Mattingly: After docking, we went through our transfer items even though we knew we were going to be retaining the LM and going to bed. From my side, the time line entering the LM was a little bit slower than I had anticipated even though I pressurized the cabin prior to rendezvous. Taking things out and finding a place for them just seems to take a little bit longer. Perhaps that was because IÂ’m methodical about it. The first thing we did was pass in the vacuum cleaner. I had checked the vacuum cleaner operation only to the extent that I turned it on and it worked and I turned it off. I didnÂ’t try to vacuum clean anything. I didnÂ’t try to verify that it really was sucking anything up. ThereÂ’s some question in my mind whether the vacuum cleaner really ever worked properly.
Duke: It did. The screen was covered with dust. It probably was so covered that it stalled out, and thatÂ’s what failed it.
Mattingly: In any event, sometime later, I went into the tunnel to get something, and the vacuum cleaner was laying there making some funny little noise. I noticed the switch was on, but it didn’t sound like it was running. so I turned it off. It didn’t interest me enough to see if it was still working. I think it had probably failed then. We tried it later and it wouldn’t start after that; it would just make this little hum. I suspect it failed at the time I found it the first time. That was within an hour of the time we started with it. The tunnel operations were just like you’d expect them to be; all the latches were made, including latch number 10. This time, latch number 10 fired properly. We had no anomalies at all with the docking latches, nor with the probes. One other comment on latch 10 that I don’t think we included before was that — when we went to undock, latch 10 cocked itself on the first stroke. It felt like it took about half the effort to cock that first stroke that the rest of them took to cock on either the first or second. So apparently, it had not fired at all. LM equipment transfer - when we started bringing that stuff over, our original plan had been to stow everything in this EVA stowage or entry stowage case, whichever was more convenient at the time we brought it over. Take our time and do that and then come over and do the LM jettison. We altered that because of the plan that retained the LM and having to put your suits on for LM jettison the following day. We just dropped the whole plan of trying to stow things item at a time. In general, we just sort of stuffed the stuff on board and decided to worry about it later. I don’t think we really had any other choice considering the fact that we couldn’t stow the suits and things. The command module filled up with LM dust and rocks and things almost immediately. Within an hour, it was very noticeable that there was a coating of dust on all the instrument panels and all the surfaces. You’d see little rocks float by in front of your nose. I was surprised how rapidly that stuff all had diffused in. It came over as soon as we brought the first bag or the first suit, or whatever it was. That stuff was just coming off of everything and it never stopped. The command module cabin fans were on at the time of docking. I turned them on right after docking and before removing any tunnel hatch equipment. They were working properly at that point with the cabin fan filter on. They failed some time EVA morning. The material we brought in we just stashed away.
Duke: We tried to vacuum the suits and some of the bags that were dirty like the big rock bags and found it was almost totally worthless. You could do a little bit, but the best method was to take a damp towel to wipe things down. We were able to get some of the dust off this way. Fortunately, most things that were dusty went over in Decon bags. That was a lifesaver. Once we opened one of the Decon bags just a little bit to see what bag was in there. The dust floated out and we closed that in a hurry. That was a real mistake. I think Apollo 14 did the same thing. The transfer of the equipment was expeditiously done just according to the Time Line Book from my side. Ken was doing a great job taking care of everything as I passed it over. Had we been on a nominal two—rev—to—jett time line, we’d have been adequately prepared to jettison the LM at the time. I think it’s a very loose time line. I think Ken does have time to stow things, at least temporarily, and we don’t just throw them in there. The samples did not need to be vacuumed except one bag before I put it in the Decon bag. That was the big rock bag. Everything else was in good shape. Since we were going to retain the LM, we had to copy up about 10 pages of changes to the checklist. We started with the dock deactivation unstaged in the Contingency Book, drying out the water boiler. We reverted back to the Time Line Book the next day when we got back into the LM. The configuration on the LM side for the rest period was a complete power-down. I felt like it took us 90 minutes at least for the water boiler to dry out. I really don’t think personally that we saved any time by making that decision to retain the LM. I feel like we could have had an 18—hour day, or whatever it turned out to be and could have jettisoned the LM by keeping our suits on. But that was not the decision. The decision was to keep it. So, we had to take the suits off. John and I both doffed the suits in the LM. I thought it was quite a hazard over there floating through the LM with all that dust and debris. A number of times I got my eyes full of dust and particles. I felt like my right eye was scratched slightly once. I think the mode you want to operate in is get that gear transferred and get out of there as quickly as possible, get that beauty closed up and jettisoned. The ground could tell us exactly when we got it closed out. I would be willing to bet you that it was almost the same time, if not later, than it would have been if we had gone on and jettisoned the LM. The suit doffing was the same problems that you had. We ended up working up a new technique at least with the A-7LB. Getting it down and pulling your feet out first before you pulled your head out. That worked just great. The next day we got up, IVTed to the LM, and started the power-up before we got suited.
