SKYLAB NEWS CENTER

Kouston, Texas

SL-2 Prelauneh Press Conference

Kennedy Space Center
May 24, 1973
i:00 p.m. CDT

PARTICIPANTS :

Dr. Willard R. Hawkins, Deputy Director, Medical Operations, JSC

Richard G. Smith, Skylab Program Manager, MSFC
Glynn Lunney, Skylab CSM Manager, JSC
Walter J. Kapryan, Director, Launch Operations, KSC
William C. Schneider, Skylab Program Director, Office of Manned
Space Flight, NASA Headquarters
Kenneth S. Kleimkneeht, Skylab Program Manager, JSC
H. William Wood, Associate Director of Operations, GSFC
Col. Alan R. Vette, USAF, Department of Defense, Recovery Forces
Charles Hollinshead, Public Affairs Office, _C
Donald K. Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations, JSC

PC-I

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PAO To get on with our conference, on my

right, Donald K. Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations
at the Johnson Space Center. To his right, Dr. Royce Hawkins,
Deputy Director from Medical Operations Flight Sciences,
Johnson Space Center. On his right, Walter J. Kapryan, Director
of Launch Operations here at Kennedy Space Center. To his
right, William C. Schneider, Skylab Program Director from NASA
Headquarters. On his right, Mr. Richard G. Smith, Saturn Pro-
gram Manager from Marshall Space Flight Center. On his right
is H. William Wood, Associate Director of Operations from
Goddard Space Flight Center. And on his right, Colonel Alan
R. Vette, U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense Recovery
Forces. We also have in Houston Kenneth S. Klelnknecht, Skylab
Program Manager from Johnson Space Center, and Glynn S. Lunney,
Skylab Command Service Module Manager, also from Johnson Space
Center. We'll start our conference with Mr. Schneider.
SCHNEIDER Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Yesterday, the senior officials of NASA held a very comprehen-
sive review of exactly where we stood for the upcoming Sky-
lab-2 mission. They examined the condition of Skylab 1 as it
is in orbit and as we expect it to be when the flight crew
gets there. Briefly, as I said yesterday, the best - our best
estimate of what the vehicle looks like from an external
standpoint is that we believe one solar panel boom has left
the vehicle, and we believe the other solar panel is deployed
about 5 to i0 degrees from the side of the vehicle. This
situation seems to best fit the telemetry signals that we're
getting and seems to best fit our rationale as to what hap-
pened. Now we reviewed yesterday the tools that we will
bring on board for some limited activity by the crew to - if
it appears feasible to them - to deploy that remaining boom.
We don't hold too much - we're not too optimistic that we'll
be able to do too much, although we will give Captain Conrad
the option to try if it looks as if it's a reasonable job.
In any event, we do expect - if we cannot deploy it, we do'expect
to take a great number of photographs, which we would then
analyze to give us a better opportunity on Skylab 3 for deploy-
ment. We also looked at what kind of electrical power we'll
have available and examined what kind of a mission we would
be able to perform. Most importantly, however, we've looked
at the various options that we had available to us for put-
ting a thermal shield on the vehicle in an attempt to get
the vehicle temperatures back to normal. We ended up after
a very - well, a lot of conversation and so, after having come
to grips with some very difficult decisions, because we had
a great number of options to choose from, each of which had
good points, bad points, and we ended up selecting, last night,
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as our prime mode of deployment, the so-called Skylab parasol.

This is the shield which is deployed with four telescoping
rods through the scientific airlock hollow position within
the spacecraft. We preferred that because the - it was from
an internal position to the spacecraft, and we did not require
extravehicular activity, and it looked as if it had a very
high probability of a successful deployment. At that time,
we had some question about the material that the sail is made
of, and the Johnson Space Center, where that device is being
fabricated, went back to make some minor - some modifications.
Our second option that we chose was the one that we have labeled
the two pole thermal shield. These are the twin booms that
are put out, back from the ATM position, back over the space-
craft, by two astronauts who would be extravehicular in the
vicinity of the ATM. We also found room in the command and
service module for still a third method, which we would consider
as a third option, and that is the one that has been labeled the
SEVA thermal shield. This is the one which would be deployed -
SEVA being standup EVA - which would be deployed using the com-
mand and service module with the astronauts, with the hatch open,
with a long pole attaching the sail to the workshop. However,
s we did have some questions at that time, and still do I might
add, about the primary device, and so we had the Langley Center
continue their fabrication on the device which is an inflatable
device which is also put out through the scientific airlock.
I might add that both of the devices which are placed outside
the vehicle through the scientific airlock utilize the T027
canisters, and they are both ejectable; that is, in the event
there is a problem with their deployment, they can be separated
from the spacecraft from within. Subsequent to that, why we
continued our tests, both at Houston and at Langley, and re-
cently which revealed today in our L minus I meeting, we have
had some problem in packing the material that we would prefer
on the parasol device. So, as a result of that, we are con-
tinuing with the original parasol with the original material,
and Langley is delivering its device here, and we will have
them both here this evening. We expect to make a decision
later today to whether or not to stick with our original
sequence - namely, parasol with, as a backup, the two pole
shield and a backup to that ... or whether or not we wish to
change the order and go two pole first, or whether or not we
wish to change out and use the inflatable device instead of a
parasol or any other combination. We have room on hoard the
spacecraft for three devices -

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SPEAKER ... we have room onboard the space-

craft for three devices. We can delay packing - stowing
the spacecraft and do intend to delay the stowage of the
spacecraft until later tonight and Mr. Kapryan can answer
any questions on that. That is an open issue; we do have
all the data coming in; we do have all the flight articles
coming in and we do have all of the proper tools for the
decision coming here and we expect to review that again later
in the day. The crews are trained on all the devices. We
have no worries in that area. All of the devices work to one
degree or another. All of the devices have a draw back to
one degree or another and we are trading those off. However
we - with the preoptlons available to us we are very confident
that when we do get up there we will be able to deploy a
shield, we will get the spacecraft temperatures back under
control, and we will have a good 28 day mission. The mission
that has been described for us, the one we are planning for
with our primary mode as I discussed before assuming we are
able to deploy from internal to the spacecraft does call for
beginning our experiment activities - I believe it's on day 5.
Our plans are then to continue with almost a full load of
all experiments. It does not look as if under nominal condi-
f tions if we had nothing additional go wrong, does not look as
if we would have to curtail many of the experiments. Although
in order to get these devices onboard the command service
module we were forced to make some changes to the stowage.
As we've previously reported you, the two experiments that
were scheduled to go out the solar scientific airlock have
been deleted because we cannot accommodate them. They cannot
go out and see the Sun. We also were forced to take off a
biomedical experiment. One - I've forgotten the name of it,
it's called SOl5 and it has to do with zero gravity effects on
human cells. We took that out for both weight and volume -
because of the weight and volume considerations and also
electrical power. We left off one of the materials processing
in space experiments. We still have a great number of them
onboard. The one that has to do with crystal growth, and
that was deleted because it is a large - a consumer of large
amounts of power and we did not feel we had that power
available to us. We will save those two latter experiments
and we have hopes that we'll be able to carry them both up
on Skylab 3 or Skylab 4. I guess - Today we had a review of
our readiness for launch and all of the forces are in place.
All of our activities are on schedule here at the Cape. And
we're preceding full speed for a launch at 9:00 tomorrow
morning with Skylab II. Thank you.
SPEAKER Col. Vette can you give us an update
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on recovery forces?
SPEAKER Okay, we were ready to go on the first
launch as we told you then and since then we have partially
withdrawn some of the forces during the stand-down period or
theslip period. However, we have again deployed those
forces and they are in position now around the world. The
force of people that activate the ROCR, the recovery operations
control room in Houston, will arrive in Houston tonight.
We'll have that in full force and fully activated tomorrow.
In fact the slipped launch date has given us an opportunity
to provide some more capability in covering this mission in
the form of ARIA aircraft. We are not going to provide
an additional ARIA to cover the vents that take place
during the docking and first days activity. In other words,
we're ready to go are so are the mission.
SPEAKER Go ahead and start back there.
QUERY For Mr. Schneider, what sort of
consideration go into these choices you have yet to reach
with respect to the order of priority. Who has to argue
with whom now, and then how long might it take? And A, as
a subjective sort of thing I suppose. Is there some pride
of authorship in the orgin of these various mods that has
come into this discussion in any way?
f SCHNEIDER Let me take the easy part first. This
is a NASA team, I have never seen any organization l've ever
worked with before that has worked parochialism. Our teams are
working hand in glove. When we say something is being done
at Houston for example, that means that the people from Mar-
shall are there, there are people from various contractors
there, there are people from Langley there. When we say
there are things going on at Marshall the same is true. We
do have technical people in various centers and we - they do
have technical discussions. There's no denying that. There is
no "we-they" that I've been able to detect anywhere in the
system. Now as far as how the decision will be made, we will
be trading off the various pluses and minuses. The parasol,
the minus on the parasol is a lack of full proof that the
material will last for 90 days. That's proof there are tech-
nical opinions and good techincal opinions that it will last.
There is no proof, no experimental proof that that material
will last. The two pole thermal shield - we're confident that
that material will work. There's no controversy there. It
requires a extravehicular activity. And that makes - that
puts another day in the activation because we would delay

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- - we would not do EVA in the same day we would do the

internal - the internal deployment. We have no problem with
the EVA other than we would like not to do it if at all
possible. The standup EVA- well we've all concluded that
that is one that - has a reasonable chance of going in case
we have to do it to backup. Reasonably certain we can
do that. It has as a potential problem, in the event of a
non-nominal deployment, you could conceivably make the solar
panel, the ATM solar panel, contaminated and reduce the elec-
trical power. The Langley inflatable device; the problem with
that is that that's a very difficult one to deploy in a ig
field and to have assurance that it will deploy in zero g. So
those are the minuses on them. The pluses on them which maybe
I should have said first - the parasol is done from internal
and that's very nice. The crew can get in there and can turn
it on and everything is done right away. It's just very quick.
The two pole thermal shield means that they would have to
enter - I forgot to say that they would have to enter the
spacecraft before we had a thermal shield on. We don't
consider that to be a problem other than it'll be warm. Expect-
ing the temperature in there to be around ii0 1 believe. Not
F above data time temperatures. As an advantage for this
one as I said, the crew works in EVA stations that they
have previously trained in and it seems like a pretty simple
EVA task. The crew - if I remember the numbers correctly
is something like an hour and a half or two hours in the
water tank to deploy it. So --

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SPEAKER If I remember the numbers correctly,

it's something like i-1/2 to 2 hours in the water tank to
deploy it, so it seemed like a reasonably - The SEVA one
again, that looks like one that has as its plus, the fact
that we can do that before we enter the spacecraft at all,
we can get that deployed. And the command module is a very re-
sponsive vehicle. It's very controllable and the crew feels
that they can maneuver it in just where they want. So, those
are the pluses and mlnsus that will be weighed, and we'll
have to do that later today.
SPEAKER (Inaudible)
SPEAKER It sounds like a bunch of questions,
but really it's two, Bill Schneider and Mr. Kapryan, and
they're all related. What airplanes have you got? What
time are they leaving Langley and Houston? What time do you
expect them here? And how is that going to conflict with
anything that Kappy's got working on the launch pad?
SPEAKER Well, let me just say that as far as
timing is concerned, I'ii tell you as I understand it at this
minute, but if it happens a little earlier or a little later,
don't quote me. First, we're delivering them here as soon
f as possible. It looks as if the "soon as possible" on the
Langley device will be to get it here about 4 o'clock this
afternoon. Mr. Kleinknecht might correct me, but I believe
we think we can get the parasol here at something like 8 o'clock
this evening. Again, this is assuming things go very well.
The SEVA sail is expected to be here, I believe, about i0 o'clock
tonight. And I believe the two pole thermal shield is already
here. And as far as what that does to Kappy, I'll have to
ask Kappy.
KAPRYAN Well, what we've done in order to ac-
commodate as late as possible an arrival of this equipment,
we decided, couple of hours ago, to move the launch vehicle
propellant loading up 3 hours. We will start flowing LOX into
the bird at 9:45 tonight, rather than at 12:45 tomorrow morn-
ing. We will go ahead with the hydrogen as well as the oxygen.
Should everything go per schedule, we'll be finished with that
operation shortly before 1 o'clock in the morning. We will
then have the 1-hour builtin hold, and a total amount of
something on the order of between 4 and 5 hours available to
us to go in there and do the complete stowage operation. As
you probably know, the device that gets deployed through the
scientific airloek is stowed in the T027 container. And this is
a device that's about i0 inches by 10 inches by 61 inches long,
and we cannot stow that with the center couch in; so we will
have to delay the installation of the center couch until after
we get the T027 device installed, whichever one that is. Since
/_ that's a fairly bulky item and comes quite close to panels in
the spacecraft, we are not going to set our switches - final
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switch positions until after we do this stowage. So, we can

accept it as late - the equipment, as late as i o'clock in
the morning.
QUERY Well, I had earlier a different question,
but I'ii - I'd like to follow up on this one. After the
Apollo i fire, it struck me that had everyone here said that
mission rules and operations down here were tightened up and
the whole of the manned operations were really tightened up
a major way, and now it seems that, in order to get this up
by 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, we're bending mission rules
and we're just bending every rule on site. And I was wonder-
ing whether this is just an observation on my part or is it
true ?
KAPRYAN That's just an observation on your part.
We have - seriously, we certainly worry about the same
thing. We did hold a design certification review yesterday
on all of these devices, we did look at all such things as
the safety of the devices, we looked at the mission rules on
how to use them, we have - any materials that are non standard
have been examined to see if they are waiverable, and they
have been. We have done outgassing tests to assure ourselves
that there are no products left in the command and service
module. We don't think that we have compromised our basic
philosophies of doing things. In some cases, the things like
the Langley sail and, perhaps, the parasol as well, our paper
work isn't as exacting or as complete as you would expect on
a normal development over a period of months. However, in
those cases, we are shipping the people here, with the device,
so that they can certify them in person. Normally, as you
know, - and we have paper that certifies our devices. We do
not think that we've compromised that in any way. We have
been trying very hard not to. And I do not know of any case
where we've done that.
QUERY Could I just follow that up and ask
Deke whether he's satisfied with everything that's happened
from the safety standpoint.
SLAYTON You certainly can, and the answer is yes.
I think - as Bill said, we've taken a very thorough review
of this whole thing, and we think we' re ready to fly. I
think the thing that Bill's talking about - making any procedures
on and some compromises - are none of them in a safety area
at all. These are things the worse that can happen (garbled)
QUERY How long does the parasol take?
PAO Can you hold? I understand Mr. Kleinnecht
has an observation on that same question if we can let -
can he talk? Can he?
SPEAKER Okay, I'd like to say something, Bill,
f-_ about the paper work associated with the hardware. We
certainly don't have as many pounds of paper work as if
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we'd been working on this hardware for a year or so, but

we have in no way compromised the paper work. We have a
complete set of manufacturing drawings for all of the
hardware that's been built in the last 2 weeks. It has
had in-process inspection as it was being built. It has
been qualified by either tests or analysis just llke any
other hardware that goes on the vehicle. We've also had
nonmetalic materials and materials reviews and it's Just
in no way any compromise. We've completely accomplished
the intent of the certification and the qualification for
flight hardware.
QUERY How long does it take to deploy the
parasol and it will be hot in there, won't it? And what -
how many guys are going to go in to do that, when are they
going to go in, and what will they be wearing? Shirtsleeves,
gloves, etc.
PAO Somebody like Deke to answer that
one.
SLAYTON Well, to begin with it's going to
he two guys, the commander and the pilot, and we haven't
decided yet whether we're going in shirt sleeves or with
LCGs, although we co go in with LCGs if we're really con-
cerned about it, but I don't think we are. The temperatures
as they are running now are what you'd get somewhat acclimated
to in Houston and a few other places around the world, so
we're not too concerned about that. The time involved looks
like about an hour for both of these devices, although I
think we have a better hack on the timelines for the parasail
than we do for the inflatable ones, but I think they run,
for the times we've run them, deploy the tripod, unstow
the things necessary etc., probably in the ball park of an
hour.
QUERY It's been observed that the temperature
here is about like what they might experience.
QUERY I have several questions for Bill
Schneider. I'd like to know how much, in terms of weight,
has been taken out of the spacecraft, how much you contem-
plate putting in, what the spacecraft will weigh, and is
this the heaviest (garbled). For Dr. Hawkins I want to
know if the food, the chance of spoilage, what's the work
load of the astronauts, plus other factors, how that will
impact your medical experiments, and from Deke how the
crew is viewing their additional responsibilities and
work load.
SPEAKER Okay, let me start off by saying I
think the weight increment is about 20 pounds or let me bounce
it to Glynn Lunney who can tell you what the weight is in and
what the weight is out. Glynn.

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SPEAKER Overall we've added about 400 pounds to

the spacecraft lift-off weight; about 180 of that is in the
command module, and 220 of it is in the service module in the
increase cryogenics. I haven't gone back and looked at the
numbers, but I expect this is one of the heaviest spacecrafts,
CSMs, that we have flown. Lift-off weight now for the com-
mand module is 13,364.
SPEAKER Ask could you repeat the first part of
the answer.
SPEAKER We've added about a total of 400 pounds
net weight from what we would have lifted off i0 days ago.
About 180 of that is in the command module and about 220 of
it is in the service module where we have filled the cryogenic
tanks.
SPEAKER If I remember exactly what you were ask-
ing, you were asking about the food, the heat, and the work
load and how this affects the medical experiments. Right?
Okay. We've been running, as you probably know from reports
that have been passed out, that we have tested the food,
been testing them under the conditions that we think the
foods on board the craft are seen. Now we've put these
under fairly severe tests, and our test data to date shows
that the food is good. We do not expect, then, that we will
have lost any of the nutritive value of the food, and, there-
fore, this would not affect the results of the experiment.
The heat certainly can influence the result that you get in
the medical experiments. These are performed at anything
over 90 degrees is that the results no doubt will be affected,
and we will have to evaluate that in light of what temperature
profiles the experiments are conducted. Workload again is
something that we don't really expect to see anything dif-
ferent than what we will have experienced under the nominal
mission.
QUERY John, is that the truth then about it all?
SPEAKER Well, this shouldn't say that it's not
going to be more difficult than a nominal mission, because it
is. We have got to go up there and do a fly around, and,
assuming everything looks good, we hope to go out and to
clear the SAS. But on the other hand I think we know
how to do this, and it certainly ... probably be a couple of
hours on launch date, but we don't look at this as being any
real big deal. I think we're trained to do it properly, and
we certainly don't intend to try any heroic measures at all
to get that thing out. If it comes easily, we'll get it, and
if it doesn't, we won't.
QUERY Conrad's responsibility is obviously much
more responsibility for the crew for doing this.
S SPEAKER Well, I think that's primarily a judgmental
thing - he's going to be on the spot and obviously can evaluate
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it better than any of us can from down here watching it on

TV, assuming we get it on TV. I don't think there's any
other way to do the job except - which is not abnormal to
what weather activities we do.
QUERY To Bill Schneider. The circumstances
surrounding the return of the SEVA sail back to Houston after
it already had been here, one flight model and one training model,
as I understand, and was this for ultraviolet protection
treatment?
SCHNEIDER Just as I stated earlier as part of what
we concluded yesterday, we did not have technical certainty
that the material would last the 90 days, and we would very
much prefer to have a material up there that lasted 90 days.
At least 90 days. I'd like to have it last the full 8 months.
One of the things that it was possible for us to do was to take
that SEVA sail and send it back to Houston and put some pro-
tective coating on the SEVA sail and return it here to the
Cape, and those actions were taken at that time.
QUERY Bill Schneider. I'm a little confused
about the materials used in the three most preferred fixtures -
i- the parasol, the twin pole concept, and the sail. Are not
all those devices made of the laminated Mylar aluminum nylon?
Why are only one or two of them being covered with foral, or do
I misunderstand that? And the second question deals with ex-
periments. I believe earlier you said that it looked now as
though the experiments would not have to be curtailed very
much. Could you elaborate on that?
SCHNEIDER Okay. If I remember correctly, the
basic materials on these three devices are all the same basic
material, and it's how the nylon surface which faces the Sun is
treated. In the parasol, that is currently in an untreated
condition. In the two pole thermal shield, that will have the
SI3G paint on, which is the paint that we had on the side of the
orbital workshop before we lost the thermal shield. I under-
stand it is on those portions that remain painted. The SEVA
material - we started out we were going to paint it with a
titanium paint and then made the decision - one of those was
getting titanium paint on it, and the other one is being
coated with (can you help me) Kapton.
SPEAKER Kapton, 1/2 mil thick.
SCHNEIDER Let's see, the mission, the experiments -
the experiments right now are firming. During the time when the
CSM is there, we have great amounts of electrical power, and
we believe we'll be able to run a full mission. There is
always the possibility that we might lose a battery on the
ATH, which would make us revise our estimate. But right now,
_f while the CSM is powered up, we think we'll have more than
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adequate electrical power to do the mission as planned,

essentially. After the CSM power is down, if we are
not yet in the high beta angles, we will have to probably
reduce some of our experiment activities, depending upon
exactly how much excess power we have. If we're as successful
as we believe in keeping the CSM powered up for a long period,
on the order of 20, 23 days, and if we have no problems with
the ATM, and if the ATM continues to put out electrical power
the way it has been, we expect to be in the high beta angle
regim_ about the same time when we'll be in full sunlight.
We'll Be in sulight for the full orbit duration, get out of
the Earth's shadow. And at that time the ATM solar panels
being in the sun at full all the time, we should produce some-
thing on the order of a little over 7000 watts, which is more
than enough to do the full experiment load.
QUERY Can I follow that up briefly? Does that
mean, in regards to the shade, that they are no longer orange
on the side facing the Sun?
SCHNEIDER The parasol device is orange. The SI3G
paint - I don't know whether that's black or white; it's one
of the two, and the Kapton I believe is gold colored. Is
that correct?
f SPEAKER Yes. Yes, it's gold.
QUERY And the experiments, when you say a full mis-
sion you mean simultaneous operation of experiments, no dif-
ference whatsoever from the -
SCHNEIDER I'm not going to guarantee that until
we get up there. Our early indications are that we can and
will have enough electrical power to do that. We're liable
to get up there and find that things are different than we
expect, and we have to have more heaters on or something like
that, which will put a higher drain on our power• We think
it'll be good. We think we'll have enough power•
QUERY Bill, speaking in terms of percentages,
with any or a combination of your three thermal devices,
what kind of protection is possible compared with i00 percent
for the late micrometeoroid thermal shield?
SCHNEIDER You talk about micrometeoroid protection?
Thermal protection or micrometeoroid protection? Thermal
Protection?
SCHNEIDER If we get these devices up within
about two days, we should be down around 80 degrees, and it will
go down, continue on down, and at the high beta angles, we think
we'll have to turn on heaters to keep us warm. Skylab was
• . • cold deliberately when we designed it, so that we had
planned on having a cold temperature and heating up. And go to
the high beta angles, we anticipate that we'll get into that
case. I believe the temperatures that we're anticipating
are probably in the 60 to 70 degree range or -

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SPEAKER ...believe the temperatures that we're

anticipating are probably in - in the 60 to 70 degree range,
although I'll hasten to add they're theoretical calculations
using the computer as a model and it's liable to be plus or
minus a few degrees on that.
QUERY At what point tonight do you reach the
absolute G0/NO GO point?
SPEAKER When the captain gets to stowage.
QUERY What is the time on that?
SPEAKER That will probably be around midnight
when he finally gets it stowed. We hope to have - we hope
to be telling them what to stow before that.
QUERY Okay, in other words, at midnight we
will have an idea of whether we have to go out to the thing
tomorrow or not. (Laughter) Is that it?
SPEAKER Well I'm going to go to bed earlier
than that. I'm going to assume that we are going out. Let
me be real clear on that. We're reasonably certain that we
are going tomorrow. There's always a possibility that we
might change our mind and if so we certainly will let you
know as soon as that decision is reached. Right now we are
GO and the only uncertainty is which one of these devices
we're going to say is the prime device.
QUERY What is the latest hour that you can
launch - or that you can stow this equipment and still make
the launch time?
SPEAKER Well, we're planning to do the stowage
starting at i o'clock in the morning. We could probably
if necessary, and if everything is going well, probably delay
that another two hours.
QUERY Two quick questions, you seem to be
implying when you talk about 90 days usefulness of the
shield that if we want to go fly the next two Skylabs we
got to go up and deploy some more thermal shields. And another
question I had was whether - what if any changes in the
rescue mission has been made by this delay or maybe none.
SPEAKER Let me start out by saying that we
would like very much - and the two pole thermal shield for
example, and the SEVA with its protection - we expect would
last the full duration of Skylab. The parasol - there's a tech-
nical uncertainty about how - just how long that would last. If
we end up using that we would probably do some additional testing
on the ground and probably also in flight to make a real time
decision whether to eject it before the end of the mission
and deploy a thermal shield or something like that. The
Langley inflatable device appears to have - from a thermal
standpoint - appears to have a capability of lasting the full
S
F SL-II PCIE-2
Time: 13:00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

duration. It requires no pressure to inflate it. And then

it has some history to it as to what should keep it in
position. But we have an uncertainty as to whether or not
the TACS firings or anything like that might cause it to fold
up and thus reduce its thermal efficiency, which might
mean then also that ... if we use it might be a candidate
for ejection if, and again I hasten to emphasize the word
might be a candicate for ejection if the thermal conditions
indicate that something has happened to it.
QUERY What about the rescue ...
SPEAKER The rescue thing? We're processing
the vehicle as - as planned. The SL-3 if in the event we
require a rescue why the crew would remain in the airlock
MDA. They do have access to the food onboard. And they would
stay there until we get the rescue vehicle up there.
QUERY We had, before we started the whole thing
here, a rescue mission. A standard nominal rescue mission
so that if something happened to the CSM when it docked. Now
has that basic plan been changed at all?
SPEAKER No sir.
QUERY A time line or anything else?
SPEAKER No sir.
f
QUERY Two questions for Mr. Schneider, if
all these things don't come together and you miss the launch
time tomorrow, what are you looking at for the next possible
launch? And could you give an estimate of how many people
have been involved in building these fixes and their possible
cost?
SPEAKER OKay, as far as the launch windows
go from a straight ... mechanics standpoint we have
a M=20 window on Saturday and the windows move forward I
believe 24 minutes a day. And then an M=I9 window on Sunday
and another M=I9 window on Monday and Tuesday and then we're
back to an M=5 window on Wednesday. We would llke very much
to have an M=5 rendezvous but we have not ruled out an M=20.
We believe based on the way the situation is unfolding right
now that if we missed tomorrow we would go for an M=20 window
on Saturday and then we would make a real time decision if
we missed that and go on Sunday. We probably, unless
there was a real urgent reason for going up, we probably would
recycle to next Wendesdays window and M=5. Although we
can indeed as I said go with it. As far as how many people
been working on the devices except for the people at Langley
I can't really say that. But people who been working on the
primary devices - Houston and Marshall and with their con-
tractors they've all been the same people we would have normally
had. They have been putting in a lot of overtime. There
f SL-II P CIE-3
Time: 13:00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

have been a number of devices other than those that we have

mentioned here that have been made by, if you will non - non
Skylab people, but they - some of them worked for Dick Smith
and they're the same kind of people. We haven't added any-
body on the payroll. We've had devices submitted by Boeing,
by North American Seal Beach, by Aerospace Corporation, By
North - by Douglas - McDonnell Douglas St. Louis and I've
probably forgotten a few people and if I have please forgive
me. So, mostly it's been a case of a lot of volunteer work
and a lot of overtime work. We have not hired on a lot of
new people though. The Langley device has been done in Langley
by the Langley people. That's been primarily done in house and
it too has been a product of much overtime and volunteer work
on the part of people. I have no estimate of the what the cost
is. We're not - we do not predict in any way that this will
have any effect on the Skylab - any significant effect on
the Skylab runout cost. Since we had in our original plan
a capability to recycle for a few days on the SL-2, we had
previously funded as if that might be a case.
SPEAKER We'll take one more here and then
we'll go to your colleagues in Houston and give them a shot
at it.
QUERY What is the technical uncertainty in-
volved here? Why are you afraid that it might not last 90 days?
Is it going to come apart? What's going to happen?
SPEAKER Well, there is a - I ought to have some
materials people to explain this better than I but, some types
of nylon when exposed to the thermal ultraviolet environment
change their characteristic and there is some evidence that
they lose their strength. Now that's not conclusive evidence
by any stretch of the imagination. And there are some bodies
of technical opinion that say that that does not go on as some
of the samples have indicated it will. But we think that
maybe it levels out and does not continue in the same manner.
The uncertainty is whether or not the nylon side will last
the full 8 months and if it does not --

END OF TAPE

f
_- SL-II PCIF/I
Time: 13:00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

SPEAKER The uncertainty is whether or not the

Nylon side will last the full 8 months and if it does not
why then we would lose our thermal shield. The Nylon would
go and then the Dacron would go and we'd lose the whole shield.
You'd lose that part of the shield.
SPEAKER Pardon ?
SPEAKER Because of the packing problem we tried
to treat it last night and as I said we between last night
and this morning why we were unable to get the treatment on
the surface that we had decided upon last night so we will
ship the device here without any treatment on the orange
s ida.
PAO Okay. We' ii start up here and then work
our way back and around.
QUERY l'd like to start with a question, Ken_
here, back to the shipment of the parasol and sail. Those
times that Schneider was giving are way off from what we've
been getting here. When can we expect they'll be shipped and
are they going to go together or not?
KLEINKNECHT They are going to go together. We may be
a little more optimistic than Bill is. The parasol should be
_ being packed now. We expect we're going to have it ready to
leave by 4 o' clock and don't hold me to that number either
because if I wasn't optimistic and if we weren't working
towards a very ambitious schedule I think we'd be remiss.
But it will be shipped by Lear jet. It will not fit in the
pod for a T38. We have a Lear jet standing by. The SEVA
sail is in the process of having Kapton put on it now. We
expect it to be ready at about 4 o'clock. It'll go by T38.
QUERY The other part of that is why wasn't the
sall treated to begin with? I remember when it was first
being developed across the street at GEI was told at that
time there would be a coating put on it of some nature to help
protect the Nylon side and then all of a sudden we found out
it' s not going to be.
KLEINKNECHT The first prototype we built did have the
white paint - white fluorel type titanium oxide paint. There
is a lack of knowledge on that although analytically that
should be good paint. We do not have a lot of data on that
either. It became a time when we were working for a device
that was good for 30 days with the best materials we had,
make it as light as possible, and we believe that the Nylon and
we still believe and I don't think there's any controversy over
whether the Nylon would be good for 30 days or not. It is a
matter of the rate of deterioration of strength. Whether it
levels off. It certainly does - strength does deteriorate.
However, on the other hand there is some uncertainty in the
Y
F SL-II PCIF/2
Time: 13:00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

loads that you would have up there. We believe once it's

deployed there's essentially no loads on it with exception
of some effect of TACS jet impingement.
QUERY The last edition of Newsweek stated that
it was highly controversial whether to use this kind of
micrometeoroid shield you used in this mission. Two ques-
tions, is this correct? And the second question, what led
you to this decision to use it inspite of this controversy
if there was one?
SPEAKER I'm not aware of any controversy. And
this shield is not a micrometeoroid shield we're putting on,
although it does provide some micrometeoroid protection. We
are putting on a thermal protective shield. That's -
QUERY Inaudible.
SPEAKER I'd send that question back to the Cape
for Lee Belew.
SPEAKER Lee isn't here but let me try it, Ken.
Lee's working the inflatable device problem this afternoon.
There is no controversy as far as whether or not that device
should be put on. We had a - we had a program requirement to
provide a .995 probability of mission success and I emphasize
s mission success, not crew safety. Crew safety is much, much
higher than that. A .995 probability of mission success was
our original criteria. In order to assure that number with
the models that were available as to what the micrometeoroid
penetration would be, it didn't indicate that we needed a
thermal shield - I mean a micrometeoroid shield. This was
done - was put on and we ended up with the shield that has
subsequently departed. The analysis today using this same
model says that our mission goes a full 240 day mission - goes
down to .954 for full mission success. For crew safety if I
remember my numbers right it's .99999998. I may be off on
the last number.
QUERY Rave all the materials been checked for
flammability that are going into the CSM? Glynn you might be
able to answer that.
LUNNEY Yes we have. We've been very careful in
all the materials that have been selected and have been looked
at. There have been 1 or 2 cases where we have had to add
equipment that would not pass the rigid specifications that
we have but we have been willing to accept them on the basis
of stowing them in bags and only taking them out for limited
use and then putting them back in bags et cetera. For example,
the smoke masks that were added onboard.
QUERY One more, please. Bill Schneider. I'm
a little confused over this power situation. I think you led
us to believe that you would be drawing power from the CSM
SL-II PCF/3
Time: 13:00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

batteries when you're going up there and that contradicts

something I heard earlier. As I understand all you're going
to do is power down the CSM in order to make it last 20 or
23 days, draw something like 4200 to 5000 watts from the
ATM of which 3000 watts are going to be for housekeeping
alone. The remaining is not going to allow you to do full
experimentation full time, is it?
SCHNEIDER To clarify the first portion and I suggest
Glynn Lunney might be able to amplify it later. When we
powered down the command service module it requires about
i000 watts and Glynn can provide the exact number to keep the
heaters going, to keep the communications equipment working
and things like that. As long as the CSM fuel cells are
operating we will provide that power from the CSM fuel cells.
When the fuel cells run out of cryogenics that power must be
provided from the orbiting workshop, the ATM solar array. At
that time then our available power is reduced by that power
which we must then supply to the CSH° So you are correct.
We were not tapping power from the CSH to do experiments but
hy having that CSM power for CSM requirements it made avail-
able to us additional power. Now I don't recall the numbers
again - I don't rememher the numbers that you said but let
me state again, as the beta angle changes we get more
and more electrical power out of the ATM solar array. And I
believe on day 24 we expect that the solar arrays will be in
full sunlight and we will get 7000 watts or possibly
even more out of those solar arrays the full 24 hours a day
which is more than enough to do our full experiment compli-
ment. So if the CSM remains powered up as much as we hope, not
as much as we expect, as much as we hope, we will just about
run out of CSM power about the time we get into -

END OF TAPE
if- SL-II PCI-G/i
Time: i'00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

QUERY If the CSM remains powered up

for as much as we hope, not as much as we expect, but
as much as we hope, we will just about run out of CSM
power about the time we get into the high beta angle.
If the CSM does not hold up that long and the fuel cell
is depleted earlier, why then we would have to curtail
some of our experiments, and we would - we cannot say
how much until we see exactly what our power usage is
up there and what our power generation is when we get
remaining in full solar inertial. We believe, at present,
that we' Ii be able to run a full complement of experi-
ments.
PAO Roy Neal.
QUERY I wonder if you can give us some kind
of a hack at what your proposed timelines would be for these
various systems of deployment, and, perhaps even more impor-
tant, what are your television plans, both for the systems of
deployment and a little later on?
SPEAKER Deke, you'd better talk about
timelines and maybe -
SLAYTON You talk about television.
f I don't want to talk about that. Okay, timelines. The
/ parasol, we would go in on the - well, number one, the
first day we planning to go up, do a fly around,
hopefully deploy the SAS panels, and redock. That's the
end of that day. The second day we will then go in and
activate the workshop partially and deploy the umbrella
mechanism, assuming that's our first choice and assuming
that works. If that does not work, of course, then we have
to fall back on our next choice, which will probably be
the fold sail, and that would have to go up the following
day, or the third day. Assuming our first choice works,
however, we would continue workshop activation on the
third day, complete it on the fourth, and begin orbital
operations and be up and running full . .. on the fifth
day. Is that what you were - if you're looking for the time-
line on the deployment of each of these, I think I indicated
earlier we look like an hour approximately on the airlock de-
ployed one. We look for about 3 hours on the EVA de-
ployed one. As Bill indicated earlier, we have deployed
it in 2 hours. However, remember we' re going around the
earth now, and we hit a couple of night-side passes there,
and we don't want to be working in the dark. So we'll
be closer through a one night-side pass at least and going
in the daylight. So the probable timeline on that would
run about 3 hours. As far as the SEVA-deployed sail is
concerned, we don't have a real good hack on that, he-
S cause it's very difficult to simulate. It would involve,
however, undocking, pressurize the suits, opening the
hatch, and if you want my guess, it would be in the
neighborhood of i hour to accomplish that. But I surely
wouldn't want to be commited to that one guarantee.
_ SL-II PCI-G/2
Time: i:00 p.m. CDT
5/24/73

SPEAKER As far as the TV' s concerned, Roy,

at present, assuming we lift-off on schedule, we expect
to be able to pick up television at Guam on the station-
keeping, much the same as you've previously heard, and we
should see a good view of the spacecraft through the window.
As you remember, we have no record capability in the CSM.
Then we plck up - we continue after we lose Guam when we pick
up Goldstone, and we expect about 5 minutes at Guam. And then
at Goldstone, we pick up, I believe they said yesterday, about
17 minutes of TV, at which time we expect to be doing the
flyaround inspection. BeyOnd that, we expect to be off
the range, and we do not expect any TV of any of the de-
ployment. For example, if we had to go on and do EVA,
we have no TV camera for, say, the second option, the two-
pole thermal shield. We have no TV camera that would give
us good EVA pictures. As you recall, the TV camera had
previously been planned to be deployed out the scientific
airlock, and, of course, that option would not be available
to us. Okay?
QUERY I have two questions: one for me and
one relayed from New York. You've been making many changes
in the last several days on the various fix possibilities.
How can you say with certainty that the material will last
even 90 days? Has anything been tested that long? Are
you extrapolating? How do you reach that conclusion? The
second thing is, as a result of the added load in the command
module, will there be any changes whatever in the launch
sequence?
SPEAKER The first question. Yes, we have done
tests, performed tests on all of these materials. Obviously,
we do not have a 90 day test. There is some extrapolation.
However, we know something about the basic materials. We
have reviewed some of the materials that have been used on
Surveyor and other space vehicles, and it's our judgment
that the materials would be good for 90 days and, in fact,
probably the duration of the mission, with the exception of
some uncertainty on the nylon.
LUNNEY Relative to the launch sequence, I'm not
sure I know specifically what you might be referring to, but
I can't think of any difference. The added weight makes some
difference to the trajectory, but that would not be noticeable.
I think that the timing of events will be essentially the
S ame .

QUERY You can appreciate these men have a lot

to do between now and 9:00; so we're going to have to cut the
press conference off here. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

_-_ END OF TAPE

/
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

SL-II Status Briefing

Kennedy Space Center
May 25, 1973
9:00 a.m. CDT

I--
PARTICIPANTS ;

Walter J. Kapryan, Director, Launch Operations, KSC

Charles Hollinshead, Public Affairs Office, JSC

PC-2
fr

SL-II PC2-1
Time: 09:06 a.m. CDT
5]25173

SPEAKER i, 2, there we are. Would you ask

questions, please wait for Ted so he can point out the
different ones asking questions?
SPEAKER Okay, we have with us this morning
Mr. Walter Kapryan, Director of Launch Operations, at
Kennedy Space Center. Hr. Kapryan.
KAPRYAN Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Well, we had a very nominal countdown. Was a very few - very
minor problems, really not worth discussing. I guess - I
guess the most significant thing, of course, was the fact
that we did get a lightning strike. Just before 5:30 yesterday
afternoon, it struck the mast of the mobile service structure.
It did affect the spacecraft slightly in that one of the
gimbo gyros did tumble. We shut the IMU down; we did a
full guidance and navigation retest, and everything worked
well. We actually had no problem other than that one
incident. We did also run a lightening retest test plan
with the launch vehicle and had absolutely no anomalies what-
soever. As you know, due to the refinements that were being
made to the stowage configuration, we did decide yesterday
morning to start propellant loading of the launch vehicle
3 hours early. And I guess it's a good thing we did, because
the last piece of equipment touched down at Patrick at 12:27
this morning. It was a - an item that had to be attached
to the T027 canister which had arrived a few hours earlier and
delayed the transfer of that equipment to the launch complex
until on the order of 2 o'clock this morning. By virtue of
having started the propellant loading 3 hours early, we did
get that done on schedule at 12:45. Had actually no problems
whatsoever. We did have a recurrence of the - of losing
the open indication of the liquid hydrogen fill-and-drain
valve for the S-IVB. If you recall, during the countdown
demonstration test we had to revert; that cost us some time.
We anticipated the same problem this time and went into a
manual mode from the very beginning. We did lose the indication
when we got to slightly over 50% again today, but we did not
get a revert, since we were in a mode where we could handle
it. As far as the stowage was concerned, we got done with
the stowage I'd say about an hour and 20 minutes before the
crew came out to the - to the ilaunch pad. So we had a lot
of time. We could have got equipment in an hour and 20 minutes
later and still made it. But everything went in well. There
were no problems as far as stowing this equipment was concerned.
Shortly before we - before liftoff, about 35 minutes before
liftoff, some concern was expressed with respect to a higher
pressure in the propellant storage module manifold than was
desired. It was at 50 psi, at which point it had been for
quite some time. However, the systems experts, in analyzing
 SL-II PC2-2
Time: 09:06 a.m. CDT
5/25/73

the potential of this DELTA P thinking in terms of a possible

air bubble being in the manifold, could cause a hard start
when the engines are fired in orbit and could cause a
catastrophic failure with those engines. The remedy, of course,
was to bleed down the engines, which we did do, or bleed
down the manifold, rather, which we did do at about T-S0
minutes. And that was really about the most exciting occurrence
we had - off-nominal occurrence we had during the - during
the count itself. We did have a little bit of concern for
the weather, but as you know though, it was cloudy and you
didn't see very much; it really didn't bother us. Liftoff
occurred approximately 230 milliseconds after the planned
schedule time. All of the performance parameters are very
nominal. At S-IVB cutoff, beginning of time base 4, we had
hoped to be at 25, 825 feet per second. And we were within a
very few feet of that. I guess there really isn't anything more
to say. I'm just going to throw it open to you to ask some
questions if you have any.
QUERY Kappy, were you ever able to get those
weight figures on how much was actually taken out of the Apollo?
Exactly how much weight was put in and what the liftoff weight
of the Apollo was?
f KAPRYAN I didn't get it, Mary, because shortly
after I got home, we had the lightning strike, and I came
back out here, and I was too busy. I told Chuck to pass that
on to you, but I guess he didn't do that.
QUERY Can we get them?
KAPRYAN Yes, I'll see that you get it.
QUERY What about the pedestal that the rocket
was sitting on? What condition is it in, and what's its
future?
SPEAKER Well, I left the firing room before
anyone was actually at the pad to look at it, but from the
cameras and looking through binoculars, it looked as though
it was in very good shape.

END OF TAPE
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

SL-II Post-Docking Press Conference

Johnson Space Center
May 25, 1973
11:38 p.m. CDT

PARTICIPANTS :

Bill Schneider, Skylab Program Director

Leland Belew, Marshall Space Flight Center, Skylab Program Director
Kenneth S° Kleinknecht, JSC Skylab Manager

PC-3
SL-II PC-3A-I
Time: 23:38 CDT
5125173

PAO Press Briefing. It's no longer a change

of shift, I guess, because of the activities that did occur.
For obvious reasons, we were not able to hold it earlier
because of the many decisions that had to made during the
evening. We did get the good news of the hard-dock, as you
all know, just a short while ago. Now we have here at the
News Center in Houston, for the benefit of the people at
the Kennedy Space Center News Center, the project and pro-
gram management people. We're hoping that the two flight
directors, who were involved in the mission all day long
and all this evening will be able to join us. Don Puddy is
the flight director for the orbital workshop during this
long shift and Phil Shaffer was the flight director for the
Command Service Module portion of the mission today. Both
of those gentlemen are still on duty after a long day and
we hope they will be able to join us here, but we thought
it would be best to proceed. We have here in the News Center
to the left, to my right, as far as the news people here
Houston are concerned. Mr. Ken Klelnknecht, who is the
Skylab Project Manager from the Johnson Space Center. Mr.
Bill Schneider, who is the Skylab Program Director, office
of manned space flight at NASA. And Mr. Lee Belew, who is
the Skylab Project Manager from the Marshall Space Flight
Center. Bill, Perhaps we could start off with just some
brief remarks, and then go right into questions. I think,
hopefully, the news media are up to speed on the events
that have occurred. We will attempt to answer questions.
BELEW Okay, I will keep my remarks brief. It
has been a very long day for, not only you, but also for us.
We consider it a pretty successful day. We did have a
beautiful countdown, and a near perfect launch, and a pre-
cision rendezvous, right on time. And then we did our
standup EVA as expected. Unfortunately, as I've been pre-
dicting, we had a very low probability of deploying the
solar panels. Unfortunately, the crew found that they were
unable to do that. This did not come as any great surprise
to us. It did come as somewhat of a disappointment, but,
as I've been telling you for the past five days, we have
not been counting getting that electrical power, although,
I truly admit, we would have had an easier mission if we'd
gotten it. And subsequent to that, we did attempt to redock,
and I'm sure I don't have to go through with you the attempts
at redocking, which kept the flight directors and the flight
controllers quite busy. However, at this time, we are re-
docked. We are right back were we had expected to be. We
are perhaps an hour or two behind schedule in getting the
crew back to sleep. We will therefore, undoubtedly pick up
i_ SL-II PC-3A-2
Time: 23:38 CDT
5/25/73

tomorrow a couple of hours later than had been expected. I

don't know exactly what time we'll wake the crew, but it
will undoubtedly be about 8 hours after they go to bed
and we fully expect to pick up tomorrow where we left off
today. We'll start, probably with a debriefing on the
standup EVA exercise and proceed right on into the entry
into the workshop and the deployment of the Skylab parasol,
and hopefully if that is successful, which we again expect
it to be. And this time we think we've got a very high
probability of it being successful. We will then proceed
on with normal activation and hopefully in a few days, we'll
be right back on our Skylab timeline for what is still
considered to be a full 28 day mission. I can't add much
to the excitement and suspense of the day, so I quess we
ought to go right into our question and answers.
PA0 Okay, thank you, Bill. We'll start
with questions here in Houston.
QUERY Bill, I got several here. First of all
the obvious question is the impact on the mission overall;
With the problems in docking tonight we were having, will
you anticipate another attempt to go out and work on the
solar panels or anything else like that?
BELEW I think we'll wait until we have the
crew debriefing tomorrow on that, before we make any decisions
as to what we will do. It obviously depends on what the
crew says on the solar panels, and also what they find
out what was preventing us from docking. And those two
will be played one to the other.
QUERY And is also part of that - Are we back
to talking about what we were discussing a number of days
ago? Without these solar panels that we would probably
have a nominal or basic nominal 17 day mission, and a -
say a power down, or a little reduced activity ii days
after that. Would that be in the offing?
BELEW That's the way it looks right now. I
think some of you might have heard, we have had one of our
batteries act up on the workshop, and we have 18 of them
on board. One of them failed to switch back and Mr. Belew
might be able to say more about that, which at this point,
of course the crew, when they get up there, can recycle them
but, they'll merely be commanding from a switch, rather
from a ground command, asking the batteries to do the
same thing, so our position on power is not quite as rosy
by 1/18 as it was yesterday.
PAO We've got a large crowd at the Cape. I'm
just going to jump around here, and take one question from
S-

SL-II PC- 3A/3

Time: 23:38 CDT
5/25/73

each and as sizeable we'll go up at the Cape. We want

to be fair about this. Reggie, go ahead.
QUERY One got the impression that Wietz had to
get back into the Command Module in a bit of a scramble at
the end of the SEVA, and was knocking against the switches.
Is there any feeling here that that was linked with the
later docking troubles?
SPEAKER No, I don't beleive we have any feeling
here that that was linked with the docking trouble. You
know in a suit, they're all three hard suited, they'd had
the tools out. I don't know exactly how many tools that
they used. I suspect that they must have tried all of the
tools, so they had some tools laying around that they couldn't
stow back_p_ope_ly,' and:i_'_s:_J+_ _, w_th three inflated suits in
there, it's a full vehicle, in addition to all the stowage that
we added in the last two weeks. We had - did do switch
checks, all the switches associated with the docking
system and breakers were rechecked and verified and I don't
believe that had anything to do with it. However, we've
had very little contact with the crew since then, and we
may learn more about that tomorrow, too. Or when we get
back on the network and they are rested.

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-3B/I
Time: 23:38 CDT
5/25/73

SPEAKER - - back up here.

SPEAKER - - went into the tunnel and did the
hot wiring?
SPEAKER I don't know.
SPEAKER They did that out of station contact.
SPEAKER We'll check that for you. That question
was raised. It is easy to find out, and we'll get that answer
for you.
SPEAKER We can tell you tomorrow, I'm not sure
we will know tonight.
QUERY Given the nature of the docking prob-
lem, and this is two parts, do you anticipate any difficulty
in undocking and would the procedure necessary to achieve
a successful docking require or have any impact on your de-
cision to do another EVA with respect to the difficulty of
redocking later on?
SPEAKER I don't think it would influence,
significantly, undocklng. It would appear now that we will
not be able to use normal procedures for undocking. However,
there again we do not know exactly what happened. We do
know that they used - the only procedures that were used were
procedures that had been developed prior to the flight. And
indeed they were procedures that we had in Apollo. There
was the first attempt was a normal procedure, the second
procedure was to extend and release the probe twice and
try again and to repeat that - did not dock. We then proceeded
to put a jumper around the electrical system, the logic
system, that would make the probe think that we did have
capture. Then we went into a mode of pulling up to the MDA
retracting the probe, and as we retracted it, used the RCS
to bring the spacecraft in, so the probe didn't know
whether it was captured or not when we got a very well
aligned mating there. When we mated the 12 latches all
worked, and if you recall, they must have been very good
because on some of the Apollo missions all 12 latches didn't
work and that is not a serious consequence. Now as far as
the undocking, the people are working tonight, the probe
specialists, to develop a plan to inspect - to look at the
probe see what they can do. And they will be planning what
is our way to back out if we want to undock. At this time
I wouldn't say, and as Bill said, whether we would do another
EVA or not. Now you know if we go to the parasol, we try
to put that up, that does not require an EVA. At the pre-
sent time, the second choice, if the parasol does not work,
is the twin boom sun shade. That's an EVA from the airlock
module. And the last would be to put up the SEVA sail. If
you put up the SEVA sail at the end of the mission when you
leave, you would undock and you'd come home, you wouldn't
f

SL-II PC-3B/2
Time: 23:38 CDT
5/25/73

want to dock again. We certainly want to get the thermal

situation fixed so we don't have to work like we have for
the last 2 weeks before we go back again.
SPEAKER Okay, I'm going to take two more ques-
tions here since they have their hands up and then I'm
going to go to the Cape and then we'll come back if we
can, okay?
QUERY Would you say that there
were six attempts, total attempts - -
SPEAKER I do not know. I know that there
were several. I know that there was the four procedures
that are normal procedures had all been developed. There
was one thing that I left out. The reason that they had
to go EVA was not to hook up this cable. You can da that
without going EVA. But sin_e the capture lines were not
working, we had to go EVA to remove a cover off the back
of the probe, because a shaft had moved. It quite likely
was not aligned to come back and if we had retracted in
that position then we could have damaged the probe so
it could not be used again.
_ PAO Okay, up here.
PAO This one, this one, and Angus over here.
Right over there is fine.
QUERY In light of the 17 days and ii power-
down probabilities this mission, what are you thinking at
this point on the two longer ones?
SPEAKER Well again, we're not quite sure just
how much we will have to power down. A lot will depend
on how the systems behave, and how much electrical power
we generate at the high beta angles. As far as the 56 day
mission is concerned, we are looking at a number of
things. One of course we've already started thinking
about are tools to cut the angle that the astronauts have
found up there. And secondly, we're looking at some other
materials which we might be able to bring up which might
provide us with a little extra electrical power. So all
I can say is, right now, the 56 day mission is still in
our plans and it will be in our plans until we find out
that we cannot do it.
SPEAKER I think we might add, we have enough
power to do a 56 day mission if it could be reduced in
the number of experiments. But it would appear at this
time, if everything else stays as it is now, that we could
get the majority of the medical data. That is extremely
important that we get that medical data for any future missions
of longer duration. We could continue to get some ATM
s data and some Earth resources data. Some of the corollary
SL-II PC-3B/3
Time: 23:38 CDT
5/25/73

experiments do not take much power. It may be a blessing

in disguise for the corollary Pl's because they don't use
much power.
QUERY Did you use more propellant for the
different rendezvous attempts than you anticipated? And
if yes, could this influence your decision on future SEVAs?
SPEAKER Yes we used more than we anticipated
because we did more maneuvering. But not more than you
would expect to use with the amount of maneuvering. So, we
have used more propellant, but we are not on any red lines
yet. We still have enough propellants to do what has been
planned.
SPEAKER I'd like to add, we certainly have not
ruled out any additional standup EVAs. But, we right now
have no more planned. We may add them into the plan, but
we just made our attempt.
PAO Okay, Angus.

