Skylab 3 Press Conferences and Briefings 1 of 4
Skylab 3 Press Conferences and Briefings 1 of 4
Skylab 3 Press Conferences and Briefings 1 of 4
-- PRESS BRIEFINGS
VOLUME l
, J
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-4
SL-III PC-4A/I
Time: 4:30 p.m. CDT
6/29/73
have been extremely stable since the - since about two days
after the crew returned. And it was at that time that we
corrected the thermal problem in our refrigeration cooling
system. That wraps up the status and our projection as to
where we think the systems will go through SL-IV. Thank you.
PAO Mr. Kleinkneeht?
KLEINKNECHT Okay, as Lee pointed out, if we can identify
no contraints against launching Skylab-III on the 28th of
July, now, at about 6:07, I believe the time is today, central
daylight time. That may vary a few minutes, but before we
get there. KSC is in the process today of performing a flight
readiness test on CSM 117. It should be completed early
tomorrow morning, which is on schedule - to have the vehicle
ready well ahead of the 28th of July. However, we have no
plans to launch earlier than that. The 28th of July is a
good date from the launch site recovery lighting - from the
end of mission recovery lighting - from a standpoint of crew
work-rest cycles and so forth. We have no problems of any
significance that we've identified with CSM 116 after return,
from looking at the hardware and of course, we're continuing
to look at that spacecraft. We've also - you have heard
reports from the crew this morning. We have Just completed
an all day project debriefing, participating in that with
the crew. They have not told us anything of any significance
_ I don't think that you didn't hear this morning. And I guess
the most significant things that have come out of both of
these briefings is that the Skylab-I crew believes sub_ectively
that we are GO for 56 days. NOw , they don't say that based
on looking at data and analysis of medical data. They believe
and they feel - believe that their progress and readapting
and returning to l-g physiological baseline is progressing
well - -
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SL-III PC4C/I
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and through a vapor phase. And I guess the last thing I should
say is that this is the flight that gets the._._r_and that's
our most exciting of the student experiments. WeVre looking
forward to the spider experiment. Perhaps we should go ahead
and go to questions.
QUERY As far as the spider is concerned. Is the
health of the prime spider okay or (inaudible)
HANES Well, I'm sure at this point in the game
the health of the prime spider is fine. We haven't gone so
far as to select the exact two spiders?
KLEINKNECHT We have a lot of those - they only cost
35 cents (laughter).
QUERY Mr. Belew, one of the things I was curious
about and this goes back to the high beta angles and the
consequent rise in temperature because you're seeing sunlight
all the time. Why not say, keep the fans running during this short
unmanned period, or keep things circulating. Is it because
you're afraid that something might go wrong and it's just
better to cut everything off. You've got the power why -
BELEW (garble) high temperature unmanned we
went as high as i00 in the workshop. It gives us no prob-
lem - no problem. The fans are crew operated. If we
turned them on they would have to stay on. We don't have
ground turn-on, turn-off capability on fans. But we didn't
expect to go any higher than 97 degrees, which that's about
_-_ right and that doesn't give us a problem. So we went - we
took the right route. Don't run anything any longer than
you have to. Save them for when you need them. Then if it's
i00 degrees it doesn't bother you.
SPEAKER No.
QUERY De you have any comment on new phenomena
in connection with the ATM that you will continue to pursue?
Can you elaborate on that a little?
HANES Well, it's been reported to us that they
have observed two things that they had not expected to see.
One is a continuation and spreading of the granular structure
of the chromosphere on out into the corona. And they - I believ:
that this is the first time that they've noticed that. And the
other one is an appearance of bright dots or spicules[?] that
are associated with this granular structure that appear to
extend also out into the corona and appear to be high energy
or hot, small hot spicules[?] that extend farther than they had
expected before. That may not be - sound like a really fan-
tastic discovery. Of course, they axe being a little bit caref I
they don't want to run around saying I discovered something
until they really know it. These things are things that appear
to be different from what they expected.
