are now at the top of Surface 2-2. ]

106:32:28 Allen: Okay, Dave; you're loud and clear.

106:32:33 Scott: Okay, we're configured; and let's (garbled)

106:32:37 Irwin: Joe, how do you read me?

106:32:39 Allen: Five by (five), Jim; sounds great.

["Five by five" means "loud and clear".]

106:33:11 Scott: (Connecting the LM oxygen hoses, which they had taken off after the landing) Okay; red to red and blue to...(Pause) Position mikes; don the helmets. (Pause)

106:33:23 Irwin: (Because of the left-rearward LM tilt) I keep sliding to your side for some reason.

106:33:28 Scott: You're attracted to me.

106:33:31 Irwin: While I was in the LM (means the CSM, possibly), it was the other way around; I was sliding to the right. (Long Pause) Okay, don the helmets and don the LEVAs (Lunar Extravehicular Visor Assembly) Get yours first as per usu(ual).

[The LEVA is the balaclava-like assembly that covers the clear bubble helmet. The LEVA provides thermal protection and contains a set of visors and sunshields that can be raised and lowered as needed while the astronauts are working outside.]

106:34:08 Scott: Okay; understand. (Pause)

[Scott - "The clock is running faster than it did in training! Have you ever discussed with the other guys the fact that time during flight seems to go more quickly than the time in simulations, and the reasons for that? The history behind some of that? As an example, when the guys at Edwards used to fly the X-15, they ran their simulations in fast time, in that they would run six tenths of a second in the simulator for each second of flight time. Because you find out that, in flight, things take you longer and, therefore, time seems to go more quickly. And, one reason, I think, that things take longer is that you're more careful, and you do things more precisely. Everybody tends to get behind (the timeline) in flight, and people are often surprised by that. If they run a simulation and it takes a half an hour and, when the get in flight, it takes forty-five minutes. Reality sets in and you do things carefully. And I think that's an experience that most people have had in flight. All of a sudden you're behind, and you say, 'Golly, I did everything like I did it in the simulator. There were no problems. No mistakes. And it took longer. Gee, I wonder why?' Well, that's because it's a phenomenon that the people at Edwards, for example, recognized very early in such programs. I don't know whether it was a conscious decision or an unconscious decision, but NASA never took that into account in the simulations. Maybe that's good. Maybe that's bad. I don't know. But I'm sure you'll find that, in a lot of these things, people are behind. Not because there's a problem, not because they're not doing what they're supposed to do. It's just a phenomenon that occurs. And I remember one of the things that Pete Conrad always used to say on 12 is 'get ahead and stay ahead'. And that's a very good philosophy because, somewhere, your clock's going to run faster than you think it will."]

[Jones - "Now, one of the things that Pete and Al talked about, particularly with regard to the second EVA, was that they had trained so carefully to the checklist that, when they got ahead, stayed ahead, got back to the spacecraft and didn't have to hustle to get back in, there were other things they could have done - like pick up some more rocks and take some more pictures - but, they were so carefully trained to the checklist that, mentally, they said, they didn't have that flexibility. And, twenty years later, they wished they had said 'Okay, we're ahead. All we've got to do is get back in the spacecraft, so let's take some more pictures. Let's pick up some more rocks.' Now, on the J-missions, there are places where the checklists are fairly detailed. There are things you have to do. There are other places in the checklists where the things you have planned are just kind of general activities. Did you notice an explicit change in attitude, or was that just something that happened as a matter of course because you were going to be there longer? Because you were going to have 7-hour EVAs?"]

[Scott - "That's interesting, because I had not heard them say that before. But I believe they said that. And I think they were much more structured than we were. We made the conscious decision to plan more than we could possibly do. To make sure that we covered everything we could cover but, at the same time, leave the flexibility from the geological point of view because we felt comfortable that, if we did have free time, there was plenty to do by way of geological investigation. Go to a crater, spend a couple of hours. Period. And we felt very comfortable that, if we had that luxury, we could be very productive. Just go to Spur Crater and spend two hours. It might have been good not even to talk to the ground. Just go at it. On the other hand, because there were so many things to do, so many things to look at, and so many people involved by that time..."]

