ALSEP Deployment

Traverse to Station 1

 

Deep Core

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1995 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Audio clips by Dave Shaffer.
Last revised 4 May 2017.

MP3 Audio Clip starting at 1200953 ( 20 min 37 sec )

[Jack is running toward the Rover, using what looks to be a very efficient foot-to-foot gait. At one point, he gets his center-of-mass too far to the right and starts to lose his balance. He hops on his right foot a couple of times to get himself centered again.]

[Jack does a high kangaroo hop to avoid the first heat flow hole.]

120:10:40 Schmitt: (Laughing) I messed up...

120:10:42 Cernan: Man, don't hit that. Give me heart failure after all that drilling.

120:10:45 Schmitt: No, I just walked too close to it. I apologize for that.

120:10:48 Cernan: I don't care how close you walk to it...

120:10:50 Schmitt: Well, Mark (Langseth) does.

120:10:55 Cernan: Just don't step on it. (Pause)

[Because of John Young's accident, no heat flow measurements were made on Apollo 16 and this is the last chance to confirm the Apollo 15 data. Marcus Langseth is the Principal Investigator.]

[Gene is on CDR-19 and has just finished drilling the second heat flow hole. He has the wrench attached to the top stem and is trying to twist off the drill; but he has to get down to re-position the wrench. The TV jiggles as Jack works at the Rover. He is getting his camera and the gnomon so that he can document the geophones as he deploys them. He is at the top of LMP-22.]

120:11:23 Parker: Stand by. (Pause)

120:11:45 Parker: Okay, you've been running at 120 flush, Gene, with peaks of 140 to 150 from time to time.

120:11:53 Cernan: Okay. (Pause)

[Gene has the drill off.]

120:12:04 Cernan: Oh...(Listens)

[Gene positions the drill, leans on it, and removes the wrench.]

120:12:08 Cernan: Yes, sir. I tell you, if you learn how to use your instruments in this one-sixth g - you take your time and you get around - it's frankly phenomenal. But if you try and bend over without some help; (it's) not so phenomenal. (Long Pause)

[Gene has the wrench off and hangs it on the rack. He moves the drill out of the way. The TV has stopped jiggling, so Jack is probably on his way to the geophone module.]

[After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Gene uses the wrench to pick up the heat flow probe. He removes the cover which he then drops accidentally.]

120:13:29 Cernan: (Talking to himself) Oh, you dummy. You dummy. (Pause) Jack, you still with me?

120:13:42 Schmitt: Yeah.

120:13:43 Cernan: Okay.

[Gene now drops the wrench as he tries to hang it on the rack.]

120:13:51 Schmitt: Don't push it.

120:13:53 Cernan: Getting dropsies.

120:13:54 Schmitt: Take a rest. (Long Pause)

[Schmitt - "Except for the little things, the ALSEP deployment went pretty much like training; and many, if not most, of the little problems had already happened in training. The only physically difficult part of the deployment was carrying the ALSEP out to the site, and then using your hands. All the manipulation just wore out the forearm muscles. You went slower and slower and slower, and then you got to the point where you started dropping things."]

[Gene tosses something off to the north, and then comments on how far it's flying with so little effort.]

120:15:11 Parker: Okay, Geno. And the (first) heat flow (probe)'s on and looking good.

120:15:19 Cernan: That's good news, Bob. Let me give you another one here. (Pause)

[The probe goes in fairly easily.]

120:15:42 Parker: Okay, I copy. Papa 1, Foxtrot 1, and Bravo 1?

[Papa 1 and Foxtrot 1 are the desired depths of the bottom and middle shields, as indicated on CDR-19. Bravo 1 is the height of the top stem. Bob was talking to the Experiments people in Houston and didn't realized that Gene had only given the last of these readings.]

120:15:57 Parker: Okay, copy that.

120:15:58 Cernan: And the top of the white marks is about Bravo 1.

120:16:02 Parker: Copy that.

[Gene attaches the rammer to the cable.]

[This is the mark indicating the deepest and most desirable penetration.]

120:16:29 Cernan: Bingo, babe, you win; and it locked in.

120:16:32 Parker: Roger. I think Mark won on that one, too.

120:16:34 Cernan: Papa 1.

[Gene removes the rammer from the hole and re-attaches it to the next higher probe.]

120:16:35 Parker: Roger. (Pause) And, Jack, I gather you are probably traipsing across the landscape with a geophone about now, right?

120:16:51 Schmitt: That's affirm.

120:16:52 Parker: Okay. And let me ask you...

120:16:53 Cernan: Good gravy! You know how big that (Geophone) rock...

120:16:54 Parker: Stand by. Go ahead.

120:17:00 Cernan: Go ahead, Bob.

[Fendell pans away from Gene. Jack is emplacing Geophone 3 eighty-eight feet south of the geophone module. Gene is looking in his direction and, with Jack in the foreground, is getting an appreciation for just how big Geophone Rock is. It is 3 meters tall, or about 10 feet. Jack is at the middle of LMP-22.]

120:17:17 Schmitt: Well, I'll check it! But I think you know where that decal is.

120:17:21 Parker: Well, okay. Good enough.

[Fendell finds Jack as he deploys Geophone 3. He is thirty meters south of the module and about 20 meters northeast of Geophone Rock. For future reference, the gnomon is visible in the TV picture. Frame AS17-147- 22549 is a documentation photo of geophone number 3, which Jack will take at about 120:38. Note the geophone flag and the gnomon at the left side, just in front of the partially buried boulder. Note, also, that Gene is at the Rover. Patrick Vantuyne has created a red-blue anaglyph from 22548 and 49 ( 435k ).]

[Training photo 72-H-1412 show Jack deploying a geophone at the Cape. Note the cable reel on the UHT in his left hand and the anchor/flag in the right foreground.]

120:17:34 Parker: Hey, that's another bingo.

120:17:36 Cernan: And it's coming out to the south. (Listens) I'm coming out to the south.

120:17:41 Parker: Roger. (Long Pause)

[Schmitt - "By running the heat flow cable southward out of the hole, you got more uniform heating than you would if the cable ran east or west. That way you could calculate more easily the error that cable heating introduced into the measurements."]

[Jack returns to the Geophone Module near the RTG. He runs using a foot-to-foot stride and, as he gets close, plants both feet in front of himself. The 30 meter run takes about 25 seconds, including a few steps at the beginning to get himself up to speed and a few at the end to stop. His average speed is 4.3 kph. For a long time, I thought Jack had left the gnomon near Geophone 3 by accident but, from the evidence of LMP-22 and LMP-23, he had planned to leave the gnomon until after taking the photos listed on LMP-23.]

[Schmitt - "Although it doesn't look like it on the television, you actually had to rotate your hips a little bit to get your feet to stick into the ground."]

120:18:11 Parker: Roger. Copy that. (Long Pause)

[Jack turns to the east and shields his eyes to find a predetermined point on the East Massif which he will use as a horizon marker so that he can take the east geophone out in the right direction.]

120:18:35 Schmitt: You might.

120:18:38 Cernan: Yeah, I might.

120:18:40 Parker: One never knows, Geno.

120:18:42 Cernan: I think I'll save it until after I drill the core. (Pause) Oh, me oh my.

[Cernan - "I called the heat flow rammer a 'javelin' because what I really wanted to do was give it a heave-ho on the Moon and see what it would do."]

[Jack picks up geophone 1 by inserting the UHT in the top of the cable reel and lifting it out of the module, and starts running east.]

120:19:27 Schmitt: Okay.

[Cernan - "The checklist pages were made of fairly stiff paper and were about two-and-a-half inches square. They lay flat on your wrist because they were bound with a spiral wire hinge that forced them to bow up. As soon as you turned a page, the hinge put a stress on it and it would lay flat. The tabs that you used to turn the page weren't very large, but even in the gloves it wasn't really hard to get them turned."]

[A detail from Apollo 13 training photo 70-HC-83 is a good side view of Jim Lovell's cuff checklist.]

120:19:33 Schmitt: (Admonishing) Now, now.

120:19:36 Cernan: In that depression. Bob, you do want the core in a depression, right?

120:19:42 Parker: Roger. That's affirmative, Geno.

Video Clip ( 2 min 47 sec 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 27 Mb MPEG )

120:19:48 Cernan: Okay, nobody touch my heat flow. It's the prettiest job I've ever done. Okay, I'm going behind a boulder over here. (Pause) Bob, I've got about 3.85 (psi) and I guess about fifty percent (oxygen). I can't see it too well.

120:20:14 Parker: I copy that, Geno.

[Jack reaches the end of the east geophone cable. He is part way down in the swale; the LM is in the background. In looking at the television picture, it appears that the LM is below the ALSEP site and, indeed, at several points in the mission it looks as though the Rover is sitting on high ground when, as is the case here, there is actually no elevation difference. Here, the fact that Jack is down in the swale may contribute to the impression.]

[Gene sounds fairly playful now.]

120:20:22 Schmitt: Likewise; and I'm...

120:20:23 Parker: Roger.

120:20:24 Schmitt: ...and LMP is five-six percent.

120:20:30 Parker: Okay. Copy that.

120:20:31 Schmitt: What are you, Geno?

120:20:32 Cernan: Well. I can't see it. The Sun was...(Pause) I don't know, Jack. I can't...I'm on about...Yeah, about 55 or 54.

[Fendell pans away from Jack.]

120:20:45 Cernan: Now, this (boulder) ought to shield that thing (the neutron probe) from the doggone (RTG)...

120:20:52 Schmitt: Pressure's 3.85 on the LMP. (Pause) Bob, one comment on getting the geophones within a few degrees of vertical. In this undulating terrain (chuckles), I think they're pretty good; but it's not real easy to tell what vertical is.

120:21:21 Parker: Roger, Jack. (Pause)

[Schmitt - "Each of the geophones was a cylinder that had a stake on one end. You put the point in the ground and then just stepped on the geophone to push it down into the surface."]

[One of the geophones can be seen at the lower left in S72-37259, just below the thick cable which connects the module to the ALSEP Central Station.]

[Training photo 72-H-1412 show Jack deploying a geophone at the Cape. note the cable rell on the UHT in his left hand and the anchor/flag in the right foreground.]

[Frame AS17-136-20695 from Jack ALSEP pan shows Gene kneeling at the deep core hole. After extracting the core, he will place the neutron probe in the hole and needs to shield the probe from the RTG as much as possible by siting the core hole in a depression or, as he actually did, with a large rock blocking the line-or-sight to the RTG. The boulder in question is immedaitely south of Gene.]

120:21:45 Cernan: That's where you're going to get it. Let me see what I need. (Reading CDR-20)"Drill, rack, core bag. Drill at 1 IPS (inch per second)." Okay. Let's go do it right. (Pause) Okay. Let me see, I'm going to put it right in this depression. Right in it.

120:22:30 Schmitt: Yeah, get the middle of that.

