Traverse to Station 11

House Rock

 

Geology Station 11 at North Ray Crater

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1996 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Except where noted, audio clips by Roland Speth.
Last revised 7 May 2016.

[The planned Station 11/12 activities can be found on LMP-30 , 31, 32, and 33. As shown in Figures 12 and 13 in the North Ray chapter of the Apollo 16 Professional Paper, John has parked the Rover close to the rim crest at North Ray Crater. The white boulders are about 55 meters west of the Rover. As can be seen in the post-mission contour map, the crater is not perfectly circular and has a maximum diameter of about 1100 meters and a minimum diameter of about 1000 meters. It is about 230 meters deep. The inner walls are steep - roughly a 30 to 35 degrees slope - and, from John and Charlie's perspective on the rim, a substantial part of the crater is not visible.]

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166:47:14 Young: Man, does this thing have steep walls.

166:47:16 Duke: They said 60 degrees.

166:47:18 Young: Now, I tell you, I can't see to the bottom of it, and I'm just as close to the edge as I'm going to get. (Charlie laughs) That's the truth. (Pause)

[Jones - "Meteor Crater (in Arizona) has got really steep walls to it. Is this that kind of steepness?"]

[Duke - "That kind of steepness; yeah. It really was. I mean, it was really scary, getting up too close. We kidded about it, but we weren't about to get real close. And we could never (see the bottom)...even on the far (northwest) side. You know, you get up on the rim of Meteor Crater and you can see the bottom - it was a little bit bigger, I think. You could see the bottom on the other side but, here, you couldn't."]

[Meteor Crater is about 1200 meters in diameter. As can be seen in an aerial photo by Dr. David Roddy, the floor of Meteor Crater is flat and covers about half the diameter.]

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166:47:44 England: Okay. Our plan here is to range along the edge of the crater for about 80 meters, if you can do that. And, Charlie, if you'll start out with your pan 1, then the 500 millimeter. We'd also like you to shoot some more pictures of Smoky with the 500, and then take your far field stereo. And then if you range on out as far as you can go, taking the 500 millimeter with you, take - and John with you - take a stereo of the inside of the crater with the 500 millimeter from as far away from the Rover as you can get. And then stick the 500 millimeter in John's SCB, and then do your other far-field polarimetry, and then, from then on, all we've got is sampling.

[TV on. We are looking at the southernmost white boulder.]

166:48:45 Duke: I do too.

166:48:46 England: Okay, fine.

166:48:48 Duke: Okay. Do you want me to start out with the 500?

166:48:50 England: Right. Go ahead and start out with your 500.

[Houston actually wanted Charlie to start with a normal pan but Tony's tone of voice suggests that he doesn't think that the order in which Charlie does the photography matters very much.]

[Charlie hops into view.]

166:49:06 England: And we've got a picture. (Pause)

[Charlie has just put Mag Kilo (magazine 106) on the LMP Hasselblad and will put it to use to take three polarization pans after he finishes with the 500-mm photography. Charlie undoubtedly looked at the frame counter on Mag Kilo before installing it.]

[Charlie goes to the CDR seat to get the 500mm camera. Fendell pans right and the other white boulders come into view.]

[While Charlie gets the 500mm camera, John takes a Station 11 Pan from a point below the Rover and close to a dramatic break in slope down into North Ray. The pan consists of frames AS16-116- 18592 to 18614. David Harland has assembled the portion showing North Ray and Charlie at the Rover.]

[Frame 18594 shows the white boulders. Frame 18603 shows House Rock and Smoky Mountain.]

[Frame 18607 shows Charlie getting the 500mm camera from under the CDR seat. Apollo 12 astronaut Al Bean used this picture as the basis of one of his most striking paintings, adding John at the other side of the Rover. David Harland has assembled a portion of the pan that resembles the Bean painting.]

[The fact that John never mentions this pan led me to think that Charlie took it later, at about, 166:55:37. However, Journal Contributor Bob Fry pointed out in 1999 that the astronaut in AS16-116-18607 does not have red stripes on his suit and must be Charlie. In addition, the relevant video record indicates that John has his camera throughout this interval.]

[Charlie runs off-camera to the right, using his skipping stride. Fendell stops the pan to give the Backroom a chance to get a picture off the monitor.]

[The following is taken from a 1996 conversation with Ed Fendell. See, also, Fendell's October 2000 interview for the JSC Oral History Project.]

[Jones - "Okay. The crew pulls up at a geology stop and they turn on the LCRU. Then you do a pan of the scene."]

[Fendell - "Right. They pointed the antenna (and) locked the antenna up. And the first thing we did was what we called a "wrap" for the science guys, for the USGS guys and so on, and that was put together by a guy named Tim Hait. He was the guy who coordinated that. What they wanted to do was to take the camera, swing it all the way to one stop (or pan limit) - either left or right - and then what we would do is we would pan it three degrees, sit a spell, and they would snap a Polaroid picture back in the Backroom. And we would go all the way around and then, when they had all of that, they would tell us (they had all the pictures) and then we'd go get the crew. And then they would take that (set of Polaroids) and make a mosaic of it and you've probably have seen pictures of that. They cut and glued together and they used that for their planning in the back. The Gordon Swann people, the Lee Silvers, and Bill Muehlberger and so on. And then we would swing over and basically follow the crew."]

["Now, every once in a while we would get a call from the back(room) saying, 'Hey, can you swing over and take a look at this?' And two things were going on. One, there were certain things they were interested in; but, mostly, they were really interested in what the crew was doing, because the crew was pretty well trained and they were doing the things that they wanted them to do. But, occasionally they wanted some other pictures to try to figure out exactly where they were...A lot of times, they didn't know how close they were to the pre-planned site. And other times, like on those big boulders, they wanted some extra shots of the rocks and so on. And like when Dave Scott got the drill stuck, they wanted a real good look at that to try to figure out what to do. And things like that. But, in general, the main thing was to stay with the crew. Pick a crewman and stay with him."]

[Jones - "Did the calls from the Backroom come to you through Flight?"]

[Fendell - "No. They came to us directly from a guy - I'm trying to remember what he was called. The Mission Manager. The Mission Planning Manager. I forget what it was; but it was one single guy who talked to you. I think it was a guy named Tim Hait. He worked for Gordon Swann. He was a USGS guy."]

[A portion of one of Charlie's pans that was assembled by David Harland shows the scene John is describing.]

[As Fendell continues the clockwise pan, he finds Charlie joining John at the break in slope that John just described. As shown in Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report, they are about 17 meters from the Rover and, if the intervening slope is 10 degrees, they are standing about 3 meters below the TV camera. Fendell continues the pan and gets a view of the interior of the crater.]

166:50:14 Duke: Okay, Tony. The inside...(Stops to listen) It really is. I see no bedrock, though. All I see is boulders around the crater. There's nothing that reminds me of bedding, just loose boulders. Though it might very well be that it's so shocked that there could be real boulders...I mean, real bedrock there.

[Fendell is now looking at House Rock. This boulder is 12 meters tall and has lateral dimensions of 16 by 20 meters. Near the boulder, the surface slopes down toward the north and, consequently, we are not seeing the full vertical extent. The southwest flank of Smoky Mountain is the background and the slope is littered with boulders ejected from North Ray.]

