Section 27: Human Factors

27.1 Pre-Flight

Young: Pre-flight - Pre-flight Health Stabilization Control Program. Healthy rascals. It worked, didnÂ’t it? Nobody got sick.

Mattingly: It probably is a good idea to hold down the number of people you have contact with the last few weeks but for reasons other than health stabilization.

Young: The healthiest thing is that they are well rested, relaxed, and in a happy frame of mind. IÂ’m just not sure that you get that by being shut up for 3 weeks. Sure you can restrain them all you want to, but I really think itÂ’s important for a guy to leave the office occasionally. I know everybody lives, breathes, and eats the space program, and nobody any more than I do. That month or so before launch where things were coming thick and fast, people are always running in and saying, did you hear we canÂ’t service the RCS, or we are unable to fix this and we are going to have to take it apart and put it back together again. The crew needs to be in a relaxed frame of mind. TheyÂ’re better mentally suited to approach the program if they get to see their wives, sweethearts, or whatever at night. I think that is very important. I donÂ’t know how to put a number on it. Charlie and I were very fortunate in that our wives were there. I think it is important to a guy. I donÂ’t know how it is going to be on Skylab, but IÂ’m sure thatÂ’s going to cause them some problems there. Maybe necessary, but they are going to be there.

Mattingly: All the stabilization program does is it takes care of the clinical thing, but it doesnÂ’t put the guys in an operational mode.

Young: It doesnÂ’t keep in a frame of mind that you want to be in.

Mattingly: You really need to have another outlet.

Young: Medical care - I thought there were a couple of occasions where the medical people unnecessarily mentally torqued the pilots all out of proportion to the amount of physical good they were doing. My personal opinion of that is, unless the crewman obviously has a medical problem in which case he might or might not go see the flight surgeon, I donÂ’t believe he should be bothered with that kind of mental stress close into launch. I think that is a real problem. If they are concerned about the morale of the guys that are going to fly the mission, how well he feels and how well they are able to do that, we ought to see if we can handle it in a little better manner than it was handled on the Apollo 16 mission. ThatÂ’s all IÂ’m going to say about it.

Mattingly: It seems to me that there is a basic conflict of interest in taking care of the crew - trying to make him best suited to go fly his mission and doing research. You put the flight surgeon in the middle. HeÂ’s trying to be a personal physician to help you. HeÂ’s also trying to get research data. I think thatÂ’s an incompatible set of circumstances for anyone to be put in. I donÂ’t think any one person is capable of handling both jobs. At some point you have to decide which is your first choice. I think there ought to be a Flight Surgeon, who is unrelated to the research end of this business, just exactly that. HeÂ’s a Flight Surgeon that we could go and talk to, and if you got something that bothers you, go see him and tell him about it. I personally feel very reluctant to do so. Before flight I didnÂ’t have any problems, but if I had, I felt like I really didnÂ’t dare go tell anybody that I had a headache, or that I had something that was bothering me. Unless I was sure it was something I couldnÂ’t handle, because that opens all kinds of extra problems that youÂ’d just as soon not add to your pre-flight workload. IÂ’d. sure like to see an independent Flight Surgeon, who is just interested in taking care of me, and keeping me, and keeping me healthy.

All of these things, which may have some medical return, just have to be weighed against the total package of how good can I do my job. I looked at it as pre-flight harassment. I know that the people didnÂ’t mean it to be that way.

Young: Time for Exercise, Rest and Sleep. I think we had an adequate amount. We made a point of trying to limit it to 8 hours a day the last couple of weeks. I know we didnÂ’t do it, but we were trying to. We made time for exercise, and I think thatÂ’s really important. I sure recommend that a month prior to launch the crews train this way.

I feel like some of the pre-flight and post-flight medical type things are not necessary for an operational mission. The retinal photography, for example, that was the most painful experience that I ever had in my whole life. I donÂ’t think anybody ought to do that to a guyÂ’s eyeballs, unless somebody can show that itÂ’s essential that you do that. They wouldnÂ’t run that procedure on the spacecraft controls. Yet they thought nothing of running it on a flight crew. The vestibular function thing, where youÂ’re standing on rails, is clearly a learning curve. I got better at it all the time. Post-flight, IÂ’ll admit that my ankles were weak, and my ear was plugged. I couldnÂ’t stand up very good, but that didnÂ’t seem to make any difference to them. They still wanted me to run the vestibular test. It is a very tiring test. I donÂ’t think that the data that you get off of something like that is going to prove anything. I really donÂ’t. We already have experience that shows that guys recover from spaceflight. I donÂ’t think we ought to fill unnecessary squares.

