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Post-EVA-1 Activities Mattingly About the Landing Site

 

Debrief and Goodnight

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1997 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Except where noted, audio clips by Roland Speth.
Last revised 12 May 2014.

 

MP3 Audio Clip ( 1 min 20 sec )

128:12:31 Young: Okay, Houston. We're ready for the 'EVA debriefing with Houston' (which is listed on Surface 3-5), and lift-off time...I guess we can take that, too, if we can find the Data Book.

128:12:41 England: Okay, fine. Why don't we just give you all the housekeeping right now? (Pause) Charlie, when you're ready...

128:12:49 Duke: Okay.

128:12:50 England: ...we can give you the battery management (on Surface 3-3 that Houston asked the crew to delay at 127:00:43).

128:12:59 Young: Okay, go ahead with that. Charlie's all ears.

128:13:02 England: Okay. If you'll read us the ED voltages.

128:13:13 Duke: It's amazing, but they're still 37 volts.

128:13:16 England: Well, that's encouraging. Okay, we'd like the Lunar Battery to the CDR's Bus. Battery 3 and 4, Off. Batteries 1 and 2, On.

128:13:28 Duke: Okay. I won't do it in that sequence, but I know what you want.

128:13:34 England: Okay, fine. Okay, the battery management on (Surface) 3-3 will get you there. (Pause)

[Jones - "I gather that there was a (specific) sequence to go through to make sure there was still power in things as you were switching batteries?"]

[Duke - "There must have been something like that that they wanted me to do. If you turn batteries 3 and 4 off before you turn batteries 1 and 2 on, you were going to be without any power. Anyway, I followed the procedure because I knew I didn't want to drop power. So that was a concern."]

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[NASA Public Affairs announces the start of a change-of-shift press briefing. The first two lines of the next exchange between Charlie and Tony were not captured on the PAO tape.]

[Readers should note that the times used at this point in the Journal differ from the GET being used in Houston because of an 11 minute 48 second update made to the clocks in Houston at 118:06:31.]

128:13:58 Duke: Okay, you got it. Batts 1 and 2 are On. Batts 3 and 4 are Off. And the Luny Batt is Commander.

128:14:06 England: Good show. And looks good here.

[Charlie then read the procedures on Surface 3-3 and looked at the Descent Electrical Power drawing, DES (Descent Electrical System) 2, in the Apollo 16 & 17 LM Systems Data Book. I looked for the switches in Figure 3-2 in the LM Operations Handbook.]

[Duke - "There was a battery 1 and 2, and then there was a battery 3 and 4; and the 1 and 2 batteries were on the LMP's bus and the 3 and 4 were the Commander's batteries. Then the Lunar Battery you could put on either bus."]

[Jones - "I haven't found the switch yet."]

[Duke - "It's on panel 14 (on Charlie's side of the cabin). (Pause) It has Descent Power/Lunar Batt (at the middle of the panel)"]

[Jones - "Oh, there's 14. I've got it."]

[Duke - "You had a Commander's position or you had an LMP's position."]

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128:14:15 England: And do you want this block data?

128:14:20 Young: Ready to copy.

128:14:22 England: Okay. It's LM lift-off, LM Timeline Book. T-28, plus 21 plus 08. T-29, 130 plus 19 plus 49. T-30, 132 plus 18 plus 22. 131 (sic), 134 plus 16 plus 54; T-32, 136 plus 15 plus 27. T-33, 138 plus 15 plus 20. And that's it.

128:15:21 Young: Okay. Give me 31 again, Tony.

128:15:24 England: Okay, T-31, 134 plus 16 plus 54.

128:15:35 Young: Okay. Starting with T-29, 130 plus 19 plus 49; 132 plus 18 plus 22; 134 plus 16 plus 54; 136 plus 15 plus 27; 138 plus 15 plus 20, (and those are the times) through (T-)33.

128:15:58 England: Okay, readback's good. And, we have some changes to your Surface Checklist. (Pause) (Page) 3-5. (Pause)

128:16:14 Young: Roger. What page did you say, again?

128:16:17 England: 3-5.

128:16:21 Young: Roger. (Pause)

128:16:25 England: Okay...(Stops to listen)

128:16:26 Duke: You speak.

128:16:27 England: All right. We're going back to a nominal post-EVA-1, Pre-EVA-2. So, on the EVA debriefing with Houston, that's at 128:20. And cancel the crossouts that we've put in there. Eat period's at 128 plus 35. And go ahead and do the part at the bottom of the page that you've redlined out there, the 112 plus 10. Do that part.

128:17:08 Young: Okay.

128:17:09 England: Okay. At the top of the second column there, the PLSS O2 and H2O recharge is 129 plus 20; go ahead and do that. And the rest of the page, go ahead and do.

128:17:25 Duke: Okay!

128:17:27 England: Okay. On the next page, 3-6, the Pre-sleep is at 129 plus 50. (Pause)

128:17:41 Duke: Okay.

128:17:42 England: And the rest period begins at 130 plus 15. That's the bottom line, second column.

128:17:53 Duke: Okay; 130:15. Do you want us to bring up the computer (as per the middle of the left-hand column on 3-6)? Over.

128:18:00 England: Negative.

128:18:03 Duke: Okay, we'll still skip that.

128:18:05 England: Rog. And it'll be an 8-hour sleep period, and I don't have the morning's checklist yet. I'm trying to get that for you tonight so we won't have any updates in the morning. Get your cue...We'll get your cue card, too, tonight.

128:18:21 Young: That'll be kind of you, Tony.

128:18:24 England: Okay, now I just have some questions...

128:18:27 Duke: That ought to be pretty nominal, Tony.

128:18:28 England: Yeah, we're looking right now at a completely nominal...(Stops to listen)

128:18:30 Duke: Hey, let me ask you...(Stops to listen)

128:18:33 England: (Continuing the interrupted thought) completely nominal EVA-2, and the day will probably be 2 hours longer (than planned), so you have...It's kind of a relaxed day. We'll have some time to sit around and talk in the evening. And we're still looking beyond there, but things look pretty good. And your biomed looks great down here. Just keep up the orange juice. (Perhaps) push on it a little bit there and everything will be fine.

128:18:58 Young: (Amused) Push on the orange juice and everything will be fine?

128:19:02 England: Yeah, push on the orange juice. Rog.

128:19:04 Young: I'm going to turn into a citrus product is what I'm gonna do.

128:19:09 England: Oh, well; it's good for you, John.

[The Apollo 15 crew experienced heart beat irregularities which, post-flight, were determined to have been caused by a potassium deficiency. In an effort to eliminate the problem, the Apollo 16 crew was given large quantities of potassium-fortified fruit drinks.]
128:19:15 Young: Ever hear of acid stomach, Tony?

128:19:17 England: Well, I don't know about that. Also, since tomorrow's pretty relaxed, we encourage you to get a lot of sleep tonight. You've got plenty of time; no need to feel like you've got to press in the morning.

128:19:30 Young: Okay, and I think I've got a pH factor going for about 3 right now.

128:19:36 England: (Chuckles) Okay

128:19:38 Duke: Okay...

128:19:39 England: We'll give you a buffer (meaning an antacid tablet) when you get down.

128:19:41 Duke: Okay, Tony...(Stops to listen)

128:19:42 Young: Because of the orange juice. (Hearing Tony's promise of an antacid tablet after the mission) Yeah.

128:19:44 Duke: I'd like to ask a couple of questions about consumable status, (about) how we look for EVA-3, and what kind of day EVA-3 would be. Preliminary plans. Over. (Pause)

128:20:06 England: Okay. We've got a whole general plan here. And I'd like to send that up to you later, if that's okay.

128:20:16 Young: That's fine. And I'd like to get some information on what we did today, in terms of how the PLSS worked, and how our metabolic rates were, and how...That sort of thing.

128:20:31 England: Okay, understand. We'll get them to work on that. And whenever you're ready, I can start sending up these questions from...

128:20:42 Duke: Then let's have your debriefing.

128:20:44 England: Yeah, right...(Finishing the interrupted thought) from the back room.

128:20:51 Young: We're ready as we'll ever be.

128:20:53 England: Okay. There was one here, just use of words that we had a question on. When you armed the mortar package, you described all three pins are pulled. I read that to mean that you'd pulled the horse collar there and armed the two switches. Is that right?

128:21:11 Young: That is affirmative.

128:21:14 England: Okay, now on to the geology.

128:21:16 Young: She (meaning the mortar package)'s all ready to go.

128:21:18 England: Good show. Okay, when Charlie was working around the LM there (at 119:17:36), he described a black vesicular basalt underneath the engine. Was that the only basalt you saw on all of EVA-1? (Pause)

[Basalts are fine-grained rocks formed from molten lava on the surface and, hence at low pressure. The fine-grained texture is a product of rapid cooling. Virtually no pieces of basalt - other than small, incidental fragments in the regolith - were collected at the Apollo 16 site.]