Mattingly: We started the power-up first.
Duke: I never had any confidence in my set of procedures that we really had everything in the right configuration. We skipped from page to page and book to book. e seemed to have gotten everything going. The computer came up; the up—link came up okay. We didn’t bother with the AGS. It looked like we had a good P30 in there. The state vector was in; the no—DAP light was off. All the gear seemed to be running, the Comm, we didn’t fire the jets. We didn’t do an RCS check, but looking back over the procedures it looked to me that we had all the necessary breakers in to fire the PGNCS switch I did miss was the PGNCS mode control; It was in Att Hold rather than in Auto. The no-DAP light was out, so it should have held its attitude, and the ground should have had no problem getting the RCS burn off to the de-orbit burn. However, when we jettisoned the LM, it just gently floated away with a slow roll and pitch, without any all jet firings at all. Looking back over the procedures I don’t know where the error was, or if there was one, or if we had a mechanical failure. We’ll just never know as far as the mechanical failure, I think that we got the switches and the circuit breakers all pushed in. But it was a set of circumstances any way in which we didn’t have a chance to review with any great degree of accuracy on board. In that kind of operation, I think you’re just setting yourself up for something, which happened.
Suit donning that morning was okay. We had the same amount of problems we normally have. On closeout, the LM was still as dusty and debris covered as ever. We had the same problems with the wrist rings as we had on the lunar surface. We managed to get buttoned up all right and on time for the jett maneuver.
Mattingly: On the LM jettison, we really got behind at the last minute. I thought we were doing pretty good. When it came time for the suit integrity check, we got behind. We didnÂ’t have sufficient time to let the whole thing play out and stabilize. YOUIG Let the suit flow come down to 0.2.
Mattingly: We had to rush the integrity check in order to get it done and get off at something reasonable. At that, I think we got off about 30 seconds late. Even with the suits on, the tunnel pyros make a very obvious noise.
Young: You said that the LM was maneuvering in pitch and roll?
Duke: As it backed away, it started a slow yaw for the LM. It was LM yaw and a slight pitch up if I recall. But it never fired a jet, not one jet.
Mattingly: Very slow rates; we must have imparted an extremely small impulse. I donÂ’t think thereÂ’s any question on whether it fired any jets because when you folks rendezvoused, I could see the jets fire in the daylight The ones that were pointing at me looked like little flashlights going on and off. The others, I could still see some effluent coming out of the exhaust nozzle. I donÂ’t think thereÂ’s any question that it never fired an engine at all in any axis.
Duke: I agree.
Mattingly: Separation maneuver was a nominal thing. They changed the maneuver from the pre-flight value, but it was executed nominally It was small; 2 foot per second. We deleted the shaping maneuver on plane change 2.
Duke: Right after that, Ken, we had to jettison the mass spec boom.
Mattingly: Yes. The lithium canister that I changed at about 181 hours was stuck. It was number 12 that came out of the V chamber. We had to jiggle it an awful lot. This was on the night of rendezvous. We had to jiggle that thing an awful lot to get that thing out. My concern at the time was tearing the little cloth strip that pulls it out - jamming it and then finding that I was unable to get it in or out and thus would be unable to change the canister in the opposite compartment. Ground told us later that there was no way we could tear that little strap off. The canister did not look much different, but it certainly was swollen good and tight. Somewhere along the line here, we were unable to get the mass spec to come in. It was before LM jettison. You saw it in the LM window.
Duke: Yes.