120:22:32 Cernan: It's a shallow one. If I go over there, I'm not shielded, Jack.

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120:22:36 Schmitt: No, that's good. Get in the middle. Get it in that place.

120:22:38 Cernan: Right in this little...It's only about a 4-meter (diameter) depression.

[Fendell finds Jack again. He is looking toward Gene.]

[On his way back to the geophone module, Jack stops at a meter-high rock due south of the Rover. He leans on it for a few seconds to examine the minerals and then goes to get the next geophone. The rock appears on the right side of AS17-147- 22549, taken near Geophone 3, and is in the center of AS17-147- 22584, taken near the RTG.]

120:22:49 Schmitt: That's good.

120:22:51 Cernan: Oh, man, go slow. (Long Pause)

[The sound of Gene's drilling can be heard. After examining the rock, Jack makes his way to the geophone module, describing the rock to Bob as he runs.]

[Jack puts the geophone module upright, picks up geophone 2, and looks west. He is at the top of LMP-23.]

120:24:26 Schmitt: What happened?

120:24:28 Cernan: Oh, I lost my vise. I see it. I see it.

[Gene is looking for his wrench, which may have popped off the core stem as a result of tension built up in the wrench while he blocked it with his leg so he could remove the drill.]

120:24:48 Cernan: Boy, all these little craters are filled with glass. (Probably talking to the errant wrench) Come on back here. I've got to chase this thing over the lunar surface.

120:24:57 Schmitt: I've seen glass covers.

[He means "glass-covered crater bottoms". He is standing on the geophone 1 cable about 10 feet east of the geophone module, sighting across it to the western horizon.]

[Jack picks up a flag and heads west, talking as he runs.]

120:26:08 Parker: Okay. Copy that, Jack.

120:26:13 Schmitt: Those parting planes (pause as he reaches the end of the geophone line) go through the whole boulder - (the boulder being) on the order of at least 3 meters long - in "outcrop". (Long Pause)

[Schmitt - "For various reasons, you sometimes see places in a rock where it's splitting and coming apart. In this case I was saying that I thought the splitting in the rock I'd just examined was produced by the alignment of prismatic habit minerals parallel to that plane; and that's called a foliation. What that implies is some kind of stress during crystallization, either a flow stress as in a volcanic rock, or a shear stress during re-crystallization. By 'outcrop' you'd usually mean something attached to bedrock; in this case there would have been no evidence of that but, for some reason, probably just the size of the boulder, I used the term."]

[The term "prismatic habit" is a reference to elongated minerals with three or more edges parallel to the axis of elongation. Jack emplaces the geophone, tamping dirt around it with his foot.]

120:27:01 Schmitt: How is it going, Gene?

120:27:03 Cernan: Fine. I'm on my second stem (pair), here. Or I'm starting on it. How are you coming?

120:27:11 Schmitt: Okay. I'm just about ready to pick up the biggie, geophone 4.

[Jack goes back to the geophone module, taking long running strides. He covers the 50-meter distance in 33 seconds for an average speed of 5.4 kilometers per hour. He takes about 30 strides, each about 5.5 feet in length. Geophone 4 will be emplaced 90 meters south of the geophone module.]

120:27:24 Parker: Okay. And Geno, how are you doing? We've been watching Jack traipse back and forth across the Moon.

120:27:33 Cernan: I'm getting there, Bob. I'm trying to fit...

120:27:36 Schmitt: Talk about seven league boots.

120:27:41 Cernan: ...Put stem (pair) number 2 on.

RealVideo File by Mick Hyde (18 min 29 sec)

[Schmitt - "By now I'm taking longer and longer strides and the running technique is getting to be very much like cross-country skiing. On future missions, either for recreation or for an emergency walkback, you ought to have ski poles available for stabilization. At this point I wasn't breathing hard and I think that, with poles, you could go faster than the Rover can drive (10-12 km/hr on a level surface) without expending much energy. And that way you could greatly extend your driving distance with a Rover. I also think the recreation of choice will be getting out and taking long 'skiing' trips. Just like with cross-country skiing, I think you could almost keep it up indefinitely. And if you had a suit with more hip-and-ankle mobility I think you really could do 10-15 km/hr, a good cross-country speed on flat terrain."]

[Jack's peak heart rate through this period is about 120 beats per minute at about 120:35 (in graph coordinates, 117:55), while he is running south with Geophone 4.]

[Fendell pans to find Gene, who is northwest of the Rover.]

120:27:57 Parker: Yeah. Are you...

120:27:58 Schmitt: Not bad.

120:28:00 Parker: Okay. You're not having to worry about extra photos yet?

120:28:06 Schmitt: No; I've been checking it. (Pause) Bob, my biggest problem is that the flags don't anchor.

120:28:16 Parker: Okay. Copy that.

120:28:22 Schmitt: In general, the lines are following the contours. Whoops - whoops - whoops. (Long Pause)

[Schmitt - "I don't remember why, but we didn't want the geophone cables to be suspended above the surface as they went across craters and depressions but, rather, wanted them to follow the contours."]

120:29:20 Cernan: Well, try another one. Doggonit.

120:29:25 Parker: What's the problem, Geno? It won't screw on?

120:29:30 Cernan: Oh, yeah. It's no problem. You know, it's the same problem you always have. You get these threads...You get a little side force on them and, you know, with the helmet and gloves and what have you, you can't...Sometimes they go on easy; sometimes they don't.

[Gene starts threading another core stem pair.]

120:30:04 Cernan: Okay. I got this one on now.

120:30:05 Parker: Roger. (Long Pause)

[Gene leans on the drill to remove the wrench.]

120:30:40 Parker: Stand by on that. (Pause)

[Gene picks up the drill.]

120:30:57 Schmitt: Okay. Hey, if you see me start to pull over that (geophone) module there...

120:31:07 Cernan: Hey, don't do that.

120:31:08 Schmitt: No, I mean...Oh, I won't hurt it. It's just that it stretches the other geophones tight.

[When Jack got to the end of the west geophone line, the cable pulled taut; and, if the geophone module - to which the cables were all attached - had moved, it would have put tension on the remaining cables.]

[Gene attaches the drill and starts drilling.]

[Schmitt - "We had anticipated that if any of the lines got pulled and the module moved, one or more of the geophones would get pulled out. So we equipped the module with an anchor of some sort, to keep it stationary. Obviously, the anchors wouldn't hold in the loose soil."]

[Gene has started drilling.]

120:31:51 Cernan: Not too bad, Bob. The first core was awful loose. I think I could have pulled it back out with my hands.

120:31:59 Parker: That's not the idea.

[Comm Break. Gene completes the stem, attaches the wrench, removes the drill, and rests for a moment.]

120:33:02 Cernan: Oh boy, oh boy! (Tired) Speaking of "boy, oh boy" (meaning Jack), are you a long way off.

[Cernan - "As I said earlier, when you stop and take a rest, that's when you have a chance to look around. You've got a second or two to yourself. You take a deep breath, take a rest for a second, and look around, and that's when you begin to enjoy your environment, look at what Jack's doing, look at the beautiful Earth, or notice just how high the mountains are. These are the times you can steal for yourself. But that first "oh boy" here definitely referred to how tired my hands were from working with the drill."]

[Comm Break. Jack may be running south with Geophone 4. If he maintained the 5.4 km/hr pace he had running from geophone 2 to the geophone module, the 80 meter trip would take 53 seconds.]

[Gene gets another stem pair and can't get it seated. As he tries to thread it, motion of the wrench, which is attached to the stem in the ground, shows that Gene is turning both stems, rather than connecting them. He gets down on his knees, with his right hand on the drill for stability and trying, again, to thread the new stem. The wrench moves again and, to hold it and the bottom stem still, he puts the wrench's wire loop handle over the drill. After 25 seconds of effort, he finally gets the third stem pair seated and, with help from the internal pressure of the suit, hops up, knocking the drill over. He rests for a second and then retrieves the drill on his second attempt to bob low enough to grab the wire handle. After positioning the drill, he then uses it for support as he drops to his knees to remove the wrench. He fails to get it off and hops up to his feet to take a rest.]

120:35:10 Parker: Okay. We've observed your problem there getting the wrench off, Geno.

[Cernan - "In addition to getting tired in the hands and forearms, the other thing that was tiring was getting down and getting up. In training on Earth, with all the weight of a full backpack in full gravity, it was damn near impossible to get down and get back up. That's why, a lot of times in training we used lightweight backpacks with hoses supplying oxygen and cooling water so we wouldn't have to carry that weight. And in one-sixth gravity, even though it's easy enough to get up and down, you were bulky, you were still heavy, and the suit was cumbersome. That's why you're going to see a lot of this 'Going to take a rest for a minute.' You just got physically tired. At the end of the day, particularly that first day, we were really tired."]

120:35:29 Parker: All right. (Pause)

[Cernan - "The drill stem was sticking out of the ground maybe eight or ten inches or so. Here on Earth, I could take that third stem and stand above the one in the ground, put those locking thread down in it, twist it, and get it locked. But on the Moon, with the stiffness of the suit and the lack of dexterity, if you got it slightly misaligned, the threads would cross, even thought they were big threads. We'd thought about all sorts of things so we wouldn't get them crossed; but it still got wedged. So you had to get down, probably on two knees, so that you could get your hands right down there where the action was and get that thing in and aligned. And then, after you were up, then you had to get the drill and put it on. All those things were physically taxing. The getting up, getting down, and the little intricate work you had to do with your hands."]

[Gene positions the drill, but knocks it over again. It takes him two tries to bob low enough to grab it. Evidently, he doesn't want to use the drill stems for support, probably because he doesn't want to damage them. During the following, Gene has the drill in his right hand, puts it down without letting go, puts his weight on the drill, gets his right knee down and then his left, removes the wrench and stands.]

120:35:42 Parker: Stand by. (Pause) Okay. Presuming you're taking photos now on geophone 4. Having finished geophone 4, Jack, you're about ... right now it looks like you're about 15 minutes behind.

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120:36:02 Schmitt: Okay.

[Checklist page LMP-22 indicates that Jack planned to take documentation photographs of any geophones emplacements from which he couldn't see the geophone 3 flag. To this point, he hasn't taken any geophone photos but, probably because of Bob's query, takes AS17-147- 22528 here at geophone 4.]

[On his way back to the geophone module, he will take several photos of a small crater lying between Geophone 4 and Geophone Rock. These are AS17-147- 22529 to 22532. Jim Scotti notes, "These photos give a good free viewing stereo bit that covers the rocks in the foreground and the right edge of the crater. It's not hard for my eyes to compensate for the slight vertical misalignment of the two images to merge the stereo. It looks to me that the crater is actually a pair of craters."]

[Your editor regrets that 'free viewing stereo' is not one of his abilities. Sigh.]

120:36:11 Schmitt: I'm not...