[By collecting samples from the large rocks near the rim, they are certain of giving the geologists back home a look at material dug out by the impact from the deepest part of the crater. One use of the samples is to estimate the age of North Ray Crater. Rock that had been buried deep beneath the surface were not exposed to cosmic rays until dug out by the impact and it is possible to use geochemistry techniques to estimate how long the rocks have been exposed. In 1975, C.J. Morgan was able to determine that North Ray is about 26 million years old. In turn, good ages for a number of lunar craters permit improved estimates of the ages of other craters for which the only available indication of age is the number of smaller craters per unit area on the ejecta blanket.]

[John is probably referring to the line of boulders about halfway down the visible portion of the north wall in AS16-116- 18599 and in AS16-106- 17259. See, also, Figure 23 in the North Ray chapter in the Professional Paper.]

[Fendell is looking east toward Ravine Crater, which is dug into the southern flank of Smoky Mountain. Note the inbound Rover tracks in the foreground and the liberal sprinkling of blocks.]

166:51:11 Duke: I don't...I'm worrying about trying to get this crazy (500-mm) camera going here.

166:51:17 Young: Okay. And the...(Pause)

166:51:24 England: Okay...

166:51:24 Young: The material is just completely different...The wall...(Stops to listen)

166:51:25 England: ...That line of boulders on the north wall, what color were they?

166:51:30 Young: In this light, they appear to be dark boulders.

[Fendell is looking over the right-rear fender toward Stone Mountain.]

[This is a reference to a group of very light-colored boulders - called the White Rocks - that Shepard and Mitchell found near the rim on Cone Crater during Apollo 14 EVA-2. See Figures 3-19, -20, -21, -28, -29 and -30 in the Apollo 14 Preliminary Science Report.]

166:51:51 England: Okay.

166:51:55 Young: Better let me get a piece of one, Charlie. I don't think...This is definitely a breccia right here, a big foot-and-a-half breccia. It's a white matrix with dark clasts, and it looks to be a three-rock breccia. Some of the dark clasts have even darker clasts than those. (Pause)

[A 'three-rock breccia' consists of a matrix which contain inclusions which, themselves, contain inclusions. This indicates that, when the three-rock breccia formed, pieces of pre-existing two-rock breccias became the inclusions in the matrix.]

[Fendell reaches the clockwise pan limit and reverses direction.]

166:52:29 England: Okay.

166:52:30 Young: Okay. Houston, I just picked up a grab sample of a breccia. It's very friable. It looks shocked; it has black clasts in it, black clasts (which are) a couple of millimeters across. (Pause) It's so worn down that you know what it really looks like? It looks like a...If I can use the analogy, (because) I'm not sure what the heck it is. It looks like a tuff. It just looks like a rock with a...You see, the clasts are sticking out of it, is what I'm saying.

[Tuffs are rocks formed of hot volcanic ash which fuses because of internal heat. If the ash contains pieces of harder rock that was ejected from the throat of the volcano along with the ash, subsequent weathering will tend to erode the ash material first and leave the pieces of harder rock sticking out of the surface. John is not suggesting that he has collected a piece of tuff but, rather, that the visual impression of the surface texture is tuff-like. John's grab sample is 67035, a 245-gram, light-matrix breccia which is shown in Figure 62b in the Professional paper.]

[Charlie has taken and extensive 500-mm partial pan consisting of frames AS16-105- 17117 to 17181.]

[Charlie started the 500-mm photos with a left-to-right series along the rim and finished that series with 17141.]

[Frames 17142 to 17181 are pictures of the interior of the crater. Although many of these pictures are blurred, they contain useful information. Digital processing could be used to remove most of the effects of the camera motions that produced the blurring, although I don't believe that has been done as of March 2002.]

166:53:29 England: Okay. We'd like some more pictures of Smoky.

166:53:38 Duke: Okay.

[Fendell finds Charlie, who is skipping uphill toward the Rover. John has just started uphill. Charlie is carrying the 500mm camera and John is clearly wearing his own Hasselblad. Charlie goes off-camera to the right, still coming uphill.]

166:53:43 Duke: Get up here where I can see it (meaning Smoky Mountain).

166:53:43 England: ...in your mineral description there, could you see a crystal shape?

166:53:44 Young: Okay. While Charlie's doing.. (Stops to listen)

[During the following transmission, John starts to examine the grab sample and then comes slowly to a stop so he can devote his full attention to it.]

[A "zap crater" or "zap pit" is a very small crater blasted into the surface of a rock by a small, high-velocity impactor.]

[John starts walking toward the Rover - still examining the sample - and, apparently, is heading for his seat. Fendell follows.]

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166:54:17 England: Okay, fine. (Long Pause)

[John goes off-camera to the left and Fendell continues to pan left.]

166:54:37 Young: Now, Tony, what is it you want me to do here?

[Fendell finds John at the CDR seat where he is removing a sample bag from the dispenser on his camera. During Tony's transmission that starts at 54:48, John bags the sample, spins the bag closed, and then folds the metal tabs to seal the bag. Note that he folds one tab on one side of the bag and the other tab on the opposite side. This is called "Z-ing". This may be the best video of sample bag closure in the Apollo record. Note that John is still wearing his camera.]

166:54:44 England: Okay. After the 500 millimeter...

166:54:45 Young: What is it you want me to do here, Tony?

166:54:48 England: We'd like Charlie, there, to go ahead and take his far-field pan of the crater and go on around and do a full pan. It looks like you could probably do the thing from one place.

[John goes to the back of the Rover, going off-camera to the left.]

166:55:17 Young: Okay. That'll be 80 meters to the northeast, here (toward House Rock).

166:55:22 England: Okay, fine.

166:55:23 Young: (It's) no problem to do that, and...(Stops to listen)

166:55:29 Duke: Okay, Tony. Pan is complete; and I'm up to 165 on magazine Mike.

166:55:37 England: Okay.

[Charlie's use of the phrase "pan is complete" contributed to my confusion over the pan that John, in fact, took from below the Rover at 166:49:06. Here, Charlie is using the word "pan" to loosely describe the sequence of Smoky Mountain 500mm pictures he has just completed. Those photos are frames AS16-105- 17182 to 17215.]

[Fendell pans right.]

[Fendell finds Charlie at the left front of the Rover. He has the has the 500-mm lens, with its own camera body attached, in his right hand. He is wearing the LMP camera.]

[Fendell continues to pan right. Once the crater comes back into view, we can see the rays on the north and northwest walls. They show up as streaks of lighter and darker colored material coming up radially out of the bottom of the crater.]

166:56:12 Duke: (To Tony) You still want me to take the 500 (when he and John go 80 meters to the northeast)?

166:56:16 Young: (Answering Tony's question about the sample bag number) Oh, yeah. Excuse me. It's 373, I think.

166:56:20 England: (To John) Okay; we copy that.

166:56:21 Young: It's in the bottom of SCB-7. Anyway, I can identify that rock for you.

166:56:25 England: (To John) Okay, that's fine. (Answering Charlie's question about taking the 500-mm lens) Yeah, Charlie. After your 500 millimeter...

166:56:28 Duke: Tony, do you still want me to get...(Stops to listen)

166:56:31 England: ...after your 500 millimeter, do the far field pan and the three polarizer settings of the far side of the crater. And then when you follow John along, take the 500 millimeter with you.

