by Acer
O.J. Simpson breaking a tackle in a 1968 college football game
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
That Simpson kid looks like he has a hell of a professional career ahead of him. Good for him!
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
I have just given the Apollo 8 crew a standby for their midcourse correction burn, in which the vehicle’s nose should be pointed at a 90 degree angle away from a radius vector running out from the center of the Earth.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
We have about two and a half minutes to ignition for the midcourse correction burn.
Cliff Charlesworth @CCFlightApollo8
We’ll try to better describe the spacecraft’s position at the change of shift briefing. It’s just a very difficult thing to describe and visualize with the different celestial bodies involved.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
Jim reports that he now has the angles he wants for the burn. Duration of the burn should be 14 seconds and should occur in 20 seconds from now.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
Fifteen seconds to the mid-course correction burn.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
6.. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Ignition!... Burning!
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
Engine shutdown!
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
Jim is reporting that the burn went well. We’re now trying to figure out how many feet per second we got.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
At 104 hours 14 minutes into the flight of Apollo 8, flight plans show two crew members, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, should now be about to tuck into their Christmas dinner.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
Frank Borman will have his Christmas dinner shortly, and after that, like so many people down here on Earth, he will take a long nap, perhaps for as long as 7 hours.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
Before my Christmas dinner, I am going into the LEB (or Lower Equipment Bay). This is where we do all our navigation by sighting on stars and on horizons of either the Moon or the Earth.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
We have all our optics positioning equipment right here. This is where we find out exactly where we are in space, what direction we are going and how fast we are travelling.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
Our onboard computer takes the information we key in and tells us how to maneuver to get home safely.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
I work with the scanning telescope and the sextant and when I’ve completed my sightings, I just float out of the site into the tunnel which will connect the command module to the lunar module on future missions.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
I just reported to Houston that Santa Claus brought us a TV dinner each and that it was delicious. Turkey and gravy, cranberry sauce and grape punch. Outstanding!
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
Glad to hear the Apollo 8 crew enjoyed their specially-prepared Christmas dinner. Down here in Mission Control, we are eating baloney sandwiches and drinking cold coffee.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
At 111 hours and 22 minutes into the flight of Apollo 8, our astronauts are now just 148,550 miles from home. We are standing by for a status report from the crew.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
The status report will be delivered by Frank Borman. We understand that Bill Anders has requested a little extra sleep period and asked if he could take one of the short-acting Seconal sleeting tablets. His request has been granted.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
I just delivered the technical status report to Houston. A number of things to note. In particular, quad tank A is running hotter than any of the other tanks. I’ve asked Houston if they can figure out any reason why that should be.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
We are going over all of Frank’s numbers down here. We’re also making a review of all the re-entry procedures and check list. We have people still working on verification of their erasable memory and looking at the EMS problem.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
I will feed up some of those pieces of information as they come along. Right now, we are just sort of having a detailed status review. This will take some time but a lot of minds are working on it.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
I don’t believe the EMS is much of a problem. It just jumps when we go to AUTO. I don’t think it will bother us on re-entry. One of the first things I see here is a ‘coldsoak’. I don’t think we want to evaporate between last course correction and re-entry.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
We have been monitoring the temperatures inside quad A for several hours now. There are 4 engine quads inside the service module. Quad A is running at about 80 degrees compared to between 60 and 70 degrees for the other 3 quads. We have no idea why at this point.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
At 115 hours 46 minutes into the flight of Apollo 8, we have had a change of watch aboard the spacecraft. Bill Anders who has slept for 4 hours has come on circuit to advise that Commander Borman is now trying to get some rest.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
I’m going down under the left couch to the water control panel to blow a little water out of the secondary evaporator. It’s a tedious process but it needs to be done before re-entry.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
We need Bill to confirm that they plan to use both primary and secondary boilers during actual re-entry. They need to be sure it isn’t dried out before re-entry. That has turned out to be more of a challenge than we expected.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
We do plan to use both boilers. I can hear myself talking after a 2-second delay on voice comms right now so speaking with Mission Control is getting very difficult.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
Down here, we’re going over several minor procedures that might work to prevent the radiators from freezing up. Nothing has been decided yet though. We’re also working on the voice comms problem.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
It’s much warmer in the cockpit right now. It has been far warmer coming back than it was going out to the Moon. Going out, we had good control over the glycol evaporator outlet temperature.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
We have a whole bunch of backroom boys working on this water control and temperature issue right now. We hope to have some good answers for the crew shortly.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
A while back Houston told me they will be playing us some music. If they are, I am not hearing it. All I am hearing right now is the echo of my own voice. It’s very annoying.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
We’re going to be handing over the air-to-ground signal to Honeysuckle Station shortly. Hopefully, that will do away with the audio problems Bill has been experiencing.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
At 118 hours and 18 minutes into the mission and after a period of relative quiet, we are about to have some more conversation with the crew of Apollo 8.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
I am interrupting the music we have been sending up to the crew to give them the late evening status report from down here.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The music has been coming through loud and clear for a while now, although some of it I’d prefer not to be hearing frankly.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
Mid-course correction number 6 looks like it needs to be just 0.3 feet per second. Weather in the planned landing site is reported as good. Visibility will be about 10 miles and wave height about 4 feet.
