Deploying the Lunar Roving Vehicle

Traverse Preparations

 

Loading the Rover

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1996 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan and panorama assembly credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Except where noted, audio clips by David Shaffer.
Last revised 12 February 2016.

Video Clip   3 min 02 sec ( 0.8 Mb RealVideo or 27 Mb MPG )

MP3 Audio Clip ( 12 min 42 sec )

120:39:40 Allen: And, Dave and Jim, you're both off the TV camera now. We're standing by for description of your progress.

120:39:45 Scott: We'll be back on occasionally as we get to the MESA. Back with you now?

120:39:55 Allen: Don't worry about it, Dave. We see you starting to come into view now.

120:39:56 Scott: Here. I tell you what I'm going to do, Joe. (Pause) I'm going to move the TV camera because it'll save us time if we don't have to tell you what we're doing.

[Dave comes toward the TV camera. By now, he is using a skipping stride that was used by many of the astronauts. He has his right foot forward as he floats between steps. He lands first with his trailing left and pushes off, and then lands with his right and pushes off with the main power step to generate the next glide. It is an efficient stride that allows him to float in between steps. It is relatively difficult to do on Earth. Others used a loping, foot-to-foot stride that also allowed efficient motion. A third stride, usually called a kangaroo hop or a bunny hop was done with legs and feet together and was generally only used coming down steep slopes or in play.]

120:40:44 Irwin: I have the 16 millimeter on the Rover.

120:40:48 Allen: Roger.

[Details of equipment stowage on the Rover are available in the Stowae Document]

[Dave goes to the MESA. Jim is at the Rover, which is pointing in toward the LM. The Swann Range is in the background, with Mt. Hadley at the left edge of the picture.]

[Scott - "At this point in the program, I don't think anybody had ever seen a mountain, had they? 14 didn't have a mountain, did they?"]

[Jones - "14 had a hill (Cone Ridge), but it was up under the Sun so you couldn't see much of it. It wasn't much of a hill."]

[Scott - "For the geologists in the Backroom, this would have been pretty interesting. If I were sitting in the Backroom, I would have said 'Wow, look at that big mountain back there.'"]

[Jones - "They knew it was there, they had overhead photography of it, but they still hadn't seen it."]

[Jones - "I remember that, during the SEVA, you said you couldn't see much back in there, because it was all shadowed. So what we're seeing in here is a fairly dramatic change in the scene off to the east, just in the that seven or eight hours."]

[Scott - "The big, dramatic change comes when the western face of Hadley is illuminated. I don't recall this being of any significance, because, you know, I've already looked at it and now I'm focused on fixing up the Rover. I made a comment here because I'm looking at the TV, but in real time, I doubt that we even noticed the mountains. Because we're not doing that. We're getting the Rover ready to go, getting ready to go. You don't really look around."]

[Jones - "You'll have time to do that later. But this is an opportunity to get the name Swann Range in the transcript."]

[Scott - "Absolutely."]

[In a 1996 draft review, Dave commented that "This phenomenon of mountain-slope illumination is very interesting - that is, the effect of the changing sun-angle as it approaches and exceeds the angle of the face of the mountain. Very few Earth people are aware of the manner in which the effects of sunlight are different on the Moon and many are quite interested to hear about it, especially the linear features on Mt. Hadley we described later."]

[Jim goes out of view around to the northeast face of the LM to get the EVA-1 pallet. He will bring it over to the MESA and load on it replacement lithium hydroxide (LiOH) canisters for the PLSSs and the LM ECS. Note that he is walking flat-footed. Film of Jim working with the EVA pallet can be found on Disk 1 of Mark Gray's Apollo 15: Complete Downlink Edition.]

[Meanwhile, Dave removes a thermal cover so that he can get at the LCRU, which he then removes and takes to the front of the Rover. Figure 3.1-4 from the Apollo 15 Final Lunar Surface Procedures volume shows the layout of equipment in the MESA. A detail from training photo 71-HC-720 shows Dave extracting the LCRU. ]

120:41:30 Scott: Sure is.

120:41:34 Allen: We copy, Dave and Jim, and we're standing by for an EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit, meaning the suit and backpack and related gear) status check when convenient.

120:41:37 Irwin: (To Dave) Let me know when you're finished...(Stops to listen to Joe) Okay, I'm reading 3.8 (psi) on my gauge. Flags are clear, and I'm reading 75 percent (oxygen remaining).

120:41:57 Allen: Roger.

120:41:58 Scott: Okay, I'm reading 3.85 (psi), flags are clear, and I'm reading 75 percent. (Long Pause)

[A request for an EMU check is sometimes a veiled suggestion from Houston that they slow down. Here, Dave's heart rate is only about 100 beats per minute while Jim's is over 130. Jim has had a heart rate in that range since the start of the EVA at about 119:55.]

[Dave turns to his right and faces southeast, apparently so that he can get some light on his checklist so he can read it. He then faces the front of the Rover again.]

120:42:29 Irwin: Trying to...Like walk up out of a crater each time. Uh! Boy!

120:42:31 Scott: Can you make it?

120:42:33 Irwin: Yeah, I'll make it. I don't know how it's going to work when I get that geology pallet. Might need a little help there.

120:42:38 Scott: Give a call (if you need help).

[The LCRU is just above knee height on the front of the Rover, and, as Dave leans to his right, he starts to lose his balance and hops sideways on his right foot, trying to keep from falling, and finally gets his right hand on the left-front Rover wheel. Figure 4-1 from the Rover Handbook shows the relative positions and attachment points for the LCRU, the Television Control Unit (TCU), the TV camera, and the high-gain antenna.]

[This warning tone is a signal of a possible problem with Jim's PLSS.]

120:42:50 Allen: (Sounding a little concerned) Roger.

120:42:54 Scott: Got any flags, Jim?

[Another indication of a problem would be the appearance of a warning flag in one of the small windows on the top in Jim's chest-mounted Remote Control Unit (RCU). The windows are small and, unless the lighting is just right, the flags are difficult to see.]

[In a 1996 draft review, Dave commented that "The flags were hard to see because the shadows on the Moon are 'deeper'. In daylight, the flags were fine on Earth, even in shadows."]

[The reason for this, of course, is that dust and other particles in the Earth's atmosphere scatter a considerable amount of light and, consequently, shadows aren't completely black.]

[Jones - "Can you tell me what the flag looked like?"]

[Irwin - "It was just a striped flag that would come up. Kind of like a warning flag. I was wondering about that yesterday. Normally it would be grey, indicating normal operation."]

120:43:04 Allen: We concur, Jim. No flags. (Pause)

120:43:10 Irwin: Are you finished at the MESA for a little bit, Dave?

120:43:12 Scott: Oh, no. (Finishing with the LCRU) This...

120:43:16 Irwin: Okay, I'm going to...

120:43:20 Scott: ...beauty (pause) beauty is really tight. (Pause)

[Dave heads to the MESA to get the TCU. He pulls up quite hard on the TCU, failing to dislodge it and, in the process, jerks the entire MESA up by a few inches.]

[Dave moves a few steps to his left so he can get a good look at Jim's PLSS.]

120:44:00 Irwin: Yeah, I can see that in the shadow.

[Jones - "Was the flap part of the thermal-and-dust cover on the PLSS?"]

[Irwin - "Yes; but it also protected it (meaning the innards of the PLSS) from manipulation or movement - if you bumped up against something."]

[The suits absorb more sunlight as they get dirty and force the cooling system to work harder. Jim is particularly dirty because of his fall. However, the 16 and 17 crews got plenty dirty but didn't spend time during EVAs to clean each other off. This suggests that, after 15, it was judged that cleaning would take more time than it would save in water. However, I do not know if such an analysis was ever done.]

[Scott - "I think maybe because of more movement on (16 and) 17, they got more dirt than we did. I don't think we were as dirty as the others, until we got on the side of the slope. Here, we're not dirty (except for Jim's fall), but there was a preconception going in - maybe based on what we knew from the prior flights - that if you do get dirt, it's going to cause a thermal problem, so we were conscious of that."]

[In a 1996 draft review Dave added, "I cannot imagine that a dark-gray suit would not compromise cooling by the PLSS, but maybe we were oversensitized to this issue. Kneeling in the dirt still seems very unattractive to me! More dirt in the cabin, connectors, etc!! After three days of dirt on Apollo 15, I would be even more cautious on the next trip."]