[The far-field polarimetry experiment consists of three partial pans of North Ray Crater, with one taken at each of three settings of the polarization filter - Left, Center, and Right - taken at two separate locations. The near-field polarimetry experiment, which has been dropped from the station tasks consists of photos taken of selected rocks at phase angles of 90, 110, and 130 degrees. See LMP-30. ]

166:56:52 Duke: We're not doing it.

166:56:53 England: We're not doing a near field.

166:56:55 Young: We're not going to do that. Okay.

166:56:56 Duke: Yeah, okay.

166:56:58 Young: Understand.

[As Fendell pans past House Rock, John comes into view. He is carrying an SCB and starts to run in the general direction of House Rock, intending to go out about 80 meters and, as Houston suggested, sample on the way back to the Rover. Note that John is not carrying either tongs or a scoop. Fendell follows him.]

[Duke - "If you look at the footprints, here, you can see we're not sinking in very far at all. It was very firm up there; there's not much dust up on North Ray."]

166:57:04 Young: Okay, I've got a sample bag, (meaning an SCB), here.

[As John gets farther from the Rover, Fendell changes both the zoom and the TV pointing. In the process, he loses John for a few seconds. Just before John goes off-camera, we see his sample bag dispenser on the ground. We don't actually see it fall but, from the dialog at 166:57:55, we know it falls off at some point during the run.]

[The Rover is parked on a north heading, so Charlie is standing northwest of it.]

166:57:25 England: Okay. You're starting in the Right position?

[Tony is probably asking Charlie if he is at the right-hand of the two locations from which he will take partial pans, the generic location shown as a circled "1" on LMP-30 and in Figure 3.3-1 in the Lunar Surface Procedures volume. Tony is probably not asking about the setting of the polarizing filter. In fact, after Charlie takes this first trio of pans, he will move counter-clockwise along the crater rim and, therefore, is currently at the Left position. See the dialog at 166:59:35. Although Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report indicates that he is taking these first partial pans from about the same place as he took the unfiltered pan and the 500-mm photos of the interior of North Ray, the TV record following 166:59:53 suggests he is actually west of the Rover.]

[Fendell finds John again.]

166:57:46 England: Okay, good show. (Pause)

166:57:51 Duke: Man, I wish I could see the bottom of this beauty.

[John turns and looks back toward the Rover.]

166:57:55 Young: Did I drop my bags, Charlie?

166:57:57 Duke: Yeah, you dropped your bags; I thought you dropped them off the Rover.

[John hasn't seen the bag dispenser yet but starts back toward the Rover, retracing his steps.]

[Charlie is using his own camera and the first pan ( 3.6 Mb or 160k ) consists of frames AS16-106- 17239 to 17248. He started by aiming at the right side of the crater and turned to his left between frames. According to Manned Spacecraft Center Document MSC-07252, "Apollo 16: Index of 70-mm Photographs and 16-mm Film Strips", this Right filter setting gives images in horizontally-polarized light.]

[The second pan ( 4.6 Mb or 176k ) consists of frames AS16-106- 17249 to 17262 and the polarization is 45 degrees from horizontal.]

166:58:31 England: Sorry, John. Didn't see it.

[John gets into position to grab the bags and drops to his knees. It takes an extra second or so for him to actually grab the bags and, in that second, he starts to lose his balance and, as he rises, he pitches forward onto his hands and knees.]

[Charlie's third pan ( 4.6 Mb or 176k ) consists of frames AS16-106- 17263 to 17277. The Left filter setting gives images in vertically-polarized light.]

[John has the SCB in his left hand and the bag dispenser in his right. The most effective technique for getting up from your hands and knees while wearing the Apollo suit on the Moon is to push up and back, forcing your torso and backpack to rotate backwards over the knees and, then once your center of mass is over your feet, jumping up to your feet. John doesn't try this but, instead, gets all of his weight on his left foreleg and then lifts his right hand and then his right knee off the ground. He then pushes up with his left hand, brings his right foot forward a few inches and pushes up and forward with it enough that he starts to rise, and then runs forward to regain his balance. He then heads for the Rover.]

166:59:02 England: John, is there still something behind you?

166:59:03 Duke: It's dust covered, and I can't tell you what type it is.

166:59:09 Young: (Turning to look) Huh?

[Tony is probably looking at one of several fist-sized rocks near the place where John fell.]

166:59:12 Young: (Lost under Tony)

166:59:13 England: ...where you fell over. Okay.

[John turned to his right to look back to where he fell and now finishes a complete revolution and heads for the Rover. He goes off-camera to the left and Fendell pans to follow him.]

166:59:30 England: Okay.

166:59:31 Duke: ...with the far field (polarimetry) pans.

166:59:34 England: Okay, very good...

166:59:35 Duke: And I'm in the Left position; I'm going back to the right. Now...Now, you want that stereo base, right?

[Charlie is asking if Houston wants him to move far enough away from the first position that the combination of the two sets of pans will give good stereo of the far wall of the crater. Our eyes are about 7.5 cm apart and, if the near field-of-view where we get good stereo extends to about one meter range, to get good photographic stereo of the far crater wall, which is about 1000 meters away, Charlie will have to move about 75 meters.]

166:59:52 Duke: Okay. We're gonna range...

166:59:53 England: ...and stow the 500 millimeter (in it), or stick the 500 millimeter in John's SCB, when you're through with it.

[John crosses the TV field-of-view from left to right. He is wearing his camera. As Fendell continues to pan left, Charlie comes into view, running back to the Rover from the west. This suggests that he did not take the polarimetry pans from the position indicated in Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report. Charlie goes off-camera to the left, probably to get the 500-mm camera off John's seat. Fendell pans right.]

167:00:02 England: Okay...

167:00:03 Young: I've got one, Charlie.

167:00:04 Duke: Okay; yours fell off...Where's yours that was on your back?

167:00:14 Young: Oh, it fell off en route.

167:00:16 Duke: I can't believe it. Dadgummit! Okay. Tony, if that thing fell off, the SESC (Special Environmental Sample Container) was in it.

167:00:24 England: Okay.

167:00:25 Young: Probably get it on the way back, Charlie.

[Fendell finds John, who is running in the general direction of House Rock, and zooms in on him.]

167:00:44 Young: Okay.

167:00:46 Duke: Okay. Have you got...I'm going to get the shovel. (Pause) Tony, are you going to want a rake sample along the rim here?

167:00:58 Young: Yeah, let's do that now...

167:00:59 England: No. Let's go get the polarizer first and...

167:01:00 Young: (Lost under Tony)

167:01:01 Duke: Okay.

167:01:02 England: ...polarizing pictures yet, and we'll do the sampling on the way back. (Pause)

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167:01:10 Young: This is about as far as I'd like to go.

[John stops and turns to look back at the Rover to judge his distance. In the TV, it looks like he is close to House Rock but, as shown in Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report, he is only about halfway there. He is near the location marked by the triangle labeled "right polarization pan", which is about 65 meters from the Rover. The run took about 85 seconds and John's average speed was a leisurely 2.7 km/hr.]

167:01:19 Young: And I can't see the bottom of the crater though.

167:01:20 Duke: I know it. That's a shame. (Pause) You see that big rock beyond John, Tony?

167:01:28 England: Yeah, we sure do. How about rolling that one over?