END OF TAPE
f

SL-IZ PC-3C/I
Time: 23:38 p.m. CDT
5/25/73
QUERY I guess Mr. Schneider just probably
answered my question, but just to get it clear, assuming that
your first two options on the parasol and the twin pole sail
were to prove unsueeesful you would still hope to do an EVA
on the SEVA sail despite the docking problem.
SPEAKER Well, again as Mr. Kleinknecht said, if
you had we have to get a thermal shield up there fairly rapidly.
And if we have a serious problem with the docking probe, we
would undoubtledly - which would prevent us from docking again,
we would undoubtedly - I say undoubtedly right now - I be-
lieve at this point that what we would do would be separate
and deploy the SEVA sail and then go home. Because our
first priority is going to be save the workshop and if we
don't get a thermal shield up there why - we're having quite
a management problem as you know - management of the thermal
and electrical systems and it's causing us to use a lot of
propellant to do that. Quite obviously we've got to get that
under control. So if we have a serious docking problem and
the other two methods fail we would go ahead, undock, do a
SEVA, and then come home.
/_ PAO Okay, we'll now switch to the KSC news-
center for questions, please.
QUERY I hope I'm not repeating a question
a question which was asked before, but some of the communications
from Houston were a bit garbled here. What exactly was done
to the probe when it was in the Apollo spacecraft? And do you
at this time know exactly why that last docking succeeded when
the others did not?
SPEAKER If I interpreted your question right,
you think that we took the probe out and brought it into the
spacecraft. We did not take the probe out. We took the hatch
out which gave us access to the probe. And the reason for
doing that was to remove a plate off of the back end of the
probe so that when it did retract, a shaft in there could
move and not damage the probe. Now, on the last docking on
the last attempt which did give us a hard docking we bypassed
the electrical logic in the probe system that told the probe
that the capture latchs had indeed captured when they had
not. We then pulled up to the - used the probe and the drogue
for a centering device using RCS thrusters pulled up into
the drogue, started the probe retracting - it was not captured
- the capture latches had not captured, so it did not pull
the spacecraft in. In lieu of that we used the RCS to push
the spacecraft in as the probe retracted. So as far as the
latches are concerned, they thought everything was normal
when the command module came in contact with the surface of
z the MDA side of the probe. All 12 latches said I'm ready to
 SL-II PC- 3C/2
Time: 23:38 p.m. CDT
5/25/73

go and they just went through a normal sequence and latched.

QUERY Could someone there describe the tools
or the methods that we used in an attempt to get the solar
array deployed?
SPEAKER I'm afraid they'were out of radio contact
with us at that time, so we don't exactly what they used. We
had hoped to have a debriefing session but we did not. I be-
lieve we covered the tools that they had onboard the last couple
of days. They had a hook device, they had a wire and bolt
cutter, and they had a kind of a ... Did they have any others
onboard?
SPEAKER Those were the ones that would have
done the job. It was attempted as indicated we don't really
know exactly what they used other than the one kind of a double-
pronged tool that would be used to twist or pull. So, we really
don't know what other tools they used.
PAO No more question from the caPe.
PAO Okay, we'll take one more here and then
we'll get some tired people home.
SPEAKER Bill, or anybody who wants to try this
s one. Why have we had so many problems so far? You know it's
been one right after another.
SPEAKER - before you say anymore. I don't
think we've had very many problems. As a matter of fact it's
been a very, very good day. We had a very smooth countdown,
we had almost a perfect trajectory, we had a good rendezvous,
and we did the standup EVA, and that went very well. Pete was
able to station-keep with the vehicle, he had no trouble getting
in there close, they did use the tools. Unfortunately the
tools we had were not designed to cut aluminum 7075 ST-6 angle -
I think 1/16 inch thick, i inch by 3/4 inch, and it appears
from what we have been able to understand by the crew's com-
munication, that that is the part that is holding the sail -
the solar arrays down. They did put in a very long day - you
can tell by the voice that there was no irritability and things
went very well. So the docking as far as I can see is the only
problem we had today.
QUERY Both missions we've had - you know - a
series of problems - we have a battery that - I understand -
that - -
QUERY That didn't happen today. That happened
yesterday.
QUERY Okay, I'm talking about I'm not
talking about today.
SPEAKER The system is able to accommadate a
battery failure. It's unfortunate that it happens when we had
r already had to operate at reduced power. There is a possibility
 F
/

SL-II PC-3C/3
Time: 23:38 p.m. CDT
s/25/73
that we may recover from that too. When the crew gets in they
can cycle the switches and sometimes that will clear up such
problems.
QUERY Okay, going back to one question that
was raised - which of the crewmen performed the EVA function
as far as the docking was concerned? We do not have that man
identified right now - it's not available as far as mission
control is concerned. If the crew volunteers it before they
go to sleep or perhaps I don't know - perhaps they are already
starting that now - we'll pass on the information as soon as
we get it. Otherwise, I'm sure the question will be raised
in the morning and we will get the answer to you. We'll be
open all night. There will be a commentary - a commentary re-
port throughout the morning hours, and I guess that pretty
much winds it up for this evening. Thank you very much.

END OF TAPE

"i
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 26, 1973
i0:35 p.m. CDT

PARTICIPANTS:

Jack Kinzler, Chief, Technical Services Division

William Schneider, Skylab Program Director
Nell B. Hutchinson, Flight Director
Terry White, Public Affairs Officer

PC-4 _: :,% ' {

/"
SL-II PC-4A/I
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

PAO All righty, change of shift press con-

ference. Participants tonight, starting on my right, Mr.
Jack Kinzler, Chief of the Technical Services Division, who
was deeply involved in the development of the parasol.
In fact, I think it was more or less his brainchild, and
incidently, he is a next door neighbor of Pete Conrad.
Mr. Schneider who is Skylab Program Director, and Neil
Hutchinson, the off-coming Flight Director. Mr. Schneider,
would you like to make an opening comment, then Neil, and
then Jack.
SCHNEIDER Okay, I don't have too much to say
except to say that we've had a very, very successful day.
As we had been hoping, the deployment of the shield has
been successful and it looks as if things are turning into
our favor. And we are looking forward to a very successful
28-day mission. It was a busy day and a very fruitful day.
And I think I'ii let Neil tell you about it.
HUTCHINSON Okay, well in the presence of an in-
credible amount of work that we did today, I assume that
most of you followed most of the activities that were going
on. As yon know, we flew, today, the flight plan that we
built in the last week here on the ground. With one or
two very minor exceptions, we flew it to the letter.
got to say that I was just incredibly pleased after getting
into the workshop after all the things that have gone on
in the last week and a half. And having us turn on about,
oh we've got her about three quarters on now, and not turn
up any anomalies of any signifcance at all. As you know,
this morning, we sampled the gas before we went in just
to make certain that the purging that we've been doing over
the last few days was successful and, of course, it was,
extremely so. We went in and turned on the airlock in
the MDA basically. And we went down into the 0WS and we
sniffed around the gas down there to make sure it was all
right. And then, as you know, this afternoon, we went into
the OWS and successfully deployed the parasol. The parasol
was retracted and the vehicle's been headed back to solar
inertial. We aren't quite there yet. We're in solar in-
ertial attitude but we have a little operations to do with
the attitude and pointing control system until we can get it
back into automatic operation. But, effectively, with in the
next hour or so, the vehicle will be back pointed at the
Sun. Every orbit, just like it's supposed to be, with the
attitude control system flying itself instead of us flying
it from the ground like we have been doing for the past
12 days. The temperatures, a lot of them are off the peg
/- and coming down for the first ti=e we've seen, in this mission,
F
SL-II PC-4A/2
Time : 22 : 35 CDT
5/26/73

except for some time period shortly after lift-off, and may-
be once or twice when we went to solar inertial for one rev.
We did do one extra thing in the activation tonight. Be-
fore the crew goes to bed, they are going to install an
airduct, interchange duct. It was going to be done in the
morning, but we decided to do it tonight. This duct carries
cool air from the front of the vehicle to the back, basically.
It goes across the OWS hatch from the airlock aft compartment
into the OWS air system. And we have a couple, in fact, we have
four big heat exchangers in the airlock module which will
be turned on tonight. So, all night long, we'll be pumping
cool air down there. We expect it to be warm but not par-
ticularly uncomfortable tomorrow. I would imagine it is
going to be something less, somewhere between 90 and 100.
It's kind of hard to say, it depends on how fast it cools
down. And we intend to go on with activation for a mod-
ified flight plan tomorrow. We will finish turning on
the workshop and we hope to sleep down there tomorrow night.
Tonight we are sleeping in the command module with all the
hatches open, all the way up and down the chain. And I
think the crew is kind of tired and we are kind of tired
but we're awful happy we pulled this thing off. And it
looks like Bill said, we're kind of back on the road to
normalcy, if there is such a thing.
PAO Jack do you have anything to say about
your parasol?
KINZLER I guess I'll start off by saying that
I'm mighty proud to be a part of the NASA team. I've been
with NASA about 31 or 2 years now and all my career has
been dedicated toward doing what I could for the program.
And as a matter of fact, I joined the space test group with
Bob Gilruth in the early days and I built up the Technical
Services Division. It is sort of a shop oriented R and D
support group. And having this group at my command made
it relatively easy for me to rapidly construct an object
of this type. However, I did think of the idea myself
and I thought the best thing I could do would be go to proto-
type. And I'll just be brief, hut it might be a little in-
teresting to indicate how this came about. Pete Conrad,
as someone has said, is my next door neighbor. I was quite
concerned about Pete being up there and not bein_ able to
have a mission. I mean, not really being out, but whether
they would go up or not. And so I knew that the center
management was looking for ideas and other centers included.
And so I started from scratch just trying to determine
what might be a suitable protective device. And the thought
_- occurred to me that the package has to be small to fit in
F

SL-II PC-4A/3
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

the command module; it has to be light weight; it has to

deploy over a rather large area. I knew the size was in
the neighborhood of 20 feet or so, square. So, with that
bit of knowlege, I sent downtown in Houston and bought four
telescoping fiberglass fishing rods, would you believe,
and arranged them in a little square array with the bases
of them mounted on springs. And the idea being that if
one had spread out a flat canopy, a reflective canopy,
and direct a telescoping tube out to each of the corners,
you would have the essence or the basics of a deployable
device. If you could then fold it 90 degrees into the ver-
tical and close it all up and then telescope it down into
a box or package. So I made this prototype last Thursday
myself with some of my people. By the way, I'm division
chief. I have a group of about 135 people working for me.
And so I built this quicky model and I've got a picture
or two here I could show you. And everyone else was actively
engaged here at the center in trying to develop other
ideas, many of which were quite good. The outside sail
for example. But, it turned out my idea was deployable
from inside the cabin with a minimum of effort and so it
kind of got the nod, once we demonstrated it would work. There-
fore the next step was to take the concept of collapsible
tubes and springs, coiled springs to effect positioning,
and combine this into a working model that would be suitable
for flight. And I brought a picture or two of that tonight.
So, then, the only other problem to this whole effort was
amassing enough capability to do what is normally a 3- or
4-, maybe a 6-month job in less than a week. So, once I had
the concepts set, I knew I had to get a team together to
build. And I enlisted the aid of Mr. Faget's group and
Mr. Arabian's group. These are JSC Directors. And all the
forces I had at my own command, my own department, if you
will, and immediately - -

END OF TAPE
F

SL-II PC-4B-I
Time : 22 :35 CDT
5/26/73

KINZLER - these are JSC Directors, and all the

forces I had at my own command, my own department, if you
will, and immediately in my same building is an engineering
design and drafting group. So, the way this thing developed,
I made sketches of the parts to be made. I immediately
started manufacturing my own facility with my people, and
as we made parts, the engineering division followed along
as quickly as possible to make design checks, do the draft-
ing and put out final drawings, and what not. Meantime, I was
assisted by Mr. Arabian in establishing a test program to
proof check the model that was forthcoming, so we had a
kind of a flat start last Thursday with an idea. By Sat-
urday I had the first prototype of a metal type aluminum
tubing, rather the fiber glass fishing design aluminum
tubing telescopeing arrangement, and we demonstrated these
to Center management, and they were accepted, so from that
point forward forward it was the fastest manufacturing that
one could accomplish, and subsequent testing. Now, to
have accomplished this manufacturing in a very short time
I mentioned a moment ago, I used my shop forces, but we
recognized that some of the parts that were available from
zf TO-27 scientific experiment that fit in the same port, that
we utilized for deploying the parasol. We knew these parts
were available. Essentially a group of aluminum tubes
around 1-3/8 diameter, approximately 4 feet long. These
tubes were available, and they would be useful for the
erection step of deploying the parasol outward. So we used the
TO-27 predesigned tube hardware. We called on some of our
large aerospace companies to provide us some of these parts
that were predesigned, and all, we just made a rush call
and asked for some manufacturing to help us. Meantime, we
devised the telescoping tube array that actually holds the
canopy in place. And manufactured that in House, and to
cover ourselves, in event we had a shortage in time, I also
put some of the work that we were doing out to some of my
smaller sub-contractors. I have a Civil Service shop that
works here on the site. We do R and D type work, and we
supporting us, some outside small business concerns. So
here you see an expanded manufacturing plan, where the
Civil Service people that were the creators of this project
did as much as they could in the time alloted. I utilized
my service contractors that are in Houston to assist us in
making parts, and then we went through another channel,
out to the large aerospace firms, like North American and
Grumman to make us some parts that had previously been
designed. All this resulted in a total package, being
SL-II P C-4B-2
Time: 22:35 CDT
5136/73

completed in 4 or 5 days. Now, that was half of the

story. The other half wasproving that the device would
work. In order to do this, we conducted quite a series of
perhaps, i0, 12, deployments and repackagings of the
flight concept. We did this by hanging the parasol assembly
in a vertical position and lowering it downward. So we
had a fairly good assurance that the system would work. But,
we were working in a one-g environment on Earth here, and
some of the problems that presented themselves to us in
demonstration were not present up in space. If we could
do it on Earth, we were assured we could do it in space.
So, that helped out, and we did run vacuum chamber tests
where we deployed the device satisfactorily in a vacuum.
We deployed it out in the open and in the regular environment,
atmosphere, and with that assurance, we just about made it, you
know, there wasn't too much more to it. You might be
interested in some weights and so on. The parasol assembly
is 22 pounds. This includes the canopy, the fabric, and
it's contained in a square box 8-1/2 inches by 8-1/2 by
53 inches, and this square box fits a port that is designed
to receive experiments of this type in the Skylab, so there's
no problem with modifying the Skylab. We just carried an
experiment box up to the Skylab containing our parasol
assembly. The launch weight of our package is about 77
pounds all told. I think maybe I have said quite a hit
here, and I'd like to just hold up a couple of pictures
and then cut it for a minute, if I may. Maybe I can turn
these through a sequence to give you some idea of the
transition. This is a little aluminum canister that I
made just to hold the prototype. Here you see the canopy
being deployed upward. We have little strings on it, be-
cause we wanted to pull it out. We recognized in space it
would be pushed out, hut we weren't prepared to do that the
first day. And you see it emerging gradually upward. It
kind of looks like a magician show. Now, it's up and if
you look closely, you see some bed fishing poles here, that
are protruding to the outside. Now the reason they're bent
outward, each one of these is anchored with a coil spring
that is pointed toward one of the corners of the deployed
canopy, so if you erect the spring in a horizontal position
and then turn it 90 degrees, it wants to return to its
natural position, so in principle you have a set of
telescoping poles, each of which is mounted with a spring,
and the springs are bent 90 degrees for packaging. So then
we go up. Here we're coming down, and the one in space
sort of went through this same sort of maneuver here. I'll
 SL-II PC-4B/3
Time : 22 :35 CDT
5/26/73

show you that in a moment. Here we're coming down close to

the ground, and there's essentially a flat plane. This
is 20 feet by 20 feet. You'll notice this array is concentric,
by that I mean, the erection pole is right in the middle.
Now, I went through this step without any knowledge of the
final required configuration. I knew they had about a
20 foot square, and I knew they had a small port to put
it through. I discovered after I built the prototype that
the port was close to 8 or i0 feet out of center position.
The final canopy is 22 feet by 24 feet, and the pole that
erects the 22 by 24 foot array is only 6 feet from one end.
So you have quite an offset, you have something about the
size of this, instead of the pole being here, the pole is
over here on the side, and that calls for quite an adjust-
ment in design, as you can imagine. Let me hold up a few
more pictures, and then I think I' ii quit here. This is
a picture of the actual 22 by 24 foot panel. It's aluminized
Mylar over nylon ripstoek. Sort of like a parachute silk.
I'ii just turn this one through, and I think you will get
a feel for how this goes. Here we have it on the floor.
Can you see these springs here? Okay, those little springs
_ are attached to four telescoping poles, which are oriented
out toward the corners. Here, we're beginning- We've
got a central pole. This is the push poles, that go back
into the cabin, and they were designed so the astronauts
could screw one on at a time. And as they advance the
device outside the spacecraft, they just simply add a pole.
I guess we ought to call them rods. That's the official
name. Here you have a view of the telescopic tubes at
their closed position. That's about 49 inches tall there.
And that's the demension that was my limit based on the ex-
periment canister that I used. Here we have some package-
ing going on. We had to use parachute packing techniques
where you carefully fold and fold the materials into the
available space --

END OF TAPE
f_ SL-II PC-4C/1
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

KINZLER - - keeps him going on. We had to use

parachute packing techniques, where you carefully fold and
fold the materials into the available space so that it will
deploy properly when you take it out. Now this is just an
ascending stripe here. We are raising and raising the de-
vice. Its approximate full height there. Just lost it.
Shades of outer space. Now there is a, I mentioned a few
moments ago about the center fold being off set. And if
order to erect the rectangle with an off set center, I
had to use some lines to make up the difference in distance.
So in this picture, you'll notice that the upper most poles
carry 2 of the corners of the canopy, and here are the two
lower corners. This is because as you lift up an off center
array, you get high and low sides. Okay, here we are coming
down. We are deploying by crain. We've got the scene
dropping. This is nearly deployed. Almost completely de-
ployed. And that's it. Now here is the canister on the
left. And then there is a picture of the package on the,
I'm sorry, I've got myself backwards here. But here is
the package and the canister that it fits in. It's quite
small when you think about it. I believe that's about all
f-_ I can show. This is another view that's kind of interesting.
It's a very beautiful package, it certainly is. Here, this
is the end where we were placing it in the final canister.
And we did this last Thursday afternoon and got it down to
the Cape quite late Thursday night, and just barely made
our deadline. So, I guess that's about all I have to
say at this time. I'm very proud of myself and the people
who helped us. And we had quite a lot, we had probably 150
or more who worked around the clock. We worked day and
night, we lived out at the shops. And there is no other
way this could have been done. We had an enormous motivated
group of people and that's about it.
PAO Okay, let's go to questions. Would
you please wait for the mike. Bruce you have a question
back there?
QUERY Nell, briefly we were talking about the ¥
axis gy£o problem again. Is this the very same thing we
had last week?
HUTCHINSON It is back with us again and I think
maybe we're about to get the gyros under toe here we hope.
What he is referring to is just as I was coming off shift,
in fact I was just standing there telling Hilt what a clean
vehicle I was leaving him, the last sight before I left
after 16 hours in the place and we had another one of these,
I don't like to call them gyro failures. It's where the
computer and its little test routine checks the gyros and
f_

SL-II PC-4C/2
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says it doesn't like it is seeing and then it brings up

another one and trys to decide whither there is something
wrong with the two that it is using. Basically, I don't
ever explained it very quickly what it is, it's the fact
that we have not been able to home in on the drift terms
on the gyros. And the reason we haven't is because we
have been flying around for 12 days without looking at the
Sun. Now we've got the vehicle back in solar inertial now
and with the attitude control system getting reanchored now
on a very inertial body, namely the Sun, we think we are
going to be able to tie the drifts and the gyros and this
problem will go away forever. You know we have had it for
several days. But it's nothing new and there is nothing
wrong with the gyros other than we have not been clever
enough to figure out how to compensate drifting gyros with-
out an inertial reference.
PAO Over here on the aisle, and then Arthur
Hill.
QUERY Mr Schneider, have you done any more
tests and tried to determine the durability of the parasol
y- that's up there now? Is it going to last for a long time?
Do you forsee the possibility of deploying the twin pole
before the first group comes home for example?
SCHNEIDER Well the answer to both those questions
is very definitely yes. I think as we explained when
we first made the decision, we selected this very fine
device that Jack has described because of its ease of
operation. We could get in there and we could deploy it
very quickly, and we didn't have to train the crews very,
too much. The problem, as Jack said, you had to pack
2 quarts into a 1 quart container. And in order to do that
we were forced to use a material that we had not had adequate
testing on. And indeed some of the testing indicated that
it may not last for the full 3 months. But we decided to
use that rather than use the twin pole device, which we
had more technical proof of the material. I'm not saying
that the other will not last but we didn't have the proof
that it would last. We decided that we would utilize the
parasol and we would conduct tests at both the Marshall
Center and the Johnson Center to see just what would happen.
We had a test panel that had been tested for 3 days at
liftoff day, so we knew we were at least 3 days ahead.
And we also had some panels that we put in what we call
excellerated testing where you use literally use devices
that put out ultraviolet at twice the intensity of the
Sun. So you, for every day, you get two days worth of data.
And we are working on those and have not had any - there
..... SL-II PC-4C/3
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

has been no concrete results out yet and we are still con-
ducting them. We do think that if we have evidence that
the material in the parasol will not last there is, well
if we have any evidence that it will not last, or if we
not have evidence that will convince us that it will last,
we will go out and we will deploy the twin pole boom some
time later in order to make sure that we have a vehicle
there when we go up for Skylab III. Obviously our first
pass with the save Skylab and I think that we have, of
course it took the ingenuity of a great number of very in-
ventive people and it took the talents of a great number of
very dedicated people to join together and get us this
vehicle which right now I think is under control. As Nell
said, he spent, he spent a great deal of time here controlling
a vehicle which was built to be in solar inertial. And I
don't know how long it has been in solar inertail but I
sure know
SPEAKER About l0 minutes and 12 days.
SCHNEIDER And now that we are able to get into
solar inertial we think that we'll be in good shape. From
my own personal standpoint, I feel that after that flight
hardware has been subjected to such off nominal conditions
as it has in the past 12 days, I have even higher confidence
than I had before that it will behave very well in the up-
coming 8 months.
PAO Arthur Hill.
QUERY Somewhat in that regard, I wonder if
you could tell us if there has been any more understanding
of the docking problem? And I would suppose it is a matter
of most concern there, at least to me it is, whether it is
going to be possible for the Apollo command module from
Skylab I to undock such that another Apollo will be able to
dock with Skylab in the normal manner? And also perhaps,
you mentioned the parasol lasting 3 months, which would in-
dicate or at least imply that you're thinking of the same
amount of time between the Skylab first mission and the
Skylab second mission as per the original flight plan.
There's been some discussion of that too.
KINZLER Well, I'ii let Bill answer the second
part. As far as the docking probe goes, well let me tell
you what we've done so far. We took the probe out this
morning, of course we did an inspection of it, we had a
couple of specific questions we asked them. And I think
I can tell you what the basic anomaly is, as far as how
to fix it, well let me tell you what the anomaly is. One
of the three captural latches is sticking in the head, closed,
depressed. It doesn't trigger. Now, we were able by fooling
j-
SL-II PC-4C/4
Time: 22:35 CDT
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with the probe this morning, Pete successfully triggered

it, recocked it and it stuck again. And then he fiddled
with it some more by fooling with the latch on the trigger
and it triggered again. So what we got - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II P C-4D-I
Time: 22:35
5/26_73

HUTCHINSON - stuck again. And then he fiddled

with it some more by fooling with the latch on the trigger
and it triggered again. So, what we've got is two out of
three, with one of them sticky, and we're not sure why
they're sticking. Now, there are several things, of course
it's a mechanical device, there are several things that are
heartening about the situation. One is that, you asked the
question on whether we could do a normal undocking. As
far as I'm concerned right now, the answer to that is un-
equivocably yes. And the way we would do that, in fact we've
already got procedures up to the crew. We sent them up a
teleprinter message about half way through the day, today,
just in case we had to get off in the next couple of days
before we had time to do more probe analysis. I'll
tell you what we're going to do in a minute. And the basic
technique is this. We're going to take the probe and the
drogue in the MDA and put them together, not in the - just
out like I was sitting here - the way you can do that is
you just stick, of couse at zero-g, it's nice and handy, you
can just set them up there in front of you and put them
_ together. And he can manipulate the triggers so he gets the
three capture latches engaged in the head. Then we're going
to take a rope. We've got a i0 foot piece of rope and attach
it on the hatch handle on the MDA hatch. The man just backs
out, and what he does, he backs out and he pulls the probe
and drogue through the tunnel with him, and the lanyard with
him. I'm assuming two men are in the Command Module and
this guy that's doing this work has got his suit in the
Command Module we're ready to leave - and he pulls on the
lanyard and pulls the door shut behind him. And then he
can reach up around the probe and the drogue, and pull the
hatch handle down and now the MDA hatch is sealed. And he
can pull the drogue down into place and reach around the
probe on both sides and grab the drogue by the handles and
twist it, which locks it into place. And all this time the
probe is connected to the drogue with the three capture
latches. To put the probe in place and ratchet it up and
you're all set to go. Now, as far as what we're going to
do with it, we have had a bunch of people working on that all
day, of course, and I am not convinced when we're going to do it,
but probably in the next few days, in the not too distant
future, because we'd like to understand exactly what it is
that's wrong with it. One of the things that - One of the distinct
possibilities is that it has, as you know, the head is a shiny piece
of metal, and I'm not sure what it is made out of_ but there is
a distinct point - that metal is just to cover over the
mechanism, a protective cover, it has no structrual bearing
SL-II P C-4D-2
Time : 22 :35
5/26/73

on the matter, or anything else. And it's very possible that

that there is some kind of warping or bending or something
in the cover itself that's causing the latch - the cover
just has three notches in it where the capture latches come
through it. And it's possible that the latch is binding on
the cover itself, in which case we can just take the cover
off and not use it. I suspect, in the next couple of days,
we're going to take the cover off and see if - we'll
probably loosen the cover bolts and see if that frees it up.
If that doesn't, we'll take it clear off. If that doesn't
fix it, we'll probably get some oil and squirt in there and
see. Of course, that exposes the guts of the mechanism of the
capture latch. And like I said, the thing that's heartening
about it is, it's not down in the mechanical part, the com-
plicated part of the probe, the spider or anything like that. All
of that stuff is working right. It's just in the trigger on
the capture latch.
QUERY Could that have been, as to cause, could
it have been possibly the long period of soft docking when
Conrad described being off, kind of hanging to one side, the
command module, vis-a-vis, the Skylab?
HUTCHINSON I really don't know, and I suspect we'll
never know. I haven't heard any comments about what the
cause might be, and I suspect that after we get in there
and find out exactly what it is in there that's hanging up,
whether we got a bent capture latch or a bent head or
whatever it is, we might have some more insight into that.
I couldn't even comment whether that's possible, Art, I just
don't know. It probably is possible, but I really
don't know.
SCHNEIDER As far as programatic actions. We got
a busy programatic day today, too. I have asked the Kennedy
Space Center to tell me whether or not they could accelerate
Skylab 3, and what it would take to do that. I've asked
Marshall Space Flight Center whether or not there's any
reason that we should, and I've asked Kennedy - Houston
whether or not they have any plans or any problems of an
acceleration. I am not saying that we're going to. I
would like to, for no other reason than from programatic
reasons you schedule your dollars to fit a schedule, and I
would like very much to see if we can pick up the i0 days
that we lost. I don't know whether that's possible. It might
cost more to accelerate than it does to stay with the
schedule that we have. So, officially right now, we just add
i0 days to each launch interval. But quite frankly, I am
looking at what it would take for us to accelerate the
program. And I'm not prepared now to say whether that is
f
SL-II PC-4D-3
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

something we're going to do. If we do it, I'm sure you'll

hear about it rather quickly.
QUERY I have a couple of questions, sir. What
have you seen, so far, as the effect of the parasol on the
temperatures inside the Skylab so far?
HUTCHINSON They're going down.
QUERY They are going down?
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
QUERY To what extent?
HUTCHINSON Well, as far as the temperatures, the
interior temperatures that we have, it's going to take a
while before they start down. The kind of immediate response
we see, of course, as you know the vehicle is fairly in-
strumented thermally, especially in the OWS. And by instru-
mented well, I mean there are temperature transducers on the
outside, in between the layers of insulation on the inside
of the wall, and then on the interior of the vehicle. We
are seeing responses already in less than an hour or an
hour and a half after we had the thing out, on probably the
third layer in of - in other words- on the interior of the
skin. And the kind of responses that are the most dramatic, of
course, are those that are right there on the skin. And, for
example, some of them on the Sun side had dropped 50 or 60
degrees in the first hour and a half that we'd seen it. So, I
think the thermal response is going to be just like the
thermal folks predicted. We hope that by tomorrow, like I
said, it will be like Phoenix on a warm sunny day down there.
QUERY My other question is about the electrical
supply. What kind of a projection do you have now on its
adequacy and will the solar inertial attitude help boost
the output any?
HUTCHINSON Oh, yes, it doesn't help boost the output,
but - Well, of course it does. It ends up being able, when we're
in the sunlight, to allow us to accommodate some higher peak
loads than we are able to accommodate here. The average
output, of course, it does not increase the average total
power because we've been keeping the power system balanced
energy wise by putting back in as much as we take out. Of
course, that's one of the reasons we've been having to do a
lot of pitch maneuvers. As you know, we have to keep jockying
around to keep the Sun angle on the panels at a sufficiently
high incidence angle to provide the energy we need. Now
as far as power margins go, I suspect that we're going to
have plenty of power to do - I don't suspect, I know that we
have plenty of power to do experimenting and there is going
to have to be some management of the experiments. With the
_ power situation like we have it, there's no way we can operate
f

SL-II PC-4D/4
Time: 22:35 C])T
5/26/73

all the experiments full up simultaneously like we'd

originally planned. However, I think --

END OF TAPE
/r

SL-II P C-4E-I
Time: 22:35 CDT
5126173

HUTCHINSON There's no way we can operate all the

experiments full up simultaneously like we had originally
planned. However, I think right now we're in the process
of getting a new power baseline, that is, what kind of
power it takes to run this machine with it all turned on
with the men in it. And, of course, we have projections on
how much we think that's going to be, and, as a matter of
fact, we're already starting into flight planning for the
first couple of days of experiment operations And, basically
it boils down to the fact that when we're running medical
ones, we don't run the ATM, and vice versa. And, of course.
we used to do that simul and that is gonna hamper us a bit.
However, I really expect that you're going to be amazed
how much we' re going to be able to squeeze out of the thing.
We'll tweak it and tweak it until we understand the power
numbers and can accommodate things by merely turning off
fans, and so on and so forth.
PAO Okay, we'll take one more question here
Dr. Campbell, and then we'll go to the Cape.
QUERY How did you come up with the exact color
of the thermal plastic substance?
PAO He wants to know how the color got arrived
at on the parasol.
KINZLER I don't know the origin of the color but
the material is common orange nylon ripstoek. I think we started
with any available material that was subsequently examined
for its characteristic as far as strength, this nylon. And
the major advantage of this material was the aluminized
mylar. The nylon ripstock is a strength carrier agent. It
is a basic material and it is orange. I don't personally
know whether the color adds anything.
HUTCHINSON No, that's the way it comes. You got the
color free.
PAO Okay. Let's go to the Cape now.
Query Several times since the things has been
deployed, the remaining window, or workshop solar array,
there has been a reference to the corollary experiments.
Which are the corollary experiments? Also, several times
today, we have had references to a nominal H-cage
maneuver. Can you tell us about this?
HUTCHINSN - experiments are basically if- Let me
see if I can phrase this very easily. If you take the ATM,
which is the telescope that looks at the Sun, the medical,
all the bio-medieal, and the EREP, those three basic bodies
out of the experiment complement in Skylab, then corollary,
I'd say to the student experiments, corollary encompasses
f all other experiments in the vehicle. And some typical
f

SL-II PC-4E/Z
Time: 33:25 CDT
5/26/73

ones are the ones like, the backpack, the maneuvering

backpack is classified as a corollary experiment. The
furnace that we have up in the MDA, that we're using for
metals melting and so on, that's a corollary experiment.
Many of the things that we stick out these airlocks in the
back of the vehicle, like S020 and like the thing that was
going to be out the airlock that we're using now for the
parasol, that was a corollary experiment, T027, and there's
a lot of them. I don't have a ready list here in front of
me but there must be, I guess, about 30 experiments in
that category. The other question on the nominal H-cage -
I hope you've heard that term for the last time. That was
a technique that we use to reinitialize the momentum in the
control moment gyros. It's part of the attitude control
system, and we've been having to do this from the ground
manually, on a regular basis, because the vehicle was flying
around at this half-cocked attitude, not in solar inertial.
The vehicle does this on its own when it's in solar inertial.
When we do it in that manner, it's called a gravity gradient
dump, and it's a way to use the torques put on the vehicle
by gravity to get rid of the energy that the vehicle has
to move around. In other words, it's a way to hold the
vehicle inertlally stable in orbit.
SCHNEIDER Yes, I don't have anything to add to that
very fine description, but I do have something that I had
neglected to say that came to my attention today. I had
previously announced the various experiments that we would
not he able to do. And today, I suddenly realize that we
now have a large container sticking out in the area of the
experiment compartment. And that brought to mind that one
of the experiments, one of the corollary experiments that
has previously been called a candidate experiment. That is,
an experiment that we had on board that we had not expected
to do on Skyla5 2, but had hoped to do on Skylab 3 or 4,
cannot be considered a candidate, namely the backpack - the
M-509 astronaut maneuvering unit. I will not permit that
to he used with that container in there because there would
not be enough free space. So we'll have to, in this mission,
delete that experiment from a candidate experiment to one
that will not be used on the first Skylab manned mission.
If in the event, we deploy the twin-boom thermal shield, why
then for Skylab 3 and 4, it can, of course, be reconsidered
as a candidate experiment, _or a scheduled experiment. But
with that canister sticking out in the middle of the
workshop, I_m sure Nell agrees with me, we would not want
to fly it.
PAO Okay, I understand there are no more
questions from the Cape. J. Conrad Russell, do you have
/
SL-II P C-4E-3
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

a question back there?

QUERY What's the configuration for the crew
tonight?
HUTCHINSON They're sleeping in the command module.
We've got all the hatches open, all the way down the line,
from the CSM, MDA, both airlock hatches, and the OWS. We're
using the OWS or the airlock 02N2 system for oxygen and
we're using the mol sieves for CO2 removal. We will put
a sieve on tonight before we go to bed, We've got the
standard fan that blows air up into the command module
with the air interchange duct lying across the hatch and
blowing up in there. We have one crewman instrumented
with the biomed system. If fact, I think Joe got the nod
tonight to wear it. And the reason we're doing that is we
have no way of monitoring that fan that's blowing the
air up in there, and we didn't want to take a chance with
PPCO02 buildup in case that fan were to get out on us. So
we put a biomed instrumentation on Joe, and we can watch
his respiration rate, which is an outstanding indicator of
high PPC02, if for some reason anything should go wrong
f with that fan. If anything goes wrong with the fan, the PCO2
build up, I think somebody told me if it failed the minute they
went to sleep and nobody woke up all night, I think it would
be like 40 millimeters of mercury, which is not even -
The doctors don't llke it, hut its not gonna hurt anybody.
However, we have taken that precaution.
QUERY Did Mr. Kinzler also invent the name
sunshade tree, SST, and if not, what does he think of it?
KINZLER The name is Skylab parasol. That's the
name we chose. It's on our drawings and I never heard of
sunshade tree until it came out of the press, or at least
out of - from somewhere.
SPEAKER It came out of the flight plan - today's
flight plan.
• CHNEIDER I'm sorry. We had a great deal of difficulty
even within NASA, trying to keep track of the various options
that we had, and if you recall, one of my daily reports, I
spent a whole paragraph trying to assign names to descriptions
so that it would become a little bit clearer, not only to
you, but also to me. And we selected various names and one
that was selected for this, kind of by -I guess kind of by
mutual choice, was parasol. The people who are doing the
flight planning didn't read my report, and they picked up
their own name, and we've had the dual names ever since.
QUERY My question was, Mr. Schnelder_ what kind
of plans are you looking at right now down the road for the -
_-- I know you got a probe and drogue problem, but of trying
SL-II P C-4E-4
Time: 22:35 CDT
5/26/73

to go back out and freeing the solar wing on the workshop?

SCHNEIDER That's most interesting. We are not re-
stricting ourselves to any set game plan, if you will, right
here. We are exploring all --

END OF TAPE
...... SL-II PC-4F/i
Time : 22 : 35 CDT
5/26/73

SCHNEIDER - - ourselves to any set game plan,

if you will, right here. And we are exploring all kinds
of potentialities. Today we had some people in the water
tank at Marshall who took what they considered to be the
most logical configuration of the solar panel to see what
they could do. And they had some fairly interesting re-
suits. We're not sure that they're conclusive or that they
really indicate that we can do any thing. But, we are
continuing to pursue the idea that it may be possible for
us to further deploy that solar array. As we told you
for the past few days, we thought that Pete and his crew
their major contribution to that solar array problem was
going to be in telling us what the problem was and giving
us enough data to come up with a solution. We have had
some good television pictures and we are continuing to look
at them. We think we know better now what the problem is,
and we are trying to work out a solution. If we think
we understand the problem and if we think we can do some-
thing, we will not hesitate. We will attempt to deploy it.
I'm not saying we are going to, I am merely saying that
we have not closed the door to any further activity there.
f PAO Dr. Cambel i
QUERY What are they wearing tonight?
HUTCHINSON Flight coveralls, I would assume. They
are in their standard flight coveralls, nothing special.
One thing that I want to mention that I forgot to say when
I was sort of giving you a run down, something you might
all be interested in. The crew had the television camera
up in one of the CSM windows during the parasol deployment.
It was all, we didn't see it of course real time, it was
all recorded on the VTR and we have made arrangements to
dump it at Guam. And I'm not sure, but it is coming up here
in about an hour or so and we have got ourselves some lines
normaled through the Pacific satellite, and we'll be bring-
ing it back here real time. And we should see two sets of
sequences on it. There's about 17 minutes of tape on the
VTR. And we aren't going to be ahle to get it all back
to Houston. But at 2 passes at Guam we're going to get 2
whacks at it. And we are going to take the first part of
the tape, the first 5 minutes, which ought to include the
thing folding out and then we are going to get the last
i minute in the middle and then the last 4 minutes which
ought to include what it looks like from the CSM and in its
deployed configuration as they started to retract it back
down. And I don't know when that stuff is - I'm sure it
will be on the monitor wherever you are pretty soon.

f--
i
-- SL-II PC-4F/2
Time: 2_:35 CDT
5/26/73

QUERY What is the latest status about those

wrinkles we heard of or if the umbrella deploying to complete
satisfaction by now?
HUTCHINSON Well, I think, Jack may want to comment
on this, I personally that the wrinkles, in the first place
that thing was very cold when it went out, extremely cold.
And as you might have recalled when Pete, when they were
bringing the rods back in after they had put it out one
of the rods Pete commented had frost on it. Down in that
125 degree OWS here is this rod that is covered with white
frost, because it was, it is very cold out there. And I
suspect that after - well two things. Number one, the back
2 rods after the description we had, and we haven't seen
the pictures. We're going completely on a verbal descrip-
tion. But, like Jack told you, this thing is you know it
is off center. And there is more material towards the aft
end of the vehicle than there is toward the front. And the
back 2 rods didn't come completely up cold planer with these
2 rods. Now that may have contributed some to the wrinkles.
We think that pulling it down on the OWS, if anything else,
will help to stabilize that as a planer surface. The sec-
f ond thing is, when the heat gets on it it's going to tend
to lose this memory that it had when it went out and was
crimped from its package and very cold. And we suspect
that will do it. And as far as we're concerned the thing
has deployed completely nominal.
PAO Any further questions? Mrs. Cambell
QUERY Is the parasol like the like the bottom
picture in this diagram?
SPEAKER Yes it is.
PAO One more then let's shut her down.
QUERY I have a question refered to me by
Brian Webb and Tom Logan with Griffin Observatory with
the Grlffith Observer, They want to know when and if the
when the Apollo telescope mount will be powered up to observe
the Sun. And if they dug into any of the Skylab food? And
if so does it taste funny?
SPEAKER Well I can answer both of those. First
off as far as the ATM goes, as you know we changed our plans
significantly on how we were going to turn the ATM on for
several reasons. One we were trying to do it as soon as
possible with the delayed activation that we ended up running
here. And 2, we decided to do as much of it from the ground
as we could. Now we are going to start tomorrow night
about 8:00 Houston time turning on the ATM instruments from
the ground. We will run about 16 hours of checkouts from
f

SL-II PC-4F/3
Time : 22 :35 CDT
5/26/73

the ground almost continuously as we go around the Earth,

of course we can only do it when we're over a site most of
it. And that means that, let's see what is today_ well
starting tomorrow night and then 16 hours from then which
makes it about noon of the 4th day, the telescope mount
will be essentially checked out except for about 1 rev of
daylight work which the crew needs to do. And I suspect that
the first the crew, let's see the way the flight plan goes
now I believe that the crew will be doing that 1 rev of
checkout as soon as or that afternoon or the first thing
the next morning. So it is about 2 days from now roughly.
And as far as the food goes, the answer to that is no
we are still eating command module food. And the first
command module food is the standard plan. We planned on
doing this, we have 4 days of command module food. The
first food will be eaten on day 5, breakfast.
PAO Thank you very much.

END OF TAPE
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 27, 1973
9:50 p.m. CDT

Participants :

Neil B. Hutchinson, Flight Director

Henry W. Hartsfleld, Jr. , Lt. Col. , USAF, Astronaut

PC-5
f

SL-II PC-5A/I
Time: 21:50 CDT
5/27/73

PAO All right, we'll get started here. On

my right Henry Hartsfleld the Capeom, and on his right,
Neil Hutchinson, the Flight Director. And we'll start off
with Neil.
HUTCHINSON Okay, I brought Henry along to see who
shows shows up at i0:00 at night on a Sunday night. Give
you a little run down on today and it is going to be a little
run down. We finally have the attitude vehicle squared
away and we are in solar inertial with attitude control
system running completely automatically. And we have
initiated unmanned checkout of the Apollo telescope mount.
And that's all going well. We effectively today finished
turning on the workshop and the activation is just about
complete. We do have some more transfers and things to
do in the morning. And we have to get the medical gear
activated, which we'll do after lunch tomorrow and then
we've got our first experiment tomorrow afternoon. We' re
going to do a biomedical run. It will be done on the PLT
and the observer will he Joe. We'll be doing a MO92 which
is a lower body negative pressure and MI71, the medobolic
analizer. We plan on doing a trim burn tomorrow, tomorrow
after dinner. It will be about 29 seconds long, be about
2 feet per second. It will undoubtedly be the only trim
burn that we are going to do for Skylab II. The result
will put us in a posture for a repeatin_ ground track about
60 miles west of the nominal, as far as our EREP work goes.
As you know, we spent a lot of gas getting docked and we
have about a total capability, correction capability of
about 5 feet per second. So, we're using about half of
it. And the way things look now, that's probably the
only maneuver we'll do, orbital adjustment every trim burn.
As far as the activation today, we had another outstanding
day. The crew worked hard from the time they got up until
they went to bed. They were just getting to bed here when
I left. It went a little slower than we had anticipated.
However, I think that's to be expected mainly because there
was an awful lot of clean up stuff. The command module
was a mess this morning. We still had all the suits in
there and everything. And I think we've probably been play-
ing the catch up game today, mainly in the area of just
trying to get things neatened up. I think the activation
time line we have laid out for tomorrow is completely adequate
to finish getting the workshop turned on and I don't think
we'll have any problems moving into full orbital operations
on Tuesday, Tuesday morning. We activated the air scrubbing
system today and it's working great. Temperatures in the
workshop have been steadily decreasing. I expect the temp-
erature in there now the air inside is probably around 90 degrees.
SL-II P C-SA/2
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The crew has chosen not to sleep in the workshop tonight.

I suspect because it's a little warm. Although we've got
everything turned on down there. The water is on and the
air conditioning is running and it's completely habitable.
Of course they were down there working all day. I'm not
sure whether they are going to sleep in the command module
the MDA. That wasn't entirely clear, one or the other.
The only other know noteworthy thing in the flight plan tomorrow
that you folks might be interested in. There will be a press
conference tomorrow with the crew. Right now, and I hope
this time doesn't end up getting changed, there was some
discussion about it being changed. However, I'm fairly
certain it's going to be at this time it's probably going
to be at 1700 zulu, that's noon, while they're eating lunch.
That's noon local Houston time. While they are eating lunch
in the ward room. And it will be a television press con-
ference. And it will probably last a total of i0 minutes.
So it is kind of hurried. The reason it is so short is
the ground track at that particular time that's all the llve
TV coverage it affords us. And the reason we constrained
it to lunch tomorrow is we are trying to get it in with
a minimum amount of impact in finishing up the activation
activities. Hank, do you want to talk about what we've
been doing the last couple of days?
HARTFIELD I don't have anything to add.
HUTCHINSON Okay.
PAO Questions.
QUERY A couple of points. I don't quite un-
derstand about the MDA. I didn't hear the exchanges. Is
this a joke or could they possibly be sleeping in the MDA.
HUTCHINSON No, it's very - they very well could
possibly be sleeping in the MDA. It's sort of a joke to
explain the joke. We, when we sleep in a command module
in the configuration we're in, we have to get the air scrubbing
system that's removing the carbon dioxide from the air
is in the airlock module. The way we get that air in the
command module is by a single fan which blows through a
duct, just like a ventalation duct and blows air into the
command module. We don't have any way to tell on the ground
if that fan is running. If it were to fail, we would not
have air circulation in the command module. And we'd get
a build up of PPC02 in the command module. It would - if
it failed right when they went to sleep, and I think I said
this last night, I think the number is something like 40 mil-
emeters of mercury after 8 hours, which is no where near the
dangerous level. However, the doctors don't like it. There-
fore, when we sleep in a command module in this configuration
f-

SL-II PC-5A/3
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we ask one crewman to wear the OBS, the biomedical instru-

mentation because one of the prime indicators of too much
PPC02 is your respiration rate increases. It's easily de-
tectable. The crew doesn't like to wear the OBS when they're
sleeping. I mean how would you like to sleep when you're
floating around with a bunch of wires hanging off of you.
So it was - we asked them when we left where they were going
to sleep and they said we're going to sleep in the command
module. We said okay, who is going to wear the OBS. And
the answer back was we're going to sleep in the MDA. _And
that wouldn't surprise me a bit. The other thing about is
that the command module is when you're used to that incred-
able volume, and if you guys saw any of the television
today command module is like sleeping in a dog house you know.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if for no other reason than
that they should sleep out in the MDA.
QUERY And talking about the doctors. I noticed
there was a bit of fuss about wearing this harness last night.
Was this raised at the medical conference? Can you tell us
a bit about that, this private discussion?
HUTCHINSON No I don't I don't know anything about
any fuss about wearing the OBS last night, The reason of
course that we asked the SPT to wear it, if they sleep in
the command module I suspect that he will wear it tonight
is because he is the guy they have the base line data on
for C02. They actually have run some tests on him and they
have heart rate and respiration rate responses calibrated
against CO2 levels. To the best of my knowlege there was
no, and I don't have any first hand knowlege of it, but to
the best of my knowlege there was no discussion arguments
or anything else concerning the wearing of the OBS at the
medical conference last night. As a matter of fact, the
medical conference was only a couple of minutes long.
QUERY Why is the trim burn required? Just
what does it do to the spacecraft?
HUTCHINSON The trim burn basically is a maneuver
which shifts the ground track, I guess is the simplest way
to put it, into a situation where it is a orbit shaping man-
euver. And it is either posigrade or retrograde. You're
either putting energy in or you're taking energy out. And
it basically increases or decreases the period of the orbit.
An d - -

END OF TAPE

f
 SL-II PC-5B-I
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HUTCHINSON - retrograde. You're either putting energy

in or you're taking energy out, and it basically increases
or decreases the period of the orbit. And what that effectively
does to the groundtrack, if you're going around the Earth
in a circular - If you're going around the Earth faster,
the Earth can't rotate quite as far under you, and that
shifts the groundtrack one way. If you're going around
the Earth slower, the Earth can rotate farther under you
in a given period of time, and that shifts the ground=
track the other way. The basic idea is to get this ground-
track into a position where it repeats itself exactly every
5 days. And of course, that aids us in our EREP - it's for
EREP - and it aids us in our EREP planning because we hit
the same sites every 5 days, we pass over exactly the same
piece of territory.
QUERY What my question was, what has happened
now, that has required the trim burn?
HUTCHINSON Nothing. The trim burn is a standard
scheduled item. It's always been there and the reason that,
of course, we had very small dispersions in the insertion
orbit that the Skylab originally inserted into and, since
-- that time, the maneuvering around that we've done with the
vehicle - you know, all those days when we were tipping it
up and so on and so forth, plus the several docking attempts
that we made before we finally got docked, which put a little
energy into the orbit or changed the orbit. I don't whether
it put it in, or took it out. I guess it depends on where
in the orbit you did it, but anyway, they changed the orbit
a little bit and the trim burns have always been in there.
There have been several. There were planned to be several.
We used a lot of RCS, like I said, during the docking, there-
fore, we think now we're only can do one. But they've
been a standard plan all along. And Skylab 3 and Skylab 4
will have them too.
QUERY Do you plan an EREP pass tomorrow?
HUTCHINSON No sir.
QUERY If not, when is the first one, and what
will you be looking at?
HUTCHINSON Let me think. What is today? Today is
148. Day i. The first EREP passes they were looking at
are day 150, which would be Tuesday. I don't know what they're
of, hut I suspect they're probably U.S. - Continental U.S.
There's no EREP pass tomorrow or the next day, for sure,
because tomorrow, we have to finish turning on the workshop,
and Monday, I mean Tuesday, I'm sorry - That would be Wednesday,
by the way, not Tuesday, because Tuesday we have to check
the EREP out and that's a several hour proposition.
 SL-II PC-bB- 2
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QUERY I have a question for each of you, if I

may. First, can you tell us what the status is now of the
probe and drogue assemblies, and what is the status of your
thinking as far as an EVA, to free the solar wing, is concerned?
And also, we're having an awful hard time reading the flight plan, as
far as which experiments will be performed tomorrow and the next
day. Can you give us a kind of basic rundown on the major
experiments that are now planned to be performed?
HUTCHINSON You mean in total on Skylab 2, or tomorrow?
QUERY No, tomorrow and the next day.
HUTCHINSON Okay, sure can. I can do that. Let me
answer the first question about the probe. Hank, you answer the
question about the probe.
HARTSFIELD Okay, Rusty Schweickart's been sorta heading
up a group in the office to take a look at the probe and the
possibilities of finding out what went wrong with it. If fact,
we up-linked a message tonight, set forth a procedure. They
might try to take the head off the probe and see if they
could find out why the one particular catcher latch was
Jammed. We won't know until we take a look at it exactly
F-- what's wrong, and whether we can repair it or not. However,
based on the comments that Pete made, we are sure we can do
a safe undocking by assembling the probe and drogue before
we put it into the tunnel. And we up-linked that procedure
last night. So they do have that procedure on board. As
far as the SAS wing goes, we also have some people looking
at that. There's some work going on now at Marshall in the
water tank looking at how we might free that wing. You
probably heard the comments that Paul and Pete m_de today
about what they observed on the SAS wing. We have cut that
strap that size with a tool like we have on board. However,
we're not sure, from what they said, whether we can get the
tool in around the strap to cut it.
HUTCHINSON The angle, sir.
HARTSFIELD It appears, from the pictures and
what they said, that the strap is tight against
the meteoroid shield and the SAS wing. But, hopefully, we're
going to come up with a plan. It appears to us that, if we
can cut that one strap, that the wing will tend to deploy
itself.
HUTCHINSON The answer on the experiments, as far as
the next couple of days go - We are pretty much starting
off Skylab about like we had originally intended, and that
is that the basic emphasis right at the beginning is to get the
biomedical experiments off and running. And, of course, the
purpose behind that is, as you know, the total length of time.
_-_ The very first observations are extremely important, and
the ones at the end. The ones in between are important too,
but the biggies are to get started. And toward that end,
tomorrow, we will be doing the M092-171 run, and that will

be on Paul. Paul will be in the lower body negative pressure.

