Young: Outstanding training.
Mattingly: There arenÂ’t enough nice words you can say about Nelson Temple and Gerry Stoner for the way they fixed up the CMS cockpit interior. 1 asked them when we first went to the Cape if they would keep the cockpit in the flight stowage configuration and. put as many things in there as possible. It was our opinion when we started that stowing and learning to handle all the little miscellaneous items and knowing where to get them would be the secret in keeping the orbital time line going. I think that was a valid assessment. We received a lot of good training by going into the simulator and seeing it stowed with cameras, boxes, the flight data file, and all the things you want. We made up a good orbit stowage list which is distinct from the launch stowage list, which most people have in the checklist. These men went out there and put that stuff in so that when we went out to train, we didnÂ’t have to spend the first 30 minutes getting stuff out and putting it around the cockpit. I really think they did a good job of making the cockpit look like a spacecraft. I felt completely at home. When it came time in lunar orbit to go after things, it was perfectly natural to reach to the right place to get a film magazine. If you wanted to know where the lens was, it was just a natural thing. We really didnÂ’t do that much special training to make it so. I think those men really bent over backwards and we always had a piece of gear that worked. CMS availability - IÂ’ll bet we didnÂ’t lose 5 hours out of the whole Cape training period because of the machines being down.
Young: I donÂ’t think we did.
Mattingly: Just super availability. The men that ran the show down there stayed ahead of it. We worked out a schedule and they tried to have some kind of a script available so we didnÂ’t waste any time when we got into the machines. In particular, IÂ’d like to say that Bernie Suchocki probably has as good a handle on the software as anyone around the program, and Dave Strunk knows more about flying an Apollo mission and the Apollo hardware than any single individual. Those two men made a very valuable contribution. The visual system, in our case, was up most of the time at least in the rendezvous window and in the optics. Those are really the only two that are worth spending your time maintaining. The rest of the windows were periodically up or down. They did go to the trouble to try and look ahead at the scheduled session to see if those things would be available. They would come in and talk to us about them if we were not going to be ready and find out whether that was going to affect our training. The CMS we used here in Houston was primarily on systems and just general crew proficiency training.
Young: ThatÂ’s all Skylab now, isnÂ’t it? MAPPINGLY I think so. You canÂ’t say enough nice things about Roger Burke and the work that he did in building up our software. When I got through with RogerÂ’s little course, I came back after Apollo 13 and I was concerned about finding enough interesting things to just stay in that CMS for another 100 hours. With Roger on the console, he always kept us thoroughly occupied and completely interested. The man has an imagination and an understanding of the hardware that is beyond comprehension. He really knows his software.
Young: Yes, heÂ’s a great guy.
Mattingly: ThatÂ’s all I have to say about the CMS.
Young: Let me say one thing about something you recommended. It became apparent a few weeks prior to launch that we werenÂ’t doing enough three-man work. Ken suggested that we get in the simulator and just run a burn or two for half an hour a day and practice three-man teamwork. I recommend that the follow-on crews take time to get in there as much as possible to get team coordination down. Of course, CharlieÂ’s and my concern was the lunar surface operation. We got all wrapped around the axle on that. ItÂ’s a matter of operational judgment as to how much of each you want to do. The fact that we spread the SIM network SIMs out so that we only had to run two a week allowed us more time to work on individual LMS burns. A lot of SIM network SIMs have more to do with exercise of the ground than they do with exercise of the crew. You can run four or five times as many dynamic phases when youÂ’re just working together as you get in an average LOI and DOI SIM. I really think thatÂ’s an important phase. Our IOS men recognize it as being an important phase, too, and I guess we agree with them.
Duke: In the LMS here in Houston, we concentrated on systems work. Bob Force gave us an excellent review. Maury Minnette and Bob Jones all did a good job for us. It was a good systemÂ’s review. Operationally, the LMS at the Cape is head and shoulder when it comes to operational training for the mission. At the Cape we just had outstanding luck with the LMS. It was in good shape all the way. The visuals were usually up. On our landing site, I had such good landmarks out my window they developed a scheme where at pitch-over we could start out with a view in my window coming straight at me and I could get a quick reference and then they would switch it over to JohnÂ’s window for the last 6000 feet. I thought that worked great and it helped to give me an input into the visibility, as to where we were at pitch-over. The landing site looked exactly like the L&A right down to the size of crater of Lone Star, Dot, and End Crater. The fidelity of the LMS was good. Being a fixed-base simulator, you donÂ’t get the motion cues that you do in the vehicle. ThereÂ’s no doubt in your mind in the vehicle, when a jet comes on, which jet is firing, and that youÂ’re moving. The engine sounds in the LMS during descent was a very good simulation. It was probably a little bit more pronounced than you got in the vehicle, but you needed something, anyway. All in all, I want to just say an outstanding job for Charlie Floyd, Dave Bragdon, Bob Pierce, and everybody that was involved in our training. We felt right at home in old Orion when we got there. I never felt so at ease and so at home in any airplane the first time as I did in that Lunar Module.