167:01:33 Duke: (Laughs) No way. (Long Pause)

[Charlie briefly comes into view, carrying the scoop. John is looking around the area where he stopped. We don't know exactly when Charlie left the Rover and, so, can't time his run with any accuracy.]

[As shown in Figures 10-5a and 10-5b in the Apollo 16 Mission Report, John's heart rate has risen to about 105 beats per minute during the run while Charlie's is about 90.]

[Charlie is back in the TV field-of-view, still running toward John. John drops the SCB so it can serve as a scale in the documentary photos.]

[Charlie arrives at the sample site and plants the scoop.]

167:02:25 England: Okay.

167:02:26 Duke: Yeah. I'll go over and...There's the shovel you can use to pick that up with, John.

167:02:29 Young: Okay.

[Charlie goes behind John, headed closer to North Ray to take the second set of polarization pans.]

167:02:43 England: Good show.

[Charlie has stopped to look at the crater and, probably, at the Rover to judge his distance.]

[Charlie turns and moves several meters farther from the Rover.]

167:02:52 Duke: (Laughing) I'm watching where I'm going.

[John takes a down-Sun "before", AS16-116-18615, of his first documented sample.]

[John moves around the sample and takes a cross-Sun stereopair from the north, AS16-116- 18616 and 18617, stepping to his right between frames.]

167:03:15 England: Okay.

[Here, Charlie means that he is standing counterclockwise around the rim from the Left position. The polarizing filter is still in its Left position, which means vertical polarization.]

167:03:17 Duke: From right to left. (Long Pause)

[The first pan consists of frames AS16-106- 17278 to 17289. The Left filter position gives vertically-polarized images.]

[John gets into position and bobs down to grab the sample in his right hand. Evidently, it starts to crumble as he squeezes it. This is sample 67055, a 222 gram breccia.]

[John bags the sample and spins the bag to close it. He spins the bag so hard that, after wrapping around itself several times, it reverses direction and starts to come open. John spins the bag a second time and then seals it. He then leans to his right and picks up the SCB. Because this is a new bag and is still flattened, John pulls it into shape, opens the top, sticks his hand deep into the SCB to complete the shaping, and then stows the sample.]

[Jones - "At this point, John's sampling by hand, using his bobbing technique and not bothering with shovels and scoops and tongs..."]

[Duke - "Yeah. And we've been there twenty minutes and we('ve only) got two rocks. There was a lot of wasted time up there, I thought."]

[Jones - "In overhead and on photography?"]

[Duke - "Well, I don't know what the polarimetry and all that stuff did for 'em."]

[Jones - "Whereas, the two of you sampling together with the tools could have gotten a lot of samples."]

[The second pan was done with the filter in the Center position (45 degrees from horizontal) and consists of frames AS16-106- 17290 to 17303.]

[The third pan was done with the filter in the Right position (horizontal polarization) and consists of frames AS16-106- 17304 to 17317. Photographically, this is probably the best of the polarimetry pans.]

[John puts the SCB down on the ground with care so it stands upright.]

167:05:11 England: Right, sure do. You probably have 20 or 25 pictures left in that 500, so maybe that'll give you the entire inside of the crater there. (Pause) We'll just shoot up the rest of the roll in there.

167:05:23 Duke: Okay. (Pause)

[Charlie moves downslope a few meters, moving away from us and to our left. John takes a cross-Sun "after", AS16-116- 18618.]

[Jones - "Just a thought here. They were still looking for volcanics; so they were probably hoping for a repeat, I would imagine, of the layering (resulting from a series of lava flows) that Dave and Jim photographed at Hadley Rille."]

[Duke - "Uh-huh. Yeah; we didn't have any of that. We just didn't have any. There were some rocks on that far rim over there, but I don't think it was bedrock. As it was, it was all jumbled up; it didn't look like it was layering."]

[Jones - "But I betcha that's why they were so interested in the photography."]

167:05:34 England: And if you're through with your far field, you can just throw that polarizer away.

167:05:40 Young: (sub vocal) God damn it.

[John's sample-bag dispenser has come off again. He gets into position to bob down to get it but, this time, goes down slowly and retrieves it without difficulty.]

167:05:55 England: Okay; and O2 (quantity)?

167:06:01 Duke: I think about 75 percent, but it's so dusty I can't read it right now, Tony.

167:06:04 England: Okay.

[At the left side of the TV picture we can see Charlie taking 500-mm photos.]

167:06:14 England: Right. We've got about 67 percent...

167:06:16 Young: I'm reading 3.85 (psi), I'm in Intermediate cooling. (Hears Tony) Okay. When you get dust on the RCU, you cannot read the O2 quantity.

[Training photo KSC-72PC-140 gives us a good view of the top of John's RCU and Hasselblad.]

167:06:37 England: Okay, you are all doing fine down here.

[John gives up trying to re-attach the sample bag dispenser and, with the dispenser in his left hand, grabs the scoop in his right.]

[John moves a couple of meters west of his first sample and starts digging a shallow, one-handed trench. He is probably looking for a buried layer of white soil like the one they found at Plum Crater.]

167:07:02 Duke: Oh, I got one partial pan of about three-quarters of the way up of the entire wall, and then almost two vertical rays.

167:07:16 England: Okay, we understand.

167:07:17 Duke: Before I ran out. (Long Pause)

[John plants the scoop. Charlie turns and comes upslope.]

[Charlie's 500-mm photos of the interior of North Ray Crater are AS16-105-17216 to 17235.]

167:07:33 Young: What's that, Charlie?

167:07:34 Duke: My bags fell off (pause) somewhere.

167:07:40 Young: Well, I've got mine hooked over my little finger. (They won't) fall off from there. (Pause)

[Charlie goes off-camera to the right.]

167:07:59 Young: (Garbled)

[Fendell finds Charlie about 8 to 10 meters east of John. House Rock is in the background.]

[Charlie puts the SCB down on the ground and tries to stand it upright, but the weight of the 500-mm camera makes it fall over. In Houston, there is a discussion about having Charlie take the film magazine out of his Hasselblad and putting it in the 500-mm camera.]

[While Charlie removes the filter, back in Houston Tony makes the decision to abandon the 500-mm photography and preserve the remaining film for sampling.]

167:08:48 Duke: Okay. Sorry I ran out of film there. I thought I had plenty.

167:08:54 England: Oh, that's all right!

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167:09:00 Duke: (Reaching back for his feedwater diverter valve) Okay, Tony. I'm going back towards Min in cooling. I'm getting a little frosty. (Pause)

167:09:09 England: Okay.

167:09:11 Young: Okay, Houston. The black clasts in this rock are really (pause) black material. It's either a very fine-grained black breccia...I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like that black breccia, fine-grained (garbled) that had that white clasts in it on Apollo 15. Although here, the matrix is white, and the clasts are black.

167:09:54 England: Okay, understand.

[John is talking about an Apollo 15 sample which, obviously, he and Tony examined in the Lunar Receiving Lab at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. The sample in question may be 15455, a large sample Dave Scott collected at Spur Crater.]

[Duke - "If I had it to do over again, I don't think we ought to sit there and try to describe rocks to 'em. I think you just ought to collect rocks. They have to trust you. See, John's sitting there wasting time trying to describe this rock to 'em. And he could have just bagged the rock, put it in his box, and gone got another one that was different from that. And he could have just said, you know, this is a white rock or a breccia. You know, just a brief description of the rock. I think all of the flights wasted a lot of time doing that. We could have done a lot more geology, I think, if we hadn't wasting time describing rocks. In the future, I think it's going to be important - you know, the long stays on the Moon - that we do it. (That) we don't try to describe back to mission control. Be well enough trained geologists to just pick it up; and they just trust you with that."]