The physical examination part of the pre-flight medicals, in every instance, amounted to about a half an hour of the examination over a half dayÂ’s time. I donÂ’t know what weÂ’re proving, to put the crew through that stuff close in. I thought the whole business was a very unpleasant experience. For example, we got five X-rays to tell how a guyÂ’s heart is doing pre-flight and five more post-flight. I think thatÂ’s going a little far on the X-ray business. IÂ’m not qualified to say whether it is or not, but I just think thatÂ’s too many X-rays for a crewman.

Mattingly: IÂ’d like to say one thing about it though. If you have to do all the things that we did, I think Chuck Lapinta and the guys that put it together really bent over backwards to make the maximum use of the time we put in.

Young: Well, I do too.

Mattingly: I never ended up wasting any of my time, as far as sitting around.

Young: And when we got close into the flight like, we had to do it on weekends. I donÂ’t think we ought to have to do that.

Duke: It happened that minus 15 fell on a weekend.

Young: Well. Make it F minus 16 or F minus 12.

Okay, I guess weÂ’ve talked about eating habits and the amount of food consumption from F minus 5 to F minus zero. I donÂ’t think we ought to have to worry about that.

Slayton: A comment on those meals?

Duke: IÂ’d rather have LouÂ’s cooking, but it was edible.

Young: It was edible? I still donÂ’t think the crew ought to be constrained to eat that kind of stuff on an operational mission close into launch.

Mattingly: One time I didnÂ’t get anything to eat for launch. It was a big deal to go and arrange to eat the special and I wasnÂ’t where they thought I was going to be, instead of grabbing a candy bar and things out of the machine - youÂ’re not supposed to do that. I just donÂ’t think thatÂ’s the way to operate.

Young: ItÂ’s not low residue food; thatÂ’s for sure. If it is, thereÂ’s something that we donÂ’t understand about that diet.

Duke: To me, I think the most important thing here is that that kind of diet changes your eating habits in food intake. ThatÂ’s probably going to materially affect something downstream. And in KenÂ’s case, it did.

27.2 Flight

Young: Flight, Appetite and Food Preference. Boy, there sure was a lot of food on there.

Duke: I think we did a good job or tried to do a good job of eating - keeping well fed. You were hungry - at least I was hungry when the meals came around, but after eating a couple of the packages I felt full and, if I had to really complete a whole meal, I would feel stuffed because there was just a lot of food.

Young: Yes, I donÂ’t think our appetite in flight changed any. I think we were all concerned about keeping hydrated; we kept drinking every chance we got. One of the reasons you get dehydrated, I think, is that on a spacecraft with that low humidity when you sweat a lot you end up waking up in the middle of the night with your mouth being dry and you want to get a drink of water. I think a conscious effort is needed to keep hydrated and I think we were able to do that. I think itÂ’s important for that seven-hour lunar surface operation that you be able to get some liquid inside of you because you do sweat a lot during that thing. I think maybe one of the factors that we were better hydrated is the fact that, in our prep and post donning, we used the LCG water cooling instead of air cooling so we had long periods of time where we didnÂ’t sweat very much while doing a lot of work in our pressure suit. We would have sweated had we used air cooling alone during the prep and post. Also, that would have gotten us behind a power curve and caused us a little heat stowage there just the same as it does on Earth. I guess that IÂ’m not convinced that we donÂ’t have too many citrus drinks on board. At least once every three days I have gas pains that I couldnÂ’t believe. And I donÂ’t know what caused them. IÂ’m sure it had something to do with the food and it was a source of discomfort to me. I never knew when they were going to come back and I never knew when they were going to go. I didnÂ’t say anything about them because I donÂ’t think itÂ’s any big deal, but itÂ’s got something to do with the food. And that sort of kills your taste for eating the stuff. And I can attest for the fact that my fellow crewmembers had gas pains or something like it, too.

Mattingly: I donÂ’t think I had as much trouble as you.

Duke: Me either.

Mattingly: But it sure wasnÂ’t my mode of operation.

Young: No, it sure wasnÂ’t normal.

Duke: Well, we swallowed a lot of air in the drink bags and in the food bags.

Young: Do you think it was due to the food and all those citrus drinks we drank. I ,just totalled up my citrus drinks - 27 citrus drinks in eleven days at 7 ounces a clip; thatÂ’s a lot of citrus. ThatÂ’s about like 27 times as much as I drink in any other normal 11-day period.