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SL-III PC-4D/I
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6/29/73
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
Participants:
PC-5
SL-III PC-5A/I
Time: 9:00 a.m. CDT
6/30/73
view
all
program
flight.
that
along.
for
is what
Now we
And
a good
we've
many
we want
can actually
pursued
months, and
to continue
at
a rather
this
it only
to do
point
active
be
when
even
exercise
reinforces
we're
our
in
a little
\
more quantitative about the amount of exercise that we might
want to pursue. Pete produced on the order of 3000 watt-
minutes of work a day during the time that he was there. And
on the bicycle ergometer that's for, as an example, 150 watts
for 20 minutes. And that sort of exercise is something that
is fairly comfortable, a comfortable level. It's an amount
I think all three of us are in the habit of exceeding on
our average daily workloads at this time. And I would expect
that when we're in flight we will continue to produce on an
average of at least that amount.
BEAN Yeah, I think Jack Lousma is more in the
habit of exceeding this than the rest of us. He exceeds it
by about 3 times maybe, so I don't know.
QUERY I understand that you've only met informally
with the dlscussion-wise with the first crew, and you're
going to meet with them, I think it is Monday. Will that
give you enough time to retrain in any areas that you have
to, or have you already been getting feedback, and if so
in what areas?
BEAN Okay, we've sort of worked this several
ways. One was on a day to day basis, we read the transcripts
when we could. And that was pretty at the first of the mission,
towards the middle of the mission we got behind and we then
read it rather sporadically, and tried to keep up with what
you all wrote in the papers hoping that you'd pick out the
points that were good for us too. So we worked that problem.
Day to day we would receive some comments from the Capcom
saying "Say I noted the alignment of the EREP", for example,
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--" exerciser, but we talked about EREP. Let's take that for _ \
a minute. We have, the way we trained for EREP is this way_ _-_\
We have a simulator over there that operates much the same "
as the sighting system used in space in that the pictures of
the targets move beneath you. On a certain time schedule _
\\
you try to track them, try to zoom in on them, and you try
to point just at the right place at the right time, and _"
\
operate the controls at the right time. And it turns out
when you begin to do that, you don't do it so grand. But \
after a while, at the level of training that we're at, we
think we can do it pretty doggone good. Okay,that's what
we've been doing. We know before flight, there was a lot
of discussion about whether or not we ought to take an airplane
T38, and go fly over the actual sites themselves. In fact /
we've got a T38 out there rigged with a similar site to the /
one we use in space in the back seat. Not quite as good /
because we didn't have the money to do it, but it is pretty /
good. So the question is should we do that, too. Now Pete, /
and Paul went out and did it before the flight. We decided
not to do it. We said that takes 2 training days to do it. /
We'll just keep training like we are, we'll find out what
happens up there. The first thing we did was call them up an_
ask them what they thought. Paul Weitz said it's ten times
better from the airplane than anything we've ever seen, we
recommend that you do it. Okay, we said well it still take_
2 training days. Let's wait until they get back and talk
with them some more. They get back, we talk, and finally
they say, after all the discussion, they convince us that
we really ought to go do it. Jack and I are setting aside the
4th and 5th of July to go out and fly our EREP sites in those
airplanes. So essentially what we've done, and that applies
across the board, is just one right after another, take the
things that we think are could be difficult or could be
important to change our training and train them as soon as -
and change them as soon as we can. We're briefing over at
Pete's house tomorrow night. And we're going to sit around
there and probably spend 7 to ii or 12 talking about some
other things that could affect us. Monday, the approach we're
going to use, which I think is an excellent one, and it
was thought of by Pete, Joe, and Paul, is I'ii get with
Pete, and Paul will get with Jack, Joe will get with Owen.
We'll split off and we'll just go around to different simulators.
We'll go over to the, let's say the OWS trainer, and we'll
walk around that thing, and Pete will say, "Hey you notice
over there, that's where you got the vacuum stowed. We found
that was a poor place. We kept it over there." We'll take
SL-III PC-5A/4
Time: 9:00 a.m. CDT
6/30/73
- that vacuum cleaner then and move it. Then he'll go over
and - in other words we'll use the environment of those trainers
over there to walk through the training situation and try
to get up to speed to the level that we can to where they
were at the end. Let's say for example, he says move the
vacuum cleaner over there. And we say to ourselves, mentally,
we still like it here. We're going to move it over there
and start in space that way until we hope to pick up as
much as we possibly can where Pete left off, where Joe left
off, where Paul left off, and start from that place. And with
that we hope we can get in tune to doing these experiments
and doing life on orbit a heck of a lot faster. So to answer
the question, we're trying all we possibly can to bring
everything into focus on a day by day basis so that when we
launch we start from where they left off as best we can.