[Muehlberger, from a 1996 letter - "We weren't expecting to find basalt at this landing site. The light color of the region precluded the presence of dark (basaltic) rocks such as those we landed on in Apollo missions 11, 12, and 15."]

128:21:40 Duke: That's all I saw. There are some more blocks than that scattered, I think, around the landing area, Tony.

128:21:51 Young: Yeah, and, Tony, Charlie's idea to make this area LM 10...I mean, to make this (area around the LM) Stop 10 is a pretty good one. There's plenty to get around here.

128:21:59 England: Okay, we understand. You said that the rocks in this area look different from what you saw (at Stations 1 and 2). About how far west did that difference go?

128:22:11 Young: There you go. I was just...At zero phase, I just hang on to the Rover and try to see where the next hole is.

128:22:21 England: That's called passing the buck.

128:22:22 Duke: Well, let me say, Tony, that the...(Stops to listen)

128:22:25 Young: (A bit defensive) That's not passing the buck, Tony. There's no way you can look down there when you're driving and see any...You can't even see the craters, much less the (lost under Tony)

128:22:34 England: We understand, John, the point you make.

128:22:36 Young: ...what kind of rock's they are. (Hears Tony's apology) Okay.

128:22:41 Duke: Well, let me give it a try, Tony. I always have an opinion. The rocks around the...beyond the ALSEP on our drive out past Spook and Buster, all had this breccia appearance to them, with the primarily grayish matrix with a dark clast. At Buster, though, there were some rocks that were very shocked, I think. In fact, they just crumbled in my hand - the one I picked up. So, at least at Buster and Spook, the rocks appear to be different, in the main, than they are right here. Over.

128:23:32 England: Okay, we copy that. Of the rocks you saw, do you feel like you sampled all the representative types?

128:23:45 Duke: Well, out there at Flag, they were all so dust covered, I don't know. I was really surprised when John broke that big boulder open and saw that whitish matrix with the clasts. I frankly don't think that was a breccia, but it was a pretty friable rock, anyway.

128:24:07 England: Okay, we copy that. You first described the Muley rock as a crystalline and then switched to a...Correction. You first described it as a breccia, then switched to crystalline. I wonder if you could have some third or fourth thoughts on that? (Pause)

MP3 Audio Clip ( 11 min 27 sec )

128:24:34 Duke: Well, I'd say when I picked it up, it was pretty dust covered, and only had a couple of spots that I could look. One (dust-free) area looked like a crystalline rock. There was a...If it were a breccia, then that clast is pretty large, a centimeter or so. If it's a crystalline rock, then it's a sort of a feldspar-looking type crystal. The other (dust-free spots on the rock)...When I turned it over, it had another one of those white specks that most of the breccias have around here, and that's when I switched. So it could be a combination, Tony.

[Because of the dust coating, Charlie is being appropriately cautious in his description of Big Muley ( 175k ).]

[Jones - "Did you spend any time with the geologists and the samples after you got back?"]

[Duke - "No. And that's a mistake. We didn't. We went over to the Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL) to look at them as they unboxed them. We touched a few of them - a day or so we spent, I guess. But then we started going on those PR trips and then we went right back into training (as the Apollo 17 backup crew). So we didn't do that, and that was a mistake. I never figured out what Muley was."]

[In the 1981 compendium, "Geology of the Apollo 16 Area, Central Lunar Highlands", which is U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1048, edited by G.E. Ulrich, C.A. Hodges, and W.R. Muehlberger, Big Muley ( 175k ) is described as a dark-matrix breccia with light-colored clasts.]

[NASA photo S71-58010, dated 29 November 1971, shows Charlie and John examining samples at the LRL.]

128:25:21 England: Okay. We copy that. (Long Pause) Okay. Can you give us a numerical estimate on the proportion of the rock types in the LM area? We wonder if there's any correlation between rock type, size, shape, or angularity. (Long Pause)

[Muehlberger, from a 1997 e-mail message - "Clearly, the questions were to confirm whether volcanic rocks or impact breccias were the common rocks; and whether the area was covered with material from South Ray Crater."]
128:25:53 Young: Well, there probably really isn't a correlation like that. I was just looking out the window here. I see some very angular rocks that are white rocks. And some more grayish rocks - in other words, less white in them - that are sort of subrounded (pause)...

128:26:38 England: Okay. Does that correlate with sizes?

128:26:39 Young: ...and some rocks that are...(Responding to Tony) No, these are all about the same size...No, the big whities are...It's just not going to be that correlatable. I see some that's sitting out there in the middle of the LM (shadow) area that look like, I swear, (Chuckles) they got some pinks in them. Pink with black clasts in them, laying across on the way to ALSEP site. And, seemingly, you can almost say they came from South Ray if you're a betting man. And these big ones...Those seem to be predominantly the size of, oh say, 20-centimeter rocks, and they're very angular. The white rocks are also...They're smaller. They're on the order of 10 to 15 centimeters. I'm just guessing because we're sitting right here in the middle of this thing, and it's sort of like we can't see the forest for the trees. They seem to be a smaller rock, maybe 6 - no - 6 to 12 centimeters, very angular. And they're probably less than 5 percent of the rock type. The predominant rock in the area is just an old gray, subrounded, angular rock. And I would guess that's a breccia of some type. And although the surface is very boulder-strewn, as you probably noticed on the television, it looks exactly, at the ALSEP site and here, at the same amount of boulders. I guess we put the thing (meaning the ALSEP) in the same ray almost, because it (meaning the ALSEP)'s almost on a line from here to South Ray. I guess what I'm saying is I can see what I believe to be at least three different rock types out here. The white, the pinkish - and this is from the LM so I'm really not qualified to go into that - the pinkish with the black clast in it, and the subrounded gray rock.

128:29:18 England: Okay. Have we sampled all three of those?

128:29:24 Young: No, we haven't done any sampling around the LM or around the ALSEP site!

128:29:31 England: Okay. We copy that. I understood that; I just wondered if you had picked up anything that you thought was the pink with the black specks anywhere?

128:29:41 Young: I think most of the rocks that I was with Charlie, when he was picking up, except for that one that we beat (meaning hammered) off over there (on the west side of Plum), they're all dust covered predominantly, and I never got a chance to look at them.

128:29:51 England: Okay, I understand. (Pause) So generally...

128:29:57 Duke: Hey, Tony, I'd like to give you a what I...(Stops to listen)

128:30:01 England: Go ahead, Charlie.

128:30:02 Duke: Let me say something, Tony, here. I'd like to give you what I think are the three major areas that we saw today. One, here at the LM, I'm convinced is a ray from South Ray. The rock types being predominantly from there. Over by Flag, we were out of that ray. We were in the Cayley, and I sampled on the rim of Buster. And whatever made Buster...I don't think it was a secondary, because I think the rocks that we picked up there were true shocked rocks. And I just can't see a secondary doing that. So the rocks around there, we were definitely out of the ray at Buster and Flag...(Correcting himself) Excuse me. At Buster and Spook. At Flag and Plum, we're again into Cayley with hardly any blocks visible. So you have a Cayley without the blocks fartherest (sic) out. You have the Cayley with the blocks that, I think, are some of the stuff that was made from Buster on the rim, and then in here towards the LM, we have the South Ray.

128:31:27 England: Okay. That sounds good, Charlie.

128:31:30 Young: Yeah, I think Charlie's right about that.

128:31:35 England: Okay. In your summary there, you answered a whole mess of my questions here. I got to slide down the list and find one you haven't answered. (Pause) Okay. How about that albedo change in the subsurface soil that you talked about? It seemed like...(Of) course, you saw it first time at Flag and were probably more excited about it there. Was there any difference in its nature between there and Buster and ALSEP and LM? (Pause)

128:32:10 Duke: No. Only around the LM, there was just...and (around) the ALSEP...it was just in spots. At Buster, it...Correction. At Plum, it seemed to be everywhere and...Everywhere we dug a little scoop. My predominant impression was that the white albedo was coarser grained than the fine-dust cover on top.

128:32:41 England: Okay. The white is coarser.

128:32:46 Duke: That's affirm. It looks sort of...I'm not going to say ash flow, but it sure looked like it was coarse, white...Let me get a better word. Let me think about that one for a description.

128:33:04 England: Okay. (Pause)

[During the second EVA, John and Charlie noted the absence of bright-white soil at Station 4 (144:59:23), Station 5 (145:20:11 and 145:27:26), and Station 6 (146:16:56).]
128:33:06 England: Okay, just a question now for you, John. When you got to Halfway or what you decided was Halfway, we understand you looped around the south, is that right?

128:33:19 Young: That's affirm.

128:33:23 England: In any of the craters that you looked into...

128:33:26 Young: Yeah, we came up on Plum from...(Stops to listen)

128:33:28 England: Okay. In any of the craters that you looked into, was there any evidence of outcrops in the walls? You mentioned the one boulder that was sticking out the side of Flag, I think it was. Was there any other evidence of...Any bedrock? Any ledges?

