EVA-1 Close-out

Wake-up and EVA-2 Preparations

 

Post-EVA Activities in the LM

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1995 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
MP3 audio clips by Ken Glover.
Last revised 19 June 2014.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 20 min 26 sec )

RealAudio Clip (1 min 51 sec )

119:09:18 Conrad: Okay, Houston. There's the cabin at 4.6.

119:09:22 Bean: Okay. Master Alarm. Let me turn it off.

119:09:24 Gibson: Roger, Pete; we copy. We show that (4.6 psi) down here.

119:09:28 Bean: (reading from the last paragraph on the righthand side of Sur-60) "Operate OPS Purge Valve to Depress suit as required." (Pause) Let me operate yours.

119:09:33 Conrad: Yeah, here.

[They have the option of deflating their suits by opening the purge valves.]

119:09:45 Bean: Here it comes.

119:09:46 Conrad: Okay. (Pause) Okay.

119:09:52 Bean: Okay. (Pause) "Cabin Repress valve closes at 4(.4 psi). Verify Cabin Press stable." It is. (Pause)

119:09:59 Conrad: "Cabin Gas Return (Valve) to Auto."

119:10:01 Bean: Okay, Cabin Gas Return (valve), Auto.

[They are opening the valve to allow flow of oxygen from the cabin into the ECS suit circuit.]

119:10:06 Bean: Okay. (Pause)

119:10:11 Conrad: Auto.

119:10:12 Bean: "Suit Circuit Relief (valve), Auto."

119:10:13 Conrad: That's already Auto.

119:10:14 Bean: That's right, (because the checklist indicates "verify") "Suit Gas Diverter (Valve), Push/Cabin."

119:10:19 Conrad: Push/Cabin.

[Both the relief valve and the suit gas diverter valve will now permit oxygen flow from the suit circuit into the cabin, the latter through the O2 hoses which, of course, are not yet hooked up to the suits.]

119:10:25 Conrad: Wait just a second. (Pause) Suit Fan 1, Closed.

119:10:30 Bean: And I'll close the Suit Fan Delta-P (on CB panel 16).

119:10:32 Conrad: Okay.

[They are turning on the ECS fan to actually start the flow of oxygen through the suit circuit. The Delta-P sensor looks at a pressure difference across the fan to confirm proper operation.]

119:10:42 Gibson: That's affirmative, Al. Turn it off (by opening the circuit breaker). (Pause)

119:10:52 Bean: Okay, and it says "Doff gloves, helmets, visors," and all that; and let's go off relay. We're going off relay right now, Houston.

119:11:01 Conrad: How do you want me to go, Al?

119:11:05 Gibson: Roger. Copy, you're going off relay.

[They are going into push-to-talk.]

[Comm Break. There is no on-board recording until about 131:02:11.]

[Long Comm Break. During this comm break they remove their gloves and helmets, remove the purge valves, connect the LM O2 hoses so that they can have some air flow through the suits, turn off the PLSS pumps and fans, disconnect the PLSS water and connect the LM water. Finally, they will reconfigure the comm and re-establish voice contact with Houston. During the break, the NASA Public Affairs commentator, possibly John E. "Jack" Riley, reports preliminary estimates of the workloads experienced by the astronauts during the first EVA. Pete's average was 900 BTU/hr (revised to 975 BTU/hr in the Mission Report) and Al's was 1000 BTU/hr. These actual values are noticeably lower than the pre-mission, predicted values of 1166 for Pete and 1142 for Al. For comparison, the Apollo 14 astronauts expended 800 (Shepard) and 930 (Mitchell) BTU/hr during their first EVA, which was also devoted to an ALSEP deployment.]

[At the end of the Comm Break, they are on Sur-61 and are reconfiguring the LM Comm.]

119:20:50 Bean: "Audio, Commander, and VHF A. Off; B. Receive."

119:20:55 Conrad: VHF A, Off; B, Receive.

119:20:57 Bean: "Mode, ICS/Push-To-Talk." (Pause)

[The audio for the next few lines is not available on the PAO tape from which this version of the Journal was prepared.]

119:21:08 Conrad: Houston, Intrepid. Loud and clear; how us?

119:21:10 Gibson: We read you loud and clear. Say, are you folks still concerned about the water in the suit loop?

[This is a reference to the water Pete and Al saw coming out of the blue O2 hose that supplied oxygen from the ECS to the suits during EVA-1 preparations at 114:35:35]

119:21:24 Gibson: Roger. If you would like to try to get it out, you can blow it out and use the wipe rag that you have over in the aft part of the right-hand equipment stowage bag as a cleanup device. Or you could probably best put it right over the exit and catch it before you get it into the dust in the cabin.

[Air-to-Ground audio on the PAO tape resumes.]

[They will return to the topic at 120:10:17.]

[For a while, we hear only Conrad's half of the conversation in the LM. He is reading the post-EVA procedures. Note that he appears not to be in Push-to-Talk.]

119:22:41 Conrad: O2. (Pause) O2. What are you going to do? Oh, you don't want a connect yet. You're going to have to turn around (and) get this side to me. Right? Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to turn all the way around that way. That a boy. (Pause) (Garbled) (Long Pause)

[They are recharging the PLSSs with oxygen, starting with Al's. They are probably doing the oxygen recharge this early to ensure that the PLSSs are available for emergency use in case of some problem arising with the ECS.]

[Conrad, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "We had practiced the PLSS recharge several times, and it paid off. The PLSS recharge went as advertised. The equipment was easy to handle in one-sixth g. All the storage was adequate. We followed our procedures to the letter and we never fell over any equipment. It all went in the right places and transferred around as we had practiced."]

119:24:20 Conrad: (Not realizing he is broadcasting) Hey, Al Bean. That was a hell of a show. Too bad the TV didn't work. Would you recycle that stop button? I'd feel a lot better. (Pause)

119:24:43 Conrad: I can't see it from here, Al. I'll have to wait. (Pause)

119:24:54 Conrad: May be it. Although I think you tend to underestimate distances. (Long Pause)

[Evidently, Al has called Pete's attention to something outside, possibly the U.S. flag.]

119:25:36 Conrad: Hey, I... You got a false joint in it or something. It's a good thing the TV wasn't working. (Pause)

[Here, they may be discussing the U.S. flag that they deployed early in the EVA. The locking hinge that was to have held the crossbar out perpendicular to the flag staff would not lock, leaving the flag hanging limp.]

119:26:00 Gibson: Pete, we're reading you on VOX.

119:26:02 Conrad: You've got 2 minutes. Turn her off. (To Gibson) Okay. (Pause) Is it off? I don't know. Just a minute.

[Very Long Comm Break.]

[An engineering exchange between Yankee Clipper and Houston toward the end of the period is omitted. After completing the PLSS oxygen recharges, Pete and Al will doff the PLSSs and OPSs, replace the lithium hydroxide canisters and batteries in both PLSSs, and stow the OPSs, PLSSs, gloves, and RCUs. These procedures are listed on Sur-62. The audio for the conversation from here to 120:10 was unavailable on the PAO tape used to prepare the Journal.]

119:42:19 Conrad: Houston, Intrepid.

119:42:28 Gibson: Intrepid, Houston. Go ahead.

119:42:33 Conrad: Roger. How far behind time are we?

119:42:40 Gibson: Stand by...

119:42:41 Conrad: I'll put it this way. Aren't we supposed to be doing a '119:45'?