Young: We really did. We really felt as if we were there. It was really comforting. We had a lot of flight time in the old LM. It was just as natural as if you had been doing it all your life. Let me say something that I recommend for training the last two or three weeks. They really threw the book at us on every dynamic phase that we have. I mean we were really having failures. If you had all those failures put together in a real situation, you would be in really bad shape. I think they should throw the book at you on burns, and every so often they should slip in a burn that, is completely nominal. Not a 100 percent of the burns are going to be, in the real world, up to date. As far as the actual dynamic phase of the burn, we have never had a manned spacecraft burn or boost phase that wasnÂ’t nominal or wouldnÂ’t allow you to perform a nominal mission. I think that one out of three or four burns they should have you spring-loaded to take corrective action and not give you anything during that burn, because I think thatÂ’s the way itÂ’s going to be in the real world. You should never forget how a nominal burn looks. Boy, we were on the verge of forgetting. We were having IMU failures, platform failures, computer failures, and backing it up with the SCS and down modeing on that. I think, close to launch, you want to keep the crew relatively calm. I'm not sure with that much pounded into them that they are going to be that way. The visual systems and the L&A was tremendous. There was no doubt in my mind as to the landing site or where we're going at pitch-over. There is a shortcoming in the L&A in that at 20,000 feet in the Lunar Module, I was able to get my nose up to where the COAS is mounted and stick my head by the window. I could see South Ray Crater and the edge of Stone Mountain. So, I had no doubt that we were targeted right into the landing site. In the real world the visibility got better as we came on down. Passing through 10,000 or 11,000 feet, you could start seeing Flag Crater and Spook. In the actual vehicle, you can look 88 degrees down, but you canÂ’t look 90 degrees down the X-axis. With that eye position, you can look down 88 degrees vertically and with a 55-degree pitch angle, which is what you get just before you get to high gate. You can see the whole landing site before you get there. Now, thatÂ’s a good thing if you had any problem with the landing site recognition, which was always a concern too. This was sort of a blah landing site, but youÂ’re going to recognize where you are. At least you are going to recognize where youÂ’re going if you are really targeted off the nominal spot. You donÂ’t get to do that in the L&A. ItÂ’s something we canÂ’t do anything about, but the capability is there if a guy is worried about recognizing the landing site in the real vehicle. The other thing they did for us that I thought helped us is if we had had problems with the landing radar, they built a shadow that gave you an absolute altitude cue. YouÂ’re looking out of zero phase and here comes a shadow which you can see in the photographs. That is the absolute altitude cue. Man, thereÂ’s no doubt in your mind how far off the ground you are when you see that shadow. The dust, of course, wasnÂ’t as bad in the real world as we made it in the simulator. In our case we could see rocks and dirt all the way to the ground. That hasnÂ’t been the case in all missions. The software in the LMS was just superb. We have software programs and erasable memory programs. I think the LMS is really valuable for checking out things such as having the right stars for the various platform alignments, are they in the right part of the sky, how much attitude maneuvering does it take to get there, and for working out the timeline. We felt as if we had been doing it all of our lives when we finished that training.
Mattingly: ThereÂ’s one thing on that whole subject of the CMS training -
Young: We never did a normal DOI burn for the whole mission.
Mattingly: We have done one normal DOI burn since weÂ’ve been together. That was at the Moon.
Duke: I sure am glad that there is only one allowed.
Young: Over 2 years of training with only one nominal DOI burn and that was in the spacecraft.
Mattingly: I think there should be somebody who puts together a training package for you, that lays out what it is you are going to do in the CMS or the LMS, as the case may be, makes up a script and reviews it to see what is appropriate. As it turns out, I had to write down a list of things to do and I had to keep looking at the things. This is fine in emphasizing the mission phases you want to look at, but it also takes away some of the training factor, I think. I had to go out and say what kinds of malfunctions we wanted to see, and where we wanted to see them. I sort of tried to back out of that because that takes away from the ability to go in and face a cold situation.
Young: Close to launch, youÂ’re the only man that really has a feel - or youÂ’re one of the men that really has a feel for what you missed.
Mattingly: Well, that may be but you know there are only so many hours in a day, and there are only so many things you can do. I felt like the time that I had to spend in laying out a detailed simulator training script was just one more task that I donÂ’t think the flight crew should be doing.
Young: ThatÂ’s right. You shouldnÂ’t be.
Mattingly: I think I probably asked for more from the machines and the people than perhaps we have always done. I think they have done a super job on providing the things we did, but the groups are cut back themselves. WeÂ’re all in the boat where there is just enough time to do the things you have to do. I really think maybe the backup crew could lay out the script for the prime crew because they know what the prime crew needs to do. Maybe you could do it for each other. I think there needs to be more thought to laying out an organized and a planned way to accomplish the training so that you do all the right things.
Young: The simulator people do have squares you have to fill.
Duke: Exactly, they have a master plan to work with.
Young: Yes. They have a master plan arid there is a lot of training we had to do to fill all the squares.
Mattingly: You can say we should do so many TEIs and LOIs, but there needs to be a spread in there so you do them under certain conditions. Certain failures that are only important during certain times should be looked at. If you do it on a random basis, and the missions become more complex, there really is no way you can keep it all in your head as these things change from day to day. You canÂ’t afford to go out there and start every burn at ignition minus 20 minutes, because if you want to look at on discrete thing, there are some things you should look at. You should crank up the burn and start it at ignition minus 5 minutes and go do the burn and then drop it right there. When you go to entry, we finally got a good entry point that was EI minus 30 seconds in that four or five minutes, and that was a good training point. As you go along, you find that there are some reset points that are more useful to you than others. They arenÂ’t always predictable when you make up the original training tapes. When the men come up with the reset points from MPAD theyÂ’re just guessing at what is going to be a good one.
Slayton: Well, weÂ’re really not, because weÂ’ve been working on those things for, how many missions, now?
Young: You know how it is, Deke for the last couple of weeks you could do every, thing you have to do and never do the same thing twice.
Slayton: Yes, thatÂ’s right.
Young: You donÂ’t really want to do that the last couple of weeks though. You want to hone in on your mission phases and tackle them one at a time.
Mattingly: I had a feeling that I couldnÂ’t really let go of keeping track of what we had done and what we were going to do. I really feel as if that wasnÂ’t the kind of thing I should be doing.
Young: We already recommended that the crew look at a couple of things late in the training schedule and they may not even have time.
Mattingly: I spent a lot of time flying the Flight Plan.