 SL-II PC-bE-3
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And Joe will be the observer, and then the next day we will
do the other two crewmen through the same experiment, so that
by the end of Tuesday, we will have had a biomedical run, a
full-blown biomedical run on all three crewmen. Tuesday,
as you know, we started the ATM, unmanned checkout. Now, this
is a change from the way we originally planned to operate on
Skylab, and we did this basically to conserve time. Since
we lost some time, the ground has assumed the checkout roll
on most of the ATM experiments, and we started that tonight.
In fact, it was started here about an hour ago. And that is
going to take about 16 hours. We'll be finished about
lunch time tomorrow with the ATM unmanned checkout. Then
on Tuesday morning, we will start the first crew ATH operations
and that will be about i and a half, one daylight pass, and
maybe a little more of another one of checkout which we
can't do on the ground, which they need to do. Tuesday
morning will be the first crew work at the ATM panel. Also
Tuesday, we will start the checkout of the EREP gear. And,
beyond that, I'm sure that Tuesday we will be running -
we will be beginning a standard set of ATM work on a regular
basis. The first EREP pass, like I said, is going to be on
Wednesday. We have already initiated some of the biomedical
experiments. The M074 we activated this afternoon. The
scales, and we have started weighing food and fecal matter,
and we've starting processing urine. Tuesday morning will
be an Mll0 blood letting, or whatever you would like to
call it, blood sampling. So we're going to start that. So
the obvious emphasis is on the biomedical, getting the
biomedical going now. Of course, on the corollaries, you
know, we don't have the plus-Z SAL, and I'm not sure -
We've already been doing some corollary work in the fact
that we've been running around and making temperature
measurements everywhere. That's one of the big M-47, I for-
get all the numbers, but corollary world is going to start
getting cranked up probably about the middle of the week.
And as you know, we're going to have to be doing some fairly
careful management between experiments because we haven't
got enough power to go around, We can't run the medical
experiments at the same time we got the ATM going. So,
there's going to be some juggling, but we're definitely off
and running.
QUERY When you do the RCS burn, do all the crew-
men have to go back to the CM and shut themselves in or can
one do it?
SPEAKER No, it's really a very simple procedure.
Basically, the burn is done either at orbital noon, or orbital
midnight. There's only two places you do it. It's either
- posigrade or retrograde. The attitude -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-5C/I
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SPEAKER - basically the burn is done either at

orbital noon or orbital midnight. There's only two places to
do it. It's either posigrade or retrograde. The attitude
control system in the workshop is used to keep the vehicle
stable. It's about a- takes about i0 minutes, we don't turn
on any guidance equipment in the CSM or anything, all we do
is go in there, enable four plus-X jets, and hit the TM on
a time. It's a timed burn. We compute it on the ground, how
much velocity we want. We know we get 400 pounds of thrust
and it's done, like I said, when the vehicle is - if my fist
is the Earth, it's done when the vehicle is at local horizontal -
exactly at orbital noon. Or if you want to do a retrograde,
you just go around on the other side of the Earth and do it
at orbital midnight and that makes it go the other direction.
It's always done with the four plus-X jets, and we do require
one crewman at the ATM C&D panel monitoring the APCS because
it's holding attitude for the burn. So, it's a two crewman
operation. The entire thing from start to finish doesn't take
more than about probably i0 or 15 minutes.
QUERY How many watts of power do you feel you
have now?
SPEAKER Well, we have about what we said we were
going to have. In gross numbers, our average power producing
capability is about 4600 watts. We - with the workshop fully
powered up and livable, in fact we've got everything turned
on now that we need. We're running about 3600 watts, and we've
got about a thousand watts for experiments. And that's just
about the numbers we gave you. And to give you an example,
the ATM wide open takes about 700 of that thousand, just as
an example. EREP full up, takes about 450 or so. Biomed is
about that same level I believe.
QUERY You feel then, that you have enough power
to goahead with your first mission?
SPEAKER Oh, very definitely. Yes, sir. We're
off and cooking. We're going to have to do a little bit of
juggling, but nothing we can't accommodate.
PAO Any more questions? Okay, thank you.

END OF TAPE
 f

SKYLAB NEWS CENTER

Houston_ Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 28, 1973
6:47 p.m. CDT

f
Participants :

Nell B. Hutchinson, Flight Director

Royce Hawkins, Flight Surgeon

PC-6

cr
 SL-II P C-6A/I
Time: 18:47 p.m. CDT
5/28/73

PAO Okay. Change-of-shift press conference.

On my right, Dr. Royce Hawkins, and on his right, Nell B.
Hutchinson who is the off-going Flight Director. And I guess
what we need to do is start with Neil.
HUTCHINSON Okay. We had another day of success today.
I think we've got probably about an hour's worth of work left
to do over there this afternoon, but I think we can say that
we're activated. Basically today was a day of getting all of
the boxes out of the way, getting the last of the stowage
transfers taken care of, getting all the biomedical gear
calibrated and turned on and starting our basic experiment
cycle. We got through the day pretty much as we had it flight-
planned. The only anomaly that I know of that we uncovered
today was with a device called the SMMD, that's an acronym
for a specimen mass measuring device. It's a scale that we
use to weigh waste matter and food residue and so on and so forth
for purposes of accurate determination of body intake and
output. We turned on, we have two of these devices, we have
one in the waste measurement compartment, one in the ward room,
and we turned them on last night - we activated them last
s night. It turns out that apparently the one in the ward
waste measurement compartment got left on all night and we
burned the electronics up. And we think it's gone. There's
nothing we can do about it, we don't have any spares onhoard.
We do have the one in the wardroom and we will use the one
in the wardroom for measuring both the waste matter and the
food residues. And we gave the crew the option that if they
didn't want to carry the fecal matter into the pantry there,
to weigh it - they could swap the electronics boxes out. They
are interchangeable - they are exactly the same - and move
the wardroom scale electronics and hook it into the scale
in the waste management compartment. Now that's the only
anomaly we turned up all day today. Temperatures continue
to come down. I think we're probably in the lower 80's in
the cabin now, in the air. I'd say probably 82 or 83. We've
about got - we've got the spaceship turned on and we're ready
to settle down to a standard experiment routine. This after-
noon we did run our first big experiment which was a medical
run. It's still in progress - was still in progress when I
left. Dr. Hawkins will probably want to comment a little more
on this but we were not experiencing any anomalies at the
time I left. And that includes all the turn-on and activation
of the big metabolic analyzer which is a rather delicate
device which requires a lot of very precise calibration. Turn-
ing the M0-92 which is a lower body negative pressure, all the
VSG hookups and everything and that's all finished with no
i-- anomalies reported. We finished about 1 o'clock today, the
SL-II PC- 6A/2
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unmanned checkout of the ATM, and again it never ceases to

amaze me, we didn't turn up a single anomaly. The ATM's all ready
for the crew and they're going to start working on it tomorrow
morning. I think that's about it. We had an outstanding day
and you never could have proved it by me that we'd be where
we are today a week ago.
PAO Dr. Hawkins, do you want to say something
before we go to the Q&A?
HAWKINS Well, actually I think Nell has pretty
well summarized the medical experiment hardware.

END OF TAPE
.f

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HAWKINS Neil has pretty well summarized the

medical experiment hardware. I might just touch on a few
of the others. I think we are fairly well satisfied at
this point that the M092, the lower body negative pres-
sure, and the MI71, the bicycle ergometer, have been run and
completed success. They just handed me a note here which
says that they did complete the MI71 at the level 3. So
it sounds like that all that equipment is working very well,
and the experiment is going well. Before we - before I left
over there, we had seen some of the VCG, the vectorcardiogram
in the initial checkout. So I'm satified with the data that
we are seeing from there. The - we have one other bit of
a problem we've got to resolve, which Nell did not mention,
with the body mass measuring device., in that some of
these weights, which are calibrated weights aboard the
spacecraft which are used to calibrate the unit. They are
having trouble getting these things to remain in place.
The established procedure is to use the shoulder straps
which go across the man when he is on there for measuring
body weight. And they are having some problem with anchoring
.... these batteries down, which are one of the items used in
getting.
HUTCHINSON We gather up all kinds of gear from all over
the vehicle and stuff it in the seat of the body mass measure-
ment device to try and get enough weight to weigh the equivalent
of a man. And we do it in steps. We start out with just a
little bit, then a little more, and a little more until we
get up to like 180 pounds worth of stuff. And the stuff
that we're strapping on there, we know how much it weighs
very accurately. And therefore, when a man gets on there,
and he gets readings comparable to the stuff we know how
much weighs very accurately, we've now got a CAL curve and
we can figure out how much the man weighs. And what he is
talking about was the high end of the thing when we used some
very heavy batteries, they didn't stay on the scale, in the
seat very well.
HAWKINS But I feel sure that can be resolved
in some manner or other. We just don't have the fix on it
right now. The Mll0s of blood samples were drawn this
morning. And that is a first. Another first in the program
of manned space flights, these were done successfully. And
we see no problem there whatsoever. Our vestibular function
study, the chair has been moved to the right spot, but it
has not been checked out yet. Metabolic, well we mentioned
the ergometer. The M133, the sleep studies, this has not
been checked out, but it will be tonight prior to the
_ sleep. And Joe Kerwin will be monitored throughout the sleep
SL-II PC-6B/2
Time: 18:47 CDT
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period for EEG, electroencephalograms. I think that pretty

well summarizes the medical equipment.
PAO Okay, please wait for the mike so we
can get your questions on record. Bruce.
QUERY I've got several. First of all Dr.
Hawkins, are they going to sleep in the command module
or the MDA or down the wardroom tonight (garble)?
HUTCHINSON Who knows.
HAWKINS I haven't heard. We have not asked
them. The temperatures in the OWS I think are right about
85 degrees, which you could sleep in with the drier air.
However, I personally would like to have it a little cooler.
And my guess is that the crew will probably sleep in the
MDA or the command module.
QUERY In moving the specimen mass measuring
device, is it the one of the two, is it any more than an
inconvenience in losing them? Or is it going to cause
problems later on during the flight with any of the exper-
iments, because that is an experiment I understand too?
HAWKINS I_ is an experiment in itself, and it
also supports other experiments -the nutritional studies.
Yes, it would definitely impact the M070 studies. Because - -
HUTCHINSON If we lose another one.
HAWKINS Well if we - yes, if we lose another
one. We've got to have one, otherwise, you just cannot
get those weights. And those are important.
QUERY What is the - in the EREP activation
tomorrow, what exactly are they going to be doing with it. Are
they just going to be turning them on and checking them out?
HUTCHINSON Well, yes. Basically, it is kind of
done in three steps and the first one sort of open the lid
on the panel and see that there is no broken glass and the
wires are all - it is pretty basic. And you're right. We
are going to turn on the instruments. We aren't going to
have an EREP pass. We're just turning on the instruments
looking at the electronic output from them. We'll be - some of
the EREP support gear will be turning on the coolant loop
for the first time. We've got to get the tape recorders
loaded - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-6C/I
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5128173

HUTCHINSON - output from them will be - some of the

EREP support gear will be turning the coolant loop for the first
time. We've got to get the tape recorders loaded and there is
a bit of a checkout involved in that because we're a little
worried about what the heat may have done to some of the tape.
We're going to load the 190 cameras, all six of them, for the
first time. So it's load them up and push the buttom and see
if the shutter clicks on the cameras and, of course, there is
some on-board monitoring capability on voltages and so on and
so forth, and it will be fully powered up tomorrow. But it
is really just a checkout.
QUERY Did the crew actually ride the bicycle
on the metabolic experiment?
HUT CHINS ON Yes.
HAWKINS Yes.
HUTCHINSON Level three that's the full protocol.
HAWKINS Yes, that was successful.
QUERY Did they say they were uncomfortable because
of the heat in doing this?
HAWKINS We've not had any verbal comments on it.
j .... In fact, this was completed while we were coming over here and
all I know is the little message they gave me.
HUTCHINSON The crew today - this morning, did call
down and offer an alternative to the protocol and we talked
about it and sort of gave them their choice. We suggested
that they complete the protocol if they felt they could do
it. If they couldn't, if he could only make two runs because
it was too warm down there we said, well, it's your choice.
Decide in real time. They obviously decided to do it all.
And they probably sweat a bit.
QUERY You haven't heard the results then of the
lower body negative pressure tests?
QUERY Not yet?
HAWKINS We have not and I do not have really the
results on the 171 yet. We won't have that really until we
get the dump data tonight, which is usually - well, at the
earliest, four hours after the experiments are done.
HUTCHINSON And it gets run through 50 computer pro-
grams and they look at it for a half a day and - -
HAWKINS Well, we give it a raw look first you know.
QUERY This is a question for both Nell and Dr.
Hawkins. What does the temperature look like it's going to
level off and if this in excess of the planned value, 72 degrees,
do you have in mind further adjustments for the sunshade? And
if we are going to have a higher heat burden in there for the
balance of the mission, will that impinge in any way on a base-
 SL-II PC-6C/2
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line data you've obtained for these medical - biomedical experi-

ments ?
HUTCHINSON Well I'll let him talk to the baseline.
Let me answer the one about the thermal situation. We have
no reason to believe that the workshop is not going to stabi-
lize exactly where we said it was, around 70 degrees. And the
temperature profile, as it's been behaving during the cool down
cycle, is just exactly what they said it was going to be. Now
the crew has described an area. Let me see if I can recollect,
I believe it is around water tanks i and 3 above the
water sampling kit on the wall on the forward compartment, that
is warm. It was not described as hot, it was described as
warm. As a matter of fact, Pete has said and I won't be sur-
prised if we don't do this here in the near future, that he
thinks he can draw a map of the sunshleld by running his hands
over the wall. And I wouldn't be surprised if we don't do
that - sounds like a good idea to me, because we can't see it
from inside completely. However, I'm convinced that that small
area or small hot spot or small thing that isn't shaded exactly
right because we may have a dip in the covering there is not
-- going to upset the thermal balance. Now, if it does upset
the thermal balance - it's yours.
HAWKINS Well we've- I guess the most critical
experiment from the thermal standpoint - the thermal loads -
increased thermal loads that we've seen, would be the lower
body negative pressure, the cardiovascular study. And any-
thing- we feel that any temperatures above 90 degrees certainly
will affect the results and we're going to have to interpret
that data in light of the thermal loads under which the =ondition -
the experiment was run. Below that and certainly in the desir-
able 70 or below range we should be really back in nominal
position.

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-6D/I
Time: 18:47 p.m. CDT
5128173

HAWKINS - 70 or below range, we should really be

back in really a nominal position.
QUERY Have you been able to make any determination
of what the effect of all of this activity to launch the repair
mission has had or will have on the biomedical experiments.
I know there was some concern about the astronauts being out
of isolation and that sort of thing.
HAWKINS No, we really have not yet been able to
assess the cost of that stress. It certainly will figure into
the results and all that we see and we will have to take
that into account as we analyze that data very carefully. But
right now I just can't tell you what that means.
}IUTCHINSON Without it there wouldn't have been any
biomedical experiments.
QUERY Can you give us some idea of what ATM work
is lined up for tomorrow?
HUTCHINSON In the morning we going to spend about
a rev and a half doing the manned portion of the checkout.
And the last part of that includes a 4-1imb eoalign, and please
don't ask me to try and explain that, but in a nutshell it's
getting the instruments calibrated relative to the Sun, or south.
We have right now in the flight plan - there are probably four
ATM daylight passes tomorrow, manned. The first one is going
to be a synoptic which is the 12-hour, every 12 hour look at
the Sun. I have not seen the detailed solar pad - activity
pad for tomorrow which is being produced by the team that's
on now. It's kind of an average day for ATM I'd say. Not
particularly busy and - but certainly a start.
QUERY Nell, you've had an undervolt and a fire
alarm, and I just wondered are these - have you solved these?
Are these still considered funnies or are they now glitches or
they just transients or what?
HUTCHINSON The undervolt you are referring to is the
one in the CSM? Well we think we know what caused the under-
volt in the CSM. It was nothing more than a case of all our
heaters hitting the cycle at the same time. It happened be-
fore we got down to what we called our quiescent power level
which is considerably below where it happened. We are now
currently in terms of loads in the CSM, considerably below
where that happened. And we don't anticipate any more problems
with it. Fire alarms - we've had two or three. You will recall
at the first day of activation we had one that went off maybe
two or three times - the same alarm. It was in the center sleep
compartment. And these things are kind of tricky, they have
sensitivity adjustments on them, And of course they can fail.
And of course we have lots of spares onboard and I don't believe,
-- in fact I know, we haven't changed it out yet. We're currently
 SL-II PC-6D/2
Time: 18:47 p.m. CDT
5/28/73

running with that fire sensor turned off in that sleep com-
partment because it was giving us nuisance trips over and over
again. We also had a fire alarm in the OWS aft heat exchanger
yesterday and the crew - they pay attention to fire alarms -
if you've ever heard that klaxon you'd probably pay attention
to them too. Anyway they ran up there, opened the box up,
the aft heat exchanger's in the airlock aft compartment. It's
the thing that cools the air that's going down into the work-
shop - has four big fans in there - there are two fire alarms -
two fire sensors in the box. And he - Pete did it - he pulled
the lid off and got down in there with his flashlight and
couldn't find anything and so we've attributed that to a nuisance
trip also and I wouldn't be surprised if we've got some ad-
justment to do on some of them. Now, it so happens that that
one occurred right in the middle of the South Atlantic Anomaly,
which is a known possible causer of phony fire alarm trips
and it's not clear whether that is the culprit - -

END OF TAPE

f
SL-II PC-6E/I
Time: 18"47 CDT
5128173

HUTCHINSON phony fire alarm trips. It's not clear

whether that is the culprit or not. However, it could
be more than coincidence. I have a feeling it's going
to take us a while to get that system down where it's -
we'll probably have to do some adjusting. There are indi-
vidual sensitivity adjustments on the individual - each indi-
vidual alarm.
PAO Let's take one from Bruce Hicks over
he re.
QUERY Nell, have the ATM- running of the ATM today,
and what we've got tomorrow, are they any more than calibra-
tion, are they actually trying to collect data?
HUTCHINSON Tomorrow is, tomorrow is ATM science.
And the old scientist snuck in a little ATM science today
while we were doing the checkout. As a matter of fact,
we spent a couple of passes looking at some filaments
that they were interested in where we - Actually our check-
out went so darned smooth, we had some pad built into it
deliberately and we didn't have any hitches and so a couple
of times we left the thing pointed - our particular instrument
pointed at a solar feature of interest to the scientists at their
request. However, technically science starts in the morning.
QUERY What are these points of interest?
And what's the good old Sun doing up there? I mean it's
hot down here but - -
HUTCHINSON The Sun is hot and it's - I didn't ever
have, in fact, I hope I'ii be a little more prepared to talk
about things like ATM now that we're turned on and starting
to go to work. But, we have - there is considerable activity
on the Sun, which is kind of surprising. Of course, as you
know, we're in a quiet cycle. And there have been since we
have been up there, there are 2 or 3 regions that are producing
subflares regularly. So, as you can imagine, there are
lots of people who can't wait to get going tomorrow. Active
region 14, I believe, is - they had a subflare, at least one,
during the crew workday today out of active region 14.
QUERY No big flares yet though?
HUTCHINSON Any flare this kind of time of the Sun's
cycle is a good flare, a big flare. But, no, no class C type
stuff.
QUERY Dr. Hawkins, has any of the food been
opened? And have the heat trays been activated?
HAWKINS No they're still eating the command
module food which was sent up there. The trays are all out,
but no power has been put to them yet. And they have in-
spected cans of Skylab food but none of these to my knowlege
have been opened as yet.
f--

SL-II PC-6E/2
Time: 18:47 CDT
5/28/73

QUERY What's your power situation now?

How many watts did those two medical experiments take?
And what are yon going to do tomorrow when you have the ATM
going?
HUTCHINSON The power situation is kind of like I
described it yesterday. It's one that requires a consider-
able amount of examination. We're kind of feeling our way
along. We have built a flight plan for tomorrow. Right
at the moment, as a matter of fact, we are making computer
runs. We have some computer programs on the ground that
evaluate power. And we're able to simulate the failures
that we've had and the amount of power that we have avail-
able. And we take a flight plan, in fact we do this every
night, we will be doing this every night. We take a flight
plan, we evaluate it for electrical power to make sure that
we aren't using too much or not putting together things
that won't fit together. The flight plan that we have
set up for tomorrow has been grossly evaluated. It's being
evaluated by computer program now. And we have a couple
of areas in it that are very tight. Around lunch time
tomorrow there is one that I recall that is up around
4500 watts, just grossing it , just sort of eyeballing it,
where the food trays are on and I don't remember what else,
several things. The ATM was on and we were getting ready
for a - or we were right in the middle of a 92-171. I don't
remember the set combination. But, we are observing some
restraint in combining experiments, at least until we under-
stand where we are. As far as the run this afternoon goes,
I don't have the numbers for how much it took, powerwise.
By the way, the biomedical experiments are not big power
users, if that's any - I mean, if you compare biomed to ATM-
it's like to run a 92-171 run is - -

END OF TAPE

'.l .i - I_ | .
SL-II PC-6F/1
Time: 18:47 p.m. CDT
5/28/73

HUTCHINSON - are not power users. If that's any -

I mean if you'd compare biomed to ATM it's like - to run a 92-171
run is probably 150 watts and the ATM is like 800 watts. So
there's a considerable difference.
QUERY What is the effect of losing one of those
batteries?
HUTCHINSON One of the CBRM's? It would cost us 1/18th
of all the power we have available.
HUTCHINSON Like 6 percent.
QUERY Dr. Hawkins when do they start to eat
Skyl ab food?
HUTCHINSON I always get it mixed up. We have four
days of command module food. What is today?
HUTCHINSON Today is mission day 4. Tomorrow morn-
ing at breakfast they will eat Skylab food. I knew that be-
cause we're using the filtrates.
HAWKINS I've lost track of what day we are in really.
HUTCHINSON We're in mission day 4, tomorrow's
mission day 5 and we're out of command module food at dinner
tonight.
HAWKINS That's right.
HUTCHINSON So tomorrow we get the big taste test.
QUERY Nell, how is the solar inertial mode working?
How is control mode - momentum gyros working and how tightly
is it holding it?
HUTCHINSON Absolutely impeccable. We have not used
- we have not fired a TACS jet since - well it's been about
36 hours. And we intend that we will continue in this mode
ad infinitum. The system's working very well. We're finally
flying it the way it was designed to be flown, pointed at the
Sun, and it's doing extremely well. We've had the canister
pointing system turned on today - it's part of this checkout - and
we've been driving the canister around the Sun and that's all
working great. And of course, the real test is when we get
it pointed at the Sun and the crew is looking at the monitors
and can tell exactly what kind of Jitter and shake and so on
they' re getting, which is what will happen tomorrow morning
first thing. At best we can tell, it's working great and
we're about to home in on _he drifts on the gyros here. We've
updated two more of them again today and I think it's just
a matter of time until that no longer is a problem. They
aren't drifting like they were and of course when we are in
solar inertial we can get a good hack on them every rev, so
it - I think the APCS is in absolutely great shape.
QUERY What's the latest on the probe and drogue
situation?
HUTCHINSON Well nothing was done with the probe and
SL-II PC-6F/2
Time: 18:47 p.m. CDT
5/28/73

drogue today except that we had a long discussion with Pete.

You know that yesterday we sent up a teleprinter message on
some stuff we wanted done to the probe. And I explained it
to you yesterday. It was basically, take the head off and look
at and squirt it with oil and so on. And we talked to him about
doing that today and about some of the special things we wanted
him to look at and they may do that tonight. We haven't -
if they don't do it tonight I suspect in the next day or so
we'll probably schedule them a block a time to free them up
so they can spend an hour or two trying to diagnose it.
PAO One more and then we'll call her quits.
QUERY The trim burn still on for about i0 mir_utes
of 8 Houston time?
HUTCHINSON Yeah_ let me see if I can quote the time
right now. It's at - what time is it right now? Yes. And
it's two-jet RCS posigrade - no retrograde noon. I'ii be about
a minute and nine seconds - something like that. You may not
recognize that time. That's because we decided to do it with
two jets instead of four Jets so that doubles the time. And
the reason we decided to do it with two jets instead of four
jets - we've lost a temperature measurement - we lost it during
the rendezvous in fact on one of the RCS quads on the CSM.
And without a temperature measurement we have no way of telling
how cold it is so we would have had to go in there today sev-
eral times this afternoon and turn on the heaters so we could
make sure that it was adequate - warm enough to use. And rather
than interupt the crew timeline we chose to do the burn two-jet.
PAO Okay. Thank you.

END OF TAPE
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 29, 1973
8:01 p.m. CDT

P articipan ts :

John P. Donnelly, NASA Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs

"_ Nell B. Hutchinson, Flight Director
Dr. Royce Hawkins, Flight Surgeon
William Keathly, ATM Experiment Program Manager, MSFC
John Wegener, ATM Flight Controller
Gerald Griffith, EREP Flight Controller
Hilt Reim, PAO

7---_ PC-7
r

SL-II PC- 7A-I

Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

PAO All right, before we get started here

if anyone has any questions on NASA policy concerning
private conversations, we have Mr. John Donnelly here, NASA
assistant administrator for public affairs, who could ans-
wer questions if anybody has any. Anybody have a question.
QUERY Mr. Donnelly, I'd like to know whether
or not information that comes down to Mission Control on
the B Channel will be transcribed and made available to
the press.
DONNELLY Yes, it will be.
QUERY Starting when and will we get any of the
back Channel B chatter.
DONNELLY Starting as soon as possible. Yes, you
will get all the commentary that has come down so far. Com-
pletely and in full.
QUERY Is there going to be a change of shift
briefing in the morning.
DONNELLY We're taking a look at that, and try to
work something out (garble).
QUERY I don't know if this is relevant to
this, but Roy Neal was saying that the crew would be told
that there will be no procedure available for deploying
the solar panel for at least a week. I wonder if this has
been on the B Channel?
DONNELLY Not that I know of, Reg, I haven't
seen it. Maybe some of the fellows that have been working
on the shifts would be in a better position to answer that
than I would. Okay, I don't want to -
HUTCHINSON Okay to ask it again, is it? You want
me to answer that one now?
DONNELLY No, I'd just like to say, I don't want
to muddy up the waters on your briefing here, but I just
thought I'd thought I'd make myself available, if you did
have any questions on that.
PAO All right, we'll get started then. I'ii
introduce the people. Starting on my right here is John
Wegener, the ATM. And on his right is William C. Keathley,
who is the ATM Experiment Program Manager from Marshall.
And Nell Hutchinson, Flight Director. On Nell's right,
Gerald Griffith, EREP, and on Griffith's right is Dr. Royce
Hawkins, the Deputy Director for Medical Operations at JSC.
We'll let Neil Start.
HUTCHINSON Well, I don't know how much you listened
to about what went on today. The air-ground probably didn't
have a heck of a lot of conversation on it, but gosh, I'ii
take activation any day to this orbital op stuff. We had -
 SL-II P C- 7A-2
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

I guess I could describe it as a successful, but hectic day

today. I think the crew day was probably not anywhere near
as hectic as ours was on the ground. We just had an awful
tough time moving into what I would call a normal operational
cycle, from what could be called a pretty canned operational
cycle. I guess we kind of expected to have a tough time
getting started in orbital operations, mainly because it's
really a change of pace from the kind of stuff that we've
been doing up to date in Skylab. And it's a bit different
than anything we've ever done before. Today, as you know,
we really turned everything on and we ran - we successfully
accomplished the flight plan we set out to accomplish today,
with a couple of minor glitches, probably which were of
our own making, I'm not sure. I'ii talk about some of the
equipment problems we had. I'm not sure yet how many of
them were procedural problems, and how many of them were
really something wrong with the hardware. In summary today,
we ran, I believe, four manned ATM passes. We completed
the manned ATM checkout first thing this morning. We got
two biomedical runs in today. So, we now have had a major
s bio run on all three crewmen.

END OF TAPE
r_
SL-II PC-TB/I
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

HUTCHINSON - morning. We got two biomedical runs

in today, so we now have had a major bio run on all three
crewmen. We checked out the EREP gear in preparation for
an EREP pass tomorrow and we did have some problems with the
checkout and I'ii talk about those. And I brought along an
ATM officer, John Wegener, here on my left and I brought along
an EREP fellow, Jerry - Gerald Griffith, who is the EREP Officer
on the silver team. And they'll probably help you if you
have any specific questions about those instruments and what
went on with them today. I think we're probably moving in
to the operations phase fairly coherently. One thing I'd
like to comment on in the systems area, which I'm sure you may
or may not have heard about, is the temperature situation.
This afternoon, after some deliberations during the day, we
kind of made a summary up for Pete which we read up over the
loop here just before I left and I'ii kind of summarize that
or paraphrase it for you. Basically we think that we've been
of course watching the temperatures and we, as you've been
told before, have a computer program at Huntsville which is
a fairly expensive model of the cluster thermally. You also
know that we've never had the OWS in a tank or anything like
_- that, ir a vacuum chanber so, the thermal modeling science
is an analytical one as opposed to one that has a lot of test
day in it. What I'm leading up to is the fact that it appears
that the cluster is not going to get as cool as we thought
it was going to get. And it's not clear yet that we know
, exactly where it's going to end up stabilizing but we're fairly
certain now it's probably going to be warmer than we thought.
And it looks like it's probably going to be somewhere around
80 degrees. Now, of course we have been watching this thing
come down and it started down after we got the parasol out
for the first day or day and a half, like it was pretty much
following the way the computer said it was supposed to perform
and here in the last day or so it's started to peel off and
it looks like it's going to level out 8 degrees or so, may-
be i0 - at the outside - higher than we predicted. Now, it's
not clear yet what effect that's going to have on our overall
operation. It's certainly not uncomfortable for the crew, but
it's not down as low as we would like it. And I'ii say again
we're still not positive where it's going to end up stabilizing
out. Now, we've done some things today to help the cooling
situation down in the OWS. We - to save power we had only
been running two of the big air ducts down there and we turned
the third one on this afternoon. We also turned on - we put
a - as you probably know we have some portable fans in the
vehicle. We have installed a portable fan in the hatch between
F- the OWS and the airlock module, blowing air up into the airlock
 SL-II PC-7B/2
_-_ Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

module. In other words, it's taking hot air out of the dome
area of the forward compartment and blowing it up into the
airlock module where it gets into a heat exchanger, gets cooled
and gets sent back down again. And I think that's probably
of course the big fans turning on the third duct increases the
air circulation down there by a third. That's another 500
cubic feet per minute flow down there. I'm not sure and Dr.
Hawkins may want to comment on this. I'm not sure if we ran
the full protocols on M-171 today or not.
HAWKINS We did run the full. Both LB and PN 171.
HUTCHINSON So, it looks like we're going to be able
to do that. Of course the temperature right now is still
up around - oh it's 85 or 86 probably ambient air temperature
in there right in that area - it may be 87. So_ we're still
cooling off and it's slower and we don't think it's going as
far and it's going to take a while for us to reassess exactly
what that's going to mean to us. As far as the experiments
today - experiment anomalies, we had an anomaly in the pointing
system that points the ATM canister at the Sun. And I'm not
- this is the one that I'm not really sure is an anomaly or
not. I'm not sure that we didn't - not drive the automobile
exactly right the first time around and maybe what we think
is an anomaly really is going to turn out not to be one. I
think it's too early to say. Basically, the thing that appears
to be wrong - and I'ii say again I'm not sure that therels any-
thing wrong - is there is a Sun sensor - as you know the ATM
canister has it's own pointing system that stabilizes it even
tighter than the stabilization the vehicle has and it works
on a principle very, very similar to the vehicle. It has a
Sun sensor that looks at the Sun that can tell how far it is
off the center of the Sun and it has a set of gyros that measure
the slight motions that it has and it's a completely a two
degree of freedom inertial stabilization system. The Sun
sensors are also used to point the canister at features on
the Sun. And we have the capibility to manipulate it - the
crew and the ground has the capibility to manipulate it - to
drive it down to specific features we want to look at. And you do
this by moving a little prism that comes in and directs the light
into the Sun sensor and it fakes the Sun sensor out. It makes it
think that it's not really on the center of the Sun and so it
moves the canister to get it on the center of the Sun. It
just - prism just bends the light. Like I said it - we move
it in two axes and we call it UP, DOWN, LEFT RIGHT. It's just
this way or this way which can move it across the face of the
Sun. And the thing that we don't understand and it appears
not to be working right is one of these wedge-drives in the
up-down direction. And right now it looks like the canister's
moving but all the indications we - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-7C/I
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

HUTCHINSON - in the up-down direction. And right now

it looks like the canister is moving, but all the indications
we have - the canister is physically moving because the crew-
men can look in his monitor and see the Sun moving when he
moves his little joy stick. However, the computer won't move
the canister with the primary Fine Sun sensor selected and the up-
down position, nor do any of the readouts on the ground or in
the ATM panel change when the canisters move. I don't think
we've heard the last of that one - we have two fine Sun sensors,
two complete units. We have selected a secondary and are con-
tinuing normal ATM operation with the secondary one. And I'm
not sure that we understand - in fact, I know we don't under-
stand everything about the primary one. That was our biggy
today in as far as the ATM goes - as far as the support
equipment. When it malfunctioned it cost us a pass. We lost
one daylight pass today before we got ourselves sorted out.
However, we did get on the secondary and get - we did a small
amount of trouble shooting on the primary and the crew was
able to continue on with ATM operations, as was the ground. We
run the ATM unmanned when the crew is not there. As far as ATM
itself goes, these gentlemen, Mr. Keathley and John Wegener can
tell you about the little things we got going with the instru-
f ments. We have a couple of instruments that we haven't started
using yet, and I'Ii let them address that. EREP - We ran
the EREP checkout today and it was right towards the end of
the day, end of our shift over there. And as you know, we
have five instruments - five basic instruments - really six,
one is the Earth terrain camera which we didn't work on today,
but we have five instruments which we were interested in check-
ing out today. We had some little funnies with four of them.
In my opinion, and this is awful preliminary of all the funnies
that we had, and we had we had some non-normal indications
on S-190, 191, 192, and 193. I think the 190 and 193, the
190 being the cameras, and the 193 is the - IS the 193 the
RAD/SCAT? The - the altimeter radiometer - I think both of
those are probably going to prove to be - there's nothing
wrong with the instruments and they'll function normally. On
191 and 192 - 192 is our 13-band scanner and again I'ii let
the EREP folks talk a little more about this, but basically
we had one of those bands which doesn't look like it's working
right and the crew was unable to do what we call, align it.
On 191, which is the infrared instrument, we effectively really
didn't get it checked out because we didn't get a ready light
on it due to the fact that the cool-down didn't work properly
on the sensing instrument. And I'm not quite sure how we're
going to play that one tomorrow. It's probably too early to
tell. However, none of the stuff that I saw here today, I think
 SL-II PC-7C/2
Time: 22:01 CDT
_ 5/29/73

will preclude the EREP pass tomorrow. Do you? I suspect

we'll run anyway. We may not run a full-up pass. I think
- oh one thing we did today that was completely successful
that's of interest - we ran an alignment check today between
the ATM and the MDA for purposes of determining where the EREP
instruments are relative to the ATM, because of course the
ATM inertial alignment is the thing that we use for an inertial
reference. And in order to point the EREP we need to know where
we are - where the EREP instruments are relative to the ATM.
We ran this alignment check by going into the command module
and powering up the computer and the optics and taking some
star sightings and figuring out exactly where the EREP was relative
to the - where the ATM was relative to the MDA alignment. And
it turns out that we deployed the ATM within a tenth of a degree.
It looks like - of exactly nominal which is kind of fantastic
when you think of pulling that great big thing up from the
nose all the way up to the top and not missing the alignment
with any more inaccuracy than that. I've got a lot of other
little ditties here that - boy we had a heck of a day - there
was just a lot of little stuff. I think - that kind of sums
it up. I think first day of operations - as a summary - I
think we just really had a good day. The crew got through
the whole day - they're going to get to bed on time and we
F got an awful lot accomplished, I think. We just have a tremendous
amount to learn - on how to smooth out the operation - to be
able to turn the crank and get things done in an orderly fashion.
But we' re on our way.
KEATHLEY I'd thought I'd just add that - the fact
that in conversations with the principle investigators on the
ATM, I think that the feeling is that they're quite enthusiastic
about the first day's activity. Quite enthusiastic about both
the data they are seeing - the photo-electric data they're
seeing and TV data they' re seeing and the obvious successful
performance of the instruments themselves. And I think the
word enthusiastic can be properly used here.
PAO Dr. Hawkins did you want to make a little
statement?
HAWKINS I think the runs today with the commander
and the pilot on both the LBNP and the bicycle ergometer did
show some improvement over yesterday's run with the - well the
SPT today. We ran the pilot the first day, I'm sorry. But
I believe there's - this indicates to me anyway that there is
a bit of a learning process going on here in how to use that
equipment in weightlessness. The first day, Paul Weitz did
experience some difficulty with - especially with the bicycle
ergometer. And as they described it - there's a mechanical problem

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PD- 7D-I
Time: 22:01 CDT
• 5/29/73

HAWKINS - could be. Paul Weitz did experience

some difficulty, especially with the bicycle ergometer. And
as they described it, there's a mechanical problem there
in learning how you ride that thing. It's certainly diff-
erent than it is in one g. But, today I think that that
looked much better, and I don't have any doubts but what
they'll work out the correct solution as to how to ride it.
PAO Okay, we'll take questions now. Wait
for the mike. Start right here. John Wilke.
QUERY Where is the crew sleeping? Andfor
Dr. Hawkins, was there anything in the private conversation
of a medical nature, that you'd like to tell us? Particularly
since we got from the summary, if you can believe that, they were
having troubles with the ergometer, and you got the im-
pression that maybe they weren't going to be able to do that,
or at least not as long as the temperatures were as high
as they are.
HAWKINS So far as I know, with regards to where
they're sleeping, I don't think we had a positive statement
from them as to where they slept last night. My impression
was that they would sleep again in the MDA or the command module.
There was a statement in the release that you saw, no doubt,
from the private conference this morning, that I believe
Pete Conrad said that he was warm, which would indicate
that they were in the OWS sleeping. Now, I honestly -
QUERY I thought you were going to ask them.
HAWKINS I haven't been back over there to ask
them. And no, the word has not really gone up to ask them.
I hope that tonight we'll have a definite understanding of
exactly where they will be.
SPEAKER Could I point out one thing, Doc, in
case of a misunderstanding. Dr. Hawkins was not present
during the private conversation.
HAWKINS Yes, thank you, Jack. I thought about
that, and then I forgot to clarify the point. I was not in
that private conversation. What I'm reading -
QUERY Did you try to get briefed on what
went on?

HAWKINS Not in detail, no. I've read exactly

what you've read in the summary conversation.
QUERY That's all?
HAWKINS That's all.
HUTCHINSON To answer your question about asking
them. Today was absolutely so busy, it never occurred to
me to ask them on the execute shift today.
QUERY You were on the private conversation,
weren't you?
 SL-II PC-7D-2
Time: 22:01 CDT
"_--_ 5/29/73

HUTCHINSON Yes, I was.

QUERY Well, you can then answer my question.
HUTCHINSON What was your question, specifically?
QUERY About the - Did anything of a medical
nature, because the summary said that they were having
trouble with the ergometer, and because of the heat. And
we got the impression that they could not use this bicycle
machine as long as the heats were the way they are. Now,
you tell us they had a full run today.
HUTCHINSON That's right, they did. No, I don't
think anybody ever said anything about them not using the
machine. Now, yesterday, they came down prior to the
medical run, and suggested a change in the protocol and
they did change it yesterday. And I think, you know, this
I mean, riding a bike in 85 or 90 degree temperatures that
we' re experiencing down there is hard work. And I was kind of
surprised they completed the protocols today. There
was no conversation about the ergometer in the private
conversation. None whatsoever about riding the bicycle or
about the temperatures being too hot.
QUERY It was in the summary that that was in
the private conversation.
HUTCHINSON I've got the summary right here in front
s of me, and I don't see anything in it about the ergometer.
Oh, it says, with the possible exception of - Let's see
I'ii read it. See what it says. Well, I suspect that
since they did shorten the protocol yesterday and this
conversation was held prior to the ergometer today, that
Pete was probably Just saying, "Hey, look, you know, we
rode the bicycle yesterday, and we didn't quite finish it,
and today we're gonna try it again, and see how it goes."
And like Dr. Hawkins said, they rode it today, and they
both rode the full ride. And I imagine they sweat a lot.
I imagine it's darn hard work, when it's that warm.
HAWKINS They have had concern about whether
they were really going to be able to push themselves to
the top level on the bicyclergometer. Initially the first -
yesterday, I think the concern was around the LBNP. I
don't think that Dr. Kerwin found, after they once got
started with the - with Paul Weitz, that really posed as
much of a problem as he anticipated and initially thought.
And really they found that they were having more trouble
riding the bicycle ergometer, and because of the mechanical
problem of riding it, they were therefore using more of
the arms to - in work - actually to hang on to that thing
and ride it than they were the lower extremities. And they
felt that under the heat loads that they were experiencing
 SL-II PC- 7D-3
Time: 22:01 CDT
..... 5129173

that this could certainly limit the levels at which they

could obtain. However, Paul went the full three levels.
And without any difficulty. Now, today, they went the
full protocol, although Pete, I think, again did express
some concern about the heat, and if it remained at that
level, they still expressing some possible doubt as to
whether they'll always be able to really go the maximum.
HUTCHINSON Let me say one more thing about the
bicycle. I think the bicycle is kind of like a lot of
the other things that we're doing here. I don't think
we understand yet, how far we're going to be able to go
with it. I think this thing that Dr. Hawkins has pointed
out about being strapped on the seat, the shoulder harness
arrangement hasn't worked out very well. I think they're
learning how to use that. I think we aren't sure yet,
where the temps are going to end up, and I think we're
just going to have to play it by ear and see now. Maybe
by tomorrow, they're going to decide they don't want to
ride it, tomorrow, but I don't think that's any big deal.
It's like a guy being in the heat, and not wanting to work
now. I think the doctors --
END OF TAPE

f
 SL-II PC-7E/I
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HUTCHINSON - they're going to decide they don't want

to ride it tomorrow. But I don't think that's any big deal,
it's like a guy being in the heat and not wanting to work. Now,
I think the doctors are probably looking at the fact at what
it's doing to their medical data. I don't know if riding that thing
in 85 degree heat is cutting your medical data down - maybe
it is a little bit. It's probably certainly not as desirable
as riding it in 70 degrees. And we may have to make a decision
we don't want to use the darned thing anymore, but it's just not
that big a deal.
QUERY Two questions, one's simple. Why aren't
the temperatures coming down as fast as you expected? The
other one is do you have any explanation at all of why Conrad
asked for this private conversation? Since if you read that
summary, there's no explanation at all in there.
HUTCHINSON Well, let me answer the first one. Why I
can't tell you why he asked for the private conversation either,
but let me try and answer the first one. The temperature
thing I think - it's plain and simple that we're on a learning
curve with this temperature business and I think that we just
plain and simple - the tools that we have available to us to
analyze thermal situations aren't anywhere near as - they're
sophisticated but they aren't anywhere near as accurate. It's
i kind of almost like a black magic science. And if there's
anything thermal predictions take it's empirical data and we're
getting the empirical data now. For example the performance
of the cluster over the last couple of days with the shade
up. And empirical data pumped back into computer programs leads
to new predictions and that's how come we're refining our
numbers. I think we're just - we just missed the number to
begin with and we're homing in on it.
QUERY It had nothing to do with the shade not
working on that attempt to (garble)
HUTCHINSON Well, I think that very well - no I - that's
not right - I think that's got to contribute something to it -
I mean there's some small percentage and it's not clear how
much. And the number i0 percent has been kicked around and
I don't have any first hand knowledge of how much it really
is, but that's got to contribute something to it because that's
letting more heat into the vehicle. And I also think that we
kind of miscalculated the amount of reradiation that we were
going to get out of the big structures inside and especially
things like the water tanks, which of course as you probably
heard, Pete continues to comment they are still hot - I mean
you can walk - float up next to one of them and you can feel
it radiating.
QUERY What about the second one?

i
 SL-II PC-7E/2
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

HUTCHINSON Now, the second question was why did Pete

ask for the private conversation. I don't know why he asked
for the private conversation. I - -
QUERY Did you even get a clue, even though you
listened to the whole private conversation?
HUTCHINSON Yeah, I listened to the whole private con-
versation - no I didn't have any clue - I guess I don't make
such a big deal out of private conversations, but I - I don't
know why he asked.
QUERY Have you got to the stage where now you
know that the temperatures have leveled off so high you've
got to consider doing an early EVA and deploy the twin pole?
HUTCHINSON No, I don't think we're at that stage yet.
Because I don't think we yet know where they're going to level
off. I gave you a new number tonight, and if it does indeed
level off at 80 I'm not sure whether we would - whether we would
make considerations for an EVA or not - an early EVA. That
option of course is open - any time. And it's certainly open
at the end of Skylab 2.
QUERY I hate to beat this private conversation
to death, but a few minutes ago you said the ergometer wasn't
mentioned in the private conversation
- HUTCHINSON That was a mistake - I have the copy right
here and it was and I don't - I didn't remember it specifically
being mentioned.
QUERY Well, I Just wonder if there are some things
that weren't mentioned there that might be worth mentioning.
HUTCHINSON Nothing that I can think of.
QUERY Dr. Hawkins, yesterday I believe it was
reported that the circumference of Weitz's calf had decreased by
about half an inch. And if I also remember correctly,
some more information was going to be dumped down so that
it could be analyzed. I wonder, has the information been
linked to you and what are the results - do you have any
results on the measurements for the other two crewmen?
HAWKINS No, I don't have the measurements on the
other two crewmen. I - when I left over there a little earlier
this afternoon we had not yet received all of the dump data
on that from Conrad. And certainly we haven't yet received
the afternoon run on Joe Kerwin. The data that yon mentioned
was from yesterday, with Paul Weitz, in which they found the cir-
cumference of the leg was about a half an inch less than it
was preflight - the last measurements preflight. And the
other interesting point there was the - that during the exercise
experiment run - that the increase in size was not two times the
expected- that compared with the preflight. Now we don't yet
really have a complete answer on this. Obviously it's a -
J
SL-II PC-TE/3
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

relates to a fluid change within the zero gravity conditions.