[Jones - "Especially on this third EVA. On the first one, where you were finding stuff that was very different from what the geologists expected, I suppose an argument could be made that they needed to know that you weren't finding basalts."]

[Duke - "To me, just looking at this TV, they could see the distinct rock types. There were white ones and the gray one and the black ones. And then just go collect every one of those, you see. And then they can write their description done when they get them into the labs."]

[John has taken four "before" photos of this rock. AS16-116-18619 and 18620 are a down-Sun stereopair and 18621 and 18622 are a cross-Sun stereopair from the north.]

[Journal Contributor Brian Lawrence notes that future astronauts will probably be equipped with helmet-mounted, miniature cameras which would relay high-quality images back to Earth or the base camp. This would reduce the need for verbal descriptions although, obviously, the astronaut would still need to describe any striking features or samples for immediate consideration by support personnel.]

167:09:56 Young: You remember that one, Houston?

167:09:57 England: Rog. I remember.

[Charlie finally gets the filter off his Hasselblad and then turns to his right and goes to join John. Fendell follows.]

167:10:03 Young: (Answering Tony's question about clast size) Three centimeters. (Answering Tony's second question) No, it's not frothy at all. It's dense.

167:10:08 England: Okay.

[Fendell finds John, who has the sample in hand for examination. This is 67015, a 1.2 kg breccia which is shown in Figures 59A and 59B in the Professional Paper. While John examines the sample, Charlie gets the scoop, which John had planted to provide scale in his "before" photos. Charlie returns to the sample site 8-10 meters east of John.]

167:10:33 England: Okay.

167:10:36 Young: At least it has a shocked appearance. (Pause)

[John puts 67015 in the SCB he had previously put on the ground. Fendell pans right to watch Charlie.]

167:10:42 Duke: I got it. I'm sorry. I thought you weren't using it. I was just going to get this one over here.

167:10:46 Young: Okay.

[John's "after" of 67015 is AS16-116- 18623.]

[Charlie plants the scoop and takes a stereopair of "befores", AS16-106- 17318 and 17319.]

167:10:52 England: Okay.

167:10:55 Duke: (Grabbing the scoop) Okay. Looking back from where we are, Tony, towards the west - (correcting himself) south, rather - I can see South Ray. (Pause)

MP3 Audio Clip ( 9 min 57 sec )

167:11:07 Young: I'd like to make sure we aren't overlooking something here, Charlie.

167:11:11 Duke: That's why I'd like to go on down to that black rock (meaning House Rock) down there, John.

167:11:15 Young: (Laughing) Yeah, (garbled). You've really got your eye on, I can tell.

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167:11:19 Duke: Big one.

167:11:20 Young: Yeah. (Pause)

[Charlie gets the scoop under the sample and raises it far enough so he can grab it in his right hand. During John's next transmission, Charlie hops back and then scoops up another small sample.]

[Fendell pans left to find John, overshoots, and then finds him as he takes a down-Sun stereopair, AS16-116- 18624 and 18625. John then moves around to the north to get a cross-Sun stereopair.]

167:12:04 Young: Sure. (Pause) You took my gnomon (meaning the scoop). (To Tony) You'll have to get the shadow for scaling, Houston.

167:12: Duke: (Joining John with the scoop) Here you go.

167:12:15 England: (To John) Okay.

167:12:19 Duke: Okay, Tony. I picked up that white...(Pause)

[Charlie tries to get a sample bag off the bunch that John has hooked over his little finger.]

167:12:26 Duke: Thank you. (To Tony, continuing his thought)...that white shocked rock. It broke in two; there are two pieces of it. (Getting the bag from John) (It's) partially documented - (in) the "befores" anyway - in 384.

167:12:42 England: Okay, bag 384.

[This is sample 67075, which consists of two pieces of "fragile white breccia" which broke into more pieces during transport to Earth. See Figures 64A and 64B in the Professional Paper.]

[Charlie goes off-camera to the right to get the SCB that contains the 500-mm camera.]

[John gets into position to plant the scoop in the secondary crater. It takes a couple of tries before he gets it stable.]

167:13:07 England: Okay. (Pause)

[Jones - "In the other places, the soil was deep enough that you could stick the scoop far enough in that it would stay upright."]

[Duke - "And it wouldn't (have to) be quite vertical (to stay upright)."]

[John's cross-Sun stereopair of "befores" is AS16-116-18626 and 18627. He gets the scoop so he can collect some small samples.]

[Off-camera, Charlie is probably trying to retrieve the SCB and may have fallen.]

[In Houston, Tony asks if Experiments wants Charlie to get the rake while he is at the Rover and take it out where John is working. Experiments decides that they want the rake sample taken near the Rover.]

167:13:36 Duke: (Can you) see me coming?

167:13:38 England: No. We're pointed over at John...

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167:13:40 Duke: It's in the bag. (Hearing Tony) Oh, okay. Hey, y'all must really be zoomed in (on John) then.

167:13:48 England: We sure are.

167:13:49 Duke: I'm just a few feet to the left of him (that is, just a few feet east of the line-of-sight from the TV to John). (Long Pause)

[John is collecting samples out of the secondary and is holding a sample bag in his left hand and has the scoop in his right. Charlie comes into view, carrying the SCB.]

167:14:08 England: No, we didn't see them.

167:14:09 Duke: ...with your big eye?

167:14:13 Young: That...

167:14:14 England: There we've got you, Charlie.

167:14:15 Young: The outer surface of that rock is dust covered. It appears to be a really black glass that's going into 385.

167:14:25 England: Okay, 385. (Long Pause)

[John plants the scoop and takes the sample bag to his SCB. Fendell follows. This sample is 67095, a 340 gram "light gray rock with black glass and white clasts". See Figures 65A and 65B in the Professional Paper.]

[After stowing bag 385, John goes back to the secondary, grabs the scoop, and slides it under the next sample he wants to collect.]

[John lifts the sample. The TV image is not very clear, but it looks like he drops the sample as he tries to grab it with his left hand.]

[John gets the scoop under the rock again.]

[John gets a grip on the rock this time and then pulls a bag off the pack he has hooked to the little finger on his left hand.]

167:15:56 England: Okay, 386.

[This is sample 67115, a 240-gram breccia.]

[Charlie has probably removed the film magazine from the 500-mm camera and has stowed both the magazine and the camera under John's seat.]

[John spins the bag, seals it, and then gets into position to take a cross-Sun "after" from the north, AS16-116- 18628.]

167:16:16 Duke: Okay. I'd like to go up to the southwest around the rim in the other direction from John, and try my hand at these large white rocks.

[John grabs the scoop and heads from his SCB. He stops and looks toward House Rock.]

167:16:31 Duke: No, I agree. That's not very much...I was just going up here a little bit, John, and do some flightline stereo of this 3-meter block up here. (Pause) Tony, some of these rocks are glass covered. They are all fractured.

167:16:59 England: Okay.

167:17:00 Duke: Very beat-up looking.

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167:17:01 England: That's fine, Charlie, if you want to go down that way.

