This forum is for discussion about content found on https://apolloinrealtime.org 

Very little of the thousands of hours of Mission Control audio on the website has been heard or documented. As you find moments of interest, post them here for discussion.

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Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / Re: Improved Apollo 13 MOCR audio transcripts
« Last post by MadDogBV on October 21, 2024, 01:47:20 pm »
Looks good, thanks Ben. It does seem a bit more accurate. There were some quirks I noticed such as duplicate text or inconsistent words ("P2" and "P-tube" got mixed up a couple times in the transcript of a recent Moment of Interest I posted), but on the whole it seems pretty strong and if nothing else gives a good baseline to work with. It does pretty good at transcribing quiet parts in particular.

For example, parts like the attached image seem to occur a fair amount. (Having listened to these clips, I can say fairly confidently that "the, uh" is not repeated 15 times like the transcript implies here.)  ;D

Edit - 10/22/2024: Per my updated post below, the transcript errors were due to my computer storing an outdated transcript in the browser cache. This was fixed by clearing cookies and cache for Apolloinrealtime.org.
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It is often overlooked just how rushed and slapdash the last few hours were prior to reading up the re-entry procedures for Apollo 13. The reason it took so long to read the procedures up to the crew was because someone (possibly Gerry Griffin or Neil Hutchinson) insisted on ensuring that all of the flight controllers could get copies of Mattingly's checklist to review simultaneously with the reading of procedures -- and the Xerox machine nearest to the MOCR was broken.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=125:28:47&ch=6
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RETRO Bobby Spencer and RETRO SUPPORT Bob Davis (a backroom SSR person whose technical capability is comparable to John Aaron's) wants to send FIDO Bill Stoval some data to help him answer an inquiry he received from NORAD. There is a problem, however, and it's nothing to do with the data, but rather the ingenious method that NASA built into the MOCR to help mail documents from one room to another - the pneumatic tube (P-tube) system.

Each engineer's console is fitted with a P-tube station, which is assigned a simple one or two-digit number.

Bill Stoval, the FIDO who was on duty for three burns during Apollo 13 -- MCC2 in translunar coast, the PC+2 abort burn in circumlunar space, and MCC5 in transearth coast -- is currently working his most "lax" shift in the MOCR, with both crew and MOCR practically on standby while the entry procedures are being finished up. He is nonplussed when asked to give his station's number.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=125:12:35&ch=19
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Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / Improved Apollo 13 MOCR audio transcripts
« Last post by bfeist on October 18, 2024, 02:11:01 pm »
I've taken the 7200 hours of MOCR audio recordings and have re-transcribed them using the latest Whisper "large-v3" model and a wrapper system called WhisperX. This has provided fewer hallucinations in the transcripts and provides much better utterance timestamps.

These new transcripts replace the existing "large-v2" transcripts and are now live on apolloinrealtime.org/13

New stats:
3,936,510 utterances
37,503,659 words
199MB of text
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At roughly 6.5 hours prior to re-entry, Neil Hutchinson in SPAN calls up GNC Buck Willoughby and proudly proclaims that the CSM engineers have completely filled up the SSR rooms, including the consoles that would have presumably have been used by the Booster engineers (or in Neil's parlance, the "Booster dummies") to spectate on re-entry. Earlier in the night, he had warned the CSM backroom folks to get in early to beat them to the punch.

As a humorous note: At around the same time that Milt Windler warned about access being restricted to the MOCR and SSRs due to overcrowding concerns, EECOM Charlie Dumis had cleverly asked his backroom personnel what they planned to be doing during re-entry. Dick Brown (EPS) said that he would be working on the Olivetti punching up numbers - and all of his colleagues thereafter said they would be helping him on the Olivetti. These "jobs" helped to justify them being in the SSR, ensuring they'd be able to view the re-entry.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=136:12:29&ch=18
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General Discussion / Re: Other Apollo Missions
« Last post by Kasper on October 10, 2024, 02:33:34 am »
Okay. I am not giving up my hope for Apollo 16 :-)