[The checklist does not contain any activity specifically scheduled for 119:45. As per Sur-63, there is an eat period scheduled for 118:57 to 119:57, including a step to copy lift-off times for upcoming orbits. The last one they copied prior to the EVA was the Rev 19 lift-off time of 120:21:09. As we will see below, they are about an hour and fifteen minutes behind schedule and are still on Sur-62. The cryptic nature of Pete's transmission suggests that he is talking about transferring the contents of the urine bags in the suits into stowage bags which would be jettisoned later. There is no mention of such a task in the post-EVA checklist, although there is such a step - "Empty UCTAs (Urine Collection Transfer Assemblies)" at 131:45 in the EVA-2 Prep procedures.]

119:42:51 Conrad: Okay. We'll be off the air.

[Long Comm Break]

119:50:27 Conrad: Go ahead.

119:50:29 Gibson: Intrepid, plane change burn was good, and we show that you're about 1:15 (one hour and fifteen minutes) behind in the flight plan.

119:50:40 Conrad: Okay. That's not too bad. We'll pick up.

[Very Long Comm Break]

MP3 Audio Clip ( 38 min 06 sec )

RealAudio Clip ( 4 min 40 sec )

120:10:09 Gibson: Intrepid, Houston. (Pause)

120:10:14 Conrad: Go ahead.

120:10:17 Gibson: Intrepid, (on) your last step on post-EVA-1 card - where you reverse the O2 hoses - we suggest that's a good time to check for the water.

[This item is third up from the bottom of the right-hand column on Sur-62. In essence, they will reverse the direction of oxygen flow through the suits, and this will be the next convenient opportunity to check the ECS O2 hoses for water leakage.]

[After stowing the PLSSs, etc., they stowed the rock box in a compartment behind the ascent engine cover. Now, they are changing the film magazine in the 16-mm sequence camera and stowing it and, after that, they will put fresh black-and-white film magazines in the Hasselblads and stow them in the ETB for use in the morning. They will top off the O2 tanks after 121:03.]

[Probably at the time that they change out the Hasselblad magazines, they use up the remaining film on the two EVA-1 magazines. On the color magazine that Pete used during the EVA, they expose frames AS12-46-6853 to 6867. Dave Byrne has assembled these into a post-EVA color pan.]

[Next, they expose frames on the magazine Al used, AS12-47-7011 to 7020.]

120:12:01 Conrad: Okay. Drain the hoses. That's the idea. Okay.

120:12:05 Gibson: That's affirm.

[Comm Break. The NASA Public Affairs commentator reports that Pete's average heart rate during EVA-1 was 105 with a high of 150 and a low of just under 80 beats per minute. Al's average was 121; his high was 151; and his low was 82.]

[A conversation between Yankee Clipper and Houston concludes with the following.]

120:14:34 Gordon: Thank you, sir.

[Long Comm Break]

120:21:09 Gibson: Intrepid, ready to copy.

120:21:19 Conrad: Roger. We just went to modulate PM, per checklist.

120:21:24 Gibson: Roger, Pete.

[Very Long Comm Break. This last exchange with Houston indicates that they are near the bottom of Sur-62 and are verifying that they have the circuit breaker panels in the powerdown configuration given on pages Sur-22 and Sur-23. Next, they will drain the remaining feedwater from the PLSSs in some small collection bags and, then, after calibrating their small spring scale by weighing one of the RCUs, they will weigh the water bags and report the totals to Houston for use in calibrating PLSS performance.]

120:40:55 Gibson: Go ahead. We're waitin'.

120:41:00 Conrad: I am going to take this 35-cent (meaning "cheap") scale that they sent out here to weigh these bags with and break it over somebody's head.

120:41:11 Gibson: I take it you're having a malfunction with the bag. The bag and the scale.

120:41:20 Conrad: The nut... (Responding to Gibson) No, just the scale. The nut came off the top of the adjustment; and that's the end of the scale (that is, they can't get it to work).

[Comm Break]

[Houston has experts in all the critical systems monitoring the flight, ready to give aid should it be needed. Other experts are on call. Here, although Gibson may be partly joking, someone was no doubt trying to find an expert or, at least, a duplicate scale that somebody could examine.]

120:43:54 Gibson: Stand by, Pete. (Long Pause) Pete, our first cut (that is, first guess) on the plier location is in one of the PPKs (Personal Preference Kits).

120:44:54 Conrad: Roger. (Long Pause while somebody in Houston digs out a stowage list)

[Bean - (Not remembering that they had pliers) "What they're saying is 'Well if there is a pair of pliers, you guys brought it yourself, along with your flags, medallions, and things like that.' And, of course, they knew we didn't because they had a list of what we each had."]

[Bean - "We had tools? I'll bet Ed didn't think we had pliers, either. I didn't know we did. But I guess we had to. Things do break and you got to have a few things like pliers. Too bad we didn't bring those out when we jettisoned the LM. They would have been a good thing for a memento to bring home. If we really had 'em."]

[Conrad - (Chuckling) "We got it fixed."]

[Pete did, indeed, bring the pliers back to Earth and, later sold them to Ulrich Lotzmann, who has provided a picture.]

[Long Comm Break]

120:50:26 Gibson: Yankee Clipper, Houston (Pause) Intrepid, Houston.

120:50:39 Bean: Go ahead, Houston.

120:50:41 Gibson: Al, how you coming on weighing the water?

[They are weighing the residual feedwater to give the PLSS engineers some data on use rates as a function of the available telemetry data on average heart rates, feedwater pressure and oxygen use.]

120:51:12 Bean: Okay, Houston. Well, let us think about it a minute. We're still working on the scale. (Pause)

120:51:24 Gibson: Roger, Al. We copy. (Long Pause)

[Conrad - "It got to be a point of honor to get that scale fixed."]

120:52:25 Gibson: Well done, Intrepid.

[Comm Break]

[Conrad, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "I wanted to weigh the water. I put in this 25-cent scale, which should have been set to zero. If anybody had thought about it, including myself, the spring tension in the scale itself was never zero in one-sixth g. As I unscrewed it to zero, I unscrewed it all the way; and the screw, the spring, and everything disappeared into the bottom of the scale. We had a slight amount of difficulty - like 25 minutes - putting that baby back together again, which we finally did. It would be wise to put in a reasonable scale that can be zeroed in one-sixth g. Let somebody think about it a little bit; we can plan this one better."]

[Because of the problems that Pete and Al are having with the scale, a much improved design was flown on the later missions. Ironically, the weight of the improved design (230 grams) was half that of the Apollo 11/12 scale (500 grams). The two types of scales are shown on page 38 in Judy Allton's Tool Catalog.]

120:54:08 Gibson: (A bit incredulous) Copy, 3.8 kilograms.

[The weight of the RCUs are known, thus giving a scale calibration.]

120:54:31 Gibson: Roger. We copy 0.38. You had us wondering down here - a few of us. The metric fellows were wondering.

120:54:38 Conrad: (Chuckling) Me, too.

[Comm Break. At the time, most of NASA used the English system of pounds and feet. Obviously, the scale was the child of some metric radicals. Journal Contributor Harald Kucharek notes that echos of this conversation had a far more serious consequence in September 1999 when "the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost due to a mix of English and metric units." A NASA JPL statement, quoting Arthur Stephenson, chairman of the Mars Climate Orbiter Mission Failure Investigation Board, states "The 'root cause' of the loss of the spacecraft was the failed translation of English units into metric units in a segment of ground-based, navigation-related mission software."]

