MSC-07631 10. Lunar surface

Cernan

Postlanding powerdown - We got the verb for STAY at T1, T2, but we got a GO for at least a T3, and we started right through the checklist and the power on configuration.

Based upon the review of the Surface Checklist, there were no anomalies in powering down the spacecraft. We just followed right on through.

PGNCS and AGS worked fine. Z, once again, had a higher than spec gyro count. It was nothing serious though.

Eat and rest period - We had an eat period on the surface. As we were beginning our EVA-1 prep, we took some pictures out the window. We just followed the checklist, and, all told, we ended up getting out some 30 minutes late. I'm not sure why.

Schmitt

Part of it was that P57.

Cernan

Oh, we had to do a P57 over because we reversed the marks on a spiral cursor, which was just an onboard problem on our part. So, we did the P57 over, and we lost several minutes. We sort of never lost any thereafter, but we never made them up either.

Suit doff and don - This will cover all the EV prep and post activities. We both found, LMP and CDR, that donning and doffing the suit in 1/6g was relatively easy. Once again, we had no problems zipping up the suits. In the course of doffing, and prior to getting the suit fully off, we mutually lubricated each other's open zippers and all the connectors. When we doffed the suit, we went into a drying mode as the checklist suggests prior to the sleep period. I'm really glad we did because our suits stayed relatively fresh and clean on the inside. We doffed our LCGs every day and slept in CWGs rather than the ECG. And I'm glad we did that because it was much more comfortable. We made it a buddy system in the entire donning and prep when it came to the suit operations, except for putting on the gloves. We found it easier to put them on in parallel and get them locked and verified locked. We actually, each individually in almost all cases, put our own glove dust covers and ring dust covers on. Maybe we had to help each other once in a while. And contrary to some of our initial desires, we decided to go ahead and put those dust covers on for every EVA. After the first EVA, we found out what the dust problem really was.

Schmitt

One of the tabs on the LMP's dust covers did break off on the first prep.

Cernan

But besides that, we never used that donning lanyard that we had available. We never needed it. I can't really say anything else except that the doff and don went pretty much as we both expected it to. We obviously took extreme care of our suits - the best we could - because we had to use them several times. I think that care paid off because even at the integrity check of the CM/EVA, the suits were tighter than a drum. I think the wrist connectors, even with the dust covers, were tending to get a little bit stiff.

Schmitt

Yes , mine were very stiff.

Cernan

But nothing ever really froze up on us.

LM vehicle systems operations - There weren't many systems operating during the lunar surface activities other than the EPS and the glycol system. We set it up per the Flight Plan.

We updated the PGNCS periodically. It was all nominal operation.

[edit] 10.1 First EVA, Massif

Cernan

First EVA prep activities - And all I can say about the PLSS donning and checkout verification, cabin depress, communications checkout, and power transfers, is that it just followed the checklist and went nominally. The only thing that we might consider as a deviation is the fact that the CDR left his O2 hoses off during most of the donnings because I felt I didn't need them with the water cooling from the spacecraft. It was easier to get them put out of the way early, and there was certainly adequate airflow. We left the flow on through the hoses to keep circulation in the cabin during that time. I felt very comfortable and less contained by having those two hoses out of the way. All I had dragging from me was the water hose and the comm hose.

Schmitt

LMP wore the hoses most of the time to partly have a convenient place to put them. Also, I like the airflow.

Cernan

And they're more out of the way of the LMP because they're on your side.

EVA 1- We just commenced the egress very slowly to get familiar, but basically there were no real problems with the egress. I felt you had to get down a little bit lower to the floor than I'd seen in the airplane, but once you understood where you had to get, getting out was no problem at all. Everybody knows that the LM cabin is very small, and you're restricted. You cannot move very fast or get out of each other's way very easily. So when you did have to turn your back to change valves or switches or circuit breakers, you had to move one at a time to get out of each other's way. Once we found out what those requirements were, we were able to work together very well and stay out of each others way most of the time.

Schmitt

Yes. Let me comment about the LMP's egress and ingress and general activities a little bit that I've done in the 1/6g airplane in the mockup. They seem to be more difficult and more constrained in the LM than they were in the airplane. I don't know exactly why. Part of it may have been in the pockets. I kept finding I was hanging my leg pockets up on those things. I don't remember whether I had those on in the airplane or not.