MP3 Audio Clip ( 21 min 39 sec )

120:36:15 Cernan: (On his feet, holding the wrench) Darn it! You know, Bob, one of the problems is I'm working in a small crater; and it's just a little difficult to work on these slopes. Okay. It's on. I'm ready to put the drill in.

[Gene hangs the wrench on the rack. His breathing is a bit labored. His heart rate (at 118:00 hours on the chart) is over 140 beats per minute again.]

[Gene picks up the drill.]

[Gene attaches the drill to the stem.]

[Parker is involved in a discussion about the length of the EVA and does not answer. Fendell pans away from Gene.]

[Comm Break.]

120:37:59 Schmitt: Yes.

120:38:00 Cernan: Okay, because I don't see you.

120:38:02 Schmitt: I'm out by the big rock.

120:38:04 Cernan: Oh, okay; I got you. (Long Pause)

120:38:36 Cernan: Man, I hope that hole doesn't collapse. I'm going to be awful disappointed. (Pause) I think I could drive that heat flow flux ... (correcting himself) or heat flow...or neutron flux in, at least for one probe, without any problem. (Pause)

[Gene is saying that, even if the hole does collapse, he thinks he could push the probe in at least a couple of feet.]

Fendell finds Jack examining Geophone Rock where, during the stop, he takes a portrait consisting of frames AS17-147- 22533 to 22536.]

[Schmitt - "I'd been doing 'instrument science' for several hours at this point, and I wasn't going to pass up a rock that size. It was my first chance to look at the detailed texture of a big rock and to get some idea of how much I was going to be able to see if, and when, we got a chance to do some geology. The ALSEP always did cut into the time for exploration and I spent an awful lot of my career as a troubleshooting astronaut trying to cut down the amount of time it would take people to deploy that thing. And, although we had some successes, as the ALSEPs got more complicated, the amount of time spent in deployment always seemed to grow."]

["Geophone Rock was probably ejected from Camelot but, even if it had been thrown into the valley from a long way off, it gave you a chance to see if there were any textures on scales larger than you could see in a hand specimen, changes in the character and structure of the rock over distances of more than a few inches. At Station 6, for example, examination of the big rocks there showed us some clear cases of intrusion by one breccia into another; and the chances of seeing something like that in a hand specimen are very small. Geophone Rock was also a chance to do some geology standing up. As soon as you had to bend down or squat down or lie down to see something, the physical stress became a distraction from your mental work."]

["As I recall, Geophone Rock was my first chance to convince myself that I could distinguish several of the minerals in these relatively coarse-grained basalts. In particular, I could see pyroxene and plagioclase, the plagioclase being most obvious because it gave white haloes around the micrometeorite impact craters - called 'zap pits' - on the rock surface. It was also my first chance to look at the patina which had been identified as a splatter covering of brown glass produced by those same impacts. Each zap would knock off patina right around the impact point, but would also add brown glass elsewhere, so, over a large rock surface, it was a steady-state process."]

120:39:05 Cernan: Okay. Bob, if all goes well in the next few short moments, you'll have the final, unleaded (pause) core stem - automatic - in this area. On Apollo 17.

[Gene sounds tired; he and Jack have been awake for 15 hours at this point. One interpretation of Gene's "unleaded, automatic" core stem is that he means "A-1, top quality". During the mission review, Jack raised the possibility that there had been concern about lead contamination from the core tubes, themselves, during Apollo 15 and/or 16 and that there had been a design change as a result. In her Catalog of Apollo Lunar Surface Geological Sampling Tools and Containers, Judy Allton writes: "On Apollo 17, to reduce lead contamination of the cored soil from the drill stems and bit, the core stems were treated with nitric acid and special processes were employed in the application of lubricant and color codes. Excess brazing compound was removed from the core bit to reduce silver and copper contamination."]

[Fendell pans away from Jack.]

120:39:39 Parker: Stand by; we'll find out. (Long pause, presumably while somebody makes a phone call. Most likely, nobody in the MOCR is watching the game.)

[In 1969, the American Broadcasting Company began broadcasting a weekly, Monday night National Football League game. Prior to this time, almost all NFL games had been played on Sundays and, for a few years, at least, Monday Night Football was immensely popular.]

[It is about 9:33 p.m. Central Standard Time on Monday, December 11. The games started at 8 p.m. CST and, therefore, the first half has probably just ended.]

120:40:21 Parker: (New York) Jets. (Pause)

120:40:30 Cernan: Not Kansas City (Chiefs). What am I thinking of?

[Comm Break. Public Affairs reports that the EVA is also at the half and that the oxygen use rate is a little high. Houston is projecting a 6 hour, 45 minute EVA. Fendell finds Gene, just as he starts to drill the final stem pair. He stops drilling with the top of the stem about 3 feet out of the ground. He looks west, adjusts his sun shade, rests for a few seconds, then continues drilling. As per checklist page LMP-23, Jack is probably at Geophone 3, taking documentation photographs and a pan. The pan consists of frames AS17-147- 22544 to 22562. A VR version is also available. Assemblies by Mike Constantine.]

[David Harland has combined frames 22560 and 22561 as a portrait of Geophone Rock.]

[Note that photo 22549 appears to show Gene at the Rover. However, an examination of the relative locations of Geophone 3, the Rover, and the deep core hole are consistent with Gene being at the deep core hole when this picture was taken. In addition, Gene doesn't go over to the Rover until about 120:48 and, at that time, Jack takes another pan consisting of frames AS17-147- 22569 to 22588. In frame 22580, the East Massif is in the distance on the right-hand side of the picture while the Sculptured Hills are behind the LM. Note the relatively high reflectivity of the Rover tracks in the middle distance and of the foreground footprints. The higher albedo is produced when the surface is compressed by a firm, flat object, such as the sole of the lunar boot or by the chevrons on the Rover tires.]

120:43:14 Cernan: Hey, Bob, would you settle for about 8 inches out of the ground? (Breathing hard) It's about as low as I can get.

120:43:22 Parker: Okay...

120:43:23 Schmitt: I haven't heard from them recently.

120:43:24 Parker: Okay, Geno. We'll give you A minus for that.

120:43:25 Cernan: (Responding to Jack) I know.

120:43:26 Schmitt: (To Gene, having heard Bob) There he is.

120:43:27 Parker: But it's still an A.

120:43:30 Cernan: Well, I'll go lower if I could get an A plus. But I am going to accept an A minus, because I'll never get the wrench on it if I go any lower.

[Gene removes the wrench from the rack.]

120:43:38 Cernan: I'm within an inch of the white stripes. How's that?

120:43:42 Parker: That sounds great to me...

120:43:43 Cernan: An inch of the white stripes, Bob.

120:43:44 Parker: Roger. And they're worried up here that you didn't clear the flutes, Geno. You want to tell them that so they'll be happy?

120:43:51 Cernan: Yes, sir. I'll tell them I did clear the flutes.

[As per CDR-20, Gene let the drill run for a few seconds without letting the stem penetrate deeper in the ground. This lets the flutes bring all of the cuttings to the surface, a process that should reduce friction when Gene extracts the stem with a jack and treadle.]

120:43:55 Cernan: (Still discussing the clearing of the flutes) Yeah, I did. But if you want me to do it some more, I will.

[Gene attaches the wrench.]

120:44:10 Schmitt: (Calling dramatically, like Marley's ghost in Dickens' A Christmas Carol) I'm over here.

120:44:14 Cernan: He's 180 (degrees) from where your camera (is pointing)...from where I am.

120:44:19 Parker: Okay.

120:44:20 Cernan: Right across the Rover.

[Gene starts to remove the drill.]

120:44:27 Schmitt: I'm getting ready to enable the old geophone (as per LMP-24).

120:44:30 Parker: Okay. I take it that means you've taken the geophone photos.

[Gene has removed the drill, starts to put it down, but then re-attaches it.]

[Evidently, Jack didn't remember to bring the gnomon back with him after he finished the documentation photos and the pan at Geophone 3.]

[In an effort to save time, Gene tries pulling the core out by the drill handles. The stem doesn't move far enough for the motion to be obvious in the TV picture.]

120:45:08 Parker: Okay.

[Gene removes the drill again.]

120:45:11 Parker: And the second question is, is there a decal and was it aligned on the shade...(correcting himself) the 20-degree decal on the LSG. Was that also aligned?

120:45:21 Schmitt: Yes, sir.

120:45:22 Parker: Okay. Copy that.

120:45:23 Schmitt: The orange one.

120:45:24 Parker: Roger. Agree.

120:45:26 Schmitt: As per drawing.

120:45:27 Parker: Roger, sir.

120:45:28 Schmitt: As per drawing.

120:45:29 Parker: Roger. You don't have to prove it to me.

120:45:34 Schmitt: Yes, I do. Okay.

[Gene removes the wrench, but with a little struggle.]

120:45:39 Parker: Okay; and, Jack, how far...

120:45:41 Cernan: ...to pull the core out...

120:45:45 Parker: Okay, go ahead.

120:45:47 Cernan: ...with the drill. (Stops to listen to Bob) I was able to pull the core out with the drill, about 3 inches. And it's all jacking material from there out.

[That is, Gene will have to use the jack to extract the core.]

120:46:07 Schmitt: I already have. It's reading three-zero. And here's the decal.

120:46:15 Parker: Okay. Copy that. (Pause)

Video Clip ( 3 min 41 sec 0.9 RealVideo or 36 Mb MPEG )

RealVideo File by Mick Hyde (25 min 04 sec)

120:46:25 Schmitt: Okay. I guess I take ALSEP photos.

120:46:31 Cernan: Good. (Pause)

[Gene gets a core plug from the rack. His "good" has the flavor of "I'm glad that it's you that has to do it." He is at the bottom of CDR-20.]

[Schmitt - "Either one of us could have taken the ALSEP photos, depending on who was ahead in the timeline. I can't remember why it was so onerous a job; but, apparently, neither one of us really wanted to do it."]

[The ALSEP photoplan appears on cuff checklist pages LMP-25 and CDR-23. Although the photos were nominally Jack's responsibility, Gene's page CDR-22 indicates that, had he been ahead of Jack in the timeline, he was to help with the geophone deployment and the ALSEP photos, as appropriate. The complexity of the photoplan explains why neither of them was eager to do the task.]

[Cernan - "We had done some cross-training on the deployment, but we specialized in certain things; like I in the drill, and Jack in the ALSEP deployment. But, because we trained together on them, I think I could have deployed the ALSEP, just like he could have handled the drill or even the Rover for that matter. I sort of got into the systems maybe a little bit more than he did, and he got in the ALSEP a little bit more than I did, but I wouldn't have had any problems, nor would he. It would have taken a little longer, maybe; but we could have gotten the job done."]

[Schmitt - "As I remember it, we did a little bit of cross-training, but mostly for the case that one of the PLSSs wouldn't work and we had to do a one-man EVA. Actually, I don't know if they would have allowed a one-man EVA. NASA was pretty conservative by this time. As another example of that conservatism is that, if we had started planning early enough, we could have had consumables enough to stay on the Moon for four days with some reserves. But they wouldn't let us plan for it. There would have been trade-offs. In order to meet the margins, you probably wouldn't have been able to take some of the equipment, but you could have done it."]

