Messages

61

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / Re: 168:51:48 "I wish FIDOs had cool things like that to say"

« on: July 22, 2020, 01:02:35 am »

She's not a flight controller and she's talking to FIDO on the phone rather than over the loop. My guess is that it's Liz Pieberhofer, who was the secretary for the Flight Dynamics Branch, but that's just a guess.

If you're interested in women in mission control, you can occasionally hear Poppy Northcutt, who worked in the backroom as Retro Support. You can hear her talking to Retro Chuck Deiterich here, for example: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=128:20:36&ch=19

62

General Discussion / Apollo 11 Guidance loop very low

« on: July 21, 2020, 07:48:31 am »

Having followed through the lunar descent shift on the FIDO loop, I'm now trying to do the same with Guidance, but it seems like the audio on that loop is often a lot lower than on other loops. It's not inaudible but it's difficult to listen to.

I'm not certain if this was an issue with the recording or the digitisation or with Apollo in Real Time itself, but thought I'd flag up in case there was any fix?

A couple of random examples:
https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=096:18:08&ch=21
https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=096:38:40&ch=21

In the mean time I'll carry on doing my best to follow the various debates between Steve Bales and Jack Garman.

63

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 102:03:02 Doors locked before landing - AGC is amused

« on: July 21, 2020, 01:53:19 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=102:03:02&ch=21

AGC (Jack Garman): Yaw, AGC. They're gonna lock you in?
Yaw: In. Everyone else out.
AGC: Pretty good.
Someone else: Is that the way you want it?
Yaw: I don't know that I have any choice.

64

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / Re: 108:15:37 Network controller gets in trouble for not responding to Flight

« on: July 21, 2020, 01:46:39 am »

Interesting. It sounds to me like Charlesworth is kidding with him but I can't work out how long he was actually waiting for a response.

This reminded me of a somewhat comparable incident the day before the landing, when the crew woke up early from their sleep period and no one heard them calling for a long while. Except for Yaw, who didn't mention it. In the end it was FIDO who confessed this to Flight.

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=069:23:42&ch=50

FIDO (Jay Greene): Flight, FIDO. Yaw says he heard them. He says he heard them call about three times.
Flight (Glynn Lunney): Yaw, if you heard that, why didn't you mention it in the room?
FIDO: Yeah, we should have.
Flight: Yeah!

65

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / Re: 087:47:16 Guido-R Orders a Pepperoni With Cheese And Anchovies

« on: July 20, 2020, 05:49:29 am »

Nice find! I can't quite make out the name of the pizza place either, but that'll be Guidance Officer Gary Renick.

(To the best of my knowledge, GUIDO-R is the name of an audio channel rather than a role. The 'assistant' Guidance position was called Yaw, but I don't think there's any way of telling who was on which role by which channel they were on.)

66

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 062:31:15 MIT wants two beds in the bunkroom

« on: July 19, 2020, 05:15:30 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=062:31:15&ch=21

Apparently at the time of Apollo 11, the bunkroom had room for about 24 people, and in this recording MIT are negotiating hard for a couple of beds for their people. Guidance officer Ken Russell explains: "There was a big thing... they had more people than they had room for, apparently.... Steve [Bales] and I are on call all the time and we have one bunk, one allocation."

Discussion continues – https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=062:35:06&ch=21 – "They have already filled 24 bunks.... It's not too hopeful."

But MIT have a couple of guys staying in Galveston and so the problem-solving continues...

"Well, one thing, Russell and Bales aren't going to sleep the entire day. You might could trade off with them."
"They don't sleep the whole mission, do they?"
"Well, I don't know."

One conclusion: "I think I'll bring in my bed roll and sleep behind the plot board." Discussion continues until 062:38:11: "Do you snore? I do!"

Interestingly, Steve Bales recalls that when he slept in the bunkroom the night before the landing, there weren't more than two other people there. (Source: From the Trench of Mission Control to the Craters of the Moon.) We know that one of them was Jay Greene, and that Jay and Steve also slept there the night after the landing, after watching the EVA in the flight controllers' lounge. (Source: Jay Greene's JSC oral history.)

We also know that Sy Liebergot had a bunk allocated to him, with a little sticker on it that said 'Rendezvous EECOM': https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=096:04:35&ch=17

67

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 069:41:37 Jack Garman's color TV EVA party

« on: July 19, 2020, 04:52:40 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=069:41:37&ch=21

Yaw: AGC, Yaw
Someone: Go ahead
Yaw: Hey, is Jack there?
AGC (Jack Garman): Yeah
Yaw: Hey Jack, is the wild rumor that Jurgenson was talking about you and a TV party still true?
AGC: TV party?
Yaw: Yeah, Sunday?
AGC: Oh! I might - I have a color television. Anybody who wishes is welcome to come over and watch the EVA, yes, certainly. I didn't really mean to say that it was a party.
Yaw: Oh, that was sort of the impression that he had given.
AGC: Are you kidding, after being on the console, everybody, for twelve hours at a shot? And then you think we're going to be drinking and partying at that time? (pause) Heck, yes, you're right!
Yaw: That's what I thought. (pause) No, I thought everybody would be beat, but I still don't think anybody would be morose.

Speaking of partying, Jack Garman got married on August 1st 1969 – only a week after the Apollo 11 splashdown – after meeting his future wife during the Apollo 8 sims at the end of 1968. So he was pretty busy in 1969!

68

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 044:06:03 System 4 at Honeysuckle has melted down

« on: July 18, 2020, 03:21:13 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=044:06:03&ch=20

What does it mean? Luckily for us, FIDO has it explained to him by the Assistant Flight Director (and a few others). They then go on to discuss at 7.7 earthquake that just happened in China.