[Scott - "As I recall, the brushing worked quite well for us. I think we get into this later on, about putting the suit (legs) in the laundry bags when we get inside (between EVAs) to contain the dirt."]

[Jones - "You were the first ones to do that, because you're the first ones to take the suits off. And 16 and 17 followed your lead on that."]

[Scott - "We were conscious of the problem before we went, primarily because of what of Pete and Al learned. And sometimes I think the dirt might get over emphasized, in all the flights. It was a problem but, sometimes, over time, when that is discussed and discussed and discussed, it becomes a major, major thing. It wasn't a major thing, it was a nitnoy (meaning a 'nitpicking annoyance') and, I guess, at the end of the day one of my cameras got jammed. It was a problem, but it wasn't a problem that was debilitating. Or a thermal-causing problem."]

[Jones - "I believe that for a three-day mission. Now, how about if you were looking at extended operations? On Apollo 17, several pieces of equipment failed on the last day because of the dust."]

[Scott - "It depends on how much time you take to clean yourself and also what the connectors and stuff are. Obviously, you've got to improve the system if you're going to go over an extended period of time. I'm just throwing out the perspective that I've heard talk in NASA of overdesigning the hell out of suits for dirt, because they want to spend however many months in the same suit, which is not realistic. Dirt was not a major problem, although it was one of the problems, one of the very few we had."]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The TCU was stuck in its mount in the MESA and I had to take the pallet out and then take the TCU off the pallet. But, once I got the pallet out, it was no problem to remove it."]

120:44:26 Scott: What, Jim?

120:44:28 Irwin: Flags are clear. (Pause)

120:44:35 Scott: (Taking the TCU off the pallet with his left hand, without much difficulty) This TCU was wedged in very tightly.

[Dave will mount the Television Control Unit on the right front of the Rover and then will install the TV camera on top of it.]

Video Clip   3 min 04 sec ( 0.8 Mb RealVideo or 27 Mb MPG )

120:44:45 Irwin: Okay. I keep getting a tone. (Long Pause)

[Dave tosses a small object - perhaps a piece of packing material or a dust cap - off screen to the right. The throw appears to be made underhanded, mostly with motion of his left forearm and perhaps a little wrist action.]

[Jones - "This shows how flat the trajectories are, how different they are from what we're used to."]

[Scott - "Really, yeah. That's a good picture. I'd never seen that before."]

[Right after Dave's throw, Jim comes into view carrying the geopallet, which he takes to the back of the Rover. He was supposed to have loaded the EVA-1 pallet at the MESA prior to this but, because Dave wasn't finished at the MESA, Jim jumped ahead in his checklist so that they wouldn't lose time. Installation of the geopallet is the first item on LMP-6.]

[The geopallet is a two-part frame work that Jim has mounted on a vertical post located just inside one of the rear wheels. Figure 4-8 from the Rover Handbook shows the mounting hardware. Training photo 71-H-840 shows the post in its raised position behind Jim's seat. The forward section of the pallet is latched to the chassis, but the rear section can be pivoted on the post to give easy access to the inner surfaces. The geopallet has attachment points for assorted tools and sample bags. Photo AS15-82- 11168 shows the Apollo 15 geopallet in its closed configuration and training photo 71-HC-722 shows it in the open position. Photos S71-22475 and 22477 show the tool-carrier portion of the geopallet. Note that the four-legged stand shown in the latter pictures is not part of the as-flown configuration. In S71-22477, note the pack of individual sample bags hanging off the left side and the two pairs of tongs sticking up at the right side. S71-22475 shows two Sample Collection Bags (SCBs). The right-hand bag has some extra stowage pockets attached.]

120:45:38 Irwin: Okay, EMU number 5. (Long Pause)

120:46:07 Scott: Need some help with that?

120:46:09 Irwin: I think I'll get it, Dave.

120:46:11 Scott: Okay, I'm going to come button your flap here. (Pause)

[Dave joins Jim at the back of the Rover, just off-camera to the left.]

120:46:24 Scott: Yeah, I think you'd better. Why don't you just go through EMU number 5, and I'm just going to close your flap here. Matter of fact...(Pause)

120:46:45 Irwin: I don't have any flags at all.

120:46:52 Scott: Stand still a minute so I can get this flap, Jim

120:46:55 Irwin: Check my (PLSS feedwater) diverter...

120:46:56 Allen: And, Jim, if you want, I'll step you through this procedure.

120:46:57 Irwin: ...valve back there for me, Dave, while you're there.

120:46:59 Scott: Okay. Diverter valve is in Intermediate. (Pause)

120:47:15 Irwin: Okay, Joe, I'm looking at EMU number 5. (Pause)

[Dave comes back into view, headed for the MESA. Just before he gets there, he stops and turns his checklist pages, using a brushing motion, looking for the one he wants. The checklist pages are made of a stiff, laminated photographic paper and are bound with a wire spiral. The spiral, in turn in mounted on a solid metal holder that conforms to the arm just above the wrist. The shape of the holder ensures that the pages will stay open until Dave purposefully turns them. A detail from training photo 71-HC-712 gives an good view of the curvature of the open checklist pages. And a detail from Apollo 13 training photo 70-HC-83 is a good side view of Jim Lovell's cuff checklist.]

120:47:23 Irwin: ... do you want me to cycle the Mode Select switch?

120:47:25 Allen: ...and after tone off, cycle Mode Select switch to A and then to AR. No tone...

120:47:36 Irwin: Okay.

120:47:37 Allen: ...no vent or O2 fail. (Long Pause with a momentary, high-pitched tone)

[Mode A is the primary communications mode and AR is the dual mode. Jim and Dave have both been in AR since 119:13:07 and, here, Houston is asking Jim to cycle the mode select switch from AR to A and back to AR.]

[With regard to the high-pitched tone, Journal Contributor Phil Karn writes: "In the normal AR ('dual') mode, the LMP and CDR transmit continuously to each other on two distinct VHF frequencies. The LM (or LCRU) continuously relays Houston to both astronauts on a third frequency, and the CDR relays the LMP's voice to the LM/LCRU (and Houston) on his own transmitter. The use of three separate frequencies allows everyone to transmit at the same time without radio interference."]

[When Jim switched to mode A ('primary'), he turned off his main transmitter and turned on another that transmitted on a frequency very close to Dave's frequency, jamming it. The slight difference in transmitter frequencies produced a 'beat' tone at the LM receiver."]

120:48:05 Irwin: Okay, I'm getting a P in the vent window. (Long Pause)

[This flag appears when the flow drops below 4.7 to 5.3 cubic feet per minute.]

[At the beginning of the video clip, Dave has already removed from the MESA a canister containing both the low-gain and high-gain antennas. He is opening the canister so he can extract the low-gain. Retired RCA technical illustrator James Burns has provided a drawing of the canister he did prior to Apollo 15. Figure 3.1-4 from the Apollo 15 Final Lunar Surface Procedures volume (9 Mb) shows the canister stowed on the lefthand side of the MESA.]

120:48:25 Irwin: I have a P in the vent window.

120:48:28 Allen: Roger.

120:48:29 Irwin: I'll cycle the fan (switch).

120:48:37 Allen: Roger. Copy you're cycling your fan.

120:48:44 Irwin: Yeah. (Pause) Fan's back on. (Pause) I have good flow, Joe...

120:49:07 Allen: Roger.

120:49:08 Irwin: But I have a P in the vent window.

120:49:09 Allen: Roger. Copy.

[Dave takes the low-gain antenna to the Rover. He is at the bottom of CDR-5 and will mount the low-gain antenna on his in-board handhold as shown in Figure 4-4 from the Rover Handbook. Training photo 71-H-834 shows Dave practicing the installation.]

120:49:19 Allen: Roger. We agree. (Pause) And, Jim, we think we just have a flag and tone problem. All your numbers look clean as can be down here.

[Because the telemetry looks good to Houston, they believe that the problem is in the warning system and not the PLSS. There is no discussion of this problem in either the Mission Report or in the Technical Debrief. After a while, the tones simply stop occurring.]

[Irwin - "(When I first got the tone) I looked at the pressure on the suit and it was normal, all the flags were normal but, yet I kept getting a warning signal. And, finally, I just decided to ignore it. When I made that decision, then it stopped. And I never did find out why I did get it."]

[Scott - "I might make a comment on all the discussion here about the flags and procedures. If you get out and one system doesn't work, then it's a big deal, because the whole thing changes. That was a concern at the time, I'm sure, to everybody. Because if Jim's PLSS system doesn't work, he goes back in. That's a big deal. So that's why all the effort in working it out."]

