Young: When we opened the hatch, I bet we increased the cabin temperature 10 to 20 degrees. The only thing on Stable II that was off nominal was that it may have taken us 4 or 5 minutes to upright. The center bag apparently didnÂ’t fully inflate. ItÂ’s supposed to be the one that inflates first. But the other two bags were certainly inflated. It uprighted just like normal.
Duke: On the postlanding checklist — you can run through that too rapidly and end up without comm. All of a sudden, it hit me that if I pulled these two breakers, we just lost our comm once we upright it. Right after we got on the mains I started rattling off the checklist. I was really talking to myself because all the breakers were over on my side. There’s about seven or eight breakers that you have to pull. I was just rattling them off and getting no acknowledgement. Ken said, "Wait a minute, what are you talking about?" I was really going, too. I apologized for that, you guys. I didn’t let you know that it was all on my side.
Young: I thought you were reading things for me to do and I hadnÂ’t done the first one yet.
Duke: I was about five steps ahead of you. One thing IÂ’d like to mention that was just an oversight I guess by the Recovery Division. The hatch opened and Lt Tashita pitched a bag in and said hereÂ’s your life vest and NASAÂ’s heat sensor. We pulled this thing out of the bag. We broke it out and it was a heat recording drum. It says tape to the instrument panel. Well, we didnÂ’t have any tape. Finally, he said thereÂ’s tape in the bag. We looked in the bag and thereÂ’s a big roll of tape. It didnÂ’t seem feasible to put it on the instrument panel, so I just taped it to my couch. They had caught us by surprise. We had never heard of that.>/p>
Young: That caused us about 5 minutes. WeÂ’d have been out 5 minutes sooner and in the raft ready to be picked up.
Mattingly: It looked like a clock you put on your back.
Young: As it was, from Stable II splashdown to the deck was 37 minutes, a super outstanding record.
Duke: Even for an old Air Force guy, I never felt seasick at all the entire 2 days on the carrier. The Navy really treated us great. I had no discomfort at all once we hit the water.
Young: We elected not to use the postlanding vent valve because you donÂ’t want a hole in the spacecraft.
Duke: We did not do that.
Mattingly: Those guys out there obviously had really trained heavily. The whole operation was well thought out. But even at that, the frogman that came out to help us get out of the spacecraft really wasnÂ’t a familiar with the opening and closing of the hatch as you might anticipate. Maybe he was typical of a frogman approach. He wanted to use brute force to close the hatch. I think the CMP just as a matter of course should help the guy close the hatch. We had apparently knocked the dog partly down when we opened the hatch, before I got the handle back to neutral or something. I may have gotten a partial stroke on it when we opened it. There was just enough of a dog in the way that he couldnÂ’t push the hatch closed. I went ahead and recycled the hatch to the open position. Then we closed it. A lot easier than trying to bend all that metal.
Young: He was going to do it. He could have. He wasnÂ’t very tall but he sure was strong. Good thing you didnÂ’t have your hand between him and that hatch.
Mattingly: We had a beautiful calm sea state. If you had any sea state, you really donÂ’t want to spend much time with that hatch open. You want to open it and close it as quickly as you can, but methodically.
Duke: That was a Navy comment. I didnÂ’t think it was so calm.
Young: Except for the waves, Charlie.
Duke: Pretty calm except for the waves.
Young: Outstanding pickup. That was really good.