Duke: See, there again is a personal preference, John. I would rather drink the orange juice than drink the coffee. And if I had to drink 27 gallons or whatever you logged up of coffee, IÂ’d be vomiting.

Young: IÂ’m with you - IÂ’m with you.

Duke: So they ought to get something else. Maybe we ought to have a Coca-Cola dispenser or something to get you a little variety.

Mattingly: Let me ask you a question - that we talked about in the flight. John has done this very same mission before without the same response. That tells me that youÂ’ve got to look for something different between Apollo 10 and Apollo 16.

Young: We sure didnÂ’t have it on Apollo 10.

Mattingly: And itÂ’s not gas in the water because we had that sort of stuff. So, we ought to be looking at something different.

Young: We had at least three to four times the gas than on Apollo 10. Our water bags were half full of gas.

Mattingly: And I thought our gas separator was doing a super job.

Young: It was.

Mattingly: I thought we were in good shape. So I think youÂ’ve got to focus your attention on things that are different between what we did then and now. The most likely thing is the food somewhere. I thought the food was good. Rita did an astounding job.

Young: Yes, Rita said it would be the dried fruits - well we had dried fruits on Apollo 10 and that didnÂ’t bother us.

Mattingly: I didnÂ’t eat very many dried fruits because I thought it might aggravate the situation. I left those out.

Young: Well, I ate them sometimes and sometimes I didnÂ’t.

Mattingly: The size of the food portions, I thought the portions were fine. You didnÂ’t have to start on something if you didnÂ’t want it. The main thing is that some of those things, like the tuna salad spreads and all those things that they packed in larger cans; the problem that you got with those things is once you started on one of those you got to finish it some way and the most convenient way is to eat it. But I ate a lot of things, I didnÂ’t really want just because it seemed to me like a better way of discarding it than it was to try to figure out how to keep the thing from sitting in that trash can and smelling things up. ThatÂ’s particularly true of the tin can kind of things. A food bag you can put a germicide tablet in and put it away with partial meals in it. But, those darn tin cans youÂ’re committed to finish it when you open it, I think. You donÂ’t have a good way - like you take the peaches youÂ’ve got to eat all of the syrup and everything that goes with it because otherwise itÂ’s going to be flopping around. I donÂ’t think we have an adequate way to handle the residue of the tin cans.

Young: Right, not on an Apollo flight. I guess theyÂ’ve got a thing they throw it all down on the Skylab.

Slayton: Yes, theyÂ’ve got a tank.

Mattingly: Boy, it had never better clog up.

Young: IÂ’ll tell you one thing. I donÂ’t know if the tank is going to be big enough for two 28Â’s and a 56, or whatever.

Mattingly: I also found out that - I donÂ’t know if itÂ’s true - but I was told that those cans are pressurized at l4 psi.

Young: No wonder they squirted out.

Mattingly: No wonder they squirted out when you opened them.

Young: WeÂ’ve got pictures of opening the can right up to the tunnel, beautiful.

Mattingly: I thought maybe it was because we were running our cabin at 4.8 instead of 5 and maybe it was that. And she said, oh no, those were 15 psi. No wonder - I wouldnÂ’t have, opened the first one if I had known that.

Young: Well, when you open a can of peaches the juice leaves the can and crawls up your arm. Charlie said it was a learning curve until he tried it.

Duke: We opened two of them - didnÂ’t have very much luck with either of them. You know, Ken, the individual food portions were good. The total meal though, I thought was too big.

Mattingly: Yes, I agree with you.

Young: We only had two meals a day in the Lunar Module and we ate everything except for a couple of wet packs. We ate everything in there and were hungry too. I think it was probably because we were working hard.

Mattingly: I canÂ’t get hungry without exercise and there is no way you can get enough exercise in the spacecraft to be very hungry.

Duke: I thought the wet packs were the best.

Mattingly: What do you mean the wet packs - you mean -

Duke: Turkey and gravy and things like that.

Mattingly: You really need some way to heat those things. Nothing is as unappetizing to me as a hot dog that was cooked 2 weeks ago and was covered with cold -

Duke: I didnÂ’t say the hot dog. I didnÂ’t like those.

Mattingly: The hamburger was in the same boat. There was also something else I got out that was the same thing. It was all cold gravy that had been laying around in the skillet for 2 weeks and I thought it would have been really good if I could have heated it. But in its present form, I only ate it because it was the only solid thing around. But, I felt like it was really unappetizing.