QUERY AI, what barriers human or mechanical do
yOU Owen and Jack see to your flying a 56-day mission or
longer if you wanted to? And on May 15, did you three think
you'd be sitting here now?
BEAN First one. I don't think there is any
barriers at all at the moment. And it looks even better,
of course, than it did before Pete flew for us going 56 days
or longer, depending on how that works out. I think, personally,
I think the great - the main challenge in Skylab is a sort
of a self-dis_pline one. Not physical from going that long
6r _-d_anical from going that long. I think you're in a
closed environment. I think you've got a lot of work to do.
A let of it is repetitive. A lot of it is rather not - boring
is not the word but not as exciting as some other things /
to do. And in order to operate properly up there, you're /
going to have to keep the scientific attitude. You're not ,
only going to have to do the job, but you're going to have /
to be thinking at the moment how to do it better. How
should you build a space station, 5 years from now, better? //
What can you do about the shuttle when you come back in - -
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SL-III PCSB/I
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6/30/73
didn't have that luxury with Skylab and so there were a lot
of things that had to work right for Skylab to get up there
and get going and get to it so that we could operate in it.
And I guess I was always a little conservative in my thoughts
about whether or not I was really going to get up there and
everything was going to work right and so when it got up
there and there were a few problems well I was still at least
as confident after it was up there as I was to begin with
that at least it was in a good orbit and most everything was
working right and if history repeated itself which I was
hoping it would why good Yankee ingenuity was going to come
through and the great space team was going to work together
and pull this one out. So my feelings weren't any different
I guess May 1 to May 15 but there some new facts run in the
ball game some pluses and some minuses but obviously every-
bodys confidence grew about the first of the following month.
And right now it's riding higher than it ever has before.
QUERY I wonder gentlemen if you could talk a
little about how you plan to handle the after effects after
56 days at splashdown?
LOUSMA Vertically.
GARRIOT Do you mean in the first few days?
QUERY Well, I mean the first few hours. I'm
thinking now what all of us saw as that last crew came out
after 28 days and I'm trying to see what your anticipation _ _ .
is once you double that time. _ _ _ '_
GARRIOT Well, I think starting down through re-_I-__,_
entry even through the deorbit burns we will be carefully _ k
monitoring our own reactions to the presence of acceleration "\_C
for the first time in 2 months and we will be carefully oh- " "_
serving ourselves to make sure _hat we are responding more
or less normal to these effects and once we're on the water
I think we'll take things a little slow and easy. We will
be checking our own heart rates and if necessary we'll have
the apparatus all ready out to check our blood pressure.
We'll probably sit up very carefully at first to make sure
that our orthostatic tolerance is where we think that it !
should be, we're not about to faint. And my guess is we'll !
be fairly conservative about this and if we do have any !i
/
/
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Time: 09:00 a.m. CDT
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keep all the parts with us through this non single point _,\
failure technique. And then we're going to operate the _
deployment in a non hurry mode because we know we got plenty _
of time. Our total EVA time to do this and to put out the |\
ATM film and to deploy the F149 experiment, we're guessing \
now, is about 3-1/2 hours. If i= took 4-i/2 hours that
would be okay. We did lunar surface operations with limited /
quantities and back packs for 7 hours or so. We've got almost
unlimited quantity, so we don't have to hurry. We can do /
it right and that's the plan.
LOUSMA May I also point out we're all equally
trained at doing the Job. A1 participated in the initial
developement procedures at Marshall before Pete left, And
Owen and I have been working on it also. So we've got plenty
of back up capability as far as personnel onboard to do
the job is concerned,
BEAN Right now the thinking is at but it
isn't firmed up yet, and it will probably await some thoughts
by management and by Pete's reccomendation° And also it
will await some thought when we do our flyaround as we get
there, do some TV of the present parasol, You know that
even though the thinking is that we will deploy this boom -
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6/30/73
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o.- -
PARTICIPANTS :
PC-6
SL III PC 6-A/1
Time 07:39 CDT
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SL IIl PC 6-B/I
Time 07:39 CDT
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egular the
deduce basis,
three that is day by day,
- diRenslonal hour
structure byof hour, we could
the corona and
from that information understand the geometry of the coronal -
forms, the relationship of coronal structures to features
on the solar disk, understand the evolution corona with
time and begin to understand the nature of outflow of
material in the corona which comprises the so - called
solar wind. From our first look at the data I think we
will be successful to a large degree in all of these
objectives. On SLII the instrument obtained 4,315 photographs
of the corona. In addition we obtained TV images followlng
a Jamming of our camera. At the end of SLII a new camera
was installed and it's been operating during the unmanned
phase of the mission tests. Our first impression of the
S052 data is that it's outstanding. In fact, our feeling is
that the quality of the data is - fulfills our every expectation.