["I remember that right after Bill Anders replaced Mike Collins on Apollo 8, probably in August '68, Alan Shepard - who was head of the Astronaut Office at that time - assigned (Buzz) Aldrin and myself to pull together a briefing for the President's Science Advisory Committee: Charlie Towns' committee. They had been asked to be briefed on NASA's plans for the first lunar landing mission. The trouble was that nobody had put together a plan since the time when the Design Reference Mission was defined prior to the RFPs (Request for Proposals) being issued for the lunar module. But by '68 we had to get realistic. So I pulled together the timeline - working with a small group of people - for what eventually became Apollo 12. And it was in that process - in defining the first mission with an ALSEP deployment - that we realized that the chances of a first mission having more than one EVA and having weight margins to carry the ALSEP with confidence had very remote possibilities. That's when I first raised the issue of designing a smaller ALSEP - called EASEP (Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package) - that included only a seismometer and a corner reflector. That was what eventually flew on Apollo 11; and that was put together in a hurry. When we briefed the PSAC, some of our viewgraphs indicated that we didn't think that the mission we'd put together could be the first lunar landing mission because of these problems. On the first mission you probably wanted all the weight margins you could get, and, at the time, it seemed as though the weight of the LM was growing and we realized that the 300 lb ALSEP was going to be a lot easier to kick off than a 100 lb alternative. Also, it was the first time anybody had put together a lunar-surface timeline, and we had to consider things like one-man versus two-man EVAs because they were still talking about doing umbilical EVAs rather than PLSS EVAs. Deke (Slayton) was very helpful in that he put his foot down and said Flight Crew Operations Directorate demanded a two-man EVA, and said that we weren't going to be constrained by umbilicals because they were too dangerous."]

[Jack is also beginning to sound a little punchy.]

120:47:12 Schmitt: Northwest. Okay.

120:47:13 Parker: Yes, and I suggest that you go far enough so that you can see the LEAM past the Central Station.

120:47:19 Schmitt: Yes, sir.

[Gene uses the drill as a support to get low enough to insert the core plug.]

[Gene goes to the Rover. He is at the top of CDR-21.]

120:47:47 Parker: Stand by on that.

120:47:49 Schmitt: About 15 feet?

120:47:54 Parker: Stand by. (Long Pause)

[Gene reaches the Rover.]

120:48:41 Parker: Hey, Jack. You've got to focus it somewhat short...Well, between 74 feet...(that is), just a little short of 74 feet?

120:48:52 Schmitt: I've already taken it at 15, Bob. I think that's pretty good.

120:48:56 Parker: Okay. We couldn't get an answer.

[From the evidence of the pan, itself, Jack is currently in the middle of taking it and doesn't want to start over. The pan consists of photos AS17-147- 22567 to 22588. USGS B&W assembly from the Professional Paper in a ( 1.7Mb ) PDF document produced by Brian McInall.]

[Frames 22575 and 22576 show Gene at the Rover getting the jack-and-treadle with which he will remove the deep core from the ground.]

[Frame 22577 shows Gene leaving the Rover.]

120:49:06 Parker: Okay. (Long Pause)

[Schmitt - "On the camera focus, we had a number of detents that you could feel. They were calibrated for photogrammetric analysis but, in this case, I was assuming - correctly or incorrectly - that they didn't do photogrammetry with these pictures. A fifteen-foot focus of the ALSEP site sounds a little short to me now, but that's what I did."]

[Gene leaves the Rover, carrying the treadle-and-jack.]

120:49:51 Parker: Go ahead, 17.

120:49:54 Schmitt: About the same position as the heat flow down-Suns...(Correcting himself) or, up-Suns?

Video Clip ( 3 min 27 sec 0.9 Mb RealVideo or 34 Mb MPEG Clip )

120:50:02 Parker: Stand by.

[Gene leans on the drill to drive the plug with the rammer. Jack is referring to LMP-25. The drawings suggest that Jack is supposed to take cross-Sun (south-looking) and down-Sun (west looking) photos of the two heat flow holes, but no up-Suns (east looking).]

120:50:13 Parker: Yes. That sounds pretty good to me, Jack.

120:50:19 Cernan: Bob, I ran that plug three-quarters...(Correcting himself) two-thirds of the way down the rammer, and it hit solid paydirt.

[As noted in Table 8-II in the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report, the deep-core rammer went about 30 cm into the top stem. Using Gene's estimate that about 8 inches (20 cm) of the top stem was above ground, the top of the soil column was about 10 cm below the ground surface, undoubtedly due to compaction. As is discussed on page 8-5 in the Preliminary Science Report, at some time before the stems arrived at the Lunar Receiving Lab, the plug moved upward by 15 cm, causing "some loosening and disturbance" of the material in the top three stems, which had been returned to Earth as a unit. See the deep core write-up from the Lunar Sample Compendium.]

120:50:27 Cernan: And I'll put a cap on it for you, too.

[Gene leans on the drill, holding the cap. He may be kneeling again.]

120:50:34 Cernan: I knew it would. And that...

120:50:35 Parker: ...pan

120:50:42 Schmitt: Roger, Bob.

[Jack's pan starts with AS17-147- 22589 and ends with 22606. Frames 22598 and 22599 show Gene at the deep core hole.]

[Bob is asking if Jack has enabled the seismic experiment as per LMP-24; Gene picks up the treadle.]

120:50:53 Schmitt: No, I didn't. You interrupted me. Good boy. I was on my way, and the LEAM interrupted me. I'll get it.

120:50:59 Parker: Roger.

120:51:01 Schmitt: Keep after me. (Long Pause)

[Jack is asking Bob to make sure that he completes all of his tasks. Gene fits the jack handle to the treadle, and telescopes the handle out to about waist height. He then moves the drill.]

[Gene fits the treadle over the core stem.]

120:51:51 Cernan: (To Jack) I'm not sure they're hearing us all the time.

[Gene tries holding the treadle down with his right foot.]

[Jack has just run out of film. At this moment, Ron Evans is passing overhead and has the following conversation with Houston.]

CapCom - Did you have any luck locating the LM area in the landing site this time?

Evans - Yes, I didn't even see the bright spot there anymore. I know...I know where to look for it and I don't even see it.

CapCom - Roger. Understand.

Evans - Well, (the) South Massif just went into a hole, too, so...

CapCom - Roger. Our best estimate of their location down here, Ron, is 83 - Delta Mike 83. Delta Mike 83.

Evans - Delta Mike 83, huh?

CapCom - Yes, and that's seen on the southeast sheet - the SE sheet with the landing site and the first EVA on it. The 25,000 grid, one of those you had put in at the last minute, there.

[Map coordinate DM 83 is about 250 meters west and 100 meters south of the LM. Ron's previous estimate - at 115:09:01 - of DN 83.3 is much better than Houston's. This is Ron's last report on the landing site.]

120:52:12 Parker: Okay, what...

120:52:13 Cernan: Oh!

120:52:14 Parker: ...was your question, Geno?

120:52:17 Cernan: I just said that was cap Alpha on the core. And let me tell you, (chuckles) it's coming, but this thing is really in something. (Straining) Oh.

[Cernan - "It was a lot of hard work; and not at all easy."]

120:52:37 Parker: Okay. I'm afraid I'll have to.

120:52:42 Schmitt: Why didn't I look at the number?

120:52:45 Parker: You want to give me a frame count, Jack?

120:52:46 Schmitt: Mag Alpha is empty.

120:52:47 Parker: Okay. Copy that.

[Mag Alpha is also magazine 147 in the overall Apollo series.]

120:52:54 Parker: Copy, 158. (Long Pause; Gene's breathing is clearly audible)

[During this interval, there is a discussion in Houston about the film magazines. It, along with a subsequent discussion is reproduced here to illustrate what was going on in Houston throughout the EVA.

EVA - Flight (Director), EVA (Team).

Flight - Go ahead.

EVA - Okay, when we change, we're going to need to go to H.

Flight - Magazine Hotel.

Parker - Okay, and do we want them to take the next one (the next pan) at 74 (foot focus)?

EVA - Yes, that's right.]

Video Clip ( 3 min 56 sec 1.0 Mb RealVideo or 39 Mb MPEG Clip )

120:53:22 Schmitt: Okay.

[Magazine Hotel is a black-and-white magazine, number 136 in the overall Apollo series.]

[To begin a stroke, Gene stands facing the Rover with the core at his right foot. With his left hand, he raises the handle to the vertical position, seats it against the core stem and pushes the handle across to his left to about the 45 degree position, at which point the jack bites against the stem. He then pushes the handle down another 15 or 20 degrees. Because the fulcrum is very close to the stem, he only raises the stem about an inch. After a couple of tries, he moves further from the core to his left so that he can get a longer stroke.]

[Gene is now almost going to his knees with every stroke, one every five or six seconds.]

[The jack is mounted on a treadle, a flat platform about a foot long and maybe six inches wide. In principle, the treadle provides a big surface for spreading the force of the jack lifting the core tube. However, the soft soil tends to shift under the pressure and the treadle is trying to bury itself.]

[Schmitt - "The undisturbed regolith is well-packed and fairly dense, with a density of about, if I remember correctly, 1.9 grams per cubic centimeter. But, as soon as you start to stir it up, it loosens. So you can work things down into it, gradually, even though you don't sink into it when you walk on it."]

[Gene has raised the core about one foot; and he now kneels, with his back to the Rover, so that he can push the handle all the way to the surface with his right hand.]

[Cernan - "I was only able to get it out an inch or two at a time. The core was eight or nine feet long, so I was pumping the jack for a long time. I'd jack the core up a little bit and then I'd have to get the jaws back on the core tube with the other hand so that they wouldn't slip when I jacked again. I can still remember doing this, right down on my knees. It was a lot of hard work, as you can tell by the way I'm breathing and by the way I'm talking. My one-sixth-gravity weight was holding me down enough to give me leverage, but it was still difficult because it required all forearm work and finger dexterity work."]

[In Houston, there is a renewed conversation about the pan and the film magazine.

Experiments: Flight, Experiments. (No answer)

EVA: Flight, EVA. (No answer)

Parker: Experiments, this is CapCom.

Experiments: Go ahead.

Parker: Are we going to come back and take all the same photos over again on the second...(correcting himself) the third EVA? If so, we're kind of gilding the lily with two pans here.

{'Gilding the lily' is either a contraction or misremeberance of a line from Act 4, Scene 2 in Shakespeare's King John: 'To gild refined gold, to paint the lily ...' and means 'needless excess'. I came across it growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s. The earliest use I encountered in a quick web search is from 1895.}

Flight: EVA, you called?

Experiments: (To Bob) We're not going to duplicate anything.