[After taking a moment's rest, John stows the sample in the SCB, picks up the SCB and heads back toward the Rover. Fendell pans left to find Charlie.]

167:17:11 Young: If you're gonna boulder sample, Charlie, I'd better come and help you.

167:17:14 Duke: No, I'm just going to whack...I'm not really going to do the true thing. I'll be down there to help you in a minute.

167:17:21 Young: Yeah, let's...You want to go down to this big boulder down here?

167:17:24 Duke: I'd like to, in a minute. I wanted to make sure we get whatever this is up here on these white rocks. I think you probably have it, but -

167:17:32 England: John, how far away is that big boulder?

167:17:38 Young: It is about, near as I can tell (pause), 150 meters, but the rocks around it are really something else. That's the problem with trafficability up to it.

[The actual distance from the Rover to House Rock is about 220m.]

[Fendell finds Charlie just as he discards an empty sample bag dispenser. Charlie is west of the Rover at the location marked "67435" in Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report. The largest of the white boulders is 30 meters beyond him.]

167:18:11 Duke: I know; it's empty. It didn't have a thing in it. (Pause)

167:18:23 Duke: Okay; there's an old glassy rock, Tony, that - glass coated, anyway - that went into 415.

167:18:33 England: Okay; 415. (Pause)

[This is sample 67435, a 354-gram, glass-coated breccia which is shown in Figures 26A, 26B, and 26C on page 70 in Section D2 in the Professional Paper. Charlie's "before" photos of this sample are AS16-106- 17320 and 17321.]

[Charlie plants the tongs he is carrying, spins the bag and seals it; and then takes an "after", 17322.]

167:18:51 England: Okay. (Pause)

[Charlie has an SCB standing upright next to him. It no longer has the 500-mm camera in it. He picks up the SCB and takes a couple of small steps to regain his balance after reaching down. He seals bag 415 and stows it.]

167:19:01 Duke: Yeah, I agree. (Pause)

[Charlie grabs the tongs and heads for the large white boulder shown just east of the "67415" sample location in Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report. John arrives back at the Rover. The 75-m trip from his sampling area took about 2 minutes and his average speed was only 2.3 km/hr, probably because he stopped to looked back at House Rock to estimate its distance from the Rover at 167:17:38.]

[Charlie has stopped on a small rise a few meters short of the boulder and, after adjusting his camera settings, takes AS16-106- 17323 and 17324, turning to his right between frames.]

167:19:31 Duke: (Garbled)

167:19:32 England: ...or anything in it, a close-up might look good.

167:19:36 Duke: That's what I'm going to do.

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167:19:37 England: Okay. (Pause)

[Charlie moves closer to the boulder, making seven skipping strides before he stops.]

[Jones - "When you say 'it's hot out here', is there some specific thing you were talking about?"]

[Duke - "I was running more in Intermediate (cooling); and I could feel a hot spot...The right (side) PLSS strap was tight, compressing the insulation in the suit, and I could feel the Sun in there. With the higher angle, we were running mostly in Intermediate, here."]

[The current time is 1714 UTC on 23 April 1972. The Sun's elevation is 46.3 degrees. On Apollo 15 and 17, the solar elevations at the end of EVA-3 were 40.2 and 40.5, respectively. At the end of Apollo 16 EVA-3, it will be nearly 48.2 degrees.]

[A search of the EVA-3 transcript indicates that, of the 5 hour 40 minute EVA, Charlie used cooling settings above Minimum - but probably not above Intermediate - for about 3 hours 33 minutes. About 26 minutes of that was here at Station 11 and the remainder began soon after they arrived at Station 13 (Shadow Rock) and continued to the end of the EVA.]

167:19:54 Duke: Yeah, if you can stand by just a minute, John. (Pause)

[Charlie takes AS16-106- 17325 and 17326, again turning to his right between frames. He then takes four more short skipping strides and gets to the base of what looks like a foot-high fillet at the base of the boulder. David Harland has assembled the two frames into a mini-pan.]

167:20:09 Duke: No.

167:20:11 Young: Boy, that is absolutely beautiful! It has a black fracture pattern running right through the middle of it. It's about six...It looks like a Sudbury breccia, and that's the truth. I can't believe it.

[It is probably during this interval that John takes a cross-Sun stereopair from the south, AS16-116- 18629 and 18630, stepping to his left between frames. He then takes a down-Sun, 18631.]

[The Sudbury Basin in Ontario, Canada is one of the largest impact craters known on Earth. The Apollo 16 (7-9 July 1971) and Apollo 17 (24-25 May 1972) crews each trained at Sudbury a few months before their respective missions. Six photos from the Apollo 16 visit can be found in the Apollo 16 Image Library, beginning with S71-39828.]

167:20:33 Young: (Lost under Tony)

167:20:35 England: And, Charlie, while you're up at that boulder, if you can, get...

167:20:37 Young: (Lost under Tony)

167:20:38 England: ...some of that fillet as well as the boulder.

[Using the tongs to gauge his distance and provide scale, Charlie takes close-ups AS16-106- 17327, 17328, 17329, and 17330. John is still at the Rover, just off-camera to the left.]

167:20:50 England: Okay.

167:20:51 Duke: Be advised that...

[Charlie has the tongs in his left hand, a bunch of sample bags hooked onto the little finger of his right hand, and is holding the SCB in his right hand. As he works the camera trigger with his right hand, he drops the SCB.]

167:20:55 England: Rog. We saw.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 8 min 30 sec )

167:21:01 Young: Charlie, I think with these equipment problems, we'd better work together, and I'll handle one bag, and you handle the other bag, and (we'll) be able to be more productive. Don't you?

167:21:10 Duke: Yeah. I guess you're right, John.

167:21:11 England: We concur.

[Charlie gets into a small crater north of the SCB and drops his left knee onto the crater rim and easily retrieves the bag.]

167:21:19 Young: Got a hammer?

167:21:20 Duke: Yeah, I got the hammer. Well it's this loose. The stuff is lying up there on the top.

[Charlie turns to his right and moves off-camera to the right to examine the westernmost of the large white boulders. Fendell follows.]

167:21:39 Young: Got a shovel?

167:21:40 Duke: Yeah, I...No, I don't have a shovel, but I got a hammer.

[As Charlie approaches the largest of the white boulders, we see a very large fragment sitting on the top It is at least a meter long and perhaps a half meter thick. There is a visible fracture that separates at least part of this fragment from the bulk of the boulder. The presence of the fracture should make it relatively easy to break off a piece.]

[Charlie reaches the boulder and stands facing the large fragment.]

167:22:03 Duke: What I'm going to do...(Stops to listen) That's what I'm going to do.

167:22:07 England: Good show. You're about ten steps ahead of us.

[Charlie leans back to raise his aim and takes AS16-106- 17331. He then steps to his left and takes 17332.]

167:22:21 England: That's okay. If you bring it back, that will be enough scale.

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167:22:27 Duke: Okay. (Pause)

[John comes into view, running out to join Charlie and carrying the rake. There are several small pieces of rock on top of the boulder and Charlie takes one for examination. John goes over a small ridge and nearly disappears as he runs down into a depression between the ridge and the boulder.]

[In NASA photo S71-15801, Dr. Fred Hörz an impact mechanics expert at MSC, is shown with back-up LMP Ed Mitchell (left), John Young, and Charlie Duke at the Lunar Receiving Lab.]