[Jones - "And you're continuing on, here. It doesn't do any good to stand around."]

[Scott - "I can't help him any. It's up to Jim and Houston. So I keep pressing on."]

[Jones - "Jim's got the malfunction procedure on his cuff checklist and, of course, they've got it back in Houston. And the reason you've got it on the cuff checklist is in case you lose comm?"]

[Scott - "No. Because we don't really depend on comm. We're supposed to be autonomous. You're supposed to have everything with you to do what you need to do because, what if you do lose comm? Which is another point of discussion in terms of 'what does the ground do for you'. Actually, they're advisors. They're there to help; and, if you can use them, it saves a lot of time. So, rather then look in the cuff checklist, in general you'd say, 'Hey, Joe' because all you have to do is listen. On the other hand, obviously, going into a malfunction procedure at this stage, you want to look at you cuff checklist to make sure you're hitting everything. You use the ground because they're there, but you don't plan to rely on them, because they may not be there. 'cause you may not be able to point your antenna."]

[Jones - "And they can screw up, too."]

[Scott - "Sure. And, if you lost comm, what would you do? Press on."]

[On Apollo 17, during an EVA closeout, Cernan and Schmitt lost comm with Houston for several minutes and, once they became aware of that fact, Schmitt continued his tasks while Cernan restored a comm configuration known to work. Similarly, at 122:13:15 Dave and Jim will lose comm with Houston and, after putting the switches back to a configuration known to work, they went about their business while waiting for Houston to fix the problem at their end.]

[Scott - "Two guys; the buddy system. It's designed to do that. Bring the rocks back. 'cause we even have all the lift-off procedures and times and all that. So you can lose total comm with Earth, finish up what you're doing to some point - whatever the mission rules say - and then come home."]

[Jones - "You've been copying the lift-off times in the data book. When you woke up in the morning, one of the first things that Bob did was read you up the lift-off times."]

[Scott - "Which gets into some of the philosophy which might be interesting on the semantics of the 'mission control' center. They didn't control anything. They advised. Control was on the Moon, in the ship. Just like, when airplanes fly around today, they call them flight controllers. They're not controlling anything. The Captain of the ship is responsible. If something goes wrong, it's his problem. But, nevertheless, Houston's an important part of the whole team. That's why we have all the integrated simulations, so that everybody knows what their roles are. Then you can go as far as possible without some element of the total team which, in the worst case, would be loss of comm because then you don't have all those thousands of people helping you. But you have a cuff checklist with the necessary procedures to press on."]

[Jones - "Which brings up the question of how you prepare for Mars missions. You do a lot of that in some training building someplace. Conceivably you can go out to some suitable place in the western US or wherever and do some field training. There are people who talk about going to Antarctic dry valleys and running simulated Mars missions there. Do you send people to Mars who have had lunar experience?"]

[Scott - "Absolutely. You don't send them to Mars unless they've had lunar experience, in my opinion. First you go to Arizona, or maybe the Antarctic - but the Antarctic is really no longer remote. You do the Earth, then you do the Moon, and then you do Mars because, as we've discussed, Mars is remote and you've got to be totally self-sufficient. Not totally, but pretty close. I would say that being on a Mars crew is a life-time career. One trip. If I were picking a Mars crew, I would pick somebody who had demonstrated performance on the Moon, with problems. Because I want to be able to know that the people going to Mars can handle problems and have demonstrated that."]

[Jones - "So you have them do a two- or three-month, real lunar mission. Have them go out and do geology and run a base camp and, in your scenario, have one half of the crew in the lander performing the mission control function. You've got Houston on the line, but with a built-in Mars delay. And the other half of the crew is out on the surface doing geology or whatever and, then, they come in and have supper and the other half goes out."]

[Scott - "Yeah, if you want to get into the Mars thing sometime, we can do that. Because that's a relatively long discussion, because there are some significant differences."]

[Jones - "But you can set it up in the lunar environment with a fair degree of faithfulness in the simulation."]

[Scott - "Just like in the Apollo Program, we tried to make our field exercises, at the end of the training, as absolutely realistic as possible - with the Backroom over the hill, etc. - so that, when we got to the Moon, we were comfortable in the procedural aspects. You didn't even have to think about talking to Joe or using the cuff checklist. That's natural. It's the surprises you've got to handle. So, when you go to Mars, the fact that you're on a foreign planet has to be natural, has to be absolutely natural. Just like you've been there before. Or you're not going to be able to get the job done, 'cause you'll be too focused on the problems. And this may be an example. We had a problem on Jim's PLSS; but it didn't really derail the train, because we had practiced these things to the extent that we knew how to go through the procedure of getting it fixed. So nobody panics, nobody gets excited. It's just a procedural thing which is relatively natural. And that's because we had practiced it. If you hadn't done that, then everybody would bunch up. Everything would stop. I would be sitting there saying, 'Jim! Jim!' instead of doing my job."]

["You've got to go through these things in a realistic manner, which takes a long time. First you have to develop the procedures, then you have to have everybody exercise the procedures - I mean, everybody look at them to make sure there are no hang-ups. Then you have to work them over, practice them and have people try to find problems in the procedures. Once you've done all that and are comfortable with it, then it's natural. So, if you have a problem, and recognizing there is a hazard involved, nobody gets clanked up, nobody gets sidetracked from their primary function."]

["When you go to Mars and you don't have Joe Allen there every second, you're going to have to be more autonomous, because it's more remote. And the people who go to Mars, in my opinion, must have demonstrated the Ice Man capability on the Moon - that the problems don't bother them. Otherwise, they probably won't panic, but they're going to get sidetracked, derailed, mentally off-balance and not focused on what they have to do."]

[Jones - "Which reminds me, again, of Amundsen's experiences in the Antarctic. During the summer and winter before his journey to the Pole, he spent enormous amounts of time and effort in preparation and testing."]

[Scott - "Yeah, and that's a good analogy, because Amundsen beat (Robert Falcon) Scott because he was better prepared."]

[Jones - "And conducted a lot of simulation exercises. Earlier in Greenland and on the Northwest Passage voyage; and, then once he got to the Antarctic, on the Ice, he did a lot of practice runs. He used the depot laying journeys as really good training."]

[Scott - "Which is another good point here, maybe, in reflecting on the present and what's going on today. Because the Shuttle missions are relatively simple, they - or we - are drifting away from the philosophy. I mean, they use simulators, but the missions are not very complex. So they're drifting away from that totally integrated, run it again and again type of simulation. A more complex mission has so many facets that can interfere with other facets that, if you don't have this long period of preparation and practice and reiteration, when you get there, you're going to have problems that you don't deal with in an efficient manner. And we're drifting away from that because the missions are relatively simple and routine."]

["Every mission's going to be different when you go to the Moon and Mars, and I'm not sure we're prepared for the long period of preparation that's going to be necessary. Of course, we didn't really know about that when we got started with Apollo. Take the geology as an example. I got my first geology books in February 1964, and it was seven years later - right? - when I got to use some of it. Even though we weren't focused on geology every day, if somebody had said when we went into the program, when we were putting our applications in for the program, 'Hey, you guys are going to have to work on geology for seven years.' I'd have said, 'Hey, wait a minute! This is not what I'm signing up for. I'm a fighter pilot! I want to go up and do all these whiz-bang things. What's this geology jazz? What do you mean, seven years of geology? No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to stay here and do my whiz-bang. I'm going to do X-15; that's more fun.' Right? So we didn't know, going in, that it was going to take this. Also, we didn't know that we'd have this vast army of geologists helping us do this. I just did a Discovery Mission workshop, and ran into some old friends - Gene Shoemaker (pdf; 204k), Gary Lofgren, Mike Duke - and seeing them brought back all of these memories about when it started and how much effort went into turning us into semi-geologists."]