EVA: (To Flight) That should be magazine Golf in lieu of Hotel.]

120:54:35 Schmitt: Well, Bob, I've already got it on.

120:54:37 Parker: Okay. Sorry about that.

[Schmitt - "The guys in the Control Room were as deeply involved in the exploration as anybody and had a lot to do to make it possible. Sometimes, although not very often, they just couldn't come to a decision fast enough. It was tough to do. You've got two guys hopping around on the Moon making their own decisions and, to make a recommendation about which film pack to use, you've got to talk to the people who can give you an informed answer; and that takes time. The way that people worked in and with the Control Room is an important part of the story. We knew that these conversations were going on back in Houston because we'd been in the control room or the science support room on other missions; but, of course, we couldn't hear - and wouldn't have had time to hear - what was going on."]

[The TV jiggles as Jack works at the Rover.]

120:54:41 Parker: Leave it on.

120:54:42 Schmitt: I know what you want. You want color.

120:54:45 Parker: That's affirm.

120:54:46 Schmitt: Well, anyway, that's black and white also. (Pause) Gail is not...You mean Charlie! If you want color, you want Charlie.

120:55:11 Parker: Stand by, Jack, if you're still at the Rover.

120:55:17 Schmitt: Well, I'm still here, but I got Hotel on.

120:55:21 Parker: (Having consulted the Flight Director) Okay. Leave Hotel on. We goofed. (Garbled).

[Gene stops to rest and stands up. He has been raising up off his knees and then dropping down to put more force on the jack.]

[Schmitt - "It's amazing to see Gene get right down on his haunches in this sequence, almost with his backside on his heels. There's no way I could have done that; I just couldn't bend my suit that much. Maybe Gene could because he is tall, because he's got longer legs."]

[Gene appears to have used his left hand to grip the core stem, which may have given him leverage to help keep himself down on his knees.]

120:55:38 Cernan: We got a little time because I've got a lot of jacking to do. (Pause) Man!

[In Houston, Bob is being told that it is unlikely that they will be doing complete ALSEP pans on EVA-3.]

120:55:49 Cernan: Well, there's not...not a lot you can do, Jack.

[Schmitt - "We had the treadle-and-jack because of the trouble Dave Scott and Jim Irwin had in pulling the Apollo 15 core out by hand. But, at least on our mission, it looks as though it took up just as much time and energy. I was offering to put in a shift at the jack but, thank God, he refused it. I don't think I could have done as well as he was doing; he could get down to it."]

120:55:55 Cernan: (Guffawing) Well, thanks a lot. (Pause)

[Jack's offer to prepare the neutron probe - as per LMP-24 - could save a little time, but won't help with Gene's basic problem of removing the core. Gene kneels east of the core, using his left hand to work the jack and his right hand on the core stems for stability.]

[Meanwhile, Jack has probably started taking his pan. It consists of frames AS17-136- 20683 to 20710.]

[Frames AS17-136- 20694, 20695, and 20696 show Gene kneeling east of the core.]

[Gene is pressing the jack handle all the way to the ground. With each stroke, he leans to his left, lifting his right knees a few inches off the ground. This seems to be the most efficient technique he as used so far.]

120:56:20 Cernan: Bob, I'll save my comments 'til later. I hope this core is appreciated.

120:56:31 Parker: Roger, Gene. And I have word from the back room that it is appreciated.

120:56:37 Cernan: Yeah, that makes me feel warm. I'll get it! You're going to have to bear with me. Man, I don't know what it's in.

120:56:53 Schmitt: I was afraid that would happen, with all those rocks.

[That is, Jack has been suspecting that there is only a shallow layer of regolith, which would mean drilling into rock, or least, fractured rock.]

Video Clip ( 4 min 33 sec 1.1 Mb RealVideo or 45 Mb MPEG Clip )

120:57:05 Parker: Hey, Geno, how about slacking off for a minute there. You're going pretty hard.

[The Surgeon reports that Gene is running at about 150 heart beats per minute and a metabolic rate of about 2000 BTU/hr, about twice the average expected for ALSEP deployment. He does a total of nine strokes during this session and, not surprisingly, his breathing indicates that pushing the handle down is the hard part.]

120:57:23 Parker: It seems that way.

[Gene uses the core stem, now about waist height, as a support as he hops up onto his feet.]

120:57:30 Cernan: Aghh. You're right, Bob. I'm going to take a rest. You betcha.

[Cernan - "I'm almost getting tired just from listening to this. I'm going back to those moments; and the comments and the sound of my voice really show how tired I was and how hard it was to get that thing out."]

120:57:56 Parker: Okay. (Long Pause)

[Gene reaches back to change the cooling setting. He has been standing with his arms out in front of him. This is a natural rest position of the inflated suit and Gene can stand like this for a long time without appreciable effort. He has cables inside his suit that are fixed at the center of his chest, run laterally across to his arm pits and then up, over the outside of his shoulders through tubes and, finally, are attached at the center of his back. Friction of the cables in the tubes help him keep his arm in any position he chooses without effort and in order to reach the cooling control on the bottom of his PLSS, Gene has to move his right arm forward and then back, twice, in a vertical plane to overcome the cable friction before he can reach the diverter valve. Gene and Jack will use this "double wave" motion throughout the mission to reach their controls. The shoulder tubes can be seen in a photo (scan by Ed Hengeveld) from a suit fit session which shows a subject - probably Jack - seated on a minimalist Rover mock-up. Note, also, the waist convolute that allows them to sit.]

[Cernan - "The suits were very integral machines. We had arm bearings and elbow joints and wrist joints in the Apollo suits. But we have yet to be able to devise a suit where you incorporate everything from the fingers, to the fists, to the hand, to the wrists, to the elbow, to the shoulder in one motion. Unencumbered by a suit, we can move our arms in any direction using a combination of simultaneous joint movements. To reach for something on a desk behind you, you twist in your chair, turn your head, and move most of the joints in your shoulder and your arm; and you do all those things at once. In a suit you can eventually position your arm or your hand almost any way you want but you're limited to maybe two movements at a time. You can't just incorporate a rotation, an extension, and an arm-bearing movement all at one time. You have to do one or two of those actions, and then do the others. I hate to say it, but it was almost like being a robot sometimes. God made the human machine and we have not been able to make a mechanical device which will incorporate all those movements at the same time"]

120:58:26 Parker: Okay ...

[Jack's three photos of the heat flow holes are AS17-136- 20711, 20712, and 20713.]

120:58:28 Parker: Okay, Jack. If you've got the two separate pans there, we're suggesting that since the CDR is still working on the core recovery, we suggest that you sample the large boulders and (also) loose material on top of some of the smaller large boulders in the vicinity. Let's do some sampling here while Geno's pumping on the old jack. Unless you've got something that...

120:58:52 Schmitt: You want me to help him?

[Gene switches to Intermediate cooling and then starts jacking again, this time left handed from his standing position north of the core. Surgeon reports his heart rate is down to 133.]

[In response to a question from Journal Contributor Ricardo Salamé Páez , Claire Johnson, Gene's able assistant, writes: "Gene is right-handed, but he tells me that, because he's a pilot, he's almost ambidextrous."]

120:59:02 Schmitt: Gene, you want me to spell you a little?

120:59:05 Cernan: Jack, I don't think there's a lot you can do.

[Gene stops jacking.]

120:59:10 Schmitt: Well, I can use up some of my (cooling) water.

[While drilling and operating the jack, Gene has been using much more cooling water than Jack has and, if the imbalance remains, they might have to re-enter the LM with Jack still having cooling water in reserve. By spelling Gene, Jack might help extend the EVA a few precious minutes.]

120:59:25 Parker: And, Jack, could you verify we have the LSPE Enable on (garbled)...

120:59:28 Cernan: I just hope that jack doesn't break.

120:59:31 Schmitt: (Responding to Bob) No, I'll get it. I knew there was something I needed to do.

[Jack reaches the core site; he has yet to push a button at the bottom rear of the Central Station - one of a row of about five or six one-inch diameter buttons - which will turn on the Lunar Surface Profiling Experiment (LSPE), the seismic experiment. This task is at the top of LMP-24 and was skipped when Houston asked Jack to check the LEAM.]

[Gene stands on the treadle; Jack moves from south of the core to northwest and kicks over the drill-stem rack in the process. He starts jacking.]

120:59:49 Cernan: Yeah, that's what I've been doing. See if you can get a bigger...(Pause)

RealVideo clip by Mick Hyde (4 min 02 sec)

121:00:02 Schmitt: (Marveling at the effort required) Oh, no! (Pause)

121:00:07 Cernan: It's coming, though. (Pause) Here, let me get my foot down there and you get the jack. See, that's the key. (Pause) Now, I think I can...(Pause)

121:00:20 Schmitt: Okay. If I do it that way...Get her way down there.

121:00:24 Cernan: Okay. Now try it. (Pause) See, if we can get a couple of inches at a throw, (then) we're all right. There you go. Do that for a little bit. (Pause)

[Jack now has his right hand on the core for balance while he literally falls forward on the handle with his left hand. He has his toes as far out behind as he can, and his knees are bent at the thirty-degree position that is built into the suit.]

[Schmitt - "I was trying to get all of my weight on the handle, just to get it to move. Gene was just heavier and could get it to go."]

121:00:34 Schmitt: Okay, ready?

121:00:35 Cernan: Yup. (Pause) It's got to loosen up sooner or later. (Pause; Jack uses his full weight again to push the handle to the ground) Okay. That's another good one. When you're tired, I'll do that and you can do this. See, this way, you can get a bigger throw. Okay. Let me know when and I'll do that.

121:00:53 Schmitt: Oh, that's all right.

121:00:59 Cernan: Does it feel like it's loosening up at all?

[On this stroke, Jack pushes so hard on the handle that his toes come up about a foot off the ground.]

[Schmitt - "I was putting every bit of weight and momentum into it that I could."]

121:01:05 Cernan: No, go ahead. (Laughter)

[Jack loses his balance and spins to the ground; he kicks the rack again on the way down.]

[Cernan - "This part - where Jack spins around and falls ass-over teakettle - was the funniest thing in the world."]

[Jack is on his hands and knees. Gene grabs hold of the back of his PLSS and tells him to rock back onto his feet.]

[Jack rocks back on his knees and pushes up with his legs onto his feet, with Gene helping him balance.]

Video Clip ( 3 min 10 sec 0.8 MbRealVideo or 31 Mb MPEG Clip )

121:01:30 Cernan: You want to get over here and I'll do that for a while.

121:01:32 Schmitt: Oh, that's all right. I just lost my balance. Can I hold there?

121:01:36 Cernan: Yeah. You can hold there, and I'll hold it, too.

[They both hold the core, Jack is now effectively falling on the handle to push it down but with his right hand of the core to maintain control. Gene is also holding the core, probably to minimize any lateral stress Jack might put on it. During this interval (about 118:20 on the graph), Jack's heart rate peaks at about 135 beats per minute. Throughout the core drilling and extraction, Gene's heart rate has been running over 130 beats, with excursions to 145.]