Young: I donÂ’t think we should work more than 8 hours a day the last 2 weeks but we did it.
Mattingly: I guess part of my comments about the Flight Plan go along with the simulator. The orbital Flight Plan flown in the CMS with all the activities in it, is to the CMP exactly the same as the EVA surface is to the lunar surface men. The difference is that we have one simulator and two crews to train. I canÂ’t practice my orbital activities and then do the nominal mission proficiency kind of training back to back like you. You can fly the LMS in the morning and then you can go out and do an EVA in the afternoon while the backup crew flip flops with you. We have one simulator to do both. You canÂ’t do this thing in piecemeal very well because you have to run real time on the real trajectory. You canÂ’t practice it in pieces because the things youÂ’re looking for are, do I have sufficient time to maneuver from this attitude to the next one? Does this attitude go through gimbal lock? Does it really get you to the right place? You have to fly those things in real time and theyÂ’re not very glamourous things to do. But, I think to do justice to any Flight Plan and to go out of there professional, saying I know that I can accomplish this mission and IÂ’m going to do these things. There is no way out except to have flown every one of those revs.
Young: Yes, even then we had three or four times where we hail to take over to avoid gimbal lock.
Mattingly: But, the things we did, we did as new things that we thought up in real time, not to the things that I verified in the Flight Plan. I think our mission is too complex and weÂ’ve got too much wrapped up in it to go off half-cocked. I donÂ’t launch without having flown the Flight Plan from A to Z to know whatÂ’s in there, or if I can find any way around it. ThatÂ’s the reason I donÂ’t think you should do that kind of stuff in-flight. We found lots of things when we went through, and itÂ’s just too complex to spit it out and write it down the first time and think you have all those answers. I guess all I can do is point out the problem and also that you really need to maximize your utilization of the CMS even if you get another 1000 hours lying on your back. ThereÂ’s just no way to find that you have an excess of time. YouÂ’ve got to use the thing and you got to optimize the amount of hours you spend in it.
Young: Yes. I think the message there is that you can keep it nominal to the real-time Flight Plan for the sake of optimizing a couple of data points on somebodyÂ’s gamma ray curve. ItÂ’s foolishness as far as IÂ’m concerned. It may be necessary, but it sure is foolishness. .
I think the LRV simulator was a systemÂ’s assurance test. It sure convinced us that the thing worked. IÂ’m not sure thatÂ’s necessary in the future because Gene has already done it. They wonÂ’t have to do it again. ItÂ’s a nice piece of gear but the LRV nay system, as you know, works like Tacan, when itÂ’s working. You canÂ’t beat it.
Duke: It was a good verification of the maps and I think you should have that for the flight. Somebody should go through those traverses drawn on those maps and then navigate in the simulator. When we first started out, the mapÂ’s starting point was different from the landing point starting point.
Young: CMS, LMS simulations - The comm was never worth a darn. We almost had to yell at each other through the hatch. They should do something about the comm. The other thing is a lot of CMS/LMS simulations are probably unnecessary when it involves the CMS being a passive vehicle all the time, donÂ’t you think?
Mattingly: Yes.
Young: I think laying around in the passive vehicle is wasting your time.
Mattingly: If you have nothing else to do, that would be all right. As IÂ’ve been trying to emphasize, the CMS is my equivalent to the EVA training, as well as a proficiency trainer. I can fly a lot of rendezvous and a lot of rescue things. Any time you do a rendezvous, thereÂ’s always one passive vehicle. The kind of things you should do in the CMS/LMS training are those things which would require coordination between the two vehicles. I donÂ’t think you should go out and fly a CSM active rendezvous and have the LMS just sit there as a target. Nor do I think you should do the other way around. You should fly just enough of those together that you get accustomed exchanging data between the two vehicles, so that you know what a nominal rendezvous is going to look like to you, and go through the decision making process. I feel thatÂ’s another area where the scripts were not adequately prepared. I donÂ’t think anyone looked at what was going to be done during the CMS/LMS session to make sure that it was worth both parties participating. I think that is one place someone could look into it and save us a lot of time.
Young: Simulated networks simulations - Invariably, if you added the freebees, you got more than you asked for and then some.
Mattingly: One thing that goes along with what you said about flying a few nominals towards the end. I felt like our last launch SIM was not the right foot to start a mission off on, where we did so many things that were way out and then we just kind of backed ourselves in a corner. I would like to have made our last SIM with Houston one of those nominal things where everything works like youÂ’re going to see it in flight and you build up your confidence.
Young: Yes, the last launch TLI SIM was pretty near a disaster. ItÂ’s too close to the end to be doing that kind of work.
Duke: All in all, itÂ’s good training, though.
Young: I really think you should slack off a little during the last of the training. This is in line with stressing the crew pre-flight. I think you should be limited as to how much of that you should impose on the crew. Missions are tough, but you donÂ’t want to bend the guys around the axis just before they get ready to launch. I was bent there after that last launch abort SIM. I donÂ’t know how everybody else feels.
Young: DCPS - I thought that was valuable for preliminary launch aborts. But, once we got down to the Cape - I think the simulator down there is certainly excellent to do it, plus they get all three men in the pressure suits and you start realizing the real limitations of doing launch aborts in pressure suits; and, they are serious.
Mattingly: I donÂ’t think you can overemphasize the fact that you should fly every launch abort, period, suited.
Young: Yes. Sure is miserable though, isnÂ’t it.
Mattingly: CMPS - I used the CMPS a great deal. I flew every rescue and rendezvous combination known to mankind, I think.
Young: Plus entries.