QUERY I've got several. I'ii start with you
Dr. Hawkins. First of all, what is the significance if the
bicycle becomes where they are not able to keep running it at
high levels - or even if they do and in the higher temperature,
what does this do to your baseline data? Doesn't this kind of
destroy everything you've got up to this point and you have
to reconfigure and when they get back I understand they would
continue riding the bicycle. Are you going to make them do
it at higher temperatures when they come back? Exactly what's
the significance of it and- because this is one of your more
critical medical experiments as I understand it.
HAWKINS It's really true. And the ideal way of
course is that you always run your experiments in the same
conditions under which you obtained your baseline data and
your recovery data. Well, obviously, we have some deltas
cranked into this for us and you have to interpret your data
in light of that new change. Now this doesn't say that the
data's going to be in - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-TF/I
Time: 22:01 CDT
r 5/29/73

HAWKINS - you have to interpret your data in light

of that - that new change. Now this doesn't say that the
data is going to be invalid, certainly it's going to be quite
valuable, we are going to be able to make intelligent decisions.
I think from what we see, it does mean you have to crank in
this new variable into your analysis of it. And you have to
be careful how you do that. But - and it even means that if
you have to continue under higher thermal loads than what
we'd like to have, it's possible we may even have to reduce -
alter the profile and thus reduce the workloads - top work-
loads under which the crew conducts the experiment. Those
things are possible, but it isn't going to invalidate what
we get.
QUERY And Neil, first of all are you saying on
the ATM with the primary Sun sensor we cannot go on unmanned
run, is that what you're saying - with that primary?
HUTCHINSON No, it's not. Well-
QUERY You said the computer could not get it
to activate correctly, is that the way I understood it, and
that would mean you couldn't go -
HUTCHINSON What it would mean is, if it turns out
that that indeed is the failure mode, which I don't think we
can assume yet, but if it turns out, you are exactly correct.
What we couldn't do from the ground is we couldn't offset
point the canister from the ground, because we have to go
through the computer - he has a little joy stick. However, that
would not - that would inhibit some unmanned or unattended
operations. John, you might comment on that. What kind of
unattended do we do with the -
WEGENER I know it's certainly (garble) a great
deal of data that's taken offset pointing, I guess the point
I'm not clear on what we're saying is that you're talking
about the loss of the two systems, isn't that correct.
HUTCHINSON Of the primary system, now of course,
you know we have a secondary system which we have to have
another failure to get into the posture you described and the
one failure we've had has to prove out to be what I'm second
guessing.
QUERY The other thing is - dealing with the ATM
exactly what have we been able to learn so far? What have
we been doing specifically, and you say the Pls are happy
so far with the information, I mean is it what they were
expecting to come back with or what?
SPEAKER Well, as far as the data is concerned,
the levels - the flux levels are as fairly well expected.
As far as the ATM observations are concerned, I guess they
could best be described as sort of a balanced diet, so far.
SL-II PC-TF/2
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

They're easing into it. We've tracked three active regions

today. One of the active regions is a very old active
region, it's been around- this is its fourth time around the
sun. The other active region is about on its second cycle around
the Sun. And the third active region is a very young active
region. So, we've done that kind of thing. There's a prominence,
a fairly quiescent prominence, that they've been taking some data
on. And in addition to that we've done the normal routine
synoptic work, so far.
QUERY One last one for now, Mr. Griffith, what is
the - which of the EREP sensors is going to be used tomorrow?
And will all of them be used during that pass - what is it
pass 20 or whatever. Track 20?
GRIFFITH All of the instruments except the ETC
will be used tomorrow.
QUERY Two questions, first for Dr. Hawkins.
Leaving aside the bicycle, which they may have to go easy
on, is he happy about them continuing the other program
of work for 28 days in these sort of temperatures? And
secondly for Neil, you have spoken about the option you have
to deploy - for an EVA- to deploy the thermal shield, what
about the effect of the extra cooling devices you turned on
inside the workshop on the electrical budget. And would the
early deployment of that other solar panel help you in this
regard?
GRIFFITH Well, I may need Neil to help answer
some of that question. I'm not sure I completely understand
all of it, but yeah, the solar - any increase in power is
definitely going to benefit all of the experiments and
operational needs.
QUERY The question was, it was for Neil - that
part of it was for Neil - what is the effect on your power
supply of the extra fans and cooling devices onboard. And
would it be a help - would you be happier if you had more
solar power as you would have if you could deploy that other
panel?
HUTCHINSON Certainly, we'd be happy if we had more
solar power and certainly it does affect our power budget.
We probably turned on today - I'ii probably give you a bummer
for a number - several hundred watts of additional power for
cooling in terms of fans. Maybe, and that number probably
isn't overwhelmingly correct. It's over a hundred, I'm sure
of that. The effect on our power budget is that we saw today
for the first time today the vehicle turned on and experiments
turned on and food being heated and et cetera. And it appears
that as usual we were a little conservative when we started
f

SL-II PC-7F/3
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

out calculating the numbers and the power - we wouldn't have

turned anything on that we couldn't support and we can, with
the power we've got right now, support the kind of experiment
operations that we conducted today and keep the fans on with
the power that we have forever if we choose. The fans and
the heat exchangers that we have on now. It obviously cut
down on our room to wiggle a bit. Everything you turn on does.
And, however, we were able to support it adequately. To
answer your question on extra power, as you know, there still
is consideration being given to what we may or may not be able
to do with that extra- that panel that's not deployed. And
all the guys that worry about power have their fingers crossed
that sooner or later we're going to be able to do something
with it.

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-7G/I
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

HUTCHINSON - and all the guys to worry about power have

their fingers crossed that sooner or later we're going be
able to do something with it.
QUERY Two questions for Dr. Hawkins. What was
eaten today and did the crewmen comment on whether they liked
the food?
HAWKINS I haven't got a report on that. The first
comments that we'll really have are in the crew status report
this evening in which they will identify those items which they
did not eat.
QUERY And (excuse me) a question for Nell. What's
he playing that music on? Is it a portable cassette recorder
or what?
HUTCHINSON Well, the Sky - no it's not - well it's
effectively that's about what it is. Skylab has in the wardroom
a- I believe we call it an entertainment center. I know that
certainly is a misnomer, but it has in it a tape recorder and
some books and some things - reading materials and so on and
so forth and it is a cassette player. And loaded on board are
tapes of the selection of each of the individual crewmen
who are going to fly and you've figured out by now that Pete's
a country and western fan. And the thing is just a cassette
recorder with a couple of speakers in the wardroom. And it's
built right into the wall.
QUERY How do the other two guys feel about country
music?
HUTCHINSON I don't know. I hope they like it.
QUERY Two questions, first one, Nell. How close
did you come to your power budget today when you were operating
maximum equipments, experiments, and everything else?
HUTCHINSON Well, we're running right up near where
we said was our maximum capability. We were running between
4100 and 43 or 4400 watts and of course you know we were plan-
ning on 4500 watts as a guideline to not exceed, so we're just
about right there. And we ran pretty consistently there all
day, Pete. Just right there. I don't think we'll run that
high at night.
QUERY Is 4500 watts a redline figure and you've
got some pad behind that?
HUTCHINSON It's not a- not even a redline. It's
a guideline and yes there is a little bit of pad behind that,
not much though, but there is probably a couple of hundred
watts behind that. And remember that we're talking about
average power now. We were sustaining the power level of that
orbit in and orbit out. There were peaks up considerably
high than that and sometimes considerably lower than that.
And I'ii probably - I don't remember what the highest I saw
f SL-II PC-7G/2
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

today, but up in the 48, 4900 watt range.

QUERY I've got a question for Dr. Hawkins. Do
you have any indication that with this heat and the exercise
and everything they're are doing that perhaps they're drinking
more fluids than they would normally? And how would this pos-
sibly affect some of your data?
HAWKINS Well, I think yes, they probably are con-
suming a little bit more of - which is naturally what they
should be doing with - because they are sweating under those
temperature conditions. I haven't had any real positive state-
ments about you know just how much sweating they're doing but
you can be assured they are doing some sweating over and above
what they would be in the nominal comfort temperature range.
So they've got to consume more fluids. As long as they main-
tain a good fluid balance it's not going to affect our experi-
mental results. If they get a fluid depletion then yes, it is
impacted.
QUERY l've got a little triple header here. One
thing that interests me in the flight plan that I saw for tom-
orrow was a fire drill. I wonder how they're are going to do
a fire drill in space. When is their first day off going to
be and could you give us a basic rundown on the flight plan
for tomorrow?
HUTCHINSON I didn't bring a flight plan with me and
our only job on the - well we did look at it briefly - we really -
the execute shift that's on during the day doesn't have a lot
to do with the flight plan that's going to get flown tomorrow.
QUERY You did it very well yesterday fr today.
HUTCHINSON Yeah, I know. That's because today was
the first one and I was really concerned about everything that
was going on there and I have to fly the one tomorrow and would
you believe that I've just kind of glanced - I did see the fire
drill there in the end. Basically the fire drill is an exercise
to - given a fire alarm, to determine where it is, inspect it, go
through a series of hatch closures - depending on where it is
and what it is and effectively safe - put yourself in a
safe condition to either put it out or get out, one or the
other. It literally is - the buzzer rings and all the kids
go to the doors and march out after due consideration of what
it is. And it's - I don't mean to take it lightly , it's serious
business, I mean, we got a fire alarm system that's - looks in
every crack and cranny around the vehicle and when it goes off,
the crew pays attention to it.
QUERY Their first day off?
HUTCHINSON It's seven days so it'll be - well we lifted
off on Friday - it's Friday. Why don't we get him an answer
on that? Frankly, I'm not sure. I think it's Friday.
/-
SL-II PC-7G/3
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

QUERY I know they have been behind but they're

catching up.
QUERY Yeah. They still have some - -
Pete's talking abouf debris that's still on the wardroom and
they'd like to clean it up. They have some chores and I figured
perhaps they might have - lose their first day off or part of it
or have it set up.
HUTCHINSON No, I don't think so. The kind of things
that he's talking about - he still is not - they still have
not got some of the launch restraints and things llke that
disposed of. They've still got little things that are bothering
them like one of the vent ports, I know, and up in the dome area
needs a vacuum cleaner taken to it and there are things like
that. But I don't think there's anything- in fact, I know
there's nothing of a magnitude that would take anywhere near
a crew day off for anybody. And as you know everyday in the
flight plan - you've been looking at them- we schedule a
thing called housekeeping which is - -

END OF TAPE

f--
 SL-II PC-TH/I
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

HUTCHINSON - for anybody. And as you know, every

day in the Flight Plan if you've been looking at them, we
schedule house - a thing called housekeeping, which is sort
of just about what it says. Sometimes there's something
put in those slots, if we have something to do. Sometimes
there isn't and if the time is open they're free to do any
thing they feel like they think needs doing in the way of
tidying up or listening to country and western music - if that's
what they want to do. The housekeeping - and we generally
try to keep an hour of housekeeping time absolutely free
going into every day_ that we'll ask them to do things in, as the
day goes on- and scheduled time in the Flight Plan. So I
don't think, by the time we get to the day off, I fully expect
the workshop to be completely squared away and I reckon they'll
take a day off. If you can do such a thing there. They'll
probably want to look at the Sun or something.
PAO We'll take one more question.
QUERY During the fire drill, and I noticed it
also said practice rapid depressurization, will they actually
do any pressurization or will they fake it?
HUTCHINSON No, you fake the sensor into thinking it's
seeing a rapid decrease in cluster pressure. It's a test
device, it doesn't even really test the sensor. It puts a
signal into the electronics that sets off all the buzzers and
bells and drives the meters and so on.
QUERY Do they know when it's coming?
HUT CHINSON Yes.
QUERY To Nell, have they in fact been told that
there won't be a solar panel deploy procedure available for
at least a week?
HUTCHINSON Well, the conversation on that went something
like - we talked about it and they know that we tre working on some-
thing and they're thinking about it, and the term a week may
have come up. I don't think a week is a- I don't think that's -
I think that's almost a figure of speech, because as you know,
we've got a thing going in the tank up at Huntsville, and in
fact, Rusty Schweickart, the backup Commander, I believe, and
a couple of other people are headed up there tomorrow after-
noon to start to work on that thing. And you know, in a day
or so they may come up with something and it may take them
a week. They may not come up with any. I just don't think we
know - that's probably a good round number for some concrete
plans of something we may or may not do. And I think that
the impetus there was to tell Pete that we're thinking about it,
we want him to think about it, and we don't think we're going
to come up tomorrow morning and say, hey, guess what, we found
/ out a way to get that panel out.
i SL-II PC-7H/2
Time: 22:01 CDT
5/29/73

QUERY Do you know who is going to be going

to Huntsville with Rusty?
HUTCHINSON No, I don't. I do know that he's going
though, because I talked to him about it.
PAO Okay, thank you gentlemen.

END OF TAPE

f
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 30, 1973
7"15 a.m. CDT

Participants:

Milton Windler, Flight Director

Guy Jackson, Public Affairs Officer

" PC-8
f SL-II PCSA/I
Time: 07:15 a.m. CDT
:5130173
PAO Milt Windler the Flight Director is here
for our first early morning press conference and as usual
we'll let him make the statement and then take questions.
WINDLER Well, it's been a pretty quiet night.
The crew slept down in the sleep compartment of the workshop.
They reported that they had a fairly nice rest. I think they
said that it's cooler than it has been although I think they
said some words which ya'll perhaps overheard on the loop
but indicated that they wouldn't have minded if it had been
a little bit eooler_ but they felt like they did get a pretty
good nights rest. And we've- the- let's see- I guess it
was Kerwin had the 133 sleep monitoring device on and it work-
ed pretty good for a while hut then the electrodes apparently
got dry there and the data was not completely satisfactory
throughout the whole night. And we're still looking at that
and trying to understand it because we just got a report from
the crew about that when they work up a few minutes ago. And
other than that we've been planning what we're going to he
doing today. It's a pretty full day as far as experiments
go. We have an EREP pass. A lot of ATM work, biomed runs,
a little bit of everything I guess. And tomorrow; we polished
up plans for tomorrow and that's more of the same. The weather
looks real good and we've got another EREP pass tomorrow. We
looked at the weather for the day after that - day 152 and
that weather doesn't look suitable for that - to try to change
the plans to have the crew dayoff on that day. So that's
presently the plan. And that's about where we are. Nell
Hutchinson is just getting ready to hit the ground running
over there with the execute team and get all the things done
today that are on the flight plan. Now I'll try to answer
questions.
PAO Please wait for the mike.
QUERY Could you go over that EREP thing again.
I'm not sure I understood you there. I'm a little foggy this
morning myself.
WINDLER We do have a pass today, EREP pass today
and the time of that is oh, let's see if I can find it in the
flight plan, from 20:34 to 21:01. And I believe that's down
through the Texas area starting from over in the California
area, winds up across in through the Rio Grande Valley, I believe.
Yes on schedule for tomorrow too. We have two flight plans
for tomorrow. As we usually do we have an EREP pass and in
case the weather is not satisfactory we have a no-EREP alternate.
And what that amounts to is essentially doing some corollary
activity and an ATM viewing period in place of the earth resources
experiment. We have M487 and SO19 scheduled for the alternate
tomorrow in case the weather is not satisfactory.
 SL-II PCBA/2
Time: 07:15 a.m. CDT
5/30/73

QUERY Then you mentioned the crews dayoff.

WINDLER The day after that.
SPEAKER The day after that, right.
WINDLER They - whatever today is and then the
next day and then the next day. Today is Wednesday, is that
the day. Friday I guess would be the day off.
QUERY Do all crew members get the same day off
or do they stagger them.
WINDLER No, they're all off on the same day.
QUERY Okay, and -
WINDLER Now when I say off, that's essentially -
there's a few light things - of course they have to continue with
their food preparation and that sort of thing and there is Just a
little bit of gauge monitoring involved. I think they do
have to go into the spacecraft, command module and look at
some gauges and there is one experiment up there that they
just read a dial on. And that's about all.
QUERY Let me ask one more thing, I'm sorry. Neil
said last night that Rusty Schweickart was going to Huntsville
today and that some other crewmembers were going with him,
corp members - do you know who else was going to go and what kind
_ of a procedure they're going to work on the probe and drogue?
WINDLER I don't know anything about that. I do
know that there is some time set up today to get an inspec-
tion of the drogue or the probe rather and -
QUERY I'm sorry it was the solar wing - they
were going to work out a procedure in the tank.
WINDLER No. I don't know anything about that at
all.
QUERY If the day off will be, what, Thursday,
WINDLER No, Friday, I believe it is.
QUERY It will be every Friday from now on?
WINDLER Well, we try to do it every week - every
seven days, plus or minus, if the weather was real good why
we can move it around some in order to take advantage of good
weather for the EREP so it's approximately every week, but
it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
QUERY And have you discovered any more bad
food other than the catsup?
WINDLER You've got one on me there. I didn't even
know the catsup was bad. They haven't eaten. They're
eating now, of course, and I haven't heard them say anything
about it. I really don't know. Oh, was it. I'm sorry. The
only thing I heard about it was they thought the butterscotch
pudding wasn't going to be too good but I haven't heard of them
eating any of it so I really don't know. There is no bad
catsup, you're telling me. All right. Good.
_ SL-II PC8A/3
Time: 07:15 a.m. CDT
5/30/73

QUERY If it's not too early or late in the

morning can you record other countries which participate in
the EREP pass or are under the EREP pass?
WINDLER I don't think there are any other countries.
Is that your question, other countries? No I think all of
these in the United States happen to be, although there are
some, you know, in the ocean but -
QUERY Central America and Columbia I think I
heard something.
WINDLER No. I don't think this pass goes over
that area. I'm pretty sure it doesn't because it's -
QUERY Maybe it would be a later one.
QUERY Sudan, Africa and the Phillipines were
mentioned earlier over the commentary.
QUERY Yes_ there was something I was just read-
ing.
SPEAKER That was mentioned ahout an hour ago.
QUERY By somebody in the Control Center?
SPEAKER A PAO commentator.
WINDLER Well, 1'11 have to check on that before
I go back but I don't - it is track 20 all right, unless I'm
mistaken and how I remember the orientation of that though -
I guess it could be going through those areas but it's only
a 30 minute data take and I don't think it goes that far but
I could be mistaken.
QUERY Where are you now as far as temperatures
are concerned in the - well -
WINDLER Around 85.
QUERY They haven't changed much from midnight
yesterday?
WINDLER No, I think as I have looked at them I
think they went down some last night. Now I understand that
nobody is real sure whether that's a night-time effect from
everybody being quiet, you know, sort of like when you rest
in bed it gets cooler. I guess it's - we still feel like it's
gradually going down although the rate of drop is not very
large, if that's the right way to say that.
QUERY I may have missed out on this earlier but
have you been able to find the cause of those trouble lights
in S190. There was some problem, I think it was S190 yesterday.
One of the EREP experiments.
WINDLER Well there is a light that indicates that
one of their coolers is not working on 192 I believe it is.
QUERY And also they had sone targeting or cali-
brating problem with it.
WINDLER Yeah, there are several little problems
in the EREP equipment and I guess - I'd hate to say exactly
SL-II PC8A/4
Time: 07:15 a.m. CDT
5/30/73

what's wrong with that right yet. In fact, I don't know

as how we'll let the crew run with it again to get a better
handle on just what it going on. I know that one of the -
I think they suspect that one of the coolers is not cooling
one of the instruments down - one of the channels down properly.
And there are some other indications like you described.
QUERY As far as the weather is concerned, I'm
kind of curious to know what you consider good weather for an
EREP pass and how much of this good weather has to be along -
how long an area in order for you to consider everything is
okay versus not being okay?
WINDLER Well, it's really kind of unusual because
there are two kinds of EREP passes or two kinds of investi-
gations, I guess, is the way to say it. There are some in-
vestigations that like lots of cloud cover and there are
others that like to be able to see the land, which means that
essentially you have to have less than 3/10 cloud cover which
would be about like scattered or clear. And right now there
is a great big high sitting over the United States, the southern
part of the United States or southwestern part, I guess, really.
And so the conditions are good for the kind of investigations
that require the clear skies. And we have a kind of a ground
rule that we llke to get at least 10 sites covered- usually
we wind up with numbers like 20 or 25 or 30 and you' II find
that they are clustered in certain places. For example, in
the California area there is a large number of them. There
is a large number in the Texas area, this general part of
Texas, the Gulf Coast or southern valley area. There is a
number of them around the east coast around the Chesapeake
Bay area. You're familiar with those names, I'm sure or those
areas - (garble) area and that sort of thing. So, you know, you
can have a relatively small part of the country that is clear,
but it gets you a lot of sites sometimes if it's in the right
place. Now if you ask me how many is the number today I can't
tell you.
QUERY And what about time constraints? You
mentioned 30 minutes - is that sort of a standard?
NINDLER That's actually kind of a long one con-
sidering our power situation. The longer we stay in the
Z-local vertical attitude the greater strain I guess you'd
say it is on the power system since it's not, you know, getting
the benefits of the Sun or at least directly. And we'd llke
to have - the ideal I guess is near solar noon which - or
local noon - which would, which is going to happen tomorrow,
as a matter of fact, I think we're llke within 15 degrees on
either side of the noon pass that is set up for tomorrow.
And that's a little bit better situation. It's a shorter time
SL-II PC8A/5
Time: 07:15 a.m. CDT
5/30/73

also, let's see, that's - that one happens to be about - well

it's 29 minutes so it's not too much different in time.
QUERY GARBLE for tomorrow, do you think? Or
do you know?
WINDLER Well, the weather is good enough that we
are going to try to - we are going to put it on the flight
plan.
QUERY I see.
QUERY Let me ask you about last night's
sleep a little bit. Maybe you overheard the surgeon or some-
body, can you give us some idea of Kerwin's depth of sleep
and whether he did any dreaming or not, if that's possible.
WINDLER Well, the data as I said didn't come in
very good on the little gizmo he wears, the 133. So they
really couldn't tell about that I don't believe. And like I
say the electrode indicated today that the problem was with
electrodes being dry and we have to think of a way of fixing
that. And I really don't have any idea whether it's a hard
thing to do or not. I left just as he passed us that informa-
tion. So we really didn't get any of that, you know, that
kind of information that you described last night, or just
a short amount of it and I don't think they really could say
anything much about him dreaming.
QUERY Are you sure that they slept in the work-
shop? Can that sleep monitor be moved to the MDA and oper-
ated from another place?
WINDLER I don't know whether it can or not but
they did say they slept in the suit compartment.
QUERY They did sleep in the OWS, though.
WINDLER You're right, last night we weren't sure,
I don't think, yeah, but this morning he made a point to tell
us that and I guess he realized that they had left us without
any clear indication of where they were going to sleep.
PAO We now have two questions that were called
from the Cape by Mary (?) but I believe they've both been
answered but I' ii put them on the record. She asked first
what foreign countries will EREP photograph today and second
what is the situation on the food. And I believe we've com-
mented on both of those.
WINDLER Yeah, I guess we need to find out for
sure about the countries and we'll call back over and find
out about that, but I really don't think that there are any.
QUERY What about tomorrow's countries?
WINDLER Yeah.
QUERY Milt have any drugs or any medications
been dispensed to any crewmen so far?
WINDER I don't know the answer to that but I'm
sure you've been told of whatever they were. Do you know?
SPEAKER I'm not really sure.
F SL-II P C8A/6
Time: 07:15 a.m. CUT
5130173

WINDLER There weren't any when I left a couple of

days ago but I have to admit that I was off for two days
there and I really didn't check that aspect of the flight.
PAO Are there any more questions?
QUERY This change of shift briefing was called
rather hurriedly but I appreciate Milt Windier coming over and
I think the comments will be valuable on the transcriptions for
the late risers. (Laughter)

END OF TAPE
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Earth Resources Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 30, 1973
2:00 p.m. CDT

Sponsored by:
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)

Participants :

Loren Wood, TRW Systems, AIAA Chairman, Technology Applications

G. R. Heath, Lockheed Electronics Co., Earth Resources Coordinator
Joe M. Kennedy_ TRW Systems Group
Dr. Michel To Halbouty, Ealbouty Oil Co. of Houston
(paper presented by Joe M. Kennedy)
J. B. Webster, Vice President s Kirby Lumber Co.
Dr. Richard Phelps, Anderson Clayton and Co.
George Specht, Martin Marietta Corp.

PC-9
 SC-II PC-gA/I
Time: 14:02 CDT
51s0173

WOOD I'm Loren Wood, Chairman of our

activity with the AIA_ that's sponsoring this press conference.
This is the first of a series that we'll have throughout the
Skylab Missions. At various times, when it seems appropriate,
when your media are available, or might be available here with
us. The next one will be during entry, when we'll be high-
lighting electronics applications, as they relate to the
Skylab Mission. Today our presentation is in the area of
Earth Resources and, particularly earth resources applications
and with some of the actual users of Earth Resources informa-
tion here with us. The Chairman of this acitivity is, Mr.
Gordon Heath of Lockheed and of AIAA. And I'm going to turn
it over to him to introduce the rest of the program.
HEATH Thank you, Loren. For most of you, the
Space Age began when the Russians put Sputnik into orbit.
But for those of us who have spent most of our lives in the
Earth Resources business, it only began in earnest when
man turned his eyes away from deep space and turned his
attention back to Earth again. The first important study of
the Earth from space was done by Apollo 9, when multispectral
f cameras were used with great success in 1969. The Earth
Resources Technology Satellite called ERTS was launched a
little less than a year ago. And has been even more productive.
It went a step beyond Apollo 9, by putting an electrodes - -
These earthbound sections, you don't hear a great
deal of, because they're pretty mundane, but they're probably
just as important as these elements in space. Back on Earth
there are many kinds of Scientific Specialities, which will
be taking raw data, and turning it into information of value
to mankind. The agriculturalist will determine where crops
are plentiful and where they're scarce. We have large
agricultural companies such as Anderson Clayton Company, which
have an interest in this area. And here today from them is
Dr. Richard Phelps, sitting in the center. Could you raise
your hand, Dick. He's their Chief Agronomist. Foresters
will determine what volumes of timber are ready to cut.
Lumber companies like Houston, Base, Kirby Lumber Corp. are
interested in this information. Their Manager of Corporate
Affairs, J. B. Webster, here beside me on my right today.
Geologists will be looking for new sources of energy, minerals.
And the Halbouty Company of Houston, has a deep interest here.
And Dr. Mike Halbouty had planned to be here, and unfortunately
he was called away on other business, the last minute but he
will be available at his office in Houston. And I think
would be happy to talk to any of the newsmen present, who
would like to hear what he has to say. He has some very strong
opinions on what can be done. Many other diciplines like
hydrology, oceanography, urban planning will also be using
this data for the benefit of mankind. The three subjects mentioned
SL-II PC-9A/2
Time: 14:02 CDT
5/30/73

here, will be introduced by brief technical discussions by

three JSC specialists, George Specht, sitting second on my
right, here, of Martin Marietta. He111 he discussing
agriculture. Myself Gordon Heath, Lockheed, discussing
forestry, and Joe Kennedy to the far right of me here, of
TRW, will be discussing geology. Following each of these
discussions, the panelist will have an opportunity to tell us
how remote sensing of space may affect their operation. Maybe,
he then, be questioned by the press. I think we should call
on Joe, first, to present his problem.
KENNEDY Well, I'd like to talk about geology
from the (garble) and somewhat general point of view. I'd
just like to point out one thing. Geologists have been using
remote sensing for a long, long time. Since the Civil War,
as a matter of fact, when the military first used a camera on
a balloon to, I don't know how you do this, Gordon, when the
military first used balloon to use a camera to look at the
southern lines and how they were arranged. Geologists began
almost immediately to look at these photographs from a
different point of view. And looking at the Earth's structure,
because they could get above things, and they could see
them much better. And since the Civil War and since cameras
have progressed, geology and the understanding of the
structural significance of the Earth's crust, both from a
scientific point of view, and from a natural resource point
of view, have progressed almost side by side. You can
almost draw one to one correlation between photogrametry
and the history of geology, and the success of geology.
I guess probably the most outstanding example of the success
is the 1950 series, when geologists were looking for oil
at such a ferocious rate, and the petroleum companies were
growing at ferocious rate. They were so successful that
they actually worked themselves out of a job. By 1959, 1960,
there was - oil was a glut on the market. The prices of
oil were probably at the lowest point in their history. The
great fields of North Africa and the Arabia, the Near East
was discovered, and oil was every place, it looked like. And
the oil companies cut way back on their exploration, and in
the sixties they cut back very far. Dr. Halbouty was going
to talk to you this afternoon about the effects of that
cutback, and he stated in his little press release, there's
a four page press release about what he thinks about space
imagery, where he predicted in 1965 that in 1973, we were
going to have an oil crisis, because we were not blocking
out enough future oil for the industrial growth in the
community itself, it's growth factor. Newsmen have been
reporting, I guess, on the spectacular things that happen
_ SL-II PC-gA/3
Time: 14:02 CDT
5/30/73

in the world. And we've gone through a series of things,

called the atomic age, then we went through the space age,
and I quess we call this the environmental awareness age.
And all the time that this has been going on, there's been
a very strong revolution going on in the Earth sciences.
Sea floor spreading was discovered. Continenzal drift was
all but proven to be factual. The magnetic structure around
the Earth has found that we had a big magnetic tail hanging
out that no one recognized before --

END OF TAPE

/f"
SL-II PC9B/I
Time: 14:02 CDT
5/30/73

KENNEDY continental drift was all but proven

to be factual. The magnetic structure around the Earth -
was found that we had a big magnetic tail hanging out that
no one recognized before, gravity anomalies that we've never
seen before. And probably when people look back on this period
of time in the early space missions they'll probably talk
about the revolution of Earth sciences in the last 20 to
40 years more than they will in the atomic age or the space
age or the environmental awareness age. The reason for this
is because almost anything that you can talk about is de-
pendent upon man's ability to understand geology, the geo-
physical environment that surrounds geology, because that's
the ultimate source of all of our resources. I want to
mention one thing because as a geologist working in the space
program and it kind of upset me a little hit. There was an
article that appeared in the Houston Post that said that
Skylab will furnish more pretty pictures from space. One of
the things that we've got to realize is that pretty pictures
to the newsmen and pretty pictures to the general population
mean a lot more than that to the hydrologist who's looking
at various sources of water, how to manage water better for
people. He looks at the picture and he sees management
capabilities that never have existed before. The people in
forestry look at those pretty pictures and they see things in
the area of forestry that people have never seen before. They
don't mean pretty pictures to them. They mean development
and management of their natural resources - trees. The same
thing is true of the meteorologists. I think that the news
media has been a little remiss in not giving NASA proper
credit for the ability of the weatherman to predict weather
because it's almost totally dependent upon the satellites and
the ability of the Earth's scientists to analyze what the imagery
shows from satellites. I have one slide to show this afternoon.
I won't bore you with a whole bunch of pictures and things.
If I could have the slide. This slide was generated by
Mr. Doug Carter who works for the US Geological Survey. This
little inset here represents a picture from ERTS which is
really the precursor to Skylab and is actually testing some
rather simplified instruments compared to what is on present
day Skylab. Doug Carter just took this one image which is
i00 miles on a side. We're looking at i0,000 square miles
of space here which I wish we'd had in 1958 when I was
working in the African desert. But you'll notice this little
structure right here. That's only 20 miles from Reno, Nevada
which sets about right here. It's actually shown on this
map here. Now in the Gold Rush Days of the 1840's - 60's this
area was crawled over by all kinds of gold miners and silver
 SL-II PC9B/2
Time: 14:02 p.m. CDT
_5/30/73

miners geologistS, mining engineers. This structure was never

noticed. Again in the search for geothermal energy in the
late 1960's, again geologists looked all over this area because
there are some known mineral springs right here. It wasn't
until the ERTS imagery was arrived at that we saw this actual
structure here. We now know that the geothermal springs are
located right there. Comparing this imagery that we see here
with the imagery over Italy and looking at the Lardelero geo-
thermal area which produces one third of the electricity in
Italy, we see that this structure is almost identical to it
in the Lardelero dome. It produces its steam all around these
edges here. No geothermal energy has ever been produced where
they have not drilled into a fault structure where you can
actually see what many people call liniments in the space photo-
graphy and geologists, we generally call them fracture zones
or faults systems. No geothermal energy has ever produced
where the well does not terminate in a fault zone, where the
fault reaches down into the magma or the hot rock area. You'll
notice that on this geologic map here where Doug has drawn
some cross-sections here, that we see several linimints -
several faults that intersect this punch dome. The potential
/_ for geothermal energy in this area is very great. As a matter
of fact, the U.S.G.S. has now classified this as a known
geothermal area and probably will require bids for any property
that's developed in that area for geothermal energy. I
think that's about all I'll have to say except for maybe mentioning
Dr. Bill Fisher from the U.S Geological Survey. He and several
other people in analyzing early Gemini pictures and some of
the pictures - I'm sorry that was not Gemini - the early Tiros
pictures and later on Itos pictures of Alaska, have almost
revamped the map of northwestern Alaska - the terminus - the
western terminus of the Brooksrange. That area was practically
unknown and they looked at the space imagery and they found
lineations that no geologists has ever seen in Alaska before.
And they also saw that the south of Point Barrow, an area which
looked like an oil province - a new basin area, essentially
an area of folds and faults systems that we knew nothing
about prior to that space imagery. Now the U.S. Geological
Survey has had somewhere in the neighborhood of i00 geologists
looking at Alaska for almost 80 years and none of these
structures were ever identified. The full belt that
they located south of Point Barrow looks as though it's going
to he a very, very major oil province. No one can predict that
in advance. That's gotta wait for geophysical exploration and
detailed shooting. But one of the things that it does is it
points the direction for oil people to look and use some of
their six to eight billion dollars that is spent annually in
 SL-II MC-9B/3
Time: 14:02 p.m. CDT
5/30/73

the search for oil in the continental United States. That

doesn'tlnclude foreign operations. So if we can direct the
activities and where that money is spent to better find 0il
production or geothermal energy, we've really done a fantastic
job. And not only conservation of natural resources, but
conservation of dollars, which is very important to the U.S.
at this time. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER If you have any specific questions on
geology to put to Mr. Kennedy, you might put them now. But
please save more general questions until the end of the program
and we can have a more general discussion on remote sensing.
PAO Anyone have a specific question?
KENNEDY Yes.
QUERY Could I just make sure I understand you
correctly. You referred to a fault in Italy that produces
1/3 of that country's geothermal energy. Did you mean geothermal
energy that's already been tapped or simply energy that is
there and could be tapped?
KENNEDY No, the - that's not a single fault. It's
a punch dome very similar to the one that you saw - a circular
structure there that is cut by a fault. It's the Lardelero
_ punch dome area. There's several towns built around this. It's
about 30 kilometers in diameter and there are I think about
seven separate thermal electric plants around that punch dome
that produce electricity. It's the Lardelero punch dome and
where the faults intersect that, it produces the energy in Italy
and that produces about i/3 of the total electricity in Italy.
HEATH Let me go on then, to the subject of
forestry. As a young man I started my career by dragging a
surveyor's chain through the swamps and timberlands. And you
can imagine the sense of elation that myself and my compatriots
felt when we suddenly graduated to the use of aerial photographs
and we could sit in a comfortable air-conditioned office in
an easy chair and look down on the domain of the rattlesnake
instead of walking through it. Now we have taken another
great step by graduating once again to space imagery. And
again a sense of elation because of the much greater and
broader extent of the coverage. Our work in the last year
has been largely with ERTS very much in preparation for Skylab.
And we have a team here at JSC which has been working on ERTS
imagery and tapes - -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-9C/I
Time: 14:02 CDT
5130173

HEATH - and we have a team here at JSC which

has been working on ERTS imagery and tapes for their use in
timber surveys. Could I have the first slide, please? This
shows the study area that we have used as a test bed because
we have a great deal of information on this part of the Sam
Houston National Forest some 50 or 60 miles north of the city
of Houston. I need the next one please, now. I guess we got
those switched around a little bit, I wanted to give you sort
of a general look at the ERTS satellite and the type of footprint
it presents on the Earth. It has a scanner which outlines an
area some hundred miles squar e and it did have an IBV system
which isn't - is not operational, so we've been depending almost
entirely upon the multispeetral scanner. And of course having
access to this scanner gives us a fine preparation for the use
of the scanner on Skylab. Another slide please. We're producing
rather detailed maps like this one in which we can distinguish
up to 15 forest types and features with this scanner material
and this is a map of that study area that I showed you a moment
ago on the Sam Houston National Forest. Next please. We're
attempting to take one giant step beyond these hand drawn
maps by going to computer maps. This is a map drawn by a com-
puter and this is of course is going to save us a great deal of
time because anything drawn by the hand of man is very expensive
to produce. And so this looks to us like the step into the
future. Next please. Composites of the imagery again produced
by computer technology, make it possible to identify quite small
objects in the imagery. Those two black spots that you see on
the center are i0 acre lakes and it's also possible to pick
out pine stands as small as ten acres. And there's some very
small lakes up in the - upper left corner there that are
as small as two acres. Next slide, please. This is another
type of composite and we show this particular one because it
reveals something to us for the first time that was quite in-
teresting to us as foresters. It showed the effects of a light
ground fire. I think I better point it out to you. This is
the effects of a light ground fire right here about 100 acres.
This comparison with what you've seen before is this
steady air that we saw in some detail. Now a light
ground fire is quite surprising to see because it does
very little damage. This was inintentionally set by rangers to
clear away the underbrush before marking the timber for sale
last fall. And we picked it up first on aerial photography where
the weakening of some of the trees made the imagery of the pine
needles change from the red, which is normal with infrared color,
to a sort of a pale green. }{ere on this ERTS imagery it appears
as a black smudge on the otherwise red healthy pine timber.
Next slide please. Here are some ground photographs that I took
_-_ SL-II PC-9C/2
Time: 14:02 CDT
5/30/73

this spring to check and see what damage actually had occurred
in this burn area. And on the right you see the hottest part
of that fire where some of the trees are actually killed, but
the majority of the burn was as you see it on the left with
very little damage occurring. And those blue spots on the
tree trunks are trees marked to remain after the cutting. Next
please. Now what does all of this mean to foresters as lumbermen?
First of all, it means that they are going to, in the future
when we develop an operational sattelite, have a continuous
flow of up-to-date information which has never before been avail-
able to them. This will give them a new management tool so
that they'll be able to better manage timber lands. And better
management will balance supply and demand hopefully and
help stabilize lumber prices and if any of you have tried to
buy a house recently, I think you'll realize how important
that item is. This brings my little discussion to a close.
Are there any questions on this subject?
QUERY I wonder if you'd tell us some of those 15
types of forest features that you can distinguish - you don't
have to numerate them all but give us some for instances and I'm
also curious why the hardwoods are red and the pines green in
f- one of
the pictures you showed us?
HEATH That was just a computerized map and we
could have the option of selecting any color that we wanted to
to represent the various timber types. So that was just our
arbitrary choice of red for hardwoods. In that particular
area, some of the types that we recognized were pine, hardwood,
mixtures of the two, regeneration areas where the forest service
has cut timber and then replanted it. And then we followed it
through several stages of regeneration. First of all where
it was just the pine cutting and then where they sighted and
prepared by heavy equipment for the planting and then eventually
the young trees coming through. And we picked up features like
roads and right of ways which really surprised us because the
computer actually was able to distinguish between highways and
pipelines. And this, to us, we felt was quite remarkable. Then
of course we picked out bodies of water and agriculture and
other land use patterns which help us differentiate forest land.
Any further?
SPEAKER Let me introduce, then, Mr. Jfm Webster
to express his thoughts on the subject.
WEBSTER Well, really I feel sort of overwhelmed
with the company I'm keeping because they kind of brought me
in as tame coon to show me this thing and say what do you think
about it? That blew my mind right there. One of the things
that has impressed me most about this whole thing is the fact
that as has been pointed out many times in recent years, the
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Earth is a closed biosphere. We have a little spaceship

barrelling along in space and what we see here is what we get.
And recognizing that - what's happening here in this Earth
Resources Survey thing is in my opinion, one of the most im-
portant events in the history of man. It's certainly equates
with the what the Wright brothers did in 1903 and unfortunately
so far, it's about at the same stage of development. But we
now have within our grasp the capability of inventoring all
the natural resources in the world - all of them. And of main-
taining the continuous inventory of those natural resources.
At the present time my company only in remote sensing use only
the USDA aerial photographs to do planemetric mapping and forest
type mapping for planting and inventory purposes. And on a
limited basis we do some volume estimates of aerial photographs.
But problems with the insects and disease and fire and storms
require extensive and expensive low altitude flying tied in
closely with ground determination - all done with the naked
eye. And incipient damage is absolutely impossible to pick
up. And what we've got here is as far as I can see - -

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WEBSTER - and incipient damage is absolutely

impossible to pick up. And what we've got here as far as
I can see, is a system which will permit us all to know
what's happening all over the world, with all the world
resources at any given time. Based on my very limited
knowledge of what's being done here, I can visualize these
satellites inventoring and monitoring tree species. Mr.
Heath's already showed me that we can do some of it. It
will improve. And that particular thing is done entirely
with ground checks now. Determining disease locations
and we now, as I mentioned have no practical way to deter-
mine the location of dormant or incipient disease infestations.
Insects, same thing is true, although occasionally at this
time, if we put a man on the ground, my company does this
every winter. They put a lot of men on the ground, walking
through the woods looking for the southern pine beetle, and
that is rather expensive, and is a kind of a hit or miss
proposition. Thinking it over before I came out here this
morning, it occurred to me that if this system were fully
developed right now, we could probably very quickly solve
this tussock moth problem thatthey are experiencing in the
_-_ northwwst in Washington and in Oregon, where they have for-
bidden the right to use DDT to control this moth. At the
present time, it has killed something like 400,000 acres
of timber and some projections are that by this time next
year, the moth will have destroyed over a million acres of
timber. They apeak of 600 square miles. Now, if the decision
is as critical as they say, surely the Earth resources satellite
could determine this, could give us enough information so
that EPA, politicians, and so forth could come up with the
answers immediately, and by- the immediacy of the thing
is, that they tell me that if DDT is not put on it by June
i, which is Friday, that it's a dead outfit. Additional
catastrophic damage, as you've seen, the fire and windstrom
damage. As a matter of fact, our guys are this week flying
today - My company's people are flying some hailstorm damage
north of Cleveland, Texas, which has not only killed three
million feet of timber, based on rough estimates, but all
the fish are dying in the creeks up there. We don't know
why. And we got all the stops pulled up, trying to figure
out whether it's us or the hailstorm, or what. Forest
volumes, as in the agriculture area, and certainly the
geologic area, certainly we could determine forest volumes
worldwide, and conceive of what this could mean strategically.
Blows my mind. Forest growth, soil types, and fertility, and
we can do that based on the knowledge we have now, I think,
with all of it. A very crude manner based on plant communities
j_
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and so forth, but this will teach where we can grow what
the best. Wild life habitats, for those people that are
extremely interested in that. Certainly, current soil
moisture and current soil moisture conditions anywhere
in the world and sustaining conditions, again, where? It
will enable us to do continuous mapping and intensive long
range planning that we Just don't even dream of today. As
an example, this ERTS satellite picture of the fire damage.
This was taken incidental to its routine overflights, and
today, this sort of thing has to be done by intensive
ground and aerial checks by experienced personnel. The
thing that struck me is this was done from a satellite with
only 15 spectral analysis combinations. And the one that's
up now, I had a guy figure up this morning for me, has
6462 combinations that they can put together. The poss-
ibilities are endless. Thank you.
PAO Any questions for Mr. Webster.
PAO Let's move ahead then, to the subject
of agriculture. And George Specht of Martin Marietta
SPECHT Thank you. I might start off by saying
that each particular field crop and the condition of the
f_ fields, whether they be plowed or what the moisture con-
tent is, each different type gives off its distinct signature.
Now, NASA has been doing research in determining exactly
what these signatures are, and assigning values to these
signatures, and comparing these to crop calendars as we
might call them. And through this data, we can do two things.
We can find the slide for you. One thing is to increase the
crop yields, something beneficial to man. May we have that
first slide? Some of these things that we can evaluate
from multispectral analysis are the physical and chemical
properties of the soil. The topography of unimproved
land which may be good land to cultivate. We can monitor
a runoff in erosion, and kind of keep our planting out
of those areas. We can inventory water sources and determine
the water content of the soil. We can detect very early,
diseases and insect infestation. And we can optomize crop
planting practices through analyses of different types
of fields, and how they are growing. And we can determine
best row spacing, best planting and harvesting times fert-
ilization requirements, and irrigation requirements the
best crop rotations, and the best crop species for different
areas. And we can also determine the particular crops in
different fields and the sizes of the field and in doing
this with valid crop surveys and census and yield estimates
and a good management of planting and distribution, we can
optomize a worldwide agricultural practice. Now, we have
 SL-II PC-9D-3
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.5130173

next slide, I think is - this is some ERTS imagery of an area

just east of San Francisco. This is the San Francisco Bay
on the left and over in this area is the (garble) region
of California, in which we have done some analysis, since we
do have ground truth data from there. Each different field
type, we can assign a specific color to, and I think the
next slide will show you what we can do with processed
imagery from digital data. We assign a known - through the
known signature we assign a particular color and then we just
run the tapes through the computer and we come up with
maps like this, which show the particular crop types. And
we can also determine the areal extent of the fields. Now,
Dr. Richard Phelps is with us today. He is with the
Anderson Clayton and company and they have fields in this
area in (Garble) and he has done a great amount of
work with aerial photography. I think we'll let him get
into some of the things that he's been able to determine,
from this same area. Dr. Phelps.
PHELPS Thank you, George. First, Gordon, be-
fore we get angry letters from agronomists, let me correct
you and say I'm not an agronomist. My title is meaningless,
f but it's Director of Technical Information Services. I have
to think about that, because we don't use titles very much
in Anderson Clayton. What I would like to do, if it's
all right with the chairman, and you people are sitting out
there in the hot lights and so on, is go through this
paper briefly, and then show you four 9-inch transparencies.
If I tried to do it at the same time I talk about the paper,
I don't think it'll mean quite as much. So I'll try to
give you a brief rundown of what we've done and then illustrate
what I'm trying to tell you. As all of you know field crops
are subject to a wide variety of disease problems, weather
problems, and so on. We've been faced with a serious
cotton problem in Arizona. We didn't have much luck in
solving the problem in traditional ways, so in 1971 we
initiated a small remote sensing program to see if we
couldn't solve the problem by some more sophisticated
techniques. A lot of previous university, government, and
private studies had indicated that this problem, which in-
volved cotton rotted in the lower third of the plant, down
near the ground. It showed that this work and - a practical
look at the problem showed that you couldn't really
visualize the problem, even walking through a field,
because the upper two-thirds of the canopy - leaf canopy
of the cotton plant shielded the rotton cotton down in
the lower third of the plant. So, even though we applied
sophisticated techniques, we really never thought we could
F_ ever --

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PHELPS - shielded the rotten cotton down in the

lower third of the plant. So even though we applied sophis-
ticated techniques, we really never thought we could ever see
the problem, so to speak. What we thought we could do would
be to see some environmental problems - environmental conditions
that were associated with the problem. And then, hopefully,
be able to do something about these environmental problems.
I'll explain this in a little more detail in a minute. Now our
limited familiarity with color infrared photography and the
availability of all the NASA data - aircraft data in parti-
cular- and the very good coverage of the primary target area,
which was in Arizona and California, influenced our choice
of color infrared over the other remote-sensing techniques.
But we do not mean to downgrade (garble) radar, thermal scan-
ning, or anything else. It's just that it was more conven-
ient for us to use color infrared, and that's why we zeroed
in on this particular technique. We looked first at both
Arizona and Southern California, but since there was better
coverage of central Arizona and we had more ground truth data
in central Arizona, we concentrated on that particular area.
We did use some Apollo 9 imagery in our study, even though I won't
i illustrate any. Apollo 9, if you remember, was around March
of '69 and the cotton is not yet planted at that time of year.
So Apollo 9 was used only to detect citrus plantings, which
seemed to be associated with the problem, and for a few other
reasons like that. But we did not use Apollo 9 extensively.
We spent a great many hours down at the Manned Spacecraft
Center - or Johnson Spacecraft Center, here - trying to find
some color tone on this infrared film that would match against "
some of the fields that we knew had this particular boll rot
problem. But because cotton fields are not homogeneous, you
get a wide variety of tones in the film. We began to think
that we were embarked on a hopeless mission. But we were a
little pigheaded, so we kept up. Most of the NASA aircraft
film, as you know, is taken from so-called high-altitude film.
It's 50 to 60,000 feet, roughly. And if you're using an RCA
camera with a 6-inch transparency - and correct me, George, if
I've calculated this wrong - I beg your pardon, first if you're
using a Zeiss with a 12-inch focal length on the camera, which,
if you're looking for a small diseased place in the cotton field,
why you got to look real hard. And if you're using the RCA
camera with a 6-inch focal length - I mean with a - let's see -
with a 12-inch in the RCA, 6-inch in the Zeiss, that's right -
with the RCA you have 185,000 acres per frame - 50,000 in a
Zelss with a 12-inch focal length, about 185,000 acres with
an RCA with a 12-inch focal length. Then, if you go to an
ERTS 1 picture like we saw, you're looking at about 6-1/2
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million acres in one of those 9-inch transparencies. When

we started, we thought we had to come down to a low elevation
to begin with in order to find out what some of these color
tones were. So, we talked Herb (garble) of the Geological
Surbey Office in Phoenix into making some low-altitude flights
for us to get our bearings - to - we had to start from zero, so
to speak. So Herb made five flights for us in the summer of '71
at elevations of 2,000 to 6,000 feet. We also had to start
with some known problem areas that were real small experimental
plots. So we selected the cotton research station at 40th and
Broadway in Phoenix. In a minute, I'ii show you what I'm
talking about. And, we had a history of what the experiments
were - the irrigation practices - the fertilization - the weed
control, and so on. Then we were in a position to match some
of the irrigation tones - the red and pink tones and so on -
contributed by the irrigation practices - to - against the cotton
problem. Then we had a kind of base to start off from. We
also went down to Weslaco, Texas, and to the USDA people there,
and they showed us the color infrared tones of cotton that's
grown on salty soil. So, we added that basic information to
our knowledge, again to have an explanation of what some of
these various tones were in a heterogeneous, commercial cotton-
growing field. So, armed with this information, we then moved
to some larger commercial growers' fields, took a few cotton
boll samples in these fields - and keep in mind that not any of
us in this room, I don't think- even those from the Harvard
College of Agriculture - can go out in these fields and be
absolutely sure you have a problem. You have to take i00 to
200 cotton bolls, grind them up, chemically analyze them by
what is called thin-layer chromatography, and measure the results
of this disease - these toxins put out in parts per billion.
Now, for you space people, i foot is a part - a billionth of
the way to the Moon, or it's 1 second in 32 years, or - for you
martini drinker - it's jigger of vermouth in i000 railroad tank
cars of gin. So, we're talking about - you know, what started
out to be a difficult problem- these are only in minute con-
centrations, these effects of the disease. Anyway, we sampled
some commercial cotton fields enough to be certain that we
had a problem in some of them. Then we selected the most likely
one, which was about a 70-acre field, sampled every 40 rows on
the north side of the field and on the south side, i00 to 200
bolls per sample, went through all the chemical analysis, matched
the data against the film, which I'ii show you in a minute, and
began to learn that certain environmental conditions - which was
very vivid on color infrared photography - was associated with the
problem. We found that cotton that has a very crimson color which
is grown in a heavily irrigated part of a field has - seems to
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have a high incidence of this problem, under the desert con-

ditions of Arizona. Conversely, if you have a field that's not
overly irrigated - and you can detect this on the infrared
fi.m because it would have a yellowish-tan color to the cotton
under infrared - we found essentially no problem in this type
of cotton. So, remote sensing really paid off for us. That
encouraged us to try to apply some of the remote-sensing tech-
niques to our commercial farming operations in CAlifornia. And
last year we hired a commercial photographer to film about
30,000 acres in Fresno County at altitudes of 12 to 20,000
feet and made a flight in July and another in August and a
partial one in September. And I'ii show you a couple of
those frames in a minute. We have not completed all of our
analysis of the data because there are 125 fields, llO
color infrared frames. But what we've learned to date is that
certain problems that we could not detect on the ground, or
at least were never brought to our attention, were land-leveling
problems, where you have uneven - too much of a slope to the
field- go in and level it, and when you do, you take off part
of the top soil in places and introduce trace mineral deficencies
- in particular, manganese deficency. And when you look at
color infrared photography over these areas, you'll see a very
light-colored cotton crop. We've also found some very myster-
ious red spots, which so far defy explanation, and we certainly
welcome theories. They look like measles on the photograph,
and I'll show you they have nothing to do with the develop-
ment of the film. They could be - well, it could have been
an orchard there 20 years ago or something, and it changed
the structure of the soil, but, at this time, we can't explain
them. (Garble) Child, Bob McDonald, and Brian (garble) and
others down here at the center have been particularly helpful
to us. And late this past summer, they loaned us an ERTS 1
satellite picture, over the Monterrey Bay - San Joaquin Valley
area. This has been a tremendous help to us because it
complements our 12- to 20,000-foot film. And their- the satel-
lite picture they loaned us -