121:01:45 Cernan: Yeah. That looks to me like it should be getting easy. Just hold on to me and...

121:01:51 Schmitt: What was that?

121:01:52 Cernan: Huh?

121:01:55 Schmitt: I had a tone. It was probably a...

121:01:57 Cernan: You still got it?

[The warning tone raises the possibility that Jack damaged his PLSS when he fell. But he didn't.]

121:02:06 Cernan: You get over here. Get over here, Jack.

121:02:07 Schmitt: Pressure's all right.

121:02:08 Cernan: No, let me get over there.

121:02:10 Schmitt: It's coming now. (Pause)

121:02:17 Cernan: Why don't you come over here? Come on.

121:02:19 Schmitt: One more.

121:02:23 Cernan: I think we're going to get it.

121:02:24 Schmitt: Okay.

121:02:25 Cernan: Come on over here and hold your foot against that thing.

[After Jack's fourth stroke, they trade places.]

121:02:42 Schmitt: Yeah. (Pause) We're getting it now.

121:02:45 Cernan: I need your foot on that thing. See if...

[Gene kneels west of the core with his thighs about thirty degrees past vertical and over his calves. He has his right hand on the core, which is now out of the ground to waist height, and is working the jack handle with his left hand, leaning to his left with each stroke has he was doing before Jack same over to help. Jack is southeast of the core holding it with his right hand and with his right foot on the treadle.]

121:02:55 Cernan: I don't know what kind of hole we're going to have (for the neutron probe). (Pause)

121:03:01 Cernan: Okay. Get your foot down on that thing again.

121:03:06 Schmitt: Wait a minute. Let me...Okay.

121:03:10 Cernan: I jacked the treadle down about 6 inches. (Pause as Gene does his sixth stroke of this sequence) Okay. It's loosening up a little bit. I keep saying that, don't I?

121:03:22 Schmitt: No. It changed while I had it there. (Long Pause)

[The core is now coming up relatively easily. Gene is making good progress with short, rapid strokes.]

121:03:40 Schmitt: You got it?

121:03:41 Cernan: Yeah, why don't you get your pan and your...

121:03:42 Schmitt: I've got that. I got...

121:03:43 Cernan: ...LSPE, and I'll...

121:03:44 Schmitt: I'll get that and a few samples, maybe.

121:03:45 Cernan: Okay. Go ahead and do that. I can get it. (Pause) Whee! Let me tell you, Red Rover, let me tell you! (Pause) I know whose face is smiling back there. (Pause)

[Andy Chaikin suggests - and I agree with the suggestion - that Gene's reference is to Apollo 9 crewman Rusty Schweickart. During that mission, Schweickart did an EVA on the LM porch, primarily as a test of the PLSS. During that EVA, his call sign was "Red Rover", a reference to his bright red hair. Here, Gene may have used "Red Rover" without really thinking about his word choice but, then, immediately realized what he'd said and imagined Rusty's reaction.]

121:04:18 Schmitt: I think it is. (Laughs).

121:04:20 Cernan: (Laughing) I saw all the way to the ground during landing.

121:04:23 Schmitt: Yeah.

[Gene is referring to the apparent compactness of the soil as a possible explanation of why they didn't seem to kick up much dust during the landing. From the descriptions provided by the various crews during their post-mission technical debriefings, the 14 and 17 crews experienced the smallest amount of dust obscuration and the 12 and 15 crews experienced the most.]

[Armstrong, from the 31 July 1969 Technical Debrief - "I first noticed that we were, in fact, disturbing the dust on the surface when we were at something less than 100 feet; we were beginning to get a transparent sheet of moving dust that obscured visibility a little bit. As we got lower, the visibility continued to decrease. I don't think that the altitude determination was severely hurt by this blowing dust, but the thing that was confusing to me was that it was hard to pick out what your lateral and downrange velocities were, because you were seeing a lot of moving dust that you had to look through to pick up the stationary rocks and base your translational velocity decisions on that. I found that to be quite difficult. I spent more time trying to arrest translational velocities than I thought would be necessary. As we got below 30 feet or so, I had to select the final touchdown area. For some reason that I am not sure of, we started to pick up left translational velocity and a backward velocity. That's the thing that I certainly didn't want to do, because you don't like to be going backwards, unable to see where you're going. So I arrested the backward rate with some possibly spastic control motions, but I was unable to stop the left translational rate. As we approached the ground, I still had a left translational rate which made me reluctant to shut the engine off while I still had that rate."]

[Conrad, from the 1 December 1969 Technical Debrief - "As soon as I got the vehicle stopped in horizontal velocity at 300 feet, we picked up a tremendous amount of dust; much more than I had expected. I could see the boulders through the dust, but the dust went as far as I could see in any direction and completely obliterated craters and anything else. All I knew was there was ground underneath that dust. I had no problem with the dust determining horizontal or lateral velocities, but I couldn't tell what was underneath me. I knew I was in a generally good area and that I was just going to have to bite the bullet and land, because I couldn't tell whether there was a crater down there or not... (At 100 feet), the dust was bad enough and I could obtain absolutely no attitude reference by looking at the horizon and the LM. I had to use the 8-ball. I had attitude excursions in pitch of plus 10 and minus 10 (degrees), which happened while I was looking out the window making sure that the lateral and horizontal velocities were still nulled. I would allow the attitude of the vehicle to change by plus or minus 10 degrees in pitch and not be aware of it, and I had to go back in the cockpit and keep releveling the attitude of the vehicle on the 8-ball. I was on the gauges in the cockpit doing that at the time the Lunar Contact light came on. I had that much confidence in the gauges."]

[Shepard, from the 17 February 1971 Technical Debrief - "I believe that we had less problems with dust then they've had before. I think it's because, as we comment later on (in the 14 transcript), the surface of the general area in which we landed was less dusty - that is, exclusive of the dust around the rims of craters. The general area appeared to have less dust and we certainly had no problem with dust at touchdown...The dust was obvious, but you could also see the rocks through the dust. We had no problems here."]

[Mitchell, from the 17 February 1971 Technical Debrief - "I might add that, looking at the film of the descent last night, the dust problem appears a lot worse on the film than it appeared to me out the window. I thought I could see it (the ground) a lot better."]

[Shepard, from the 17 February 1971 Technical Debrief - "You probably would, in any event, because the camera is only looking at one spot and you don't have the more general feeling that your eyeball gives you."]

[Mitchell, from the 17 February 1971 Technical Debrief - "Right; but just looking out the window, you can see the dust is not a great problem at all."]

[Scott, from the 14 August 1971 Technical Debrief - "(At 150 feet) I could see dust - just a slight bit of dust. At about 50 to 60 feet, the total view outside was obscured by dust. It was completely IFR (Instrument Flight Rules). I came into the cockpit and flew with the instruments from there on down...I think if you had to move from one point to another, you could do it quite well. I would recommend maintaining an altitude of at least 150 feet so you don't get into the dust problem. I think dust is going to be variable with landing site."]

[Young, from the 5 April 1972 Technical Debrief - "From 200 feet on down, I never looked in the cockpit. It was just like flying the LLTV (Lunar Landing Training Vehicle); your reference is to the ground outside. You had another thing that nobody has ever remarked about before, and that was the (LM) shadow. I really didn't have any doubt in my mind how far above the ground we were with that shadow, coming down. I had no scale of reference to the holes; but, with the shadow out there in front of you and coming down, it really takes all the guesswork out of it. For that kind of Sun angle, if the radar had crumped (failed), I don't think you'd have had a bit of trouble in just going right in and landing just like a helicopter. First, we could see the thing all the way to the ground; second, the shadow was right there to help you out with the rate of descent. When Charlie says (in the transcript) 'you stopped and you're hovering', there wasn't any doubt in my mind that I was hovering. I could look out the window and see that we're hovering just like a helicopter. We were well into the dust - maybe 40 or 50 feet off the ground - when we're doing that."]

[Duke, from the 5 April 1972 Technical Debrief - "It started at about 80 feet, John."]

[Young, from the 5 April 1972 Technical Debrief - "Yes, 80 feet. Certainly, it started there and it got a lot worse; but you could still see the rocks all the way to the ground. (You could see) the surface features, even the craters, and with something like that...Which really surprised me. I was expecting two things: either the dust would be so bad we couldn't see anything, or there probably wouldn't be as much dust as there was. Possibly, it's the 15-degree Sun angle that did all that. Because there's certainly plenty of dust down there to blow; and there's nothing thin about the regolith around the LM."]

[Cernan, from the 4 January 1973 Technical Debrief - "We started to get dust somewhere around 100 feet."]

[Schmitt, from the 4 January 1973 Technical Debrief - "In my window, I didn't see dust until about 60 or 70 feet."]

[Cernan, from the 4 January 1973 Technical Debrief - "The dust layer was so very thin that I could definitely see through it all the way down. It didn't hamper our operations at all."]

[Jack has pushed the LSPE button on the back of the Central Station, probably with the UHT.]

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121:04:31 Schmitt: (To Houston) Whoops, I moved your Central Station. I've got to re-align on your antenna.

121:04:36 Parker: Stand by, Jack. Wait a minute. (Pause)

121:04:45 Schmitt: Well, the gnomon's still aligned. I thought I moved it.

121:04:50 Parker: Okay. Well, let it be.

121:04:51 Cernan: We should have raised the flag on this thing.

[Gene means they should have used the core stem as the pole for the U.S. flag, because it is so firmly planted. About 8 feet of the stem is now out of the ground.]

121:04:59 Parker: Okay, Jack.

121:05:06 Schmitt: Is it okay, Bob? (Pause)

121:05:14 Parker: Okay. Leave it alone for right now, Jack, and we'll get a reading on it...

121:05:18 Schmitt: Okay.

121:05:19 Parker: ...for a minute or so. (Pause) And, Jack, I guess right now, you might get some fairly rapid samples in the area, since you're probably almost ready to leave. And can you tell us what you saw there in the vicinity; you were giving us a description of the boulders there and plate-iness and alignment of the crystals...the plag(ioclase). You want to amplify that a little bit?

121:05:42 Schmitt: Okay...(Listens to Bob's final remark) I will as soon as I get back over there with a sample bag. Bag 10 Echo - one-zero Echo - is a sample of the very large boulder (Geophone Rock) that's just beyond Geophone 3. Just west...just south.

[Jack has collected a rock fragment and has put it in one of the small Teflon bags used to pack individual samples. Each of them is marked - in this case "E-10" - so that there will be no confusion as to which sample was taken where. The checklist calls for Jack and Gene to mount a pack of 20 sample bags on each of their 70-mm cameras when they start preparing for the geology traverse at 121:26:32. In this case, Jack has used one of the "Dixie cup" sample bags described in greater detail at 141:23:00, probably having taken one off of the stack stowed on the geopallet. Sometime in the next few minutes, Jack will mount a pack of sample bags on his camera.]