120:57:18 Gibson: Roger, Al. Is that the CDR's?

120:57:25 Bean: That's right. (Long Pause)

120:57:40 Gibson: Intrepid, for your information, your EVA went 4 hours and 1 minute (from 3.5 psi cabin pressure to 3.5). And, Al, you were the shortest in terms of quantity remaining. Your PLSS H2O was down to 47 minutes remaining (an estimate since they are still measuring the residual water); and, Pete, your O2 was most critical on you. And you had still 2 hours 7 minutes left.

120:58:10 Conrad: Okay. (Long Pause)

120:59:02 Bean: Okay. Pete's water bag weighs 0.26 kilograms.

120:59:11 Gibson: Copy, 0.26.

[Comm Break. According to the Mission Report, Pete's initial feedwater charge (done before launch from Earth) was 8.56 pounds, of which 3.81 remained at the end of the EVA. This would be consistent with the reported 0.26 kilograms if the latter is a lunar weight. Not all of the remaining 3.8 pounds could have been used but, nonetheless, Pete had plenty of cooling water left.]

121:01:14 Gibson: Stand by. (Pause)

[BTUs are British Thermal Units, a measure of total energy expended. The workloads are inferred from the heart-rate data.]

121:01:26 Gibson: Pete, you averaged out at 900 BTU; and, Al, you averaged out at 1000. (Long Pause)

[As mentioned previously, the Mission Report gives a revised 975 for Pete and 1000 for Al.]

121:01:48 Gibson: That's affirmative. It's running real well. The PSE and LSM are up and working; and they're just going through the activation phases for the remainder.

121:01:59 Conrad: Okay. (Long Pause)

121:02:58 Bean: 0.17 kilograms for the LMP's water.

121:03:04 Gibson: 0.17. Got it. (Pause)

[As Al reported at 120:59:02, the weight of Pete's remaining water was 0.26 kilograms. The Mission Report indicates that Al lost about 1.2 pounds of water during the relatively brief time that the hatch was accidentally closed at the start of the EVA. Apparently, the crew is reporting lunar weights and the difference between 0.17 and 0.26 kilograms (lunar) is 1.2 pounds (terrestrial).]

121:03:30 Gibson: Roger. We're standing by for that.

[Long Comm Break]

[Here, they will do a second oxygen charge before they get their hammocks out. During the first charge, the temperature of the gas in the oxygen bottles probably rose due to compression and they are giving them a chance to cool down. Cooling will lower the pressure slightly and will allow them to get a bit more oxygen into the bottles during the second fill.]

121:07:11 Bean: Wait one. (Long Pause while Al gets out the Flight Data book so that he can write the times in a pre-printed table) Go ahead, Houston.

121:08:06 Gibson: Okay, Intrepid. Lift-off block data Rev 20 thru 24. 20, T8, 122:19:32; 21, T9, 124:17:54; 22, T10, 126:16:13; 23, T11, 128:14:34; 24, T12, 130:12:59

[These are lift-off times which would allow easy rendezvous with the Command Module. "Revs" are revolutions or orbits by the Command Module where Rev 1 started when they entered lunar orbit over the lunar Farside. T8 and so on are sequential launch opportunities, with T1 and T2 having come shortly after the landing and, then, T3 the next time the CSM passed over the landing site.]

121:08:58 Gibson: That's correct, Al. (Pause)

121:09:05 Bean: Say, Houston, I'm a little bit puzzled about that TV camera. Do you think it had some sort of mechanical failure or did we point it at the Sun too much?

121:09:15 Gibson: That's a question right now, and we're trying to figure it out. We got mechanical and Vidicon-burn people taking sides. We're not sure right now.

121:09:31 Conrad: We got lots of room. We'll bring it back for you.

121:09:42 Gibson: That is a possibility, Intrepid.

[Long Comm Break]

121:14:55 Gibson: That's affirmative. We'd like to get your comments first if we could, and then we'll take up the questions and recommendations that we can come up with.

121:15:05 Conrad: Okay. My first comment is that I got water in both my boots, and it's driving me buggy.

121:15:14 Gibson: Roger. Copy. Water in the boots.

121:15:19 Conrad: My second comment is that the EVA went pretty well as planned. I think that most everything - once we got to a task the way we had practiced it back there - we got it done. It was kind of the unforeseen, as usual, which almost got us behind. I will say one thing. It very definitely took about 10 minutes or so to adapt to what was going on, but as soon as I did, I really got the hot-foot, and I think that Al felt the same way.

121:15:57 Gibson: I think from our end down here, Pete and Al, you did a tremendous job. You were able to go along, as you said, on the nominal things and take care of the off-nominal also. There were quite a few points there where we might not have met the objective had you not played "heads up" ball.

121:16:16 Bean: (Referring to the troubles they'd had getting the fuel element out of the cask) Yeah; that's the handy of having a hammer aboard.

121:16:20 Conrad: My heart was in my throat when he couldn't pull that cask out of there. (Pause) I mean the element out of the cask.

121:16:31 Gibson: Al, you should have been a surgeon.

121:16:33 Conrad: As far as the geology goes... (Stops to listen to Gibson) That was me that was beating with the hammer, not Al. (Pause) As far as the geology goes, we really didn't have a chance to look too hard; but I think it's very obvious that there are a variety of different kinds of rocks. I would also like to say that I think that we're in a most favorable position to get to the Surveyor. I don't think we want to walk down the crater wall from... the crater-wall side that the Surveyor is on. I think what we want to do is walk down in the crater right from the LM across the bottom and walk up to Surveyor. It looks far too steep to approach from the other side - near the upper part. That's number one. Number two, I think that we're pretty well game for any kind of a (geology) traverse that you want us to make. You know, what we can do here in a few minutes is sit down with our book and put together the best of spot 3 and 4. And y'all can do the same thing. (Pause)

[Bean - "It's funny, (when we went down to the Surveyor) we did just the opposite (of what Pete suggested) because, when we got out, we could see that it wasn't steep anymore."]

[Conrad - "I still think it has to do with the Sun getting higher."]

[Bean - "Yes, I do too. (At a higher Sun angle), it starts to look more like Earth lighting."]

[Conrad - "It's like your problem painting in the shadows, you don't know what's in there."]

[Bean - "That's right. When you don't (know what's in there) you think it's steeper than it is."]

121:18:53 Conrad: Yeah. Let me find number 4 here, just a second; I'll be right with you. (Long Pause) Say, that ought to work out pretty darn clever, actually, to start at F-C which is essentially where we landed there.

[As mentioned previously, landing site 4 is near Sharp Crater and the tentative traverse (dashed track) that had been laid out for that site began at Sharp, continued east to Bench Crater, then further east to Halo Crater, northeast to the Surveyor, then north out of Surveyor Crater past Block Crater, then west to Head Crater, and finally back to the LM around the west side of Bench. Because of the LM's location on the northwest rim of Surveyor Crater, Houston is thinking about doing this traverse with the only change being the starting point. The dark track shown on the map is the revised traverse which the geology team will devise overnight and which Gibson will describe to the crew starting at 129:38:43.]