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PHELPS - This has been a tremendous help to us

because it complements our 12 to 20,000 foot film. And the
satellite picture they loaned us, which we'll give you a copy
of in a minute, was taken the 23rd of July and our filming was the
13th of July. There are only a couple of weeks difference
in the tones there and it is really unbelievable what you can
see once you know a little about the ground truth data. There
is a certain black T in this picture over on the right hand
side that I' ii pass out when we start showing these frames.
This black T that you see about a half inch in from the right
border of the frame is burned-over barley stubble in - the horizon-
tal part of the T is a half Of section of land, 320 acres or
a mile across by a half a mile deep and the horizontal part is
another half section. And the black again is - is
due to burned over barley stubble. All the way around the
black T - every field touching the black T is cotton land,
just to orient you. All the yellow you will see in there -
almost all of it is barley stubble and the yellowish tan you
will see is safflower, not stubble but the crop has not been
harvested. And the pink tones you see are sugar beets. We
can't differentiate, at least I can't on this one frame, alfalfa
from cotton. It's possible to do it but not in one frame. It's
still very difficult for us to realize that we can obtain so
much detail from an electronically reconstituted print trans-
mitted from a satellite as far away from the Earth as Wichita,
Kansas is from Houston. And I might say that not only can
you pick up the fields on this Earth sattelite picture from
570 miles high, but you can actually correlate the damaged areas
of fields where you have a field of 50, 60, 70 acres and you
have a poor cotton crop in one part of the field. If you take
a magnifying glass and look at the ERTS imagery with it and
hold this low altitude frame against it you can see the corre-
lation between the damaged field and what's visible on the
ERTS satellite picture. Now if anybody told me that, I wouldn't
believe it if I hadn't of see it with my eye. Now we're anxiously
looking forward to the Skylab data and we understand Skylab
is about half as high as ERTS, so we expect equally good and
maybe even better images from that. And as long as we can
get the images or prints from the Sioux Falls facility why
we' ii put it to work. Now I'd like to show you four frames
if I can have them on the viewgraph. This is a frame of the
cotton station at 40th and Broadway in Phoenix. The Phoenix
airport is right out here. This frame is probably about two
to three thousand feet, I don't remember the exact helghth.
But the thing I wanted to point out to you is everything in
this block is Delta pine 16 cotton, the same variety planted
t-- the same day. The different red tones are due to the irrigation
 SL-II PC-9F/2
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5130173

treatment. And the red blocks, the little red blocks you see
are - were irrigated the day this was photographed. The other
tones if we had this blown up a little bit or you looked at
the frame with a magnifying glass, you'll see there are five
different irrigation treatments in there and I've tested
secretaries and had them put the plots in one of the five
categories and they can do it with i00 percent accuracy. This
is a very good illustration of water effect on cotton. There
are many other things but in the sake of time let's move on
to the next frame please. We need to have this part at the
top - this border at the top. This is a high altitude NASA
aircraft picture. I believe this is with Zeiss camera. This
is just south of the city of Phoenix. This is the - for any
of you familiar with it, is the International Harvester proving
ground for you right here, south mountain area. But I want
you to concentrate on - could we pull that down just a hair?
We may be running it off - -. Okay, here we are, okay. I
got it. We want to concentrate on this field right here. l_m
going to show you a low altitude picture of this field. This
particular print here is a transparency about the first of
_ October and the one I'm going to show you is taken earlier
in the Summer. This is all cotton in here, but the fellows
cut the water off this and has a very weird looking crop. This
particular field here is a 70 acre field that we sampled very
extensively. It has Delta pine 16 cotton on the west end -
west half and Stonebill 213 on the other and if you look closely
even from there you might see a different tone from here to
there. I point that out because different varieties have
different infrared tones. Now, if could have the next one
it'll blow it up. We need to have this side on again to the
top. This is the field here. This is not part of our problem
really, but you'll notice the very peculiar looking cotton
down here. This was heavily infested with a boll worm problem,
but the fellow went ahead and harvested prematurely so he
cut us out of our experiment. And since it was a commercial
grower we didn't have control over it. We concentrated on
this field here. Our big cotton boll rot problem is down
in here and if you look closely you'll see that it has a relat-
ively homogeneous infrared tone to it. A nice crimson red tone
to it. You get up in here and you can tell this cotton is
stressed for water. There was no problem in here at all. And
we have much other data to go with this, but this illustrates
how the infrared did - color infrared did help us solve our
problem. Next frame please. This should be at the top again
this border. The frame will be attached to the press release
ERTS picture. You will find the black T over on the right
f hand border of the frame. This picture taken two weeks earlier
f-- SL-II PC-9F/3
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doesn't have the complete T black. But only the vertical part
has been burned over. Later this stubble was burned. This
is barley in here and actually this (garble) which is rye
wheat cross in here, but it's very hard to tell the difference.
All these are cotton fields around here, but I'll illustrate -
around the T are cotton. I'Ii just briefly illustrate a
couple of things. Here is herbicide damage. This herbicide
was not supposed to affect that cotton. But it did seriously
affect it right in here, presumably because it was applied
when the temperature was too hot. All these little spots
you see in here are previous herbicide treatments to control
morning glory which is a very serious weed in the San Joaquin
Valley. And here is an old flood channel that you can pick
up. This is a field of safflour here. This is a full section
of barley one mile by one mile. Here you see some irrigation
water being applied. It makes that dark tone up in there, too.
And the light areas you generally see are due to a high salty
soil. This is very salty soil as you get over toward the Fresno
slew. These are tomatoes in here that are being harvested
and the different streaks you see are where it's harvested
and not harvested. And the little white dots are actually
tomato pickers. If you look at this frame with a magnifying
glass you' ii see the tomatoes in the wagon. The tomatoes are
yellow under color infrared. There are some - the red line
right there down through there - I don't know if you can see
it from there, but as far as we can tell this is a compaction
strip where the - it was a so-called turn row the previous
year and the soil has been matted down hard. We would expect
it to be light rather than red, but it - for some peculiar reason
it's showing as a healthier crop. I think I have one more
frame. That's it. Okay. Glad to answer any questions I can.
PHELPS Yes sir?
QUERY You've mentioned some services - the
aerial and the ERTS satellite that gave you information that
you couldn't get on the ground or you couldn't get it except
at great expense and you've also mentioned where you've been
able to use the information for some benefit. Could you put
a dollar estimate on any of the money you've saved. _ The dif-
ference between doing it one way and doing it the other? Or any
dollar estimate on how much good it did any of your crop work?
SPEAKER I really couldn't at this stage because
we haven't completed our study and we haven't really put dollars
into this thing. But l'm glad you brought up the point - -

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z- SL-II PC-9G-I
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PHELPS I really couldn't at this stage because we

haven't completed our study, and we haven't really put dollars
into this thing. But I'm glad you brought up the point
because, one thing I left out of my talk, was one reason
we like to have ERTS imagery over aircraft imagery is, it all
has the same lighting effect. Every time you change frames
on the airplane you get different lighting conditions, and
it makes it difficult to compare one cotton field in one
frame with a cotton field that's in the next frame of the
film. With the ERTS, since it covers so much area, it all
has the same lighting effect, or maybe it's corrected to
the same lighting effect, but at least to us, it has the
same lighting effect. It allows us to not only compare all
our cotton fields on the two ranches, which are separated
by 65 miles, it allows us to compare with our neighbors to
see whether we're doing a poor job or a better job and so
on. It allows us to compare the low salt areas against the
high salty soil areas. And so it gives us a way of making
comparisons of a larger area that we cannot do with aircraft
film.
QUERY You gentlemen have done a very fine job
_- of describing in good detail all of the things that can be
done, that you are doing with aircraft and with satellites
by infra red scanning and other means. The question comes
to my mind, if you can already do it, why do you need the
Skylab at this time?
SPEAKER I'd like to field that a little bit, if
you don't mind. I think that you're trying to make Skylab
an applications satellite, and it is not an applications
satellite. They're trying different kinds of instruments
on that. It is strictly experimental. And I think we pointed
out earlier, the instrumentation that's used on the ERTS was
originally experimental, and very, very simplistic type of
instrumentation. As the aircraft program progressed and
they found that they could do more and more things, and as
we gained more and more knowledge, you know, more things
presented themselves. So, we needed to find out and still
need to find out, what actually can yon do with these
instruments? And to try to make the Skylab an operational
system is the wrong thing to do. It's strictly experimental.
And we really don't know what's going to fall out of all of this.
Certainly if Dr. Phelps can analyse his agriculture with
four channels from ERTS, what kind of potential would exist
with a 13 channels of multispectral scanners on the Skylab?
I don't think anybody could predict how well you can do it.
As was pointed out by the gentleman from Kirby Lumber a while
ago, you know, they had no idea the things that they
 SL-II P C-9G- 2
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could do until the actual experiments were complete. And

to try to force these satellites into an operational mode
is probably the wrong approach. All we're saying here is
that the experiments have been so successful that we're
trying to increase our experiment and bring the applications
and the applications engineering along with the program.
HEATH Let me add just a bit too that. We in
the program look at this problem as being in its infancy.
We're just beginning to scratch the surface, and we look at
it as an information system that eventually will evolve from
this, that we'll be able to - not after long hours of study
but very quickly be able to run tapes through computers and come
out with instantaneous information which can be disseminated
to the agricultural agents and then to the farmers. We've
got a very, very long road to go before we can ever get to
that point. We're just barely starting this process.
SPEAKER Well, I think one interesting thing that
Mr. Heath mentioned to me on one of our previous visits
here is that, with the very limited data they've gotten
from ERTS, it can collect enough information in one second
_ that will require them two years of study to analyze. Now,
hopefully, that wouldn't last very long. Within a few
short years, we should have the computer system, we should
have the basic data collected, that will turn this material
out on - well if it were on the Skylab basis - every 1S hours,
or whatever.
SPEAKER Eighteen days.
SPEAKER Eighteen days the information comes
out, which is fantastic.
SPEAKER Skylab is once every 5 days.
PHELPS I won't pretend to answer the question.
I don't have enough information, but one thing that we hope
Skylab will do, is give us better resolution. With the
ERTS, of course, we're at a 575 mile altitude, and as we
drop down, and I understand from talking to George, that
we're going to get even better resolution than what you'd
expect dropping from 570 to 270 or something, whatever the
altitude is. And with cotton production it is very critical
to have the water on the cotton to adequately irrigate it
when it's fruiting. If you don't put the water on when it's
fruiting, you can just forget about it the rest of the
time. That is the real critical time, and if we can get
to the point where we can, where Skylab can go over and
image this cotton, say the 15th of July, and at 5 day inter-
vals, then we can pick up the film in, say two weeks or some-
thing like that. A lot of times we'll be able to correct
the problem that we can't correct right now, at least, not
 SL-II PC-9G-3
Time: 14:02 CDT
5/30/73

as well.
SPEAKER I might to say a couple of more things
in this vein. From Skylab, we're going to be getting
actual photographic data with high resolutions up to 180
line pairs per millimeter, which we can't get that kind
of resolution from scanner data. And number two, we're working
in the areas of interpretation. And in order to develop techniques
to reduce the data, we have to be able to take out the atmospheric
attenuation of facts on the data. And we have an Sl91 spectro-
meter on board, which can track the entire pass, a point
target of one quarter mile, which will give us a lot of
information on atmospheric attenuation, so we can determine
how to remove this.
QUERY In other words, then, what you're say-
ing then, is the EREP pass experiment on Skylab is nothing
more than an extension of your ERTS equipment.
SPEAKER Very much so.
QUERY And you' re pushing the state of the
art in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER Great ly.
QUERY I understood, the sensors on Skylab
had both applications of - that is we were trying to im-
prove the state of the art, but that there would be hard data,
also, coming back from the EREP package. Things that will go
into the center at Sioux City and Sioux Falls where ever, and
is this - you're saying that this is just the - that this is
really just the beginning?
SPEAKER Most of the data that's coming off
Skylab is over selected test sites. And if it is not going
to give yon worldwide coverage like you get on the ERTS.
They're just selected test areas of a flrrite area in particular
areas. And all of that data will go eventually to Sioux
Falls so that it can he used by anybody, but it is just
selected test sites. So that you're pressing the state of the
art.
QUERY It is correct in saying that there'll be
hard data that can be used immediately?
SPEAKER The multispectral package is something that
we've been working with for a good many years so this isn't a far
out approach. This is something that most people are fairly familiar
with.
WOOD We surely thank you for sitting in
with us this afternoon. If we can help you in any other
way, please come to us.
WOOD Mr. Webster has something more he wants
to say.
WOOD Yeah, we have five sets of five diff-
- erent news releases that cover these presentations that
you are welcome to take with you. A couple of them have
.... SL-II PC 9G-4
Time: 14:02 CDT
5/30/73

colored photography and so forth. So come help your-

selves to those.
WOOD Thank you very much. Yes, this is
being taped. This has been taped, and it will be typed
and transcribed like the other mission data.

END OF TAPE
J

SKYLAB NEWS CENTER

Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 30, 1973
10:07 p.m. CDT

_ Participants :

Nell B. Hutchinson, Flight Director

J. Steve McLendon, EGIL
Milt Reim, PAO

PC-10
SL-II PC-10A/I
Time: 22:07 CDT
5130173

PAO All right. We'll get started. On my

right is J, Steve McLendon, he's the EGIL and
Nell Hutchinson, the Flight Director coming off shift now.
We'll let Neil start it off.
HUTCHINSON Okay. I've already been told you guys
would like - you folks - excuse me, ladies, would like to
with know about our electrical power system, and I'll start off
that. And then backtrack to the rest of another incredible
day. Let me - I think what I'ii do is kind of describe
the sequence of events that happened during the EREP pass -
during and after the EREP pass and then I'll let Steve, who
is the guy whose batteries and things seem to be giving us
a bit of a tussle here, talk about anything you want to talk
about in detail. The EREP pass today, as you know, our power
situation is such that we've been managing the power fairly
close to the best. The way we manage batteries is we have
to always pay back what we take out, if you will, and we try
to do that on an every orbit basis and occasionally we'll
let ourselves get in a posture where we don't quite pay back
all we take out and then we make sure that the next orbit
we catch up. In the case of an EREP pass, it is a case of
having to wait an orbit or two to pay back what you take
out. And the EREP pass today, as are all the EREP passes that
we planned with the reduced power situation, we run the
batteries down to the lowest level that they are run under
any other circumstances and that ends up being a state of
charge in the area of 45 to 50 percent. In other words, we
use about half of their total capacity on the night side.
to make it through the night. Now the batteries have a
characteristic - they have - not a characteristic - that's
the wrong word, they have a set circuitry in them that -
a protective circuitry that will automatically take them
off line when this state of charge or amount of energy left
reaches 20 percent. It appears that an anomaly that we ex-
perienced back while Pete was still on the ground. You will
remember one night - and it - I have to dig way back, but
you will remember one of those times when we were flying and
the vehicle around tilted up at a weird angle, a particularly
high to try and cool it off, we had a power problem where
all of a sudden we came up over a site and discovered that
some of the regulators had tripped off and some of the bat-
teries had tripped off. And today during the EREP pass,
after the EREP pass, we experienced a similar problem. It
appears to have two very definite symptoms and I'm going to
let Steve talk some more about this. I'ii just kind of
touch on it briefly. One of them is that we apparently have
SL-II PC-10A/2
Time: 22"07 CDT
51so173

HUTCHINSON some batteries that are tripping off at

considerably higher state of charges than 20 percent. We
didn't miss our predictions on how the system was going to
perform or how much power we were going to use. We didn't
take any of them down below 45 percent. However, we did the
EREP, as you know, of course, across the States during the
day, and we just got back to solar inertial. We didn't quite
get back to solar inertial before we went into night. And
we went LOS right then, just as we were getting back to solar
inertial to Vanguard. We had about a 40 minutes LOS, some-
thing llke that. Came around at Hawaii on the other side
and we were in daylight and low and behold - were we in day-
light then?
McLENDON Yes.
HUTCHINSON Yes. We were in daylight, Goldstone.
Anyway, three-quarters of the way around the Earth, and low
and behold - -

END OF TAPE
_ SL-II P C-IOB/I
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HUTCHINSON - io and behold - was it - were we in

daylight then? Yeah we were in daylight at Goldstone. Anyway
three quarters of the way around the Earth, and io and behold
during the night we had - four batteries had tripped off, which
meant that the loads during the night were being shared by
only 13 - well really only 12 because it turned out that five
regulators also were off when we came over the hill there.
Now we in since have taken a look at the data, of course we
don't have any conclusions and neither does Marshall. And
it's going to be awhile but we have looked at the dump data -
we had the recorders running on the ATM during that time and
we have gathered in the data here in the control center and
looked at it. And it looks like a couple of the batteries,
indeed, tripped off in the middle of the night on a low voltage
trip, and they were nowhere near 20 percent depth of discharge -
state of charge. The regulators, it appears, kicked off right
at sunrise and we're not sure we understand that but it appears
that there is some phenomemon based on the voltage surges
- on a regulator, right at sunrise that's causing them to
kick off and I don't think anybody really understands it yet,
and we're going to have to sniff that one for quite awhile.
The end result of this - well when we got to Goldstone, we
tried to get the regulators back on so we could connect the
solar wings onto the buses and get everything back up to nor-
mal. And of course the batteries that kicked off - the two
that kicked off there and the two that kicked off at sunrise
had not discharged but the other batteries had discharged
excessively and they were already down anyway because of the
ZLV. So the idea was to get the solar panels hooked back up
to the batteries and so we could charge them and back up to
the buses so we could supply power. We were unable to get
CBRM 3 back on the line, and we have since tried from the
ground and from the air to reactivate it and with no success.
Now, the characteristic of this one is different than the
one we lost the other day. We appear to be able to charge
the battery, however, we can't get the regulator on line,
which means we can't connect the battery or the solar panel
into the power system. Now, do you want to split this up
and take questions on the power system now, and I'll let
Steve answer them.
QUERY So what is the situation right now? Row
many batteries do you have operating? And how many batteries
do you have down?
MCLENDON Right now, we've got sixteen batteries
that are fully operational. We've got two batteries that
are still off line, and at the present state are useless to
US.
 SL-II P C-10B-2
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

Query One of those batteries is the one that

dropped out earlier, and then one that dropped out tonight,
and you've never been able to get it back on the line with
the rest of the system?
MCLENDON That's right.
QUERY You talk about four batteries dropping off
and the five regulators, when you say the four batteries,
you're talking about 6, 7, 8 and 16, and then you're talking about
3 when you're talking about the fifth regulator, right?
Three battery is okay, regulator is bad. How will this
affect - is this just another 6 percent of your power
gone just like the other one, and then what do you foresee
is working around that problem?
MCLENDON Well, you're right in the fact that we have
lost another 6 percent of our power. As far as the CBRI_ 15
problem goes, the end result is the same. You can't get
anymore power in to feed the electrical power system. Now,
we have been talking to Marshall for procedures to try to
come around this. We have had more or less the same problems
on the pad, and they have come up with some different pro-
z cedures that they have fixed those on the pad.
QUERY How does this impact EREP, if you lose
another 6 percent? Now if you go EREP again, couldn't the
same thing happen all the time as you go flip out.
SPEAKER Let me tell you about that. About EREP.
At first the short term thing, we have --

END OF TAPE
_ SL-II PC-10C-I
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

SPEAKER - the same thing happen all the time,

or is it flip out.
HUTCHINSON Let me tell you about that, about
EREP. First, the short term thing, we have cancelled the
EREP pass tomorrow. And primarily because we couldn't
turn out a flight plan that had an EREP in it that we
could do a power evaluation on at this late stage in the
game. Power evaluations don't just come quick, it takes
you hours to make the computer runs and so on. We had a
flight plan tomorrow with an EREP pass in it and later on
I'ii - I brought a flight plan with me. I'ii give you a
run down on what we've done to back off of the flight plan
that we were planning on flying tomorrow to accommodate the
power situation as it sits. But basically we dropped out
the EREP pass for tomorrow. I don't think it in any way
means we won't run any more EREP passes. In fact, I can
guarantee that that is not the case. However I suspect, first
off, we got less power, so we're going to have to be a
little more judicious in the way we spend it, in other
words, you can't accommodate as long a time out of solar inertial
which means the EREP passes may very well be shorter. An-
s other obvious thing is we don't clearly understand how come
the batteries are tripping off at a considerably higher
state of charge. So we are undoubtedly, in fact I can
guarantee it, tomorrow, we won't he planning any activities
that take us anywhere near the 45 - in fact, what did you
decide? Did we decide on a flight plan tomorrow what we
were gonna do, state of charge wise, maximum, minimum?
MCLENDON No, that was still in work, because
we still had to evaluate the alternate flight plan, it was too -
HUTCHINSON Well I suspect it won't be. It will
be up in the 55. Wouldn't you?
MCLENDON Well, with the no EREP on, how about
60 or 65 percent?
HUTCHINSON Oh, you want to talk about the flight
plan for tomorrow.
QUERY What can you do if you limit yourself
to going to 55 percent on the battery?
HUTCHINSON Oh, we could press on very well. As
long as you stay in solar inertial you do pretty well. It's
that one rev of not getting those things recharged that eats
your lunch. We have not made any power runs on the flight
plan tomorrow, and the one big MOD that we've made, of course,
is to take EREP out, and it will be several hours before
we home in on a final flight plan. I suspect it will be very
similar to a not - no EREP day.
QUERY What will you be doing tomorrow in
SL-II P C-IOC-2
Time: 22:07
5/30/73

relation to trying to understand this problem?

HUTCHINSON Well, I don't know. I suspect that
there's an awful lot of people going to be doing an awful
lot of work over the night and tomorrow and the next day.
Basically, I think the first thing we gotta do is to look
at the data awful close. It's like any other anomaly that
happens. There are a lot of theories running around, not
any of which I've heard. I don't know. Steve, what do you
suspect we'll be doing besides looking at data and trying
to understand?
MCLENDON Well, understand first, that in the
ATM and particularly in the electrical power system we're
very handicapped as far as that area goes, because most of
the data on the electrical power system is not recorded.
And we have just a few vital parameters in there that are
recorded and that's where we're taking our data from now.
The recorder that was recording all the events that happened
during the dark side. And while all this was taking place,
we did have a hot line set up direct to Marshall, where
we could talk to them directly, if need be, and when the
crew was doing the troubleshooting on the CBRM 3, the
switches they were throwing and the reports they gave - for
instance, one of the reports that completely baffled us
was that the status indicator light on the panel indicated
that indeed CBRM 3 regulator was indeed on. When the
regulator was not outputting anything. And Marshall was in
on the hot line up to there, and they got all the inputs
and they were just as baffled as we were. So right now
they're looking at that pretty hard.
HUTCHINSON I think there's going to be a lot of
engineering data analysis done tonight, and I think,
Just like CBRM 15, I imagine now, since the symptons are
different on number 3 we'll probably be doing - you'll
probably he hearing a lot about various switching we're
doing_ and so on and so forth, trying to get it back. We
did all the basic troubleshooting tonight that you can do
to get a CBRM back, that is we turned the REG off the Charger
off, the REG on the charger battery on, ec etera, and the
crew did it also.
QUERY It didn't work?
HUTCHINSON That's correct.

END OF TAPE
_ SL-II PCIOD/I
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

HUTCHINSON - - reg off the charger off, the reg

on the charger- battery on, et cetera, and the crew did it
also.
QUERY It didn't work?
HUTCHINSON That's correct.
QUERY What - have we not gotten down to that
45 percent before on these batteries? And another thing,
is the regulator on number 15 gone or is it the battery?
And is there any way, if the regulator on 15 is good, to
hotwire across in any form?
HUTCHINSON Neither - well, go ahead an answer him.
McLENDON As far as we know on CBRM 15 all the
components are good. The regulator's good. We know the
regulator is good because we-can take it on line and draw
power from the battery - from the regulator. Now we
pretty well got this honed in and on CBRM 15 we're fairly
certain that the solar array contactor is open and we can't
get it closed. So we have no solar array energy into the
CBRM on that one. They've got a different case on CBRM 3
where we've isolated it down to a particular component and
that is the regulator. The regulator does seem to be the
_. p rob lem.
QUERY You can't get them together?
McLENDON No, they are not switchable. They are
dedicated to one another.
QUERY Can you continue to - in case you have
the automatic controls on the four of them that you lost
today, can you continue to work from the ground? Are you
fully confident that you can continue to switch them back
on when they go off line.
McLENDON Well, we're confident that we can, but
right now, we just don't want to get ourselves in a posture
where we have to do that again.
QUERY If you would have lost this second battery
for the rest of the mission, how does it impact the rest of
the mission.

McLENDON Well, each time you lose the CBRM you

essentially take off about 250 watts with your power system
capability.
QUERY Can you go into it a little more than
that?
McLENDON Well - -
QUERY What can you do - what do you lose?
What do you think you lose?
McLENDON As far as - -

QUERY Experiments, powering down, lights, any-

thing, you know, heaters, fans -
_ McLENDON Okay. Just a short summary. We can
support full up ATM operations - we can - we can support
 SL-II PCIOD/2
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

McLENDON full up ATM operations. We can support

all of the corollary, all of the biomed experiments. And
keep in mind that you have to stagger these somewhat so that
they don't hit you all at once. One of the things that I
have great doubts about now, is 120 degree EREP passes.
Those have to be looked at real close from now on. But
as far as the solar EREPs go, then, yes, I have full confi-
dence that we can make those.
QUERY What about housekeeping and running the -
running the workshop?
McLENDON That's already been baselined into our
loads that we have on already.
HUTCHINSON Do you remember I told you that we
passed out numbers like 4500 watts and like we're running
around 4000 average and when we get this thing really tuned
up, we've been pushing it up around 4400 or so. Now the
solar system supports - there's a little bit of pad in the
4500 number and it's up probably when you push it up around
4700 watts. And I kind of look at this one like we lost all
the pad we had, but you know, that 4500 number is now
yes, it's getting to be like the kind of number you use.
_ Instead of one you feel very comfortable with, it's one you
now get squirmy about. I don't think this particular failure
in itself has jeopardized a single thing. However, it's -
you know, one nickle and one nickle make ten cents and et
cetera.
QUERY Let me just ask one more part of that
question. Does this make it all the more urgent to get that -
to try to get that solar panel out now? And w_!l you try
anything before day 26? Are you thinking of it anyway?
HUTCHINSON Well, I don't think it changed the
urgency or the desire. Well, it obviously has to lend some
impetus to the urgency, if you could call it an urgency.
I think that everybody is looking forward to the possibility
that we may be able to get the panel out sometime during
Skylab 2 and toward that end there are a lot of people working.
QUERY How many batteries can you afford to
lose before you have to come home, then?
HUTCHINSON Well, Steve just gave you the - I mean
you can kind of figure that out for yourself. You know, it's
cost you 200 watts - 240 - how much - 250?
MeLENDON 250.
HUTCHINSON 250 watts for everyone you lose and
you know we get down to a couple of more and we'd be in a
posture where we'd be just pushing it every single rev just
to support the on-orbit type of operation. And you know so - you
SL-II PCIOD/3
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

_UTCHINSON can just kind of add, you know, every

one you lose you just subtract 250 watts and you folks know
about the kind of power loads we've been using to run the
cluster.
QUERY How- I don't get a picture of these
batteries in my mind, you know. How big are they and is there
any way to resupply either components or the batteries on
another mission?
McLENDON No.

END OF TAPE
 SL-II P C-10E-I
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

QUERY I don't get a picture of these batteries

in my rain. You know - How big are they, and is there anyway to
resupply the components with the batteries on another mission?
MCLENDON No.
HUTCHINSON He wants to know how big a CBRM is.
MCLENDON Well, a CBRM, I guess if you take one
of them, it would measure about this long and about -
QUERY That's the whole thing now, the charger,
the battery, the regulator?
QUERY Two feet?
MCLENDON That's right. About that.
QUERY Can you do repair work on one? Are
they so - the thing so contained that itts no way to work
on it individually?
MCLENDON Well, as you know, they're all- 18
CBRMs are located up on the ATM canister, and when they are
installed they are all hermetically sealed and potted, so
there's not very much of a convenient means, even if you
could get them apart, because they have all the potting
material in there, to get in there and do any kind of
repair work on them.
QUERY Nell, are you starting to lose a little
of your optimism in the flight. You seem to be a little
more twitehy each day.
HUTCHINSON I'm tired. Would you believe that I
get two days off after this. I mean, I ended up with a real
smash over there today, so I'm gonna retire.
QUERY How many problems are all being on-
worked right now? How many anomalies are being on-worked?
HUTCHINSON You mean between - all told? The
experiments and support systems? Bruce, I don't even know
whether I - I don't know - I couldn't give you an accurate
count. You know, it's a tremendously big vehicle. And,
frankly, I don't think there are any more anomalies than I
would have expected for the size of the vehicle it is. You
know, every time- I think a lot of the things that you
would class right now as anomalies, two weeks from now
won't be. It's just that we still haven't understood the
exact nature of the beast. Like all of these things that
are going on with the EREP. I don't think - I think you're
going to find that when we finally get that thing squared
away that a lot of those turn out to be just little things
about the way EREP works that we didn't quite understand.
You know, and there are three or four of these biggies, you
know, that we've been chasing, but and a myriad of
little ones, but I just don't think there are any more
than one would expect for the massive number of systems
rr that we've got to contend with.
QUERY Nell, the time that the one tripped
SL-II PC 10E-2
Time: 22:07 CDT
5130173

when you said you were up in that wierd angle, was that
at 45 percent.
HUTCHINSON No. That was, if you'll recall, the
time we got into that little problem, was one of those
times when we were doing a cold soak, and we had maneuvered
up to 65 degrees pitch, which is, you know, way up there.
That's not - you remember we were flying at 45, and then
a couple of times there towards the end, we did this thermal
shock maneuver to try and give a big thermal impetus to
the workshop by going on up very, quite a bit more. It
was during 2 revs of that that we got into this situation.
And I would say that, would yon not say that's the only
other time that we've driven the batteries down as low
as we did today? That's the only other time we've driven
them down as low as we did today with EREP.
QUERY I had another part to that. Did I
understand you to say you also had this problem on the
pad? Or you mean, did you refer to while the crew was on
the pad?
MCLENDON No, during one of the pad checkouts
down at the Cape, when they were running through their
initial checkouts, and they were trying to do some check-
outs on the CBRM, they noticed they could not close the
solar array contactor on the same CBRM - CBRM 15, by the way.
And, you know in the ATM C & D area they have a little
digital address system, where they just dial in a function
code and it's essentially the same as our command system
down here. Well, they were using that as part of the
checkout and they noticed that they couldn't get the
contactor closed. That means, they couldn't command it
through the digital address system. And they found the
only way they could get the contractor closed was to
cycle the on-board switches that they have for that function
right there, and if they're cycled those a number of times,
they did have success in closing the contactor.
QUERY I have two questions. How would the
crew --

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-10F-I
Time: 22:07 CDT
5_30_73

MCLENDON - a number of times they did have

success in closing the contactor.
QUERY I have two questions. One, how would
the crew deploy a TV camera out of the minus-Z SAL to
take a look at the wing? And also, what other systems
not including experiments, are you having troubles with
up to this point right now?
HUTCHINSON Okay, on the minus-Z SAL thing. Oh
boy, we have - Well, let me tell you first, I'm not intimately
familiar with it, but there's a standard procedure with a
standard set of equipment already on board to put a television
camera out the minus-Z SAL, It was - I mean out the plus
Z SAL. Of course, the SALs are identical. We had a
prearranged pre-mission plan to use a television out the
SAL for EVA, out the plus-Z SAL. That was a planned
thing. And we are, as you mentioned now, discussing as
part of the possibilities of a solar wing repair, sticking
a camera out the minus - the same camera on the same mounts,
and it's a system very similar on rods that you
push out with a camera on the end, very similar to the
parasol device. As a matter of fact, I really don't know
whether it's the T027 booms or not. l'm not sure. But it's
like that anyway. It's the same principle. And there are
some people looking at the possibility of putting it out
the minus-Z SAL and turning it around and looking right
down into the wing that we have partially deployed, to get
a super good look at the - where that piece of meteoroid
shield was up over the wing. I think that's a distinct
possibility. I fully expect us to do something
like that in the next few days as a scheduled flight
plan task.
QUERY What about the other systems?
HUTCHINSON Systems we're having problems with
outside of the one that you - Oh boy, that's going to be
hard to recall. Steve can help me, cause they're mostly
his. The - We've had, of course, as you know, we've had
some uncertainty about the drift terms, and the RATE GYROS
and the APCS, and we think we're homing in on that. How-
ever, another one of my fun things today during EREP pass,
we had another RATE GYRO failure. RM, redundancy management,
calling one bad again. I don't think we quite understand
that still. It looks like now, maybe the RATE GYRO
drift terms are connected in some way with maneuvering. And
if you know anything about gyros, you know that gyros have
two kinds of things that are bad in them. One, they have
constant drift, and two they have drift that's g sensitive.
And it's commonly called scale factor error and it never
f SL-II PC 10F-2
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

shows up unless they're under a measuring rate, a signifi-

cant rate, and I wouldn't be surprised if we've got some
scale factor problems with the RATE GYROs, and I don't think
it's anything that we can't cope with. So that's the only
one, well, that's one in the APCS. The other one that we
have in the APCS is this Fine Sun Sensor - UP/DOWN thing
that's not working, and again I don't think we've had
enough time to look at that one. I'm not sure that things
broken either. I wouldn't be surprised if we just don't under-
stand it yet. There's some possibility the prism may be have
turned 180 degrees, and we may be looking at the back of
it, and all we have to do is drive it back around, and I
think in the next couple of days, we'll be getting at that
one. We've got - you want the rest of them? Two CBRMs
which you know about. We have a pump in the - pump inverter
i in the secondary coolant loop. We've had some little
dingelberries, like a fire sensor here and there and a
I think for the systems - can you think of anything else?
vont valves i are--

END OF TAPE
f-
_ SL-II PCIOG/I
Time: 10:07 p.m. CDT
5/30/73

SPEAKER the systems, can you think of anything

else?
SPEAKER Solenoid vent valves 1 are - 2 and 4?
SPEAKER One and 3 are open.
SPEAKER One and 3 telemetry indicates they're open.
You know those are the two that have their two series parallel
arrangements in the back for venting the cluster down. I think
that's about it. And boy that's not very much when you think
of all that stuff.
QUERY I've got three questions. Number I, what's
happening to the temperatures in the spacecraft? When they
did have this failure with the array regulator on the pad,
did they change it; and three, are there any mission rules with
regard to the number of batteries that can fail before you
say you're going home?
SPEAKER Well. I'll answer the first one. What
was the first one again, I - I'm very tired. I'm sorry.
Oh, yeah, temps. Okay. We came down, as pretty much as expected,
last night a couple of degrees. We didn't come down today
during the day as expected. We just hold our own about during
the day, and I figure we'll come down a degree and a half or so
tonight. I don't see anything that leads me to believe any
different other than we're probably going to end up right in an
80-degree neighborhood, like I told you last night. It is still
coming down, and we lost a couple of degrees over the last 24 hours.
QUERY It comes down at night and then levels
off during the day when the activity goes down, and then comes
down a little bit more at night and levels off.
SPEAKER We're not making anything during the day,
but we're not losing anything either, and that's very important -
not to lose things during the day when the crew is in there
working. Because that means we still haven't found the equilib-
rium point yet. Now when we get down closer to equilibrium
point, we'll begin to see us gain a degree or so in a day and
cool, and you know, we'll bounce like this. But we still are
going like this at the moment.
SPEAKER Your second question regarding the checkout
at the Cape - no, that was not changed out, and the reason it
wasn't changed out is because they were able to operate it suc-
cessfully, and there was no intent they were having that contacter
open. So they felt that once you had it closed in a nominal con-
figuration, you didn't have any reason to suspect other than a
nominal mission that we were going to have, that it would be
okay the way it was. And we figured that if we ever did have
any problems, that we could repeat the procedure on board
in flight. And your third question. No there is no mission
t_ SL-II PCIOG/2
Time: 10:07 p.m. CDT
5/30/73

rule that says concretely how many CBRM's you have to lose.
Again you get into the management game here. We had allowed
in all of our pre-mission planning - of course, this was assum-
ing you had an airlock power system to start with. But we had
allowed for four CBRM losses. But, obviously, if you get
down to that point today, you're really going to he severely
hampered. But whichever one you lose, that just says you have
to play the management game just a little bit more.
QUERY Any problems in the food area today?
And in the power management, is there any possibility that
you would cut down on the amount of heat that the crew could
use to heat their food?
SPEAKER No problems with the food that I know of.
In fact, I don't know if you saw it - there was a meal prep
on it today. A meal prep and eating on one of the televisions
that they downlinked, and they looked like they were enjoying
it. The answer on curtailing the food preps in terms of
power considerations - it's sort of yes and no, definitely
not to where it affects them eating hot food. However, we're
doing some things that cause us not to use so much heat.
For example, we take the food out of the freezer 12 hours
_-- earlier like you would do at home if you wanted to thaw out
a roast. You'd set it out on the counter for half a day, and
therefore it doesn't take so much heat to heat it up. And
we' re doing some rehydrating with hot water and some things
like that to minimize the amount of power it takes to - it's
eating with minimal power, but as far as having them eat cold
food or anything of that nature, no, and there are no plans to
do that.
QUERY Well, if you find yourself in this sit-
uation from here on in, regards the extra battery out and the -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PCIOH/I
Time: 10:07 p.m. CDT
5130173

QUERY Well, if you find yourself in this situation

from here on in as regards - extra battery out. And the situ-
ation where you can never really solve whether these things
are going to kick out at 40 or 50 percent, aren't you pretty
much confined then to shorter your EREP passes?
SPEAKER Yes.
QUERY Will there be an effect on the amount of
TV, as a result of the power problem? I mean, will there be
less or more recorded as opposed to live or what?
SPEAKER I don't really think so. I really don't
look for, with this particular power thing that we have, and
I don't look for any particular big curtailment in the flight
plans, other than a little more careful management of the
things we put together at one time. And I don't think it's
going to - I don't think you're going to see any marked effect
in anything, and TV included. I think there will be just as
much as there was planned.
QUERY }[as any more consideration been given to
Pete Conrad's crazy and wild and good idea, I suppose, of going
hand over hand onto the wing with the pry tool and trying to
break loose the wing? As Friday's their day off, I've got to
presume that there's a possibility he might be able to go out
by Friday if Rusty figures out a way for him to do it at
Marshall.
SPEAKER I don't know what's going on with the EVA
plans. Honestly I don't, l've been so busy over in the place
that I don't know what's going on with the EVA plans. I am
sure that Pete's comments have been and are being continually
factored into the planning that's going on on the ground.
Now how we conduct an EVA out there, I think that remains
for Rusty to figure out up in the tank at Huntsville.
QUERY Well, just following that up, I wonder,
do you feel or have you any personal preference to push ahead
with an EVA now? And apart from that, you haven't had a
chance yet to give us a rundown on the day. Can you do that
very briefly without going into any detail?
SPEAKER I don't really have any personal preference
on an EVA. I think if and when we do it, it's going to cost
us a day of flight plan activity. I think probably we're just
going to have to wait and see if it proves to be feasible. I
suspect that if it proves to be feasible, we're going to do
it. I don't really think there's any questlon in anybody's
mind if it's a fair certainty that we stand a good chance of
getting that wing out and it's_ _afe Fro cedure to accomplish,
I don't think anybody has any questions that we'll try it.
Now as to when, there are lots of things that might influence
that. You know, if we get in more trouble with the CBRM's,
_-_- that's obviously got to influence it. Because like Steve
said, we're going to get to a point here where we're going to
_, SL-II PCIOH/2
Time: 10:07 p.m. CDT
5/30/73

end up having to start curtailing experiment operations.

And I Just don't have any thoughts one way or another -
preferences one way or another. As far as what went on today,
we had another day of some new experiment operations. You
know we started up the chair today for the first time and it
worked good - well. I had to canc_l the chair run on the
SPT tonight because of the power problem. We lost it - we
did some quick and dirty pulling things off the line until
we could get the batteries back up to snuff. And one of the
things that we dropped was the MI31 run on the SPT tonight -
or this afternoon. Anyway, we started the chair up today.
The other big experiment that we started today, or tried to
start up, was S019. That's the stellar astronomy experiment.
We had a problem with it. We were not able to operate the
experiment today. The problem appears to be - the thing has
a very fancy - it's not fancy - it's really a fairly simple
device. It's a mirror system on the end of a kind of a -
it's an elliptlcal-shaped mirror, about that big around- -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-101-1
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

SPEAKER It's an elliptical-shaped mirror about

that big a round that is used as a light director to
direct starfields or starlight into the opitcal system.
The mirror has two degrees of freedom, it tilts up and
down and it rolls 360 degrees, and you put it out the
scientific airlock and extend the mirror away from the
SAL. It goes out about this far, oh, about 4 feet I guess
and then you can sortof fly this thing llke you can optics
in the CSM. It has a roll and a tilt. Turns out that
the roll and the tilt are not working, and the roll is
sort of working but it's very sticky and the tilt is not
working at all and it appears that the tilt wheel, the
tilt ajustment on the canister, is freewheeling. It has
a clutch in there between it and the gear train; and the
gear train is stuck fairly solidly. And we haven't got
the - we don't know what's wrong with it. They have had
it back in the cabin and they extended the mirror in the
cabin. You can - they took it out of the SAL and brought it
back into the experiment compartment and opened it up and
extended the mirror and looked in there. We have a procedure
that's being worked on tonight, in fact we have a S019
over in the control center. We were fooling around with
it over there today trying to understand what might be
wrong with it. It looks like there's something jammed in
the gears, is what it looks like. If the thing, of course,
this mirror system is also the mirror system for the
French experiment, the S183.

END OF TAPE
........ SL-II PCIOJ/I
Time: 10:07 p.m. CDT
_5130173

SPEAKER and what might be wrong with it. It looks

like there's something jammed in the gears. That's what it
looks like. If the thing - of course, this mirror system is
also the mirror system for the French experiment, the S183.
It's not clear yet what implications, if we don't ever get
it working, it has on the two experiments. They're obviously
not completely lost because there is nothing wrong with
the optics. And the fact of the matter is, it will limit what
you can look at if you can only roll the mirror around and
not tilt it back and forth. So we've got S019 started anyway.
We did run the EREP pass today. And again there were several
things, as there were yesterday, in the checkout in the EREP
area that we didn't quite understand. I think we probably
had a reasonable - I think we had a reasonable EREP pass for
the first go at it. I think there's going to be a lot of
people thinking about some of the indications the crew saw
and talked about, and the crew is going to say some more about
the things they saw. As you know, we don't have any instru-
mentation telemetered to us on EREP; so we're completely
dependent upon the onboard instrumentation - what the crew
has to say about how it worked, to figure out what's right and
-- wrong with it and whether it's healthy or not. So it requires
a considerable amount of interchange and interplay between
us and the crew. And the pass was late in the day today, and
we haven't had a chance to really sit down and chew about
that one. We ran the ATM today. I saw some fantastic ATM
pictures. I don't know whether you saw those. I saw S052
for the first time - the white light coronagraph, in the Control
Center. ATM operations are going well. We had one little o
a couple of little glitches today. S055 - one of the high
voltage power supplies acted up, and we have chosen to take
the conservative approach. I don't think there is anything
wrong with it, but we've taken the conservative approach, and
we've turned it off for now, and we're thinking about it. And
I'm sure we're going to be turning it back on and doing some
extra looking at it tomorrow. S082A has a couple of malfunc-
tions. In the panel, the READY light is on all the time, and
the frame counter doesn't seem to he working. Other than that,
I think ATM is working fairly well. While I'm on the ATM here,
I have a question from Lee Merrlbuh - Merribub, are you here?
Do I answer this now?
SPEAKER Yes. Go ahead.
SPEAKER She wanted to know if there was a flare
observed today, or was it the South Atlantic Anomaly? And if it
was the anomaly, how could this possibly be confused with the
solar flare? A flare was not observed today. It was the
South Aclantic Anomaly, as best we can figure, and it's very
_ SL-II PCIOJ/2
Time: i0:07 p.m. CDT
5/30/73

easy - there are some sensors on board, X-ray event analyze -

let's see, I don't remember which one it was, but the flare alarm
went off, because the crew did not turn it off prior to going
through the South Atlantic Anomaly. They just missed the
llne in the checklist, that's all. And the flare alarm went
off, and they thought they had a blgee and went running to
the console. And it turned out that it was the South Atlantic
Anomaly. So we didn't get a flare today. However, we are going
to get one. That's about it for the day.
QUERY When are you going to have the fire
drill?
SPEAKER Tomorrow, just prior to dinner, and as
a matter of fact, just before I left, Pete made a comment about
that and said, "Well, hey, you know we've had a couple of fire
drills up here, and we've sat down and talked about them and
what we did and didn't do and -" However, he agreed it was a
good idea to have a couple more, and it's scheduled in this
Flight Plan for tomorrow at about 0100 Zulu, which is late in
the afternoon, late in the evening.
QUERY With all the other things they're doing
here, have they kept up with the housework?
_- SPEAKER Yeah, I think they're learning how to do
that. There still is quite a bit of housework to be done, and
we're leaving them- trying to leave them time in the flight
plans to do it. We still have things like - they're still get-
ting suits stowed, clothes hung in the closet, as it were.
There is a lot of vacuuming around to be done. In all serious-
ness, like the habitationary event port we know is still -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PCIOK-I
.r--. Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

SPEAKER ...clothes hung in the closet as it were.

There's a lot of vacuuming around to be done. In all
seriousness, like the habitation area vent port, we know, is
still full of junk. They haven't had a chance to vacuum that
out. Have they, Ed?
ED No.
SPEAKER And - but I think they are keeping up the
housekeeping pretty well. And we very deliberately help
them. We have a lot of scheduled things that we actually
put in these flight plans to try and keep things fairly
coherent from a biological contamination standpoint in there -
and just general living.
QUERY Does their vacuum draw power from the -
SPEAKER Yes. Yes, it does. How much?
SPEAKER It's about ii0 watts.
QUERY And that hasn't been a consideration
for not getting it done?
SPEAKER No. No, no.
SPEAKER Take one more question over here.
QUERY Does it appear feasible for them to have
Friday off at this time? And Pete commented on running
around that he was doing. I can't quite visualize that and
_ didn't see the TV. Would you explain it briefly?
SPEAKER Yeah, I can explain the running around. He
hasn't done it on television, but I guarantee we'll see that
on television sooner or later, cause it's got to be something
interesting. The - you know where the water tanks are? The
water ring? Well, they - Pete apparently has developed a
technique for - It's like a ball and a string; if you whirl a -
centrifugal force. And the idea is to get started. And once
you get started and get a little speed up, you can - you're
forced against the wall, and you can actually, literally
walk on it as if you were in l-g. And faster you go, the har -
you know, the firmer your footing is, so to speak. And apparently
they've figured out a way where they can - by the way, this was
discussed premission - whether such a task - jaunt would be
feasible or not, and it's been a topic of conversation around
here for quite a while. Starting out on his hands and knees
where he can slowly crawl, and then when he gets up a little
speed, he kind of gets half way to a crouch and goes a little
faster. And pretty soon he's fast enough to where he can stand
up and they're able to go around the water - the water ring up
there. And it's like riding the bicycle, I guess you'd call it.
QUERY Well, in effect he's creating gravity of
some sort. It isn't gravity; centrifugal force I guess is -
SPEAKER Which allows him to walk in a normal manner.
j_ SL-II P CIOK-2
Time: 22:07 CDT
5/30/73

QUERY ...said he was going to do somersaults or

something or - I don't know if that was the same part of this,
but he says he is working up to that, which didn't make much
sense based on -
SPEAKER I'm- I'm not sure I copied that part of it.
Of course, as you know, they've - they - somersaults are easy
to do in that -
SPEAKER He tied it in with that.
SPEAKER He may have been talking about stepping over
something that's in the way as you go around there, l'm
not sure.
QUERY The other questions. It looked like they are
going to have Friday off at this point?
SPEAKER Yes.
SPEAKER You have anything else, Neal?
SPEAKER Well, I - there's some questions here.
SPEAKER Well, I think you answered the one on the food.
SPEAKER Yeah.
QUERY What countries outside of the US were covered
by theEREP pass today?
SPEAKER I - there were a couple - three countries in
South America, and, gosh, I'm not sure. Columbia, - there were
three of them. That sounds right, and I'm not really sure. You
ought to get them an answer on that, Bill. I'm not sure.'
There were three countries outside of the US, and they were in
South America. And I've already answered the one about the
food heater. The food - the fact that were - the question
says, what effect does the fact that you're having to trade off
power have on the mineral balance experiment because you are not
heating the food? Well, we are heating the food, and it has no
effect whatsoever on the mineral balance experiment.
SPEAKER Okay. Thank you.