["And geology was just one part of the mission. Let's talk about this malfunction procedure number 5. When we started, there were a lot of blank pieces of paper. There were no procedures. In fact, we didn't even know what to call people. Jim was LMP and I was the CDR; but, in the beginning nobody knew what to call the people who were there. Totally blank pieces of paper; and, when you get to going to Mars, it's going to be the same thing, essentially. This Journal is going to help, immensely - if they'll read it - because they're going to have to start with the basics. What does the spaceship look like. Nobody knew in Apollo. Somebody won a design in '62, but they really didn't know what was going to happen, and they didn't know how to interface the systems. It takes a long, long time. Which is why, in my scenario for Mars, it's a career. (See the discussion following 119:13:48.) You're probably 30 years old before you even get close to qualifying for this career, and you're close to 60 when you finish. That's a long time. But if you add up all the things you should do, it's going to take that much time. Like, when you get back, instead of running off and doing other things as we did, finish the job. Five years on the job when you get back. That's what you're getting paid to do, that's your job. Do the Journal a year after, instead of twenty years after. It should be a lot easier, and you'd probably get a lot more out of it."]

[We turned off the tape for a moment to take a break.]

[Jones - "When the tape was off, we were talking more about Mars and you were saying, 'don't send them to Hadley, don't send them to Taurus-Littrow, send them to someplace nobody's ever been.' A real-live mission, not messed up with other people's footprints."]

[Scott - "Yeah. A real, live mission in a real, live hazardous environment with realistic problems and then, find out if they can conduct the science. When they get back, they get an exam in a way. I mean, you don't sit them down with a piece of paper. I know we had a real-time exam, because everybody was watching us - Gordon Swann and Lee Silver and Jim Head. While I'm doing this (the first Apollo 15 EVA), I know I'm getting examined. So you send several crews to the Moon, and you pick one to go to Mars. Now, some people say, 'Well, that's too much competition!' Baloney. What you want, as a program manager, is the best that you can get. And the only way you find out who's the best is to put them through it. They've got to go through the actual drill. And you have to measure their performance. Whether you do it formally or informally, it's done."]

["I know our performance (during training) was measured, because I know the guys running the simulators, whether formally or informally, were watching and making comparisons. Everybody makes comparisons. So, when you get ready to send the Mars crew, you probably look at three to six of your lunar crews and you pick, based on their performance and not their academic excellence. Not the grades they got in school, but how they perform in real life, in a real situation which is as close as possible to the situation they'll get on Mars. And that, in itself, is probably a ten-year program."]

["Somebody needs to sit and think through the Mars thing and, unfortunately, when NASA did their 90-day study (in 1989/90), they apparently didn't think it through. They had the guys to do it, but they didn't get serious about what you're really going to do when you really send somebody to Mars, when you have a program manager. When you have to put people in those shoes and say, 'Okay, you're the Program Manager. You'd better get serious about what you're going to do.' One of the decisions your going to make is that you're not going to let somebody go to Mars for six months and conduct a six-thousand kilometer traverse on the first trip. That just isn't going to happen. Maybe it will, but I'd be surprised if it did. I think you're going to go very cautiously, very carefully. Mars is going to be there for a very, very long time, and you don't have to do your six-thousand kilometer traverse until maybe 50 years after your first trip."]

["Mars is complicated; it's difficult. To the Moon, you can pop one off every month. For Mars, wait a minute - regardless of what propulsion system you have. A lot of thinking has to be done before anybody goes to Mars. And, in the interim, people need to go to the Moon to establish the basis for preparing people to go to Mars."]

[Jones - "I mentioned Tsiolkovsky (Crater on the lunar Farside) as a place. And that's a piece of cake compared to Mars. And there were discussions during Apollo about Tsiolkovsky, every once in a while. But it's a hard problem because of the comm."]

[Scott - "Not really. You can do a TDRS, GPS type constellation and by the time you send people back to the Moon, you will have a constellation of orbiting satellites around the Moon."]

[Jones - "But in the early 70's, it was a different problem - financially, politically and technically."]

[Scott - "Well, we didn't have the technology then that we do now. Now, you can put a constellation of small satellites around the Moon and have continuous communications for not much money in relative terms. So Tsiolkovsky's going to be just like the front side of the Moon was in the 70's. When you get this constellation of orbiting satellites - which you will have for Rovers and other things before you send people back to the Moon - then you'll have constant communications. And the Backside's going to be fascinating. It will be no more risky than the front side. It'll be the same. And polar orbits. They're learning things they've never seen before. And you'll be sending people there. Which won't be any different than the equatorial Nearside during Apollo."]

[Jones - "But you had a slow buildup of Apollo experience. You didn't go to Tsiolkovsky in the beginning. You didn't go to polar orbits in the first series of missions."]

[Scott - "Didn't go to the mountains, either. Went to as flat a place as you could get (for Apollo 11) and still had problems, right?"]

[Jim is on his way to the MESA and stops to look at his cuff checklist.]

120:49:52 Scott: Oh, yes, you can dump it. I had to take the pallet out to get the TCU off.

[Dave tosses four pieces of packaging off-screen to the right. Jim tosses the TCU pallet over to the right side of the MESA.]

120:50:07 Scott: That's pretty neat, huh? At least we won't clutter up the immediate vicinity. (Long Pause)

[Dave goes to the front of the Rover to connect the low-gain antenna cable to the LCRU. Training photo 71-H-848 (scan by Frederic Artner) shows Dave practicing the connection.]

[Jones - "How easy was throwing things? Was there a balance problem?"]

[Irwin - "I don't think I ever threw anything. Dave was the one who did. It's just a question in my mind...We wanted to keep it neat around there, but it seemed to me it would have been better to save your energy, save your balance and maybe just stack it neatly under the LM. That's something you'll have to check with Dave. One worry is the centrifugal force kind of thing. You probably saw that on the television, where he went into kind of a pirouette (at 124:48:02)."]

[Jones - "We'll get to that. Most of the trash did go under the LM."]

[Irwin - "I would think that was a good place. We never talked about it but that's probably what we should have done, rather than taking the time and the energy to flip it out somewhere, 'cause then it could have disturbed something we might want to sample later on."]

120:50:32 Allen: Roger, Jim, that's true.

120:50:33 Irwin: ...hopeless.

120:50:34 Allen: ...We can tell when you get a tone down here. We hear it as well.

120:50:39 Irwin: Okay.

120:50:41 Scott: So do I, Jim.

120:50:44 Irwin: Disturbs you too, doesn't it?

120:50:45 Scott: Yep. Sure does. (Long Pause)

[Jim removes a package - probably the EVA-1 pallet - from the MESA and hangs it on the forward edge. Dave goes to the left side of the MESA to get the high-gain antenna.]

120:51:13 Scott: (Laughs)

120:51:21 Irwin: Yeah. (Pause)

120:51:28 Scott: That tape for the MESA blankets is something again. (Long Pause)

[Dave removes the folded high-gain antenna. He unfolds the mast and, in the process, partially releases the umbrella-shaped, wire-mesh dish. He heads for the Rover. He is at the 53 minute mark in the checklist but is 72 minutes into the EVA. The problems he had with the tape on the MESA blankets and the TCU have put him 12 minutes farther behind than he was when he mounted the LRV at 120:31:33. Jim is perhaps two or three minutes behind Dave, but has had to alter the order of his tasks to accommodate the delays that Dave has been experiencing.]

[Training photos 71-HC-723 and KSC-71P-323 show Dave installing the high-gain.]

120:52:17 Irwin: (Still at the MESA) You can tell, Joe, I have the geopallet on the back end of the Rover. I don't know whether it's locked on there properly yet.

[Comm Break]

[Jim has removed a replacement ECS Primary LiOH canister from the right end of the MESA and, after removing and discarding a "band" puts it in the EVA-1 pallet. At the Rover, Dave stands upright and inserts the bottom of the high-gain staff into the attachment sleeve with no apparent difficulty. To lock it into place, he then reaches down to knee height with his left hand and, in order to get a little lower, moves his feet backwards and gets on his toes in a deep knee bend. As he does so, the front of the Rover moves down, indicating that he is putting some weight on it. When he rises, the Rover rebounds. After securing the mast, he unscrews a knob on the mast, pulls out a telescoping mast section to raise the umbrella to its full height, and retightens the knob. Finally, he grabs the high-gain cable and removes a protective cap from the connector.]

120:53:34 Allen: Roger. (Long Pause)

Video Clip   2 min 01 sec ( 0.5 Mb RealVideo or 18 Mb MPG )

120:53:49 Irwin: I'm taking the hand rails off (the geopallet) (Long Pause)

[Dave connects the high-gain to the LCRU. Jim takes the geopallet handrails to the north side of the spacecraft and discards them.]

120:54:38 Allen: Roger, Dave. Have at it. (Long Pause)

[Dave heads past the MESA toward the TV. He starts with three kangaroo hops, switches to the loping, foot-to-foot stride, and finishes with the skipping motion.]