[Benches or ledges on the inner walls of craters can be indicators of the base of the regolith, showing where the strength of the materials changes as the impactor goes from regolith to bedrock.]
128:33:47 Young: (To Charlie) Did you see any in Buster? (To Tony) Charlie didn't see any, and I didn't see any.

128:33:51 England: Okay. No benches in any of these craters at all...

128:33:53 Young: No, these were very subdued...(Stops to listen) No, these were rather subdued craters. They do have rocks sticking out of them, particularly at Buster, and there was a few at Flag. But the rest of them really didn't. The deceptive part of the whole business, you know, is you can't really tell by looking at a crater how big it is. I was almost willing to buy Halfway for being Flag.

128:34:26 England: Okay, we understand.

128:34:27 Young: It's a long way from being Flag-Crater size.

128:34:31 Duke: Tony, let me try again. The larger craters, the old subdued ones, were boulder free. The only hint that I had was this northeast-southwest boulder distribution in Buster. And that went sort of up the wall southwest to northeast. Over.

128:35:10 England: Right; understand. I guess that's why (you) went ahead and called it a secondary. It probably isn't, since it was oriented with the structure of the area.

128:35:23 Duke: Man, that was a big rock that came in there, if that was a secondary. I'll tell you, that is a big crater. The walls on it are...Well, the east wall was still in shadow to some degree with whatever our Sun angle is now; and we couldn't see in the bottom of Flag or Spook. We just couldn't get up close enough to the rim to see into the bottom.

[It is currently about 02:30 hours Greenwich Mean Time (GMT/UTC) on April 22, 1972. The Sun's elevation is about 27.1 degrees. Charlie made his examination of Buster starting at about 124:31 - about 22:25 GMT/UTC on April 21 - and, at that time, the Sun's elevation was about 25.1 degrees. At the lunar equator, the Sun rises about 0.5 degrees per hour.]

[Jones - "Certainly, in orbital pictures, Buster looks nice and round. So it was just the distribution of rocks in there that (led to the supposition that Buster was a secondary)..."]

[Duke - "Yeah. I think that's the reason. I don't think you can tell...It seems to me we learned (that), if it was a primary crater, you wouldn't have any rocks in there. It hit and it all vaporized. But there was plenty of blocks there, so that's why we thought it was secondary. And, looking at it from the side, you'd probably say it was maybe oblong; but when you take a top view of it - from the photographs - it obviously wasn't."]

128:35:50 England: Okay, from the TV there, a couple of times when you were walking around those rims, I was wishing we had that rescue lanyard.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 10 min 07 sec )

128:36:02 Young: Too late now, there, Tony.

128:36:05 England: Rog.

[Apollo 12 and 14 crews carried a 100-foot tether - which Tony is calling a "rescue lanyard" - which could be used if one member of a crew got down into a crater and couldn't get out without help. However, the early crews discovered that it was easy to decide whether or not it was safe to venture into a given crater and the tether was not flown on the J missions. See, for example, the Apollo 12 dialog and discussion at Bench Crater at 132:43:45 and following.]
128:36:08 Young: We'll have to count on Charlie being able to crawl out of any hole he gets in.

128:36:15 England: Okay, we're looking...

128:36:16 Duke: When I fell down over there by the ALSEP, I crawled into one to stand up.

[Charlie fell at about 122:40:42. Fendell was doing a TV pan at the time, and there is no TV record of Charlie's recovery.]

[The astronauts discovered that, by getting their feet into a small crater, it was easier to rock back to get their center-of-mass far enough back that they could stand. There is video of Jack Schmitt doing this at Apollo 17 Station 4.]

128:36:26 England: How was the footing, trying to climb out of those? The little ones?

128:36:33 Duke: It's a piece of cake on those little 10-meter size.

[A typical crater ten meters in diameter will be about 2-3 meters deep.]
128:36:37 England: Okay. (Pause) On this Station 10, we're perhaps considering beefing it up, and letting you do some sampling in that area. And from what you've been saying now, it sounds like you think that the LM-ALSEP area would be a good place to spend some time. You think from your experience with the drill there, you could drive the double core all right? And how does a rake sample in that area look? (Pause)

128:37:08 Young: Yeah, we can get a lot of rocks in a rake sample. (Pause) Charlie says (based on his experience with the drill) the double core will go.

128:37:18 England: We're thinking about maybe moving (Station) 10 a little bit away, to get out of the LM descent (plume) and the peeling paint on the LM and all this kind of stuff. So from what you've been saying, if that's a ray, it should be okay to move to the south-southwest.

128:37:37 Young: What peeling paint on the LM?

128:37:41 England: Oh, your ablated paint on the top.

128:37:43 Young: Man, that LM looks good from the outside. She looks good from the outside. All that paint's gone away.

128:37:49 England: (Laughs) Okay; understand.

128:37:52 Young: There's still a little bit out there.

128:37:56 England: Okay, a question here on the cosmic ray (experiment). When the red ring came off, did it bring the whole cable with it?

128:38:10 Young: No, it brought about 3 inches with it.

128:38:16 England: Okay. Did you happen to notice if there was a 1-1/2-inch hole visible in the upper, left-hand corner of the upper panel? (Pause)

128:38:31 Young: A 1-1/2-inch hole visible in the upper, left-hand corner of the upper panel.

[John is repeating the question in hopes that it will trigger a memory.]
128:38:37 England: I know. I wouldn't have noticed; but the question's here. I thought you just might have seen it.

128:38:44 Young: Well, there was a bunch of squares and different samples in the upper panel, but I guess everybody knows that. But, you say, we would have made a 1-1/2-inch hole in the whole business?

128:39:00 England: No, you wouldn't have made the hole, but it would have shown it.

128:39:01 Young: I can look at it tomorrow. (Listens) We can find out when we're passing by the Y strut tomorrow.

128:39:09 England: Okay. After you pulled the red ring off, was there any cable hanging out the bottom of the cosmic ray experiment? I mean, was there any of that string left? What I'm wondering is, did the string break?

128:39:23 Young: Just a minute. I looked at the top of the panel (out the CDR window). It did look like the thing had jammed up in there. Some of the Mylar in the top section was crinkled in a funny way, like it had been pulled down on it. And that was the only abnormal thing I noticed about it.

128:39:48 England: Could you estimate how far it moved before the thing broke?

128:39:58 Young: Yeah. At least 3 inches. How far does it have to move?

128:40:07 England: As long as you get any movement at all, it should be all right.

128:40:13 Young: That's what I figured. I think it moved some. (Pause) I mean...

128:40:19 England: Okay. That should give them enough information to think about back there. (Pause) We're curious about the position of the UV camera. We saw it on TV, but it was pretty hard to get an exact location. Could you estimate how many feet down-Sun from the plus-Z footpad, and I understand it's right next to the edge of the shadow? (Pause)

128:40:58 Young: Okay. (Looking out the window) Right now, the camera is about, I would say, from the center of the Z-footpad - I mean the plus-X footpad - to the center of the bottom of the camera is about 4-1/2 or 5 feet.

128:41:31 England: Okay. Now, that is directly to the camera, or is that in the down-Sun direction?

128:41:38 Young: That is in the down-Sun direction.

128:41:41 England: Okay. Understand.

128:41:43 Young: In the Y distance, the distance to the camera is about, oh, maybe 5 feet. Up from the Z strut out to the camera, it may be 6 feet. And it looks like to me that the Sun has got to move...(Pause) I'm not so sure we're not going to have to move the camera to keep it in the shade, if the Sun is going to move another 20 or 30 degrees while we're here.

[As the sun rises 0.5 degrees per hour, the LM shadow gets shorter and things near the edge of the shadow will be sunlit relatively soon. With the Sun currently at an elevation of about 26.5 degrees, the shadow of the 7-meter-tall LM is about 14 meters long and is shortening by about 0.3 m per hour. When John first deployed the UV camera at about 119:40 - about 17:34 hours GMT on April 21 - the Sun was about 23 degrees above the horizon and the LM shadow was about 17 meters long. By the end of EVA-3 at 171:11 - about 21:05 hours GMT on April 23 - the Sun will be 48 degrees above the horizon and the LM shadow will only be 6.3 meters long. Readers should note that, according to the original Flight Plan, EVA-3 was to have ended about 16 hours earlier, when the Sun was at an elevation of 40 degrees.]
128:42:28 England: Okay. Understand. The Sun looks like it's coming down on the top of it?

128:42:36 Young: (With a touch of annoyance in his voice) No, the Sun is not coming down on top of it.

128:42:40 England: No, I didn't mean...

128:42:42 Young: The shadow has got to move...(Stops to listen) The shadow has got to move in, oh, about 12 feet before it gets into the LM (means the UV camera) or...That's hard for me to tell from right here.