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General Discussion / Re: Other Apollo Missions
« Last post by MadDogBV on October 03, 2024, 02:37:27 pm »
I would assume until there is an update from NSF that it's on hold indefinitely.
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Background:
Although the FIDO is nominally and de facto the "leader of the trench" (save, of course, for the Chief of the Flight Dynamics branch), there was most certainly still an unwritten hierarchy that existed within the trench's corps. Jay Greene and Dave Reed were widely (and rightfully) regarded as the most experienced and most skilled FIDOs who got assigned to most if not all of the powered flight duties (liftoff and lunar descent) since they would need to have the confidence and nerves to know whether or not to call an abort. Bill Stoval was the midcourse man, and he oversaw two of the midcourses during Apollo 13 - the SPS GNN midcourse to a hybrid trajectory, and the manual DPS burn midcourse for corridor control. Bill Boone was the other FIDO scheduled to work.

As of the time of Apollo 13, Boone had been in the Flight Dynamics SSR during Apollo 4 and had also been a FIDO in Apollo 7, Apollo 11, and Apollo 12. Glynn Lunney's shift after the accident was intended to have the crew asleep starting at around 60 hours. Instead, at 61:30, they executed the DPS midcourse to free return, and Boone provided the trajectory for this. The original burn would have put them in the middle of Madagascar, until RETRO Tom Weichel asked FIDO to move it off the land into the Indian Ocean.

He had been regarded as a "junior controller". From Ed Pavelka's oral history:

Quote
]"In this particular flight we were introducing several new flight controllers, and we actually had dual assignments on some of the shifts. I was with another controller, Bill [William J.] Boone [III], who was a junior controller. So I was on the console with him as his trainer, if you will, or on-the-job training type. Other positions had this, too. So for many of the shifts, Bill would be there, and I would come in with him for the difficult parts or what was more complicated. Actually, during the part of the accident where they discovered it, I was just coming on when the information began to come in."

While Pavelka went to do troubleshooting at the other consoles during Lunney's shift, Bill Stoval and Jerry Bostick provided support for Boone. Later after the PC+2 burn, Jay Greene would act as Boone's "supervisor" on the subsequent shifts, when he himself wasn't pulled away to attend planning meetings.

Description:
Boone is now working his back-to-back shift in the MOCR, having been on for the Maroon team (Milt Windler as FLIGHT) shift after the PC+2 burn and now filling in for Dave Reed during the Black team shift. Lunney has now posited to the Trench that in addition to making considerations in selecting a TIG time for the corridor control burn, they now need to factor in weather avoidance with a mild storm in the Mid-Pacific Line area.

FIDO Bill Boone calls up RETRO Chuck Dieterich to discuss weather avoidance. Whether it's due to fatigue, or perhaps overenthusiasm or trying to find something to do, Bill Boone initiates a bizarre exchange on the loops where he declares "we don't have any contraints [on when to do the weather avoidance burn] as long as it's between those two numbers [104 and 118 hours]." This immediately makes Chuck prickly. When Boone holds his ground and declares that he's simply trying to ensure they're both attacking the problem the same way, Chuck replies brusquely "I know what my job is, Bill."

Apparently Chuck was genuinely angry, since he snubs Boone later at 91:54:30. When they do finally get to talking again, Boone apologizes.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=091:46:05&ch=20
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Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / 089:40:59 Piss in the PLSS
« Last post by zootboy on September 28, 2024, 11:48:23 pm »
During a discussion on SURGEON-R about water allocation, there is discussion about the procedure for using urine as a substitute feedstock for the sublimators if things really get tight.

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=089:40:59&ch=13

They definitely have some fun with that discussion:

Quote
> ...push all that good fluid out into the sublimator.
> Right. And sublimate the piss outta it! *Laughs*
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Apollo 13 Moments of Interest / 056:40:24 RETRO Spencer nixes direct abort
« Last post by MadDogBV on September 05, 2024, 11:09:59 am »
Pretty self-explanatory. During the height of the crisis, RETRO Bobby Spencer has run the numbers on how much it would cost to do a direct abort at T+60 - 10,000 ΔV (delta V, or available velocity). The numbers he gives to Maroon FLIGHT Milt Windler are unrealistic. Milt doesn't realize this at first as he tells Bobby "work on that", but soon they quickly come to the conclusion that it's not doable. Even the subsequent conversation involving 7,000 ΔV implies that they would have the SPS engine for an undocked burn.

They will not.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=056:40:24&ch=19
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