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Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing, Volume 1 (scan)

NASA via ibiblio · 1969-07-31 · 251 pages · text by OCR

This is Volume 1 of NASA's Apollo 11 Technical Crew Debriefing, dated July 31, 1969. The Mission Operations Branch of the Flight Crew Support Division at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston prepared it, and it was originally classified Confidential. In it Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins go phase by phase through suiting, launch, powered flight, Earth orbit and lunar surface activities. They comment on suit fit, vibration, checklists, lunar dust, footing and poor sleeping conditions in the lunar module. A section titled Visual Sightings appears in the table of contents.

Open the PDF at page 141 Original source ↗

“Works”60+ pages

  • p. 6 …It released after a good bit of work and coordination between Mike and Fred, the BCMP…
  • p. 7 …Our procedure worked very well. I don't know who thought it up to use the…
  • p. 16 # CONFIDENTIAL 3.11 CABIN PRESSURE (DECREASE) COLLINS The valves worked as advertised and started decreasing as…
  • p. 17 …ALDRIN This would give you a clue if the lights were not working, if something had…
  • p. 25 …L-2 and L-9 need some work to get them in the proper sequence. ALDRIN…
  • p. 28 …ARMSTRONG That worked well for us, I think. COLLINS Worked fine. ALDRIN Optics Cover Check. COLLINS…
  • p. 40 …and docking, in general, worked in flight just as it worked a couple of times in…
  • p. 41 …In the simulator, sometimes it worked like magic and other times it wouldn't. In flight…
  • p. 42 …ALIGNMENT AT 50 FEET My procedure was worked out so I'd be 66 feet away…
  • p. 46 …All that hardware worked well. We followed the checklist. We extracted in CMC, FREE, and then…
  • p. 51 …were quite reasonable and had been well worked out by previous crews and I'd recommend…
  • p. 53 …That worked fine. All three suits did go in the L-shaped bag satisfactorily and could…
  • p. 54 …That worked as planned, and we think that's a reasonable procedure. Folding them, taking a…
  • p. 55 …3 OPTICS CALIBRATION COLLINS Optics calibration worked all right. 6. 4 PHOTOGRAPHY; EARTH AND MOON COLLINS…
  • p. 62 …from that viewpoint, or it won't work properly. These are just two pitfalls that I…
  • p. 68 …A little bit of work could have cleaned that up before the flight, and I just…
  • p. 69 …safe and comfortable with it, and it worked throughout the flight. 6. 15 ADEQUACY OF PROCEDURES…
  • p. 70 …all the P30's and P40's worked out very smoothly. ## 6.16 MIDCOURSE CORRECTION ## ARMSTRONG…
  • p. 74 …It hasn't been well worked out. I feel uncomfortable about this. ARMSTRONG It's just…
  • p. 75 …just trying to see how it was working. All of a sudden we found that we…
  • p. 77 …I suspected at times that it was not working properly. I never absolutely caught it mal…
  • p. 78 …6.21 S-BAND SQUELCH ## ARMSTRONG It worked very well, I thought. ## ARMSTRONG ## 6.22 DAYLIGHT…
  • p. 79 # CONFIDENTIAL ## 6.24 RADIATORS COLLINS We never flowed through the secondary radiators because the primary worked…
  • p. 80 …ALDRIN When it worked, it worked like a charm. There were a couple of times when…
  • p. 82 …The repetition just took the pressure off the next day's IVT. ## ALDRIN Working in the…
  • p. 83 …ARMSTRONG So, all in all, I guess it worked out well. We recommend it as a…
  • p. 84 …We got a lot of rest and got into lunar orbit eager to go to work…
  • p. 93 …That always worked for us. We were always able to see the star in the sextant…
  • p. 103 …It seemed to work well. ARMSTRONG I was thinking ahead about our overall LM stowage which…
  • p. 110 …The probe, drogue, and hatch worked flawlessly. At this time, I was on this solo book…
  • p. 115 …This solo book concept, where I had all the information I needed in one book, worked…
  • p. 116 …I'm not sure it turned out to be any less work. I never was too…
  • p. 117 …me to see that the system was working. We had no scheduled checks on it to…
  • p. 120 …I think that things worked out quite well. We were gradually, comfortably getting 15 to 20…
  • p. 122 # CONFIDENTIAL ALDRIN (CONT'D) E-memory dump, and you did some work with the DSKY and…
  • p. 123 …But, that worked out all right. ## CONFIDENTIAL
  • p. 124 …If in other flights it could be worked into the earth-side pass, I think it…
  • p. 127 …ALDRIN The S-band antenna seemed to work very well at this stage. It didn't…
  • p. 129 …If it didn't work that way, when you moved it, it didn't go to…
  • p. 132 …Cards worked quite well. We'd lose maybe a little bit of time by having to…
  • p. 133 …The little piece of Velcro on the feet port worked quite well, just slapping it down…
  • p. 140 …AUTO optics worked well, and the optics drive was extremely smooth. When using resolve and in…
  • p. 141 …This technique works for another few miles, but I don't know how long I could…
  • p. 143 …I did that as a VERB 49 maneuver, and it worked fine in that I had…
  • p. 148 …This procedure seemed to work as we had planned; however, the variation in the data was…
  • p. 149 …We had it worked out with the ground how we arranged the signs on the differences…
  • p. 151 # CONFIDENTIAL for the PDI needs additional work prior to the next flight. There are some alternative…
  • p. 154 …something that the two of us could work on at the same time and to give…
  • p. 165 …That worked pretty well, but I was surprised that I had as much trouble as I…
  • p. 174 …noticed that the mission timer wasn't working. It was frozen; it just stopped. ARMSTRONG No…
  • p. 175 …We turned it off for a while and turned it back on again and it worked…
  • p. 176 …might have that we'd want to work on, and the second was our adaptation to…
  • p. 177 …from the window prior to lunar surface work. We were in a relatively smooth area covered…
  • p. 180 …We would have at least one working watch to back up the mission timer or to…
  • p. 187 …It seemed to work well. ## 10.20 DEPRESSURIZATION This was one area of flight preparation that…
  • p. 188 …Well, in retrospect, it all seemed to work okay, it was just that we weren't…
  • p. 190 …and the work on the ladder and the platform is that our simulation work in both…
  • p. 191 …The work and effort required to go up and down the ladder and in through the…
  • p. 193 …operation of lowering the camera seemed to work fairly well. It appeared as though you might…
  • p. 196 …10.25 ENVIRONMENTAL FAMILIARIZATION With respect to work on the surface, the 1/6 gravity was…
## CONFIDENTIAL

the LM through the sextant. The LM would appear to be just a tiny little dot of light which was easily confused with many other little dots of light on the optics. One trick that you can use is switch from AUTO to manual and slew the optics up and down and left and right. All the other little dots that are associated with the background of the surface will remain fixed, and the LM will then move across them; and you can pick out which little dot is the LM by the fact that the LM has motion relative to the background.

This technique works for another few miles, but I don't know how long I could have kept the LM in sight. I lost it prior to PDI when I switched from P20 to P00. My procedures called for me to do this, and in the simulator it worked quite well; however, in the real world at the instant I called P00, I went VERB 37, ENTER 00 ENTER. That stopped the P20 rate drive, and despite the fact that I was prepared for it and was looking through the sextant, the instant the computer went to P00 and the rate drive stopped, the LM just disappeared from view. It took off for parts unknown at a great rate of speed and disappeared to the 6 o'clock position in the sextant and at an extremely rapid rate. It was impossible to bring it back, and I never saw the LM again throughout the

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