[An aphanitic rock is "a dark rock of such close texture that its separate grains are invisible to the naked eye".]

[This is sample 67455, a 942-gram breccia which is shown in Figures 71A and 71B in the Professional Paper. This sample broke sometime before it was first examined in the Lunar Receiving Lab in Houston.]

[John has reached the boulder. It appears that Charlie is standing partway up the fillet. John stays below him and moves out of sight to the left, behind the foreground boulder.]

167:23:31 Duke: They turned out pretty good, I think.

[Duke - "Fred Hörz gave us a briefing about shocked rocks, about the various phases that they metamorphose through. I don't remember much about the details, but he was very good. And I think he talked about the zap pits and those things that you see in impacts that just changes the whole character of the rock. He's a German (and has a) Ph.D. He's still at NASA, as a matter of fact. His specialty, I think, was shocked rocks."]

[Charlie turns to face John, comes part way down the fillet, and leans to his left to pick up the SCB he's been carrying everywhere.]

[John turns to present the left side of his PLSS which, normally, has an SCB mounted on it. During the following exchange, John's transmissions are badly clipped.]

167:23:45 Young: (Garbled)

167:23:47 Duke: See, both of...We'll just use this one. Okay?

167:23:51 Young: (Garbled)

[Charlie puts bag 416 in the SCB he is carrying.]

167:24:02 Young: Okay. (Pause)

[John's down-Sun is AS16-116- 18632. Charlie's cross-Sun stereopair from the south is AS16-106- 17333 and 17334. In the second frame, John has moved in with the rake. He will use the side of the rake to collect a sample of the fillet soil. While John uses the rake, Charlie gets a bag ready.]

[John raises the rake and pours.]

[Charlie spins the bag closed.]

167:24:33 England: Okay, 417.

167:24:36 Duke: Let me put it...(Stops to listen)

167:24:39 Young: (Garbled)

167:24:40 Duke: Huh? (Pause)

167:24:43 Young: Okay. I'll get the down-Sun here.

[John's down-Sun "after" of the fillet sample is AS16-116- 18633. Charlie backs away to the south.]

[Charlie's cross-Sun "after" is AS16-106- 17335. He is mostly hidden by the foreground boulder and, once he takes the "after" he hops sideways up slope behind the foreground boulder, moving generally toward the Rover and trying to get high enough that he can get a "locator" showing House Rock.]

167:24:57 Duke: And you can almost...

167:24:58 Young: Did you get the boulder (sample) off the top?

167:25:01 Duke: Yes, I did. I got that sample.

167:25:03 Young: Okay; it's a multi-rock breccia. Boy!

[Charlie continues upslope behind the foreground boulder and stops when he is high enough that we can see his Hasselblad. He faces House Rock and takes AS16-106- 17336.]

[Charlie turns to examine the north side of the foreground boulder.]

167:25:27 England: Good show. You feel like you got all three (components)?

167:25:28 Young: Let's get a rake sample, Charlie.

167:25:29 Duke: Okay; good idea, John.

167:25:35 Young: (Responding to Tony) I can't imagine how they wouldn't be in the clast that (pause) Charlie picked up.

[John grabs the tongs and Charlie joins him. John moves a couple of meters toward the Rover. Charlie climbs the fillet and rests his SCB against the boulder.]

167:26:00 Duke: Hey, John. I'm chipping out this little teeny...this big black clast here. It's coming right out.

167:26:05 Young: Okay.

[John moves out of sight behind the foreground boulder and takes a cross-Sun stereopair, AS16-116- 18634 and 18635, of another sample.]

167:26:22 England: Very good.

[John takes a down-Sun "before", AS16-116- 18636.]

[A soil sample from a permanently shadowed area would not receive direct exposure to the solar wind and to solar cosmic rays. Such a soil sample might show differences in the relative abundances of volatile components, although such differences would be better preserved if the sample had the vacuum protection provided by the Special Environmental Sample Container. Here, Houston is more concerned with time than the extra protection afforded by the SESC.]

[Still standing at the top of the fillet with his back to us, Charlie examines the black clast. This is sample 67475 ( 343k ), a 175-gram, aphanitic, black clast.]

[Charlie's "after" is AS16-106- 17337. He did not take a "before".]

[John goes out of sight behind the foreground boulder and may be collecting his sample.]

[Charlie gets a sample bag off his little finger and bags the black clast.]

167:27:13 England: Okay; 418. Sounds like a good one.

167:27:15 Duke: And that's a rock...(Stops to listen) Yeah. I haven't seen a rock like that before in the Apollo samples.

167:27:22 England: Good show. Another first for (Apollo) 16. (Long Pause)

[Charlie reaches down and stows the hammer in the pocket that is strapped to his right shin.]

[Jones - "Had you spent much time at the (Lunar) Receiving Lab."]

[Duke - "We did some; but not much. We had some briefings about the rocks from some of the geologists; we saw some slides and stuff like that. But I don't remember actually going over there and looking at very many of them. We did (look at) a few (rocks from prior missions), though. We probably visited four times, for all the mission, but we didn't spend hours."]

[Jones - "Did you go in groups?"]

[Duke - "Me and John, and maybe the backup crew. I don't remember. At this point, our classroom stuff was mostly about our (Apollo 16) geology and our area and the experiments we would be doing and the science behind all of the experiments on the ALSEP we were going to have. So we didn't really get much out that wasn't directly related."]

[During John's next transmission, Charlie spins the sample bag closed and then gets the SCB that he leaned against the boulder at the top of the fillet.]

167:27:38 Young: Okay, Houston. I have a rock here that is a fine (grained), white crystalline rock. It's pretty well dust covered, but I don't see any...I do not see any clasts in it.

167:27:52 England: Okay.

[Charlie stows the black clast in the SCB, hops down the fillet and then turns to watch John.]

[John's sample is 67415, a 175-gram, white-matrix breccia. His second thought was the right one.]

167:28:24 England: That's okay ...

167:28:25 Duke: ...and do a rake sample. That way they can see us.

[John stows the white-matrix breccia in the SCB Charlie is carrying and then gets the rake.]

167:28:29 Duke: Well, just anywhere we rake, we got a good sample.

167:28:34 Young: Yeah. Charlie, let's get a...(Pause)

167:28:41 Duke: (To himself) Dadgummit. Do what, John?

167:28:48 Young: Let's get a soil sample right here.

167:28:51 Duke: Okay. (Pause) Stick this...

[John is pointing at an area between the foreground ridge and the largest boulder. They are working down-Sun of the Rover and the scene is noticeably washed out. The TV camera lens may also be dirty.]

[Charlie is probably suggesting that they put the tongs in the "before" pictures.]

167:28:56 Duke: Okay. You want to document it?

167:28:59 Young: Yeah, we can; but I don't really see much...(Pause)

167:29:08 Duke: Boy, this equipment problem is really handicapping us. (Long Pause)

[Charlie has probably dropped the pack of sample bags he had hooked on his little finger. He retrieves them with the tongs while John takes a cross-Sun stereopair of "befores" from the south, AS16-116- 18637 and 18638.]

[Jones - "I gather that you'd planned to sample independently at most of the stops."]