[Bean, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "One of the best things about the charts (that they carried during EVA-2) was that we had traverses planned for three different places that we might land. This was Pete's idea during the last month (prior to launch.) That is what gave us the capability to go out there and do some good geology. (The geologists had) done a lot of thinking about what to look for. We named some of the craters, we knew the traverses, and we were able to massage one of the pre-planned traverses a little bit (to adjust for the actual landing site). We were able to follow the traverse pretty well."]

[Bean, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "It looks like we can land now on one spot. Thus, you want to practice the exact traverse on Earth that you are going to be doing on the lunar surface. I might even suggest that they make those little craters out in Flagstaff, Arizona, like your particular site. Then, you can do the exact traverse during training that you are going to do during the mission. This allows you to save a lot of time by going to the proper side of the crater and trenching and core tubing at the right place. Then, on the Moon, you can follow the same pre-planned traverse and get a lot more done much faster."]

[Al's thinking on this matter was probably influenced by the relative simplicity of the Apollo 12 site, by the very short time that he and Pete had for their geology traverse, and by the very small size of the area they were exploring. The experience of the Apollo 14 crew demonstrated the problems one can have in attempting to precisely follow a pre-planned traverse that includes stops at small, preselected craters. At the 14 site, the terrain was far more rugged and undulating than the area around the Snowman. Frequent ridges hid craters and made it difficult to determine location to within a few hundred meters. Consequently, it was nearly impossible to find specific spots on the map. Because of the troubles they had with what Ed Mitchell has called "micronavigation", he and Al Shepard even failed to find their main target, 350-meter-diameter Cone Crater. For the three-day J-missions, problems of this sort were largely eliminated because: (1) the Lunar Rover gave the crews greatly increased mobility that simplified the problem of figuring out exactly where they were in relation to known features; (2) once they knew where they had landed, the Rover navigation system could get them to within 100 to 200 meters of a particular spot, close enough that they had no trouble finding the crater they wanted; and (3) the Rover gave them an exploration range of several kilometers, a simple fact that let the geologists choose a variety of major, loosely-defined targets, rather than a series of small, hard-to-find targets. The later crews also had the advantage of having trained as backups on landing missions and, so, could devote a large fraction of their prime crew training to realistic field exercises and could better focus their attentions on the critical aspects of each of the stops along the traverse route. As did the later crews, Pete and Al made a number of astute geologic observations and, within the framework established in the checklist, decided where on a crater rim they were going to stop and sample and what samples they were going to collect. However, they were also far more time limited and, so, rarely had an opportunity to do more than make impromptu stops, take pictures, grab rocks and move on.]

121:19:56 Conrad: Hey, wait a minute. I'm going to improve your knowledge of where we are. It just came to me what crater I'm looking into here. I am sitting approximately 120 feet northeast from the number 3 crater - that's 3 in age - that is on the east side of the Head Crater. Which would be. Q... No; as a matter of fact, we're right on about Q-5 and about 14.1.

[A composite 1:5000 map made from portions of LSE 7-6g and LSE 7-7g shows four possible traverses laid out pre-flight around Surveyor Crater based on landings at points 1, 2, 3, and 4. The markings in white indicate various geologic features, particularly the approximate extent of ejected blankets around craters. As explained in the Geology Map Legend, the white numerals indicate relative crater ages based on superposition and other factors. Lower numbers indicate greater age, with the crater labeled ‘3" at the northern intersection of Head Crater and Surveyor Crater (Q-2/13.7) being of intermediate age. It is younger than Head Crater which, in turn is younger than Surveyor Crater.]

121:21:06 Conrad: Okay.

121:21:07 Gibson: That puts you pretty close.

[Note that this estimated LM location (Q-5, 14.1) is the starting point of the revised traverse. As mentioned previously, post-mission estimates put Intrepid closer to Q-5, 15.5. The difference is an insignificant 70 meters.]

121:21:31 Gibson: Okay. Stand by, Pete; we will be right with you.

121:21:35 Conrad: Okay. I tell you, the first thing I am going to do is disconnect the suit hoses.

121:21:40 Gibson: Okay. We're thinking about that, Pete, and why don't we go on with this debriefing? And we'll get back to you as soon as we can come up with a good recommendation. (No answer)

[Comm Break]

121:23:10 Conrad: Okay. Just a second. I disconnected my hoses. This blue hose is really pumping out pretty moist air. I'm just going to let it pump it out. The air is ice-cold air and I think that's part of the problem. Is there some way we can warm up this air?

121:23:32 Gibson: Stand by with that, Pete. (Long Pause) Pete, would you give us the position of the suit temperature control valve and also confirm that the LCG pump circuit breaker is pulled?

[There is a heat exchanger in the ECS suit circuit with control behind Al's station. Houston is also asking if the ECS LCG pump has been turned off.]

121:24:53 Gibson: Affirmative.

121:24:55 Conrad: And the LCG pump breaker is out (meaning that the breaker has been pulled and the pump is off).

121:25:00 Gibson: Roger. (Long Pause)

[The following discussion has been taken from the Mission Report: "During preparations for the first EVA (at 114:35:42), water was reported coming from both suit inlet hoses when disconnected. After the first EVA, the Commander reported that his boots had water in them and that the suit inlet hose was delivering cold, moist air when disconnected. The Lunar Module Pilot also noted drops of water in his inlet hose. The water separators were switched with no improvement in the free water condition. Prior to the sleep period, the water was drying in the Commander's suit, and there was no further problem with water in the suits. Two possibilities exist for introducing free water into the suit loop: water may have been bypassing the water separator, or water may have been condensing out of the gas in the suit hoses. The water separation speed indication was above the upper limit (in excess of 3600 revolutions per minute) for about 50 percent of the mission. Since the water separator is a gas-driven centrifugal pump, the high speed indicates a higher-than-normal gas flow through the separator. Tests have shown that, at separator speeds in excess of 3700 revolutions per minute, water splashing occurs at the Pitot tube (figure 14-31), allowing water to bypass the separator. (In considering the second possibility of water condensation in the hoses) since the coolant lines for the LCG are adjacent to the oxygen hoses in each crewman's umbilical assembly, condensation in these hoses was investigated. The analysis showed that, with the flight conditions, condensation did not take place in the suit hoses. For Apollo 13 and subsequent missions, a flow limiter (figure 14-32) will be added to the primary lithium hydroxide canister to reduce suit loop gas flow and consequently limit the separator speed to within the no-splash range. The flow limiter provides restriction of flow equivalent to the secondary canister. If necessary, this added resistance can be removed in flight."]

121:25:33 Gibson: Roger. Okay. Number 1 would be F, and that's Head Crater; number 2, B, Bench Crater; number 3, A, Sharp Crater; and we might possibly delete this depending on how you are doing on the timeline at that point. Number 4 is C, Halo Crater; number 5, D, Surveyor Crater; 6 is E, Block Crater; and we'll omit G. (Pause)

[As can be seen on the traverse planning map, Station G is a small doublet (that is, crater pair) west of Bench and north of Sharp.]

121:26:40 Gibson: That's affirm. A is Sharp Crater. And we may just cut across that corner depending upon how you are doing with the timeline.

[Houston is suggesting that, if the early part of the traverse takes more time than they anticipate, they can eliminate the Sharp Crater stop and go directly from Bench to Halo. As Pete notes in his next statement, eliminating Sharp would eliminate their only sampling point on the supposed Copernican ray. The dotted line on the Site 4 map indicates the supposed northern boundary of the Copernican Ray material. Ulli Lotzmann has provided an annotated telescopic view. Copernicus is the large rayed crater north of the yellow box.]