121:06:09 Schmitt: South of geophone 3...(Correcting himself) Southwest. And I got a few photos to document the boulder. I'm not sure I documented the sample, though.

121:06:21 Parker: Okay, copy that.

121:06:22 Schmitt: It's the same kind of rock I saw near the LM. And...(Pause) It's a gabbro. I'm beginning to lean towards 50 percent plagioclase, though.

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121:06:45 Parker: Okay. (Long Pause)

[Schmitt - "A higher percentage of plagioclase indicates a higher proportion of silica, calcium, and aluminum in the lava. We were looking at relatively coarse-grained rocks formed from an extrusive lava flow and the higher proportion of plagioclase suggests that the flow might have differentiated, with the plagioclase-rich crystals having floated up toward the top of the flow."]

[Fendell pans away from Gene.]

121:07:21 Parker: Okay, go ahead.

121:07:23 Cernan: Oh, me! (Responding to Bob) No, I'll tell you later why. I'm just figuring, oh me, how am I going to get all this stuff now?

[Fendell pans past Gene. The core is now completely out of the ground. Gene mentions his reasons for removing the treadle at 121:14:14 and 121:15:36, albeit not with any great clarity.]

121:07:39 Schmitt: Did I ruin something?

121:07:41 Cernan: Nope, I've just got to stoop over to get things and that's a major, major effort these days.

[The Experiments people in Houston want Fendell to watch Gene.]

121:07:49 Cernan: No, I got it here. I've got a delicate core in one hand, and I'm trying to get some core caps in the other. (To Bob) You'll be glad to know it's full (at the bit end), Bob. And while I'm the only one to see the bottom end right now, I'm going to tell you (that) it looks like what I'm walking on, but it's obviously not powdery. It's obviously very cohesive, because the bottom of the core is not smooth. It's very jaggedy, and fragmental-like.

121:08:25 Parker: Okay, copy that, Geno. Very good.

121:08:31 Cernan: Well, I'm being very careful with your core here, but I've got to do a few little housekeeping chores first.

[Gene has just finished the "Deep Core Recover" section of CDR-21.]

[Fendell pans past Jack, who is running southeast, away from the Rover.]

121:08:43 Cernan: No, sir, I already got it.

121:08:45 Parker: Okay; good enough.

121:08:46 Cernan: You haven't been looking.

121:08:48 Parker: And Jack, in your travels there, while you're doing some sampling, if you happen to wander by in the approximate vicinity of the deep core, you might get us a Rover sample of the soil there.

121:09:03 Schmitt: Okay.

[Because Jack has used one of the Dixie-cup bags, Bob is under the impression that Jack has assembled the LRV Sampler.]

121:09:12 Parker: Okay. Sounds good to me. Sounds like a good candidate for a cap.

[Fendell returns to Gene, who has picked up the rack and drill. The core is laying in the rack.]

[The plug would have been inserted into the tube and forced in against the end of the core had the bit end not been full, thereby preventing movement of the core material in the tube and also preventing destruction of evidence of layering.]

121:09:29 Cernan: Now, let me see what else I can get here, before I get too upset. I need my...The drill, besides performing admirably, is a tool of necessity to lean over and pick things up with.

[Cernan - "I used the drill as a cane so that I didn't have to get all the way down on my knees. Without it, the only way you could get something off the ground was to get down on your knees because you couldn't bend over. But, if you had a short cane like the drill - the drill was probably 12 or 18 inches high - you could lean on it and then reach over with the other hand to pick things up. It's hard for people to understand the kind of problems you had getting up and down, reaching down to pick things up from the ground. On Earth, we take for granted our mobility and our motion capability. Plus we take for granted the full force of gravity. In lunar gravity, when you were leaning on the drill, you don't lose your balance as quickly as you would on Earth, so that was an advantage. But, when you're being held down by Earth gravity, you can handle a lot more torque than you can being held down by one-sixth gravity. It's those kinds of things that made this a difficult task. It was just very difficult to flex that stiff suit."]

[Gene tries to re-position the drill, but it falls over.]

121:09:49 Parker: Okay. And our next priority is to put the neutron flux down the hole, we hope.

[Gene leans on the drill with his right hand and, without going to his knees, picks up the gold-covered probe with his left hand. He is on CDR-21.]

121:10:02 Cernan: Well, we shall see. Man, I don't even know if I can find the hole. It's in the shadow now. I guess I can see it down there. (Pause)

[Gene unwraps the lower section of the probe.]

[Cernan - "Remember, this was a disturbed surface, a very beat up area. There were footprints all over. And it was basically all one bland color. I had just drilled the hole a couple of inches in diameter, I'd gone four or five feet away, had come back, and then had to find the hole. If I hadn't left something close to the hole, so I'd know where to look, it probably would have been very difficult to find. You were looking across the entrance to that hole, and you were still looking at the same color in the wall of the hole. The low Sun would give you a shadow close to the top, but you wouldn't have seen that unless you were almost on top of the hole. And I'd drilled the hole in a hummocky crater, a little depression, that had some slopes on it. So, I was afraid of going back and not finding that hole to put the experiment into."]

[Schmitt - "I'm still amazed that, after everything we did around that hole, that it was still open and that Gene was able to find it. The ground had really gotten chewed up and, by all rights, the hole should have fallen in, at least near the surface."]

[Bob Parker says that $3.25 was the prevailing per diem rate with government-furnished meals and lodgings.]

[Gene tries to use the probe to pick up the rammer. He flips the rammer up to head height but gives it enough motion away from himself that it flies almost out of the TV picture. Gene moves forward to retrieve the rammer.]

121:11:10 Parker: I don't. (Pause) John (Young) doesn't, either.

[This time, Gene gives the rammer a little inward motion, flipping it upward with the probe in his right hand. This time, the T-shaped head of the rammer hooks on the probe tip and he catches it with his left hand. He then hangs the rammer on the rack and activates the lower section of the probe. In brief, the neutron probe consists of targets containing either boron or uranium-235 which, upon capturing neutrons, emit alpha particles or fission fragments which are then captured by plastic or mica detectors. The instrument consists of an outer tube containing the detectors and a central core containing the targets. Because the targets and detectors do not cover the whole surfaces of the core and tube, respectively, the core can be twisted so that the target/detector pairs are either next to each other or 180 degrees apart. In the latter case, very few alpha particles or fission fragments are captured by the detectors and, therefore, the instrument is "off".]

121:11:19 Schmitt: Bob, I see no clear alignment of plagioclase or pyroxene in this rock. That's the one with the parting in it. It looks as if - integrating what I've seen here and over at the big rock, the geophone rock - the layering or the foliation or the parting, whichever it is, is the result of variations in vesicle concentrations. The sample 10 Echo is a sample of the more coarsely vesicular rock. I could not get one of the more finely or non-vesicular fragments. But I got pictures of it.

[Schmitt - "An alignment of elongated minerals such as plagioclase or pyroxene is called a lineation, and generally indicates that there has been a flow or some stress in the direction of alignment. The term 'foliation' is usually reserved for a situation where the orientation of tabular minerals creates a planar variation in the rock. A 'parting' indicates how the rock breaks, usually along foliation planes."]

[Gene is doing some detailed finger work on the neutron probe.]

121:12:08 Schmitt: I'm having trouble getting...(Listens to Bob)

121:12:10 Parker: Go ahead.

121:12:13 Schmitt: Go ahead.

121:12:14 Parker: And, do you see any evidence of soil on top of some of these medium-sized boulders?

121:12:21 Schmitt: There's soil. A little bit of dust in some of the holes. But there's not enough to sample at this point. I may find some later.

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121:12:33 Parker: Okay, copy that. (Perhaps to someone in Houston) He's picking up (garbled). (Pause)

121:12:43 Schmitt: Vesicle walls do not seem to be as shiny (as in other Apollo lavas)...Most of them seem to have dust in them.

121:12:54 Parker: Copy that.

121:12:55 Schmitt: The vesicles are not cleanly (that is, smoothly) spherical. They're spherical but they have fairly rough outlines. They look as if there's been some recrystallization.

121:13:10 Parker: All right.

[Schmitt - "In molten rock, vesicles usually start out being roughly spherical in shape but, once the rock has solidified, if it stays warm for long enough, there will be a tendency for crystals to grow and destroy the smoothly spherical outline. If the rock cools slowly enough, the vesicles would start to look like 'vugs', with the crystals growing right into the void."]

[Gene removes the top section of the probe from its sheath and threads it into the lower section.]

121:13:16 Parker: Okay, thank you, Geno. (Long Pause)

121:13:30 Schmitt: I picked the wrong rock to sample with a scoop, I'll tell you that. (Long Pause)

[Jack's sample is too big for the scoop. He has taken photos AS17-136- 20714 thru 20717. Gene uses the probe to pick up the empty sheath, and then lays the sheath on the rack.]

121:13:52 Parker: Okay, Geno and let's...

121:13:54 Cernan: Okay, another key to the world is whether the...(Stops and listens)

121:13:56 Parker: Geno, stand by. Hold it.

121:13:59 Cernan: Yeah.

121:14:00 Parker: Okay, make sure that the top of it doesn't go down through the hole, too, and disappear, either by putting it through the treadle, or if you're sure that the...Or whatever.

[The neutron probe is a self-contained unit and, among other things, has no cable connecting it to electronics on the surface, a cable that would prevent the probe from falling out of reach to the bottom of the core hole. At the end of the third EVA, Jack will return to the ALSEP site and retrieve the probe so that he and Gene can bring it back to Earth for analysis.]

[Gene may mean that, after he got the core out of the hole, he tried to push the jack handle into its shortened, stowage position and couldn't. However, the problems he foresaw in emplacing the probe through the treadle aren't apparent.]

121:14:33 Cernan: See, the jack wouldn't...(Listens) Well, looks big enough to put this down. Let me use my judgment on it. (Pause)

[Gene uses the probe to pick up the treadle.]

121:15:08 Parker: Okay, thank you. (Long Pause)

[Gene uses the jack handle to position the treadle over the hole but doesn't yet set it on the ground. He puts the probe through the hole in the treadle and then puts the tip of the probe in the hole and lowers it about a foot or so without lowering the treadle. He then drops the treadle to the ground and, finally, he lets go of the probe, which falls into the hole until the top catches on the treadle.]

121:15:27 Cernan: Shazam!

[Schmitt - "As I remember, Captain Marvel, the comic book hero, was a handicapped newspaper boy who, when he said 'Shazam', turned into Captain Marvel."]

121:15:36 Cernan: (Excited) See what happened, here, to that treadle, Bob? I couldn't get the jack (handle) to go down and it made the hole oblong when I...But it's all right now.

121:15:42 Parker: Okay; beautiful, beautiful.

[Apparently, with the handle upright, the opening through the treadle has an elongated shape. However, the probe was able to fall through until the top caught.]

