Mission transcripts
This page is still under development. There are several separate recording transcripts available of the Apollo missions. These are:
- Public Affairs Office (PAO) Transcript
- Produced at the time from the public feed of the mission audio. It includes commentary from the occupant of the PAO console in Mission Control as well as much radio communication. Having been transcribed in a hurry by stenographers for use by journalists, it is very prone to errors.[1]
- Technical Air To Ground Voice (TEC) Transcription
- Documents all radio communication between Mission Control and the spacecraft and which has been carefully transcribed.
- Command Module Onboard Voice (CM) Transcription
- This is recorded on the Data Recorder Reproducer (DRR) - a tape recorder with 2,200 feet of tape giving 4 hours of recording at Low rate, or 60 minutes at High, fitted in the Command Module Lower Equipment Bay. The recorder is switched on during powered flight and during times that the spacecraft is out of contact with the ground. It can then be played back and transmitted to the ground. It can also be used to record data from some of the scientific experiments carried. The voice recordings from the DRR are not continuous throughout the flight. However, for the periods they are available, the CM transcriptions give a real insight into the crew's informal discussion and chat. Readers should note that if an utterance by a crewmember is listed as "onboard", the ground crews are not hearing it live at that time. They will be able to hear the onboard voice after they have replayed it to Earth during a regular dump of the tape. The written transcription was produced shortly after the mission[1]
- Lunar Module Onboard Voice (LM) Transcription
- This is recorded on the LM Data Storage Equipment Assembly (DSEA). After the multiplexed voice communications and mission elapsed time had been recorded on board the LM on a single track of the tape, the tape cassettes were transferred to the command module for the return to Earth. The transcription was produced shortly after the mission.
There are minor differences between the transcriptions, partly as the crew’s discussions could mask off Mission Control reception. Also, the quality of the tapes makes the transcription process subjective at times.
[edit] Apollo 16 - Notes on Transcription
By Tim Brandt[2]
The process of producing corrected transcripts is not straightforward, and neither can the result be described as completely accurate and free from errors. Regrettably, there is no open source of the original recordings of Apollo 16's mission and most of the tapes have not been reviewed since the original transcriptions were made. There are a few exceptions, such as periods when television transmissions were being made. Hence, the primary source material for this record is the transcriptions produced by the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office (ASPO) from the tapes recorded at Mission Control throughout each mission.
The CM Transcription and the LM transcription cover all the crew’s discussions and speech in the CM and LM respectively, and some but not all of the radio communications. However, they cover relatively short periods of the mission, since the DSE and DSEA were not running continually. The DSE, in particular, was only operated during periods of significant activity such as maneuvering or during in-flight experiments. As a result, some parts of the mission have no transcripts. Other periods have the same speech recorded two or three times, on the different systems. However, this brings its own complexity, as the transcripts sometimes disagree. This is not surprising as the recordings were reviewed and interpreted by different people. Neither was the quality of the recordings uniformly good. Trying to interpret unclear or garbled speech in a recording is as much as art as a science, and two people can come to different conclusions over the same phrase. To make life harder, "vox" circuitry was used at times during the mission, especially when the crew were too busy to operate switches before each radio transmission. Vox, or "voice operated switching" starts transmitting when the user speaks into the microphone. However, there is always a short delay before the system can operate, with the result that the start of sentences can be clipped, making the words and their exact timing hard to understand. Finally, internal communication in the spacecraft is often broken or unclear, especially when the crew were communicating without their headsets.
The timings in the transcripts tapes pose still further problems. Mission Control used Ground Elapsed Time (GET) as the primary means of co-ordinating activity. GET was updated to the spacecraft, to MCC computers, and to the telemetry down-link pulse-codemodulated bitstream and other time-recording devices on the spacecraft. GET was updated to correct significant changes in Flight Plan time occurring as the result of delayed lift-off, midcourse corrections, or spacecraft burn-time differences (trajectory dispersions). Therefore, Apollo elapsed time (AET) (the true mission elapsed time) does not always agree with Flight Plan and MCC times. Furthermore, radio communications takes a finite time to travel from Mission Control, via a transmission station, to a spacecraft in the vicinity of the Moon. This can change timings by a second or so in either direction.
The result is a considerable challenge to the person trying to assemble a single coherent transcription record. In this record, the Technical Transcription has been used as the master for all Mission Control transmissions, while the CM and LM Transcriptions have been used as the master for radio transmissions from each of these craft. Where there is significant disagreement between them, this is recorded. Where the differences are not significant, the differences have been ignored. Where there are slight differences in timings, these have been adjusted to ensure the sequence of conversation is correct.
The result is that while much of the transcript is clear and definitive, some parts are not.
http://www.netwrx1.net/rfischer/DOCS/transcripts/Start.html
[edit] The NASA Air-To-Ground Audio Tape Archives
- Appendix C: The NASA Air-To-Ground Audio Tape Archives, The Mission Transcript Collection, Inside KSC.com
The original mission control audio tapes from the Mercury through Apollo programs consist of audio gathered from different flight controller console stations at NASA’s Mission Control Center (originally based at Cape Canaveral Florida then moved to Houston). Each console fed an audio loop into a 30-track Soundscriber tape recorder which recorded audio from up to 30 different flight controller console positions per mission. Copies of these audio tapes are currently housed in the public affairs office vault at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Examples of loops recorded during a mission include audio from the flight director, capsule communicator (CAPCOM), and public affairs officer. The flight director loop includes all audio from the flight director such as queries, status checks, and commands given to other flight controllers. The CAPCOM loop includes all air-to-ground communications between the CAPCOM and the astronauts in their spacecraft. The PAO commentary loop includes mission status updates and other observations given by the public affairs officer who monitored each mission from his console in Mission Control. The resulting PAO commentary transcript was made available to the media during and after each mission.
At the close of the Apollo program, the 1-inch 30-track tape was replaced by a newer 1/4-inch 2 and 7 track format which is still in use by NASA today. With the retirement of the 1-inch 30 track tapes, the original hardware that supported this format was no longer needed. Since there no longer was a requirement to support this older equipment, the original Soundscriber tape recorder fell into disrepair.
Even though the requirement to record mission audio on the older 1-inch 30-track format was replaced by a newer system, there remained a historical need to capture and preserve the original audio. NASA recognized this need and soon came to realize that the only way to preserve the older audio was to transfer the 1-inch 30-track tapes to a newer format.
Enter Greg Wiseman, an audio engineer with JSC’s public affairs office. Wiseman led the task of dubbing the remaining 1-inch 30 track mission audio tapes containing audio from the Mercury through Gemini missions, as well as tapes from the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). The challenge Wiseman faced was to try and coax the only remaining machine capable of playing these tapes back into operation. "We found another machine underneath a subfloor in the same building," said Wiseman, adding that the found unit was "in pretty bad shape so we ended up taking parts from it to make the other one work." With spare parts plus a little spit, glue, and bungee cords, Wiseman proceeded to dub the remaining tapes.
As part of the dubbing project, Wiseman assembled a detailed database listing every mission audio tape from Mercury through Apollo housed in JSC’s PAO vault collection. The tape database is an invaluable historical reference tool
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Tim Brandt and W. David Woods, Day One Part One: Launch and Reaching Earth Orbit, Apollo 16 Flight Journal, updated 2004-10-29
- ↑ Tim Brandt, Apollo 16 - Notes on Transcription, viewed 2007-03-29