69

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 044:01:05 Jerry Bostick's missing headset

« on: July 18, 2020, 03:12:01 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=044:01:05&ch=20

Jerry Bostick's (chief of the Flight Dynamics Branch, AKA the boss of the Trench) headset goes missing and the saga enlivens another dull sleep shift. It had a long cord and everything.

Discussion runs until 044:05:36 or so, at which point the participants are commenting: "it's good to start a flap over something simple... hey, we could probably carry this on for two or three hours."

70

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 015:01:11 Even on Apollo 11 there are boring shifts...

« on: July 16, 2020, 08:39:56 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=015:01:11&ch=20

FIDO (Jay Greene): Hey, if you've memorized the flight plan, I'm all set to give you a spot quiz on what's happening this shift.
GUIDO (Will Fenner): Sleep
FIDO: You just flunked. It's sleep and PTC. You only knew half of what's going on, Fenner.
GUIDO: I have been watching the PTC here for an hour. It's going around and around.

71

Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / Re: Apollo 13 Film vs Reality

« on: June 25, 2020, 05:07:10 pm »

Apollo 13 (1995) - A New Mission Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLMDSjCzEx8
(didn’t happen)

In a way this did happen, just not as it was depicted in the movie.

Obviously a decision was made not to try to use the SPS for a direct abort. I'm certain it was discussed in many places by many different people, but at one point Gene Kranz just decreed on the loop that this option should be ruled out in the abort planning. This was a mere hour after the accident. No one argued with him.

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=056:50:51&ch=8

Whatever planning you do, I want to do assuming that we're going around the Moon and we're using the LM for performing maneuvers, because in the present configuration, unless we get a heckuva lot smarter I think we're wasting our time planning and using the SPS... So I think all of our return-to-Earth type planning should be assuming the use of the LM DPS and/or RCS. And I think third priority down the line should be CSM RCS.

72

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 122:18:04 Attempt to track CSM with LM rendezvous radar

« on: June 08, 2020, 01:49:39 am »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=122:18:04&ch=21

Really enjoyed this GUIDO-eye view of the attempt to locate the LM on the lunar surface by using a P22 to track the CSM with the LM's rendezvous radar. I've given a time tag that offers a little bit of the lead-up – it kicks into being a mad scramble about three minutes later, with Steve Bales nearly failing to give Buzz Aldrin permission to hit "proceed"; Aldrin requesting to do a Verb 83 and being told no; the AGS getting mis-initialized; and finally Jack Garman announcing at 122:25:11 that they can't lock on again because "that vehicle's GONE! We saw it go overhead."

It all sounds far more exciting from the ground than it does on the air-to-ground loop.

There is some good background information from the top of the relevant page on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.launch.html

It quotes Buzz Aldrin from the Technical Debrief: "I don't think we had our AGS configured (properly) and the ground was not as helpful as they might have been had we run this sort of thing previously in simulations and had a bit more training on it."

73

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / 168:29:19 FIDO sings show tunes

« on: May 24, 2020, 02:36:33 pm »

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=168:29:19&ch=20

FIDO Jay Greene gets a call from a young woman trying to arrange an interview for him with Henry S. F. Cooper of the New Yorker (author of several books on space exploration). He greets her with a chorus inspired by "Hello Young Lovers" from The King & I. Apparently his nickname was 'Broadway Jay.'

74

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / Re: 131:50:06 FIDO: "Finally we said, fuck it, Flight, we gotta stop"

« on: May 23, 2020, 05:28:19 pm »

Saga continues with the separation maneuver...

Now FIDO has to compute a whole new maneuver to ensure separation: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:09:12&ch=20

Flight (and others) now don't like the timing of the separation maneuver for 130:15. "Okay," says FIDO, "you want to pick a time way out in the future? Because we're gonna be chasing this five minutes at a time all night. I give up, I'll just wait." They finally agree on 130:30. Flight concludes with: "let's everybody settle down and get away from this bear."   https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:11:44&ch=20

FIDO is having a moment - "I am getting beaten to my knees," he tells his backroom. https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:12:57&ch=20

FIDO is continuing to have a moment as the PAD is being read up to the crew - "I refuse to put up a PAD again ever." The noise he makes at the end is almost un-transcribable, but "MEHH" probably gets us closest.  https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:21:15&ch=20

Separation maneuver actually happens at 130:30 or so

75

Apollo 11 Moments of Interest / Re: 131:50:06 FIDO: "Finally we said, fuck it, Flight, we gotta stop"

« on: May 23, 2020, 05:13:31 pm »

The saga of the LM jettison...

Flight Director Gene Kranz starts pondering an early LM jettison, because they closed out the LM early and the LM systems guys are worried that it will die prematurely if they do it at the planned time: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=129:53:01&ch=50

Flight asks FIDO for a new jettison time and planning starts - Flight then accepts a suggested time of 130:30 (compared to 131:52 as originally planned): https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=129:54:28&ch=20

After completing a fair amount of planning, the Trench team realize that they can't jettison the LM in the attitude they had planned, because it's already in ATT HOLD and it would fight them, Hence back to the drawing board: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:00:01&ch=20

LM jettison time is moved up again, now to 130:07. FIDO says "this is a bad plan": https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:02:56&ch=20

Now Flight asks FIDO to move the planned time to 130:14. More argument about attitudes and the best approach to separation ensues within the Trench: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/?t=130:04:25&ch=20

LM jettison actually happens at about 130:09