["You'll have to check it, but I bet there were far more scientists, geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, etc. involved in the J-missions than the H-missions. Which meant that you not only had many more individual inputs, but you had the integrated inputs, and the synergistic inputs of this vast army of people. Each of whom had something they wanted to do. And we tried to work in all of that, because it was fun, for one thing. But, on the other hand, I think it was good to have more thought out, more pre-planning, more schedule laid out than you could accomplish so that you didn't miss something that would have been important to somebody. At the same time, you needed to have some flexibility to do your own thing. And, even within those flexibility times, there was one thing we missed: there was never any time for reflection. There was never any time to sit there and look at Hadley Rille (and think about it). There was only time to look at Hadley Rille, say 'Wow', and then Joe Allen said 'Let's get on with it.' or Jim said, 'Come on, Dave.' And that's okay, that's the way it's supposed to be. But, often when I talk to people, relatively infrequently now, they say 'What did you think while you were there?' Well, I really didn't have a lot of time to think. I had a lot of time to act, plan, implement things I'd been taught. But just to sit and think about it, I probably wouldn't have anyway, because there were too many things to do, even when we had flexibility and time. Your mind very quickly slips into 'At Coso Hills, Lee Silver said if we ever got to this kind of area, we ought to do A, B, and C. So you get some place and, even if you don't have anything planned, you don't stop and think about the world, you think about 'Boy, this is sort of like Coso Hills. Why don't we do this?' You get tuned into it."]

["Get ahead and stay ahead is more an operations philosophy in checklist/hardware stuff, rather than an exploration philosophy in that it would be relatively easy in our traverse to check off things and get ahead. If you just took the pre-planned, checklist activities at each station, we could have gone through those very quickly. If we hadn't have done anything but the mechanics, that would have been easy."]

[Jones - "Collect the core, get the rake, hop in the Rover and off you go."]

[Scott - "But we'd see things that would stop us and we'd say, 'Hey, look at this!' So you sample the boulder or take a little more of the fillets because of our training, because we carried this mental list of opportunities to look for. So the time got used up. I'd never guess at the end of each day that we'd spent that much time outside, 'cause it just went so fast. But that was okay, because we were not in an operations/hardware situation where you have to have a series of events and, if you get behind in that, you can't skip ahead 'cause you have to stay with the sequence. Whereas, on the surface, in the exploration sense, if you spent more time at one crater, you could very easily skip the next one and it doesn't have a critical impact on the total mission. Different kind of work."]

[Jones - "A flexibility permitted by the longer time on the surface, and a different style of activity."]

[Scott - "Well, you could have had flexibility in a shorter time, if somebody would have just programmed it that way. I mean, how much time on the surface has to be spent doing a particular thing? If you have a one-hour stay, you could grab a contingency sample and then spend the rest of the time doing whatever you want to do. So it depends on the mission planning. What are your objectives, and how are you going to implement those objectives? So, I think what we tried to do was pour in as many objectives as we could, to make sure we covered all the things that people were interested in, but at the same time build in enough flexibility to take advantage of the surprises. In thinking back on the H-missions, they were operations missions; there was probably more operations thinking. They were more structured, in an engineering sense, which probably spilled over into the surface activities. When you got to the J-missions, there was more influence by the scientists, who were less structured. The longer time enabled us to spend more time in the exploration activities. And there was the maturity of the technology. The LM lands and you don't have this hard driven, engineering, logical, sequential structure that you would have on an H-mission. The J-mission is structured up until you land; but then, because of the comfort in the system and the maturity of the system, you have the luxury of being more unstructured. In conclusion, as I think about it, it's hard to compare an H- and a J-mission in the sense of flexibility on the surface, because they were definitely different types of missions. When Pete went, that was still a real test flight. I mean, from July (1969) to November, who knew in July whether Neil was going to get down or not? So system mentality was still working on a real test flight."]

