MSC-07631 05. TLI through S-IVB closeout

Cernan

The TLI burn from the ground targeting point of view and targeting went just as written. We went down the checklist and cue card without any problems or any anomalies, without any changes except to the manual. We had a change to all our manual angles to monitor the S-IVB burn because of the late lift-off. We wrote those down on our cue cards and were going to use those in case we had to take over during the burn. We had to change to the nominal and we rewrote both of those on our cue cards. That's the only basic change I think we had.

Schmitt

The communications all through Earth orbit were excellent, as I recall. There was no difficulty getting the pads up. They came up expeditiously and well read. We actually gained a little time because we didn't have television. But we didn't need it. We could have configured it for use.

If there's ever any attempt to do weather observing from Earth orbit, in the low orbit like that, you're going to have to have a very clear plan of where you're looking at what time you're looking in order to make reference as to where you are because you're moving so fast. You can't really keep track of where you are and specifically in terms of weather observation. Later on, once you get the whole globe in view, it's a relatively simple thing to pin down to within a few degrees of latitude and longitude where you are looking on the Earth.

Cernan

On all these lunar missions, we've never really done much in Earth orbit except get prepared for the TLI burn. Future Earth-orbit flights need this continual map update, you're right. You have to do that. As I think back to 3 days in Earth orbit, unless you continually follow a map and a map update as to your rev as you progress around the world, what part of that world you're looking at is very difficult to follow except the precise piece of real estate you're flying over.

Schmitt

The lunar orbital operation is somewhat different because you stay in the same groundtrack much longer I think.

Cernan

The S-IVB performance was outstanding. She lit off on time and burned for 5 minutes and some odd seconds as I recall. And we had shutdown on time. The residuals and the EMS on the spacecraft are written down somewhere, but they were all very nominal, very excellent. We stayed in IU. As the S-IVB maneuvered, we flew through a sunrise during TLI, which in itself was also very interesting, very spectacular. We had nominal S-IVB performance after shutdown; and maneuvering to the sep attitude, we went through checkout load NOUN 17 and NOUN 22. There was again no noticeable pogo. The S-IVB sounded and performed just like it did on the insertion phase burn and I'll let the CMP pick up the separation and the transposition and docking.

Schmitt

We all were very aware of PU shift.

Cernan

I guess I could have called that or I was looking forward to seeing it. It is on my checklist. It's on my cue card and I've looked for it and I've seen it in the simulator.

Schmitt

It just didn't register in the simulators, I guess. And the other thing flying through that sunrise, it did to a small degree interfere with visibility in the cockpit.

Cernan

It didn't bother me from the standpoint of monitoring on my side at all.

Evans

As far as the separation from the SLA, it was nominal. There's a louder bang than I expected from pyros. This is the first time that I really noticed that in the plus-X translations, or in any translations as far as that goes, you get about 0.4° per second rates within the dead band. As opposed to the simulator, it has about 0.1° per second on any of the translations maintaining attitude.

Formation flight was great. The S-IVB by itself was as steady as a rock out there. No problems. I couldn't tell it was dead banding or moving at all. I came in relatively slow, about 0.1 ft/sec, somewhere in that area.

Docking was nominal. As soon as he got capture on the thing, there were no rates. Everything was steady. I didn't have to handle the translation controls or null rates at all. We went directly to hard dock. There's more spacecraft movement during that period because I feel that the COAS and the docking target were off a little bit. And I don't say misaligned, but it's a little bit off. But, of course, it was in limits and was no problem.

Cernan

When we went to retract, we got our big ripple fire - bang on the latches, so we had a relatively good hard dock. We only got one gray indication on the talkbacks. The other one was barber pole.

Schmitt

There's a lot of descriptive material, I think, in the transcript on that. As I recall, we got two pulses in the ripple fire. It seemed like there was one or two latches and then the ripple fire.

Cernan

I just recall a woomph!

Schmitt

I think, if you look at the transcript, we said that there were two pulses to it.

Cernan

Subsequent inspection of the latches showed that there were three latches which were not made entirely. One of them, as I recall, had to be recocked. Anyway, it turned out that once we got those three latches (which at that time looked like they were operating properly) reset, we got two barber poles on the talkbacks. Ultimately, latch 4 was found to be unseated on the ring, although, at that time, it looked nominal. The attitudes given us were excellent; we were able to watch the S-IVB maneuver. We were able to see the S-IVB vent and it all went well and nominal.

Schmitt

It was very clean as far as any debris or anything coming out during the docking phase, and I could see a few little things that were bouncing around inside around the LM, particles of some kind. It was nothing like previous flights where they had a lot of debris. It was very clean.

Cernan

As I recall, we undocked and separated just a little earlier than had tentatively been planned, but that was no problem because we were ready to do it.

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