128:42:57 England: Okay. I understand, John.

128:42:59 Young: But I set it up like that picture in the book (CDR-9).

128:43:04 England: Rog. (Pause) Okay. One more geology question here. Was there any difference between the rocks in the bottom of Buster and those on the rim of Buster?

128:43:28 Duke: You want me to guess, Tony? I don't think so.

128:43:32 England: Okay, you're right. (Chuckling) That's all you can do.

128:43:38 Duke: Okay. And the reason I don't think so is that the rocks in the bottom were all shattered and crumbly looking and sort of mounds of rocks with many fractures in them, which was just like the one I sampled that crumbled up in my hand. So, texturally, from 50 meters, they look the same.

128:44:04 England: Okay, fine. That's the end. Do you have any comments on the geology?

128:44:16 Young: We didn't do enough of it.

128:44:18 England: (Laughs) I think you did an outstanding job. The Backroom was elated. I went back there after the EVA and talked to them, and they were really excited, really pleased with it.

[Jones - "I get the impression that both of you took to the geology. Did John like the geology?"]

[Duke - "Yeah, we liked the geology. They were a bunch of nice guys, the geologists we worked with - not only from Flagstaff, but Lee Silver and the Caltech guys and Bill Muehlberger and his team up at UT (University of Texas at Austin). And those guys we had at Houston - Dave Carrier and Fred Hörz. So we had a good time in geology and we enjoyed it. It was always good break to get out doing geology."]

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

128:44:32 Young: Who's in the Backroom, now? Is Dale (Jackson) and Lee (Silver) and Bill Muehlberger back there?
[The late Dale Jackson was a volcanologist who, according to Tony England, worked with the crew during their field exercises in Hawaii. Lee Silver is a geologist at Caltech who played a major role in training the J-mission crews, and Bill Muehlberger, a geologist at the University of Texas, was the Apollo 16 Principal Investigator for Geology. See Don E. Wilhelms' superb To a Rocky Moon for more detail on the role of these and other members of the Apollo geology team.]
128:44:38 England: Yeah, I saw Dale and Lee. I didn't see...Correction: I saw Dale and Bill; I didn't see Lee. I think he's on the planning team (which is currently thinking about EVAs 2 and 3 based on the results of the first EVA).

128:44:47 Young: Okay.

[The following is an earlier conversation between Ken Mattingly and the CSM CapCom, Hank Hartsfield, starting at 126:10:38.]

Hartsfield: And, Ken, the guys are back inside (the LM). I don't know whether you heard me a little while ago or not; but EVA-1 was a total success. They had a 7 hour and 11 minute EVA.

Mattingly: Outstanding. Did they have anything particularly significant to say or...

Hartsfield: I didn't catch all of it; let me ask...

Mattingly: Did they have any surprises in the things they saw of that they didn't expect?

Hartsfield: I guess the big thing, Ken, was they found all breccia. They found only one rock that possibly might be igneous.

Mattingly: Is that right!? (Laughs)

Hartsfield: Yeah. I guess the guys (in the Backroom) are a little bit surprised by that.

Mattingly: Well, that ought to...That ought to call for a session with the...(Laughing) Yeah, yeah. (Laughing) Well, it's back to the drawing boards or wherever geologists go.

[Young, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "(With regard to) the EVA-1 Debriefing, I thought that the questions were pretty good, with the exception of the kind of questions where they ask you 'what rock did you pick up at what station?' Nobody can ever remember the answer to that. After you've gone through eight stations, all the rocks look the same. You can't remember which rock you picked up at which station."]

128:44:49 England: Okay, I have your EMU summary. There were no PGA problems. Both PLSSs performed nominally, with no major anomalies. The CDR's average metabolic rate was 850 BTUs an hour. The LMP's average metabolic rate was 1050 BTUs an hour. And there's something here on several procedures in work to work around that purge valve pin problem. I wasn't sure you had a problem.

128:45:35 Young: I don't think we've got a problem, either, if I can figure a way to keep (from) pulling it every time I get in and out of the Rover. If I can't do that, why, we'll just keep putting it back in.

128:45:49 England: Okay. We'll investigate it tonight; and we'll make a recommendation, if necessary, during the EVA prep tomorrow.

128:45:59 Young: Okay.

128:46:00 England: Maybe we'll put a lanyard on the pin or something.

128:46:04 Young: (Laughs) Oh, Tony, now.

128:46:06 England: I'm just reading it. (Pause)

[Young, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "On three or four different occasions on the first EVA, we pulled the purge valve off - either fastening or unfastening the seatbelt pulled the purge valve pin out. I didn't know how it was happening. Charlie never saw how it was happening. We never experienced it before. What we did on the second EVA (Prep at 142:12:55) was to turn the purge valve around so that the plug came out this side. I found during the (EVA-2) suit integrity check, when we pressurized the suit prior to egress, I could pull it that way. So I said, 'Let's do that and get it out of the way', and that's probably the best way to take care of that problem in real time. The ground was going to suggest that we tie the purge valve with a piece of string, and that would have just been something else to pull loose and get in the way. We really had too much stuff to do. So, I think that was an adequate fix, a real-time fix, for that problem. The other thing they said about the purge valve, which I really didn't understand, (was) they wanted to bring mine back for analysis. We don't know whose purge valve is whose, so I don't think that was a rational request - to bring one back as opposed to another one. But they got them both back, I think."]

[Duke, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "Yes."]

[Young, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "It was just catching on something. I don't know what."]

[Duke, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "I think it was your seatbelt, John. It happened when you dismounted."]

[Young, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "Yes. It must have happened when we dismounted, because we found it lying beside the Rover."]

[Mattingly, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "That's surprising. Those things are hard to pull out, unless you just get them lined up right."]

[Duke, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "He did it three times."]

[Young, from the 1972 Technical Debrief - "I did it three times on EVA-1 and had everybody nervous. I didn't know what was going on."]

[The following is taken from the Apollo 16 Mission Report - "On three occasions during the first EVA, the pin assembly - red apple - on the Commander's purge valve was accidentally removed while ingressing or egressing the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Each time, the assembly was found and re-inserted. During subsequent EVAs, the crew wore their purge valves rotated from the recommended position to prevent the pin from being pulled out. Testing indicates that the Lunar Rover lap-belt buckle could be the cause of the purge valve pin being accidentally removed. A modification has been made to eliminate the barrel actuator spring in the purge valve and to shorten and stiffen the pin assembly lanyard. This modification will require manual pull-out of the purge valve barrel, and will prove less chance of the red apple and lanyard being snagged."]

[Apollo 16 photo AS16-114- 18388 shows John at the ALSEP site just before he and Charlie started the traverse to Station 1. The red apple is about an inch (2.5 cm) across and can be seen at the top of his right leg. AS16-117- 18825 is an EVA-3 picture of John and, because of the changed purge valve orientation, the red apple is partially visible below his camera at the left edge (from our perspective) of the sample bag he is holding. AS17-140-21390 shows Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan. The red apple is just to the left of his naval.]

[Figure 2-29 in Volume 1 of the Apollo 15-17 EMU Handbook ( 4.3Mb PDF) shows the purge valve, pull-pin, and red apple. The red apple is used to pull the pin out. Note the selector on the outside which allows the astronaut to choose a flow rate of either 8 pounds per hour or four pounds per hour. The high rate was used in the event that PLSS cooling was unavailable.]

128:46:10 England: Okay. The LMP had depleted both the primary and secondary water tanks, and the CDR had approximately 2 hours remaining. And the LMP's O2 use rate was higher than expected due to high metabolic rate. CDR's O2 rate was nominal.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 10 min 35 sec )

128:46:35 Young: No, mine was lower than expected. (Pause)

128:46:42 England: Okay. The medics agree.

128:46:44 Duke: I tell you, I expended about a thousand of those (BTUs) when I fell down.

128:46:52 England: Rog. You were really puffing away, there.

128:46:58 Duke: Well, you got to get up.

128:46:59 England: You're right. Good idea. (Pause) Okay. That's about all I've got except for the plans for the next couple of days, and I guess I don't have them quite yet. We'll get those to you later. Why don't you go ahead and eat. (Pause) If you haven't done so already.

128:47:18 Young: That's in work.

128:47:20 England: Oh, one question on the food, there. You mentioned, Charlie, that one of the bags had kind of blown up. I wonder if you could describe which one it was and what it looked like.

128:47:32 Duke: Yeah. It's the one we're eating right now, and it's day 5, meal C, and it was back there in the food compartment. And it was in there in its little bag; and the thing just sort of came loose and everything floated out. Each little sample is not...the vacuum is not gone on it. It's okay. I mean, each part of it. It must have been the overbag or something (that wasn't completely evacuated pre-flight).

