139:13:22 John Aaron proposes unthinkable power-saving solution

[MadDogBV]

During the re-entry shift, EECOM John Aaron and EECOM Sy Liebergot make their case for never powering up the glycol pump (nominally it was to come up 1 hour prior to re-entry) in order to save power in the CSM. John cites 2TV-1, a test run where Apollo mission-critical equipment was tested under thermo-vacuum conditions to determine when it would actually fail, and makes the supposition that the spacecraft could still make a G&N re-entry safely even without glycol cooling.

Both Arnie Aldrich and Neil Hutchinson in SPAN explode with outrage at the idea. Although John's engineering analysis makes sense, especially since the command module is still freezing cold, it's unthinkable precisely because no CAPCOM would be willing to make the call to the crew to shut off cooling equipment required to preserve the spacecraft's sensitive electronics. They are especially concerned about the G&N and the components which rely on the glycol pump (PIPAs and IRIGs).

Thankfully, this was relatively far down on the list of the "emergency power-down" list and never ended up being needed.

Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=139:13:22&ch=16

[kendradog]

Excellent find. There must have been conversations just like this for nearly every system, with John Aaron demanding power cuts to systems the specialists said could not be cut. By the way, the transcript has Flight Director Gene Kranz saying "Tell him if any other reconfiguration" at 139:14:41; that should be "TELMU, and other reconfiguration?" Gene always intercalates a shwa after the L in TELMU for some reason. Similarly, "Telling you?" at 139:15:40 should be "TELMU".

This is also a great clip for having both John Aaron and Sy Liebergot on there.