Milton Windler @MWFlightApollo8
The TV folks have been looking in detail at the photography so far and have a series
of suggestions regarding different bracketing positions and camera filters to use in future. CAPCOM has read the details up to the crew.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
We have all the numbers needed to achieve the best spacecraft attitude and camera position for good Earth photography as the spacecraft approaches re-entry.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
The problem with the camera is it’s darn near impossible to get the thing pointed in the right direction – takes 3 men and a boy, and we even tried chewing gum for the sight. I think the odds of getting that thing firmly fixed on the Earth are pretty small.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
It’s not the spacecraft that’s hard to point. It’s the camera. The bracket has so much slump in it that the camera keeps moving out of the field of view.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Filming from the fixed bracket while going around the Moon took a lot of micro-adjustments and a lot of coaching from the ground to get the thing right. It was a real tough job. We might be better off just using the wide-angle lens.
Ken Mattingly @KMCAPCOMApollo8
Here in Mission Control, we are in the middle of a shift change. Flight Director Glynn Lunney is coming on to replace Milton Windler. At the present time, Bill Anders is the only crewman awake. Frank Borman and Jim Lovell are getting some well-earned rest.
Jerry Carr @JCCAPCOMApollo8
We have some new gimbal angles to read up for the crew. After we do that, Jim Lovell will use his onboard slide rule to confirm our calculations for expected results of roll, pitch and yaw angle numbers.
5 days 7 hours 51 minutes mission time
Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8
Current altitude and velocity numbers coming back from the spacecraft correlate very closely with those we read up to Frank just a while ago. We are very close to reaching the exact marks called for in the flight plan.
Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8
We are now less than a minute away from our anticipated time for a television broadcast from the spacecraft. We are looking very closely at our TV monitors to see if we will acquire a picture. Now 15 seconds away.
Jerry Carr @JCCAPCOMApollo8
No picture yet, but we are waiting with some anticipation.
Jerry Carr @JCCAPCOMApollo8
We will switch over for any conversation that might come down from the crew. Still no picture, but we are standing by and watching.
Jerry Carr @JCCAPCOMApollo8
Okay! Picture is coming through on the lower right hand section of our screen. The camera needs to go down away from the Earth’s terminator (line of shadow) and to the right.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
The Earth is looking a fair bit bigger to us today. I’m sitting in the right-hand seat now. Bill has got the TV camera, and Frank is helping him aim it at the Earth. I wonder if Houston can make out the clouds in the picture.
Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8
They need to move the camera away from the terminator just a little bit. But we can indeed make out the clouds on the TV picture. At the tip of South America, we see a huge swirl of clouds. Looks like a giant storm down there.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
This is the view of Earth from some 97,000 nautical miles out. Still pretty small. I think I must have the feeling that the travelers in the old sailing ships used to have.
Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8
I mean the feeling of having been on an incredibly long and difficult voyage away from home and now headed back with a feeling of being intensely proud of the trip but still so happy to be going back to the home fort.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
We’ve enjoyed producing the television shows. I hope they prepared viewers for what will be even more spectacular shows from upcoming Apollo missions such as the descent to the Moon and the walks on the lunar surface. Those should be quite something!