[Jones - "And because of 12, you knew you could put it down at an exact spot you had picked out ahead of time."]

[Scott - "Right. It's a different approach. By the time you get through with 14, you're in a situation where, not only do you have a longer time, you have a different mind set. You have more comfort, more flexibility. It's a natural, evolutionary phenomenon that you have less structure and more opportunity to do things. It's a logical growth from a test flight to a developmental flight."]

[Jones - "Let me ask you a specific 12 question. Do you remember if there was any doubt on launch day that the Surveyor was in that crater."]

[Scott - "I'm sure there were skeptics but, as I recall, it was a fairly comfortable situation in that that was where the Surveyor was. I think they knew pretty well. You always have the people who say you don't know where things are."]

[Jones - "The guy who located it, a fellow named Ewan Whitaker, had basically picked it out within a few months after the Surveyor landed. Pete and Al remembered that there had been some exercise in like September or October - just a month or two before their launch - to convince people that the location was really pinned down. Whitaker doesn't remember anything like that, so it may have been up at a higher level than he was involved."]

[Scott - "That may have been. But, as far as I can recall, there was a fair amount of comfort that it was there. Also, a pinpoint landing demonstration could have been demonstrated anywhere, so the Surveyor was a secondary objective. But it was just sort of neat that they decided to pick some stuff off the Surveyor. I thought it was a great idea. I think that was one of the highlights of the whole program."]

[Jones - "And for the public and for Congress, the fact that you say you're going to go - not to a specific crater because how the hell do you know that they really landed at that crater - but next to a spacecraft. Here's a piece of it; we landed there! So you want to make damn sure you're going to the right place."]

[Scott - (Tongue-in-cheek) "Well, you know, it's not really clear that the piece they brought back really was from the Surveyor that was there, was it? You tell me."]

[Jones - "Well, you guys did all this in a cavern in Nevada, anyway. Right?"]

[Scott - "You ask Pete Conrad. He's the one that brought it back. I believe him. He's a nice guy."]

[Jones - "And he's got the pictures to prove it - and I don't see any wires in the background."]

[The click of Jim's helmet lock is audible.]

106:34:48 Scott: Okay, (garbled) locked. (Long Pause as Jim helps Dave get his helmet and LEVA on and locked)

106:35:32 Scott: Tight today, aren't they?

[Because they have not yet started glove-donning, this is probably a reference to Dave's helmet lock, the lock-lock described below or the LEVA straps. Three suits were made for each crew member: a training suit, which got well broken in during the long months of training leading up to the mission, a flight suit, and a backup. At this point in the mission, the flight suits are virtually brand-new.]

106:35:51 Scott: Okay; verify the following: (reading) helmet and visors aligned and adjusted. Yours are. Let me check your O2. Okay; red one's lock-lock; blue, lock-lock; the gas connectors both in a lock-lock.

[The helmet lock and connector locks are ring locks which, as a backup, have devices called lock-locks which hold the ring locks in place. The lock-locks are operated by squeezing a pair of tabs with thumb and forefinger and sliding them in or out of the locked position. Operating the lock-locks with gloves on is not a trivial task. This is one of the several reasons that the gloves are donned last.]

106:36:13 Scott: Okay; PGA diverter valves to horizontal?

106:36:15 Irwin: Mine's verified.

[With the PGA diverter valve in the horizontal position, all of the air flow entering the suit comes in at the neck ring. With the valve in the vertical position, some of the flow would enter in the torso.]

106:37:05 Irwin: Okay, my gloves are on.

[Several of the astronauts - Jack Schmitt, in particular - had trouble donning the gloves. The 15 crew is impressively fast.]