[Conrad - (To Al) "Remember, (during the EVA-2 traverse) you didn't know where you were going. You followed me."]

[Bean - "I didn't. I didn't copy this down. You had the map. I didn't have the map. So, while you were copying this down, I was over there eating, probably."]

[Jones - "Tell me the story behind the apology to Uel Clanton."]

[Conrad - "'Stuff'. I said the word 'Stuff'."]

[Bean - "Uel Clanton was one of the guys that trained us. He was the chief training geologist."]

[Conrad - "And there were several (people) were going to make a lot of money every time I said 'stuff'. Uel Clanton had to pay 'em a buck or something (every time Pete said the word 'stuff'). And so I was doing my best never to say 'stuff' and that one just got out too fast. And that's why I say 'material'."]

[See the discussion following 130:32:23 during the EVA-2 Prep.]

121:27:45 Conrad: Okay. Now, in looking at the map, we got all the way over to... If you go to, what is it, the general map, map 5, or whatever you want to call them, we got over in that Shelf Crater (Middle Crescent Crater). That's where you sent us, and we got to that fellow, so some of that stuff we picked up might be of that Copernican ray material. We also had photographs down there of that shelf, which everybody thought was interesting. I took a set of stereos in that thing, all the way around that big crater. Now, we made it over there with no strain. Matter of fact, we ran over and ran back in nothing flat. So, I think it's reasonable to go as you have indicated. Which would be one, starting at F, which is right in front of the spacecraft, then going to Sharp, then going to Bench, then to Halo, then to the Surveyor crater, then to Block, and back to the spacecraft. How's that sound?

[Pete's reference to "map 5" is not to LSE 7-5, which covers the area south of the Snowman. He seems to be referring to the overall traverse planning map, which includes all four of the propsed traverse routes. It has the name "Shelf" written on the north side of the large crater that Pete and Al visited at the end of EVA-1 and which is called Middle Crescent Crater in the post-flight literature. What seems likely is that Shelf refers to a feature on the north rim of Middle Crescent at the point marked with a lowercase "e" on the Landing Site 3 traverse. Post-flight analysis of the EVA-1 traverse indicates that Pete and Al took their Middle Crescent pans and samples near point "a" on the Site 3 traverse. In any event, as plotted on the traverse planning map, no part of Middle Crescent Crater lies on the Copernican ray.]

[Bean - "I think this (business about finding the edge of the Copernican Ray) falls in the category of looking at things too simplistically - like we seem to always do things. You know, that we'd look out the window and there'd be a ray and we could run over to the edge and sample it. And, really, that is never the way things turn out. Maybe from altitude you see a contact and you can tell ray from non-ray; but, on the ground, that contact is a mile wide or something. So it's not like you're running along and all of a sudden you're on the ray."]

[Conrad - "It doesn't go from black to white."]

[Bean - "That's right. It does over a mile, maybe. After a mile, maybe, you say 'Gee, this is a lot whiter than it used to be'."]

[Conrad - "True. But still, they're fairly sure here - if I read them right - that by getting to Sharp Crater, we would be in the ray."]

[Jones - "That was their thought, anyway. There's something very much like this, Al, on 16 and 17. At both of those sites, there are contact/albedo-change features which you can see from orbit but, as you're driving along on the Rover, telling when you cross the contact is real, real tricky. There were some subtle signs that Gene and Jack were able to pick out when they drove into an area associated with a big landslide off the South Massif. The crater ejecta started looking a little bit different, once they were on it. But it was a real subtle thing. If you were up on a hillside looking at it, you could see it. But if you were driving across it, no way. It's exactly the same kind of thing that you've got here."]

[Bean - "It's the desire to have an answer when there isn't always an answer."]

121:29:13 Conrad: Well, yeah; we can try that.

121:29:17 Gibson: Rog. No problem. (Pause) Okay, Pete, if you would, take a look at the information you have there on those sites, and we'll be getting back to you in the pre-EVA briefing and talk a little bit more about the location of the sampling, the core tubes, and the trench site sampling.

121:29:47 Conrad: Okay.

121:29:49 Gibson: You may have some pretty good ideas on that now, after being able to look at it first hand. (Pause) And, Pete, we have several questions for you related to the EVA. We'd like to move through these pretty quickly, as we know we ought to get you off to bed pretty quickly.

121:30:14 Conrad: Okay.

[They have been awake for about 20 hours.]

121:30:32 Conrad: Al doesn't have any. I noticed it just starting before... I just got off the suit loop to Prep for EVA. It started in my right boot when I came back in. And these hoses - blue hose, of course - pumped out about three or four three-quarter-inch balls of water when I first disconnected it, just a few seconds ago.

121:31:06 Gibson: Roger. Thank you, Pete. (Pause) Question for you, Al. In the EVA Prep, the PLSS Comm check took longer than nominal. What corrective action did you take; and do you think we may have a problem the second time around?

121:31:26 Bean: None at all. It was completely my error. At the front of the RCU, there's a switch, it goes Main, Off, Push-to-Talk or something like that... Momentary, it is. And we should have had it at Main and we didn't. And so we were a little confused there for a while.

121:31:44 Gibson: Roger.

121:31:45 Bean: It was entirely an onboard problem.

[They began the comm check at about 114:07 and found the error at about 114:29. Journal Contributor John Pfannerstill notes that the switch in question, which is located on the bottom of the RCU, can be seen in AS12-49-7278. From our perspective, the switch is just to the right of Al's camera.]

[Jones - "You both sound a little stuffed up to me."]

[Bean - "Yes, we do."]

[Jones - "Jack had a mild allergic reaction to the dust. Did either of you notice anything like that?"]

[Conrad - "You could sure smell it. Very distinctive smell. I'll never forget. And I've never smelled again since then; (it was) only on the represses. And, obviously, there was some oxidation of the dust. There just had to be."]

121:31:48 Conrad: Question for you, Houston. How long was our total EVA Prep time?

121:31:53 Gibson: Stand by on that one. (Pause) Pete, your total EVA Prep time was 2 hours and 8 minutes.

121:32:10 Conrad: Okay. I believe we'll do it in about 1 plus 45 tomorrow as planned. Like Al said: one, we made a couple of mistakes; and the other one, we just had our heads up and locked. Something we didn't have on the checklist and we should have known better.

[Conrad - (Laughing) "(The full expression is) Heads up our ass and locked!"]

[Thomas Schwagmeier found a explaination at a website dedicated to Slang Used in the 5th AAF in the SWAP during WWII: Head Up and Locked = A term applied to a person reacting stupidly to an emergency. ('He had his head locked up his a--'). Other synonyms might be 'useless' and 'hopeless'.]

121:32:55 Bean: Yeah. It was getting harder as I drove it in, just like it does back on Earth. But I think if you wanted to stand there and pound, maybe three times as long as you would have to drive in one, you could do it. And I don't know if we could do that now, though, with those pins in, but maybe we could take those pins out and put two of them together. I'd sure be willing to give it a try if you'd want to do it.

[There was a pip pin (a removable, pull pin) near the top of the core tube, perhaps to keep a follower from coming all the way out, that would have made it impossible to join two core tubes.]

121:33:35 Bean: That and you've got to pound the... (Stops to listen to Gibson)

121:33:38 Gibson: Go ahead.

