Spacelog Apollo 13

Aquarius, Houston. We'd like to have AFT OMNI, and we're going to lose contact with you for about a minute here while we try to establish tracking. And our latest data shows that your closest approach to the Moon is going to be 60 miles perigee. Over.

Okay. Closest approach, 60 miles, and I'm sitting on AFT OMNI now.

Houston, Aquarius. Over.

Go ahead, Aquarius.

Okay. We're thinking about rigging up the urine dump to the side hatch. We're thinking about rigging up the urine dump to the side hatch and save urine heater power. What do you think?

Stand by 1.

Better still so we won't freeze up our urine dump.

Roger. That sounds like a good plan, Jim. Why don't you go ahead with that one?

Okay, Aquarius. And down here we're getting regrouped, trying to work on your control modes and trying to set up something for PTC and taking a look at consumables as opposed to flight plan, and so forth, and as soon as we get all that information, we'll pass it up to you. We also have the 14 backup crew over in the simulators looking at dock burns and also trying to see what kind of alinement procedures they can come up with for looking at stars out the window. So if you ever are able to see any stars out there and think you can do an alinement out the window, why let us know.

Okay. Jack, right now we're not able to. The sunlight's reflecting off the thrusters and whatever debris came away at the time of the mishap is still with us, such that the stars are hard to find, and why—what respect do you want us to do the stars out the window—just to check the LMS run, is that correct?

That's affirmative. We'd like to correlate the information we get with your's, so that if we can use it to update the platform, we can. What we're really trying to do, Jim, is see if we can do a COAS aline so we can power down the platform.

That is Aquarius. We're getting an awful lot of static on the uplink now, and we're not reading you at all.

I have good signal strength and I'm on AFT OMNI.

How do you read now, Aquarius?

Hey, Jim, do you suppose that you could orient the LM so that the service module would be between you and the Sun? I believe you could see—recognize constellations out your front windows then.

Aquarius, Houston. Radio check.

Okay, Jack. How do you read now?

Okay. Hearing you 5 square now, Jim. And the question we have, is there some way you can orient the spacecraft so that the service module is between the LM and the Sun so you can recognize constellations out the window? And secondly, can you see anything out the AOT?

Aquarius, Houston. How do you read?

Aquarius, request FORWARD OMNI, please.

Aquarius, Houston. Request FORWARD OMNI. How do you read?

Okay, Houston; Aquarius. How do you read?

Hello there, Aquarius. Loud and clear. How do you read me?

There's an awful lot of background —

We get a lot of background static, Jack. You're down in the mud. You having a ground problem?

What we tried to do was to get the IU frequency shifted off a little bit so that we'd have less interference. I think it'll come up—What we want you to do is turn on your descent oxygen and turn off your ascent oxygen. Over. And request FORWARD OMNI.

You're unreadable, Jack. We've got our signal strength meter—right now it keeps wavering up and down, and the best I'm getting is about 2.4 AGC.

Roger. Request FORWARD OMNI.

I am on FORWARD OMNI. I've been on FORWARD OMNI.

Okay. How do you read, Jack?

I'm hearing you 5 square, Fred. How me?

Aquarius, Houston. How do you read?

Okay. We're up to about 2.6 AGC now.

Aquarius, Houston. Radio check.

Okay. Every time you transmit, Jack, the AGC starts to drop off and the static level turns up.

Okay, Fred. You're loud and clear.

I wish you were.

Fred, go to DESCENT O₂.

DESCENT O₂. Roger.

Hello, Houston; Aquarius.

Hello there, Aquarius. How do you read me now?

Hello, Houston. Aquarius.

Aquarius, Houston. Go.

Okay. And the other thing we thought you might try is to put the service module between you and the Sun and then to see if you can see anything out the window in that attitude.

The reason that we think that that would work is that it worked on Apollo 10. It made the constellations all recognizable when we put the the service module—in our case a LM, between us and the Sun.

AFT OMNI, Fred.

You're down in the mud again, Jack. It appears that some other circuit is feeding through on there with you.

Roger. AFT OMNI.

Aquarius, AFT OMNI.

Okay. You're down in the mud again, Jack. Lots of background static.