In fact it exceeds it. For this we are of course indebted
to many people, not the least of which are the various
engineering teams that have participated in the construction
of our instruments initially beginning almost i0 years ago.
Ball Brothers Research Center in Boulder and to the
Marshall Space Flight Center for the integration and putting
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I
VAIANA It is difficult for me not to embark on
some personal recollectlon of when we were with my colleagues_
out waiting for the fllm that would come out from the and be
developers v hands at that time. And somehow_ we were all a
little bit scared, Though_ we certainly didn't know what to
expect in detail. And this kind of tension was broken when the
image started to come out and we suddenly realized the full
impact of what we flnally see. What we had seen_ as you can see
from the previous pictures of the corona (garble) before. But,
as you can see_ the plasma filllng the magnetic field group to
eome extent_ but is a dlfferent sort of thing. It is a thing
that somehow with this high revolution sensitivity seems to be
a whole panorama. Now_ Itm not going to go into the details
of the various things that you are observing and that you -
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F
C_
Time: 07:39 CDT
7/26/73 I
REEVES of the ATM data secquence on the solar fla
.- SL
that Dr.
PCVaiana
6F/2 mentioned earlier. And you can see the
the structure thatTs there; one arc second, the chromospheric
network, the quiet regions surrounding the solar flare and
down in the lefthand corner_ an old decaying active region
which had been followed previously ifor studies by the - by the
ATM. This telescope was - both of these telescopes were
build under Harvard connectlon_ but they were built by the
Perkin-Elmer Corporation, for Marshall Spacefllght Center
and I think it certainly exceeded our expectations for the
quality of H-alpha records which_ are hope about this week
due to be distributed and released. Thetis all I wanted to
say there_ could I have the lights again please? Now the
other experiment the main one I wanted speak about today was
the - is the Harvard experiment S055, which differs from the
other experiments on the ATM that it is not photographic
experiment. We do not rely on film. Our instrument is photo-
electric. The data is recorded in dlg_mS_tape _orders
aT_dum_to the ground every revolutlon of the spacecraft_ so
that we were not quite so Jittery and nervous at the time of
film development, some of our colleagues we had the - although
we had some of our own difficultles, different than film
development. We did have assurance throughout the mission
-_ that our instrument was operating beyond our best expectation
what we could reasonably of expected to get from instruments
performance. .The resolution of the instruments, the ultraviolant
instruments looks that those wavelengths is below the ultravlolant
part of the sound do not come through earth atmosphere, has
these observations can only be conducted from above the earths
atmosphere. It observes from 300 to 1350 amgstroms. The wave-
length range in which most of the atoms and ions in the outer part
of the solar atmosphere_ the chromosphere, the transistion
region and inner corona have there strongest lines. Lines
that are formed between i0,000 degrees and 1 or 2 million
degrees. The instrument can either stop at a given feature
and scan its complete spectrum for an annalist of pravatures
such as temperature and tenancy_ or it can sit on a number
of lines, seven lines which are distributive in height over the
solar atmosphere and build up a picture of the sun -a so called
picture of the sun, every5 minutes. Could I have the next
slide. What we have done here is to take digital data and
convert it into a quasi - photographic form because this is
much easier to talk about and reams of numbers. Here you
see an active region, one rather unspectacular_ I thought,
active region that was observed - this is a reproduction or a
photographic construction of the intensity as seen in the light of
magnesium i0_ that's magnesium with nine of it electrons stopped
off. And that particular ion is only formed at temperatures
f
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REEVES of about two million degrees. So where
we see white or light in this picture we know that intensity
is coming from a region that only exsist at temperatures of I
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(-- PAO I am happy to say we are joined by
Dr. James Underwood of Aerospace Corporation who will have
some remarks for us. Dr. Underwood?