Cernan

The key to ingress was to get all the way in and then bend my legs up. As soon as I bent my legs up, all of a sudden everything broke free. I think it was that the pockets were hanging out on the sill, and as soon as I bent my knees, it took the pockets off the sill, and I just slipped right in. I didn't learn that until the second egress. Work on the platform and on the porch was fine. We got the MESA deployed. The LMP egressed, We got the LRV deployed.

Schmitt

Cosmic ray was deployed nominally.

LM description and plan - There wasn't much to say. I had the impression maybe the strut was stroked, but that was discussed and photographed.

Cernan

The whole EVA, as we call it, "closein," went so close to our EVA closeins and eventually closeouts at the Cape that even I was amazed. It turned out that I got to the flag just about the time I always got to the flag, and you were ready. It just couldn't have been a better reproduction of the training activities at the Cape. I think the transcript and the television better describes and debriefs that portion of the EVAs than we could by just sitting here and saying everything went nominal by the checklist because that's essentially what happened.

Schmitt

You've heard all about the ALSEPs and the LTG problem in real time. It's on the transcript. It was something in the dome removal strip. We pried it off with a hammer. The ALSEP traverse surprised me in that the package seemed heavier than I had expected.

Cernan

You lost a block.

Schmitt

I lost a block. It just came off the Velcro. I may have hit it with my leg. Really the dust was so deep and soft that the blocks were relatively ineffective, and I ended up putting a rock underneath one corner.

ALSEP deploy - In the LMP's point of view, it was slower than I expected it to be. But, everything got deployed. And, the geophones were faster as we expected.

Cernan

The heat flow went very well. It just went bang, bang, bang. Really the only difficult thing in 1/6g is that fact that you cannot bend over very easily to pick things up. I used the drill for a brace almost every time I had to get the wrench off, as you saw and heard in the transcript and pictures.

Every time I found out that I reduced a work output and reduced the frustration when I set the drill in the right place, leaned on it, and took the wrench off. The only little thing I had some problems with was with the core and the bore; you have trouble in 1/6g with the gloves on to align the threads and make sure they get all the way seated on the following bore or core prior to starting to drill. I had a couple of problems with that, but eventually I got them all. I never rammed a thread down with the drill. I always had it all the way flush, which preserved the bores, of course. The whole operation just went well. You saw it; you heard it. We followed the procedures. The TGE could have been taken on and off very easily on the Rover. The only thing that we didn't anticipate about taking readings when it was off the Rover was again the same problem. You have to lean down to get to anything, and the TGE is very low. It's very difficult to get down there and make anything but a swipe at the buttons when it's on the surface. I'm very glad we did not have to take it off the surface for all the readings because it made it much more convenient. It was not a problem of taking it on and off. It was a problem of pushing the button once it was on the surface.

Schmitt

The ALSEP photos were not taken in the normal way. I think that by the time we had finished our second and last traditional revisit of the ALSEP, a fairly good collection of photos had been obtained, both on specific request from the MOCR and also random photos I took while they were thinking.

Cernan

The whole EVA-1, all the way through the station 1 activities and the SEP deploy, although there were modifications in it, followed the checklist. The best debriefing is the transcript and the TV. I don't think there's anything we can really add to that or any of the other particular stations that hasn't already been said in real time.

Schmitt

Let me mention again, for the record, that the geophone module package did not constrain the geophone's lines very well. But the net result was a good triangular deployment of geophones, even though they are not anchored at the base of that triangle.

Cernan

We go into ingress and the EVA closeout was again pretty much as planned without anything worth talking about other than what was heard and seen.

Schmitt

I don't know whether you've been told yet or not, but both the SRCs have excellent backings.

Cernan

Good.

Schmitt

Number 2 has the best they ever had.

Cernan

I took pains to make sure that that thing was sealed. They did have excellent backings? That's good.

EVA post-activities - Again, the refurbishing of the PLSSs went as was written in the checklist, both with, oxygen and water. Apparently, we got them completely refurbished for every EVA because the total time we were able to accumulate on them in the second and third EVAs. I never had any problems throwing the CDR's PLSS back in the recharge station.

Schmitt

Let me go back to the EVA closeout. The transfer of the gear up the ladder by hand was not difficult, but it was more difficult than I had expected. Getting the EVA pallet in ahead of me looked like it might be a problem, but I found that by pushing the hatch full open and putting the pallet off to the right, I still had plenty of room to move around. I put it to the right, next to your stowage area, and it was out of the way. I got in and then reached over and undid it. Taking the gear off the pallet took longer than it did in training. It was a more difficult job.