Mattingly: Well, thatÂ’s a separate operation. I thought that I had flown everything they had. I did this all before we left Houston, so that all the time I spent on rendezvous and rescue review was done as just sort of a paper exercise at the end, and thatÂ’s the way it should be done. I think the McDonnell-Douglas people running that CMPS have a really super operation. They can show you all the characteristics of the different trajectories and step ahead. I canÂ’t think of any way that the CM would ever become an active vehicle in a rendezvous, I would have felt terrible going up there without knowing that I could effect a rendezvous from any place in the sky. I have complete confidence that I can rendezvous with that hardware with any malfunction that can happen to the Command Module and still effect a rescue, and stay within my fuel budget doing it.
Young: Except when you start in the low orbit with the TPI from apogee and you rendezvous from below. I didnÂ’t think much of that.
Mattingly: I still think you could do it.
Duke: There he goes behind the hill.
Mattingly: I think you should skip Gulf egress training.
Young: Yes, I agree.
Mattingly: I think if you have ever been out in the Gulf, thereÂ’s no reason to ever go out in the Gulf again. As much as I cherish my time, I thought to spend a Saturday going out there was terrible.
Young: Do it in the tank on a normal working day, do Stable I and Stable II in the tank and thatÂ’s certainly adequate. The Gulf egress training is a waste of time, money, and effort and in particular when youÂ’re so dependent on the weather and the sea state. ItÂ’s not worth the effort.
Mattingly: I didnÂ’t use the planetarium this time, but I used it on 13 and thought it was valuable. I did go out and schedule some sessions in the CMS to get use to finding my way from one star to another in a star-ball sense.
Young: Yes. I think the planetarium could be deleted from the crew training, if you know the stars. There are much better star simulators in the LMS and CMS, perfect stars, better than you would ever get in a planetarium.
Duke: I took about half an hour every couple of weeks to look at stars in the simulators and I think thatÂ’s quite adequate.
Mattingly: I guess that is what we have been talking about and that is one area that really should be looked at. I donÂ’t mean it as a function. I donÂ’t mean that the guys are not doing their jobs. I think that their job description is changing. As the mission gets more complex, weÂ’re adding not only more requirements to the crew, but to the people that are responsible for training the crews. They have to be as sophisticated in laying out the mission training as well as all the hardware and everything else. A lot of times I think we leave the simulator people out of the picture and theyÂ’re sort of technicians that run the machine and the training, but they donÂ’t ever get involved in the flight planning. I think they are short-handed and hard pressed, but somehow we have to include them in the total flight planning.
Duke: As far as the LMS goes, I can count on my hand how many times we changed our training plans. I never did a thing, it was all their “square filling” and. I thought it was good.
Young: I think it was good, too.
Mattingly: I think you have an entirely different problem.
Duke: We do. We donÂ’t have our Flight Plan verified. We have a set of procedures and systems to learn and thatÂ’s it.
Mattingly: If you had as many hours in the LMS as I had in the CMS, my CMS hours would have to be proportioned over 290 hours and your LMS would go about 10.
Duke: Yes. About 10 flying hours, youÂ’re right. I felt redundant many times, as if, man, IÂ’ve done this before. But, to back you up Ken, we do not have the problem with the LMS, since we donÂ’t have the Flight Plan to verify. All we had to do was look at new procedures and attitudes, and you can do that in one session.
Mattingly: Systems briefings - Man, I didnÂ’t have any this time around. The only system I really hit on as a separate thing was the G&N software.
Young: You had it once, but, you never got them logged in your training plan. You were in here on weekends talking to Roger Burke. I count that as training; but, no one else did. Did you log it?
Mattingly: Yes, I did.
Young: You didnÂ’t log it as a system?
Mattingly: Again, thatÂ’s one of those things, and it depends on the crewÂ’s background as to whether itÂ’s profitable or not. Some people would find it useful.
Young: The thing that I think we should emphasize here is that it would have been nice to know about such things as SPS and pressure anomalies prior to flight. The way we were working was that we were having a close-in systemsÂ’ briefings on anomalies. You know when you get close to launch, youÂ’re going to take a little different view. We knew about the digital event timer skipping and we knew about things of that nature. But, we sure didnÂ’t know about the SPS. I wish we had. Before, Charlie Kline had been there on launch day. ThatÂ’s the kind of thing the crew should be cut in on.
Slayton: Don ArabianÂ’s little poop sheet didnÂ’t have that on it? Not that one.
Duke: All in all, except for that one thing, I thought that ArabianÂ’s thing plus Dave BallardÂ’s briefings were adequate.
Slayton: Yes. That one fell through the crack.
Young: Orbital geology - ThatÂ’s a life subject in itself. I canÂ’t say enough good words about El Baz.
Mattingly: I canÂ’t say enough good things about Dick Laidley. Dick Laidley came in and set up a training plan. His first task was to convince me that when you carry a map and pan camera, thereÂ’s some reason why you should spend your time looking out the window, and use the manÂ’s time at all. IÂ’m really glad that he did because the proof of the pudding came a couple of hours ago when I went over and looked at the photographs again this morning. The things that I saw and recognized with my eyes are not on the photographs. I think if I can record those things that it would all have been worth it. The training was set up, again, solely by Dick Laidley. I think itÂ’s a unique thing, as we donÂ’t have a system that handles this very well. We had one man, with the unique capability to take his capability as a pilot, and his ability to fly and recognize what he sees from orbit - that made him especially useful. He gets my vote for being the most organized and most thorough person I worked with in any training capacity anywhere. HeÂ’d set up a trip, run through it, make sure that all the kinks were out of it, heÂ’d fly the things, prepare maps and briefings before you went, and heÂ’d provide for critique. He provided for briefings by local geologists on the area and he proofed the whole thing before he ever wasted one minute of crewÂ’s time on it. And you just canÂ’t say enough for his thorough preparation. At the end, El Baz got back in the loop and Dick didnÂ’t know as much about the Moon as he did about general geology. El Baz on the other hand, probably knows about all there is to know about the Moon on a human basis. The problem is that is a single-point failure, if there ever was one, in the Apollo Program. El Baz canÂ’t afford to sneeze, cough, or anything, because heÂ’s the only person that has expressed any interest in that. Putting it all together, itÂ’s frightening to me that one person is in that position. ItÂ’s fortunate heÂ’s the super kind of guy that you can afford to have in that kind of job. I just donÂ’t think we should be running a program as expensive as this with only one person carrying the ball for such a large portion of the activity. In this case he got wrapped around the axle on Apollo 15 until very late in the game. By the time he gets through reducing the data on 16 and gets through with all that stuff, heÂ’ll probably be late getting back into the Apollo 17 picture. I donÂ’t know what you can do about it, except to recognize that fact. Gary knows how many hours we spent on this stuff, but IÂ’m sure we spent maybe about 50 percent more than is recorded.