[Gene covers the top of the probe with the gold sheath. This task is the last one on CDR-21. Next, he will carry the deep core to the Rover for disassembly as per CDR-22]

[Bob asks the Flight Director for a briefing on the EVA plan.]

[Cernan - "It was a lot of hard work; and it was very satisfying to get it done."]

[Here, Jack is using one of the flat sample bags, suggesting that, although page CDR-24 calls for Gene to mount packs of bags on the cameras during the upcoming geo-prep period, Jack already has a pack on his camera. At 121:26:54, he indicates that he had mounted a pack on his camera sometime prior to that time. Jack takes a stereopair of this sample location, AS17-136- 20718 and 20719.]

[Schmitt - "The sample bags were reasonably clear Teflon, with a little metal double-spring that held the lip open a little bit. They also had tabs on either end, and what you could do was push against those tabs to open it up even more, get your sample in it, and then pull them closed and then twist the tabs down. It wasn't a vacuum seal but it wasn't a bad mechanical seal to keep the sample from falling out."]

[Fendell pans clockwise, away from Gene.]

121:16:54 Schmitt: Well, how far behind are we?

121:16:57 Parker: Stand by. (Pause) You're between 35 and 40 minutes. And part of the problem is that we're a little short on oxygen on Gene's PLSS. It looks like it's a 6 hours and 45 minute EVA from that point of view (rather than seven hours as planned), which means that we'd have to leave Station 1 too early (to get very much useful work done). (Pause) Which is the reason to curtail Station 1, apart from just (being) behind which is what the hooker was.

[They will actually have a 7 hour, 12 minute EVA. The workload and, consequently, the oxygen use rate will drop significantly once they start the traverse. Station 1 was to have been a stop at the east rim of Emory Crater, an impact feature 650 m in diameter. Fendell pans past Jack, who is returning to the Rover from the south, scoop in hand.]

121:17:44 Parker: Okay. (Pause)

[Gene is on checklist page CDR-22 and is about to separate and cap the core sections for transport back to Earth. See the deep core write-up from the Lunar Sample Compendium.]

121:17:58 Parker: Well, there's some things you can't help. Even the (Flight) Surgeon agrees with me on that one. And for your thinking, Jack and Gene, what we're doing is planning on going to the west side of Steno and that boulder field that's part way out to Station 1.

[A number of boulders on the west rim of Steno could be seen in blow-ups of pictures taken from the Apollo 15 Command Module. These are indicated by X's in the traverse map. Readers might want to note that Geophone Rock, which is near the planned landing site, was not noticed in the Apollo 15 pictures. The boulders at Steno can be seen in the accompanying blow-up of the relevant section of a frame taken with the Pan camera aboard the Apollo 17 Command Module.]

121:18:20 Schmitt: (To Gene) Okay, you want to break that (core) and I'll go get this sample, Gene.

121:18:24 Cernan: Yeah; I'll break this, Jack; no sweat.

[Jack will get a surface soil sample from the deep core site while Gene separates the sections of core stem for later packing. Gene will put the core in a small vise mounted on the top of the geopallet and use the wrench to twist off one core section at a time.]

[Jack's photo of the deep core hole and the associated hardware is AS17-136- 20720.]

[The surgeon reports to the Flight Director that, during the first four hours of the EVA, Gene's average metabolic rate has been 1170 BTU/hr and Jack's 1120. These compare with the predicted averages of 1050.]

121:19:09 Parker: Okay, congratulations.

121:19:14 Cernan: Well, don't do it yet, I haven't gotten it broken down yet (without spilling anything). (Pause) But I got it out of the ground with a little help. (Pause) Okay, first piece of three sections. Bob, it's full.

[Fendell finds Jack, who is sampling near the core hole.]

121:19:41 Cernan: And I have to tell you which end I'm taking it from. I don't remember which end I've got here.

121:19:45 Parker: That's all right, since we got the cap and Alpha on one end and Bravo on the other end. (That's cap) Bravo.

121:19:55 Cernan: Man! There's a cap that's going to be tough to get on. I put that on with a hammer. Oh, boy!

121:20:03 Schmitt: Okay, Bob, there's a mixture of soil and a rock in (sample bag) 475.

121:20:08 Parker: Okay, copy 475.

[Experiments wants to continue watching Gene. So, Fendell leaves Jack and pans clockwise, looking for Gene. He has to pan through almost a complete, 360 degree circle.]

121:20:19 Parker: Okay, copy that. Beautiful.

121:20:21 Schmitt: And it's about 3 meters from the hole. Well...

121:20:31 Cernan: Hey, Bob, cap Charlie is opposite Alpha. That was the first 3-section.

121:20:38 Parker: Okay, copy that. (Pause)

121:20:46 Schmitt: Bob, it's about 3 meters from the hole. I got a stereo "before" at 11 feet and one "after" at 11 feet.

[Contrary to his statement, Jack apparently took a single "before" picture of the sample site. The "before" and "after" pictures are AS17-136- 20721 and 20722, respectively.]

121:21:01 Schmitt: Stand by. (Long Pause)

121:21:33 Cernan: I tell you. (Pause)

121:21:40 Schmitt: (Can I) help?

121:21:42 Cernan: No, I can get it. Boy, this system works good. (Pause)

[Gene is referring to the vise/wrench. Fendell finds him at the back of the Rover, using the wrench to turn a stem section. It detaches very easily.]

121:21:55 Schmitt: Okay, let me see. Let me configure the old LRV sampler, here. (Long Pause)

[This is the so-called "Dixie cup" sampler consisting of a UHT fitted into a holder for a stack of cup-shaped sample bags. The sampler will allow Jack to collect rock fragments and soil during the Rover drive without dismounting. NASA Photo KSC-72PC-411 shows Jack examining the LRV sampler during a final, suited check of the Rover prior stowage on the LM.]

[Jack has returned to the Rover, carrying one of the two UHTs. He goes to the gate where he will get the cup holder for attachment to the UHT. Jack had planned to assemble the LRV sampler at the top of LMP-22 before deploying the geophones.]

[Gene is expressing his heartfelt relief that the drilling job is done. He puts a cap on the core section and hammers it on with his glove.]

121:22:25 Schmitt: Go ahead.

121:22:26 Parker: When you took those two pans at the ALSEP, was one at 15 feet and one at 20 feet?

121:22:33 Schmitt: One was at...Focus was at 15 and 74.

121:22:37 Parker: Okay.

121:22:38 Schmitt: There's a partial pan on mag A (Alpha or 147), which was taken at 15 (feet focus).

121:22:46 Parker: Okay. Understand.

[Gene removes the wrench and takes the core section to Jack's seat so that he can get it out of the way.]

121:23:08 Parker: Roger. Copy that, Gene. (Pause)

[Gene returns to the vise and puts a cap on the now open end of the core.]

121:23:52 Schmitt: Arms tired?

121:23:53 Cernan: That hurts. Oh, me; oh, my. I'm going to take a big drink of water here.

[Gene takes the core to Jack's seat. A detail from a training photo by Ed Dempsey shows the position of Gene Cernan's drink valve and food stick.]

[Cernan - "Maybe we were 30 minutes late, but at least we got the job done and we got it done right. I think that was the feeling we had. A feeling of satisfaction. That's what we went up there to do during that period of time and we did it. It was a lot of work, probably more work than people anticipated because we ran into problems in getting the core out, but we got it all done."]

[Schmitt - "I was not quite so satisfied as Gene was at this point because of the time we were losing for exploration. The difference was natural. Gene was very pleased with having gotten the ALSEP properly deployed, while I was concerned that we hadn't spent much time yet learning about the Moon."]

[Gene is sounding livelier than he had while he was struggling with the drilling and the core extraction.]

[Cernan -"If you expend energy at a high rate and you're not careful, frustration can set in. Fortunately, when I was a little kid, I used to work with my dad in building things: rebuilding automobile engines, building garages, fixing plumbing, or whatever it was. These kinds of things were fundamental things to me. My dad used to always say, "Do it right, or not at all." And it certainly applied to what we we're doing here, because we only had one chance to do it."]

[Gene consults his checklist. He is about finished with CDR-22. Readers who have been following along in the checklists should note that CDR-23 is a duplicate of LMP-25, the ALSEP photo plan.]

121:24:31 Schmitt: Hey...

121:24:34 Cernan: What do you need, babe?

121:24:35 Schmitt: Can you pull that off?

[Jack hasn't gotten the LRV sampler attached properly to the UHT. During the following exchange, Jack asks Gene to grab the sampler head and pull it off - with Jack still holding on to the UHT - so that they can get it properly aligned.]

121:24:37 Schmitt: Yeah. Rotate it 180, there. (Pause) No, no, no, just the...The total thing. That's good. There you go.

121:24:45 Cernan: Like that?

121:24:46 Schmitt: Yeah.

121:24:50 Parker: Okay, and, 17...

121:24:51 Schmitt: Okay, I have to line it up.

121:24:52 Parker: Go ahead.

121:24:54 Cernan: Okay. I'll hold it. You do it.

121:24:56 Schmitt: I got it.

[Jack returns to the gate.]

121:24:57 Cernan: Okay. Let me give you a (gravimeter) reading, Bob, before you speak. Wait a minute, let me get it over with.

[Gene goes to the rear of the Rover to read the gravimeter. For this reading, he had not taken the instrument off the Rover.]

121:25:16 Parker: Did you punch Grav a second time? That's identical to the first one.

121:25:24 Cernan: It (meaning CDR-22) just said to read it. That's what you want, isn't it?

121:25:26 Parker: Yeah, but did you punch Grav after the first reading you gave me there at the ALSEP? Or are you just reading me the same measurements you did before?

[Gene was supposed to have punched the Grav button when he was at the Rover getting the treadle. That was on CDR-21 and, in his eagerness to get the core out of the ground, he forgot to do that task. See Gene's further comment below at 121:35:53.]

121:25:48 Parker: Yeah, and I didn't copy your punching Grav, but the one...

121:25:53 Cernan: Bob, I did not. When I went to get the treadle and the neutron flux and rammer, I did not punch Grav.

[Jack is working at Gene's seat.]

[The Surface Electrical Properties Experiment (SEP, usually pronounced "Sep") measured variations in the conductivity of near surface materials and gives an indication of the subsurface geologic structure. It consists of an antenna, receiver, and data recorder mounted behind Jack's seat and a transmitter and associated antenna which they will deploy 150 meters east of the LM. As soon as they finish with the ALSEP deployment and their preparations for the geology traverse, Jack will run back to the LM, get the SEP transmitter, and then will carry it out to the deployment site. After the geology traverse, they will then deploy the transmitter and lay out the transmitter antenna.]

121:26:18 Parker: We'd also like to know if you have the gnomon, back at the Rover?

121:26:24 Cernan: No, we're just...(Listens to Bob's final question)

121:26:25 Schmitt: Yes, we do (have the gnomon).