Mattingly: Out the window. They told us to retract it for LM jettison. I went to retract and they said it stalled out. I had a barber pole. You looked out and could still see it. So, we went to extend once and it went just a little way and stalled again. We cycled it in and out a couple of times, and Charlie was able to tell that the mass spec was neither at full extension nor was it coming in. It was just moving back and forth a little bit. So they gave us a pad to jettison it and that all went quite nominally. The thing that was most significant about the boom jettison was that, when it left the spacecraft, it had practically no rates of any sort except in the translation. Just as stable as it could be. It was moving out rather rapidly. It Just looked like a big arrow going out. We should have some pictures of that. But that stuff came off without any trouble. I don’t remember even hearing the thump when that thing went. I don’t remember a sound or anything that was associated with the mass spec test. The satellite jettison, we did on time. It was perfectly nominal as far as we could tell. It was done in the dark so we didn’t see anything. I don’t remember any sounds associated that either. It did its thing on time and barber pole changed state just as advertised. During all of that time, we were getting Flight Plan updates almost by the minute. The ground had taken over control of the SIM bay and was operating it in a real—time mode with us executing it. We tried to run out the rest of the pan camera and get as much mapping camera coverage as we could prior to TEI. My concern at this point was that at the pace we were going, we might not have a chance to even settle down and give TEI the consideration it ought to have. But the Flight Plan all settled down the rev before TEI. We sat there and did essentially nothing but think about TEI, and set up for it in the last rev. I thought that was a super thing to do. I felt really comfortable; I think we ought to always do TEI that way.
Young: I do too. There were a couple of changes to the cue card for TEI that seemed unnecessary to us.
Mattingly: I sort of went along with all of the changes we were getting. At the time, we were changing some things because we had to because of a changed time line. It seemed to me that we were also changing other things that didnÂ’t have to be changed. A good example was the suggestion that the circuit breakers for pitch and yaw, gimbal number 2 be pulled out during TEI burn in order to protect against transfer from primary to the secondary and then a drop out due to the alternate circuit on the secondary. This condition has existed as long as Apollo has. ItÂ’s been discussed and rehashed as long as Apollo has been around. It seems to me itÂ’s a very poor practice to change those kind of procedures in real time unless some material condition is developed that causes you to alter your standard practice procedures.
Young: I agree 100 percent.
Duke: The PUGS operation. We didnÂ’t touch it as per directions from MCC, but before the burn they put the gaging system into the auxiliary position versus the primary. We flew with it in the auxiliary position. You could tell every time that you uncovered one of the point sensors the quantity would jump and the unbalance would jump. It would then settle out. At shutdown, we were looking at something like 3 percent on the fuel and 5 percent on the oxidizer; maybe 3.5 to 5 percent. But there was about a percent difference or so in the unbalance meter. We had just started responding to that when we got shutdown. I think it was going toward the decrease position, but I donÂ’t recall. But except for that anomaly I think the thing worked as advertised throughout the burn.
Young: I donÂ’t think thereÂ’s any further comment on TEI. The burn time was exact.
Duke: Right on.
Young: Within a couple of milliseconds, it seemed like. The residuals were nothing. DidnÂ’t even have to trim.
Duke: Yes. All you trimmed were X and Z and they were small. We had 1 foot per second.
Mattingly: Post—TEI, we did a lot of the photo stuff. It was one of the places where we got interested in what we were looking at. I guess we missed a couple of things. It was one of the problems that used to catch me in training all the time, but the only time it caught me was this one time in flight. When you call up P20 option 5 to get a maneuver to the attitude, you have something like 8 seconds from the time the V18 comes up until you can get an Enter on it in order to get the rate drive going. This was one of those times where I didn’t sit and watch it. And sure enough it required another maneuver. The ground had to call us and tell us we hadn’t started P20. I almost missed it the next time because I was still looking out the window. I would suggest that if you ever need a program like that, again, the computer should have some way to call your attention to the fact that there’s an activity on your part required. It is not uncommon to have maneuvers to attitude which take 12 to 14 minutes. It’s real easy not to be sitting there watching the DSKY for that 8—second window during that time. Future programs should provide the computer with the capability to ring a bell or light another light or do something which would attract your attention at the time another activity is required.