[NASA photo S72-19887 shows Apollo dietician Rita Rapp posing with some of the Apollo 16 food packages. The package in the center foreground is labeled 'Day 4, Meal A'. Details for the meals can be found in the LM Menu given in the Apollo 16 Press Kit ( 5.6 Mb PDF ).]
128:48:03 England: Okay; I copy that. (Pause) Great. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. The day went so fast today, the first thing I knew, I didn't have a chance to eat or get a cup of coffee or anything. It was really fun along here. Doggone exciting.

128:48:26 Young: Well, it was pretty interesting. I think we'll do a little better on the driving cross-Sun tomorrow.

128:48:31 England: Rog. You made good time coming back.

128:48:37 Young: Well, follow your tracks. That's the only way to fly.

128:48:43 Duke: Hey, Tony. If we were on time, and we got our 7-hour EVA in, how come we cut down? Where did we lose...We must have lost it somewhere because we only had half the time at Flag...(correcting himself) or Spook, rather.

128:49:03 Young: Yeah, I was a little curious about that, too.

128:49:06 England: Okay. We got out of Flag about 10 minutes late, really, by the time you're really all loaded up and moving. And I can't remember right now where we lost the rest of the time.

[The EVA started at 118:53:33 and, at the end of the LRV deployment at 119:40:48, John was about three minutes ahead of schedule. Charlie started carrying the ALSEP packages out to the deployment site at 120:33:48 and was only 3 minutes behind schedule. The drive to Station 1 started at 122:58:02 and, at that point, John and Charlie were still only two minutes behind schedule. They had planned to arrive at Station 1 at about 4 hours 15 minutes into the EVA (123:08) but, because of the poor down-Sun visibility and the confusion at Halfway Crater, they arrived fifteen minutes late at 123:23:54. They planned to spend 43 minutes at Station 1 and leave at 4 hours 58 minutes (123:51), but they were actually there for 51 minutes and left at 124:14:32. The drive to Station 2 took only two minutes longer than expected - mostly because of the time they took to make sure they were at the right place, and they parked at Station 2 at 5 hours 28 minutes (124:21). At this point they were about 26 minutes behind schedule. Station 2 had been planned as a 56-minute stop but, because of the late departure from Station 1, Houston told the crew at the start of the drive from Station 1 that the stop would be cut to 19 minutes. In reality, John and Charlie spent 27 minutes at Station 2 and left at 5 hours 55 minutes (124:48:20). They had planned to leave at 5 hours 58 minutes and were now back on schedule. They had planned to close the hatch at 6 hours 56 minutes (125:49) and actually did so at 7 hours 9 minutes (126:02:52). Clearly, the main cause of the abbreviated stop at Station 2 was the time lost in the outbound traverse to Station 1.]
128:49:24 Duke: Okay. Thank you. Let me say that all our geology training, I think, has really paid off. Our sampling, at least procedurally, has been real teamwork; and we appreciate everybody's hard work on our sampling training.

128:49:48 England: Okay. And I sure think it's paying off. You guys do an outstanding job. (Pause)

128:50:00 Young: Yeah. You noticed how good I carry the bags, huh? (Long Pause) (Garbled) be that way. (Pause)

[In the following, John doesn't realize he still has a hot mike. Charlie is only faintly audible through John's mike and the following undoubtedly contains transcription errors.]
128:50:37 Young: I have the farts, again. I got them again, Charlie. I don't know what the hell gives them to me. Certainly not...I think it's acid stomach. I really do.

128:50:44 Duke: It probably is.

128:50:45 Young: (Laughing) I mean, I haven't eaten this much citrus fruit in 20 years! And I'll tell you one thing, in another 12 fucking days, I ain't never eating any more. And if they offer to sup(plement) me potassium with my breakfast, I'm going to throw up! (Pause) I like an occasional orange. Really do. (Laughs) But I'll be durned if I'm going to be buried in oranges.

[Journal Contributor Doug Van Dorn offers the following in reference to John's comment about 'another 12 days'. "This is a typical, John Young minor mis-speak. Apollo 16 was scheduled for a duration of 12 days. Even though they were five days into the mission, and were looking at the likelihood of a somewhat shortened mission due to the CSM's MTVC problem (it ended up being a 10-day mission), in talking about when he'd be free to deep-six orange-flavored *anything* from his diet, John used the mission duration - 'another 12 days' - rather than 'when we get back'."]
128:51:13 Duke: (Too faint to hear) you really played it easy today. I wish I'd stayed out another hour.

128:51:25 Young: I knew all that stuff you were doing would make you work hard.

128:51:28 Duke: It seemed like...

128:51:30 Young: Well, I don't know what the hell I was doing. You did most of my work. You unloaded the ETB and loaded the ETB and all that stuff.

128:51:40 Duke: (Too faint) loading and unloading. You know why? I got back here. You were - I'll tell you what it was. We never practiced that part before of arming the mortar package.

128:51:53 Young: Yeah.

128:51:54 Duke: While I get back...You see, I usually stand around in training playing around and drink. And so, I got back here to the LM, golly, I had SWC out, went out there to pick up that rock, and that's the only reason - because I'd keep running back in. (Lost) (Pause)

128:52:42 Duke: About 20 minutes before I woke you up, we had a site handover that dropped the up-link...(Lost)...got a whiff of that turkey and gravy...

[See the dialog at 115:50:51.]
128:53:16 Young: What'd I do with them?

128:53:20 Duke: What did you do with them?

128:53:21 Young: They're right there over the...(Talking with his mouth full) Well, they're gone. I put them up over the...Right up in here. They ain't there? Oh, shit. Must be on the floor, then. Is all that ripped open or something, Charlie?

[Astronaut Joe Allen makes the next call from Houston.]
128:53:47 Allen: Orion, Houston.

128:53:53 Young: Yes, sir.

128:53:58 England: Okay, John. We have a hot mike.

128:54:07 Young: How long have we had that?

128:54:10 England: Okay. It's been on through the debriefing. (Pause)

128:54:28 Young: How could we be on hot mike with Normal Voice? (Long Pause)

[Jones - "...myself as you were telling me during lunch that, during the PLSS refill and the like, you were in down-voice backup because of the lack of steerable and that wasn't push to talk."]

[Duke - "Right. It gave you a hot-mike."]

[Duke - "Looks like it goes right...(pause, looking at system diagrams) It goes to the speech processor and right on out to the amplifiers."]

[Jones - "Without going through the triggers."]

[Duke - "Yeah."]

[Jones - "Although there are other instances of down-voice backup in other missions and I imagine that I'll find they are not push-to-talk either. That'd be easy enough to check."]

128:54:48 England: John, how do you have your intercom set up? (Long Pause)

128:55:04 Young: I'm in S-Band to T/R, ICS to T/R, Relay is Off, Mode is ICS/PTT, Audio Control is Normal, VHF A is Receive, VHF B is Off. (Pause)

128:55:31 England: John, would you exercise your Push-To-Talk button there? It may be stuck. (Pause)

128:55:48 Young: (Garbled) (Pause)

128:55:59 England: John, it doesn't seem to be a hot mike now. Evidently, you got it off.

128:56:15 Young: Okay. Fine.

[Comm Break. Deke Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations, now takes over as CapCom.]
128:57:21 Slayton: Hello, John. How do you read?

128:57:34 Young: Loud and clear. How do you read? Over.

128:57:37 Slayton: Okay, John. While you're eating, just let me pass a message on to you. That, number 1, you guys did a beautiful job there today. We're real happy with it down here. Tony told you the plan tomorrow is to run a full 7-hour (EVA). And our plan beyond that is to give you a little longer day than usual tomorrow. And the following day, run a third EVA for about 5 hours, then go ahead and launch and rendezvous and try to hold you to about an 18-hour day total, which means hang on to the LM and go into a sleep cycle (before LM jettison). So that's kind of the master plan at this point.

128:58:22 Young: Okay. Fine.

128:58:25 Slayton: And we hope you're going to get lots of rest here tonight. You've got plenty of time to do it, and, of course, with only two meals a day, why, you ought to be hungry enough to push the heck out of that. But as long as you're feeling good, why, everybody will be real happy down here, and you go as far as you feel like going.

128:58:44 Young: That's what we're doing.

128:58:46 Slayton: Rog. (Long Pause)

128:59:26 England: And fellas, I'll see you all in the morning. Have a good sleep.

128:59:32 Young: Thank you.

[Comm Break]
129:00:46 Slayton: Orion, Houston.

129:00:52 Duke: Go ahead.

129:00:53 Slayton: Roger. Just wanted to confirm that you guys are recharging the PLSSs (as per Surface 3-5). We're showing a little high water usage and assumed that was the case.

129:01:03 Duke: No, we're not. We were just drinking a lot. We're filling drink bags, juice bags, and (reconstituting dehydrated) food, Houston.

129:01:21 Slayton: Okay, fine. We're just a little ginchy down here based on previous experience with a leak.