Young: But, Ken, let me tell you something. I think youÂ’re the kind of a guy thatÂ’s really interested in that, and IÂ’m not so sure that the 17 guys are going to be that way.
Mattingly: Okay, IÂ’ll buy that. IÂ’m not sure. That may be a personal thing.
Young: He sure is a good man. ThereÂ’s no doubt about that.
Mattingly: Landmark identification training - We spent a lot of time on that at the end. ThatÂ’s one of the things that youÂ’d like to start working on early, but you canÂ’t until the ground track is firm and then you have to wait until you get the maps out and all that sort of thing. It almost by definition comes up in the last month, when everything else is starting to jell. It just seems like it all hits you at one time. I think that the time we spent on it though was really well worthwhile. I was able to operate by looking out the window and seeing things, and knowing where I was without referring to the map. And, I think if youÂ’re going to make any useful visual contribution youÂ’re going to have to have that kind of operation. Your time on target is so short that if you waste your time cross-checking your position against a map and looking back and forth, youÂ’re not going to get around to doing anything except verifying that the pictures on the map are on the right place. That probably goes along with how much emphasis you want to place on visual recognition. If you donÂ’t, IÂ’m not sure that you really need to do those things. They kind of go hand in hand.
SIM bay training - We didnÂ’t do any formal SIM bay training, to speak of. And, again, thatÂ’s because of the background we have, since we were in on the hardware development, on the first SIM package. It was sort of like we started our SIM bay training 2 years ago, and if you picked up the program at a different step, why youÂ’d have to spend some time on it.
Young: I sure thought we were well trained. I donÂ’t know how we could have gotten any more, unless we just trained for another month. We were as close to 100-percent trained as you can get. Maybe we let some things go, but, by golly we were in good shape.
Duke: Lunar surface training one-sixth g and KC-135 - We had about two or three sessions on that and it was good. The Rover seatbelt fit was excellent, and it turned out to be perfect, and then right at the end we had another couple of sessions looking at pallets and things like that and I thought that was good.
Young: I thought it was valuable. I got the idea that the suit would really be very mobile in one-sixth gravity and sure enough it was. I had the idea that there was going to be many times when I was going to be forced to get down close to the ground and pick up something that dropped and sure enough the next minute I dropped the flag staff and a few things like that. I had to pick up rocks and the lunar portable magnetometer reel which was always in the middle of the dirt. Sure enough, based on one-sixth 'g' and the work we did in the KC-135, it was no problem. And the one-'g' walk-throughs, and we had a minimum of those, we had one on the ALSEP and one on the MESA. I think you should do a minimum on the unsuited work, as little as you can to get the idea of what youÂ’re doing, and then plunge into the suited work, for the EVA training.
Duke: At most, two ALSEP exercises was enough to learn the procedures, and I think that after that you were wasting your time as far as effectivity goes, because itÂ’s all that suit that encumbers you. You donÂ’t want to learn enough about it so that you break the training gear. We had EVA training. After EVA training, exercise, and 13 or 14 ALSEP deployments since last June; and, gosh knows how many EVA-2 and -3, and itÂ’s a backbreaker, and you cuss all the time. But, it really paid off. We felt right at home. Everything worked.
Young: We got 350 hours in those pressure suits, according to my records, since the day we started this business. I think it paid off. I think that learning to work in a pressure suit is the most important thing you do in the lunar surface operation, because youÂ’ve got to learn the limitations of the equipment. And, no doubt there were some serious ones with the pressure suits. You canÂ’t move your fingers very well. One thing that was different in one-sixth g was that I ended up on the first EVA leaving a hole in my wrist with a wrist ring. I had some wristlets that I had taken up there with me, but unfortunately, they were in my lower pocket and they were all full of dust. So, I borrowed one or CharlieÂ’s and used that on the other two EVAs, but it just kept getting worse. I just tried to ignore that, but I should have worn a wristlet. I didnÂ’t anticipate and because of the fact that you had to bring the pressure suit up like that (gesture) to do Vmax and youÂ’re doing some motion that I hadnÂ’t anticipated in the one-sixth gravity, with the controller. I guess thatÂ’s just a fact of life. I should have worn wristlets.
Duke: The geology field trips were outstanding. The monthly trips that we did from the time we started on the crew was just right. In 2 or 3 days, you would come up to speed. I thought they were excellent.
Young: Also, it helps you to get a teamwork pattern and I think thatÂ’s real important. You are not very effective unless youÂ’re working as a team up there. I thought Charlie and I did a lot of teamwork when we were working together in our own peculiar ways. And, I thought it worked out real well.
ItÂ’s really important. Otherwise youÂ’re just going to be spinning your wheels on the Moon and that is not where they want you to spin them.