UNDERWOOD Good morning. I'm sorry to be late, but
unfortunately I went to the wrong place, I finally found
out were I was suppose to be and got here. I will also
apolloglze if I'm a little repetitive because I haven't
heard what the other experimenters had to say, so if I - if
I have to - if I repeat some of what has already been said
I thinklyou'll yall understand that I haven't been hear to
hear the previous discussion. Especially in regards of
in the regards of what - what Dr. Valana and what S054 says
as thetr experiment is being quiet slmular to ours. To give
you an ideal of what our experiment is, could we look at the
first slide? I would say that our experiment - oh I better go
to the - screen now our experiment in contrast to some of the
other that has been mention S082, S055 is a very simple experiment
in fact it's Just a camera for the x-ray region with the
spectrum - the solar sectrum from about 5 angstrum, it covers
to around about 50 to 60 angstrums. And it consist of simply
glancing incidence, could you give me a little bit of focus
please, it's Just a little off. That's fine. It consist
of glancing incidence x-ray mirror which projects an image
of the sun onto a film over here containing which is in a
roll form which 60212 film - film strictly develop for it
by Eastman Kodak for operate in the X-ray retlons this a
thousand feet of film in there and we can take approximately
6000 or 7000 x-ray photographs of the sun during one load
and from one magazine. And infront of the film there are
six different filters of metal. They are rather thick filters
and by using thick filters of metal such as tltlum, beryllium
and aluminum we make sure that we are infaet observing the X-ray
region of the spectrum and it is no ultraviolet leakage.
_here is no leakage of radlation_ for instance that Dr. Tousey
sees with his experiments. So we are actually looking at true X-rays
pictures of the sun and in addition - shbwlng this photograph
you see - this picture yon see two stops these are just
to prevent direct radiation from going straight through
the center apeture appllcate of the telescope and reaching the
film and dropping it. Not show in this photograph - not show in
this drawing is an aneillaly instrument which we call
the X-ray eventanayymer, this is a very simple instrument.
It consist of counter, a proportional counters which is llke
some of you may be familiar with it, it is like a gelgercounter.
It counts pluses it counts individual photons from solar
events and as if turns out this instrument is extremely
useful, it sees the whole sun at one time and it has a good
time resolution of the order of a second or two and so can
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can begin
smaller
any more
I think
my neck
characteristics
that we can say
out here,
of these
to understand
flares
slides
are produced.
or is that
already,
but by study
smaller
the mechanism
flares,
and I might
of some
we think
by which
Let me point
the last one?
of the
some
be
that we
_
_
of these \"
out - Are there
I guess that is
._
\_
\
% r
/
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UNDERWOOD -change in the modes of operation are concern
apart from making some minor adjustments in the exposure time.
We intend to probably concentrate it on the one, as I have
mentloned before, one of the interesting thing from the first
mission was rapidity of which things change, and we would
tend to concentrate more on the second mission on modes which
allows to observe these rapid changes what we call our active
modes, whereby we take secquence of short exposures very rapidly
rather than - S052 experiment might feel that we are abandlng the
cause of synoptic observation we are not infact doing that
what we call synoptic observation we take with a patrol mode
where we take a long exposure and we tend to take a long
exposure to expose the detail structures in the quite
corona and we have been taking a large number of these per
day, and we hope on the next mission to go to modes where
we observe the rapid changes in active regions using flares
and common things and so on. These turn out to be very
interesting.
KEATHLEY Add to that Just a bit yes we are we for
SLIII have been two or three new types of observing programs
one of which is velocity fields. These have been devise
in the inerlm between SLII and SLII they've written in (garble)
new astronaut observing sequences. They have been things towards
there will be different matters and with the scientist astronaunt
we have on SLIII, it is certainly conceivable that two observation
modes could be devised during the course of SLIII itself.
UNDERWOOD I do think that one new observation
mode that is being considered for SLIII is a - I don't know what
you would call it - catch all mode, or a astronaut operation mode
where by we give the astronuat the hunting license to go after
whatever he thinks is interesting phenomenon on the Sun, whether it
be an erruptlng prominence or a partlcularily interesting piece of
network cell or whatever. And knowing Garriott being well trained
and expert in fact in solar physic - will be - will carry out this
program very well, l'm sure
KEATHLEY I would Just llke to add something about Owen.
Owen has been involved right from the conceptional deesign, pre-
llmarily design of these instruments, has artlclpated in all the
design reviews and had a great deal to do with the influencing the
design instruments and this has been going for about 7 or 8 years.
So Owens knows - Owen not only knows the solar physic and stuff
but , he knows thoselnstruments very well.