Young: Food Preparation and Consumption, ProgramÂ’s Deviation from Program Menu and Eat Periods. We had several of those. There were a couple of times when we actually missed a whole meal because we were so busy, a couple of times in lunar orbit and, of course, Charlie and I missed one on descent because we were 6 hours late. ItÂ’s just unavoidable; you canÂ’t stop when youÂ’re in the middle of something. Operationally youÂ’re up against it and it didnÂ’t seem to bother us any. We just took the next eat period and went on with it. We got them all logged.

Food Preparation and Consumption, Programs with Rehydration (mixing; gas). We never had enough time to allow the things to sit around. I mean, it says on the package 15, 20 minutes. We constituted them and ate them right on the spot. And we never had time and I donÂ’t think we were getting the kind of mixing that we should have had because I ate a lot of food that didnÂ’t have any hydration in it at all. But you canÂ’t stop to worry about that.

Mattingly: There is something wrong when you have a 30-minute eat period and the first bag you come to is "wait 20 minutes."

Young: Yes, you canÂ’t do it.

Mattingly: YouÂ’re sort of behind.

Young: Food Temperature - I think the hot water really made a lot of difference in the taste.

Mattingly: ThatÂ’s good, it really is.

Young: Effect of Water Flavor and Gas Content of Food. I donÂ’t think that has any effect on it. Use of the spoon bowl package - that was okay until such times you got your soup too soupy.

Mattingly: There were two items I have - I donÂ’t know what it is but they have an extra amount of surface tension or something. One was that lobster bisque and the other was that tomato soup and they were both very thin and they would crawl right up the side of the package and onto anything they could find. There is a learning curve to that. I found out that your natural reaction - when you open the bag and it starts to squeeze out - your natural reaction is to close it and thatÂ’s exactly the wrong thing to do because It gives it extra surface to climb on. And as soon as it starts to squeeze out if you pull it apart itÂ’ll just climb up to the rim and stop and then you can eat it out with a spoon and it all works fine. But, your first inclination is exactly wrong.

Young: Okay, on those really soupy ones, I cut a hole in the side of the package and sucked it out the side instead of trying it with the spoon because thatÂ’s a manual dexterity test. Sure you can balance stuff on your spoon and it doesnÂ’t get off but that kind of stuff is too time consuming to suit me. Using the spoons as long as youÂ’ve got something you can put on there is okay. Opening of cans -

Duke: I liked the spoon idea.

Young: I liked it too, Charlie, except when the thing was too soupy. I saw you over there with that stuff crawling up your spoon, didnÂ’t you notice that?

Duke: At times.

Young: It worked okay. The point is it just slowed you down. Opening the cans - donÂ’t, especially the Skylab cans packed at 15 psi.

Duke: Well, tuna salad is okay.

Young: Tuna salad?

Duke: Stuff like that. But if itÂ’s got any juice in it, donÂ’t open it.

Mattingly: Well, let me say one thing about the cans. YouÂ’ve got a real disposal problem. You got pieces of metal with sharp edges on it floating around the cockpit and no adequate way to dispose of it.

Young: Yes, you canÂ’t mash them; you canÂ’t flatten them.

Mattingly: You just got to be careful of that stuff.

Young: Consumption From Cans - well, things like pudding and things that didnÂ’t leak all over the place werenÂ’t any problem.

Duke: I had vanilla pudding that I thought was good. Butterscotch was good.

Young: Yes, thatÂ’s good stuff. ItÂ’s off the shelf from the ground.

Mattingly: So were the spreads and things like that.

Young: But the liquids were pretty tough.

Mattingly: And this discussion does not include the Skylab food cans. ThatÂ’s a separate subject.

Young: Food Bar Usage During EVA periods - Charlie didnÂ’t get around to that.

Duke: I was going to but after that orbital shock with the juice bag and the food bar I decided to forego the food bar. All I needed was some beverage. And thatÂ’s true. You really donÂ’t need the food bar. And it gets messy when it gets soggy.

Young: Function of the Germicide Tablet Pouch. DUF They function okay.

Young: Extent of Use of Germicidal Tablets - we put them in everything except maybe I didnÂ’t put them in mine the last 24 hours.

Mattingly: The germicide tablet is hard to put in one of those tin cans. You have to go wrap the tin can in something now to keep the tablet in there.