121:33:42 Bean: No comment there. (Long Pause)

121:34:11 Conrad: Okay, Houston. If you're watching the computer, I'm going to bring it out of Standby and put it back in again to update the clock time.

121:34:20 Gibson: Roger, Intrepid. (Long Pause)

121:34:51 Conrad: There's another one of those downlink too-fast alarms.

[Long Comm Break with the LM. A conversation between Gibson and Gordon has been omitted. ]

121:39:36 Conrad: Go ahead, Houston.

121:39:38 Gibson: First, would you give us (the) aft Omni (directional antenna)? And we are ready to pick up with the debriefing.

121:39:50 Conrad: Aft S-band? Is that what you want? (Long Pause)

121:40:13 Gibson: Intrepid, negative. That's the VHF antenna.

121:40:15 Conrad: (Garbled) (Stops to listen) (Long Pause)

121:40:29 Gibson: And, Intrepid, we're ready to pick up with the debriefing.

121:40:41 Conrad: Okay, Houston. Go ahead.

121:40:45 Gibson: Okay. Two questions related to the mounds which you saw out there. Is the object at R-5, 13.1 a mound or a rock? And, secondly, confirm that you did get a sample of the mound material.

121:41:04 Conrad: Yes. We got a sample of the mound material; we got lots of them. And would you say again the coordinates?

121:41:12 Gibson: Coordinates are R-5, 13.1. (Long Pause)

[They may be eating and/or performing the PLSS feedwater recharge.]

[Pete is wrong about this. The object at R-5, 13.1 is, indeed the larger of the two mounds. The Lunar Orbiter photograph from which the map as made was taken when the Sun was low in the eastern sky. Consequently, a crater which has a shadow on its sunward - up-Sun - side is dark on the east and bright on the west. A mound or rock casts a shadow on the down-Sun side and would show up as bright on its east side and dark on its west side.Thomas Scwagmeier has created a composite from views out each of the windows and one of the maps that shows the larger mound.]

121:42:34 Conrad: That's right. We can get, tomorrow, a documented sample if you want.

121:42:40 Gibson: We will talk to you about that in the briefing before the EVA, Pete. And a question on the number and sizes of rocks. What was the ratio of fines to rocks that you finally ended up with? (Pause)

121:43:03 Conrad: I put two of the large scoops worth of fill (that is, regolith) in one bag that had three rather large rocks in it; I think it's three. And the other bag of rocks fills half of the rock box, and I guess there were, what would you say, Al, 10 (or) 12 rocks in there? And the rock box is full to the top. I couldn't get anything more in there, I'll tell you that, and get the core tube in there. That's it.

121:43:47 Gibson: Roger. We copy that. One question on the SIDE dust cover. Was the SIDE dust cover well aligned after reclosing? And the reason for asking that is in case we suspect a misalignment, we would try to activate that now and if it doesn't work, we'd have a manual backup.

121:44:12 Bean: The SIDE dust cover popped off about three times, Houston. And the last time it popped off was when we just finished aligning it neatly (and) level and we put out the cold cathode ion gauge. And the cover popped off again, and we didn't want to disturb the experiment to try and put the cover back on. We'd spent already overtime on it, so we just left the cover off. So, as the experiment sets right now, the cover is off. Now if this is not acceptable, I guess we can take a swing by there tomorrow and try to put the cover back on. And we can put it on lined up accurately as it was to begin with, if that is what you want.

121:44:57 Gibson: Okay. Stand by on that, and we'll be massaging that one tonight.

121:45:03 Bean: Okay. My recommendation is - unless it is going to hurt the SIDE - to leave it just like it is, because it is just a precariously balanced experiment over there and it is going to take time to do it right.

[Overnight, the experiment team will decide to leave the experiment alone. Because of the difficulty that Pete and Al had in deploying the SIDE and CCIG, the experimenters don't want to make things worse. The only danger, really, is dust contamination of the experiment during lift-off and, evidently, the experimenters deemed this to be an acceptable risk. In the end, the experiment worked well.]

121:45:31 Conrad: I really didn't get a count, Houston. Well, let me see. I guess it would be about, (to Al) wouldn't you say, about 15 to 20 rocks is all.

121:45:44 Gibson: Okay. We are looking for really the quantity of rocks, pounds of rocks.

121:45:51 Conrad: That rock box is heavy, I'll tell you that. I think it is right up to Max.

121:45:58 Gibson: Roger. That is good enough. One last question, Al. When you took the fuel element out, in the extraction, what was the force profile like? In other words, did it all of a sudden come free at one point or did it gradually come free as you extracted it?

121:46:16 Bean: Well, Pete started pounding on the side; and, as it came out, an eighth of an inch at a time - make that a sixteenth of an inch at a time - until it was about three-eighths of an inch out. And once it was three-eighths of an inch out, it slid out rather easily.

121:46:36 Gibson: Roger. We copy that.

121:46:38 Conrad: What is the fuel cask made out of?

121:46:41 Gibson: That's graphite.

121:46:45 Conrad: Okay. Well, I pretty well was beginning to bang it up pretty badly. As a matter of fact, I think I cracked it. I had better go look at it tomorrow. But I was rapping it as hard as I could and was getting about an eighth of an inch at a time until he finally got about, what would you say, Al, an inch and a half out, and then it came all the way.

121:47:06 Gibson: Roger. (Pause) Pete, no problem with that. You don't have to go back to it.

121:47:23 Conrad: Okay. (Long Pause)

[As indicated in the discussion from the Mission Report which is reproduced at 116:49:52, the element came loose after 0.6 inches of travel - about 5/8ths of an inch.]

121:48:25 Conrad: Okay, I understand that one, and we'll do it in a little bit. We're eating right now. I got my hoses disconnected anyhow.

121:48:34 Gibson: Roger, Pete. And we don't see a real easy way of getting the water out of the boots. If you turn the heat way, way up, we may be able to dry some of it out. And the other thing is to use gravity in whatever way you could use it.

[Because the inner boots are integral parts of the suits, the only way to completely drain the water would be to take the suits off, something they don't want to do unless absolutely necessary.]

[Jones - "What was the main reason for not wanting to take the suits off? Time?"]

[Conrad - "We just weren't allowed. It hadn't been cleared yet."]

[Bean - "The concern was that, if the LM developed a leak or if you had to make an emergency takeoff or something, you could get in a pressurized environment much faster."]

[Conrad - "We were, in a sense, still proofing the LM by adding time (that is, by staying on the Moon longer and doing longer EVAs than Apollo 11). So they didn't want us out of the suits."]

[Bean - "If you have a leak in the LM, and you have your suit on, you can get in a safe configuration - (that is), put your helmet and gloves on - in about a minute or two. If you got the suit off, you probably got 15 minutes because you've got to help each other. And you stumble around in there. So it was more of a case of (emergency response) time."]

[For the last three missions, the crews got out of their suits between EVAs. The decision to do so was made, in part, because of confidence that had been gained in the LM during the earlier missions and, in large measure, because the astronauts had to get out of the suits to get adequate rest.]

121:49:02 Gibson: Roger.

121:49:06 Conrad: I just want to make sure the suit loop's running right, that's all.

121:49:12 Gibson: Roger, Pete.

[See Pete's discussion of the sleep period, which is reproduced at 122:37:27.]

121:49:17 Gibson: Go ahead.