Jerry Carr @JCCAPCOMApollo8
At 128 hours 46 minutes into the mission of Apollo 8, the spacecraft is now just 94,676 nautical miles from Earth, travelling at a velocity of 6,176 feet per second and continuing to increase speed.
Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8
We are replaying the latest TV pictures from Apollo 8. We can see the Chilean coast and Florida. That was a pretty good little TV camera when used with the right filters on it.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
I just asked the friendly Flight’s Surgeon’s permission for Bill to take another Seconal tablet so he can get some sleep. Permission was granted.
Jerry Carr @JCCAPCOMApollo8
Before Bill goes to sleep, we’d like him to go ahead and do that secondary evaporator check. We’ll monitor it with the high-bit rate if they just let us know when he’s done it.
Glynn Lunney @GLFlightApollo8
We’re coming up on a change of shift here shortly. Along with my Black Team of flight controllers, I am headed out to the big auditorium for a press conference. Cliff Charlesworth and his Green Team are just now coming into the control room to take over our consoles.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
We’ve been looking at the stars we gave Jim for the P23. It looks like star number 11 has a trunnion angle right out to the limit at 49.7 degrees. It might be a good idea to switch to star number 1 (Alpheratz) which has a much smaller trunnion angle.
Bill Humphries @BHNewcastleUNI
I have no idea what Mike Collins just posted there. I thought the idea of presenting information in a general (non technical) medium like this was so the thoughts and actions of the astronauts and NASA personnel could be accessible to the layman.
Bill Humphries @BHNewcastleUNI
Please, as far as possible, avoid obscure NASA acronyms, jargon and incomprehensible numbers so as to keep it relatively simple and non technical for us laymen, guys.
Cliff Charlesworth @CCFlightApollo8
We are now predicting the nominal time of the next mid-course correction burn as being at entry interface minus 2 hours. We are calling for a 1.4 feet per second burn.
Cliff Charlesworth @CCFlightApollo8
Hope that wasn’t too technical for the general audience following our mission. We are trying.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
I’m about to read down Jim’s last set of star sightings. Even if we lose comms and Houston cannot confirm, we’ll just establish re-entry attitude with what we’ve got.
Frank Borman @CDRApollo8
Incidentally, comms has been fantastic through most of this flight. I don’t know how well Houston is hearing us right now, but we’ve been hearing them like they’re right next door – even at lunar distance.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
With rare exceptions, like now while they are on a bad OMNI with a lot of background noise, comms have been great. We are really thankful for that because reading all these technical updates back and forth would be bad news with inadequate comms.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
At 131 hours and 19 minutes into our mission, the Apollo 8 spacecraft is now only 85,284 nautical miles from Earth and travelling at a velocity of 6,567 feet per second.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo 8
We are now around 12 hours away from re-entry.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
Since our previous report, it has been fairly quiet here in the Mission Control Center. Most of the activity has been checking and double checking figures to pass up to the crew for their final midcourse correction burn prior to re-entry.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
The clock here at Mission Control has begun counting down toward re-entry of the Apollo 8 spacecraft and now shows 11 hours and 6 minutes to that crucial event. Jim Lovell and Frank Borman are currently resting. Bill Anders is on watch.
Bill Anders @LMPApollo8
Houston have informed me that they will be changing antennas in
3 minutes and we need to switch to OMNI. We can then expect a brief period of blackout.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
We have some more news updates for the Apollo 8 crew. One other little item in the news here I thought might be interesting for Frank Borman. Bob Hope is back out in Viet Nam again with his troops, doing a great job as usual.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
Bob Hope told jokes from atop of the high gun turret of the battleship New Jersey yesterday to the delight of the 1500 men aboard.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
The sailors were particularly impressed, by a squad of long-legged girls who came aboard with Hope including Actress Ann-Margaret and Miss World.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
Good for him. I believe that’s something like Bob Hope’s 20th trip to Vietnam. I wonder how many tours he’ll clock up before he’s done. He’s nearly as old as Jack Benny now.
Mike Collins @MCCAPCOMApollo8
The aviator Max Conrad is going around the world in his light aircraft. He spent Christmas day in Punto Arenas in Chile. He’s waiting for good weather so he can continue his flight down to the South Pole.