END OF TAPE

1
f

SKYLAB NEWS CENTER

Houston, Texas

ATM BRIEFING
Johnson Space Center
May 31, 1973
10:02 a.m. CDT

Participants :

f William C. Keathley, ATH Program Manager, MSFC

Dr. Robert MacQueen, High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, Colorado
Dr. Ed Reeves, Harvard College Observatory
Dr. Richard Tousey, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
Dr. Giuseppe Vaiana, American Science and Engineering, Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Guy Jackson, Public Affairs Officer, MSFC
 SL-II PC-IIA/1
Time: i0:02 CDT
5/31/73

PAO This is a briefing on the results of the

operation of the Apollo telescope mount. On my right is
William C. Keathley from the Marshall Space Flight Center.
He is Chief, ATM Experiment Branch at Marshall. And Mr.
Keathley will introduce the principal investigators, then he
has an opening statement and from that time on he will conduct
the conference. K e a t h i e y. And Mr. Keathley you may
have to spell some of the names of the principal investigators
for me.
KEATHLEY I think we just set a record. I think we
just started a press conference on time. First of all, I would
like to introduce the ATM principal investigators which we
have here. We have one missing, who is pulling a shift on a
console right now, in the science room. Just to my right is
Dr. Ed Reeves from Harvard College Observatory and he has the
S055 experiment. Just to his right is Dr, Richard Tousey
from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. T o u s e y,
He is from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C.
He has the S082 experiment. Just to his right is Dr. Robert
MacQueen. He is from the High Altitude Observatory in
Boulder, Colorado. He has the S052 experiment. To his right
s is Dr. Giuseppe Vaiana. And Dr. Vaiana has the S054 experiment.
And he is from American Science and Engineering in Camhridge,
Massachusetts. The one missing principal investigator is
Mr. Jim Milligan, from Marshall Space Flight Center, and he
is the principal investigator on S056 experiment. As I said
Mr. Milligan is pulling a shift at the science room console
right now. All right, now that the introductions are over,
I just wanted to sort of set the format for the rest of the
briefing. We have some - a recorder and a monitor here in
which we plan to show you some results of yesterday's video
downlink of three images: the H-Alpha image that we got from
the H-Alpha telescope on board the ATM. I'd also like to show
you an image of the corona, which we got from the S052 instru-
ment, and also an image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet,
which we got from the XUV disk monitor, which is a part of the
SO82 experiment. Now, after that I'ii ask each one of the
principal investigators to give his assessment of what he has
accomplished to date. And then we'll open it up to questions
and answers. I'd like you to bear with me for the first part
of this thing, because I'll ask certain of these gentlemen to
step down in front of the monitor and we'll try to select out
that portion of the tape to show you those images I was referring
to and if you'll just bear with us until we find that part of
the tape. We think we've got it all figured out, we don't
have any technical difficulties and then he'll step down and
describe it. First of all !_f _ou:can_4_e_ us to the H-Alpha
SL-II PC-IIA/2
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31173

image we'll ask Dr. Reeves to step down and discuss that
particular image.
PAO I believe I'ii have to ask the mike handler
to come over and hold the microphone for the principal investi-
gator. Here's one, thank you.
REEVES Well, just a few words of explanation.
The H-Alpha telescope is a telescope which is quite comparable
to the ones that are used on the ground to regularly view the
Sun over a worldwide network to get an assessment of the solar
activity and the features that are always present on the solar
disk as the Sun rotates with it's 27-day period. The H-Alpha
from the ground gets a resolution of about i second of arc
normally, and in fact, the telescopes that we've provided for
ATM also get about the same resolution. They're a 6-inch
telescope, which were built by Perkin-Elmer, and our guide
telescopes, there are two for redundancy. These telescopes
provide the astronauts with a video image of the Sun's disk,
and then he uses those to guide the ultraviolet and X-ray
experiments very precisely down on the very small solar fea-
tures which we can see, which we have not ever been able to
see with previous satellites because of a limited resolution.
So now we can get very high spatial resolution with the X-ray
and ultraviolet instruments. And we have to provide the
astronaut with a way of guiding to exactly the spot we want
so that we can get detailed spectra, as well as the broader
field images, because most of the experiments, at least some
of them, have two modes, one sort of an imaging kind of mode
and one a detailed spectroscopic analysis mode. The astronaut
needs these to tell him where to go to start the activating
sequences of the experiment. And one of the H-Alpha telescopes
then provides a photograph which comes back down to the Earth
at the end of the mission, as film recovery quite comparable
to most of the other experiments. And we use that as a post-
flight record of exactly where the instruments were. We then
compare those with the other H-Alpha telescopes that were taking
pictures around the world at the same time and we know then
that the development and how to bridge the gap between the data
we saw and the data analysis and history that we build up on
the ground. With that kind of broad background, can we see
the H-Alpha? Here you can see the kind of display the astro-
naut is presented. He has a video display in H-Alpha, which is
a line of neutral hydrogen. You can see a small active region
here, a filament which was dark. And this is not the best
contrast picture, but this is a very very quiet region on the
Sun which normally has no structure that you could call active
regions
• or promises great a_i.v,
_J _ ity.
. • _ I_ _ a quiescent - a large
qulescent area. One of the_suBjects of interest to be analyzed
SL-II PCIIA/3
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

by the experiment are the chromospheric network. You can see

a little patchiness, and that little patchiness is of great
interest to us, because this is perhaps the region where much
of the heating of the solar atmosphere takes place. The
astro - this is a video picture. Here is the full - here's
almost the full Sun. Now the astronaut has the capability
of zooming the magnification, Just like any optical system.
You can see here again, some active region bits and some small
prominences. These are reticles, just to register where the
telescope is in regard to these two crosshairs. Now the two
crosshairs can be moved inside the telescope to line up with
say, our instrument or with Dr. Tousey's instrument particularly.
Those instruments which want to put a very fine slit down on
a particular feature. He sets the crosshairs to - in the
H-Alpha telescope - to our instrument using the sharp limb
of the Sun and then he slews into the feature, changes his
magnification, and puts our slit down exactly where he wants
it and takes the data. I think that's probably enough words
of explanation on the H-Alpha. Do you want to now go on to
the other experiments first, or -
KEATHLEY It would be appropriate if we had some
questions and answers just on this particular image, because
we'll lose it - just emphasize this is a recording of the same
image the crew is seeing on board.
REEVES The room is rather crowded so let's be sure
to wait for the mike before you ask your question.
QUERY What do you see from these pictures? What
does it tell you - anything more about the Sun? They look
like average features?
REEVES These pictures of the H-Alpha are nothing
new. They are not as good resolution as the best we can get
from the ground. They purely provide a guide function to
the astronaut who can now see these very small features. It
does have one slightly interesting characteristic and that it's
video. And the characteristics of previous observations from
the ground have been photographic. Very high contrast, very
black, very white, pretty pictures. But for television you
can get a much greater dynamic range. So we can see some of
the structure on this kind of display more easily than they
can be seen from the ground. Particularly we can distinguish
between flares and just brightnings in inactive regions. So
the video does provide us a way of turning down the intensity
and turning up the contrast so we can get more data than we
could from the ground.
QUERY What would a flare look like in that
system then?
 SL-II PC-IIA/4
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

REEVES An active region, l'm sorry we don't

have a good active region. The Sun's like that. If this is
an active region here and it were blown up to fill the whole
field of view, you would sort of see an enhanced area where
the intensity is about, oh some four or five times what it is
in the quiet background. And a flare then becomes a very
small, very bright point, many tens of times, hundreds of times
the intensity. The temperature goes way up and the density
is very high, they become very bright. In photography from
the ground those flares are hard to see because a film only
has a limited dynamic range and when it's saturated, it's
black. Whereas the video you can sort of keep cranking up
the level and open it up, so you can now distinguish between
these bright flares and ordinary activity in an active region.
And, of course, flares are one of the things which the experi-
menters are most anxious to go after.
QUERY Do I understand this right? The video
that you're getting from the spacecraft really just tells you
what you're going to get when they bring the actual film down,
as far as scientific research, the information you're getting
at this point really doesn't give you anything new or does
i it give you something new?
REEVES It provides, as I say, only a couple of
things. The photographic data that will be brought back will
be one of the very best sets of continuous records of H-Alpha.
Because he gets 24-hour coverage, which any ground station
never gets because of weather and even the distribution pro-
vides, stations around the world provide some loss of coverage.
There will be some interesting data there for some
experimenters, but it really isn't anything of great signifi-
cance compared to the other experiments. I believe this
gentleman up here had a - -
QUERY (garble) of 24 hours what percentage of
your orbit do you get?
REEVES We are in daylight for about 60 minutes
and dark for 30. So, it's roughly two-thirds daylight. I
think he had another question so -
QUERY How do the active regions look? You haven't
seen any flares?
REEVES No, we haven't seen any flares yet.
QUERY Are there any developing regions?
REEVES There was a region which started to develop
and then started to peter out again. This is the low part of
the solar cycle. Our activity in ATM is centered around a
great variety of solar features. We do expect sometime during
the mission to have flares. Whether we'll be lucky enough to
_ catch one, is quite a diffem_r sto_y._i_,re trying very hard.
SL-II P C-IIA/5
Time: 10:02 CDT
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We have devices on board which ring bells for the astronauts.

So, we'll stand a good chance, but there aren't going to be
very many chances.
QUERY Following up, you just answered the first
half of my question about the alarms for flares. Was this
the developing region yesterday that caused the flare alarm
that Conrad referred to when Kerwin tracked something on the
surface?
REEVES I believe that was known as a South Atlantic
Anomaly, which is a region over the eastern part of South
America, which is sort of in a gap between South America and
Africa, which is a region where the radiation belt dips down
fairly low into the atmosphere. And if the astronaut's not
quite careful enough to turn off these alarms before he flies
through that region, then the electrons and protons trapped
in that magnetic region will trigger his alarms for them.
So I'm afraid it was not a flare, but rather a false alarm.
QUERY But when there is a genuine flare alarm,
can you just describe a little more in detail where the data
comes from that enables you to tell the astronauts go and look
for a flare and how is this transmitted.
REEVES He has on board, all of the main require-
ments that he needs. He has a daily update from us which
advise him on the base of the worldwide network, which regions
are probably going to show flares and what that probability
is. If one of the flares does go off, we have an X-ray
detector. One of the experiments may describe that later this
morning, which we can adjust the threshold for either little
tiny flares, mlddling kind of flares, or great big flares,
depending on whether we want to interrupt things or not, and
how actively we're seeking flares at that point in the program.
That will cause an alarm to go off. He knows therefore that
there's a flare which has exceeded certain prearranged thres-
hold, and he can then use his H-Alpha display to go look for
the flare. The object being to catch that flare during the
very interesting rise time. Not to get there after the action's
all over. And the flare starts to decay.

END OF TAPE
i_ SL-II PC-IIB/I
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5131173

QUERY From what you've said, it is not clear

to me why go to the trouble and perhaps the expense to send
the H-Alpha back to the ground when the guy who's using
the guy who gets most use out of it is the astronaut him-
self. I don't understand the value to the ground on this.
SPEAKER That's right. For flares we're - from
the ground our pictures would be quite unambiguous about
where he was. For a lot of the experiments, for 2 of the
experiments particularly, namely Dr. Tousey's and Harvard's,
which is our experiment, we are looking for a variety of
other things, such as study of these filaments - very fine
scale structures. And we want to bring back photographs
that allow us to say not just that it was in the filament,
but precisely where in the filament it was, so that we can
then go to our observers who are working with us in compan-
ion programs at other observatories around on the ground.
And say, okay we were looking exactly there - not just some-
where in there but precisely there and inter-compare the
data.
QUERY So why do you need this picture on
the ground now? Why can't you wait for it to come back
in the spacecraft?
SPEAKER The data on the ground here now, the
video, is purely for us to be able to assess the astronauts'
viewing capability, to assess the performance of the tele-
scope and what kinds of features he can see with what kinds
of clarity or difficulty, so that we can then use that
in order to get him to observe the kinds of features we
want. I don't want to - -
SPEAKER There are daily planning sessions that
go on with this downlink with this information. Then we
can plan the next day's activities, once knowing what he
did that particular day and exactly where he was pointed
also. So it helps in the planning cycle. That's where
most of this TV is used.
QUERY - directed at you because you're the
first one up there.
SPEAKER I think we should proceed on and I
think we'll see some more and then there can be individual
conferences lined up too.
SPEAKER The next image we recieved yesterday
was the coronagraph on the S052 experiment, and Dr. McQueen
will describe that.
MCQUEEN This TV image comes out of the S052
coronograph. It represents the occulting or blocking of
the Sun by a set of external disks on our instrument, which
-_.... SL-II PC-lIB/2
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provide an artificial eclipse of the Sun. So, the basis for

the coronograph is to examine the solar corona, the faint
outer solar atmosphere, on a regular basis throughout the
entire Skylab mission. And in a very real sense, we are
having an eclipse made to order, an eclipse occurring each
day on command by the astronaut so that we can study the
time evolution of the outer solar atmoshere. A study
that cannot be done any time on the Earth because of the
infrequent occurrence of solar eclipses. So in a certain
real sense, we're filling in the gaps between times of
total solar eclipses with this coronagraph. Now this image
which the crewmen sees looking through the coronagraph
shows the corona like one sees during total solar eclipse
almost llke one sees during total solar eclipse. Solar north
is in this direction. There aren't very many features up
here. That's because they're of the nature of the solar magnetic
fields and the energy transfer in the Sun, the polar regions
don't normally have large structures. Solar south is
down here. There is a very prominent streamer here which
is a region of high electron density. There are lots of
free electrons caught in magnetic field lines if you will
in this direction. And this feature has been observed from
the ground in the very innermost corona which is all one
can ever see from the ground with special instruments
for several solar rotations. We are now able to follow
the structure of this streamer all the way out to solar,
to 6 solar radii. Now you can see the things going by.
That's contamination. That's little particles of dust which
are around the spacecraft. Because we're looking right at the
Sun those are, we see preferential scattering in the for-
ward direction. And it highlights little tiny particles
very much. This is an excellent contamination monitor if
you will. There is a very bright active region- well there
is an active region it's not very bright, on the Sun in
this position, and this is the right corona over that active
region. There are streamers here as you can see. Interest-
ingly enough, this morning astronaut Kerwin reported that
there was a new solar streamer on the east limb of the Sun
which was not there from yeterdays picture which you are
seeing here. And also he reported that he can see very

clearly a polar plume over,_h@;_p,

,, north _o_e of the Sun, which
is a little surprising to "us. _ We didn"t really think we
were going to get a very good look at polar plumes. So,
in summary what we are doing is providing an eclipse of
the Sun with this instrument, an eclipse of the Sun every
day. We block the bright solar disk and we're able to see
the corona from about half of a solar radius above the limb
f_ SL-II PC-lIB/3
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

out to 6 solar radii above the limb.

QUERY Why do you think the streamers coming

off seem to be further to the south than they are to the
north, as least the pictures that we saw?
MCQUEEN The precise inner- the precise location
of streamers with reguard to solar features is not well
understood. Simply because one has not been able to have
an instrument like this observing the corona over a long
period of time. There is a magnetic field configuration on
the Sun, which we know from magnetographs made from the
ground. In this southeast region of the Sun_ which it is
suspected is very conducive toward the forming of a very
stable structure out in the corona, the magnetic field struc-
ture is a very stable thing. And it persists for many
rotations. And that we think is the region which is the base
of this corona streamer. What we really hope to get from
this instrument is a much more clear picture of the re-
lationship between coronal streamers and features on the
S un.

QUERY What you' re seeing is one and a half

to six, isn't it?
j MCQUEEN One and a half to six - a half radius
above the limb to six radii to - -
QUERY Right. In the picture, at the south
pole there was a very dark area. Is that an artifact?
MCQUEEN No, that's not an artifact. That is the
stem that holds our occulting disk. We've got to hold them
up some way. This accounts for some of the operations
the crewmen does. For example he makes a series of pic-
tures like you saw. He then takes the whole ATM cannister
and rolls it 90 degrees so that it moves our stem out from
that region and then makes another sequence of pictures.
And that way, we can build the whole corona up.
QUERY What percentage of the time is the ATM
on? Is it on all the time that you're not doing something
else?

MCQUEEN That's very tempting. The ATM is not on

all the time you' re not doing something else. The ATM in
theory has the capability of course of operating any sun-
lit pass. Some of the power problems that have occurred

early in the mission have _ean_ tha_ the_e is more of a

conflict between medical ta_s_ j ust
_ ;_J the
from power con-
suption basis, so that we're now observing something like
5 to 6 daylight passes per crewman day. And as Dr. Reeves
pointed out to you, that means about 50 to 60 minutes
each pass of actual sunlit time. I should mention that
3 of the instruments are running unattended - that is, while
r_-_ SL-II PC-lIB/4
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the crew is asleep. We have limted command capability to

the coronagraph, the Harvard spectraheliometer and
the American Science Engineering X-ray instrument, and we
do make observations during the crew night, every night,
with those instruments while they are sleeping. But the
modes and functions are limited over what the crew can
achieve.
QUERY How many daylight passes had you planned
to have if you did not have these power problems.
MCQUEEN We'd hoped to run somewhere around
7 or 8 daylight passes on a good day. Now a good day to us
is defined as a day when there are no Earth resources
experimentation_ simply because to do Earth resources
you have to roll the whole spacecraft over and look down
and clearly we can't observe the Sun then.
QUERY What is the significance of seeing a
plume of the north pole?
MCQUEEN Well I probably emphasized that. It's
significant to us because they are relatively faint struc-
tures. They are faint - I guess a good example would be
if you could imagine sticking a lot of garden hoses in the
f_ ground and letting them stick up out of the ground. They
are structures that occur over the poles of the Sun. I
wish I had a good eclipse picture to show you. And they are rela-
tively faint structures. They represent apparently a very
narrow bottling of coronal material, electrons, within
magnetic field lines. And they are faint and they are
small. And we weren't really sure that we were going to be able
to see them. I should point out that the TV image that
you saw, because of the fact that it is a television system,
SECC videocom system, is a factor of 3 times poorer resolution
than the actual data we're receiving with the coronagraph,.
So that we'll be able to see 3 times more detailed structures
if you will than what yout re seeing on that picture. And
we're very excited about that. We can achieve a resolution
which is nearly comparable to pictures made at a reasonable
eclipse site, that is, in terms of angular resolution.
Eight-arc-second resolution and sometimes if you go to
eclipse you' ii have really good skies and you' ii get down
into the 3 or 4 arc-second range. Most of the time, you're
in between 5 and i0 arc-seconds of seeing at eclipses be-
cause of the thermal problem. So we're right in the ball
game with good eclipse p_res_ an_ jt_e advantage is we've
got 8 months to watch the corona rotate and change.
QUERY Have you been able to associate the
streak with any particular feature on the Sun? The
streak that went up.
/_ SL-II PC-lIB/5
Time: 10:02 CDT
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SPEAKER This one that went this way?

QUERY Yes, that is right.
MCQUEEN Yeah, not with a very well defined
feature now. Yes, we have identified that with a filament
which has been rotating around the Sun for a number of rota-
tions. The filament isn't there now if you can use the anal-
agy that it sort of slopped out of the bathtub. But the
bathtub is still there. And so the magnetic field config-
uration presumably still exists there. One of the very
interesting things we want to look at is to compare these
data with the X-ray and the ultraviolet data made in those
regions so as to try and get a good feeling for what the
structure at the footpoints of these streamers are.
SPEAKER That may be an appropriate time to show
the XUV images and see the correlation, or attempt to see the
correlation. Dr. Tousey, if you'd show that image it might
put things together for them.
TOUSEY The S082 experiment is really 3 experi-
ments, SO82A, S082B, and the extreme ultraviolet monitor.
The extreme ultraviolet monitor is what you'll see here.
It is a television system which shows what the Sun looks
like in extreme ultraviolet radiation of a very broad band,
a band that covers the ranges of 4 of the instruments aboard
Skylab. The SO82, 5 or rather 4. The S082A, the Harvard in-
strument and the two X-ray instruments, not perfectly, hut they
overlap with it. So one can take this as a kind of preview
of what each of these instruments will see in its own very
special way. This is a picture of the high atmosphere
of the Sun. The region from perhaps i00,000 degrees from
up through the transition region and into the corona at
a million degrees all sandwiched together. The other in-
struments that I mentioned sample at different altitudes
in the Sun's atmosphere by picking out monochromatic or narrow
band pass radiation bands with which to make the images.
So for the first time, from an orbiting spacecraft, it is
possible to see what the Sun looks like in extreme ultra-
violet and you will never be able to see this in any other
way on the ground except from an orbiting spacecraft. Be-
cause these radiations can't get around to the Earth.
This will be used for two principle purposes, or really
three. The first purpose is to show the astronaut who
sees the same thing on his CRT, on the control and display
panel, what the Sun looks like in the radiation that these
four instruments studying he can point crudely - this is a
circular reticle. And we see in this case that the Sun is
not quite with the instrument, the monitor is not quite
pointed at the center of t_@.'S_n bedau_e the circle is off
r_
/P"- SL-II PC-lIB/6
Time: 10:02 CDT
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center, but in some of them it was on center, but he can tell

what is perhaps most interesting on the Sun to watch. The
Pls on the ground have available the same image al so to
study and to use in making up their plans to advise the
astronauts what to do for the next day. And then after the
mission these will be valuable for scientific purposes.
Here we see some very strange looking objects. We see an
active region that is extremely bright. We see some more
that are very bright on the llmb - -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC-IIC-I
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5131173

TOUSEY We see models coronal emission from

more less quiet coronal regions, and we see a coronal hole -
this very black object, if you want to call it object, from
which there's almost no emission. It does have in it a
few bright points, North is here and South is here, and
the equator goes across here. I think east is here, so the
Sun is rotating this way. No, the dark spots are cool spots.
The bright spots are the hot dense spots where flares are
likely to take place. And this coronal hole is believed to
be a region where the corona is at a lower temperature and
a lower density, and there's some reason to believe that
the solar wind comes out of coronal holes to a greater extent
than from any where else on the Sun. You can also see the
limb of the Sun is bright, just the opposite from what it
is in the visible and near ultra violet. One is looking at
a shell of emitting gas and when you look through a shell
edgewise it automatically looks brighter than it does if
you look through it at right angles. Like looking
through a sheet of emitting gas this way and you see more
of it than if you look through it this way.
QUERY To what depth are you seeing here? Is
this like the top surface or through a few layers, or what?
TOUSEY No, we're looking at an average of pro-
bably i0,000 kilometers more or less. From the - From some
what above the temperature minimum, which is just beyond
the edge of the visible limb, up into the corona, not to
the corona that Dr. McQueen showed you, because that is
still farther out, but the very base of the carona, where
the temperature first reaches the million degree range.
QUERY Can you- I realize these pictures are
probably very new to you since you haven't been able to
see them from Earth. If the bright spots are where you
think solar flares may develop, can you guess maybe how
that process would occur. Would we look for a bright spot
to get brighter and bigger and eventually would the flare
be produced, and how long might this process take? That
sort of thing.
TOUSEY It's just barely possible that this
can be done. If the system is watched carefully by the
crewmember on the TV panel. In the mode with which he
can do this, it will not be as bright as this. He will see
very little, but he can see, so he says, some of these
bright regions. I think that one of the first signs of
a flare would he seen on this monitor, if he were watching

it. Probably sooner tha_!l_,,an/_r-A1_h_ , although this is

a question that no one really knows the answer too. In-
cldently, I might say that this - these images had about
20 arc seconds resolution. The images to be obtained by
f- SL'II PC-IIC-2
Time: 10:02 CDT
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the photographic and photoelectric instruments will have

at least 10 times better spatial resolution, so this is a
kind of a quick and dirty - you might call a quick and dirty
way of having a look at the Sun and it's very exciting and
tells you what - it whets your appetite for what the
instruments may bring back.
QUERY Is there anything in that picture that
surprises you about the Sun, or did you think that's ex-
actly how it was going to be?
TOUSEY We've had some samples of this type of
image before, both from our rockets using extreme ultra
violet and the X-Ray rockest of AS&D and others, so that
the features were not unexpected, but here theylre much
more impressive in some ways, because they appear to be
so bright and contrasty. The contrast between the dark
coronal hole and the active regions shines out. Here the
point quite nicely, and you can see the radical - the cir-
cular radical lined up very well. Incidently the north and
the south poles are both coronal holes, if you want to call
them that.

TOUSEY We can - I might add here in closing, I

i think that's probably all the questions there, the Doctor,
I don't see any more. Why don't you just return to the
podium, and we'll open it up for questions and answers in
just a minute, but I might just interject at this particular
time that later on this afternoon, we will have still
photographs of some of the images you're seeing on television
and they will he released out of the PAO office
here. The photographs - I've seen a sample of the photograph
and I might caution you that the photographs during the
reproduction period did not come out quite as good as that
TV image. We went back and tried to reproduce them and
see if we can improve them. We'll have them later on this
afternoon, you can pick them up from Guy Jackson here, or
one of the PAO people here.
SPEAKER The Photo Branch down the hall.
SPEAKER I guess now to follow the format, we'll
just go down the line here and have each individual principle
investigator describe what he has accomplished so far, and
how his instrument is operating. We won't attempt to des-
cribe the instruments themselves. That would take far too
much time, and why don't we just begin off with Dr. Reeves.
REEVES Well, I'd like to sa[ just a couple of
words first. The Harvard i_ment _ l_Ja;photoelectric in-
strument, which is called a polychrometer. The detector,
instead of having a spectrum spread out, we have a number
of photoelectric detectors which simultaneously record the
intensity from various heights in the solar atmosphere,
because each one is set to be at a specific temperature.
.... SL-II PC-IIC-3
Time: 10:02 CDT
5131173

The data is, instead of being recorded on film, is recorded

on magnetic tape and dumped once in orbit, and played back
here to the Johnson Space Center, where it is displayed for
us and we can look at that data, so-called quick-look, when
the system is operating up to full function and be able to
respond to that data and change our observing program in
response to what we're actually seeing from the Sun, so
that when new things come up, when we see things that we
are more interested in than we thought we were going to be,
we can stress them, conversely, when we can see the data
and when we feel we have accomplished some of our objectives
we can lower the stress on those and get on with the others. We
did manage late last night to get a first sample of quick-
look data through the system, and although the instrument
provides a dynamic range, if you like, equivalent of a
photographic range of something like 32,000 to i, the photo-
graphic process - the images we can get are something like
4 or 5 to i. But I'd like to ask a colleague of mine, Dr.
Noyse, if he'd just take a minute or two and just show
you some of these pictures.
NOYSE Thank you, Ed. These are literally hot
.... off the press, only an hour or so old, so we apologise for
the quality of these. I might point out that we can have
photographic reproductions in a matter of 24 hours that
we can distribute. I have here an example of a picture,
here's the solar limb. This is in the light of hydrogen at
900 angstroms, ( garble) continum. This is a
negative, so black things are emission, as opposed to what
you've been seeing earlier. If you look carefully you can
see a fuzzy cloud above the limb, which is a so-called
solar prominence, which comes through very clearly in our
data. As Dr. Reeves mentioned, we can observe simultaneously,
in seven different aligns, which means seven different
altitudes or temperatures in the sun. This material you
see emitting here is i0,000 degrees, but simultaneously we
see what the Sun looks like at that same position at
i00,000 degrees, and a million degrees. And we can see
this prominence in many aligns extending upwards to higher
temperatures, although not at the million degree temperature.
This is a region of cold gas, which is existing, refrigerated,
if you like in the hot corona. By cold, I mean it's only
i0,000 degrees, whereas the surrounding corona is perhaps a million
degrees. Thank you. l'd like to show just a couple of
more pictures. These are pictures on the same scale of
the center of the quiet S_nd if ydu_look carefully, you
can see the pattern of emission that reflects the H-
Alpha picture you saw originally with little dark fibriles,
/ .... which some people think may be related spatially to the
r SL-II PC-IIC-4
Time: 10:02 CDT
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places where most of the coronal heating occurs. The so-

called network - emission network. And one interesting
question is how far does this emission network extends into
the corona, because if it extends bodily into the corona,
that may say that the heating in the corona is also localized
over this network. This is a very pressing scientific question
today in order to understand the heating of the corona. And here
is a picture of the Sun, not at the hydrogen temperatures,
but at a temperature of about 100,000 degrees in the light
of doubaly ionized carbon which shows in fact this network
exists very well at that altitude. This was already known
from earlier rocket data actually. Here is a picture at a
somewhat higher altitude, of course (garble) to
5 times ionized oxygen, and of course brought to a
temperature of about a quarter of a million degrees Centigrade.
And again we see the same pattern, so we can see that the
network extends at least that high. Finally here is a picture of the
Sun with the same spatial resolution at one and a half
million degrees, from 9 times ionized magnesium at 600
angstroms, and if you look carefully you can see that the
pattern is reflected in here, but it's really a much fuzzier
and qualittatively quite different. I'm not prepared to talk
in detail about this, but just as I said, the data only
has been in our hands for an hour. hut it's quite clear
that we would be able to resolve the question of where the
heating is localized at the one and a half million degree
corona level.

QUERY Is that all coronal, or is it chromosphere

too? Are you above the chromosphere there?
NOYSE All of these pictures were - This is
purely coronal. This is in the so-called transition zone,
between the chromosphere and corona, and this is - the whole
transition is on- This first picture I showed was chrom-
ospheric.
QUERY Are those features related to the
convective cells in the photosphere or they -
NOYSE There's a large scale pattern of
convection called the supergranulation, which has a size of
about this on this particular scale, and these we are con-
fident map 1 to 1 into that conduction pattern, and we know also
that the magnetic fields are probably set up by this con-
vection pattern, also mapped 1 to i, incidently, and are
related to the heating probably.

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC IID-I
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QUERY Is this the first time you've had

evidence that the network extends so far up?
REEVES Dr. Tossy has had evidence that the
network extends up to at least this level before, and as
I say, it's perhaps too early to tell exactly what the
structure of the network is. It looks to me as if it's
probably there, but I would not want to state at this
moment that we know for sure that the network extends into
the corona, but I would say this is the first evidence that
we have had which will tell the tale, probably in a few
days after looking at the data we could give an answer to
that question.
REEVES Again, you can remember that the contrast
here that, if you like, draws out these networks cells is
visually is very hard to get tuned up just for this one
photograph, so that when the analysis proceeds, the dynamic
range of the instrument will be tuned in order to enhance
those to a maximum, if fact, and then we' 11 be able to see
them much more clearly.
SPEAKER All right, to Ed, did you have anything
else to add. All right Dr. Touousey? Well, our A and B instrument
have both been used to a considerable extent, and we don't know
what we've got on the photographic film strips, of course. We
do know, however from the slip display, one of the closed
loop TV display for the astronaut is the image of the Sun
on the slip of the B instrument. This is very useful in
connection with the pointing. We know that the ATM pointing
is very stable, so that we're pretty sure that the astronaut
has been able to point the B instrument at the place that's
our interest, and that the instrument is coaligned with H-
Alpha. We've - I don't remember exactly how many frames
have been taken, but we've used quite a lot of pictures and
owing to the South Atlantic anomaly event that was
alluded to earlier, we did take some pictures as the Sun set
and may well have images that tell about the attenuation
of the Sun's radiation by the the Earth's atmosphere. This
is one of the joint observing programs, number 7, to study
the Earth's atmosphere in this way, and we may have run
this by chance. The 82A instrument has taken more than its
share of pictures. A lot of s_ but t_s,may very well
be all to the good, too. I dorf_ _l_no_ 3us_ what else to say
about it at this stage, except that everything is going
almost normally. There are always a few things one worries
about, and of course one never knows what one has on a photo-
graphic instrument of this type, until he actually sees a
developed and fixed photographic images, and has them in
f hand, so that. Ed Reeves and I are at the opposite ends. He
 SL-II P C-lID-2
Time: 10:02 CDT
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gets his results right away. We have to wait and wait and
then we get ours all of a sudden, we hope, in a month or so
from now, or perhaps less than then. I'ii let you look at
OUrS •
REEVES Dr. McQueen.
DR. McQUEEN Well, the white light coronagraph went
through checkout on mission day 2 and 3 by ground command
almost completely, then the final checkout was accomplished
with the astronaut at the console on mission day 4. From
the time which we were turned on until now, we've exposed
between 900 and 1,000 frames on the corona which is right
on our budget for the total mission. We have a film canister
which contains approximately 8,000 frames, and as Dr. Tousey
just mentioned, we got it all in one fell swoop when we process
the pictures. We're very pleased with the TV image, it shows
the instrument is extremely well allgned. It shows the
astronaut is doing the alignment procedures which he does
every time he makes a picture through instrument, perfectly
well. We were quite distressed the first day that the TV
was turned on that we didn't get any comment from the
astronaut on the corona. I think this is a tribute to
their training. They expected it to be as good as it is.
i They've seen it in the simulator for many months. The sim-
ulator pictures we've given them, so everything's working
normally. We're very pleased with the way things have
gone up to now.
SPEAKER Dr. Bo uer.
BOUER We turned on our cameras on mission day
two and three unattended. The camera is in the focal plane
of the X-RAV spectroheleiograph, and with that instrument
(garble) it looks at a corona in between the one that Bob
McQneen has seen, and what the rest of the instruments have
seen. Everything has worked as expected, but we started
the (garble) observation on mission day 4 to 5, and yesterday
we finally turned our high voltage for the flare alarm system,
X-REA flare alarm system, which is a separate instrument,
and in spite of the fact that these first experiments are
going(garble) South Atlantic anomaly and only they most count
as planned so that the switch was not turned off on that South
Atlantic anomaly, I think that we got a very good response from
the astronaut, or what would have been a good response if
he (garble). By now we have taken some thousand frames
of film, and most of them, about 200 were down through
the South Atlantic anomaly thing, but most of the other
80 were done on very good sc_fi_ pT_@r_ms. We coordinated
in fact, and we hope operated simultaneo_s1_. Perhaps most
important in the number of things we've done program
_- that we have started as early as we could, particularly
SL-II PC-I ID- 3
Time: 10:02 CDT
5731/73

we are very pleased with the fact that there's a very large
complex of activity centered on those active regions you
saw (garble) monitored that started to be started, a very
pecular feature with a very pecular magnetic configuration.
And it's going to tell us, if we follow it throughout,
(garble) it's going to tell us about how the dynamics of
those large complexes of activity develope. How the magnetic
field changes as related to the plasma that we see encompassed
by the magnetic field in the corona. Simultaneous with the
other program which has been started, we are conducting
edit all the PIs and the synoptlcs study of the Sun and which -
and we particularly center our attention to observing the
magnetic field again in the (garble) corona of the Sun as
we have seen in the plasma confined by those structures. We
depend to receive our data on the astronaut receiving the
film and bringing it back the kind of information that is
contained in the photograph. I brought here one of our
rocket still photograph. You can kind of imagine what we
are looking for. We are looking for a film which will
last eight months, which will tell us the development of the
X-KAV feature for that portion of the corona. And I'ii
put them on the table up there. I have several sequences
of them, just a few still photos and you can have an idea
what the data should look like, but in that film sequence
of the (garble)
QUERY }lave you all taken steps to make sure
that the astronauts don't mistake some of the anomaly
again for a flare?
BAUER Yes, the sensors were there to start
with, on the pad there is a line which says, South Atlantic
anomalies forthcoming, which, turn the switch off. At the
time that we were going to the South Atlantic anomalies, it
was expected, it was the first time that we were doing it, of
course, the first the instrument was on, in addition it not
being turned on the day before when we were supposed to be,
Just because we decided to wait so that the picture of
(garble) in the canister would be as we expected it should
have been, and all of those things were in the pad,
so we have now told the astronauts that, and of course it's
going to be (garbled)
SPEAKER I think it's a simple matter that we had
to delay the cutting on of that particular part of the
hardware because of some press, Sty. bur_s we were getting in
the canister and we were a li_l_ :" _' ' about
concer_ed posslbly
corona of that particular high voltage system, so we de-
layed the cut on until the whole thing stabilized out, and
he operated the panel without that particular alarm, for
i-- SL-II PC-lID-4
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

several revs and then we cut it on and it was just a ques-

tion of getting the panel configured right, and that it, it's
just about that simple.
QUERY What are the temperature ranges that
you see with your X-RAVs?
BAUER The wavelength ranges its 3 to 60
angstrums. The temperature ranges, of course are depends
the mechanics for the production for X-REA is, but roughly
speaking it's from one million degrees or there about.
1.2, one million degrees up to whatever. Ten million
degrees or so. At ten million degrees of course, you don't
expect to produce very strong effect on the three angstrum
range, but I do have a considerable
SPEAKER I might add just one little comment to
the business of operating the panel. One general comment.
That is a very, very complex system the crewman is trying
to operate up there. It's a very complex panel, very com-
plex set of instruments, and I personally think the crew
is doing an excellent Job in the first couple of days.
QUERY Could you go into a little bit more
detail about when you said you saw the relationship between
/
the magnetic fields and the gas cloud in a particular
active region?
BAUER I'm saying we are going to see this
relationship within one of these fields in the gas cloud
and the point is that the magnetic field which is observed
on the ground is observed only for the (garble) level.
Observation will give you the (garbled) we are after.
The magnetic field behavior there is expected to (garble)
looking at the (garbled) after the way it behaves. Some-
what similar to the one on the Photospheric and chromaspheris
level in particular. From the up what we know is the
plasma is confined in loop structures and things like that.
We do not know how to separate it, the magnetic field from
the photospheres into the corona because this simple measurements
is on the magnetic field on the photosphere not sufficiently
this answer if they aren't current then that is not enough
to be able to separate (garble) together what the magnetic
field will be. So the best way that you can hope to find
something is by how that magnetic field is in the corona.
Is by looking at the plasma which is confined by it, and
that's what X-RAV photographs do. That is what white light
photographs do from 1,5 solar radii.
QUERY Have you seen anything that helps you
out? Have you seen anything already that has helped you
out on this problem?
BAUER Well, as I said, we are waiting for the
f _ astronaut to bring back our film to do that. A few hints
 SL-II PC-lID-5
Time: i0:02 CDT
5/31/73

we have had from rockets photographs were enough to give

us an idea on our the structure side. What kind of
structure to be expected and so on. But certainly the
(garble) were the got to develope in those regions, and
that is exactly what is the most important problem is to
look at the dynamics of it, but on a time scale which is
very short, only a few seconds, we are talking of stability
in that case, solar flares to a time scale of the order of
seven solar rotations for the large complex solar activities
up to hopefully to eleven year solar cycle, but of course we
are going to have just a portion of it to go into the eighth
mon th.

SPEAKER All rlght, just general questions to

be addressed to any of the gentlemen.
QUERY Yes to Dr. Reeves, if you find that that
network does indeed extend so high, what is the significance
of finding that out?
REEVES Well, as you may know that if you come
up upways from the surface of the Sun, the average tempera-
ture first starts to decrease, and then it rises very sharply.
That means of course, that energy is being dumped into the
corona much higher up. It's not starting low down and being
radiated. If we can see the way in which this network of
cells carries the energy up into the corona, then we can
try to answer the question, we'll get a pretty good handle
on, whether the heating of the corona is done by the oscilla-
tions that take place in the center of these cells, or whether
the heating is done by energy that's carried on the network
the boundry of these cells. And we can by looking at the
oscillations, we can look at these things with good time
resolution, we can sit on one of these and go back and forth
and either get sort of 5 seconds or if we wish to sit inside
a cell, we can get forty milliseconds time resolution, and
we hope to see waves propagating up into the atmosphere, and
try to get a handle on whether the - what is the - is there
a wave motion and what is the nature of the wave motion, and
where does that heating occur for the network, for the
chromoshperlc, sorry for the corona.
QUERY Is the idea that the heating takes
place in the cells and then it's transported up by the
oscillating back and forth, is that the idea.
SPEAKER That's one of the things we're trying
to answer. Just how does the corona get heated. There are
I guess a number of different postulates on how the energy
gets into the corona, and whe_%_d_q, t_e_ _t_into the corona?
And there are certain observa@ion_s that_W_ *_an make, such as
the wave motions, where they occur, such as the structure of
this network, and how it changes as you go up into the
j.f corona, that will give us a pretty good idea on where the
 SL-II PC-I ID- 6
Time: 10;02 CDT
5/31173

heating takes place and what is the mechanism by which

that heating takes place, but from a couple of quick
photographs. We don't want to tackle a question llke that
which is really one of the outstanding questions in solar
physics.

END OF TAPE

F-
- SL-II PC-IIE/I
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

QUERY Could somebody summarize what the total

of the malfunctions with ATM instruments has been so far and
what the net effect of that looks like it is going to be at
this time.
SPEAKER Well, we really haven't had any major
malfunctions. We've had a couple of nuisances that have come
up. I think in the case of the Harvard instrument, we have
had a couple of tripouts of the high voltage detectors.
Bear in mind that there is a protective circuit on each
one of those high voltage devices which will cut the device
off if the voltage - if the current actually exceeds a certain
amount. And that threshold is set fairly low and we expect
see tripouts every once in a while so really there is
nothing to be alarmed about. It is a protective circuit
and it is working, and working well. The threshold as
I said is low and we have tripped out there a couple of
times. There is no indication of any problem to speak
of. We have had some again nuisance factors with the press-
ure inside the canister. Up until 2 days ago, we were
getting some indication from a pressure gauge inside the
canister that it was burping every once in a while and
f we're getting a little outgassing inside the canister. That
appears to have settled down now. As Dr. Tousey pointed out,
the canister has been shown to be extremely stable. Let's
see I don't believe I know of any other malfunctions,
in fact we are all very pleased with the performance of the
instruments today. Just absolutely ecstatic, if you want
to get right down to it.
QUERY All the flim in use, flim that was on
the spacecraft during the prior manning and are you confi-
dent that it is okay?
SPEAKER The flim that you heard about being in
trouble was all down in the workshop and we had no film
in the workshop. All of our film was either in cameras, on
the instruments inside the canisters, or the rest of the film
which we will use in subsequent flight was in the multiple
docking adapter in film vaults. We tracked those tempera-
tures and I don't remember seeing any temperature higher
than 73 degrees during other times. So we are in good shape
there. Our film was very reasonable. We have an upper limit
of 80 degrees and we didn't come close to that.
QUERY All right this is for you Dr. Reeves
if you would try to answer _his questi_.. If you can learn
how the corona is heated and I presume it would some kind of
a thermo nuclear reaction, but if you can learn that process,
do you believe that it would result in finding new ways to
produce power or heat on Earth.
 SL-II PC-lIE/2
Time: 10:02 CDT
5131173

REEVES Well the heating of the corona is not

a nuclear reaction. The nuclear reaction is that produce the
very large souce of heat that keep the Sun operating are
produced very deep down in the center of the Sun. The
heating of the corona is only from i0,000 degrees up to one
or two million degrees, certainly no where near. And the
density is very low so that collisions almost never take
place. Thermo nuclear reactions would not take place.
Collisions do not take place. The heating is probably one
of shock waves where an acoustic wave produced in these super
granulation cell steepens as it goes through a decreasing
pressure and increasing temperature region forming shock
waves which then as they get to a certain condition of tem-
perature intensity dump their maximum amount of energy.
So it is probably an acoustically shock waved kind of heating
process.
SPEAKER There are lots of things that go on
on the Sun, which these active regions and prominences
and these surges of gas that move in the magnetic field
are going to tell us a lot of good sound physics about
how plasmas at high temperatures are constrained and move
in magnetic fields and how they interact. And that basic
f physics of plasmas in motion at high temperatures in mag-
netic fields is of ultimate interest in ultimate application
to the question of fusion and the control of fusion. But
it's one sort of through the hack door,
SPEAKER (Garble) experiments on fusion because
now on the Sun, it takes place all the time. It takes place
more or less in condition of millions of degrees (garble)
the physics is quite relevant, quite important although it
may not be directly applicable tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow.

SPEAKER But the theory of energy mass and

transfer on the Sun have to be understood, verifledp eliminated
and so forth before you can ever find out what the equations
look like so that you can apply them. That's what the ATM
is all about to collect data to determine what the theories
are correct_ which theories are correct, what the equations are,
what the laws of physics are, and which can be subsequently
applied later on.
QUERY Do you have any idea how soon after you
have analyzed the ATM data when you will know the effects
of the Sun energy or the Sun has on the weather on Earth,
the climate.
SPEAKER Dr. MacQueen has got to answer that one
because he is from the high altitude observatory which is
also interested in that atmospheric resea[ch. ! ,
SL-II PC-lIE/3
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

SPEAKER Since we are a division of the national

center of atmoshereric research, that _s our charter is
to try to understand the Sun's influence on weather and
climate. To answer your question is I don't know. And by
that I mean the direct answer is I have no idea of how long
it is going to take to solve the problem of how the Earth
reacts to the Sun wlth regard to long term changes of
climate or even to short term fluctuations in the Earth's
outer atmosphere as a result of solar impulsive vents. It
is a major problem recognized as a major problem of atmos-
pheric physics. And we think by understanding the structure
of the corona, which actually extends throughout the solar
system, and the Earth is embedded in the solar corona, that
if we can understand the physics of the corona, then we
could ultimately understand the physics of the passage of
energy from the Sun pass the Earth and to the Earth, and
that of course is the link that we need to understand
before we can ultimately tie together weather, climate, and
disturbances on the Earth to the Sun.
SPEAKER Any further questions?
QUERY You are pursuing the thermo nuclear bit.
It seems to me there used to be an idea that they occurred
in flares, that there was some fusion in the flare in the
pinch of the flare. Has that gone out the window?
SPEAKER No it has not by no means. The flare
is a very unusual event. The flare is a condensation of
matter where the density goes up far above the local density
in a corona or the transition region and the temperature
also goes way up. And I think there probably will be good
evidence that reactions of that type can take place on that
rather unusual event.
SPEAKER Any further questions. For any other
pressmen or investigators or for Mr. Keathley?
QUERY Do any of you people see anything in
the photographs that you've been able, a phenomenon that
you've been able to observe before, that is a surprise to
you, a particular surprise to you. Do you see anything is
the photography of features on which you have had some infor-
mation before or some theories before, that are particular
surprises to you in a quick look.
SPEAKER You are referring to previous observa-
tions, therefore a petition a_p%_or n_w_h_ngs which may
have come from ATM. I person_i'i9 had the experience of
a number of rocket flights spaced over the last 10 years
or so pursuing the (garble) observation of the solar corona.
I can state there has been no flight - that has been = at least
one or two totally unexpected sort of thing. I think for instance
 SL-II PC-lIE/4
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

during that time the general idea of the spc(garble) the

description of the corona as a (garble) shell has been com-
pletely thrown out of the window. The most important thing
today is the corona and in the plasma in the structure of it.
All of that has come out from eclipse observation, from the
(garble) rocket observation, and from X-ray rocket observation.
Now these are very important things because when you are trying
to do the physics of the corona, trying to understand for
instance the heating mechanism, or the way that the (garble) of
the sun changes, then you do tend to use the (garble) as you see
them, as they are presented to you by the observations and that's
more than (garble) sort of thing just i0 years ago. And since
then we have had to abandon almost completely (garble) of
this kind and never look into the details. We have to know
that (garble) fields that is more important than we thought
it might have been and so on.
QUERY When you get a result you'll almost
certainly find someone who will say I could have told you
that. There are bound to be at least 3 or 4 theories
for each observation, and many phenomenon have been expected
one way or another. The objective of ATM is sort of at the
end, not the end, but is the end point at this time of a long
series of solar observations, and so we've blocked out a great
" many of the solar types of phenomenon. The objective of ATM
is not so much a discovery mission of new kinds of things but
really coming to grips, theoretically quantitatively with
these phenomena.
SPEAKER I should like to say the extreme ultra
violet images that you looked at some of which were taken
a day later than the first. On casual inspection, which is
all I have done and all you have done, seem to have changed
much more during that period than I had expected. It may
may be Just a matter of how they were taken and something
to do with the reproduction, but it really looks as though
the corona and the transition layer which were changing rather
a lot more rapidly in details than can just be attributed
to the fact that the sun is rotating. I think that this
is just about the first time that we've had an opportunity
to compare this kind of extreme ultraviolet image on days
on a single day apart.
SPEAKER Do any of the other PIs have any other
comments that they would llke to make to any question
that was not asked? Mr. Keath_ey, do Yiou have anything else?
SPEAKER In sum_r_zing, m_st_ of the gentlemen
here are being reasonably cautious about the results of the
observations because obviously they have to wait on the
photographs to get back to really pin that down. Dr. Reeves
....
_ SL-II PC-IIE/5
Time: 10:02 CDT
5/31/73

has just received his first images from the photo electric
data and I thought Dr. Noyse described the result there.
And I think as time goes on, some more interesting observa-
tions could be made. We're just in the very beginning of
the observations right now. As far as the instruments are
concerned to summarize again I think they are working ex-
ceptionally well and I'm sure we're going to get excellent
data.
SPEAKER Remember there are some photographs that
will be available right after the conference and other
photographs will be available in the photographic branch.
Thank you.

END OF TAPE

f
s
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
May 31, 1973
7:42 p.m. CDT

Participants:
f
Donald Puddy, Flight Director
Larry Bourgeois, Jr., Corollary Experiments
William Moon, EGIL
Milt Reim, PAO

PC-12
- SL-II P C-12A-I
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

PAO We'll get started here. On my right

is William Moon, the EGIL. And on his right Don Puddy,
the Flight Director. On the far right - I got it mixed up
here, didn't I, excuse me, let me start over here. Larry
Bourgeois, Jr, he's the corollary man, and then we have
Don Puddy, and then William Moon.
PUDDY Okay, well let me start out this even-
ing, as you were probably were briefed last night, we did
have a problem with S019, which are UV stellar photography
experiment. Larry is the fellow who monitored that for us,
and we went through the troubleshooting procedure as
scheduled the first thing this morning, did find a plans
that was binding some of the gears, and were able to go
ahead and repair the instrument, subsequently installed it
in the anti solar cell, and this afternoon had an operational
pass, and I brought Larry along just to give you a few words
about that particular experiment. Larry.
BOURGEIOUS Okay, the problem with SO19 is that, when
you extend around the SAL, you rotate a mirror through a
tilting rotation mechanism to point it at celestrial objects.
The problem was the tilting mechanism was binding. The crew
could not - could not turn it. We went through the malf
procedures this morning, and there's various gear mechanisims from
the tilt rotation knob, they pulled the tilt rotation knob off,
and the panel behind the knob, and they were able to observe
that there's a radiation - there's a flange behind the gear which
drives the rotation readout mechanism, which was bent out-
wards, and was obstructing the gear whi=h drives it. That
display mechanism. They were able to bend it back and put
the SO19 back together, and it operated properly.
PUDDY Okay, as far as spacecraft status
goes throughout the day, we did maintain electrical balance.
We did some powering down this morning, as it turned out,
we powered down probably a little bit more than was
absolutely necessary. We actually had about a 300 watt
pad over what we had expected to had. We ran around 3700
watts, and we expected to have a load most of the day of
around 4000 watts. We again did some troubleshooting on
CBRM 15, which you've been briefed on, I know several times.
Again, I'm unhappy to report, we had no joy with that trouble-
shooting, so at the present time, anyway, I'm afraid that
we've lost that particular capability, which means that we
have lost one-eighteenth of our power capability, or about
a hundred forty watts total capability. As yon probably were
briefed last night, we also had a problem during the EREP
pass, where after the pass we came into the nighttime frame
we had four batteries kick off line, and shortly thereafter
 SL-II P CI2A- 2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

two batteries kicked off shortly after we went into night-

time, two more a little bit later, and finally towards the
end of that pass, we had a REG trip off line. We were able
to command the batteries back on line, however the regulator
associated with CBRM number 3, we were not able to command
back on line, we have not done any additional trouble-
shooting today, because of the very packed crew timeline. And
probably will schedule that after the crew day off, which is
tomorrow. I'm not sure, I can't make any statement as to
whether or not we expect to get that particular regulator
and consequently that CBRM back on line ornot. Let me
just say a couple of words of explanation to you. On the
regulator, basically what that particular device enables us
to do is to supply power either to the battery or directly
to the bus.

END OF TAPE.