Young: Undesirable Odors. I donÂ’t think we noticed any from food. Quantity of Food Eaten on the Lunar Surface - almost all of it. ItÂ’s in the log. Quantity of Food Discarded on the Lunar Surface Prior to Lift-Off.

Duke: We didnÂ’t discard anything.

Young: Skylab Fecal Container.

Mattingly: We already discussed that.

Young: We talked about that. Water, chlorine taste and odor - I didnÂ’t notice any chlorine taste.

Mattingly: Not a bit, and I drank some water right after chlorinating it too.

Young: You did?

Mattingly: Yes. I wanted to see if it was going to have a taste.

Young: Iodine Taste and Odor - I donÂ’t think I noticed any. Physical Discomfort - I donÂ’t think we had much gas in the water and neither did you. I already remarked that, when we packed a bag in the lunar module, we had to sit around till the water gas got out of it. I estimated the top 20 percent of the bag would be gas which you could vent right out. Gas/Water Separator - we already commented on those. Intensity of Thirst During Mission.

Mattingly: I felt like having a drink about the same frequency as I do on the ground.

Duke: One thing I did that I never do at home is IÂ’d wake up and IÂ’d want a drink. We had our water bags with us. I usually had one water bag throughout the night - 7 ounces.

Young: Same here, and I think thatÂ’s due to the air cooling system and the dry humidity. ItÂ’s like sleeping in the desert. You know when you wake up in the middle of the night in the desert youÂ’re kind of dry.

Mattingly: LetÂ’s finish that Skylab food. We didnÂ’t really ever talk about that.

Young: Okay. Why donÂ’t you talk about that.

Mattingly: The drink bags were the little accordion things that unfold and they looked like they were pretty neat little items. They folded up in small packages when you started. And I think we all planned to use those as our water container. WeÂ’d have a measured amount and something to use. The little valve on that thing is really nice because you can pull it open with your teeth, drink from it, and when youÂ’re through, you can push it closed. It had one drawback in that all three of them leaked. They all leaked around the valve. We had the same failure mode on all three of those bags. Other than that, I thought the bags worked pretty good. If you could fix that valve, I think this is an improvement over the rollup bags. I always had trouble with the rollup drink bags. I never could stop once I started taking a drink. I could never pinch it off enough to keep it from seeping out once you opened up the crew port. This bag looked like it would do that, if it doesn't leak. What did we have in those cans? Chicken and rice or something, some such thing in that. I thought that was a giant step backwards.

Duke: Yes, I donÂ’t understand why youÂ’d want to bother putting chicken and rice in a can. Why not just put it in the feed bag like you do in the Apollo Program.

Slayton: They have everything in a can on Skylab.

Young: Do they have a trash masher on there? They don't!

Mattingly: I donÂ’t understand carrying a tin can just for the sake of carrying a tin can.

Young: It allows them to pre-package longer in advance. ThatÂ’s what it does for them.

Mattingly: How?

Young: Why donÂ’t they take it out of the tin cans before they fly it.

Slayton: You can put the supplies on board 6 months ahead of launch.

Mattingly: The thing that surprised me is that the bags - and I understand it wasnÂ’t just ours - but inside of that tin can is a plastic bag just like the one we have right now. ItÂ’s not clear to me what the tin can did for us except to provide another waste management problem.

Young: Yes, I didnÂ’t know what to do with it.

Mattingly: ItÂ’s hard to handle, it was hard to throw away. ItÂ’s a hazard if you get

Young: Maybe this really isnÂ’t apropos. Maybe the Skylab guys know how to handle the tin cans.

Mattingly: Okay. Maybe they do, but these were problems that I had with it. Fredo cut himself nice and clean just like a razor on one on the ground.

Young: Yeah, TheyÂ’re really sharp,

Mattingly: Those are really sharp edges. And I think

Young: There is no methyolate in the medical kit, either.

Mattingly: And when you get through, what you have is a plastic bag just like we have now in a much less useful shape, because thereÂ’s no zipper top. You canÂ’t open it out. Now to use your spoon to get food out, first you take this plastic out of the tin can and you put it on the foodport, hydrate it, just like we do our present bag, and then you squeeze it and squish it. When you are ready to eat it, there is no good way to handle this thing. You have to take your scissors and cut the top off of this thing. If you have any fluid in this bag, surface tension is going to pull that stuff right up around the top and every time you stick your spoon in there, youÂ’re shaking stuff off it. It just seemed to me like it was a step backwards from the spoon bowls that we had before. Maybe I donÂ’t understand the problem, but thatÂ’s the way I saw it.