[This is a reference to a water leak of about 25 pounds on Apollo 15 due to a broken bacteria filter that occurred when the crew got back in the LM at the end of an EVA.]
MP3 Audio Clip ( 2 min 08 sec )

129:01:32 Duke: Well, we just looked back in the back to try to find a lost item, and we looked all through the back end. And there's some condensation on the ECS side, but there's no leaks back there.

129:01:52 Slayton: Okay, everybody's happy. (Long Pause) Orion, if we're not disturbing your dinner there, would you comment on whether you found anything that accounted for that hot-mike situation a while back?

129:02:35 Duke: Well, unless it was a stuck mike button. That's the only thing we can think of because our comm configuration was normal.

129:02:45 Slayton: Okay.

129:02:52 Duke: Sorry about that; but it's terrible being on a hot mike here sometimes.

129:02:56 Slayton: Well, you guys have done commendably well, considering the fact that you didn't know you were on it. I'm very happy with your...(Pause)

129:03:09 Duke: Thank you.

129:03:15 Slayton: I wish we could say the same for some of the people down here. (Pause)

129:03:25 Duke: (Chuckling) Yeah.

[Duke - "Deke might have been referring to himself, for cussing (meaning 'cursing') in the MOCR."]

[Long Comm Break]

129:11:08 Duke: Houston, we getting ready to start the PLSS O2 and H2O recharge (as per Surface 3-5). It's an hour passed since our initial O2 recharge? Over.

129:11:24 Slayton: Rog. Go ahead.

129:11:32 Duke: You're clipping a little bit. Say again.

129:11:34 Slayton: Roger. Go ahead. You're clear.

129:11:36 Duke: Thank you.

[Long Comm Break]
MP3 Audio Clip ( 1 min 29 sec )

129:18:10 Duke: Okay; Houston. We're gonna start the water recharge right now.

129:18:14 Slayton: Okay.

[Comm Break]
129:19:36 Duke: Okay; we've started the water fill. Give us a hack at 5 minutes, please, Houston.

129:19:40 Slayton: Roger. Will do.

[Long Comm Break]
129:23:51 Duke: Houston, Orion.

129:23:53 Slayton: Go ahead, Orion. Houston here.

129:23:55 Duke: Rog. If all goes according to schedule on this plan you sent up, what would be our total lunar surface stay time?

129:24:07 Slayton: About 19 hours. (Pause) Oh, you're talking about surface stay time. I'm sorry; I'm giving you EVA time. Well, hang on a second. We'll have to figure that one out. (Pause)

129:24:28 Duke: Appreciate it, boss.

129:24:31 Slayton: Okay, thank you. (Long Pause)

129:24:51 Slayton: Okay, Charlie. You've got 5 minutes (on the PLSS water fill); and your total lunar surface time would be about 71 hours, in round numbers.

129:25:07 Duke: Thank you, boss.

129:25:09 Slayton: Roger.

[Very Long Comm Break]
MP3 Audio Clip ( 9 min 28 sec )

130:01:18 Young: Okay, Charlie's charging his PLSS with water, and he just started (the) 5 minutes about 5 second ago.

130:01:34 Slayton: Rog.

130:01:37 Young: Can you keep time on that for us, Houston?

130:01:41 Slayton: Rog. Got her running.

130:01:45 Young: Okay. (Pause) What is this water problem that Charlie's telling me you think we've got? Should we start looking for leaks?

130:01:59 Slayton: No. Relax on that, John. They just noticed a higher than normal usage and, you know, we had that leak - I guess it was on 15 - that we discovered there when people (meaning Scott and Irwin) were resting. Just wanted to make sure that you weren't doing something that was using high usage.

130:02:19 Young: Okay. We were drinking plenty of it, I'll tell you that.

130:02:26 Slayton: Well, it's good for you. (Pause) How's the temperature on it? Does it taste pretty good?

130:02:34 Young: Yeah, it's pretty good. (More enthusiastically) Yeah, it's good water. It really is.

130:02:44 Slayton: Great.

130:02:47 Duke: I never thought water had a flavor to it, but this has really got a good flavor.

130:02:51 Slayton: That's that good high-calorie iodine in it that does that for you.

130:02:58 Young: That's probably what we really need. (Pause)

130:03:08 Slayton: Yeah, you guys earned a good shot, there, today. Wish we had something a little stronger to give you (like a beer).

130:03:20 Duke: You just keep it on the cooler, boss. We'll be back and take you up on that.

130:03:24 Slayton: Okay.

130:03:27 Young: I'll tell you that's really a nice place to work, once you get out in the open like that. That is really something.

130:03:39 Slayton: Yeah, that was pretty impressive. Looked real great on the TV, and you guys did a real beautiful job there. (Pause) Looks like you were lucky to find a place big enough to land in.

130:04:02 Young: Yeah, I've got second thoughts, right now, as to whether or not that was luck or skill. I thought it was being pretty skillful because I could see all the way to the ground and then we got out...And I noticed that we were kind of close to a crater, so I went forward a little. Then we got out and, shoot, we hadn't landed more than about 10 feet beyond this big thing.

130:04:32 Slayton: That's pure skill and cunning, John.

130:04:34 Young: And it...(Stops to listen) That's right. I didn't realize we'd come in so close to it. I think I was backing up just a hair before we landed. Although the probes seem to have broke (sic) straight up and down.

130:04:52 Slayton: Rog. Sounds like you had essentially no velocity, except vertical. (Pause)

130:05:06 Duke: And, Deke, the landing didn't seem that hard, but we must have stroked the gear. The (engine) bell is about 10 inches off - less than that - about 4 or 5 inches off the ground. But the MESA was sitting right on the ground! We had to pick it way up, and the ALSEP was less than eye level, really, (in the SEQ Bay).

130:05:24 Slayton: Well, it could be our simulation isn't all that good, either.

130:05:33 Duke: That's true. (Long Pause)

[Duke - "The ALSEP, if I remember, was up in here when I had to get it out."]

[Jones - "Just right at about eye level."]

[Duke - "I remember I had to work up like this, which was really hard."]

[Jones - "Up at about forehead level."]

[Duke - "Yeah. But, on the lunar surface, it seemed like it was more down in here."]

[Jones - "About chin level. Would the pictures have shown anything about stroking the gears?"]

[Duke - "I don't think we did. I think Deke is right. Somewhere, there is a report; they looked at the pictures and I don't think we had any stroke."]

[Jones - "I don't think anybody did."]

130:06:32 Slayton: Okay, we got the 5 minutes (completed) on your PLSS (refill) there.

130:06:42 Young: Rog. Thank you. I just did that so the guys on the ground would know when we were using this water this much.

130:06:51 Slayton: Rog. Good idea.

130:06:53 Young: And we've completed the charges of both PLSSs now.

130:06:57 Slayton: Roger. (Pause)

130:07:08 Young: (Joking) Re-schedule another EVA in 2 or 3 hours here.

130:07:11 Slayton: Well, if you're ready to run, we could probably work that out in about an hour or so.

130:07:22 Young: It's amazing how much better you feel once you sit around for a couple of hours afterwards. Boy, when we got in, we were pretty well convinced that we couldn't do a heck of a lot more, but I think...It's just like any other training exercise. Once you sit around for a couple of hours, you're ready to go again. I think we are.

130:07:43 Slayton: Rog. Well, we got a nice casual schedule from here, so you might as well power down and get a good 8 hours of snoozing. You'll really feel like it in the morning.

130:07:54 Young: That's what we're going to do.

130:08:00 Slayton: How are the fingers feeling at this point? A little better?

130:08:09 Young: Yeah. It wasn't my fingers so much as my knuckles. I don't really understand it; but it's going to be very interesting to see what I can do with them.

130:08:23 Slayton: Rog.

[Very Long Comm Break]
MP3 Audio Clip ( 1 min 03 sec )
[Readers should note that the times used at this point in the Journal differ from the GET being used in Houston because of an 11 minute 48 second update made to the clocks in Houston at 118:06:31.]
[After charging Charlie's PLSS, as per Surface 3-6 they stow the LMP PLSS against the hatch, turn off the urine line heater, configure the ECS for sleep, and hang the hammocks.] MP3 Audio Clip ( 12 min 00 sec )

130:18:47 Duke: Houston, Orion. Whose biomed do you want to watch tonight?

130:18:58 Slayton: Stand by one. (Long Pause) Okay, biomed on the right-hand (LMP) side, Charlie.

130:19:25 Duke: Okay, you going to watch me again tonight?

130:19:29 Slayton: Yeah, you apparently paint a pretty picture for them. They like you.

130:19:36 Duke: Okay.

[Comm Break]
130:21:47 Young: Okay, Houston; this is John. I'm going to be on comm tonight. I'm going to get Charlie some good sleep. Okay?

130:21:50 Slayton: Okay, fine. Yeah, I don't think there wasn't anything magic about our input there.

130:22:05 Young: Yeah, he got good sleep last night, as a matter of fact, and so did I.