AFT OMNI, Aquarius.

Hello, Houston; Aquarius. How do you read?

Hello, there, Aquarius. Loud and clear. How me, now?

Okay, we're reading you loud and clear, Jack. I hope it stays this time.

Okay. We'd like to brief you on what our plan is. We're, at this time, water critical in the LM. So we'd like to use as little as possible. To do this, we're going to plan to make a free-return maneuver of 16 feet per second at 61 hours, which is 37 minutes from now. Then we're going to power down the PGNS, and then we'll—at 79 hours, we'll go ahead and make another abort maneuver to kick what we got. But we'd like to get that PGNS powered down as soon as possible. That would be after the midcourse and—so how do you feel about making a 16-foot-per-second burn in 37 minutes?

Well, we'll give it a try, Jack, if that's all we've got. That's a 16-foot-per-second DPS burn in 37 minutes?

Roger. We're working up a pad for it, but we'd want to know what you think about doing it at that time.

Well, we'll do it. Could you give us a little bit more time?

Okay, Jim. We'd like to get a suggested time from you. We can figure out a free-return maneuver for any time you want to give us, so if you'll give us the time you'd like to shoot for, we'll figure out a pad.

Okay, that sounds good. I think if we have a little bit more time; we want to do it right. Stand by 1.

Let's shoot for an hour if we can, Jack. How's that.

Okay, Jim. How about 61 hours and 30 minutes? That's an hour and 5 from now.

Okay. We'll do it and we want to be sure we talk back and forth now to make sure we get this burn off right.

Affirm.

Okay, in the interim, Jack, I looked around again and I saw that we have a radar and a landing-radar heater breaker in. Can I pull those out?

Affirmative. Pull them both out.

And now we want to ask you a question about alinements, and so forth. We wanted to know if you can see any stars out of the AOT. We also wanted to know if you could use the service module to cast a shadow on the LM windows and then look out the windows to see stars for a PS1 COAS alinement.

Okay, in this attitude, Jack, that we're pitching around, I cannot use the AOT to see stars. We—we're just not able to see them at all. Now we may be able to maneuver off in yaw or—and/or roll and see stars. Right now, we haven't been able to. The AOT is useless. The command module structure is just radiating too much light into the—into the telescope.

Okay, and how about using the service module to cast a shadow on the commander's window? If you do that, can you see stars for a COAS alinement?

We could give that a try, Jack, although I don't know how successful it will be. We tried to do it—The light shines off our quads which makes it difficult to see stars. We do have the Earth and the Moon, if that can be of assistance.

Another problem—Right now, Jack, I'm looking out the right window and it's pretty dark out that window but there are about a thousand or so false stars out here from—left over from some of the debris. It's hard to discern what's real and not real.

Okay. That's good information and during the time that we see you're continuing to pitch, if you ever get in a position where you think the AOT might be of some use, we'd like you to periodically look out of it and see if you can see some stars that would enable us to get a P52.

Okay, will do. And also, let me ask you a question. In this configuration, docked, we have to use the TTCA to control pitch and roll. And, just how much can we use that without really changing our trajectory? We only have 60 miles to play with.

Roger, we'll put that to them.

Okay, Jack, are you ready to go to work with me on the 2-hour DPS activation and contingency book, page 1?

Roger, we're ready to go.

Okay. Item one, we can—one through five, we can scratch off, as done. Is that correct?

Stand by 1, Fred.

Okay, Fred, let's go ahead. Step 1, page 1. Everybody's listening.

Okay, I've looked around, and I've essentially done steps 1 through 5 with the exception of floodlights and utility lights and I think we'll just do without those.

Roger. Your choice.

Okay, on EPS activation, we're through step—we're through that—bottom of that page. That's all done.

We concur, page 2.

Okay, in essence, we've circumvented step 4, and we're not sitting with all 4 aps—descent BATs on high-voltage taps, so I'll scratch off step 4.

Roger, and in step 5, we want to leave INVERTER 1 circuit breaker OPEN.

Roger. In step 5, we'll leave INVERTER 1 CB OPEN.

Omit step 6.

Okay, for the time being, our mission timer is the computer so, mission timer activation scratch off.