Duke: The soup bags, the plastic bags, that are normally in the cans - you just donÂ’t cut the plastic off the fill valve and fill it. They have a little stopper in there and you have to take a sharp edge and peel it, like you do an orange, to get the cap off. Then you work your fingernail under there to get the stopper out so you can put it on the fill port. It is a heck of a lot easier to have the old style where you cut the plastic off and stick it on than this new improved bag. Another thing on these drink bags, the accordion bags are great but it has a stopper in the fill plug and when you pull the stopper out - I ended up opening the fill port and all of that powder came floating right out the valve.

Young: Yes. I think thatÂ’s a real problem.

Mattingly: Yes.

Young: How do you avoid doing that.

Mattingly: You pull the valve out to close it. DUI No, you push it in to close it, but thereÂ’s a stopper in it, SO you canÂ’t get it on the fill port. When you pull that stopper out, what happened to me is that the valve opened and the stopper came out and I had enough pressure on it so all the orange juice powder or whatever it is just went pshew! - just like a talcum powder spray in the cockpit and we filled up with orange juice powder.

Young: That orange juice was really out to get you this time. Charlie says, "here, let me show you what itÂ’s doing" and he comes over to me and goes pshew!

Mattingly: There was another problem with the Skylab food bag in the can. After you got through with all these things, now you go to put your germicide tablet in there and thereÂ’s no way to seal the bag up when you get through. Because you had to cut into the bag to get into it.

Duke: And it leaves a big hole in the top.

Young: Yes. It left a big hole in there and now you still donÂ’t know where to put the germicide.

Mattingly: You put it in there but it comes out all over.

Young: Maybe theyÂ’re not

Duke: I really think those guys are going to have a lot of trouble.

Young: I do too. Is there a vacuum on the other side of that air lock?

Mattingly: The whole thing looks like it was organized by General Jubilation T. Cornpone, the advance to the rear.

Duke: That meal was a little disappointing to us because it really gave...

Mattingly: I think we photographed a lot of it. IÂ’m not sure we took enough footage on it to show what we did. We had hoped to photograph a normal meal and that one got cancelled with the ISS light or something.

Young: We didnÂ’t have any chlorine taste in the water. We didnÂ’t have any iodine taste, I didnÂ’t notice any.

Speaker: Was there iodine in the LM water?

Young: ItÂ’s good stuff if there is.

Duke: It didnÂ’t taste like it.

Mattingly: You guys commented on how good the LM water tasted.

Young: Good and cold. Physical discomfort - I didnÂ’t notice any gas in the water - to amount to anything other than what weÂ’ve mentioned. Gas/water separator - worked like a champ. We talked about the intensity of thirst.

Work, Rest, Sleep. Difficulty in going to sleep - Charlie, did you have any?

Duke: The first night I felt like I catnapped all night long. After that I was okay. I think that was just getting acclimatized.

Young: I slept like a log.

Duke: We reported all this sleep stuff.

Young: Yes, we reported it all.

Duke: The flight docÂ’s already got that.

Mattingly: I donÂ’t think I slept much the whole mission.

Young: You just werenÂ’t that tired. He was only 5 beats down on his post flight heart energy test. You never do sleep much.

Mattingly: I get about 6 hours but generally itÂ’s a solid 6 hours. I think, without physical exertion, my body just didnÂ’t believe it was time to go to bed. I just sat there and lay wide awake and I tried everything.

Duke: I tell you, a couple of the sleep periods I was tired. I was looking forward to them when we got to them, I did go right to sleep. It was refreshing to have that to look forward to.

Young: Disturbances. Charlie has commented on the disturbance - couple of master alarms on the lunar surface and a break lock.

Duke: YouÂ’ve also commented that, any time somebody else moves around with a light on, youÂ’re going to wake the other two guys up.

Young: Exercise. I think we did our exercise periods.

Mattingly: We skipped one trans-lunar and skipped one trans-earth. ThatÂ’s because we had operational things that we were doing. We were probably getting exercise anyway. Stowing the suits is more exercise than you get from the Exer-genie.

Young: ThatÂ’s a pretty interesting exercise.

Mattingly: WeÂ’ve already talked about the exercise.

Young: We werenÂ’t sore.

Mattingly: I got sore on one of those periods.

Duke: Oh, did you?

Mattingly: Yes.

Young: In Flight Oral Hygiene, Mouth Discomfort -

Duke: None.