130:22:10 Slayton: Roger. That's correct. We agree. (Pause)

[As Charlie told Houston at 115:50:28, he was awakened from a deep sleep by a site handover about 20 minutes before the scheduled wake-up. In addition, he had taken a Seconal to help him overcome the excitement of a successful lunar landing. Here, John is exercising the Commander's prerogative of standing watch so his crew (Charlie) can get some needed rest.]
130:22:20 Duke: Couldn't ever believe we'd go to sleep, Deke; but, man, this guy John sleeps like a baby up here. I've never seen it.

130:22:31 Slayton: It sounds like the best place in the world to sleep. I wish I was with you.

130:22:43 Duke: We do, too, boss.

[Comm Break]

[Jones - "Did John sleep with his head to the rear?"]

[Duke - "Uh-huh."]

[Jones - "And the comm cable was long enough that he could wear the helmet?"]

[Duke - "Must have been, because I remember him sleeping with his head to the rear."]

130:24:43 Slayton: Orion; Houston.

130:24:48 Duke: Go ahead.

130:24:49 Slayton: Rog. We've got a short Flight Plan update for tomorrow. There are some miscellaneous items if you want to go ahead and take them now.

130:25:01 Duke: Stand by about 20 seconds.

130:25:03 Slayton: Okay. (Long Pause)

130:25:34 Duke: Go ahead.

130:25:35 Slayton: Okay. This is in your checklist, 3-7, right-hand side of the page, following "Empty ETB", where it shows "1 - HCEX Mag B", delete that line. (Long Pause)

130:26:04 Duke: Okay.

130:26:06 Slayton: Okay, and then add that line down further on the page where it says "Stow in ETB". Add "1 - HCEX Mag B". (Pause)

130:26:29 Duke: Okay. Copy.

130:26:30 Slayton: Okay. On the leftside page (3-7) about halfway down, where you have "Books for revs 25 through 31", that is now "34 to 39". And the two lines below that, I believe, have already been deleted, but double-check that.

130:26:51 Duke: Okay, 34 to 39, and you're right, Deke. We already deleted that.

130:26:58 Slayton: Okay. Now, on page 3-8, right-hand side, halfway down. Delete two lines: "Change LM ECS, lithium hydroxide cartridge"; and the one below it, "Stow used cartridge with BSLSS Bag".

130:27:18 Duke: Okay.

130:27:20 Slayton: Okay, and 3-9: delete the whole page. (Pause)

130:27:30 Duke: We got it. Go ahead.

130:27:32 Slayton: Okay. 4-3. Get your EVA-2 prep card on this one, and we'll enter those (changes) all on that page.

130:27:48 Duke: Stand by.

130:27:49 Slayton: Okay. (Long Pause)

130:28:19 Duke: Okay, go ahead.

130:28:20 Slayton: Okay. On the right side of the card, in the middle, after Comm (which is at the top of the right-hand column on 4-3). These are all add-ons. There's about six line items of add-on under there, which we have fit on our card. You'll have to start up above that column to do it. First is "S-Band Mod PM." (Pause)

130:28:47 Duke: Okay, keep reading them.

130:28:48 Slayton: Okay.

130:28:49 Duke: I got that, "S-Band PM."

130:28:50 Slayton: Okay. Next, "Transmitter/Receiver, Secondary; (Pause) Power Amp, Secondary; (Pause) Voice, Down-Voice Backup; (Pause) PCM, PCM; (Pause) Range, Off." (Pause) Okay, then down about five lines there, TLM Biomed, where it says "Off", should be "Left", and three lines below there, where it says "Recorder, On", should be "Off". (Pause)

130:29:45 Duke: Okay, copy. "S-Band to PM; Power Amp to Secondary; Transmitter/Receiver, Secondary; Down Voice Backup; PCM to PCM; Ranging Off; Telemetry, Left; and Recorder, scratch."

130:30:02 Slayton: Affirmative. Okay, next change is 5-3. (Pause) And on 5-3, right-hand column, battery management. Delete that whole column.

130:30:22 Duke: Okay, deleted.

130:30:23 Slayton: Rog. Okay, page 5-4. Left column, bottom of the page, the last two lines. Delete "TLM PCM - LO", and "S-Band Voice Down to Voice Backup".

MP3 Audio Clip ( 9 min 49 sec )

130:30:39 Duke: Copy.

130:30:40 Slayton: Okay. Then on the bottom of the right-hand side, three lines up from the bottom: Cabin Gas Return (Valve), where it is "Auto", change to "Open". (Pause)

130:30:55 Duke: Copy.

130:30:56 Slayton: Okay, page 5-5, middle left-hand column. Delete "Stow LM ECS lithium hydroxide in bracket aft of engine cover". And bottom of the page...(Stops to listen)

130:31:10 Duke: Rog. Go.

130:31:11 Slayton: Rog. Bottom of the page, where it's "Rev 32-36", should now be "Revs 40 to 45". (Pause) Okay, next change is...(Stops to listen)

130:31:25 Duke: Go ahead.

130:31:26 Slayton: Okay, next change is 5-6, bottom of the page. Below "MCC-H Conference", add "153:45; change LM ECS lithium hydroxide cartridge and stow (used) cartridge and bracket in jett bag" (Pause)

[The MCC-H Conference is, in essence, an hour and ten minutes of padding in the schedule which was included to take care of such things as the checklist changes Deke is now reading up.]
130:32:08 Duke: Okay, at 153:45, we change the LiOH, and we stow the cartridge and the bracket in the jett bag.

130:32:15 Slayton: That's affirmative. And then same page, top of the right-hand, eliminate "Pro, 30...(Correcting himself) Verb 37 Enter". (Eliminate) that line and also "Standby Light, On". And that's all the changes we have here.

130:32:33 Duke: Okay, fine. Next line down, that "ECS for sleep", we'll go "Cabin Gas Return to Open" again, Deke.

130:32:43 Slayton: Okay; and stand by 1, here. I believe we've got a comm configuration they wanted to change on you. Just a second.

[Comm Break]
130:33:52 Slayton: Okay. Orion, Houston.

130:34:00 Duke: Go ahead.

130:34:02 Slayton: Okay, we want to try a configuration change here on your comm to save a little power (by) trying to hold Low Bit Rate with an 85-foot dish.

[It is currently about 04:04 hours GMT/UTC on April 22, 1972 and communications are going through the antennas at the Goldstone Station in California. The Moon will rise at the Australian station in about 20 minutes.]
130:34:12 Slayton: Which means select Low Bit Rate; Voice, Off; open the Power Amp circuit breaker; and wait about 4 minutes. And then return to the opposite configuration. Do not touch the Power Amp switch, and you'll have no comm during this period of 4 minutes. Want me to go back through that slow?

130:34:39 Young: Yeah, could you run through it again slow?

130:34:43 Slayton: Okay, you can go Low Bit Rate. And you can do that right now. (Pause)

130:34:50 Young: That's done.

130:34:52 Slayton: Okay, stand by 1. (Pause) Okay, now you can go Voice, Off. At the conclusion of that, of course, we'll be out of contact with you. Open the Power Amp circuit breaker and then stand by for 4 minutes. Then return to the original configuration. (Pause)

130:35:27 Young: Okay, we got it.

130:35:28 Slayton: Okay.

[Long Comm Break]
130:38:57 Slayton: Orion, Houston. You can now turn Voice on again (and) close the Power Amp (circuit breaker). Apparently their little test didn't work.
[Comm Break]
MP3 Audio Clip ( 9 min 53 sec )

130:40:46 Duke: Okay, Houston; Orion. We're back up in comm configuration. How do you read? Over.

130:40:53 Slayton: Rog. Read you 5 by 5; and we've just got one final thing to do and that should salt it down for the evening. Just wanted to double check that you've got your suit hose connectors red-to-red, blue-to-blue.

[Jones - "Salt it down?"]

[Duke - "It's a hunting term. You salt down your meat and it won't spoil."]

130:41:08 Duke: Deke, we're just going to get them. We've been drying out the suits. We're going to configure the ECS for sleep momentarily.

130:41:20 Slayton: Okay. As soon as you're through with that, give us a call and turn your Voice off and go to sleep. Sleep tight.

130:41:31 Young: Roger.

[Duke - "It sounds like he's got a mouthful of toothpaste."]
130:41:35 Slayton: And we've got a full 8 hours programmed for whenever you power down and it gives you plenty of time tomorrow to do everything you've got to do, so don't sweat it.

130:41:45 Young: Okay. I was right pleased that we could get through that today. I thought it was going to be kind of tight. And I was pleased that we got as much done as we did.

130:42:00 Slayton: So was everybody else. I was (Stops to listen)

130:42:02 Young: I'm sorry that we had that accident with that cable. We probably should improve our training along those lines, but I don't know what else to do.