_i,,
' ......
_

4m
--4 SL-II PC-12B/I
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

PUDDY of explanation to you. On the

regulator, basically what that particular device enables us
to do, is to supply power either to the battery or directly
to the bus. It's more or less in the same context as the
SAS output. If you lose a regulator or you lose the SAS
contactor, as we call it, you essentially have lost total
power capability from that particular source of electrical
power. But, we will be doing some additional trouble shoot-
ing on that, and have some hope of being able to regain
that. As far as temperature is concerned, we expect now
to stabilize somewhere in the habitation area at around
80 degrees. As I briefed you 2 or 3 days ago, the rate of
decrease was expected to slow down, and it has followed
that trend. And we are presently dropping some where around
a half a degree a day. Today, we did turn off one of the
coolant loops as a power conservation measure. Saw no sig-
nificant noticeable increase in the overall temperature,
which means we're - we're gradually cold soaking down to
what we consider to be a stable temperature. And expect -
we're bringing that loop back on line during the night time
frame. And we expect to go ahead and continue to decrease
slightly during the night time frame. As to exactly as
to when we're going to reach the lowest temperature, it
is pretty hard to predict, but I imagine we're talking again
in the order of 2 or 3 more days to completely stabilize.
I think the only other, well there is a couple of other
items I probably ought to mention. One, you may have copied
on air to ground, that we're contemplating taking some TV
of the SAS wing. This is being worked throughout the
Center, here and also at Marshall. We still have high hopes
of being able to get OWS wing 1 deployed and to take ad-
vantage of that electrical power. With that particular
wing deployed, we certainly would be back in the mode of
operation where everything would be completely ops nominal
as far as experiments are concerned. And as you are well
aware right now, basically what we're able to do is still
conduct an experiment protocol. But, the experiment pro-
tocol does have certain limitations associated with it.
Which means, you can't simultaneously conduct experiments
in the ATM, the biomedical, and the EREP area at the same
time. There is just too much power required. We have,
however, as you're probably well aware of also today con-
ducted simultaneous ATM and biomedical experiments with
no problems, in fact we had power to spare. We also con-
ducted the corollary experiments, one of which Larry briefed
you on. In fact, I think we had, we had 6 ATM passes
scheduled today. We also had 4 or 3 runs of the M-131,
-_- SL-II PC-12B/2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5131173

which is the vestibular function test, special orientation

tests and we also had our standard M092, M-171 run. I
think you probably also have copied some comments from the
crew as far as the cramped tlmellne and the problems that
they're having following that particular time line. And,
let me just say a few words to you about that. Basically,
I think we're finding that in space it has taken just a
little bit longer to do some of the activities than it
did here on ground. We expected that this might be the
case, but we had more or less agreed with the crew that
at the start of the mission, we would go ahead and try to
fly as full a protocol as we possibly could and that once
they began to experience some problems, in meeting the time
line, we would go ahead and make the necessary adjustments
in the flight plan to allow a little bit of extra time.
We're also finding, as we did in Apollo, that some of the
housekeeping tasks, of which there are a lot more in - -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PC 12C/I
Time : 19 :42 CDT
5131173

SPEAKER - time. We're also finding as we did in

Apollo, that some of the housekeeping tasks, of which there
are clot more in Skylab than there were in Apollo, are taking
a considerable longer period of time than was anticipated
by either of us or the crew. We've also, as you've probably
well versed on, if you've listened to air to ground today,
had these little start up problems, with each new experiment
as we progressed into it. The learning curve, both on the
ground, and on the spacecraft, is very high. I think that
you will see in the next few days these things will tend to
smooth out tremendously and operations will tend to become
fairly routine. I don't believe I have anything else at
this time. Bill, do you have anything you want to add from
electrical power standpoint?
MOON The only thing we're doing here different
is - we are changing the power. That is we're powering
down, so that we can do the experiment runs everyday. And
we are able to maintain energy balance which is one of
the constraints here. I feel that powerwlse, if we can power
down to a certain level everyday to - and we look at flight
plan to achieve this power level. We're in good shape
as far as doing most of the experiments.

SPEAKER Let me add a little bit to that. What

Bill is talking about. When we say powering down, we essen-
tially are not disabling any crew capability to a significant
extent. Give you a couple of examples of the things we're
doing. We have a requirement to try to obtain as much TV
as is possible. There's two ways to obtain TV. One, is to
go ahead and do it at anytime of the crew day. And put it
on a video tape recorder. And subsequently dump it to the
ground. Well, the video tape recorder happens to cost us around,
I believe the figures somewhere around 400 watts total. We
can go ahead and power down the video tape recorder and get
the same TV picture. All we got to do is make sure that we
got these scheduled over ground site where we can essentially
dump on real time. And this saves us a tremendous amount of
power. We just don't use the video tape recorder. For instance,
the TV that we took today, of which we hope to have around -
well, we got about i0 or 15 minutes of it real time. We
recorded about 30 minutes. We wil.l re-record some additional
information on one of the additional ATM passes tonight.
About 5 minutes worth. And we plan during the crew day
off tomorrow, while we're over the States, and we expect
low power levels to just go ahead and dump it. So we're
not losing anything there. One of the other things is we're
running with a single coolant loop. And as I pointed out
SL-II PC 12C/2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

a minute ago, at least during the daytime frame. And as

I pointed a minute ago, we've been able to do this quite
successfully with no significant impact to the crew comfort
level in the spacecraft. The other things, just like at
home, turn off the lights, if you don't need them. Things
like that. So, these are, you might say, taken away some
of the luxury items. But we're not taking away any of the
basic capabilities that were designed in the Skylab space-
craft. So with that, let me open the floor to questions.
QUERY Contemplating TV of the SAS wing. Can you
go into that?
SPEAKER Okay, we started looking at this about
a day and a half ago because we were extremely interested
as to how we get a closer view of just exactly what this
metal strap is. Exactly how close to the OWS SAS solar array
beam fairing. It is located. Make sure we understand
just exactly what the material is. And how is the best
technical way to approach these things from the standpoint
of releasing that beam fairing. What the TV - if we can
possibly accomplish this is expected to do, is to give us
some higher resolution picture of that particular strap.
It's exact location and enable us to in the water emersion
facilities over at Marshal Space Flight Center. Run some
checks that the crew might be able to --

END OF TAPE
f-_ SL-II P C-12D-I
Time: 19:42
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PUDDY - in the water immersion facilities over

at the Marshall Space Flight Center, run some cheeks that
the crew might be able to perform during an EVA operation,
that might allow us to cut that strap or pry that strap
loose, and actually free that particular wing. So that's
the intent of the TV. Let me go on and say that we're still
in the process of trying to accomplish just exactly
procedurally how we would do this. We're talking about
a device which is, as far as the deployment of the TV
camera, which is very similar to the one that we used the
other evening to deploy the parasol. In other words the
T027 that has the extension rods. You mount the TV camera
on some of these rods, and you extend it out the antisolar
SAL. Which, by the way, presently right now is occupied by
the SO19 experimant that Larry just briefed you on. One
of the problems associated with that is that to get the
proper look angle to that wing, you've gotta go through
some angular contortions, and one of these that we're look-
ing at is the possibility of a 90 degree lens. And one of
the key questions that needs to be resolved is just exactly
whether or not we can take that camera, mount that 90
degree lens on it and still have enouth clearance in the
f T027 canister to make sure that we don't run into any prob-
lems either with the deployment of that mechanism or the
retraction of that mechanism. We certainly don't want to
run any risks whatsoever of hurting the SAL usage for the
remaining part of the mission. So that's what we're look-
ing at. Those procedures are not completely developed, and
what we're doing on air to ground tonight with Pete was
trying to get some idea from him as to just exactly what
he thought would be the feasibility from his standpoint of
accomplishment, also it is his crew day off, and it's one
that's one that's well deserved, and we certainly don't want
to put him in the posture of spending the whole day - his
whole crew day off on something until we're totally con-
vinced that it will be profitable, and that he feels free
that he can go ahead and do it. We know he still has quite
a few housekeeping tasks that he would like to get done, and
several other things that we probably haven't completely
conversed on, and so we're just trying to feel him out.
He's also being asked probably about this time as to just
exactly in his opinion, basically, what additional informa-
tion, he feels we might gain that we can't, say obtain from
him through some more detailed questions. So it's just again
various aspects are being looked at to try to figure out how is
the best way to attack another hack at the deployment of this
wing. And I'm not even saying we're going to make that
-- SL-II PC-12D-2
Time : 19:42
5/31/73

attempt. I'm just saying we're continuing to investigate.

QUERY Don, what time of day would this most
likely be done, and what - how would it fit in, they got
a pretty much open day, except for some minor housekeeping
and some physical training and so - and all. What kind of
time frame is it? Would it take 3 hours to do it?
PUDDY Our best estimate right now, and this
is including setup time and clearing out the SAL after we
finish, our best estimate is that it will take approximately
3 hours to go ahead and accomplish this. As far as the
best time, several things are being looked at. One is, we'd
certainly like to do it over a long pass, where we can talk
with the crew about it, and can hopefully get some of the
TV ourselves. We would - We've got a couple of other things
in the flight plan, even though some of them are minor to us,
they're pretty major to the crew, like this is the first
chance for a shower since liftoff, and we certainly don't
want them to miss that opportunity. So, we're looking
at it, but I would imagine that we're talking probably
one of two options. It's either going to be in the morning
over the states, or in the afternoon over the states, which
really narrows it down for you.
QUERY What kind of chance is it that the
ground would have the procedures worked out so that they
can do it in the morning? And do you think it would be
more likely put off until the afternoon to get those
procedures worked out?
PUDDY No, I think if we have all the procedures
worked out they will be worked out during the nighttime
frame tonight, and certainly would be on board for a crew
review the early part of tomorrow morning.

END OF TAPE

f
 SL-II PC-12E/I
Time : 19 :42 CDT
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PUDDY - - they will be worked out during

the nighttime frame tonight. And certainly would be onboard
for crew review the early part of tomorrow morning. I think
it's just basically trying to juggle the time line to make
sure everything fits the best, and gives the crew the max-
imum amount of latitude as far as free time.
QUERY One more. When would you expect the next
EREP pass?
PUDDY I think we've got one scheduled now
on day 153, which is the day after crew day off.
QUERY Are you working towards an EVA on a
particular day?
PUDDY No we are not. Basically, what we
are doing right now is still trying to gather enough data
so we can evaluate the tools and the procedures that would
be used for an EVA. Right now out intent is to continue to
go along with the - an experiment protocol much as we had
originally planned.
QUERY Say on the electrical situation, did
I understand you correct, that this regulator that you can-
not get back on line at the moment, has that effectively
J robbed you of a third battery until you fix it? The second
thing is about turning off the lights. Can they in fact do
this? I understood to start with that the lighting was a
basic system that just came on when the thing was powered
up. And the third one is, can you give us any sort of num-
ber, rough number as to what the increase in your power
would be compared to your present situation, if you could get
that wing deployed?
PUDDY Okay, I may start out in reverse order,
and see if I can remember all of your questions. If the
other wing was capable of being deployed, and all three
sections of it were fully deployed, we're essentially talk-
ing about an increased power capability of around 3,000 watts.
In other words, we're essentially talking by the way we can
hook that particular power system up, almost two thirds of
the capability of both wings. So it is obvious that it
would be a tremendous boost. As far as your first question
is concerned, we do have the, well let me make sure. Why
don't you rephrase your first question.
QUERY Well, I didn't quite understand what
you said about that the facts you had a regulator that has
not gone back on line.
PUDDY We have lost right now, to the best of
our knowlege, with all the trouble shooting procedures we
have been able to come up with, 1 CBRM, which includes a
f battery. We have lost the regulator on another, which
 SL-II PC-12E/2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

essentially has cost us the second battery and capability

during a day side pass of feeding power to the bus. Let
me just say, that the way that electrical system works is
that during the day cycle, we are providing power not only
to the bus, but to charge the battery. During a night time
pass, of course, we are discharging the battery only. Now
when you have lost either the input between the SAS and the
regulator, or if you lost the output of the regulator,
then what you have lost is the capability not only of using
that battery power during the night time frame, but also
of charging the battery. So you have essentially lost total
power capability. I think I've explained that correctly,
haven't I Bill.
SPEAKER Well, that's for the first. In CBRM 15
we lost the SAS contacter which does provide power. That
contactor does provide power to the charger and to the rig.
On the third one, the CBRM 3, excuse me, we tentatively
think that it might be in the reg control logic itself.
But, on day 153, we are going to do a little more trouble
shooting on that CBRM there.
QUERY The lights.
f SPEAKER The lights.
SPEAKER Well, upon entry, they have what they
call emergency lighting, that's normally on. But, each light
itself you can turn it off or dim.
SPEAKER We also have several consoles. For
instance, the ATM console has a - what we call EL lighting,
electroluminescent lighting. We have proven time and again
that it's, although it's helpful to have that particular
type of lighting, it's certainly not essential. It is a
large power drain- -

END OF TAPE

f
 SL-II P C-12F-I
Time: 19:42 CDT
5131173

PUDDY - luminescent lighting. We have proven

time and again although it's helpful to have that particular
type of lighting, it's really not essential, and it is a
large power drain, and that can separately disabled and
still use the regular lighting on the panel to read all
of the meters on there, so we do have independent control
capability over some of the lighting capability.
QUERY When can you say what percentage of the
original Skylab electricity is now operating, and second, if
you use the fuel cells in the Command Service Module, how
much percentage of the total that you started out with
would you be able to add.
PUDDY Well, let me say that we have lost one-
ninth of the capability that we had shortly after Skylab i
liftoff. And we're talking right now, our basic power
generation capability, an average, and we don't want to
get into Beta Angles and all this type of thing, an average
power generation capability that we have right now, without
the loss of the two, assuming that we cannot regain those
were we were talking around 4500 watts. Each of these losses
amounts to a drop of 140 watts, or a total of 280 watt
_- capability we've lost, so we're down to what, 4220, is that
right ?
SPEAKER 4200 watts.
PUDDY 4200 watts, rounded off, it may be a
little bit in excess of that, as a total power capability.
Now, if you brought the other wing out, I indicated to you
that you would have an additional power generation capability
of 3000 watts, or you'd be up in the 7200 watt region.
QUERY What about the fuel cells?
PUDDY Well, right now we are essentially
using the fuel cells per se, merely to power the quiescent
that loads in the CSMs. They're not supplying any power to
the OWS, nor is the OWS supplying any power to the CSM.
QUERY I'm not sure I understand yet. Last
night there seemed to be some feeling that you couldn't
work on these CBRMs and now you're talking about maybe
troubleshooting them and fixing them. What can you do to
one, and what can't you do to it, in the way of fixing it?
PUDDY Well, if you followed Apollo missions,
it's the old try, try again approach. As you're probably
well aware, we were in thermal conditions for quite some
time frame that we didn't expect to be in. As over all
temperatures continue to stablize, and things of this nature,
we will continue to just cycle switches. That's basically
the only capability we have. It's not something where we're
F talking about taking a hammer and a screwdriver and a pair
-_ SL-II P C-12F-2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5131173

and going out there and having at a particular electronics

box or relay module. We don't have that capability. It's
just basically going through and cycling switches and hoping
that if we do have cantaminate condition in relay contacts
or something that is an intermittent, we might be able to
catch it at a particular time under a particular thermal
condition where we can again make that contact and maintain
our capability.
QUERY Let me put my question a little more
clearly. I appreciate that, but what I wanted to know is
are they sealed up so you can't get at them or not?
PUDDY Oh, all of these - they're all outside.
QUERY Paul Weitz said something this morning
about a high CO2 reading throughout the spacecraft. I didn't
hear anything, or don't remember anything after that point.
PUDDY Well, we were running what we call a
CO2 monitor test and basically this is one of those ex-
periments where we again have come up with a small problem,
as we activate the - this is essentially just a - what we
call a DTO or a detail test objective that we are carrying
on board, where we have the capability of monitoring CO2 and
z_ dew point. And I believe they call it the contamination
experiment, and basically, what we're trying to do there
is to measure the C02 and dew point. And this morning we
did actually, well this morning, was the first time we
noticed it. This morning we had some trouble in that
particular experiment, where on one half of it, what we call
system A, it looked like part of the sensor may have dried
out. We have another --

END OF TAPE
 -_ SL-II PC-12G/I
Time: 19:42 CDT
5131173

PUDDY - - half of it we call system A. It

looked like part of the sensor may have dried out. We have
another cheek on that this evening, and we have asked the
crew to go ahead and use the redundant sensor system in the
C02. As far as CO2 level is concerned, I have not heard
that reported high with any degree of belief. In other
words, as far as I'm concerned C02 level in the spacecraft
is well within the region of where we expect it.
QUERY I understood last night that each one
of the CBRMs was worth 250 watts. Was that an error?
PUDDY Well, I've been laboring under the
assumption that - I was under the assumption that they were
worth about 140. I guess we could do some mathematics here
and figure it all out.
SPEAKER Well, the number that comes to my mind
is about 200, I don't know maybe 180.
PUDDY Okay, we've got a range here. I think -
SPEAKER It all depends upon the beta angle and
all that and the other.
PUDDY There are a lot of factors that enter
into it. I think that you can say that 140 watts would
f probably be the minimum number. Under extreme conditions,
yes, you could get as high as 200. I don't know about the
250, that sounds a little high to me, as far as the loss of
one CBRM being that high. It is essentially - if you want
to, we're talking about each CBRM being 1/18_h of our power
capability. And we expect at the average condition 4500
watt generation capability. So I guess that does come out
to right around 200.
QUERY Going back to when you do the EVA, in
the light of what you've said since you answered my first
question, surely there's some, there is going to be a tre-
mendous advantage in doing it quickly isn't there if the
pictures look good tomorrow?
SPEAKER Well, let me clarify a couple of things.
A, I didn't possltively say that we're going to take the
pictures tomorrow, because there is still a lot of work to
be done there. And B, I said, I didn't positively indicate
that regardless of whether or not we got the pictures we
are going to do an EVA. All that is being looked at. Our
hopes are, of course, if something can be figured out,
where we can do the EVA. As far as the time limitation on
it, no, we're not nearly as short in time duration here
as you were on the SEVA for instance, because what we're
talking about is performing an EVA, very similar to the type of
thing we do when we go out and retrieve the ATM film.
QUERY But have you, assuming you have got
 SL-II PC-12G/2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5131173

pictures that give you hope that you could do something

tomorrow. Have you got a lot of procedures to work out
after that? I thought that would mostly be done with Rusty
at Huntsville and so on.
PUDDY Oh, he's been working, he's been work-
ing several concepts, several different ways of going at it
based on the original pictures that we got from the SEVA
activities and the description from the crew. None of these
have been completely refined into detailed step by step
crew language. It's one thing to take a concept and say
okay, don your suit go into the water tank, take the bone
saw, go down there and saw on the strap and see how it
all works. It's another thing to write it up in short con-
sise crew language, which will explain it to a man that's
orbiting around some 200 and some odd miles above the Earth
and say you go do it. We have proven that it is feasible
to do. So, from a standpoint of testing out concepts, yes
several concepts have been tested and several others are
still under work. As far as transforming the procedure
that would be selected into crew language, while some of
that has been started, it hasn't been completed. And there
would be some time delay from the photograph to starting
on the EVA.
QUERY Don, they were talking about the I
think it was the decibel reader, this little machine was out
today or was - seemed to be reading awfully low, I think it
was one of those funnies that they wanted to look at. What do
you think the decibel reading is in there? Is it very high
or are they really getting good low readings?
PUDDY It just so happens I happen to have
the expert with me who can explain that to you completely.
SPEAKER Well, I'll just show you the instrument.
This is a sound level frequency analyzer, and what they do
is they take this throughout the different compartments
of the workshop - -

END OF TAPE

f
4 SL-II PC-12H-I
Time: 19:42 CDT
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SPEAKER - this is a sound level frequency

analyser, and what they do is they take this throughout
the different departments of the workshop, and read the
ambient sound levels. And when Pete first reported he was-
he said he was doing about 22DB, which was awfully low.
You'd expect to read somewhere in the fiftys, I'd think,
which is an average room with people talking. And he said
he went through the checklist and this is the knob he was referring
to. Setting it to the proper positions and he could not
get anything above 22DB, no matter what kind of noise he
made. He started fooling with the knob, he said, and he
eventually got a reading around 55 degrees, which is some-
thing in the order of what you'd expect to hear. And basing
what we've heard from Pete, it sounds like there's two
possible problems we're looking into right now. One is
humidity or some kind of contaminate in the microphone, which
can be wiped out, which they have observed preflight, which
would be fairly easy, it's just a matter of unscrewing the
microphone and cleaning it out. The other possibility is
there's a know down here which he has to have in the linear
position; right next to the linear position is the external
filter, which feeds the sound through a filter, a band-pass
filter down here which cuts the DB level way down, and it
turns out you get - I tested it before we came over here -
you get in a room about 60 or so DB sound level and you
turn this thing to the external filter position and it goes
on in the range of the twenties. Which leads me to think
that this particular switch was in the wrong position.
Right now, we really haven't determined exactly what the
problem is.
QUERY I've got three questions. You talked
about the concepts for this - freeing this strap. Could
you give us some idea of what they're considering? And
second, in your estimation, when is the earliest that they
might try to do this? And third, you talk about a 90 de-
gree lens for the TV, how will they rig that up? Will that
come from some other equipment, or is it all part of the
TV?
PUDDY I'm not positive. I haven't been work-
ing directly or nor have I been in contact with the people
that are running the tests at Huntsville, as to exactly Just -
the details of the procedure they're going through. I know
they're looking at using some of the same tools that we used
on the SEVA, possibly, in slightly a different matter. A
couple of things I've heard talked about is a crowbar type
approach, just to try to pry this particular device far
enough away from that particular beam structure where it can
 SL-II PC-12H-2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

flare. It looks like, because of the characteristics of that

particular material, which is a very brittle, but very tough
aluminum, we possibly may be able to fracture it. It also,
having those characteristics is a very difficult thing to
cut. It is also, apparently an angle iron, which makes
cutting it even more difficult. We are looking into the
possibility of using a saw, bone saw, that is on hoard to try
to cut through this particular material, and going any
further than that, I'm afraid I would be getting out on a
shallow limb.
QUERY Well, I guess we aren't on the same
frequency. What I was wondering is a SEVA thing or is it
something where they're trying to stay with the spacecraft
and crawl along it? Pete had the idea of shimmying down
the beam. How are they going to get at this is what I was
wondering about?
PUDDY One of the big problems associated with
this particular EVA procedure is just exactly how do you
get there? And there are several items that are being
looked at there. And I am not familar with exactly the
testing that has gone on there. Milt, have you got any
_ words exactly on what they've been going through there?
SPEAKER No, they only one that I'm aware of is
that they have been talking about using something like the,
and this may not work out at all, it would certainly have
to be simulated, but using something like a fireman's pole.
As merely a devise which one crewman could translate down
to that particular structure. All of this and any procedure
that we'd come up with, would have to be verified, of course,
and made completely sure that it was a very safe thing for
the crew to do before it would be attempted. But, right
now as far --

END OF TAPE

f
- SL-II PC-12I/I
Time: 19:42 CDT
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PUDDY - - sure that it was a very safe thing

for the crew to do, before it would be attempted. But, right
now, as far as I'm aware of, most of the concepts do revolve
around a normal EVA and not a SEVA type thing, where we're
actually going to undock and drive around to that area again.
That's not to preclude - that's not to say that we wouldn't
do that, but most of the concepts that are being looked at
right now are not in that thing. Did I leave one other one
unanswered?
QUERY A couple of them. In your estimation,
when is the earliest they might attempt this?
PUDDY I would hesitate to guess on that.
It's dependent on whether or not we go with the TV, what
the TV shows, how long it takes to run through the simula-
tions. The pictures or verbal descriptions here from now
on might throw us on a completely different track. It's
not something we feel like we've got to rush into, I guess
is the point that I'm trying to get across. It's something
that we certainly would like to do, and we'd like to do it as
soon as practical. But, it's not something that we say,
boy if we haven't got this done by day 154, we're out of it,
f because we're certainly in that posture.
QUERY And about the 90 degree angle on the
TV lens, is that coming or something they'll rig up or where
will that come from?
PUDDY That's something that requires a little
rigging. Basically using the camera with its standard lens,
you just do not get quite the perspective that we would like
to have on the wing. And what you're talking about is essen-
tially a prism, to give you that 90 degree feel of view and
there is not, it is not exactly compatible with the threads
on the TV lens, so there has to be a little Rube Goldberg device
figured out such that we can attach that and assure our-
selves that we are not going to lose that lens.
QUERY Where will the prism come from?
PUDDY I cannot exactly answer that question.
It is part of the lenses that are carried on the spacecraft,
but I can't swear to you which experiment it is associated
with.
QUERY It definitely not part of the TV, itls
out of some other equipment.
PUDD¥ Yes, that is true.
QUERY When will you be able to say whether
or not you' re going with the TV in the morning.
PUDDY Tomorrow morning sound soon enough?
QUERY Ten minutes before or what?
PUDDY Oh no. No, because if we, if we do
J
SL-II PC-121/2
Time: 19:42 CDT
5/31/73

some procedure like this, there is certainly going to have

to be a detailed procedure prepared for the crew. And that
will have to be uplinked. They'll have to have time to
review it, gather the equipment together. There would
certainly not be anything like a i0 minute notice. I guar-
antee you that. But, I don't think as far as giving you
a final GO/ NO GO on whether or not we're going to take
the TV is going to available much before tomorrow morning.
QUERY As far as the possibility of doing this
TV activity tomorrow, have the crew said anything on the
link? I haven't heard anything of how they propose to spend
their first day off?
PUDDY Well, every crew day off has associated
with it certain housekeeping tasks. There are certain things
that we have to do on a periodic cycle regardless of what
the scheduled crew activities are. There are a certain
amount of housekeeping associated with the command module,
the workshop and so on and so forth. These items are all
scheduled into the flight plan. There is some experiments
like S009, which we have to essentially reset each day, to
make sure we have lined it from a period, an orbital period
standpoint and from a beta angle standpoint. This type
of thing is done on a daily basis. And they've got to do
that type of activity. And as I pointed out, one of the
few things is the old Saturday night shower, which is
scheduled for all 3 crewmen. Basically I think the extra
time that is alloted with or without the TV, the extra
time is basically going to be involved in regrouping and
sitting down and just thinking about how they think is the
best way to progress in the weeks to come and probably some
discussion between the ground and the crew on several of
that type items.
QUERY Would it be possible, Don, once you
deploy the

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-12 J-1
Time: 19:42 CDT
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PUDDY - that type of items.

QUERY Would it be possible, Don, once you de-
ploy the camera out the ANTI solar SAL, to turn the thing
around so that you can look at the parasol?
PUDDY No, I don't think that there is any
way in the world that you can get an aspect angle on it.
You're essentially on the other side of the spacecraft, and
I think you would have to have two or three 90 degree lenses
and a couple of extension poles between then to get any-
where near of a clear picture of the parasol.
QUERY You have some 18 or 20 feet, though, don't
you, of poles or an extension mechanism in the TO27 canister,
where you could put it out that far if you wanted ?
PUDDY You could, but essentially once you got
it out that far, you've still got to look back in the opposite
direction, which means you almost gotta mount it through
the lens. That's not feasible.
PAO Don, if I could break in here, I've
just been informed that the crew, they passed it up to the
crew that because of problems in developing the procedures
there will not be a TV tomorrow. And you'll be able to
hear that. We'll play the tape hack as soon as we get
through here.
PUDDY Well now that we've discussed that sub-
ject thoroughly and-
PAO We'll take one more or two more questions
and then we' re going to ask that you -
QUERY Okay, I'ii just ask one then. Nohody's
ever said a word about using these experimental maneuvering
devices they have aboard for this EVA so I guess you're not
even thinking about that. Why is that?
PUDDY Well, I think that basically on the
maneuvering units, the idea was to test those in zero g, but
in a confined environment and EVA is certainly not what we
would consider to be a confined environment, and we're not
willing to take that risk.
QUERY You mentioned showers earlier, when he
sent up a flight plan, will there be a time line for showers,
or could you give me any idea how long it will take them to
take a shower?
PUDDY There certainly is. I believe it's
called housekeeping 7-J, and there is an alloted period of
time in the flight plans that are available out there on the
desks for you that shows that particular activity and that's
what it is.
PAO Okay, for those that aren't aware, we do
plan to have a short briefing in the morning some time around
f-_ 8:00 or thereafter. T hank you gentlemen.

END OF TAPE
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
June i, 1973
9:00 a.m. CDT

PARTICIPANTS :

Milton Windier, Flight Director

John E. Riley, Public Affairs Officer

PC-13
SL-II PCI3-A/I
Time: 09:03 CDT
611173

SPEAKER You got a lot of people with black boxes

listening to you, so - -
SPEAKER A lot of black boxes, huh?
SPEAKER Yeah.
SPEAKER All right.
SPEAKER Good morning. We have Milt Windier,
flight director on the overnight shift, who'll give you a
summary of spacecraft status.
WINDLER Well, I'm pleased to report that - that
there wasn't anything too exciting happened in the spacecraft
last night. We've had really about all the excitement, I
think, we need for awhile. The temperatures continue to drop
slowly. They're down now somewhat below 80 degrees, down 79
point something or another. And I think that represents
about a 2-degree drop since yesterday, 2-1/2 degrees,
something like that. I'm not really sure what point of
time that you'll are counting your days. The crew is - has
been allowed to sleep in, and I believe y'all probably
heard the wakeup. I guess they must have called in for the
first time over Carnarvon or some - Honeysuckle, something
like that. But we chose not to call them and wake them up;
so we allowed them to sleep as late as they wished. I think
we did have an indication that they might have been stiring
around a little bit before that, but that was their first
call. Today is a pretty quiet day. We had discussed trying
to do something with the TV, to look at the SAS wing, and -
I don't know if you've already been briefed on this or not,
but the crew comments indicated that they felt like that they
didn't require this, that they had been able to get a very
good view of the piece of metal that was hindering the SAS
deployment when they were in the rendezvous and dock, in
the fly around phase I should say. And so they - they are
not too concerned about trying to deploy the TV to view the
SAS. And it would have been a fairly complicated procedure
to make all that work. So that idea was put aside for the
time being anyway. We are not planning to ask them to do very
much troubleshooting today. Trying to hold off on that as much
as we can until tomorrow. There are a few odds and ends of
small items on different pieces of equipment that we might look
at, but we're are going to basically try to do that tomorrow.
The Flight Plan for tomorrow is - has not been completely eval-
uated with respect to the p@w_ _re_uirements yet. So we're not
really sure whether w_l fly o_r'prime or our alternate Flight
Plan. The prime Flight Plan right now does have a earth resources
pass in it. It comes down across California. It actually
starts in the Pacific, just off shore, and runs down through
 SL-II
Time: P 09:03
C13-A/2 CDT
611173

California and is a good pass in terms of sites acquired.

And we hope we are able to do that, that the power works
it okay. The rest of the day is basically devoted to
ATM. And there are some blomedical runs, although we did
delay the biomedical run we originally considered for day
153 until day 154. I guess that's probably about the major
points. (Garble) I asked for- if there any questions.
Basically, I guess you're getting the idea that on the last
day or so the space craft is kinda of just junked along and
the crew have been doing quite well at doing the experiments.
So we're in a relaxed mode, I guess you might say, for this
day off.
SPEAKER Barry (garble)
QUERY Pete Conrad yesterday had some very choice
words for mission controllers about scheduling of time and
activities. I got the opinion that he wanted you to look
real closely at some of the orders that were going up for
them to do. }{ave you - are you looking at ways in which -
scheduling, I guess, is what I'm trying to ask you about.
SPEAKER Yes. We think all their words are choice.
And the - and you're right; he had some comments to make, which,
of course, we certainly expected to have comments going both
ways regarding the Flight Plan and the procedures that were
sent up. As you are well aware of, it's a fair difference
between simulations on the ground and doing the job in air.
We have a very hard time simulating the zero-g effects, and
it's certainly nothing unusual to have things take in some
cases more time than in other cases - less time than that al-
located in the Flight Plan. He was pointing at some areas in which
things had taken longer. There are - and we've incorporated
these into the next day's Flight Plan_ as a matter of fact,
as best we understand them. In fact, I would guess that
during a day to day, we would - as they are sitting around
relaxing, we'd probably chat a little bit about some other
aspects of it and try to clarify some of these things. We
have some questions on some of the procedures that they did,
and I'm sure they have some additional questions that they
want to ask us. In fact he indicated this last night, I
believe. And I don't think he's gotten around to - to putting
them all down on the tape recorder or asking them of the ground.
SPEAKER Reg Turner .....
QUERY On the question of abandoning the TV
look at the wing, I'm not clear in my own mind whether this
was abandoned finally because it was thought to be unnecessary,
or whether it was'i_h_ ught_ha, t tit might end up blocking
the airlock.
SPEAKER Far as I know, there's no concern about
-- it blocking the airlock. It's the same kind of an instrument
SL-II P C13-A/3
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611173

that we - mechanism we plan to use - and will continue

to use in the future, in the airlock. I'm not - that may
have been discussed by somebody, but I'm not aware of it -
The potential of blocking it. The only reasons that I've
been associated with have been the - the degree of difficulty
and the amount of the wing that you could see. Whether
it was worthwhile from that point of view.
QUERY But you' re not in the position where you
feel that there can't be an EVA to deploy this wing without
having a look at it through the airlock?
SPEAKER I'm not real sure that I followed your
question there. But I believe you're asking if we - We don't
feel that there's any requirement to have - to put the TV
in it before we do the EVA. That's true; we don't. Because the
crew was very explicit about this, if you listened to their
comments or read the transcript that - In fact, I didn't
hear it; I was reading it. So I just got mine off the transcript.
But they - they seem to be very positive that they were able
to identify the problem and in fact had some comments on some
proposed solutions, I believe. Something about the surgical
saw or something like that. And so we think that they do have
a - already have a very good evaluation, and that there's
really nothing to be added by - by going taking the time
to put the TV up.
QUERY One gets the impression the EVA has been
given a much lower priority in the last day or two. We're
not likely to see it happen for some time. Would that be
right?
SPEAKER No, I wouldn't say that. In fact, there's
a great deal of effort going on, and it has been going on
and continues to be active in trying to look at methods to
deploy the wing. As you probably are aware of, Rusty Schweickart
is at Huntsville, and they have their assembling equipment.
I believe they have got a backup wing assembly that they
have flown from California to Huntsville. I don't know whether
it's there yet or not. I think it was suppose to arrive -
I guess it's today, l'm not real sure even what day it is,
to tell you the truth. But the effort is continuing, and
there is a number of people that are, we think, very strong
crew procedures and systems people that are working on this
problem, and they're working at it steadily, which means pretty
close to 24 hours a day. So I wouldn't say that there's any
lessening of- -
SL-II PC-13B/I

Time: 09:03 CDT

6/1/73

WINDLER means pretty close to 24 hours a

day. So, I wouldn't say there was any lessening of importance
in that. Now, of course, nobody has said exactly when you know,
would be the best time to any kind of an EVA. The first
effort is to try to ascertain the best way to losen the wing.
Then we can decide later.
PAO Peter (garble).
QUERY Is there any kind of a time line would
you estimate as to when they do that EVA, this coming week,
before Wednesday?
WINDLER No. I couldn't say when. Because it
all depends on what comes up with the tests at Huntsville.
QUERY And are you getting any closer to
solving this battery regulator, CBRM problem?
WINDLER No, I don't really think we are. I had
to leave a meeting in which they were discussing that kind of
a subject to come over here. So, I'm not really completely
up to date on all the testing that's going on in Huntsville,
where they are running batteries through cycles and making
evaluations of them, under the kind of conditions we've
actually experienced on the flight. The kind of thing I'm
sure you' re aware of and would expect us to do. And ah - I
know that that work is also progressing and, I'm sure that
probably somebody is closer to understanding it than I. I
really haven't been briefed on that and I don't know. I
know we're trying to take a conservative until we do understand
the problem. Of course, we're trying to take a very conserva-
tive approach to the batteries. And are managing the power
system so that we recharge the batteries each daylight cycle,
and don't enter the dark side with partially depleted batteries
as we have been doing in the past, which, of course, we thought
was okay. And apparently, now there's some conditions there
that we don't completely understand, as you're well aware of.
PAO Pete.
QUERY Could you dwell on your fuel and gas
propulsion studies, what the outlook for those are, in rela-
tion to this notice that they're looking to launch SL-III a
little earlier?

WINDLER Yeah. I don't really - I think that

probably doesn't have a whole lot to do with the propulsion.
You're probably asking about the attitude control system. We
still - We're in good shape on the attitude control system.
We're not using any TACs fuel, hardly. We used about 60 pound
seconds, I think, which is a very small amount, compared to
what we've been using. And it's even less than we anticipated
before the mission, for that - f_o_ _n.E_P repass. So, we
feel that as far as that par_u_ar' cons_/_ble is concerned, that
we are in good shape, but there's a lot of uncertainty about managing
the system when the crew isn't there, plus trying to get the - if
SL-II PC-13B/2
Time: 09:03 CDT
6/1173

in case there ah - other equipment that may be taken up and other

methods to deploy the SAS. We really do feel like we need
to get the other solar panel out.
QUERY Are you indicating then, that the reason
for looking at the earlier launch is to get an EVA accomplished
earlie r?
PAO I don't know that Milt has been in on the
early launch planning. Bill O'Donnell is going to try to get
Mr. Disher over here.
QUERY Oh. Okay, Good. Some of the inputs from
the flight--
PAO Yeah. Why don't we wait and see - -
WINDLER I don't think those two things are related,
though, the EVA and the early launch. I don't know which EVA
you're referring to but - -
PAO (garble)
QUERY It's a week - oh, 6 days since you got
the parasol deployed. Can you give us some sort of indication
of how you think it's working. And is there any sign of any
degradation from TACs firing either from physical distortion of
the parasol, or contamination?
WINDLER There's ah - Of course, that's a difficult
thing to tell and as best we can tell, there isn't any decay,
or whatever you want to call it in the ability of the parasail.
In fact, we're very pleased with the way it's dropping the
temperatures. They're coming down steadily. And if we, you
know, if we had unlimited power, or had the normal power system
we could run the coolant loops in a different fashion and
even make it better. But as you're well aware, the tempera-
tures are dropping steadily and we're all ready down to the
level where the crew can operate. So, we're pleased with the
performance of the parasail and really it seems there's no
real change in it, other than it's steadily getting better.
QUERY Don Puddy, last night, said that some
time yesterday, there was another loss of 300 or 400 watts
someplace, they can't figure out where it went or how it
was lost, have you had any - (chuckle) Have you taken a look
at that last night or early this morning?
WINDLER Yes. You know, President Johnson, I
think, was famous for going around the White House and turning
off lights, to save electricity. Well, the crew's been doing
that. And we think we've found 2 or 3 hundred of those watts in
just the lights and some o_,eA'r o4_l_-ar_d _nds that they've
turned off. The crew didn"£" g I don't'h_ink they realized
they were contributing as much to it as it was. And they've
kindof soft pedaled it I think, in their answer to the ground.
But when they added up all the lights that they probably
have been turning off, it does amount to over 200 watts and that's
 SL-II PC-13B/3
Time: 09:03 CDT
6/i/73

probably the difference that we were seeing. And you, of

course, also realize that it's hard for us on the ground to tell
them to turn off this light or that light, because we're
not sure exactly what they need. And of course, they under-
stand the situation and they've been cooperative and they've
been themselves conserving power. It's kind of like Fred
Haise, you know, he was so convinced that Apollo 13, when he
was coming back, the necessity of conserving water that he
wouldn't take a drink (chuckle). So he wound up, - I guess
he had a to take some antibiotics for kidney infection later on.
But, he was very conservative with the water use.
QUERY Do you have any indication at all that the
excessive heat that the ship was put through the first i0 days
may have degraded some of the batteries and made them less
powerful than they should be? And also, I understand the
batteries are very old.
WINDLER Well, I guess I'm really not familiar with
the age on the batteries, but there is the possibility that the
temperature profile had an effect on the batteries. And that's
one of the things that's being pursued now. And I guess it
would be real premature to comment too much on that until the
tests are completed.
QUERY What's the status of the EREP experiments?
Are they going to start running those again tomorrow?
WINDLER We'd like to very much. And we have
those in the day 153 Flight Plan. However, as pointed out earlier,
we don't - We have not completed the power analysis and we're
not sure that the power will be sufficient to allow us to
do that, even though we have a short EREP pass. We expect
it will be, but we just haven't confirmed it yet. We're
right now, trying to hold the EREP passes to about 20 degrees
on either side of the solar noon. And it turns out on day
153, it works out very well, because it - that's about the
time we'd want to do it anyway. It just happens to put us -
I think solar noon occurs over Los Angeles, or something
like that, which has got a lot of - Sduthern California has
a lot of EREP sites in it anyway. And it makes it a really
good situation from a lot of EREP site coverage.
QUERY Do you know if the crew's had any takers
on their wager, whether they can run around the water ring
lockers or not? They're supposed to demontrate today.
WINDLER No I don't know about that, but I listened

to a conversation, and I w_%_'t._b_ _r_ised at any thing

(laughter) that they try t_h_w th_£ _B_y can do up there.
QUERY That was my question, also.
WINDLER Oh. I guess we'll all have to watch that
and see what happens.
PAO Okay. Thank you.

/ _ END OF TAPE
/f

SKYLAB NEWS CENTER

Houston, Texas

SKYLAB III LAUNCH BRIEFING

Johnson Space Center
June i, 1973
11:45 a.m. CDT

PARTICIPANTS:

John H. Disher, Deputy Skylab Program Director, NASA Headquarters

William O'Donnell, Public Affairs Officer
f SL-II PCI4-A/i
Time: 11:50 CDT
6/1/73

SPEAKER Okay, we have with us, again, John H. Disher,

who's Deputy Director of the Skylab Program at NASA headquarters.
And John is here to discuss with you and answer questions
with respect to the new launch date for Skylab III. John.
You want to open with a statement or just take questions?
SPEAKER I believe you've all read the release
that summarizes very briefly our reasons and the planned
new launch date for the second manned mission on Skylab.
July 27th, a nominal 7 a.m. launch, which gives us a- an M equal
5 nominal rendezvous capability. And I'm- l'd be pleased
to respond to questions at this point.
QUERY How valid is that date of the 27th?
I notice that in here you've allowed yourself a day or two
leaway. And I wonder just how firm the 27th is, and can
you give us some idea of launch windows surrounding that
date or subsequent dates?
SPEAKER Yeah, it's - it's really probably July
28th, plus or minus a day, depending on the specific orbit
that we're in and our specific M equal 5 calculations. And
the 27th is the earliest M equal 5 assessment, as we have
it. So - No, no, I said our calculations indicated it was
s the 28th plus or minus i. So we're working on the 27th on
the assumption that it'll come out that the 27th is satis-
factory.
SPEAKER Howard.
QUERY Yeah, what - what about SL-IV then? Are
you thinking of moving that up considerably, too?
; SPEAKER For - for our current thinking, we would
maintain the - the three month interval. However, we've
not really given serious consideration to the SL-IV date yet,
and that will come as we proceed in our planning.
SPEAKER Angus.
QUERY Could you say something about the - you
said it in broad outline, but about the Beta angles at this
time and how thls would affect you? I mean how it would affect
a mission either in the case that you get the solar panel
deployed or that you do not get it deployed.
SPEAKER Yes, the - not getting into - into specific
numbers at this time, which I really would want a chart or
something to talk to. But but let me just say, qualitatively,
that going earlier, going July 27th as compared with the August
8th plan, gives us, because of the percentage that we're in the
Sun at that earlier time of the year, as versus the later,
gives us a greater integrated power input from the Sun by
going July 27th and - than would it later. Basically, its
percentage of time in the Sun_[_ bE ,]_ _-eing the earlier
date than the later. And this is also invoived with its fit
 SL-II P C14-A/2
/- Time: 11:50 CDT
6/1/73

with the power available from the fuel cells in the CSM.
It's not a simple question nor a simple answer that relates
only to Sun angle. It relates also to how the power avail-
able fits with that available from the CSM.
SPEAKER John.
QUERY When do you move the vehicle out to
the launch pad? And does this change in any way your count-
down preparations?
SPEAKER The - June ii is our nominal spacecraft
move-out time, and this would not change any of our - the
content of our testing. It - it will change their - their
detailed phasing, but not the content.
QUERY Will you have to do a lot of overtime
work? In what way will you speed up the preparations?
SPEAKER Yes, we will - we will do some work on
the pad that had been planned in the VAB. We will work
the 4th of July, possibly, and we will work at least one
Sunday that we had not planned to work. We will take the
open days that we had previously allowed on our prior date.
SPEAKER Go ahead.
QUERY If the crew that's up there now does
perform an EVA to attempt to pull out the wing, and if they
are successful, would that have any impact on this proposed
early launch date?
SPEAKER I see no reason that it - that it would.
If we, of course, do get that array deployed, as we hope we
will, that would certainly alleviate our rationing of power
that we're having to go through currently. But I think we'd
still want to stick with our earlier date.
SPEAKER John.
QUERY Well, then, are you saying that it's
not just the power situation that is causing you to move
up the date? Are there other situations that were brought
to bear in this decision?
SPEAKER Well, there is the desire to - to- to
get up as early as we can in recognizing that we have been
stressing the - the active power system at higher levels
than it was designed. And there could be a diminishing of
the overall life accordingly. So we would like to complete
our planned series of missions earlier, if that is, in fact,
possible.
QUERY Overall life of the space station?
SPEAKER It is possible. If we continue to have
to stress the - the power system that we're using currently,
its overall life could be diminished. So there's a- certainly

an incentive to get our misN_o _ "_0a%_,_ly as possible. Now

•L- I I P_4_/_D
q T
611173

if the - If we're able to deploy the one stuck array, that,

of course, will -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PCI4B/I
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6/1/73

DISHER The power system that we're using currently

it's overall life could be diminished so there is certainly
an incentive to get our mission in as early as possible. Now
if we are able to deploy the one stuck array; that, of course,
would alleviate - we'd have the freedom to consider a more
relaxed schedule.
QUERY As a contingency, what, if anything, does
this do to the time which is now required for a rescue mission?
On the day of the launch of SL-II I think it was Bill Schneider
that said if they had to go - had to order one that day they
could get up in 48 days. Is that time now at all different
and if so how?
DISHER No. The - well, it could be - nor I don't
see a reason the 48 days would change. So what we will be
doing now is proceeding as we would have during the first
48 days and we'll be continuing on that pace somewhat longer
period, not quite that pace following that but we'll be con-
tinuing at an accelerated pace in order to make the July 27th.
QUERY Still 48 days, minus 6 days or whatever
it is now, is that correct.
DISHER Yes.
QUERY You mentioned higher stresses, what
parts if there are any specific ones are feeling the strain
the most, the battery chargers or the batteries or the cir-
cuitry or what?
DISHER It is the electrical power supply of
the ATM which is carrying the burden of the mission now,
in addition to that of the CSM which is not being higher
stressed. What I'm trying to say is the power for the mission
currently is being carried hy the CSM fuel cells and the ATM
solar powered system and the ATM solar powered system is having
to operate at higher levels than it would if the complete
solar array system were operating. And we're looking at -
continuing to look and to refine our power conservation policies
if you will so that the housekeeping systems will consume
less and they will be more available for experiments. That's -
our basic objective is to operate at acceptable stress levels
the ATM power system and do all the essential housekeeping and
provide a reasonable balance for accomplishing the experiments.
QUERY Well, has your evaluation given you some
life on the ATM system then if you operate it at about the aver-
age of what you' re looking at - the present operations at do you
see a life now for this?
DISHER I understand your question - the labora-
tory at Huntsville are continuing to examine the potential
effects of these higher stress levels. We don't
SL-II PCI4B/2
Time: 11:50 CDT
6/1/73

have any quantitative projection of that - of what that will

be but in our original design, of course, we start out with
enough extra capacity, low enough operating cyclic load to
have a very high confidence of operating for the full 8 months.
Now unquestionably there is some reduction in that level of
confidence having - been operating these systems at the higher
level. Our laboratories are analyzing that. There's no way
that I could give you a quantitative estimate of that degrada-
tion in reliability at this point.
QUERY You feel confident at this stage then
of completing this - letting this mission go to its full
28 days even including doing Earth passes?
DISHER Well, we have to examine very carefully
each and every time we go out of the solar inertial orienta-
tion. And because we lose our input from the Sun - we lose
a percentage of our input from the Sun when we go out of the
solar orientation. At the same time, normally we go out of
solar orientation to do Earth-looking experiments at the same
time and we're turning on added power load for those Earth-
looking experiments. We have to consider very carefully that
power loss, that power required for the sensors versus the
state of charge of the system. One thing that we're looking
at right now is going out of the solar inertial orientation
for a shorter period of time where previously we had been
considering the order of 120 degrees of orbit plus or minus
60 degrees from solar noon. We're now looking at some re-
duced passes down as low as plus or minus 20 degrees of solar
noon which would, of course, give full Earth coverage during
that reduced portion of orbit, but would not take power away
for as long a period.
QUERY I'm not sure I understood that. Are you
saying about 40 degrees for an EREP pass instead of 120?
DISHER We're examining that. Yes, the question
is if we find it not feasible to do the full 120 rather than
doing nothing, could we do 40 and 40 being plus or minus 20
from noon.
QUERY Where does the importance of television,
I'm not including ATM television which is clearly an experi-
ment, but other television; where does that come in in your
priorities and in line with your thoughts of power rationing?
DISHER Well, there is television use for the -
for certain of the ATM experiments which comes directly to
ground - television for engineering purposes, for instance,
helping us decide whether we can, indeed, free the solar
array that is stuck is importuned; glv_s an indication
of the well being of the crew, how they look, how they're
performing, how their mobility is, is important and certainly
SL-II PCI4B/3
Time: 11:50 CDT
6/1/73

conveying on to the public an understanding of how the mission

proceeding is important. We try to factor television coverage
in without interfering with scientific experiments. There is
obviously a trade-off here. We're trying to do that on a
balance priority basis. Our science does get first priority
however. Yes.
QUERY John I wonder if you could discuss for
us just a little of what the current status is relative to
the attempt to fix that wing. Give us some handle on how
the boys are doing in Huntsville and what management is really
thinking of now.
DISHER certainly. We had some encouraging
underwater results - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-14C/I
Time: 11:50 CDT
611173

DISHER We had some encouraging underwater results

yesterday at Huntsville_ I understand, with a simulated set up
of the - of portions of the stuck array, with crew under water,
with tools that they have on - that are currently on board the
spacecraft, working on - on simulations of that array. We have
coming in today, from the west coast, an actual piece of hard-
ware - The back up - one of the back up solar wings that is be-
ing flown in by Guppy to Huntsville. It should be in the big
tank tonight. And we should he able to do some testing with
that actual setup with a simulated, or rather a reproduced struc-
tural angle over it, restraining it as we understand its re-
strain from Pete's description in orbit and from the television
pictures that we have. And the crew will endeavour to free that
and to maneuver, to cut the angle for instance, with the tools
that they have.
QUERY Can you give us some idea what tools they're
working with, such as maybe a bone saw or a bolt cutter? What
are they using?
DISHER Yes. There is - You mentioned a bone saw.
There is such a device on board. I don't think that's - I
think that's a long shot, I would say. But there are a pair of
cutters, remotely actuated cutters. There are variations of
crowbar, if you will, various prying kinds of tools, and at
least one shear kind of cutter that resembles, to some degree,
I guess, a tree, a remote tree pruning shear. Right.
QUERY When's the earliest opportunity you see
to attempt a SAS wing free?
DISHER Okay. _ Based on the getting off success -
successful test this evening and assessment of those over the
weekend, I would guess that about next Tuesday might be the
earliest possibility. I wanted to add one comment to Roy's
question. The crew did say that the tool that they wished
they had, the portable rotary power saw with a metal cutting
blade on it. We don't have one of those on board.
QUERY Following along on that, are any of these
tools, in fact, the - such as the bone saw or the - or the cutter,
are they - any of them power tools which are, obviously, much
easier to use in zero-g?
DISHER No. None of them are powered. They're
all manually operated, as I recall.
PAO Doug.
QUERY Are we going_t@_have an EVA then sometime
next week? Is that what you're saying?
DISHER If ah - If our testing now and our review
of that underwater testing and our review of any hazards
that could be entailed in going out to do that, say yes, then
---. it's possible we'd have an EVA next week.
SL-II PC-14C/2
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QUERY The equipment that's coming into Huntsville,

today, and will be in the tank tonight, for test tonight, - -
DISHER Yes.
QUERY - - Is that a real wing or a simulated wing
or a real beam fairing with a simulated wing? What is that exactly?
DISHER It's a real beam fairing, and I don't
know how much of the insides of it are contained.
QUERY Rusty Schweickart working on that?
DISHER Yes. And possibly someone else. But to
my understanding, Rusty will.
QUERY When the - If they are successful in
cutting that metal strip, what - how will that come out? Will
it come out real fast, or will it come out slowly? Just
what will happen?
DISHER It was Pete's assessment, Pete Conrad's
assessment, from his examination and from the - from Paulls
maneuvering of the - from the crew's maneuvering of the re-
strained wing in the earlier attempt, that if that angle were
- were cut or sheared, that the array would move out slowly
in its normal fashion.
DISHER Oh, I have a correction to make to my
earlier statement. The flight hardware SAS wing that I
talked about is going into the clean room in Marshall Manu-
facturing for the kind of activity I talked about. That will
be coordinated with underwater activity of a simulated wing.
My error on that.
QUERY Can you describe a little bit more the
EVA? How long would it take, how would they do it, where
would they go?
DISHER We're going to he reviewing those procedures
over the weekend, and I don't really have a time line on it yet.
So I'm just not able to help on that.
QUERY When do you think you'll know when you're
going to do the EVA?
DISHER I think probably Monday, late Monday, we
should be in a position to assess.
QUERY I just also wanted to clarify that. If the
meeting is Monday, you could go ahead as early as Tuesday with
the EVA. Is that what you're saying?
DISHER I said that would be the earliest. I
suspect that that could be optimistic, but I would think
Tuesday would be the earliest. That's what I was saying in

response to an earlier question. ._- _ i'_ _,_

QUERY Would it _ _._fa_If s_-_se, John - First
of all, we're talking about an alrlock module EVA, are we not?
Not a stand-up EVA in the CSM.
DISHER Ah, both - Yes, we're talking about a
walk-out EVA with a long extended tool. Right.
 SL-II PC-14C/3
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QUERY And because of the nature of the beast

and the way in which that orbital track lays out, it would
be a fair surmise, I guess, and I'd like to check it with
you. But we're really looking at something that would occur
during day time here in Texas so that you'd have the advantage
of stateside passes and maximum comm.
DISHER We have not worked that out. But, certainly,
that would be desirable. Right.
QUERY Would it be helpful for your purposes to
have someone standing outside the airlock module hatch with
a TV camera? (Laughter).
SPEAKER You'll volunteer.
DISHER We normally, of course, do have two men
out for an EVA kind of operation.
QUERY You'd try for TV on this, wouldn't you?
DISHER I can't - Well, there's the opportunity
to cover from the CSM in the way that we have in the past.
I can't tell you what the view angles are from that. I don't
know whether we would or not, specifically, take a TV out
there on the tether. (laughter)
_ PAO Okay. One last question. Angus.
QUERY Granted that the procedures are still
being worked out, is it als0 a reasonable assumption that
there would have to be some form of assistance for the
astronaut to get down that distance to the panel? I'm think-
ing, for instance, of taking the - removing what we now call
the fireman's pole from inside the workshop and deploying it
outside. There would have to be some form of assistance for
him to get down that area.
DISHER Yes. Depending on how far he travels
and the length of the tool that we have. For instance, we
do have long poles on hoard, and the cutting shears that we've
been talking about are the kind, they say, that are intended
to reach up in a tree and I mean analgous to that, to cut from
some distance.
PAO Thank you very much.