[Scott - "In the training sessions on this, we did exactly this: we read every word all the time. So it becomes automatic when you get there. A lot of times people would think that, if you read it so much - and this happens sometimes in airplanes - it becomes meaningless. One reason it takes you so long up there is because it's not meaningless, because, now, you're really paying attention. This is a rehearsal we practiced in the mission simulators. And we also had mock-ups in which we trained, which represented the physical configuration of the spacecraft but the switches weren't active. They were all there, but they weren't active electrically. So we had LM mock-ups and Command Module mock-ups in which we did the EVA preparation training."]

106:37:16 Irwin: Okay, you're locked.

106:37:18 Scott: Okay.

[In the following sequence, they will reconfigure the ECS (Environmental Control System) Suit Circuit in preparation for the cabin depressurization. Readers interested in a detailed description of the ECS and the Suit Circuit should consult the Apollo Operations Handbook.]

[The ECS controls are behind Jim who, undoubtedly, has turned around to reach them.]

106:37:27 Irwin: Verified.

[They have verified that there is no air flow from the ECS into the cabin.]

106:37:30 Irwin: Verified.

[Here, they are verifying that there is no flow from the cabin back into the ECS.]

106:37:32 Irwin: Close.

[The Suit Circuit Relief valve would normally open if the pressure in the circuit exceeded 5.3 pounds per square inch (psi). Here, they are making sure that the relief valve will not open during the SEVA.]

106:37:35 Irwin: A to Egress.

[In the Cabin position, one or both of the two Pressure Demand Regulators would maintain the cabin pressure in the range of 4.6 to 5.0 psi. In the Egress position, enough oxygen is added to the Suit Circuit to maintain the Suit Circuit pressure in the range 3.6 to 4.0 psi.]

106:37:38 Irwin: Direct O2.

[With Reg B in Direct O2, there will be an unregulated flow of oxygen into the suit circuit, albeit at a modest flow rate of 7 pounds per hour. This flow is enough to pressurize the heretofore unpressurized suits. Now, they will monitor the suit pressurization and, once the suits are pressurized to 3.7 psi above cabin pressure, they will shut of the oxygen flow and monitor the suits to make sure there are no leaks. Once they are satisfied with the suit integrity, then they will depressurize the cabin.]

106:37:43 Irwin: Okay.

106:37:46 Scott: Okay, cabin pressure's coming up. (Correcting himself) Suit pressure's coming up - in the cabin.

106:37:53 Irwin: We might as well turn the urine-line heater off.

[While performing the tasks on Surface 2-1, they emptied the urine collection bags in their suits into a transfer line which led, ultimately, to a collection tank in the descent stage. The heater prevents the line from freezing.]

[The cuff-mounted pressure gauges do not go down to zero.]

106:38:41 Scott: Yeah. (Pause)

106:38:49 Irwin: Okay, there's 3.5.

106:38:51 Scott: Right.

106:38:53 Irwin: 3.6, 3.65. Okay. I'm (setting Reg B to) Egress (thereby cutting off the oxygen flow). Reading 3.6.

106:39:03 Scott: Okay. One minute.

[They will now monitor the suits for one minute.]

106:39:11 Scott: Yeah. (Long Pause)

106:39:54 Allen: Dave and Jim, while you're timing that minute out, be advised that Endeavour is passing overhead. Al's got you in sight, and I suspect there are two big cameras (the pan camera and the mapping camera, both in the SIM Bay) that'll be brought to bear on you a little later on.

106:40:11 Scott: Okay, very good. I'll bet Al can tell you where we are better than we can.

106:40:15 Allen: Al says you're...

106:40:16 Irwin: Okay, Joe; that's a minute, and...

106:40:17 Allen: ...just north of Index.

106:40:18 Irwin: ...I've got...(Pause)

106:40:24 Scott: North of Index, huh?

[The following is the conversation between Al Worden and Gordon Fullerton regarding Worden's observations of the landing site through the Command Module Sextant.]

106:38:10 Worden: I have the landing site in view.

106:38:13 Fullerton: Roger. Very Good.