120:56:05 Irwin: (Going to the MESA as Dave starts to move the TV) Sure is. I hope the (16-mm) pictures turned out. (Pause) Okay, SRC-1 is going to the (MESA) table, Joe.

[The SRC-1 is a Sample Return Container, one of the sealable rock boxes which will be left on the MESA table while the Dave and Jim make the first traverse. When they get back to the LM, they will fill it with samples and then take it into the LM at the end of the day's activities. The MESA table has latches to hold the rock box, as shown in S69-31080, a picture from an Apollo 11 training session. The astronaut in this picture is Neil Armstrong. Generally, of course, the contents of the MESA on Apollo 15 were quite different from those flown on Apollo 11.]

[TV off. Dave picks up the TV while it is still operating, takes it to the MESA, and finally sets it down just to the right of the ladder where he unplugs the cable connecting it to the LM.]

120:56:53 Irwin: Okay, I'm closing the control sample, in the...

120:56:58 Allen: Roger.

120:56:59 Irwin: ...SRC. (Pause)

[The Control Sample is a roll of clean aluminum metal which Jim has put in an individual sample bag. The Control Sample is included to give the scientists who will examine the lunar samples a means of determining the level of contamination - if any - to which the samples have been exposed.]

120:57:20 Allen: Okay.

120:57:21 Irwin: ...on the Hand Tool Carrier. (Long Pause)

[Dave and Jim will each wear an SCB on the side of their PLSS and, after they collect a sample of rock or soil and put it in a small, marked individual sample bag made of Teflon, they will put the small bag into one of the SCBs. Jim is temporarily stowing SCB-1 on the geopallet at the back of the Rover. Later, he will put this bag on Dave's PLSS.]

120:57:47 Scott: There goes the old TV (on the TCU). Trouble getting it to fit today. (Long Pause) And the TV handle is stowed in the side so you get your thermal. (Pause)

[By stowing the handle, Dave is reducing the surface area of the camera and, thereby, the amount of sunlight it will absorb and transmit by conduction to the TCU and other temperature sensitive equipment such as the Rover batteries.]

120:58:21 Allen: Okay, Jim. (Long Pause)

[Pre-flight photo KSC-71-P222 shows Jim (second from the left), Dave, and Bob Parker examining geopallet and related gear at the back of the flight Rover.]

120:58:43 Allen: Rog.

120:58:47 Scott: Okay, LCRU's circuit breaker is closed. And the LCRU Power is going to Internal. CTV Power switch to On. (LCRU) whip antenna coming up. Okay; LCRU is going PM1/Narrow Band.

120:59:21 Allen: Roger. (Pause)

[Dave is now on CDR-7.]

[Journal Contributor Phil Karn writes, "After Dave says 'going PM1/Narrow Band', there is a swishing tone for about a second. I think I now know what this was."]

["The LCRU PM1/Narrowband mode is the same as 'backup voice' on the LM and CSM. Audio is transmitted at baseband using PM on the main S-band carrier."]

["The LCRU PM1/Wideband mode is the same as regular voice on the LM and CSM: the voice is frequency modulated onto a 1.25 MHz sub carrier which is in turn phase modulated onto the S-band carrier."]

["The ground receiver is already looking for the LCRU, rapidly sweeping back and forth in frequency. Right after Dave turns on the LCRU transmitter, the receiver sweeps past its carrier in one of its acquisition scans. As it approaches the incoming carrier, the difference drops into the audio range. That produces the variable pitch tone we heard. When the receiver locks on, the tone goes to zero frequency where we can't hear it."]

["By the way, a trained ear - e.g., a radio ham like myself - can tell the difference between the wide band (normal) and narrow band (backup) voice modes by the nature of the background noise. In the narrow band mode - which is really a form of AM - the noise is a constant steady hiss and the voice signals vary in volume with signal strength. A faint signal is a faint voice. This was the case for Apollo 16's LM Orion because of the failure of its steerable S-band antenna, and also from Apollo 13's Aquarius after the explosion to save power."]

"In the normal wide band (FM) mode the voice levels are fairly constant and the background noise decreases with increasing signal strength. When the signal is good, the noise disappears entirely. The FM background noise also has a different character, sounding like 'popcorn' rather than a steady hiss. You can hear these effects yourself by comparing an AM broadcast radio with an FM radio."]

[Jones - "'If I can get down to it' means that the LCRU is low and that the gauges and the switches were on the side."]

[Scott - "And small. So you had to get down to look at them so you can see the numbers. Yeah, I remember that. They're little things."]

[Jones - "I don't remember if I've ever seen you kneel, in the video. Some people could, other's couldn't."]

[Scott - "I don't know if I ever tried. Why kneel? Why would you kneel, other than getting dirty?"]

[Jones - "To get your eyes close to it. Get your hands close to it."]

[Scott - "Oh, this. Maybe. But I can't think of any other reason to kneel. That's why we had tongs, so you didn't crawl around on the ground, purposefully."]

[Jones - "John (Young) and Gene (Cernan) did a fair amount of kneeling. There were a couple of cases where Gene needed to pound on a rock that was low, and it was easier to get down on the ground to do that."]

[Scott - "Maybe that's why they got dirtier."]

[Jones - "That's a fair bit of it. There were cases during the 16 ALSEP deploy where John needed to work on some piece of equipment. The mortar pack had some tricky leveling and alignment. And it was simply easier for him to get down on his knees and play with it. And get his hands close."]

[Scott - "Yeah. I would say that would be a real dirt accumulator. 'Cause it's just like kneeling on mud."]

[Jones - "Because of the static charge on that stuff."]

[Scott - "And one of the reasons we went through this tong exercise was so that you didn't have to get down, so you could stay up all the time. Because you don't want to get in the dirt. (Chuckling) I mean, we do fall over and do those things which are not designed. On the other hand, I think you would attempt to stay away from getting dirty; and one way you do that is with the tongs. And it's also easier; you don't have to physically work as hard."]

[Jones - "There's a question I have to ask John. He's told me that he spent time in the KC-135 (aircraft in which they did one-sixth-g training) actually practicing a kind of dynamic bob down to the ground. You get one leg forward, one leg back and jump and push the suit down to get your hand down to the surface and come back up without actually getting on your knees. He actually spent time in the 135 practicing that and practicing kneeling, and the question to him is: what made him decide he wanted to do that rather than rely on the tongs."]

[Scott - "Why would you want to do that, unless the rock was larger than the tongs? Then you'd have to do something to pick it up. But, on the other hand, the tongs were designed to pick up the size rocks that they wanted."]

[Jones - "Did the tongs get in the way?"]

[Scott - "I thought they were great. An extended hand. You don't have to get dirty or bend over. I thought they were pretty efficient."]

[Jones - "Difference in personal style."]

[Scott - "I thought they were a very good tool. And, also, as we'll probably talk about as we go along, it gives you distance from a rock, and also gives you scale if you put it up against a rock. So you know how big the rock is, or the phenocryst or whatever. I felt the tongs were very useful."]

[A few moments later in the mission review, Dave added the following thought.]

[Scott - "About bending down and kneeling in the dirt. Another problem you know, going into the situation, is if the suits get dirty you have a thermal problem. Based on what previous flights have encountered, you want to keep the suits as clean for thermal considerations, which says that, if you had your choice of tongs or getting the suit dirty, clearly, you'd use the tongs, even if they were somewhat cumbersome. That's one reason to have tongs, even if you could bend over and kneel down."]

[Jones - "I'll be fascinated to hear what John has to say about that."]

[Scott - "Yeah. It'll be interesting. And maybe they found out...I don't know if anybody did an analysis on the suits when they get grey; but, there again, you have the other problem of bringing dirt into the LM, which we knew we were going to have a problem because of Pete and Al. That's why we had the laundry bag. So, containment is a big issue, and I would think you would want to stay away from the dirt as best you could."]

121:00:02 Allen: Copy. (Pause)

121:00:07 Scott: Okay. I'm now going...You got a good check on the narrow band, Joe?

121:00:16 Allen: Stand by, Dave. (Pause)

121:00:22 Scott: Okay.

121:00:25 Allen: And we're going to Narrow Band.