Young: Brushing Frequency, adequate.

Duke: I tried about twice a day but I never did average that.

Mattingly: The tooth paste is also packed in l4 psi.

Young: You open the top and out it comes.

Mattingly: The first time I opened it we could have brushed the teeth on an elephant.

Duke: Out it comes - and out it comes - and out it comes.

Young: Toothbrush Adequacy; itÂ’s adequate.

Duke: We didnÂ’t use the dental floss.

Young: Sunglasses or Other Eye Protective Devices.

Mattingly: I used the sunglasses.

Duke: Yes, thatÂ’s mandatory.

Young: Yes, I think theyÂ’re mandatory. The first couple of revs in Moon orbit my eyes hurt and I got a headache from looking out the window; I know that is what it was.

Mattingly: My eyes were very very tired the first 2 days. I could really feel them being sore. That was the only time I felt like I was ready for the sleep period, not because of sleep but I just wanted to turn my eyes off for a while.

Young: YouÂ’re gonna have to look in the vicinity of the Sun, and right at the sub-solar point on the Moon. You really need something to keep your eyeballs from burning out, because it sure is bright.

Visibility of Instruments and Controls Inside the Spacecraft with Sunglasses On.

Duke: You correct that by taking your sunglasses off.

Young: Unusual or Unexpected Visual Phenomena or Problems Experienced.

Duke: ThatÂ’s all covered under the ALFMED.

Young: We didnÂ’t have any rapid accelerations or decelerations that would cause your eyes to uncage except for the splashdown.

Duke: The next one up weÂ’ve already commented on; the Distance Judgment versus Aerial Perspective During EVA. Looked to me just like a desert scene. You think that the mountains are closer than they really are.

Young: Sure.

Duke: Stone Mountain looked a lot closer than it was.

Young: That isnÂ’t an unusual thing.

Duke: No, but it happens up there just like it does on Earth. I might comment on the outer visor. When I first got out during the beginning of the EVA I wanted my visor down even in the shade. But after weÂ’d. been out in the sunlight during the whole EVA and came back into the shadow, on the closeout, I wanted my visor up because I didnÂ’t feel like I could see well enough.

Mattingly: After the second day I finally got to where I could leave my sunglasses off when I was looking outside and that is a much more desirable mode to operate in if you can. But somehow youÂ’ve got to get your eyeballs used to all that intensity.

Young: The Medical Kit, Helmet/Visor Reflections - Yes, there are helmet/visor reflections but I thought it was at least a thousand percent better than it was on our training visors. DidnÂ’t you, Charlie?

Duke: Yes, even. though I had a scratchy one by EVA-3.

Young: Medical Kit - We pulled the strap off the medical kit in the CSM because all the biomedical sensors were on it. There were a couple times there when I didnÂ’t think we were going to get it out to change biomedical sensors. ItÂ’s packed full of medication. I canÂ’t believe that anybody would ever use all that medication.

Duke: Plenty of stuff there.

Young: There sure is.

Mattingly: I guess it would be better to package all the biomedical sensors and stuff all in one place instead of throughout the medical kit, just one package. The thing I thought was missing that belongs in there is some soap. I canÂ’t believe that medical kits that are designed to keep you healthy - give you injections to take for everything from heart attacks to gas warfare - and thereÂ’s not one little bar of soap that you can clean up with.

Slayton: I thought we had soap in there.

Mattingly: No, I remembered it right after lift-off that that was one of the things the Apollo 15 guys said you ought to have and I had written it on my list of things to do and thatÂ’s the one that got away from me. But I really donÂ’t think my PPK is the place to carry a bar of soap. If the medical world wants to keep me healthy, they ought to give me a bar of soap. You really need it.

Slayton: IÂ’m not sure it ought to be in the medical kit, though.

Mattingly: Okay, I shouldnÂ’t comment on where it ought to be but the thing that torques me is that here are things to cure me once I get sick and thereÂ’s nothing here to keep me from getting sick.

Young: Yes, thereÂ’s no way you can get clean either. You ought to be able to wash your hands, for example, when you get through going to the bathroom because you may be right in the middle of an eat period but - you put water on your hands and wipe them off and I never felt that the hygiene was the best in the whole world.

Slayton: How about the towels, that didnÂ’t show up here any place?

Young: Well, we had towels. What you do is wet the towel with water and wipe your face off, but that really doesnÂ’t get the dirt off.

Duke: And they were too small, not bigger than a dollar - smaller than a dollar.