121:49:19 Bean: Here's a question for you, Houston. With the tapemeter being like it is and those erratic readings we seem to be getting approaching PDI, as far as the backup perilune monitor check. How are we going to use that tapemeter tomorrow when we're trying to update the AGS in range and range rate (during rendezvous)?

121:49:42 Gibson: That's a good question, Al. We'll be working on that one. That's another one for tomorrow. We're going to have a lot of people thinking hard over the sleep period.

121:49:49 Conrad: Okay, I think we could just call Noun 78 with P20 running. Isn't that right?

121:50:02 Bean: You could do that...

121:50:03 Conrad: And the first thing that I'd propose doing, Houston, is we'll get a quick airborne check after we launch and I get a manual lock-on or something, go do a Verb 63, and check the tapemeter against the DSKY.

121:50:24 Gibson: Roger.

121:50:26 Conrad: That's no big deal.

121:50:29 Gibson: Roger, Intrepid.

[As Houston will tell the crew in the morning at 129:33:57, there is nothing wrong with the tapemeter. The 'erratic' readings were due to the fact that numbers in the checklist that they used in making the test were nominal values rather than values appropriate to the actual orbit they were flying. In using the checklist values in an overnight simulation, engineers in Houston reproduced the tapemeter readings observed by the crew.]

[The checklist contains options for EVA-2 lengths of 3 hours 20 minutes and 3 hours 50 minutes, with the difference being the length of the geology traverse. Given that they are running behind the timeline, Houston is leaning toward the shorter EVA.]

121:50:44 Conrad: Okay.

121:50:46 Gibson: Roger. And we'll wake you up at the nominal time in the flight plan (which is 129:55).

121:50:53 Conrad: Okay.

[Very Long Comm Break; Dick Gordon begins his rest period. PAO announces at 121:59 a change of shift, with Glynn Lunney's team of flight controllers taking over from Gerry Griffin's team. Astronaut Paul Weitz is now CapCom.]

122:13:24 Conrad: Houston, Intrepid.

122:13:29 Weitz: Go ahead, Intrepid.

122:13:34 Conrad: Roger. When do you want us to change the... Give me a time for the (ECS Primary) LiOH cartridge change, would you, please?

122:13:39 Weitz: Okay. Sure will, Pete. Now we got a couple more questions to get rid of some Irish pennants here; and when you answer these, we can turn you loose to go to sleep.

[Conrad - "'Irish pennants' is a navy term. It means that there are some loose ends hanging around. On a ship, if you have Irish pennants, that means lines aren't tended right. They're hanging over the side, they're not coiled correctly, whatever."]

122:14:04 Conrad: Al says he's hot, and he's going to leave his connected to blow air. I'll probably sleep with mine (his suit hoses) off.

122:14:11 Weitz: Okay. Understand. Secondly (as per checklist), how about, for our friendly surgeon, a crew status report and a medication and radiation status?

122:14:26 Conrad: Okay. The crew's in super shape; no medication; and let me look at my little Rad(iation) counter here, just a second.

122:14:36 Bean: (Sounding quite stuffy) LMP had one of those decongestant pills just prior to EVA.

122:14:42 Weitz: Understand, Al.

122:14:44 Conrad: And my Rad counter is 11020.

122:14:51 Bean: And mine's 04020.

122:14:55 Weitz: Okay, thank you. One last question. Did you have any problems with the tapemeter during your descent other than it reading high on the perilune check?

122:15:12 Bean: We had it in Altitude/Altitude Rate on the descent, naturally; and it looked to me like it agreed pretty closely with the PGNS's numerical readout on the DSKY. That's what kind of concerns me about the rendezvous radar. Also, that low transmitter power - maybe they're hooked in somehow.

122:15:30 Weitz: Okay. Thank you.

122:15:32 Conrad: I disagree on low transmitter power. We got surface lockup when the command module went by at a good P22. The tapemeter did not run in the P22 like it does in the simulator, I'll say that for it. And secondly, it was off - I don't remember the number now - but it was off from its normal reading in self-test. Although the PGNS portion of rendezvous radar self-test was absolutely correct. So I suspect that there may be just something wrong with that tapemeter. I don't think there's anything wrong with the rendezvous radar itself.

[P22 is the radar test program from the surface as the CSM goes overhead.]

122:16:28 Conrad: Nope; it runs just perfect - not erratic. I think there's just... My impression of these perilune altitude checks, I think, (is that) there may be a bias on it, like 30 or 40 feet per second.

122:16:44 Weitz: Roger, Intrepid. Thank you. (Long Pause) Intrepid, Houston. Pete, the second time you disconnected your suit hoses, did you get any water out of the hoses then?

122:17:18 Conrad: Well, it was the second time that I got all the water out of them. I took them off the first time and put them on the floor as advertised and didn't get any water out of them. I put them back on again; I started getting water in my boots, so I took them off that time, and I never put them on the floor; I just took them off and it blew three three-quarter-inch water balls right out of it, that splattered all over the spacecraft. And, since then, it's been pretty good. And we turned the suit-dealie (the suit-circuit temperature control) here up full-hot, and we'll see how that works.

122:18:03 Weitz: Okay. Thank you. (Long Pause) Intrepid, Houston. Has Al done the same thing with his hoses, Pete? And, if he has not, we would like to request that he do so before you turn in.

122:18:37 Conrad: Yeah, he hasn't gotten any water, but he's going to drain them right now. Now, look, you got us down here for an hour to eat tomorrow. We're in one-sixth g and it doesn't take us anywheres near that long to eat; we can whistle through things a lot faster. I think we can pretty well stick to the nominal timeline and get a good night's rest. It may turn out, that after 6 or 7 hours worth of sleep, we're going to get stirring because we're both up. And we're not going to sit here. So, we'll give you a holler whenever we get up, and we're going to start cooking right then and there and be ready to go over the sill ASAP ("as soon as possible") so we can get as good a EVA out of it as possible and not cut ourselves at the end.

122:19:20 Weitz: Okay. That will be fine, Pete.

[Comm Break]

122:20:45 Bean: (Expressing his pleasure, with perhaps a small hint of sarcasm) That's a pretty reasonable request.

[Long Comm Break]

122:29:40 Conrad: Go ahead.

122:29:42 Weitz: Okay. Pete, can we have the results of Al's suit loop check?

122:29:50 Conrad: Roger. He got two drops of water. That's it.

122:29:55 Weitz: Okay; understand. And on that lithium hy(droxide)...

122:30:03 Bean: It's one of those mysteries of life, Paul. I don't have any water in mine, to speak of, and Pete has his coming out all the time. We've been shifting over to (Water) Separator B, but I really don't think that's the answer. Must be something to do... Just like on Neil's spacecraft with (garbled) hoses or the way it turns or something else.

[Except for separate hoses, they are hooked up to the same ECS plumbing, hence the mystery.]

122:30:46 Conrad: Roger. And you want the LiOH out at 130:00?

122:30:53 Weitz: That's affirmative. (Long Pause) Intrepid, Houston. Let us know when you're getting ready to turn in, Pete, and we won't bother you any more.

122:31:39 Conrad: Okay. We're still doodling around here a little bit; we're just getting ready to rig the hammocks now.

122:31:48 Weitz: Roger.

122:31:50 Conrad: Al wanted to go EVA again, and I restrained him until tomorrow.

122:31:57 Weitz: Okay. Good show.

[Long Comm Break]

[Jones - "The hammocks showed up after 11? Or were they going to be on board 12 from earlier than that?"]