Duke: Once you got there, there really wasnÂ’t going to be the geology to see that you see on the field trips to the San Gabriels or the Sierras. But the Moon has itÂ’s peculiar geology and there really are things to look for. ItÂ’s mostly in descriptive terms on a broad and a narrow scale. By broad, I mean describing mountains, such as Stone Mountain in general describing rocks in detail and estimating. Getting your eyes tuned to estimations of slopes and percentages and sizes and things and the only way you get that is on a field trip.
Young: I know how important that is and it makes the geology guys feel good.
Duke: I thought we did a better job up there than we would have without it.
Young: That Moon is really looking at a geology field trip through 6 feet of dirt and itÂ’s kind of tough. The LBU training was outstanding, once we got that seat cushion put in there where we were elevated up to the same position that you were on the Moon. I had the feeling when I was up a little higher than I was on the seat, but not much, just a little bit. I felt I was maybe riding a little higher on the Moon than I was in the trainer with the yellow seat cushion. The qual unit we had for a week to look at off-nominal deployments was very useful. We had a nominal deployment, itÂ’s good to see those things.
Young: As you know, we had to fix the walking hinges, the wheels, and the pins. ItÂ’s good it wasnÂ’t more serious than that.
Duke: But the saddle came right off.
Young: Yes. The saddle came right off. Of course, we were pretty flat too, when we landed.
Duke: The CSD Chamber - We did one too many on that.
Young: Yes
Duke: Two would be adequate.
Young: And, I hassled with those guys, trying to get this thing brought around to our way of thinking. I think thatÂ’s just too much work for the good you get out of it. ItÂ’s unfortunate. What weÂ’re ending up doing is spending all day long to run an altitude chamber test during which weÂ’d actually be running equipment for 40 minutes, with the pre-breathing; the pressure drops; the added test that they were running (which didnÂ’t have anything to do with what we were doing); the way the ingress and egress; the chamber; and all. We would like to start right out with the prep and post in there, and going to the EVA and working the gear. With the uncomfortable and unfortunate suspension of that rig - the backpack in the chamber - compared to the amount of good you get out of it, youÂ’re really spinning your wheels for a whole day. Since the equipment does work so good, IÂ’m not sure thatÂ’s worth it.
Duke: I think thereÂ’s some good in the two on the PLSS; not in the LM cabin part, but in the other part of the chamber, where you have the PLSSs on and youÂ’re exercising the PLSS modes.
Young: I think it is important to know how to do the PLSS water recharge. You could do that over there in the lab where the guys are showing you exactly whatÂ’s going on. You want to make sure you get your water serviced right or you are not going to do much EVA. But they can certainly do that adequately in the lab, both here and on the flight unit down at the Cape, later on if youÂ’re concerned about it, which we certainly were. Then we first started, my concern was that we never knew if we had the water serviced properly. So, we made a special effort to make sure we did. I donÂ’t think you need to do that in the altitude chamber.
Duke: I donÂ’t think you need to do the Buddy SLSS in the altitude chamber, either.
Young: No, I donÂ’t either.
Duke: And that took one hour to get that thing on and off because of those connectors they had in there. ItÂ’s just not worth the effort.
Young: Contingency EV training, EVT training.
Duke: We did one in the WIF which I thought was a lot of fun.
Young: But one time when we all got in the Command Module there, we had suits and bodies and hoses and I had a feeling that if something had happened, nobody could have gotten in there with us. ItÂ’s kind of crowded thatÂ’s something. I was lying on the bottom of the pile when they closed the hatch. I had the feeling that if anything happened, it was a bad scene.
Duke: Closed the hatch and lost comm or whatever we did that day.
Mattingly: ItÂ’s not clear how much value youÂ’d get out that training, even if you had to do a real EVT. ItÂ’s so much harder to do things in the water tank than it is in real world. But, it does kind of help to keep you from being overly ambitious in your ideas about what it is you might be able to do.
Young: I do think you need preparation for EVT, but you could do it in one g.
Mattingly: ThatÂ’s a one-g thing.
Young: Yes, because you want to make sure you got the thing on, and hooked up right.
Mattingly: IÂ’m not sure that, if a guy has never looked at the EV transfer pad or something, he shouldnÂ’t do that once. But IÂ’m not sure thereÂ’s any reason to do it twice. All the things we did there I can see them coming up. If you ever had to do one I could see you coining up wanting to know why we didnÂ’t do one. Like if you go the outside route with the OPS, you canÂ’t talk a fellow through the things and I think you really need that visual image stuck back in your head somewhere that says "Oh, yeah, I remember now, I gotta go back in this corner" because thereÂ’s no way you can get to the fellow to tell him what he should do.
Young: Well, thereÂ’s some things that we hung up on in the WIF, crawling across the vehicle with all that line on you. It might would have been valuable to have done that if you are going to have those lines hooked onto you, to make sure that you remember how bad it was. You may not get hung up on them in zero g, but, I donÂ’t see any reason why you wouldnÂ’t, you know. Twenty minutes of OPS - You know thatÂ’s a little last ditch thing. You should do that once.
Mattingly: I think itÂ’s worth an afternoon of your time. You should do it earlier in your training, perhaps, than we did. By the time we got around to doing it, it was getting down to the point where we were pressing to do other things that were more important.
Young: EVA prep and post was outstanding.
Duke: We had about three times on each prep and post and really felt at home by the time we left there.
Young: We were able to easily regroup toward sleeping first. Of course, the procedures called up were just right down the wire, and they were good. But, the fact that we had run our prep and post so many times just sort of made them seem natural.
Mattingly: Yes. IÂ’d like to throw in a comment on the same subject, Jim Ellis set up that prep and post training for the in-flight EVA. Again, I think it went well, primarily because I had done it many times. ItÂ’s a pain in the neck to do because itÂ’s not an interesting thing, stowage.
Young: Especially in one g.