130:42:17 Slayton: Rog. Can't win them all, John. That was a beautiful job; you guys were right on the line all the way. For your information, we do have some people playing around with a potential fix to that heat flow thing; but my personal opinion is that it ain't going to work. I don't think it's worth the bother, but we'll talk to you about that later, if it looks like it's at all possible.

130:42:51 Young: Roger.

[Very Long Comm Break]

[Jones - "It seems to me that you guys hit the ground running on this EVA."]

[Duke - "Yeah. I think, looking back, we were real pleased with how it went. We didn't have any more problems with the little crummy stuff, like we'd had in training. You know, we had a few of those little problems; but it was what we all expected and we were just used to 'em. I guess, if you were going through it for the first time and you had all those problems, you'd really have been frustrated. But we had been through it in training so much and had all those same problems that we just didn't get flustered. We were really excited and looking forward to the next day."]

[Jones - "Similar kinds of problems but different sets. But there'd always be something that'd..."]

[Duke - "Well, I think that's the value of training, Eric. That's why you need to train over and over again for these kind of missions, because it's the little things that bite you. You just really need to be as familiar as you can with all your procedures and all your equipment. And thank God John and I...Most of the crews understood that and they just went over and over and over again - in the suit...I mean, you got to train exactly like you're going to wear it and exactly like it's going to be. You need good, high-fidelity training equipment; (and) not only on the spacecraft and the simulator, but also on this EVA stuff. You know, going back to the Moon again or to Mars, you've got to have high-fidelity training. Stuff's got to work like it's supposed to work. Well, the experiment doesn't have to work but it's got to deploy right and you've got to know how to work it. The same way it works for real, it's got to work that way in training, or you just get hopelessly lost. Frustrated. So it's really important to train. Those guys going out 30 days on Mars are going to really need to be well trained. I don't now how you're going to train for that, really. It would be a lot of repetition, I'm sure. That's probably the saving grace of it all, because you just keep repeating things. It's critical to know your gear and to have training gear that matches the flight gear."]

[Jones - "Were there problems, early on in training, with things appearing late? I mean, Pete said at one point, when he folded down the MESA, something like 'Gee, everything I've seen before'."]

[Duke - "Yeah. We were in pretty good shape. We kept pushing them for the L&A, the landing model. But they got that in plenty of time for us. Prior to that, we'd been using the 15 one - our procedures, but their model. But I don't remember anything else being a problem. You know, we modified a few things based on 15; but they were minor and, so, they caught up and we had a chance to train with them. Like seatbelts on the Rover and things like that."]

[Jones - "So it was getting fairly mature by the time you flew 16."]

[Duke - "Uh-huh. The system pipeline was full...You know, Neil and them, they trained, I think, about three or four months; and we trained two years, really. It doesn't take that long to get ready; but you had to reach a level peak and just try to hold that level in your training on out to your launch."]

[Jones - "I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but I engaged in a little idle speculation a few months ago that, if there was still money, if things had continued and NASA had had a go ahead for a base camp and a go ahead to start engineering on an unmanned, cargo-only LM....Take the Ascent Stage off, put a cargo module on, set it down some place, send a crew, and get started on a base camp. (See, for example, Donald A. Beattie's Taking Science to the Moon.) Was the program mature enough by the time of 16 or 17 to have had people start trying out procedures for that eventuality? Try out some construction things and what have you?"]

[Duke - "Oh, yeah; they'd have been able to do it. Yeah, we could have done that. To me it was a real sophisticated program; everybody knew their job and the training guys we refer to in here were always a great help and they always knew the systems and you could always turn to them for an answer and they knew it. We were real mature."]

MP3 Audio Clip ( 1 min 14 sec )
[Readers should note that the times used at this point in the Journal differ from the GET being used in Houston because of an 11 minute 48 second update made to the clocks in Houston at 118:06:31.]

[The backup CMP, Stu Roosa, takes over as CapCom.]

MP3 Audio Clip ( 3 min 20 sec )

131:10:39 Young: Okay, Houston. We are all rigged up for sleep, and we'll be seeing you in the morning. (Pause)

131:10:57 Roosa: Okay, John. I guess we're all ready for you to go to sleep. One thing we want to...Stand by. We want your Suit Isol(ation) Valves to Connect. I hope that's the right terminology for you LM-ies.

131:11:31 Young: We got Suit Flow and Suit Disconnect. What do you want?

[The Suit Isolation Valve has two settings: Suit Flow, which allows oxygen flow from the ECS into the hoses, and Suit Disconnect, which prevents such flow. Stu Roosa flew as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 14 and is the Backup CMP on Apollo 16 and is not very familiar with the LM systems.]
131:11:42 Roosa: Okay. We want the CDR's hose to Connect and Suit to Flow. (Long Pause)
[What Houston probably wants is to make sure the hoses are hooked up to John's suit and that there is flow through the hoses, as per "Configure ECS for Sleep" on checklist page 3-6. This will dry the inside of the suit.]
131:12:24 Young: (Not understanding) You're snowing me there. What do you want? You want flow through the hose or not?

131:12:35 Roosa: Okay. We want the CDR's Suit Isol to Flow. We want it the same configuration as old Percy (meaning Charlie) over there. (Pause)

131:12:54 Young: The CDR's Suit Isol valve to Flow.

131:13:01 Roosa: That's affirmative.

131:13:07 Young: Okay, you want it to Flow.

131:13:10 Roosa: Okay, it looks good.

131:13:15 Young: Okay.

[Telemetry - flow rates and pressures in the ECS - indicates that they now have the proper configuration.]
131:13:19 Roosa: And, good night.

131:13:27 Young: Good night to you guys. Thank you much for a good day. We enjoyed it.

131:13:31 Roosa: Okay. We'll look forward to a bigger and better one tomorrow.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 0 min 53 sec )

[Long Comm Break]

[Readers should note that the times used at this point in the Journal differ from the GET being used in Houston because of an 11 minute 48 second update made to the clocks in Houston at 118:06:31. PAO takes down the live line, thinking that there will be no more comm from the LM, and misses the first part of the following exchange between Young and Roosa]

131:21:52 Young: Houston, 16. Over.

131:22:00 Roosa: Go ahead, Orion.

131:22:04 Young: Okay, this is Orion. Could we put our AOT detent to either 4 or 6, because the Sun is shining right in it right now, and it's lighting up the whole cockpit even though we've got the lights turned down. It's just like we got a big spot in here. Or is that not possible?

131:22:24 Roosa: Okay. Stand by. (Long Pause)

[The current time is 06:52 UTC on 22 April 1972. The Sun's elevation is 29 degrees; azimuth 85 degrees. Although detent 5, which is used for stowage, is described as "closed", John's request to Houston indicate that it does provied a light path into the cabin. The centers of the 60-degree fields-of-view of detents 4 (right rear) and 6 (left rear) are offset by 60 degrees from the minus-Z axis. Neither field-of-view would show the Sun.]

[Comm on the following clip starts at about the 2-minute mark.]

MP3 Audio Clip ( 3 min 57 sec )

131:23:06 Roosa: Okay. John. The word is, you can put it in any position you want, if that'll solve your problem. We don't care.

131:23:19 Young: Okay. Thank you. (Long Pause) That solved our problem, in detent 6. Thank you much, Houston.

131:23:57 Roosa: Roger, Orion. And, good night, again.

[Duke - "Sun was shining in the AOT and then just coming down and just reflecting into the spacecraft. It was like a reverse telescope, you see, and it was shining in and lighting up the whole cockpit."]

[Jones - "And shining up on John's hammock? Would it have been at about AOT level?"]

[Duke - "No, it wasn't that high; but it was enough to diffuse into the whole spacecraft. So you turn the AOT, on the outside, away from the Sun and it helped solve the problem."]

[Jones - "The 11 crew and the 12 crew complained about noise in the spacecraft. And I think the 14 guys used earplugs or something like that but I don't remember any of the J-mission crews talking about noise."]

[Duke - "I don't remember any."]

[Jones - "No ECS whirs or anything like that?"]

[Duke - "Oh, there was some hum and the separator's going and converters and stuff...Well, I guess we had AC power down at this point, even. So we didn't even have any inverters. It might have been the inverters (that bothered 11 and 12) or it might have been the IMU and all that stuff. We powered all that stuff down and all the J missions did."]

[Jones - "Whereas the earlier..."]

[Duke - "They kept all that powered up, as far as I remember. So it could have been some of that. So the only thing I had...My mind's going - racing - so the second night, again, I took a Seconal."]

[Jones - "Was it cold?"]

[Duke - "I slept in my LCG. I don't remember (but) John might have taken his LCG off. I slept in mine; and I left the urine collection device on. John, I think, maybe took his off. Any way, we'd slept...I remember sleeping in my LCG and I think that what John did, too. It was very comfortable in it."]

[Jones - "I'd forgotten about the IMU powerdown."]

 

Post-EVA-1 Activities Apollo 16 Journal Mattingly About the Landing Site