QUERY Richard Lewis of Science and Public
Affairs. I would like to switch just a little bit. toward a
omparlson. My basic question is what can
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- do with ATM that you can't do with a OSO?
What is the advantage of Skylab in this respect? I think
this is a - I wonder if some of you would comment on the
advantages of one over the other - over presumably over ATM.
Because it appears from this conference that ATM has revealed things
that have been revealed by any other program.
VAIANA Well, the first thing that to be said is the (garble)
the size of the ATM in itself allows as well as the pointing
of the ability. The act of which you can point things. It allows the
total difference, (garble) and resolution in the instruments
which on board affectany other thing (garble) The second
point is the data possibility is being allowed by the presence
of astronaut onboard. Which has been spoken before. Finally is
the unmanned satellite of the (garble) somehow has to be to a
very large extent almost canned in the observation which means that
once you are dealing with the Sun, each of the times (garble) of
change are going from seconds during the flare to the solar cycle,
I mean, 11 years or 22 years if you want to then somehow you are
somewhat forced to choose one of those modes that being the
characteristic one for this particular satellite as you have in the
unmanned portion. There the flexibility allows you to change those
things, with the appropriate time resolution and to take advantage of -
of immediate direct evidence (garble) flare occurance. Finally the
other thing which is also a different scale is, of course, the
prominance that one perceives of that is - automatically sort of
caused without referring b_ck to the individual stations as well as
of course, to the exent of iwhich the coordinated observing program
from the ground has been tdned up. (garble) simultaneously observing
without and again that has not been acheived with the (garble) satellite.
These are a few of the new things that can be done with the ATM
(garble)
QUERY Would a continuation of this program obviate any
further OSO experimentation or launchinga?
QUERY I'd -first of all I'd llke to ask Dr. Tousey
who was involved the OSO program and ATM program to add to
Dr. Vaiana's comment and then maybe he can take a shot at your
latter question.
TOUSEY Well, I feel as though the ATM has produced
anywhere between i0 and i00 times as much information about
the Sun as a single OSO. That's rather a broad statement and
has to be qualified because OSO - some OSO experiments have been
designed and are being design to do a very special thing. That are
not being done in ATM. On the other hand, ATM carries photographic
experiments and photographic materialr still have the possibility of
gathering far more information per unit time than photoelectric
experiments. Photographic film could be recovered from
OSO, but it seems to be out of the question for one reason
or the other. I think the use of photographic film is one of
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7/26/73
the prime advantages of ATM. The - then the other is the size
that Dr, Valana has Just said, the size of the instrument that are
carried they are, what would you day, at least ten times larger.
REEVES Well_ I believe the size of the OSO pointed
tail is from 30 inches long and maybe 12 to 15 inches square and,
of course_ the size of the ATM platform is some 130 inches long
and 86 inches in diameter, so you can obviously put more,
bigger instruments in the ATM than you could in the OSO.
MACQUEEN But there is another point which should
be made_ the current ATM instruments were actually designed -
their basic specifications were set about 6 to 8 years ago and
if the advances in instrumentation is advances in the kinds
of thing we would abserve if we were deslnging experiments
today are far more precise for certain problems than we are
capable of ahservlng with ATM. Now it is possible to put new
experiments of smaller types on OSO to great advantage for a
much reduced cost compare to the cost of ATM and a Skylab
Program. So while OSO was not attempting to -
END OF TAPE
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7-26-73
SPEAKER - - compared to the cost of the ATM and Skylab
program. So while OSO was not attempt to comply with ATM today,
the OSO program can still be a most effective program in conjunction
with a program of a mammoth observatory of the size of the ATM.
After all, they're not going to lauch one of these things every
2 years.
TOUSEY I should like to continue that, however, to go to
evan smaller and less expensive vehicles, namely sounding rockets.
The sounding rockets can produce results that - Just as good as
those from ATM, but - but gather only a very small fraction of the
amount of information that you can get from ATM. Both from the
point of view of the time involved and the number of different
experiments. But you can design for accounting rockets and do
experiments that will compete very well with any other vehicle
including OSO and ATM, as far as doing speciallized Jobs. And
the sounding rocket is the sine qua non of space research, in my
oplonlon. The - It's the work horse that leads to the development
of instruments that can be put in OSO's to make observations over long
periods of time and in man's vehicles to increase even further the
information gathering ability from above the Earth's atmosphere.