Mattingly: But it really paid off.
Young: ItÂ’s painful.
Mattingly: Yeah. IÂ’d like to comment on that chamber thing, too. We ran the umbilical in there and I think it is important that you run the umbilical system in the CSD chamber before you run the altitude chamber at the Cape. And exercise the same system such that you have some idea of what a nominal system performance is like and because thereÂ’s such limited instrumentation that no one except the guys thatÂ’s using the gear is really likely to know whatÂ’s going on. And I thought doing that once was a very worthwhile thing.
Young: Mockups and stowage training.
Duke: Great big plus for Jerry Stoner and Joe Dougherty. Those guys with the our EVA, MESA pallets, and Rovers. We never had any problems.
Young: We sure didnÂ’t when we finally got all the gear together. As usual they are still on Delta right down to the last time we did it.
Duke: I didnÂ’t see a thing on the lunar surface that looked different than the training gear.
Young: Yeah, that in itself is a miracle.
Photography and camera training was adequate.
Duke: I naturally had zero confidence in the camera gear going up there, but it worked like a champ. Those guys had given us little hints that would help on the 16, especially, and we checked every mag and it just worked great.
Mattingly: I think Dick Thompson really did a lot to help, to put all that stuff together. Before, I had never had anyone sit down and go through the malfunction with the camera and take pictures and critique what you did with them and all those things. I think having Dick available to look at all that camera stuff was a big help. He took the time to review each photo we took, and what we could have done better about it, particularly the ones we took in geology training and then sat down and make sure we talked about all of the malfunctions. We went through all the procedures. I thought that was a super thing to do.
Duke: The training Hasselblads were getting a little bad towards the end. It was frustrating. The camera briefings were all good. We had a good deal about how is should operate. The training gear was getting a little rusty by the time we finished with it. And, it left some frustrating moments, and I guess thatÂ’s what led to my lack of confidence. But the flight gear was really good.
Young: You know, where we really let it fall down in the crack was on those bags.
Duke: Lunar surface experimentÂ’s training. We had briefings from all the PIs and had them witness the deployment of their experiments and at the end everybody was happy. I understood how the equipment was supposed to perform and I thought that was good.
Young: If I had to do it over again, IÂ’d put all those cables up in the air so they would not get in the way of the crewmen. I sure didnÂ’t think of it. I know that everybody said you had to step over the cables very carefully and I thought I was doing it, but I sure wasnÂ’t.
Lunar landing, LLTV, LLTVS, LMS - Up until the mission, I would have thought that the LLTV might have been pushing it too far. But, after I flew the thing all the way to the round, I spent the last 200 feet with my head out of the window. LLTV is mandatory as far as I am concerned. ItÂ’s really a nice feeling to have flown a vehicle that responded just like the regular Lunar Module did. I had mixed feelings about it because I thought it was a pretty risky way to train, but, I really think itÂ’s essential. It really helps you get prepared for that last 200 or 300 feet, and the LMS, of course, supplemented it with the L&A. It sure is a good gear.
Young: The planning of training and training program - I thought it was excellent.
Mattingly: There is nobody that looks after all the Command Module experiments. ThereÂ’s nobody that lays them out. ThereÂ’s nobody that puts them together in any kind of a reviewed fashion to see what it is we are trying to do, except the flight crew. There is no one to point out who we should talk to. ThereÂ’s no one to set it up and yet you have to do everything through the backdoor. For instance, take an experiment checklist thatÂ’s 1½ inch thick of experiments. ThereÂ’s nobody thatÂ’s screens how those things are done, how they should be done, what it is youÂ’re trying to do, how you should take them, when they should be done. We‘ve pulled every bit of that stuff out like pulling teeth.
Young: But you made that book up, didnÂ’t you?
Mattingly: I am one of the few people that knows whatÂ’s in that book.
Young: I was continually surprised.
Mattingly: I should be given that book with a set of procedures to learn. Instead, IÂ’m one of the few people that knows what is in there and why itÂ’s there.
Young: ThatÂ’s the only way to make it work, Ken.
Mattingly: But, I donÂ’t think the flight crew has the time to do that stuff. I feel like I put so much more in this thing than you should do.
Young: I know you did.
Mattingly: I started on this thing 1½ years and thatÂ’s the only reason I got there, because I sat down and I talked to everyone of those PIs and every one that had an idea. I had to call them in and I had to look them up and find out what they were trying to do, try to put it in the context of where our spacecraft was going to be and what we could do and how we do it.
Young: What youÂ’re saying is that thereÂ’s probably no single point of contact from S&AD working on it.
Mattingly: The things we got werenÂ’t useful. They werenÂ’t usable. The requirements would come in and theyÂ’d be ding-dong. You look at it and you would say, "Well, this is not going to do anything because I know what the guy wants to do."
All theyÂ’re doing is reading from a mission requirements document, which doesnÂ’t do a doggone thing for you. The whole area of orbital activities has totally been lost. No one is looking after it, except the flight crew. Perhaps the proper approach is to drop it. But I would never recommend that another crew spend the time that I spent on it, and if I were doing It over again, I would not spend the time on it.
Slayton: The problem is that they all assume that all you have to do is turn them on and off at the proper time and thatÂ’s it.
Mattingly: The SIM bay takes practically no training and no effort. We did that. We covered that part of it with minimal effort. ItÂ’s all that other stuff that takes so much of your time and there isnÂ’t anybody to do it.
Speaker: Well, what happens to the ALFED, Skylab contamination, all those?