121:00:30 Scott: Hey, give me a call when you want to go to TV Remote and I'll do it. (Long Pause)

[We can hear Dave struggling a bit. He may be completing deployment of the umbrella-shaped high-gain antenna while he waits for Houston.]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The unlocking of the antenna was easy, but relocking the antenna in the open position was quite difficult, probably because of the new, stiff antenna (as opposed to the training antenna which had been opened many times) and the difficulty in the locking mechanism. I finally got it locked, but it took quite a bit of force."]

121:01:10 Scott: Fair. Boy, that (lost under Joe's transmission)

121:01:11 Allen: Okay, Dave. How do you read Houston?

121:01:17 Scott: Houston. I read you loud and clear. (Pause)

121:01:31 Allen: Okay, Dave. TV Remote, please.

121:01:38 Scott: Okay; going to TV Remote. (Long Pause with heavy static that clears after a few seconds.)

121:02:12 Allen: Okay, Dave. And continue on, please.

121:02:19 Scott: Okay. (Pause) (Reading) "LCRU blankets are 100-percent open; connector covers are closed; the dish is deployed." See if I can find the Earth. (Pause) There she is. (Pause) Okay; pointed right at you, Houston.

[The high-gain antenna, which is used primarily for the TV picture, must be pointed almost exactly at Earth. This is done with a boresight instrument on the antenna which is aimed by the Commander after he dismounts at each stop. Because the pointing has to be very accurate, the TV can only be used effectively while the Rover is parked. For voice communications during the traverse, the Rover is also equipped with a low-gain antenna that has to be pointed within about 30 degrees of Earth. Because Earth is nearly overhead, Dave doesn't have to change the low-gain pointing at any time during the mission.]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The high-gain antenna was pointed to Earth without any problem, although the Earth was very dim in the field-of-view - and I did check to make sure the filter was open."]

[Dave will have trouble with a dim image in the sighting scope at several of the stops. The device was re-designed for Apollo 16 and worked well on both 16 and 17. Training photo 71-H-833shows Dave Scott practices aligning the high-gain antenna on the one-g LRV trainer. In this photo, it appears from the reflections in Dave's face plate that he is aligning the antenna toward the Sun, the only bright light in the daytime Florida sky. The Sun would have made a good object to practice pointing but not for getting a feel for finding a dimmer object in the scope.]

121:03:04 Scott: Okay; she's all yours.

[The TV is controlled from Houston by Ed Fendell who, from March 1969 to June 1984, was Head of the Communications Systems Section, Flight Control Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Fendell received a number of achievement awards for his Apollo work and, in 1973, was awarded Germany's HÖRZU Golden Camera Award (photo courtesy Ed Fendell / Harald Kucharek).]

[Journal Contributor Harald Kucharek writes "HÖRZU (hör zu = listen to) is one of the oldest and largest German TV schedule magazines. (Equivalent to the U.S.'s TV Guide.) It started in the radio age; and that's where the name comes from. It is normally written in all caps. The award is a media/movie award, like an Oscar or Emmy."]

[The remotely-controlled camera allows Mission Control to follow crew activities or examine the countryside while the astronauts are otherwise occupied. Journal Contributor Ken Glover has extracted a RealVideo clip from the NASA film 'In the Mountains of the Moon' which shows Fendell operating the Rover TV during the Station 2 activities.]

[Scott - "This was another very effective system; and Fendell did an outstanding job, especially on this first mission (with a remotely controlled camera). Tracking our movements with a three second delay was not easy!"]

121:03:12 Irwin: Got your favorite little gadget...

121:03:15 Scott: Okay.

121:03:16 Irwin: ...got your favorite gadget stowed back here, Dave.

121:03:18 Scott: Oh, good. (Long Pause)

[Jones - "What was 'your favorite gadget'?"]

[Scott - "What are the choices?"]

[Jones - "(Reading from LMP-6 and LMP-7) Tongs, extension handle, scoop, penetrometer, gnomon, bags, the infamous vise, sample bags, rake. It was something on that list."]

[Scott - "From the voices, it probably something that probably wasn't really my favorite."]

[Jones - "The vise worked fine in training and that problem won't start until later. So that probably isn't it."]

121:04:00 Scott: Oh, yeah. We're pressing on. (Long Pause)

121:04:26 Allen: Dave, we want you to verify the CTV switch, On, please. And that the high gain's pointed, in TV Remote.

121:04:40 Scott: Okay, Joe; stand by. I'll go look. (Pause)

[Scott - "A lot of people are holding their breath to see if the TV will work when it's on the Rover. First time, and for Ed Fendell and all the guys who will control it and run it, it's a big deal. Big step in lunar exploration. You're going to put a television on a mobile vehicle and you're going to go out away from the LM, and you're going to get pictures away from the LM so everybody on Earth can watch. Great idea."]

[Jones - "And you tried it in simulations, with Ed over the hill in the tent, running it?"]

[Scott - "Yeah. It worked. But does it work on the Moon? And when you think of the number of people involved in this one little piece: RCA, etc. You've got to have power to the television, you've got to move it. That may seem simple, but it's not. It's a big deal and it's too bad we couldn't have had remote control on the Rover after we left, because just simple television can tell you an awful lot. If you can roam around the Moon with television - or Mars - think of how much you can learn. Nobody would ask for it, but I could sell the pictures to the scientific community - for pennies, because that's all they have - but, just give me TV in Hadley Rille, and thousands of people would love to see those."]

[Jones - "Especially with 90's technology."]

[Scott - "Of course. Look at what you can get in resolution. This is a nice, incremental step in the total system, in that we are demonstrating for the first time a mobile, visual capability on the Moon."]

[Jones - "And not only for the scientists, but for the engineers and the support people who get to see what you're doing. And there are plenty of instances where people drop stuff and the CapCom or somebody notices it - and the crew doesn't. So you get an extra pair of eyes."]

[Scott - "Yup. A third pair of eyes on the Moon. And the public gets to watch it. And with new scenes. The public, on the earlier mission, saw only one scene. And that's around the LM and it's boring after a while. Now, each place you go you're going to have a whole new scene, a whole new set of circumstances that you can get people involved in."]

[Jones - "You would not have left the LM without checking that the TV was working."]

[Scott - "Actually, the first thing you did when you were connecting the connector would be to turn it on so you could find out if it works. And if it doesn't work, then you've got that whole army of people to figure it out while you're doing other things."]

121:05:07 Allen: Roger.

121:05:08 Scott: And, it's spring loaded to neutral. It moves! I think. Maybe that's just Jim wiggling the rear end.

121:05:20 Irwin: Wasn't me. (Pause)

[TV on.]

121:05:30 Allen: Presto chango; there's the TV.

['Presto Chango', sometimes spelled 'presto change-o' is a incantation usually assoicated with amateur magicians.]

[Jones - "Your tone of voice, here, says..."]

[Scott - "I'm glad to see the TV worked, because there was so much involved, so many people and so many things that could be done with it. The TV was a very big step for us."]

[Jones - "Which brings up the 12 accident (in which Al Bean accidentally pointed the TV at the Sun and burned out the vidicon tube). In hindsight, Al says that they didn't properly appreciate the importance of the TV, despite having watched Neil and Buzz and having seen the public reaction to it. What, in your mind, was the importance of the TV? There are lots of aspects to it."]

[Scott - "I guess, A, it's another source of documentation. It's a record of what you're doing. B, it enables the ground to be involved in what you're doing. Lee Silver, Gordon Swann, and the others in the Backroom can watch what we're doing, not only from the point of view of what we're doing, but also what they can see that we can't see. So, scientifically, they can add to the scene. At the same time, they can observe other aspects of the site that we never talk about, which subsequently, somebody can go back and review. As you notice here, as we're loading the Rover, the mountains are in the background and in partial shadow. So here's another source of documentation which is never, ever discussed during the mission. I don't think anybody's looked at it afterwards. That's a wealth of information, in addition to what we gather and the photos we take and the things we talk about. C, the engineering, hardware part where, later on, they can see the bag that's loose, or whatever. And, D, the public gets to participate. Everybody gets to participate. There is more of a union of the involved people because they can see and the eyes take in 85% of what you take in."]

["What could be more interesting and fun, than to be on the Moon, with your eyes? Ed Fendell's eyes, as an example; and, since he will be controlling it, he's actually exploring the Moon, in a sense, because he can work at his console, and he can point the TV at something, just as if he was there. And, if you had a zoom lens and there was a boulder you wanted to look at, you could swing the TV and go look at it. You don't have to be physically present. So it adds a whole dimension to the exploration because, in addition to having a Rover and two guys going out, you also have the television as a third person, if you will. It's a robot and, where the Rover goes, this robot goes. It's a robotic device to explore the Moon. When we're up working the boulder near St. George, somebody can be looking down into the rille."]