[Conrad - "We were the first ones who were going to sleep. They didn't sleep, did they?"]

[Jones - "Neil and Buzz had a rest period, but they just kind of curled up in corners."]

[Bean - "The hammocks were always there (for Apollo 12), as far as I know. We always were going to have them. There wasn't any last minute thought 'Well, hey, we gotta give you somewhere to sleep'. I think we always knew we were having hammocks."]

[Conrad - "Didn't we invent them?"]

[Bean - "I don't know. But we sure found out they didn't sag as much (as on Earth). I don't know if we invented them or not. I didn't, I don't think. You may have done it when you were working with the LM (design teams)."]

[Conrad - "Somewhere in there, I think that we figured out how to get two people stretched out in there. That pops up (as a memory). I can't prove that. I don't know exactly how it did get invented. It might have been us, or maybe I'm just remembering us doing our fit check with the stuff."]

[As related by Thomas Kelly in his important book Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module, Pete spent a great deal of time with the Grumman design team. The layout of the hammocks is shown in a drawing from the Apollo 12 Press Kit.]

122:36:41 Weitz: Stand by there, Intrepid. (Pause) Intrepid, Houston. That's affirmative, Pete.

122:37:04 Conrad: Okay. We're going Down Voice, Backup and Power Amplifier, Off, at this time and configuring for sleep.

122:37:10 Weitz: Roger, Pete. Nighty-night.

122:37:12 Conrad: Okay, and I understand 129:55 is reveille (as per checklist). Is that right?

122:37:22 Weitz: That's affirmative.

[Reveille is 7 hours, 18 minutes from now.]

[PAO resumes live coverage after completing the playback at about 123:06.]

[Pete will sleep in a hammock stretched out fore and aft, as close to the ceiling as it can be hung and still give him some room. As per Surf-64, after they get both hammocks hooked up, Pete moves to the raised, aft part of the cabin to get out of Al's way while he gets in his hammock. Then Pete gets in his hammock.]

[Bean - "One comment I would make: if I did it over again, I would take a sleeping pill on the Moon; because I didn't sleep."]

[Conrad - "I would take one of the new ones. There's two available now that are non-barbiturates. Of course, if you take too much, they've got some bad side effects. But, just to adjust your sleep cycle..."]

[Bean - "Just to get some sleep."]

[Conrad - "...you take that sombitch and you're gone, man. You crash and burn. I can wake you up and you're just as bright eyed and bushy tailed as you need to be. It's got an hour and half half-life in your body, where barbiturates is 32 hours. All the difference in the world. I could never take those goddamn things (barbiturates), 'cause they just make you (groggy)."]

[Bean - "I felt like I was tired, towards the end of the second EVA and I felt like it wasn't from the physical effort. It was from the lack of good sleep. I didn't take the pill because it was not a macho thing to do. But, looking at it, I would do it now. In the future, people ought to do everything they can - including that - to get some good sleep, so they've got their maximum energy the next day. I don't feel like I had it. I felt like I was really running out of gas. I think I didn't sleep well because I was just nervous and excited. I think it was just being hyper and being worried about it going well."]

[Pete also had trouble sleeping, primarily because of pain he was experiencing from a poorly fitted suit.]

[Conrad, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "I made a technical error before I left (Earth) when the suits were sent back to ILC (the suit manufacturer) and the boots were put on. We knew that we had to refit the suits, and I let myself get conned into refitting my suit in long underwear and not with the (bulkier) LCG (Liquid Cooling Garment) because the flight LCG was PIAed. ( PIA = Preinstallation Acceptance. ) That was a mistake. I wound up with the legs being too tight (that is, too short). I realized this prior to lift-off while staying in the suit for a long time. I had spent only about an hour or so (in it prior to getting into the Saturn V), getting fitted in my long underwear. (And during the rest period on the Moon), it became unbearable. It spoiled my rest period. I did not want to take the suit off, so I stayed that way all night. I slept only about 4 hours (he revises that to 4 1/2 hours below), and it was mainly because of suit discomfort on my shoulders. The next morning, Al did an outstanding job on letting my legs out for me, which took him about an hour."]

[Bean - "You think it was because the suit was adjusted wrong or because you grew in space? Or both?"]

[Conrad - "No. You don't remember what happened to my prime suit when they went to check it out prior to the flight. This was like three days before the flight. They did a suit check. And that suit, which had hardly been worn, had a leak in one of the boots. I don't remember which one, now. I think it was probably the left side. And I remember they told me 'your prime suit has a leak.' And they flew it by Lear Jet all the way up to ILC in Dover (Delaware), and the little old ladies put a new boot on the suit. And then they sent it back. Now, the normal way we fit the suit was to wear our LCG but, by the time they got the suit back that had already been packed in the spacecraft. And they wouldn't let me in the suit unless it was flight underwear (that is, either the flight LCG or flight longjohns). So I fitted again with my cotton (long underwear) for the Command Module. And I didn't guess right on the left boot. So it wasn't until we put on the LCGs in flight (that I realized) it was too short. And there's no way you can shorten your body. No matter what you do, the distance from your feet to your shoulders is the same. That's the way it was. So, there was a cable and we had laces (at the ankle) you could adjust (to lengthen or shorten the leg)... The laces went all the way around..."]

[Bean - "There were two sets, because everything was redundant. And they knotted the shit out of those things."]

[Conrad - "You're probably right. And, I mean, I was really tired by the time we went to sleep. I crashed and burned. But, still, I woke up four hours later... I remember, that's all I slept. And it was like my shoulder was in a vise. I mean, I had to get out of that suit. So I woke Al up and had him re-do the boot. And by then, we were wide awake. So we said, 'Screw it, let's go early.' And we did. We called up Houston and said, 'Hey, we're awake.' And I think I told 'em what the problem was. It should be in here."]

[Bean - "I still think you could have grown, in addition to the fact that the legs were too short."]

[Conrad - "Whatever. You could be right. But it got to be unbearable. I mean, it was really driving me bonkers."]

[Ulrich Lotzmann writes that most of the documentation related to suit fit checks done at the ILC was thrown out in the 1980s. However, a former ILC engineer did save two summary sheets from a 20 February 1969 session - one each for Pete's and Al's flown PGAs. Scans courtesy Ulrich Lotzmann.]

[Conrad, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - "As far as the remainder of the rest went, the cabin temperature remained good all night. I didn't notice any change in the temperature all night. I didn't hook up my LCG. The only thing that I noticed was that the very bottom part of my legs - from the knees down to my feet - tended to get hot while I sat in the suit with no air (circulation). Although they weren't uncomfortable, I had the feeling that I was beginning to perspire down there and that, after a while, it was either going to get wet or it was going to get cold or both. So, about every 3 hours, I put my suit hose blue to red and blew my suit out with dry air which took all the moisture out of the lower boots and dried out the LCG socks. I would let it blow for 5 to 10 minutes and then would take it off. And that's the way I remained all night long. I never used the LCG pump. I don't know whether Al did or not. I was never too hot or too cold. The hammocks were excellent. (For) the first 4 -1/2 hours, I slept; and it was a good, sound sleep. The only reason I couldn't sleep the rest of the night was that my shoulders were so uncomfortable in the suit. My feet were plastered against the bottom of the suit and my shoulders were plastered against the top; and there was no easing it, no matter what I did."]

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PAO update.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 10 min 21 sec )
starts at about 127:59 and includes a PAO update at about 128:06.