106:38:29 Worden: Okay. And, Houston, Endeavour. I've got the LM.

106:39:34 Fullerton: Roger, Al.

106:39:39 Worden: I'll give you the coordinates in a minute.

106:39:41 Fullerton: Okay.

106:39:43 Worden: But he's almost directly north of Index.

106:39:46 Fullerton: Roger. Understand.

106:40:28 Fullerton: Endeavour, Houston. Your TCA now.

106:40:34 Worden: Roger.

106:40:48 Worden: Okay. He's about halfway between Index and the next crater off toward the North Complex. He's sitting right by a very small crater. And, as soon as I lose them here, I'll give you the coordinates, but he's quite plain down there.

106:41:05 Fullerton: Roger, Al.

106:42:22 Worden: Houston, Endeavour.

106:42:24 Fullerton: Go ahead, Al; Houston.

106:42:28 Worden: Okay, Gordo. If you look at the grid map, 1 to 250 (scale); that's (map) HR25-11, he's on BR.5/75.5.

106:42:49 Fullerton: Okay; copy. Baker Romeo 0.5 and 75.5?

106:42:59 Worden: That's affirm.

[The actual LM location is about BS.4/73.3, a location about 250 meters north and 500 meters west of the location Al gave to Houston. The sextant field-of-view is about 3 kilometers. Al may have misread the map - unlikely, given his statement that the LM is almost directly north of Index - or, perhaps, he is being confused by a small, sharp-rimmed crater.]

[Jones - "There's a pan-camera frame that shows the LM quite clearly, and I think it shows the Rover."]

[Scott - "While you're looking for it, Grant (Heiken) mentioned last night that he got to see some of the first generation photos and how much better they were. And when you look at these in the Preliminary Science Report, which is the one document I have around, they're pretty good but, boy, they're sure nothing like what we saw. I have recently used the photos in here to show what we got at the North Complex in the 500-mm lens. And if the first generation is that much better, it was really pretty good."]

[Jones - "Looking at Figure 25-43 in the (Apollo 15) Preliminary Science Report, there's the LM and I would claim that the Rover is just northwest of the spacecraft. Of course, the question is, when did Al take this picture and was the Rover parked by the MESA as it appears to be?"]

[Scott - "There are two separate, independent missions going on, because Gordon Fullerton (as CSM CapCom) and Al Worden are working the Command and Service Module, which was a full-time mission..."]

[Jones - "With a whole 'nother support team, Farouk El Baz (Principal Investigator for orbital geology) and the whole crowd."]

[Scott - "Just as dynamic as ours. And we're working ours and every once in a while there's some connect. But we're not really interested in the connect at this time, and I don't think Al really is, either, because he's busier than a one-armed paper hanger. But it's sort of interesting to see that, now, the system is running two missions."]

[On Apollo 11 and 12, there was only one CapCom and the Command Module Pilot's primary responsibility was to work with the ground refining basic procedures for extended lunar orbit operations. On Apollo 14, Stu Roosa had a significantly larger number of observational and photographic tasks and had a dedicated CapCom. The addition of the instruments and cameras in the SIM Bay for Apollo 15 completed the transformation of the CMP's job.]

[Scott - "To get a little perspective, you can go back and think about the focus on Apollo 8. When they were doing their thing, it was a really big deal. Now you have a lunar-orbit mission far more complex than Apollo 8 - with only one guy running a three-man spacecraft - being run simultaneously with a lunar surface exploration more complex than Apollo 11. So the system has built up to a tremendous capacity for doing this stuff."]

[Jim's suit pressure has reduced by 0.2 psi due to breathe-down, minor leaks, and flow into nooks and crannies. Anything less than a 0.3 psi decrease in one minute is acceptable.]

106:40:43 Irwin: Circuit Relief going Auto. (Pause)

[With the pressure integrity check complete, they have now reset the relief valve so that it will open if the pressure in the Suit Circuit exceeds 5.3 psi.]

[They are now on Surface 2-3.]