Mattingly: I thought they were a waste of time.

Duke: The towels were good - the big ones, you know, with the red, white and blue stripes - were great.

Young: Wet wipes, according to something I read, youÂ’re only supposed to use one of those a day because of the poison in them. Did you ever read that? (Laughter) I was hoping for the best, Charlie.

Mattingly: The whole business of hygiene - all I figure we did was disprove all the theories about the importance of personal hygiene because we had absolutely none.

Young: Yes, pretty dirty I thought. Even though - at least once or twice a day weÂ’d take a towel, wet it down and wipe ourselves up as best we could.

Young: Housekeeping.

Duke: Learning curve.

Mattingly: Yes, thatÂ’s very important.

Young: Shaving.

Duke: The Wilkerson one we started with - I had a half of shave with it and there was no way to get the blade clean and it just went belly up on me.

Mattingly: I tried the windup and that worked great until you missed a day. If you miss a day, youÂ’ve had it because that thing feels like its pulling the whiskers out instead of shaving them of f.

Young: The Wilkerson worked okay if youÂ’d taken that cream and made a lather out of it.

Duke: Well, you looked pretty bloody, John, the time you used it.

Young: I really did. I used it. MAPINGLY You wouldnÂ’t have sold any blades, John.

Young: I really didnÂ’t get too good, did I? Pretty bad. The day before launch, I used the Wilkerson. It was about four or five days growth maybe. Really bad.

Mattingly: I got a data point on the mechanical guy when you got back, itÂ’d been about three days since weÂ’ve shaved. I was shaving and I missed one day and I went back to get it the next day and once it got a head start, that mechanical guy just couldnÂ’t hack it from there. He just gave up. We even tried cleaning it out.

Duke: Yes, I did clean it out.

Mattingly: We cleaned that all out. You really need a plain old everyday razor. Somehow we ought to be able to find a way to let you have a razor that you can open up like any other safety razor and clan off. ThatÂ’s the big problem you get that thing all crudded up and thatÂ’s it. There must be some war to do that without producing a free floating hazard.

Young: Dust, Density and Effects on Visual and Respiratory Systems.

Duke: It was dusty when we got back in orbit, weÂ’ve already commented on all that stuff.

Young: I donÂ’t think it was any problem.

Duke: I got one piece in my eye - a little something when I was over in the LM that gave me problems, but that was okay; it cleared right up, watered it out.

Young: Radiation Dosimeter. Everybody wore their PRDs, except me, who forgot and left it in his pressure suit and sealed it up. But I wore it up until time we got back to suit stowage.

Mattingly: Yes, I threw my personal dosimeter away when I changed skivvies. We just never thought about it.

Young: Radiation Survey Meter. We didnÂ’t use it. Personal Hygiene. Adequacy of Wipes, Size and Numbers.

Duke: The one in the food kit is almost worthless.

Young: Yes, they assume you donÂ’t get any food on you. The Adequacy of Tissue Size and Numbers. We certainly had enough, and I sure thought we werenÂ’t, but IÂ’m sure thereÂ’s some left over.

Mattingly: There were only two boxes left, and we were into both of them.

Duke: Yes.

Mattingly: We didnÂ’t have any extra.

Duke: I donÂ’t think there was any extra, quite frankly. MAINGLY All you had to do is have a few more trips to the head, weÂ’d have been out.

Young: Yes, I think we would have been.

Duke: I think like John. Those tissue boxes should have a snap on the bottom of them, so you can snap 'em to the LEB and pull tissues out. We were constantly looking for tissue dispensers.

Young: At very embarrassing times.

Mattingly: Yes, itÂ’s a two-handed operation to get a tissue out, when you ought to just reach up and pull it out. Cause they got a piece of Velcro there which will hold it, if you just want to set the box there. But itÂ’s on a side that if you open it, the Velcro isnÂ’t available to set it on.

Young: And invariably -

Mattingly: You canÂ’t yank it.

Young: When you need one, is when your urine system is leaking all over you, or your food bag is broken, and itÂ’s running all over you, and you got to hold it close with one hand, and wipe it up with the other.

Mattingly: And it takes two hands to get a tissue. So if you didnÂ’t get one before you need it, youÂ’re in trouble. I really think thatÂ’s one that they ought to put a snap on the bottom of the bag.

Young: Potable Water Used for Personal Hygiene. WeÂ’d wet the towels and wipe up. But that sure is not the way to get clean. All that does is smear the dirt around.