Cernan

That whole transfer seem to go very well, the transfer into the cabin and transfer back out of the cabin.

Schmitt

Tool management reminded me of that for some reason the left-hand pocket down low on the left leg was essentially not used. I couldn't get to it easily. I was able to get to the right pocket and I did stow odds and ends of samples in there occasionally, and once or twice, the hammer. In general, it was only the right-hand pocket that was useful to me. Tool management was as we had trained, with the exception that as the EVA's progressed, the spring-loaded latch that locks the scoop into a given position in the detent ceased to function very well.

Cernan

EVA post activities - You got anything to add?

Schmitt: We did that in parallel with other activities.

Cernan

We approached that relatively casually but with the idea of getting to bed on time, and for the most part, I think we had a little fat in there. Where we didn't we still preserved the 8-hour sleep period because the next day was not necessarily critical, except the day of launch, on which we wanted to get up on time.

Performance comments, equipment - I cannot say enough for the PLSS operation. Cooling capability was there tight as a drum; communications were excellent; and the suit performed well.

Schmitt

The only problem we both had was in the gloves. Just general fatigue and also continual pressure against the nail there bruised under the nails.

Cernan

That pressure against the nail areas was not a pressure caused by short gloves for me. It was just because of use. You required so much dexterity during the ALSEP deploy that it was apparently a pressure that got you across the top of the hands or the top of the fingers, but it was not a fore and aft pressure for me.

Schmitt

But you still got some bruises under your nail? I don't see my other way to get that but by pushing against the nail. There was no way to avoid it either.

[edit] 10.2 Second EVA, South Massif

Cernan

Here again, you can talk about the prep activities. We were obviously smarter. Some of the things you do in EVA-1 do not have to be done during EVA-2 because they're only done once in terms of stowage and what have you. We had some OJT on EVA-1, and EVA-2 just went right down the line. We got the cabin depressed, got out, and went to work. I cannot say anything about EVA-2 egress or equipment transfer or anything else.

Schmitt

Yes. I don't want to waste time on the traverses because I plan to do that with the tapes.

Cernan

I've talked about Rover mobility and capability and the requirements of the driver for continuous attention and that became very evident on EVA-2.

Schmitt

Although I made reference to most of the little memory jogs we had in the Cuff Checklist, it turned out they were not specifically necessary to have them in the checklist since our continuous observation and discussion of the surface covered those things as a matter of course, if they were there. I think the most important thing that they did was to force us to review cuff checklists prelaunch to learn, train, and think about the kind of problems they were referenced to. In the actual operation, most of those discussions took place relatively automatically.

Cernan

The CDR's navigation page used in traversing to each station was probably one of the most useful things I carried on my cuff checklist. It kept me very much aware of the general heading I had to go and general large features we were looking for, I just think it was extremely useful. Because of the terrain and the inability to travel on a straight line for very long periods of time, I primarily did not navigate on heading. I primarily navigated to a point. And so the particular points that were shown for jogs in the traverse, or for Rover samples, or charge deploys, or for stations were most valuable to me, because I navigated to a range and a bearing and didn't worry particularly about the exact heading. That seemed to work out very well. And that's why we never, on any of the three EVAs, followed our tracks back to anywhere. We crossed our tracks a couple of times but we never covered the same piece of real estate twice. Performance of all equipment after EVA-2 was excellent. Going into the EVA-3, the prep, again, was familiar.

[edit] 10.3 Third EVA, North Massif

Schmitt

Station 3 - We both did most of that station separately. Gene was working the double core as planned and I was doing sampling. I got a little inefficient at the start because I didn't have a bag to put samples in. Once I got a bag, it was a little hard to handle because I was on a side slope. But in the time that we spent there, I think it turned out that Gene got an excellent double core canned and I got on the order of 10 or 11 documented samples, both surface and trench samples at the edge of that crater. I would still have a hard time evaluating now whether we could have operated more efficiently together or separate in that particular case.

Cernan

EVA-3 closeout was nominal. It was modified because the LMP had to go back to the ALSEP again. As far as I'm concerned, the recovery of the neutron flux, parking the Rover, turning off the SEP and going through all that worked very well. Here again, any modifications to those closeouts are really not bad at all because we used the checklist as a reference and not as a cookbook. We understood what had to be done and what had to be closed out so that we could accept modifications and also pick up each other's task. And we did that quite frequently on the closeouts. We could see what the other guy was doing, and picking up the other guy's task occasionally, when you had a free moment or an easier reach, was a very simple thing to do. That comes from having done this together many, many times.