END OF TAPE
 SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Briefing on MSFC Activities Supporting Skylab

Johnson Space Center
June I, 1973
3 p.m. CDT

Participants:

Dr. Rocco A. Petrone, Director of Marshall Space Flight Center

ff Guy Jackson, Public Affairs Officer, MSFC

PC-15
 SL-II PCI5A/i
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SPEAKER Are you ready?

SPEAKER This is the first in a series of briefings
in which NASA hopes to have some of his top management personnel
available to the media. The Marshall Space Flight Center
is responsible, as you know, for providing the Saturn launch
vehicles and a good bit of the Skylab hardware and some of
the experiments. So for this first briefing we have
Dr. Rocco A. Petrone, R-o-c-c-o- A. P-e-t-r-o-n-e, who is
director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, who has been
the director since January 26, 1973. Formerly he was the
Apollo Program Director for NASA in Washington. There are
a few biographies available at the news center after the
briefing, but Dr. Petrone is not interested in history I
know. And there's a good bit of activity going on at the
Marshall Center right now in support of Skylab, so Dr. Petrone
may want to make an opening statement or summary of that,
and then we'll have questions and answers. Dr. Petrone
PETRONE Okay. Let me summarize some of the work
we're doing at the Marshall Center on the aspects of freeing
the SAS wing that's still attached. Obviously we've given
it a very high priority, you know we attempted it when we
first got there. We would still like to do it. We've had
a effort going underway every since we took the first TV
pictures. We've been enhancing those, trying to see just
how it's angle of aluminum is attached to the honeycone.
And there's been some enhanced pictures which bring out a
little more detail. And we've been looking at methods by which
the crew could approach the angle - I would like to say
angle iron. It's really angle aluminum, angle iron kit
comes out in mind, approaches from what would be the fast
station, That's the forward air shroud. He'd come out the
EVA door, like we would for a normal EVA, you have to work
yourself around to in wing - SAS wing i which would be on
the right as you look at it.
QUERY Would you point on the model (garble)
SPEAKER Okay. You see the hole in the meteoriod
shield is a solar airlock.
SPEAKER I don't know how this is going to
stand up (garble)
SPEAKER It's fragile I know. Wings do fall
off easily.'
SPEAKER Not intended as a pun.
SPEAKER That's what bothers me the most, it's
not mine. I want somebody to get on the train with me.
SPEAKER We wouldn't do that, Jack.
SPEAKER Right here is what we call a subsolar
point. This is the solar airlock in which the parasol is
i
SL-II PCI5A/2
Time: 15:14 CDT
6/1/73

now deployed. Wing one is what I call looking at it to the

right, if I'm heading head on looking at ATM in the subsolar
point. This is wing i. The EVA station is up here. He's got
to work himself around to that point. It's not a normal
station where he would have to be. Now what's being looked
at in Huntsville, we've got Rusty Schweickart working with
some of our test engineers, is first how would one tether
himself to get out there? What would you do? One method
being looked at is using some of the poles we have for
the tools and the sail, 5 or 6 poles to put a - attach it
here on one of the ATM frames and then - possibly that
shepherds hooks. You know the shepherds hook we took with -
find a spot down below in the beam to tie, and in fact make
yourself a handrail that way. Another one being looked at
is the use of this - a thing called a flexible fireman's
pole? It's what you've seen in the ship, they had going
down the length of the workshop. That could be taken out
and a possibility of maybe using that as a - as a tether.
Right now the poles, with the shepherds hook to be attached
into the beam and then tied up here, is one of the methods
of having a flexible handrail. The guy could work down
- one of the men - the crewman, and also attach himself to the
tether. The cutting schemes we're looking at - cutting
or prying, I should say, but getting it loose there're three.
One is a device called a bone cutter that I think you've
been briefed on. It's a pretty bity tool. In IG they're
able to cut it very fast, less than a minute. In the water,
it took longer, took three minutes. But one must be very careful
not to - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-15B/I
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SPEAKER And it's a pretty bity tool. In i g

they're able to cut at a very fast, less than a minute.
In the water it took longer. It took 3 minutes. But one
must be very careful not to infer those times with what we
can do in zero g, because he's got to get himself in position.
And that's the whole angle we're looking for here. It's
where in he can get a position that we would consider safe. In
terms of the micrometeoroid shield on one side and where the
beam will go on the other. But the bone cutter does cut.
And it cuts that metal. And we've taken a look at some of the
worst case pile up of a little bit of the meteoroid shield. And
if he can get around it, he can cut. Now, of course, the ques-
tion is can he get around it. From the enhanced TV pictures,
it appears there's some sunlight shining in one of the views
under this angle aluminum. From that, Rusty has concluded
and our people with him, is that, yes, you should be able to
slide this under. But, obviously you won't know that because
shadows have got to he deceptive up there, we understand. So
we're looking at more than one way to cut. Another way is
the bolt cutter. That's the one we did fly up. It's on board.
That's the one that you activate with a lanyard, you pull on
it, and the use of that. The third device is the use of the
pry bar. Pete Conrad, seems to believe in discussions that
if he can only get those rivets loose, the thing would easily
swing out of the way. So, we're looking at three schemes to
get the angle aluminum loose. The bone cutter, the scheme
which you would slip under and then pull. But, that needs
a fairly good position to anchor yourself. The bolt cutter
which we feel we could position in a certain way, then a man
up here might pull the lanyard. He's in a better position up
there. He could pull. And the third would be the pry bar to
try to get those rivets as they appear to be in the picture out
of the honey comb. Okay. I've discussed then, one getting down
there by tethering. Either poles, or this flexible fireman's
pole, but the pole's looking right now the most promising. The
scheme by which we would cut or fray. And now the last thing
that we would have to do, would be to ensure the beam comes off.
We have reason to believe the beam is ah - is a damper actuator.
The damper has oil in it, and is quite cold. We're still reading
temperatures in this thing. And we see a temperature in here
which, you could say the oil is like molasses or maybe frozen.
And we've therefore, got to put the force on it. We had estimated
the force at the bottom to pull that up would be like i0 pounds.
As one gets closer up in here, the forces are going up. We think
it's about the spot in here somewhere. They've worked out
the two ways to do it. Now just take, the guys are really
_ thinking and you've got to give them credit for it. Some of
 SL-II PC-15B/2
f Time: 15:14
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these, as we work further, may pan out. But one is to use

the wash cloth squeezer. I don't know if you've heard that
one yet. There's a squeeze bag onboard in the system, in
which, you're able to wring out wet items, like a towel or
cloth. It's a flat bag, not much - a little bigger than
this, you can slip it under there, then if we can pressurize
it, we can put a force under the beam. Now we've done this
once in one g tether. The question of what kind of pressure
we're talking about would be a low pressure like 10 PSI.
There's some lines onboard we can do this with. Clearly one
wants to make sure and all that these things will take the
pressure. The bag will. The bag has been proofed to i0 PSI.
Actually, burst much higher, about 40. But the question, what
connection one would make, where one would tie in. But I've
got to give them an A for credit. It's a very novel scheme.
It'll be one of the easiest because once you cut, you could
slip it under right at the hinge line, go back up here and
pressurize it, and hope to see that beam spring up there.
Another way, and one that we're going to be trying, I'll talk
about later this afternoon, is use of this fireman's pole.
What the fireman's pole is, is really flexible webbing. You
see the men working up and down on it in the tank. They had
z it out I believe the first day.

END OF TAPE
f-_ SL-II PCI5C/1
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PETRONE The one that we're going to be trying to talk

about later this afternoon is use of this fireman's pole.
The fireman's pole is really flexible webbing you see the
men working up and down on in the tank. They had it out, I
believe, the first day. This is webbing with a metal hook at
either end. What we envision is to take one hook, tie it in -
there are three vent areas on this SAS beam; hook it into the
one midway. The beam now would still be free (Suppose you got it,
for you're either cut or pried it loose.) but still down by
virtue of this damper actuator being either frozen or very gooey.
You put one end of the webb material with a hook under a vent - I
think you saw the vent in the pictures - the TV pictures. You may
when we were looking. It's like a covering. It's a hood. It's in-
tended to vent this on lift-off. Put one end under here.
Another end would be tied up there, and leave Just a little
slack where the astronaut could get under it. Then he would
stand up against the ship, and that would then pull the line
together. You could imagine this line tied at either end,
fairly taught, but enough either he could pull it or get
it over his shoulders in the half crouch and then just stand
up. And that would put force, sufficient we believe, to pull
s- the beam out. Now that second item, that one there - we're
doing a l-g walk-through right now with a full beam on the floor.
We've tested the hook - what it'll take. One of the key items
is how you attach that hook to the vent covering; clearly, you
want to get structure. And that's one of the reasons we have
shipped from TRW the wing into Marshall, I believe it's arriving in
about an hour this afternoon - so we can actually see the
as built condition of where your strong points are. We've
been working with simulator gear, and we want to actually get
the actual hardware so you know where you grab. And you can
caution them where to put the hook and the exact things from
a beam built to fly, which is the one we're getting flown in
this afternoon. So we then have two ways to free the beam
we're now looking at. Of course, there's always - say another is
to - you wouldn't like to do a SEVA, but you could fly with the
ship and pull it, if you couldn't get these other ways. And we
certainly want the power. So if we can free that item, I would
think that's first priority. It's either cut or free that angle.
Once we've done that, I think the rest of it then - if these two
systems don't work, we'd certainly know that a fly-around by the
ship or the shepherd's hook - we could definitely put the force,
because the other night, when Paul Weitz first tried it, he
deflected that beam about a foot. He deflected the beam - In
a transcript I read, Conrad mentioned that the beam had
come out. Be it very clearly at the end where it was attached,
it hadn't moved. So there was quite a bit of force put into
that. So this afternoon nw, we're in the process then of using
 SL-II PCI5C/2
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this - what they call the fireman's flexible pole on a l-g

mockup with the full beam on the floor. We then will simulate
in the water tank. In the water tank we only have a half
beam, where he'll look for position - our beam in the water
tank just doesn't - you can't do a good job of getting the
zero-g effect, but you can get for position. You can se where
do you anchor yourself. Where can you grab on something, and
what force can you apply? Then we can always go to the l-g
to make sure then we have the right (garble) tool. And we have the
actual flight wing as built configuration to make sure where
we want to put these items - either grab them by hand or put
this bag underneath, because we really have the surfaces we
believe are there. Well, in a nutshell, that summarizes work
going on to free the SAS wing. There is much other work going
on, just supporting the mission - the power profile being
studied, the work for tomorrow, looking at what power we
feel we're going to have available. I don't have actual
numbers on it. I've just got some general feel, but I can
answer some questions. The very aspects of the temperature
prediction and so on - all that work is going on. This work
here is just part of the special work we're doing trying to
_-- free this wing. I'm open to questions.
QUERY Rocco, if you get it opened, will you
consider extending the mission to make up for some of the
lost time ? And if you can't get it open, will you consider
coming home early?
PETRONE Well, the second problem I'd like to have.
Now, what I mean by that is I wish I did have to worry with
all the power -

END OF TAPE
_ SL-II PC-15D/I
Time: 15:14 CDT
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QUERY If you don't, can't get it open, would

you consider coming home early?
PETRONE The second problem I'd like to have, what I
mean by that is I wish I did have, to worry with all the
power to whether we'd stay or not. Whether we stay or not,
longer, is very clearly dependant very heavily upon what the
doctors feel. In terms of what data they're getting, how
confident they feel, they know crew position. Now their
advise to management is around which we will make that
decision. If they feel any discussion of extending the
mission very clearly has got to be on what type of medical
information we have and how much the doctors feel they
know of the status of the crew how well they have faired,
and so on. We did commit to a 28-day mission based on having
knowledge of a 14-day mission. We've got much more medical
information here than we've ever had before. How good it
is, one really has to get to the doctor and see how he assess
it. And I guess, he's going to say, I've got to see more.
Which is about the answer we expect. So, I wouldn't rule
it out, but it's very heavily dependant upon the medical
evaluation. Now whether we've curtailed, if we can't get it
/_ out, at this time there would be no reason to curtail. We've
got to run powered down in and do less than the number of
simultaneous experiments expected to do. At a period of time
yesterday - these numbers are rough, I thought. We set a
power profile of 3600 watts we've have gotten to. The system
right now is rated about 4100 with the loss of this CBRM number 3
that we had, I guess, a day and a half ago. So you might
say, what has (garble) for experiment. What we'll want to
do is set a little margin, obviously, so that you don't come
off to full depth of discharge on the battery. Some of our
batteries, they were six in number, were subjected to higher
temperatures than we would have like to have seen when we
were pitch down. We were in an attitude for i0 days, in order
to, I'd say, to save this mission that the ship wasntt designed
for. You see the ATM when pitch down, - see normally you're
riding like this, and you get a temperature head on. When
pitch down you put heat here. Because you put his head down
to keep the sun from beating on this area which we have to
do to keep the temperatures down inside the workshop. Then
you're going to take a beating up here. So we did heat that
area. We know what was going on. We were watching it. In
terms of trade-offs this certainly was the thing to do.
Now some of those batteries - The batteries rated about 20 amp
hour, probably cause they have a lesser capacity to have
a charge. However, we have reason to believe, and hope that
as we keep cycle and charge, that we can climb upwards back
• " toward the 20 amp hour. How far we don't know. The batteries
are built , we look at normally as a 4000 cycle life.
.....
_ SL-II PC-15D/2
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4000 charges and discharges. And this must tell you it's
a very, very difficult thing to test for. You put that in a
16-cycle today and 16 into 4000 will give you how long the test has
to be. And that's a general scheme of things to run the missions.
So we now are seeing some batteries of lesser ability to take
charge than it would have had. Some are working perfectly
normal. Now what we have to do is nurse those along and
hopefully as the temperatures cool, you charge and discharge
and the battery can tend to start taking more capacity.
So, on the question of curtailment at this time, I see no need
to. I think we could still do a respectable mission on the
power (garble) some 4100 watts. Now we do get into a squeeze
some CSM fuel cells run out, which is I think around the
14th of June. Because at that time we must feed the CSM
power from the workshop. And we' re talking like a 7 or
8 hundred load. It means for a period of a day or 2 will
be very tight, in terms what we can make available for
science but, then shortly thereafter, we start climbing up
At the end of mission we' re in our 7000 watts and this comes
about because they'll be im summary all the time because of
they call it Bt - Beta angle,processlon of the plane with (garble).
So at the end of this mission, our power's building up in
a period of about 2 to 3 days, where we'll really have to
sweat out. That assumes - -

END OF TAPE
SL-II PCI5E/I
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PETRONE This mission, our power is building up, to

the period of about 2 to 3 days we really have to sweat out.
That assumes we don't lose anything else and have no deterioration
in our solar arrays. We have no reason to suspect deterioration
but that can happen.
QUERY Dr. Petrone I have a hatfull of questions.
I' ii try to ask them quickly. One. Can you illustrate on the
model how far down an astronaut can get with a 60 foot
umbilical? And two, the flexible firemans pole confuses me
because I was under the impression there was that rigging we've
seen on the TV but there was another item we haven't seen
which was indeed a pole which - it was telescoping. Is that - -
PETRONE Yeah, they're are two different items.
QUERY Are both of those involved in the possible
phases ?
PETRONE Yes. Both of those are used as possible
tethers or a way to get down there. One is the poles,
going to be made up of rods that we put together for the
twin pole sail. You know there are 5-foot rods, we
flew three per tool. That's 15 feet we have. There
were two spares that we flew, we need ten - we need eleven
each, we have 12 in each packet, so we can get five and use
them and not worry about any damage or anything. When we
use the sixth we're going to tether that last one because
we feel we may have to deploy the sail yet. So we want to
protect our twin sail. But this pole - they're locked together,
that would give you then a ridgid handrail. The second item
the flexible webbing, which sometimes people call a firemans pole,
I don't know why, it looks like that, I guess, it goes down in
the hole. That's the one we could also use with a hook at
each end, but we are planning to use on that to pull this
beam up. Right now it looks llke one of the leading contenders.
QUERY Okay. My last question is the power
figure you mentioned toward the end of the mission. Seven
thousand watts as compared to the presently 4100.
PETRONE 4100.
QUERY Can you tell us what you envision the
crew could do with that much power? Full experiments, full
EREP - -
PETRONE We'd be in clover, yeah. With 3,000 watts,
see, you'd be feeding 800 of that to the command module -
look at some curves we have. He would have available for experiments
three and a thousand into i, 2, 3, We'd have about 1900
watts for science. And I think with that we could run the
ATM and EREP and really not worry. But as I said, there are
going to be three very tight days. Starting at about the
SL-II PCI5E/2
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fourteenth of June. Fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteen at

which - it's plotted in red here, we got a deficiency and we've
got to get by that assuming all things remain (garble). And one
way is to pull down some of the command module loads which
we think (garble) it's pulling a thousand, but once the fuel cells
go off you don't have to have heaters in the cryo tanks because
it is not feeding the fuel cells anymore. So we can pull
a couple hundred out of the CSM. And for that period of
time we'd be on the barest of science, maybe 100 watts or something
of that nature for about 2 days. Yes.
QUERY Rocco, is serious consideration being given
to extending the mission assuming that you have the power and
you have the okay from the doctor?
PETRONE Well, you say - Let me say this, it's worth
looking at, yes. It's worth looking at now because we do get this
bonus in power. In power limitations, to now until we deploy that
wing, have curtailed some that we could do. So it - there's a -
there's a item sitting there on the table, now before you grab
for it you've got to make certain you're not letting your appetite,
you know, control your emotions. You've got to look at what
it means and I see medical would be one large thing. There's also
the question of Just crew condition on how we been doing and so
forth. When you say seriously, I say it's worth looking at. Yes,
it's very definitely worth looking at. But clearly the decision to
go 20 days is a very serious step that we'd have to take and
if we get the wing out and we got the power but we're not
sweating as much for the next mission, well we got more time
we're going to spend up there in SL-III and IV. So that's going
to enter the picture why we try to grab more at this time when Itd
try to get hopefully 56 days within a period here starting in late July.

END OF TAPE
SL-II PCI5F/I
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PETRONE in four so that's going enter the picture

why I try to grab more at this time and I'm going to get
hopefully 56 days within a period here starting in late July.
You can see then the factors that fall into that thing but
yes it's worth looking at. We'd be wrong in not looking at
it, in my opinion.
QUERY What does this bone cutter look like and did
I understand you to say that you have no doubt it could cut
that piece of metal?
PETRONE I've seen the pieces it cut. In fact
we cut seven pieces with the same piece of wire yesterday,
in other words, it keeps working. It's a beautiful little
gadget. I didn't know they had such things• It looks - if
you - it looks like a stainless steel wire, you know you hang
picture frames up with. You've seen that, I'm sure. Almost
that thickness, embedded within those wires are very small
teeth - cutting teeth and they come out random so you've got
cutting all the way around and all he has to do - if this is
the item you want to cut- put it around that- it has a ball
on each end you grab with and all you do is work it back
and forth over the item you want to cut I must say it cuts
better than any hacksaw I've seen and the fact that it's
flexible means you can get the ball under there. This is the
key item. It's a little less than about a half an inch,
put the ball under and pull it across and all you've got to
do is cut this way. But you've got to be anchored - positioned
in some what that when you finally get through you don't go
flying. But it's a stainless steel braided wire. l'm sure
you've seen them on picture frames and with them out of these
teeth that are oriented in it all through the length except
for the part you grab with the handle. It's in the medical
kit. Tom, I can't answer that question because it's in the
dental kit I understand is where it is and they're prepared
to do many things medically which frankly - I mean things
they've trained on, but I really can't answer that question.
I'm going to try to find out. But it's in the medical kit
we understand the dental kit and we're very pleased it's there
right now.
QUERY What material is the teeth? Is it stain-
less steel teeth?
PETRONE I cannot answer that. My guess would
be it's like a tungsten-carbide but that's just a guess be-
cause you want to cut with something you'd like to have a
cutting tool like you do on a milling machine and that would
be like a tungsten-carbide but I'm not positive of that. But
it's material like that.
SL-II PCI5F/2
Time : 15 :14 CDT
611173

QUERY And another question completely unrelated,

are the batteries replaceable? Can you take up any addi-
tional batteries should the ones which are now unable to
charge fully decomposed-
PETRONE These here cannot be reached. They're
up on top here and they cannot he reached for replacement
purposes.
QUERY No. But the question could we take other
batteries up - could we look at other source of power. We
are going to but we're looking at that like for the SO4 mis-
sion rather than the SL-III mission but that'll take some time
to develop and qualify. We think there are possibilities of
power augmentation that one could develop to take up there
for SL-IV.
QUERY Three questions. Is it reasonable to
expect that we could do this by next Tuesday? Has it been
determined which crewman will do it? And how would you
pressurize this washcloth squeezer?
PETRONE Could we do it by Tuesday; that
we're going to have some discussions on Monday that will
let us put the pieces together - how soon after that we could
do it I think is a very difficult thing to say, you know, a
lot depends on the pressure that'll be on us. Now we've
taken our time working out procedures and the steps we're
going to take - certainly no earlier than Tuesday I'ii say
that for sure because on Monday we're going to put - we are put-
ting a piece together now but Monday we finally think we'll
have everything together. We'll be working through the weekend,
pooling everything together and then Monday we'll have a dis-
cussion. How soon after that - much of that depends on what
the crew - how many questions they have. What they want to
know. What more they want to see. I don't think by mid-
week next week that if everything pans out and we haven't
given a GO yet because as you know we've got a lot of things
to look at be -

END OF TAPE
f SL-II PC-15G/I
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6/1/73

PETRONE If everything pans out and we haventt

given a go yet because as you know we have got a lot of
things to look at. We've got to be concerned about the
safety of the wing and what it is going to do and the
material there. So all that is being analyzed and looked
at again as we get down to that procedure. The question
of pressurizing this washcloth squeezer, there is a
source, there are sources on board that they can get through
hoses and you'll be EVA through the MDA. So exactly what
rag or line we'll hook up to, I'm just not able to answer.
But, there are sources on board_ we're looking for a very
low pressure, probably in the neighborhood of i0, i0 psi.
One possibility is the canister - they're subject to a pressurized
state of 30. They'll take it out and, with the hose hooked
up, use it outside and bleed her down to 10. There's also
the possibility of hooking up inside some lines which you
vent through. Things of that nature. We really haven't,
I haven't seen a scheme - I will a little later today hopefully.
I'm going back to Huntsville tonight. I just know they say there
is pressure available to 10 psi that they can hook up to.
Was there a third question? Oh, that has not been decided,
_-- not been decided.
QUERY Dr. Petrone, this is a rather far out
question. But, I feel I should ask it. The back pack has
been eliminated from its candidacy for use inside on this
mission. Is there any chance whatsoever if there were
no other way in which man could stabilize himself that that might
be used? Was that considered?
PETRONE I don't believe any of us would do
that. Mainly because that's an Rand D item. It's an R and R item
that we talked about using inside. I personally would
not propose it to be used outside. It's up to the (garble)
you don't like to do a thing like that, at least I don't.
QUERY Are there any other batteries? For
instance do the SAS have their batteries?
PETRONE Yes they do. There are eight more batteries
in the airlock module.
QUERY What's their status? Do you have any
reading on them?
PETRONE We, they' re off-llne. We intentionally
took them off-llne. They should be, and I say should be, fully charged,
but not providing any power. Now we have seen two of the batteries
(garble) This wing is deployed about 5 degrees. We have
actively pulsed some 80 watts out of that wing with the sunlight
we've had. And there are 2 batteries that we've been actually
pulling a little wattage into. So the system is working
in that regard. It's this wing right here - is deployed
f SL-II PC-15G/2
Time: 15:14 CDT
6/17/73

and down in this area, we know the solar panels by the num-
ber. And those batteries feeding off of those solar panels
at the end, we do see that they will take some current.
About i amp, very very low, 80 to 90 watts. So each -
this will charge batteries in the airlock module.
QUERY Do you think that they might have been subject
to less intense heat and therefore be likely to be in better
condition than the others?
PETRONE The answer to this is yes, they were
not, the temperature was not raised. We do have housekeeping
information on the batteries. We know the temperature. As I say,
we've been cycling two with the power we've been able
to get there just to make sure the system is working.
As far as we know 9 the batteries have not been abused. They
have been now on what we call stand voltage. They have been
sitting there with no load on them. We have no reason to
believe that, it will be 3 weeks Monday, should have affected
them. We have no reason to believe that they should have
deteriorated.
QUERY Is there no way to bring them in touch
with the solar, with the vanes on the ATM?
.... PETRONE No. There is a very complicated
charging system. We've tied the buses together. In other
words, you've got a line up here and a line down here,
if I call a bus. We've got that tied together. But you
could not charge from one into the other. And the question
of regulation. Each battery is active more - it's got its
own electronics that both charge and regulate. And when
the battery is finished charging, you're also feeding solar
power direct into your bus. We've intertled the buses so
we can feed from one end of the stack to the other. But you
cannot charge from one set of solar arrays to the other.
The electronics would become quite complicated to do that.
QUERY Would you consider doing this same EVA
deploying the twin-pole sail and if not when would you
consider deploying this?
PETRONE Well - -

END OF TAPE
7--
SL-II P C-15H-I
Time: 15:14 CDT
611173

QUERY Would you _onsider during this same EVA

deploying the twin pole sail, and if not, when would you
consider deploying this?
SPEAKER Well the twin pole sail is an item
looked upon to - for a long duration item, in other
words, the parasol is now there, we really do not know
the rate at which, and I use the word, it might deteorate, I'm not
trying to be cagey, we just don't know. There's indications that
under ultraviolet nylon at many, many hours would loose it's
strength. We've got many tests under way. Those are also underway
at Marshsll. There's some tests that are underway at Johnson,
and we've tied in the Goddard Space Flight Center, trying
to run excelerated tests. That's what's going to tell us
when we should deploy the sail. I do not see any urgency
to do it next week. As our test now tells us, actually
we're looking at a period of 90 days. What's it going to
be like in the unmanned period, when we go back. That's
what we're trying to answer, that question. So, I do not
feel it will be done next week. I do not feel the two will
be combined.
QUERY You mentioned these ATM batteries as
having 20 amp hours?
SPEAKER That's about it.
QUERY Okay, but you said some of them were
degraded somewhat by the - -
SPEAKER Having been subjected to some heat.
QUERY Yeah, by being subjected to the heat.
How many of them- approximately how many of them were
degraded, and what amp hour life do they have roughly.
SPEAKER It's a verydifficult thing to answer. There were
six, that saw higher temperature. They did not all see the same de-
gree of higher temperatures. Our red llne was like 30 degrees
centigrade. I know we were sitting like 28, 29 , on at
least two of those, so the six have seen a higher temperature
than we would like. When we say red line, we say okay, it
won't malfunction above 30, but, obviously you're taking
some life out. That's what we were doing in those hotter -
the first part of the misiion we had no alternative. It is
very difficult to tell how much each one has deteriorated.
We do not have individual watt hour meters. We have to
infer on the whole array, and the guys who work voltage,
how long it takes a battery to come up. See, when the
battery gets fully charged, you get a signal, well if one
is going to charge faster, it means that its got all it
wnats, when it didn't take everything it should have, then
that's how you start narrowing down. If you do not have a
_\ good, nice indication that this battery is I0 amp hours, then
f

SL-II PC-15H-2
Time : 15 :14 CDT
6/1/73

then that would take a lot more instrumentation, which we

didn't put in the system, because of the complexities and
the wiring and all that would he added. So, looking at the
ganged array, you could where you tend to mask, maybe one
battery with the others, when you do it that way.
QUERY Do you have any indication to what dis-
tances, roughly are involved, say if you used the bone cutter,
and what length of time?
PETRONE Distances in terms of where he would
be? Well, it's gonna be less than, I'd say about one third
way down the beam. Now, this is i0 feet from here to here,
and he'd have about another i0 feet down the beam. That's
where he'd be for this, I want to say operation, I guess
that's what it would be. I'm really not - like I say -
I really don't know whether he is - from the inside where
his hose has to hook, whether he can get - this is 30 some
feet here. You have 40 feet down on the end. I'm just
not prepared to say. He can get close, but it may be like
only two thirds of the way down.
QUERY Were the two batteries that died also
the ones that were exposed to the high heat?
PETRONE No.
QUERY Were the four batteries that tripped off,
were they the ones that-
PETRONE They came back on, yes.
QUERY But they were exposed to the high heat.
PETRONE Yeah, they had less than - they got a
depth of discharge in them that took them down to a certain
low level. They ought to make a trip up to protect them-
selves. They came back on. Battery number 3 that failed
a day and a half ago was actually receiving its charge, when
it failed. No, the battery did not fail, we believe the
electronics failed. It was in the regulator that failed.
Some electronic difficulty. We are attempting at Huntsville
to duplicate the failure in the lab, we've not been successful
yet. You don't design these things to fail, but you do
get it. But this battery was 17 minutes into the sunlight,
taking a charge and doing well, when she just - the incication
went on. So for that reason, we suspect the regulator. And
the regulator is part of the charging system. And how much
power it lets go out and how much feed from the solar
cell of the battery. And the one that failed earlier, be-
fore the men lifted off. That did come off line, and that
we could not get back on line. And have not been able to.
We've not given up all hope for that, you keep looking to
where you may have upset the logic or you may have done
f_ something to your relays, and there's still some possibilities
on that battery, number 15, I believe. We've still got
--" SL-II P C-15H-3
Time : 15 :14 CDT
6/1/73

people looking at the circuitry, and what type of commands

or other things you might do, hope is very, very low on it.
But, we're just one to give up.
QUERY Rocco, we've heard some of the MOCR
people say that with these batteries, the way they've been
behaving, we're in the danger of nickle and dimeing our-
selves out --

END OF TAPE
 SL-II PC-151/I
Time : 15 :14 CDT
611173

QUERY We've heard some of the MOCR people

say that with these batteries the way they have been behaving
we are in the danger of nickel and dimeing ourselves out
of power. What actually were the decisions to accelerate
this EVA? The one you're considering. Was there evidence piling
up that looked like you were running into a situation where
you would definitely have to cut this mission short, where
there was a good chance that you would have to cut it short?
And what was it?
PETRONE You've seen it right with us. We've
lost the battery before we launched; the one from 18 to 17.
We lose about 250 watts. And what we think is totally
unrelated we've lost due to electronic failure we believe,
although we don't know conclusively, we've lost a second
battery and solar cells. You lose them both together because
you knock off the battery you also knock off the cell feeding
it. So as you know, we've been looking at that SAS wing
since day i. So we have guys working and working at very
intently to get out there to do something. I believe we
said after we did the SEVA, the first one who went back
that was so tantalizing. There it was, you saw a little
I- bit holding it that power would mean a lot to us on this
mission. In terms of, using the word acceleration, we
had in mind that we might do it during this mission. We
knew for sure we would grab it on the second mission. Well,
with the loss of the second battery, you say all right if
things are panning out as they appear to be, we want to
consider and go out and get it. So it wasn't in accelera-
tion of panic or anything or saying we're down to nothing.
Because, we could still get a pretty good power profile and
a pretty good science. If you can't get it simultaneously
you can't do all the things you wanted to. You've got to
turn off some heaters. There are some the crew has got
to go turn switches, you take a little of their time. You
don't llke that. You could do it. But the fact where
we have been considering getting that beam free since we
first saw the pictures was that angle, that piece of alum-
inum holding it in there. It's been sitting there, as a
source of power, we need it badly before we lost - - to do
the mission the mission we'd like to do. So, in that
regard we just said all right I'll see where we can sit
here in a few days and does it look good and is it advisable
to go do. I know the crew inside; Pete has talked a couple
of times about wanting to get at it. We said, we're looking
on the ground and we'll let you know in due time. And we've
got ourselves plenty of time to study it. I don't think
we've overlooked anything that we know of. So I think when we
 SL-II PC-151/2
Time: 15:14 CDT
6/1/73

decide that we want to do it if we do, I think we will have

done all the study work, all the work you can do getting
ready for it.
QUERY We've had the commentary about these
things going off, but I was wondering in the back rooms
there was some evidence that some of the curves were starting
to show declines that weren't yet enough to talk about openly.
PETRONE We told you that the degradation of the
batteries but we still see it is giving us some few hundred watts.
I've seen the power where they said 37 and then it was going
down to 36 and everything is working well. So what you
do is like on the rack you start squeezing both ends how
can I get a little more and how can I do with a little less.
But, there hasn't been any trend, anything other than what
we've discussed right here today that would be forcing us
to do anything any sooner than we wanted to do it.
QUERY Doctor, just as a point of interest, when
this bone cutter is in a dental kit. How big a piece of
equipment are we talking about?
PETRONE Exactly, I'm only surmising here, I've
only seen the wire. You could roll it up in a little roll.
It's flexable wire, well, it would be about this long. You've
got to slip it through and around and with about this kind
of a grab, you cut.
QUERY You would have to be out few feet.
PETRONE Yes, within a few feet I'm sure.
PAO I believe we'll take one more question
and then Dr. Petrone has to go. Does anyone else have a
final question?
QUERY I'm a little bit confused still. Ex-
actly what part of the wing is tied down. Where are the
rivets, exactly.
PETRONE On this model here, you've got to assume
this to be laying down upon the ship, right about at this
point, right about at that point. Not at the end, right
here and only over about 2 inches. She doesn't go the full
length, only about that much. You've got this angle of
aluminum, which is part of what is holding the meteoroid
shield. About a third of the way a little less, about a
third of the way would be a good estimate. A third of the
way down the length of the hinge over into the center of
the beam, I'd say about 2 inches over the edge. About
2 inches over the edge. And she had rivets in it. They
were attached to the meteroid shield plus some bolts to
put two angles together, and as it lap over some of it was
caught in that honey comb. That's what it looks like,
_ from their description, it looks like it does in the picture
p

SL-II PC-151/3
Time: 15:14 CDT
6/i/73

and ifyou could pry that loose you might be okay.

QUERY Just one more Roceo. Have you got any
idea what caused the shield to come off yet?
PETRONE No. No, we've got people putting time
lines together, and I think you've heard the time and all.
But, we're probably going to have to do some air, we are
going to air dyamlc analysis and all the load analysis. But
we do not have that yet.
SPEAKER Okay, thank you Dr. Petrone.

END OF TAPE
S SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas

Change of Shift Briefing

Johnson Space Center
June i, 1973
6:45 p.m. CDT

Participants:

Don Puddy, Flight Director

Richard H. Koos, EREP Officer
Milt Reim, PAO

PC-16
/f-_- SL-II PC-16A/I
Time: 18:45 CDT
611173

PAO Let's get started here on my right,

Flight Director Don Puddy, and on his right Richard Koos,
K-O-O-S, the EREP officer. Don, take it away.
PUDDY Okey doke. I guess the most interesting
thing that we had today, you're taking a look at it on the
screen over there, is the live TV from the spacecraft. And
I'm sure you got a real good feel today of how much the
crew was enjoying their day off. And also got a real good
feel I think from the standpoint of how well they had
adapted to the larger environment, which was a question
that everybody was faced with before we took off on this
mission. They seem very happy and in excellent spirits
today and I think that was evident to everybody. From a
thermal standpoint in the spacecraft, we're running about
79-1/2 degrees today, still dropping slightly. So we may
get lower than the 80 degrees that we previously had antic-
ipated. Electrically today we had loads that varied any
where from around 36, or 3700 watts on up to a high of
4400 watts. Had no problems whatsoever. In fact, the
spacecraft performed beautifully today. The M487 experiment
that we briefed you on last night was fixed. I'm not sure
Just exactly what was done to correct it but anyway they
did take some sound readings in the spacecraft today. And
they all sounded real well. We do have, we did develop
our flight plan today for tomorrow and it does include an
EREP pass. And let me turn it over to Dick for just a min-
ute here, and let him describe to you the path that that
EREP data take is going to have for tomorrow.
KOOS The pass itself starts at about 4 min-
utes after 3:00 tomorrow afternoon. It's a i0 minute pass.
It begins about 5 minutes before it crosses the west coast.
And it will cross the coast over the San Francisco area,
and come along the edge of the coast down through Mexico.
And it will end about 18 degrees north and about i00 degrees
west longitude. It will end about i00 degrees west and
about 18 degrees north. It's in Mexico, I don't know exactly
what town or anything like that. Just to give you an idea,
last night, based on weather forecasts for that area, we expect
to get in the neighborhood of about 25 test sites coverage
during that pass. And they're doing an evaluation on today's
foreeast_ and that may alter, I think that the clear weather
is a little bit smaller than it was forecast yesterday.
PUDDY Okay, as far as the remainder of the
day, it is a filled up experiment day. We have in addition
to the EREP pass which takes place in the afternoon, we
do have 6 daylight ATM passes. We also have a medical run,
f SL-II PCI6A/2
Time: 18:45 CDT
6/i/73

in fact we have 2 medical runs. One MO92 93 run and a MI31

run on the Commander. We also are taking the SO19 experiment
that you have been briefed on out of the SAL and putting the
S183 experiment into the antisolar SAL. This is another
star experiment, UV stellar astronomy-type experiment. We'll
he running that early in the morning. And that's basically
the plan for tomorrow. One other thing that I might add
is we are doing some additional calibration data on the small
mass measuring device. This is the device that you may have
been briefed on. It is sensitive enough to weigh a postage
stamp. And we are moving the electronics on that particular
package and then we'll go through a recalibration - -

END OF TAPE
 SL-II P C-16B-I
/ -
Time: 18:45 CDT
6/1/73

PUDDY -weigh a postage stamp, and we are

moving the electronics on that particular package and then
we'll go through a recalibration sequence, and that will
be done tomorrow. As far as the long range plan, over the
next five days we expect to accomplish four EREP passes,
continue on with our medical protocol, also continuing on
with, of course, as much possible time as we can give to
the solar physics or the ATM viewing. The next scheduled
crew day off is day 15, and of course, we're still planning
on a 28 day mission, and as probably as you've heard announced
today, we're looking for a Skylab 3 liftoff on July 27th, I
believe it is. And with that we open it up for questions.
QUERY What are some of the sights that the
EREP experiments will we be picking up on?
KOOS Probably t_e ones that we'll he most
interested in are the ones that the crew will be tracking.
The San Francisco area is the one, the first one that they
will pick up. There's another one on Salton Sea. We'll
cross right over Salton Sea in Yuma. And that will be the
other site now. We're restricted in how close we can put
these together. I think those are only two that we have in
__ opportunity to track tomorrow.
QUERY On these sites, and then all the 25, if
most of them are inconsequential, what are the exact things
they're going to be looking at? What are they going to be
studying? Are they gonna go the whole gammit or what?
KOOS Yeah, there is quite a variety
there. I wouldn't say they are inconsequential. I just
gave you the ones that are probably of interest, because
the crews participating and actually tracking them visually.
They cover all the range of diciplaints.
QUERY Will this be a full, what they call a
120 degree EREP pass.
KOOS No, its total arc is 40 degrees, centered
around orbital noon.
QUERY Were we doing a 120 degree EREP pass the
other day when we lost the batteries for awhile?
KOOS No, it wasn't that large. I think it
was about 70 degrees. Seventy degrees of arc.
QUERY You have full confidence, then that
you won't be out of plane long enough, that you'll have
any problems at all with the batteries, because I know
those four could go out again if you get down to that
45 percent.
PUDDY Let me comment on that briefly. Basically
how we're working the electrical power work right now, is that
we do develop a, what we call a summary flight plan. Subsequent
I- to developing that, And I've more or less briefed you on
 SL-LL PC 16B-2
Time: 18:45 CDT
611173

the level of detail that is - it just merely lays out the

experiments that we expect to conduct at a particular period
of time for all three crewmen. And, of course, each one
of these experiments has their various loads. EREP load
happen to be very high. And basically, what we're doing
is after we have completed a summary flight plan, we run a
detailed electrical analysis of that flight plan, determine
what the depth of discharge or the state of charge, however
you're familar with looking at the battery state, for that
particular flight plan and determine if there are any
problems, and if there are electrical problems that- from
the standpoint that we're getting too high and our load
for too long a period of time, we look at various equipment
that we don't need. Like I said today, we ran anywhere from
around 36-3700 watts to as high as 4400 watts and a lot of
that, as we talked about last night, can be attributed to
such things as lights and extra cooling and things like
that that can be powered down. And we have developed a
couple of power down checklists that we do use just prior
to going into an EREP pass. So, as far as giving you all
the details on tomorrows flight plan as to exactly what
• the lowest state of charge or lowest depth of discharge on
the batteries that we expect to achieve, I can't - That
information will be available in about an hour or an hour
and a half. But, I feel very confident that with the pass
that we' re talking about tomorrow, there will be no problems.
QUERY Is this pass that we're calling for
tomorrow, is it - has any changes over what was planned
premission for say track 63, is it the same length of time,
same instruments and everything else, or has there been
modifications because of the power.
PUDDY I think that the - Let me answer that
one. I think that we're going to find that in general, the
EREP passes, because of electrical power considerations, are
going to be somewhat restricted in the overall arc, due to
electrical power considerations. However, that doesn't
necessarily imply that the data that we're gathering from
those passes is going to be any less. It so happens that
looking at the weather conditions as they stand right now,
and correct me if I'm wrong on this, Dick, that the weather
appears very good, and we were doing some simulations prior
to the start of this mission, using actual weather. We were
running anywhere from 70 to 120 degree passes, and coming
up with maybe 14 sites, and we're talking about a lot more
sites than we expect to get tomorrow, with essentially the
shorter pass that Dick has briefed you on. So yes, in
answer --

END OF TAPE
 SL-II-P C-16C
Time: 18:45
Date 6-1- 73

PUDDY And a lot more sights that we expect

to get tomorrow with essentially the shorter pass that Dick
has briefed you on. Yes, In answer to your question, they
are a little shorter due to electrical power considerations.
We may gradually lengthen these things out as we get a
little more experienced, little more data. But at the same
time I don't think this has imposed upon us an undue penality
into what we expect to get back from the Earth Resources
experiment package.
QUERY I'm not quite satisfied with what you said
about the test sites. Why are you looking at San Francisco.
you studying there and how about the Salten Sea?
SPEAKER Well San Francisco is an urban area and
that's basicaly the study there. The Salten Sea is an
agricultural type site. San Francisco also is the bay area. It's
a waterland interface. Actually those are alternate sites.
There are other objectives. Houston is one, the urban areas.
San Francisco happens to be an alternate to that site. There's
a site that's located in Rosenburg which isn't an agricultural
site which Yuma is a substitute, or an alternate.
QUERY Are you looking at any particular crops
for any specific reason or . ..
SPEAKER Not that familiar with as many of these
sites for tomorrows passes.
PUDDY Let me add a few comments here. Basically
what we at NASA are doing is - as far as EREP is concerned,
we have been working with the principal investigators. They
have come up with a particular site. There had been some
ground data. There may also be some aircraft over flights.
And basically what our roll is here is kind of two fold. We
are looking at developing the capability of perfecting some
sensors which have the capability of accomplishing certain
objectives in space from an Earth Resources stand point.
But as far as the actual data analysis and subsiquent
application of that data, this is something that has primarily
done by the principal investigator. So our primary job
is merely to work with the principal investigators to find
out which sites they would like to view, which instruments
in the package they would like to use to view that particular
site and if they do have aircraft over flight requirements
to assist by using NASA aircraft in scheduling those aircraft
to be over those sites within a certain time frame of the
spacecraft pass and then to provide them the raw data or in
some cases reduce the data according to their specifications.
As far as the detailed analysis in just exactly what they can
use that data for from an application stand point. That
responsibility pretty much lies with the principal investigator.
-- I don't know whether that helped clarify it for you but
Press Couple of points on a rather lower
intellectual level Did they get those showers done today?
SPEAKER Well we know they got a couple of showers
done. We tried to ask them about the Saturday night special
 SL-II PC-16C/2
Time: 18:45 CDT
6-1-73

SPEAKER there but we were unable to get any comments

back. I've been expecting any minute they were going to come up
and tell us just exactly how nice it was to have that break
but as yet they haven't commented. We did quiz them on it.
But we didn't get any comment back.
QUERY And It would be a help to know - for the
purposes of recording it and so on tomorrow What - if
any plans are there for Conrads birthday?
SPEAKER Well, I'ii tell you, the only I have taken
is one associated with a wake up call. And there will be
a rather unique - for a spacelight wake up call tomorrow
morning. He will rapidly get the idea that we remembered
it's his birthday.
SPEAKER Right.
QUERY With all their gyrations today and
their running around and moving around inside the spacecraft,
it that causing any problem. I think there is one test
isn't there, one experiment to see if their motions effects
the stability of Skylab.
PUDDY Yes, those are - we do have test like
f that to see whether their motions does effect the stability
of the spacecraft. But as far as that causing any problems
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean. We did
notice the movement in the spacecraft today when all three
of them were running the foot race around the food lockers
or the lockers in the upper end of the dome.
PRESS It doesn't cause any impact at all -
You don't have to compensate in any way?
PUDDY No, no, ... the system takes care of
itself. The crew has been cautioned on and trained to
that there are certain experiments which do have a degree
of motion sensitivity as far as the overall spacecraft is
concerned. And during .....

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SL-II PC-16D/I
Time: 18:45 CDT
6/i/73

PUDDY - - certain experiments which of course

do have a degree of motion sensitivity as far as the over-
all spacecraft is concerned. And during those time frames
the crew isn't zipping throngh the spacecraft or running
foot races or that type of thing. But as far as it causing
any problem in gathering the experimental data on a normal
day, it has not shown up as a problem.
QUERY I had heard that they were having to
use some extra TACS gas to compensate.
PUDDY No, we have not, let me think back. The
last time that I am aware that we used any TACS gas was, we
did use a little during the maneuver, the EREP maneuver,
because we did have, if you remember, one of the rate gyros
we did have a failure there. And we did have a couple of
firing there. And the previous time to that was associated
with damping out the trim burn, which we expected. We had
no TACS firing today. And none since those two cases. So,
we're not using TACS gas there.
QUERY Sir, has there been any more talk this
afternoon, since 3:00 I believe we heard the last, on the
possibility of extending Skylah II mission beyond the 28 days?
PUDDY Oh I'm sure a lot of things are being
considered. As far as any official extension of the Skylab II
mission, no. There has not been any decision reached in that
area. The only decision that has been reached is the July 27
liftoff on the Skylab III or a date as soon as practical
thereafter.
QUERY I believe I heard Paul Weitz, maybe it
was yesterday, say that part of the ATM had turned yellow,
it was off-color.
PUDDY Yes, he did indicate that one side of
the spacecraft had some yellowing to it and the other side
of the spacecraft on the ATM was what he described as very
clean and white. As to exactly what that's attributable to,
I can't really say. I can only surmise that it probably
had something to do with the overall thermal conditions
that we had to put the vehicle to during the early part of
the mission. But as far as the ATM portion of the space-
craft, we certainly have no reason whatsoever from the per-
formance of that equipment to believe that yellowing is
having any degradation in the thermal coatings on it. All
the ATM instruments have been well within their temperature
bands, which are very very close. There has not been
any problem that I am aware of.
QUERY Do you ever notice any clouding of
telescope lenses?
/ SL-II PC-16D/2
Time: 18:45 CDT
6/1/73

PUDDY Oh no, no. In fact from the - I haven't

had a chance to go back and review in detail some of the
data we have been getting back off some of the ATM experi-
ments, but I did glance at some the other evening and the
PIs were very jubilant. I'm sure if there were any coating
on the lenses we would have heard about it.
PAO One more question.
QUERY Well, I'ii ask the main one then, I
had a couple. One is very short. Does that 4 EREP passes
in the next 5 days include the one Saturday?
PUDDY Tomorrow is Saturday and that is cor-
rect.
QUERY What can you tell us about this prob-
lem of the batteries taking a charge that Rocco Petrone
and John Disher were talking about today, Petrone especially?
Have you got any data on how serious it is? What have you
been able to get together?
PUDDY Well, I don't know exactly what they
said. I guess the best way to phrase that is that you
expect - when we lifted off, we expected each one of these
batteries to have a certain rated capacity. And what we
/ have found out is that it looks to us like right now a
few of these batteries do not have that rated capacity.
Therefore, since they do not reach their full rated capacity,
during a charge cycle, you basically have the problem where
you reach the lower limit on the states of charge during
the nighttime frame much earlier than predicted. And of
course this is just another aspect of the overall electrical
power management that we must take into consideration.
PAO All right, thank you.

END OF TAPE