[Jones - "Was there an evolution in attitudes toward the TV camera in the Astronaut Office? Or on the part of Dave Scott? Were there some people who thought it was a great thing to have along and other people who thought it was a nuisance?"]

[Scott - "I don't recall, Eric. I always thought it was great. It was sad that 12 had the problem. They did a lot of training in the simulator building with all the surface hardware, and we never had a Sun in there. Missed it, right? The setup in the training building was not high fidelity, because we didn't put the Sun there. Nobody's fault. It's just that we didn't think about it; and that's why it's so important to have everything in the picture, if you will. The loss of it on 12 obviously made me sensitive because we all missed a lot of what Pete and Al did."]

["I was always big for pictures, anyway. The telephoto lens and all that. I think the more visual documentation you can get, the more information you get from the trip."]

[Jones - "You were the first guys to carry the 500-mm lens. When did that come on?"]

[See, also, the discussion just prior to 106:50:05.]

[Scott - "That came along because, I think, in some field exercises, somebody said something to me about a telephoto lens. And we had one and tried it and I thought it was a great idea to take it to the Moon. And so I took it through the process and, as you probably know, Rocco Petrone finally let it go by taking off some ascent margin in propellant. That was the ultimate trade-off. We had to push it very hard through the whole system because people said you can't hold a 500-mm lens steady on the Moon. You won't get any good pictures. And, then, if you look at the number of pictures that were useful, I think the majority of the most useful pictures were telephoto. It worked very well."]

[Jones - "They're gorgeous!"]

[Scott - "But it was a struggle to get it on the flight, because it weighed a couple of pounds. That had to be subtracted from something that was already there. And, as I recall, the subtraction was from ascent propellant margin."]

[Jones - "Just a smidge."]

[Scott - "Just a smidge but they had to have configuration control. So those kinds of things don't get put on, unless something else comes off. It was a relatively late addition, as I recall."]

[Jones - "And the only exploration of North Complex, as it turned out, that you did were those gorgeous pictures you took during the SEVA (and from Station 6)."]

[Scott - "Yeah. That's right. Big blocks. I guess 16 and 17 took it also?"]

[Jones - "Yeah. Charlie had some trouble with holding it steady and only a few of his pictures are good. The ones Gene and Jack took are as good as yours."]

[Scott - "Gee. I thought it was pretty easy. In fact, I didn't even think about it."]

[Jones - "I think Charlie hurried; but you and Gene did great. Two out of three is well worth the fight."]

[Scott - "Oh, yeah. And we took a bunch from orbit, too. Great pictures! Tsiolkovsky, for one. In fact, you can see a big outcrop in the flank of the peak. You mentioned Tsiolkovsky and, boy, that's a fire-lighter for me! Boy, that's a place to go, on down the road. There are so many great places to go on the Moon that we haven't been, that would be just spectacular. I think (Jack) Schmitt would be big for Tsiolkovsky."]

[Jones - "Oh, yeah. He still talks about it."]

[Scott - "And Tycho, of course. We took a lot of telephotos from orbit. Not that they would be better than the pan camera. The pan camera's probably much better. But, nonetheless."]

[Jones - "I'm glad you lobbied to get that on."]

[Scott - "Hard work. But enough people were convinced, and not just me. We took it out in the field and tried it, and enough people were convinced that it was going to be useful as a tool that we went through the system and got them to buy off on it."]

[In his next transmission, Dave is using the direction in which the TV is pointing - southwest - as 12 o'clock. And the Sun is almost behind the camera and slightly to the left.]

121:05:57 Allen: Roger, Dave. We copy and hustle on, please.

[If we had started the clock on the Rover deployment at 120:07:08 when Dave positioned the TV camera so that Houston could watch the deployment and then stopped it here, the entire procedure took about an hour, about twenty minutes longer than planned.]

[Jones - "In watching this, it seems to take a while; but, actually, it's only been about an hour and my sense is that that's a very small overhead cost for an enormous increase in capability."]

[Scott - "Yeah. But the increase in capability comes from all the parts that go into it. The whole design concept, the preparations, whatever. An hour to deploy an automobile on the Moon? That's pretty good. I mean, you can't even go in and buy a car off the street and be in it in that time. The whole Rover is pretty clever, when you consider what we did, what we got out of it, the success rate, the handling and performance, stability and control, everything it carried. And I think it's pretty remarkable that an automobile could be carried to the Moon and activated in only an hour and then perform what it performed. Yeah, you're right."]

[For comparison, the Apollo 14 crew planned to spend 5 minutes deploying their handcart - the Mobile Equipment Transporter or MET - and 8 minutes loading equipment on it. In reality, although the MET deployment went smoothly, the equipment load took 18 minutes, in large measure because of the difficulty they had attaching bags to some very strong spring clips.]

[Scott - "Do you know what they took off the Rover, because they ran out of money? A remote control driving capability! Did you know that?"]

[Jones - "No, I didn't!"]

[Scott - "At one point in the program - and I've only learned this recently - they had designed a capability to control it from the ground after we left and drive it. Wouldn't that have been marvelous? But budgets were tight. Can't do everything. But at least we know, from having driven it, it would be relatively easy to put that kind of Rover into a teleoperated mode and drive down the rille, or whatever. A wheeled Rover of that size has been designed, built, and tested."]

[Jones - "What you've got to be able to do is to have an automatic pointing system for the high gain, so you can have TV. You could run the Rover through the low-gain, voice link, I would imagine."]

[Scott - "And this really only verifies that we could do what the Russians did with Lunokhod (two very-successful, remotely-controlled Rovers landed on the Moon by the Russians on 17 Nov. 1970 and 16 Jan. 1973, respectively). I guess the point is, when somebody takes the next step with Rovers, a couple have already been demonstrated. And there were plenty of people who would have liked to look around with that TV after we left."]

[Jones - "On Apollo 15, you only used about 52 amp-hours of the 242 amp-hours of available energy in the Rover batteries."]

[Scott - "And (in principle) they're rechargeable. So you could very easily provide mechanisms to put it to sleep and wake it up. You'd have to provide some shelter at night and during the high sun angles. But, on the other hand, you could have taken a chance on minimal protection because, after we left, there was nothing to lose. It was over. Anything else would have been a gain. But at least the Rover system's been designed. The wheel's been designed, the power system's been designed, stability, control, and performance. All you've got to do is put the scientific instruments on, control it, protect it, send it to the Moon and you're on your way."]

[Meanwhile, Ed Fendell has started a panoramic sweep with the TV and is panning past St. George Crater on the northwest flank of Mt. Hadley Delta. The LM ladder is at the left side of the picture with the LEC dangling from the porch rail. The image jiggles from time to time as Dave and Jim work around the Rover.]

[Scott - "Here we are, loading things, and we're doing overhead. Which is not good science time. And you've got Ed back there exploring the Moon with the camera. Gee, there's St. George. That's the first time anybody's been able to see St. George up close, with the peak behind it. (See the caption for AS15-85-11374.) Scientifically, that's got to be interesting. Not that we won't get better pictures. But, suppose we had to come back now? 'Problem! Come home.' Invaluable pictures. Probably not better than they would have from orbit in some period of time."]

[Jones - "Or better than the 500s you got during the SEVA, but these are now."]

[Scott - "Yeah. We're exploring, now. We're thinking. The Swanns of this world are looking at these and it turns their minds on. Maybe not any significant discoveries, but it put them in the thought process of mentally exploring the Moon, and they may come up with something because of something they see. That's what scientists do, right? You're a scientist. Give you something to look at, and your mind will take off and you'll probably think of something. So here's another dimension in the whole exploration process. Just a straightforward piece of hardware and, while Jim and I are spending time on overhead, there is some benefit coming out of Fendell's swinging the camera around."]

[Jones - "It puts the Backroom on the Moon and starts them thinking about the real-live Hadley."]

[Scott - "And they can talk about it. 'Hey, look at that!' And you get that interplay. Invaluable piece of equipment."]

[Jones - "Did you spend any time in the Backroom during any of the missions?"]

[Scott - "Yeah. During 12. And on 14 I did, too. Quite a bit. Has anyone ever told you about the Backroom? It was a shambles! I mean, there were guys going everywhere. And it was great! Because they've all worked together. I don't mean it's disorganized. A very busy place."]