Probably the most difficult job of all the closeouts was trying to dust the suits It's a difficult and awkward position. It's hard to make fast sweeping movements in a stiff suit. We did our best, and I think probably the time spent was well spent. But I think also it was a bit more time than we had anticipated. The real-time transcripts will show just how much time and effort was spent in dusting. Both of us found that our lower limbs and boots could probably be better dusted by jumping up and down on a ladder or clapping your feet together on a ladder, which, incidentally, the CDR had to do in every case because he was the last one in. His feet were always in the dust prior to getting on the ladder. But I think that worked out pretty well.

Schmitt

Third EVA was pretty much operationally like the second. We worked on slopes on both EVAs. On the third we did have the Rover on the slope. That didn't seriously perturbate the operations. I intended to rake larger areas for samples than I had planned to, but that was mainly because we weren't getting very many samples per rake swipe in most places. I think the only place we got a large number of samples was at station 1. After that we were dealing with no more than 10 in raking over a very large area in any of the other rake samples. But that's clearly documented in the samples. I don't know how many LRV samples we actually took, but it wasn't a problem. And the sampler was used whenever I worked around the LM or went out to the ALSEP or anything. As a result, I picked up maybe a half a dozen more samples just because it gave me something to carry a sample in.

Cernan

The only piece of hardware I remember that broke was the bag fastener on your camera.

Schmitt

Somehow or another I strained that and I taped it on in the cabin between EVA-2 and EVA-3. That taping job, using the food-pack tape, worked very well. We had no further problems. The EVA-3 post comments are the same. Equipment jettison went smoothly with no problems. You had the feeling that if you had an infinite amount of oxygen and water, you could have used those PLSSs indefinitely. Good systems.

Cernan

In closing, as obvious and as always true in the past, the efforts put forth on the surface of the Moon, or any place else, are based upon a great deal of work by a lot of other people. In general, the most significant group of people that supported us in excellent fashion, and probably the best I've ever been associated with, is our team led by Dave Ballard. Those guys continually went out of their way to make sure that things were done right. I just can't say too much for the effort that they expended. They performed in a super professional manner. Without that team and the training, the debriefing that we've just gone over here for the last 2 days might be a lot different.

The success of Apollo 17 is due to a lot of people. In particular, the LM activities went so smooth. The LM stowage, in which there were a few changes right at the end, the interior cockpit stowage and the exterior descent stage stowage, was really in outstanding shape, and it was due in no small part to the efforts of Terry Neal. Terry's had a great deal of experience in the past on previous flights, and that experience really showed itself. was a tireless worker. He supported every activity without being asked to at the pad, and came back and told us what he had to support. He kept us informed. He made sure that people who were in charge and responsible for all the training gear had all the knowledge to keep it up to speed, based upon flight configuration of gear. He was concerned about the type of details and things that the crew is either too busy to handle or certainly would have let slip by. He's the guy that got the job done for us so that when we got up there, to unstow the gear and to put it to work, it was not only like we had planned it to be, but it was all there and it was properly and professionally done.

Schmitt

Your statements are certainly echoed in my mind with respect to the entire team. Every time something needed to be done there was somebody there who had already done it, generally. It wasn't a question of asking. It was a question of doing, or of utilizing the results of the team's effort. Terry Neal certainly made the lunar surface stowage and equipment operation, both in flight and in training, outstanding. There is no other word for it. We had no difficulty at all in learning where the equipment was and how to use it in its storage locations.

I'd also like to congratulate the EVA operations group for their work in putting together three, very complex Cuff Checklists, and in keeping a general trend of training going that was just about at the right level. We reviewed the various EVAs in a reasonable sequence. And by the time we launched, I think we had enough of a feeling for what was in the cuff checklists that we really, as you said earlier, only used them in the review and that can't be to anybody's credit but the people who organize the training program.

Cernan

And the entire support team - it wasn't a case of them keeping up with us getting ready for the flight, but a case of us keeping up with them. Because they were going to be ready for the flight and they made it a point of making sure that we were going to be ready also.

Schmitt

I think it's also worth mentioning that we have nothing to give but praise for the ability of the suit technicians not only to keep our gear in working order and up to date with the changes that might be coming along, but also in training us on how to use the gear. That is perhaps not in their job description. No small part of our ability to get in and out of the suits, and understand what you can do and can't do with the suits, in terms of doffing and donning, goes to the four guys who were our suit technicians.

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