Mattingly: That dim light photography takes such an inordinate amount of your time, learning to do that stuff. ThereÂ’s nobody to screen some stupid procedure. Somewhere IÂ’ve got a copy of the original procedures we got. They are humanly impossible to do. YouÂ’re handed this stuff, and told, "Here, go do it." Well, IÂ’m the poor cat thatÂ’s responsible. I have to sign off the yellow sheet and say IÂ’ll fly this airplane and IÂ’ll make it work and there is no way. No oneÂ’s looked at it and the final crowning insult is that you go back and you have to argue with some ding-a-ling who doesnÂ’t know a thing about it, about whether this is a reasonable thing to do or not. S&AD and every bit of this has been a filter in the middle that has been a time delay. They should bring a set of experiments that have been thought out and practiced. ThereÂ’s no excuse for anyone ever bringing me an experiment that they havenÂ’t sat down and done themselves, and I donÂ’t think we got a single one that was brought to us that way.
Slayton: Sure, youÂ’re right.
Mattingly: I will say that the guys on the ALFMED put more effort into their experiment and did more work and did more to make our familiarity with it useful than anyone else. But, they are the only ones that volunteered to come forward and work on it. The rest of the stuff we had to go pull out tooth and nail. And in many cases, I think we had a lot better handle on what could be done and should be done. They come in with something that takes a lot of your time. I probably spent 15 hours in the CMS alone on low-light level photography, learning the techniques because youÂ’re sitting here changing shutter speeds, changing the aperture. YouÂ’re sitting there in the dark doing it because we have inadequate gear to properly do the thing. YouÂ’ve got to practice how to do all that stuff in the dark. Some of the stuff I finally had to end up having to write and talk into a voice tape, which I could then turn on and play back to me. ThereÂ’s another thing I had to build. You know operating on the surface that way, if they want you to do something like that on the surface, some surface guy goes up and works out all the things, makes it up and letÂ’s you try it. You kind of work out the rough edges. In this world, the Command Module experiments which I think should be done, thatÂ’s the reason I did it, because I think we can contribute a lot of good stuff. But I just donÂ’t think the flight crew should have to be the experiment interface and all that stuff. I think he should be handed stuff to learn and to do.
Slayton: YouÂ’re right. But, as long as youÂ’re willing to do it and get it done, it isnÂ’t going to get done any other way. The only way you can get it done the way you say it should be done is to throw it right back in their lap, and say, "Give me a package, or forget it."
Mattingly: You may be right.
Young: If it hadnÂ’t been somebody as conscientious and methodical as you are, the stuff wouldnÂ’t have gotten done, Ken.
Mattingly: Well, there is no question in my mind that we wouldnÂ’t have done it.
Slayton: I wish you had bitched about it before the flight instead of after. WeÂ’d probably wouldnÂ’t have flown it.
Mattingly: IÂ’d do it because I think weÂ’ve got an orbital platform up there that should be used. I think we can learn things. I wish I had had the authority to do the experiments that were worth doing and not the ones that arenÂ’t. We threw off a lot of good experiments...
Young: You never get that opportunity.
Mattingly: No, you never do. You have to get the ding-a-ling ones, too. I guess I wouldnÂ’t mind if thought someone had ever put these into the priorities and weighed one against another for the time involved. That never got done, never.
Slayton: Nobody knows what time is involved until you get into the nitty gritty like you did with that one. ThatÂ’s the time you should blow the whistle on it.
Mattingly: But, thereÂ’s no guy to go back to. ThereÂ’s no one that is responsible for all the experiments. You only talk to the guy that is responsible for this experiment. I want to throw this one off; this is a stupid thing to do.
Slayton: There are people that are responsible for all the experiments. ThereÂ’re three of them. One is Tony Calio, one if Jim McDivitt, and one is D. K. Slayton. Between the three of us, weÂ’re responsible for all of them.
Mattingly: I shouldnÂ’t bring my nitty-gritty problems to you guys.
Slayton: ThatÂ’s what we get paid for.
Mattingly: There should be other people that I can interface with.
Slayton: There are people that are responsible, if they are doing their job. You should be raising hell about it, which youÂ’re doing now, but I think itÂ’s kind of after the fact. Maybe it will help Apollo 17. But, I think we could have helped 16 if you would have screamed about it earlier.
Young: We have a quiet period of time there going to the Moon. I thought we were going to sit around and take it easy, but KenÂ’s over there making up his tape so he can do his dim-light photography. And he had to do it. It took about one hour to do that going to the Moon. And, of course thatÂ’s the only way he could have run the dim light in lunar orbit, near as I can figure. Because I donÂ’t know how you work in the dark with a clock.
Mattingly: Let me add one other constructive thing to this, itÂ’s not just complaining. If youÂ’re going to this kind of stuff, once again, there needs to be someone who takes all these things out and finds out where they go into the Flight Plan and says now, hereÂ’s an area that you need to practice. This sequence is important and you should go do that. And lay out a little training package for you. ThatÂ’s something else where there was no such thing. All this stuff just adds up to a lot of extra time youÂ’ve got to spend.
Young: In specific instances, if the mission had been nominal, it was a week before flight that Ken had to delete some stuff from rev 72 and 73 because they were physically impossible to cram into the time to do them. That probably is too late in to be doing that. But when you slip the launch a month youÂ’re going to run into that problem because the stars move and the Sun comes up at a different time, or something.
Slayton: You slip a month but you donÂ’t gain a month. It takes about 6 weeks to recover.
Mattingly: And, we couldnÂ’t have picked a worse time to slip that month.
Young: Well, you would have been worse if it had been later.
Slayton: YouÂ’ve got a point there. My only point is that if you werenÂ’t so conscientious, we wouldnÂ’t have that problem. Some other guys would say to hell with it.
Young: I knew you were having a problem, but I didnÂ’t know how to attack it either. Maybe if you hadnÂ’t been worried about that you would have been worried about something else that you didnÂ’t need to worry about.
Mattingly: That could well be possible.
Young: Charlie was always worried about everything.