[Jones - "How many people? Twenty or thirty?"]

[Scott - "Something like that. In very cramped quarters. But the interchange and the energy of stuff going on in there was great stuff. You could walk into the room and you could feel the energy. Here are these guys; they're all tuned in, they're all hyped up. It's like the football team before the game. 'Rah, rah; we're going to win this! We're going to go to the Super Bowl!' You get this energy going and it becomes geometric. And, then, you get to see the pictures and they're excited, which is what it's all about."]

[Jones - "They've had mental images based on the pictures from orbit, and now they're getting a ground level view, which is probably different from the mental images."]

[Scott - "If you put twenty guys in the Backroom like that, and just get 'em television from the Moon, they won't leave the room; they won't go to sleep. They'll be there until somebody turns it off. That's the beauty of the system. That's why you go do this stuff. It's not eight to five (that is, an everyday job)!"]

121:06:45 Allen: Roger.

[The space under each of the seats is enclosed with a cloth strip and can be accessed by lifting the seat bottom. Fendell continues his pan until he gets to the left edge of the LM and starts to get some specular sunlight reflections. He then reverses direction.]

121:07:23 Allen: Roger.

121:07:27 Irwin: And, Joe, in bag 2, I have the core stems and caps. I'm putting bag 2 (SCB-2) under my seat.

[Fendell has now panned around far enough to the right that we see Jim carrying the SCB to his seat. We get an excellent view of Jim's OPS actuator cable and the open pages of his cuff checklist. Note that he is not yet wearing his camera.]

Video Clip   2 min 13 sec ( 0.6 Mb RealVideo or 20 Mb MPG )

[Jim goes to the back of the Rover and Dave takes his place next to the LMP seat and hangs the Buddy Secondary Life-Support system behind the seat. We get a good view of Dave's PLSS hoses running under his right arm.]

[Jones - "At 121:07:34, Joe said 'the TV scenery for us is breathtaking'."]

[Scott - "And you can't not say that. That's a spontaneous comment by Joe, because it is breathtaking, and he's in it and he's excited and he's reflecting what all the other people are thinking, instantaneously. Without dwelling on it, without preconceived notions, it's just sort of 'Wow!' And you see Jim in the suit. There's Jim in the suit! The guys who are responsible for the suit and the backpack are saying, 'Wow, there's my stuff! Oh, is that connected right? Does that look okay? There's my thing.' They're involved. It gets everybody involved. And there's nobody in the Control Center who isn't glued to this. I mean, absolutely glued to it! Unless they have to be watching some chart somewhere. So it brings everybody in. It makes them all part of the deal, which I think is one reason why the bosses probably put the television camera on, because they had the foresight to think that, 'Gee, we put the television camera on, and we get more.' Because it cost them a pretty penny, obviously. But they got more than they paid for. I'm promoting television today, Eric. Because it's great."]

[Jones - "I couldn't agree more. We wouldn't know half as much about these missions - twenty years after the fact, trying to document what was going on - without these pictures. And, even if we'd sat down with these transcripts and the audio tapes five years after the mission, we would not have the richness of detail and the understanding of what actually happened that we have because of the TV tapes."]

[The BSLSS ( 159k )would allow the astronauts to share cooling water in the event that the cooling system in one of the PLSSs failed.]

[Jones - "Shepard and Mitchell had a BSLSS on the MET on the climb up to Cone. I don't know if Lovell and Haise had one, but there certainly wasn't one on 12, primarily because they didn't go terribly far away from the LM. How did that come about?"]

[Scott - "Well, I think it's probably an evolution from the scuba work we did. As you probably know, everybody was trained in scuba. We went to the Navy's Underwater Demolition School and got all that training, with two tanks, not one tank. So we stayed down a long time, which was a lot of fun. Another nice element of what we were taught."]

["In scuba, you are trained that, if you lose your mouthpiece or oxygen, you breath on your buddy's oxygen. So I would say, off the top of my head, that when we get into on the Moon exercises, you think about the buddy system and you think about breathing underwater, and you think, 'Gee, if my oxygen goes out, I'll tap into my buddy's oxygen. Because that's already demonstrated and that works out very well. That may have been the evolution. I thought it was obviously a good idea. Before we were assigned the Rover, we had the longer duration, seven-hour PLSS, so we were going to be able to go much further than 14 (who had a four-hour PLSS capability, with margins), even if we only had a MET, which would mean that the buddy system would be even more important. And we practiced it, and I think it was a great idea."]

[Jones - "Now the interesting thing, to me, in listening to your answer, is that it was actually a cooling-water-sharing system."]

[Scott - "Yeah, we had the OPS for oxygen."]

[Jones - "If you've got working cooling, you've got an hour's worth of oxygen, in low flow. If the whole PLSS is bum and you've got to use the OPS for cooling as well, you've got half an hour in one OPS. Well, Gene (Cernan) pointed out to me that there are two OPSs, of course, and, if one guy's oxygen goes strange, you've really got two hours in low flow or one hour in high flow."]

[Scott - "That's part of the malfunction procedure formulation before the flight. What are all the options? It was a pretty flexible system."]

[During my 1989 discussions with Jim Irwin, he also thought the BSLSS was a spare oxygen supply. Clearly, the J-mission crews had a great deal of faith in the PLSSs and did not think it likely that they would ever have to use the BSLSS.]

121:09:00 Allen: Roger, Jim.

[Dave has the ETB in his left hand. He pulls out the extra traverse maps and stows them in Jim's seat pan. Jim moves out of the TV field-of-view to the right. Fendell continues to watch Dave at the LMP seat.]

121:09:12 Irwin: Sure does. (Long Pause) 121:10:00 Irwin: Okay. And, the sample bags are on the individual seats, Joe. Now I'm going to get the rake.

121:10:04 Allen: Roger.

121:10:04 Scott: (Don't) forget the rake. (Pause)

121:10:12 Irwin: Have to rake a lot of this, wouldn't you?

[The rake resembles a conventional clam-rake and has tines spaced about 1 cm apart so that, when Dave and Jim drag it through the soil, they can collect all the small rocks. The sides are made of metal sheet so that the rake can also be used as a scoop for the collection of soil samples. Here, Jim is saying that, because of the apparent lack of small rocks on the surface near the LM, they may have to rake a lot of soil to get even a few rocks. As mentoned by Don Beattie in his 2001 book, 'Taking Science to the Moon', the rake was the brain-child Caltech geologist Lee Silver and is being flown for the first time on Apollo 15. It proved to be a very valuable tool on all the J-missions. Jim is now on LMP-7.]

[Scott - "The rake did a great job of picking up a lot of small samples, quickly."]

[Jones - "It made for very efficient use of your time."]

[Scott - "Yeah; and I think we knew that, going in."]

[Scott - "I ran across one of the guys who was part of all this at the Discovery workshop. Gary Lofgren was a young feller who did a lot of the less exciting work, geologically. A young geologist, and he's still at Houston. He's working on Lunar Outpost, now, and I happened to see him in November. A really nice guy, a good guy, and he was an integral part of all these things."]

Video Clip   1 min 58 sec ( 0.5 Mb RealVideo or 18 Mb MPG )

[Fendell has panned back to Dave, who is securing some traverse maps to a holder attached to the staff holding the 16-mm camera which, in turn, is mounted on Jim's handhold near the console. Photo AS15-85- 11471 shows the maps at the start of the EVA-2 traverse. Figure 4-4 from the Rover Handbook shows details of the 16-mm camera mount. In the TV image, we can see some detail of the controls on the top of Dave's RCU.]

[Each of them will carry a pack of twenty small Teflon sample bags. Here, Dave has attached a pack of bags to a holder on Jim's camera. Later, he and Jim will attach their cameras to brackets on their chest-mounted RCUs, leaving their hands free for other tasks. Dave goes around the back of the Rover with the ETB and out of view.]

[This is the same Sun Compass that Dave used during the SEVA at about 106:50:50.]

[The TV image jiggles as Dave raises his seat.]

[Jones - "We're looking at the TV picture that's looking right past the back of the Rover, and there are some very nice Rover tracks. And there is good crater definition, because we're looking north, cross-Sun. I'd never noticed those before."]

[Scott - "Sure. There's something that, if you were responsible for a number of things, you'd be interested in that. As an example, soil mechanics. Rover tracks on the Moon that you can really see."]

121:12:25 Allen: Roger.

121:12:26 Irwin: ...here for driving.