[Duke - "Here, we were supposed to go out independently. That was the plan. But the bags were falling off and we figured out, like John said earlier (at 167:21:01), that we'd better do it together because we were just having a lot of equipment problems. I think we got a little bit more efficient when we started working together. But, you know, if you had good equipment, you could have done it all by ourselves."]

[Jones - "Now, when you were solo sampling, you were planning on taking an SCB out and setting it on the ground next to you?"]

[Duke - "Well, that's what we ended up doing, 'cause we wouldn't have had any place to put 'em."]

[Jones - "And you'd planned ahead to do that?"]

[Duke - "Yeah."]

[While Charlie gets a bag ready, John gets a soil sample with the rake.]

167:29:24 Duke: Okay. There's a...Wow! Boy, the regolith here, Tony, up on this crater rim is really soft. We're sinking in on these slopes about 6 inches or so.

167:29:43 Young: Okay.

[Charlie holds the bag down and John pours.]

167:29:55 Young: Okay.

[John has collected more soil and pours it into the bag.]

[Charlie spins the bag closed and John backs up to take an "after", AS16-116- 18639. The 249-gram soil sample (67481) was taken just to the right of the tongs.]

167:30:07 Duke: Let's get in a clear spot, John, to rake. Okay?

167:30:10 Young: Well, we can do it down there, too.

[John starts raking.]

[Charlie watches John shake the soil out of the rake.]

167:30:18 Young: Lot of rocks there, Charlie! One rake sample.

[While Charlie gets a bag ready, John does two more swaths.]

167:30:25 England: Sounds good.

167:30:27 Duke: You can see us on the tube.

167:30:28 England: That's fine.

167:30:29 Duke: It's going into 48...It's going in 420. (Pause)

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167:30:33 England: Okay.

[Charlie holds the bag low and John pours the rocks into the bag. The fragments are shown in Figures 74A to 74G in the Professional Paper.]

167:30:39 Duke: Oh, he's got some nice ones there.

167:30:42 Young: (If I can) see what I'm doing.

167:30:45 Duke: That's it.

167:30:46 Young: That got them in there?

167:30:47 Duke: Yep.

167:30:48 Young: Amazing.

[While Charlie spins the bag closed, John backs up and takes an "after", AS16-116- 18640.]

[John picks up the SCB.]

[Charlie puts sample bag 420 in the SCB, which John is now holding at waist height.]

167:31:07 Duke: Where you want to go?

167:31:08 Young: Go on back to...

[They drop something.]

167:31:12 Young: Let me get it...

[Charlie gets the tongs.]

[John starts running toward the Rover and, after a few seconds, Charlie follows. They take a circuitous route to avoid the intervening ridge and probably, a crater which is hidden from our view.]

167:31:43 Young: All right. Yeah.

167:31:46 Duke: And that'll be about 150-meter radial...(correcting himself) not radial, but concentric sampling. (Pause) I'm on Intermediate cooling now, Tony.

167:32:05 England: Okay, we copy that.

167:32:08 Young: I'm halfway between (Low and Intermediate).

167:32:13 England: While you two are working together, you may be able to put the bag shoe into the core cap holder on the side of Charlie's PLSS. You won't be able to run that way, but, at least, it'll be some place to hang it while you're working.

[The "bag shoe" may be the "metal strap on rear side of bag" indicated in Figure 14-62 in the Apollo 16 Mission Report.]

[John and Charlie stop to do a second rake sample. They are near the rake sample site marked "67610" in Figure 6-65 in the Preliminary Science Report and are partially obscured by the high-gain antenna mast.]

[Charlie plants the tongs and backs off to the north to take a down-Sun "before". John is at the left side of the picture, holding the rake.]

[John runs around the tongs to look at the left side of Charlie's PLSS.]

[Charlie turns a few degrees to his right to give John a better view.]

167:32:46 England: No, it'll probably pop out, but you can look at it.

[The following dialog indicates that John thinks that Tony has been talking about the sample bag dispenser and not the SCB. He adjusts the sample bags on the fingers of his left hand.]

167:32:50 Young: Keep it over your...Push it way up on your finger.

167:32:55 Duke: Yeah. If I push it up on my middle finger, it ain't going to fall off. I won't even know it's there.

167:33:01 England: Okay.

167:33:03 Duke: I'm going to get a down-Sun.

167:33:05 Young: Okay; a cross-Sun here. (Pause)

[Charlie's down-Sun "before" is AS16-106- 17338 and John's cross-Sun stereopair from the south is AS16-116- 18641 and 18642. In the TV picture, note that Charlie has an SCB and a pack of sample bags in his right hand and has an SCB mounted on the left side of his PLSS.]

MP3 Audio Clip ( 0 min 05 sec )

167:33:14 Duke: You got it. (Pause)

MP3 Audio Clip ( 2 min 18 sec )

167:33:25 Duke: John, have I still got my SCB on my back?

167:33:29 Young: Yep.

167:33:30 Duke: Okay. (Pause)

[John does a swath with the rake.]

[Charlie moves counter-clockwise around the rake site and takes up a position north of John. John does a second swath.]

[John starts a third swath.]

[John isn't sure he has collected anything but soil and soil clods.]

[John starts to shake the dirt out of the rake.]

[John is using an unusual pouring technique. He had the rake handle in his left hand and raised the rake until he could grab the handle with his right hand just above the rake head. He then lowered his right hand until the rake handle was parallel to the ground and, now, with Charlie holding a bag at about waist height, John rotates the rake to get the rock fragments to pour into the bag.]

167:34:17 Duke: Yeah, I could too. Okay. That's in 421, Tony.

167:34:27 England: Okay, 421. And we'd like a soil (sample) here.

[While Charlie spins the bag closed, seals it, and stows it in the SCB he's carrying, John backs up to get a soil sample with the rake.]

[Charlie gets a sample bag ready for the soil sample and then sets the SCB down on the ground to his right. The ground there is a little higher than where he is standing and, because he doesn't have to bend his knees while he is getting the SCB placed, he has no trouble getting it to stand upright. The sample is 67600.]

167:35:01 Young: Sure, sure it would have worked, Charlie. That's a good idea, too.

[Jones - "You talked about the shopping bag in Moonwalker, I think. You wanted to get a bag with a big enough bottom..."]

[Duke - "Just like a shopping bag. You know, like you get to put your Christmas presents in. It would have a handle so that, when you pick it up, it closes up and, when you let it back down, it opens up and, so, you can just drop your samples into 'em. It would come up to about mid-thigh level; and you could just pick it up and off you'd go with it."]

[Jones - "Was it a last minute idea before the flight."]

[Duke - "Oh, we thought about it earlier, but they didn't pay any attention to us. But it would have worked."]

[John and Charlie discuss the shopping bag concept again at Shadow Rock at 168:33:52.]

[John raises the rake, Charlie lowers the sample bag, and John starts the pour.]

167:35:11 England: Okay.

167:35:13 Duke: That's enough, John. That's a hundred grams.

167:35:17 Young: Okay. Little bit too...

167:35:21 Duke: That's okay.

167:35:23 Young: (Joking) 100 kilograms...(Garbled) kilometers.

167:35:29 Duke: Okay, get an "after" of that, please, while I pick this bag up.

167:35:30 Young: Some large number. (Pause)

[Charlie grabs the top of the SCB and gets it open so he can drop the sample bag in. He then picks up the SCB. John has backed off-camera to the left and takes a cross-Sun "after", AS16-116- 18643.]