SPEAKER Plymouth.
SPEAKER The Rolls Royce may be a beutlful car but it's
nice to have a few Volkswagons around.
SPEAKER Yes. I think that is the point. I Think that
whatever vehicle you offer a space experiment whether they be solar
physicists or outerspace physicists however - whatever kind they have
available devises instruments to go in it. I think experiment is a
(garble) they'll go with whatever is available at the time. A few
things, I don't wish to disagree with any of the comments made by my
collegues, because they're all true about ATM, hut I expect that
insofar as carrying film is concerned, film is one of the greatest
information storage devices ever invented by man. Ri ht now we
don't, for instance, have TV systems which work in X-rays which
both give the high resolution and the time resolution that you can
get with film. Because, for instance, on OSO the types of pictures
that they get are built up by scanning in the very slow way. It takes
many minutes to build up a whole picture of the sun from an OSO by
rapid scanning and yon can miss any timed information that way. But
I'ii say one thing in favor of the OSOs and the unsatelltes is that
they don't eat - they don't have to eat, they don't have to sleep,
to to the toilet, then you can run them until they fall apart.
(laughter) So - -
SPEAKER Okay. At this point we're going to have to
cut the discussion off somewhere. We are now running a little
bit over schedule. However, Tom Hanes would llke to have one
little last word on this, and we have questions - I understand
that Houston - they'd llke to get in. I also have a couple of
reporters who cannot attend and so we'll let Tom say a little
more about this and then I'll have one more from the floor
here, then we'll try Houston - to Houston.
HANES I'd like to Say something a little more
general a question wueh as the one you Just gave us. It
tends to try to polarize - polarizes the question into our
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_HANES manned satellites and unmanned
satellites center. Itls fairly obvious that each has
it's place. And the whole idea behind the shuttle is
to try to make that question academic. The shuttle_
when it is in real operational condltion, should make
it possible to pick the kinds of instruments that are
best for the task at the time. And alsoj it should
make it possible for a faster turnaround to keep up a
little better with the technology of instrumentation.
And it should make it possible to make alterations -
more rapid alterations in the viewing program. I -
Z can't talk as well to the ATM type of the - the
astronomy program but it's fairly obvious_ for ex-
ample, in Earth survey work_ that there is a place
for both at this time, and there will be for some
time. And then, eventually, when you want us to do
operational Earth survey work_ there isn't any doubt
that an unmanned automatic satellite does that best.
But when you're trying to get to the point of knowing
wharfs best to do with that unmanned satellite the
manned program has some advantages. As Z say_ _ think
we're trying to make that an answer to the question.
QUERY Tom Beldon_ UPI. How much major
flare activity are you expecting or predicting for this
next mission? SPEAKER
for flare activities, of course. As you know, we are
going towards the solar minimum and, there fore stressing
in general will be the dues on the activities in general
on the Sun will be the dues. Now, on the other handj the
picture that you showed there was in X-rays. (garble) in
general, asserting it to activity, they look quite active.
You could see quite a bit more than you would expect. Some
of the beginning, for instance, over the past mission would
(Garble) during the - a preference cycle. Now what we saw
on this 28 day mission was a welt of small flares. At least
one that we were able to follow of the reasonable large size.
And you can separate them to the next mission. I don't think
the next two missions is going to be any less than it has been
for the past 28 days. Now, for instance, Just in not shows
so we were able to collect these on 12 (Garble) C-flares,
they are called. Very, very small but quite important small
X-ray flares from 28 day mission. We collected data on this
(Garble) flare which is larger flare of the June 15. l
think you can expect an equivalent sort of thing. The basic
difference is going to be that now we know what to expect.
We know, for instance, if our alarm system works. The
astronauts have seen the data. They now know what to ex-
pect from the instruments on board. Remember, the meaning
of those things has never really been (Garble) tested in
the operation. So in addition to the fact that you are
going to have an equlvalent sort of (Garble) you can also
=-SL III PC6-0/3
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SPEAKER expect that you are going to be able
to take advantage of quite a bit more. Now, I guess that
in your question there was included a very specific thing.
Are you expecting one of those larger flares of the solar
cycle? And I don't have an answer to that. It will be
perhaps something very small.
VAIANA However, large flares are known to
curve also during a period of solar minimum. And there is
some claim that perhaps in an (Garble) of time there could
be some - somewhat (Garble) in the kind of cycle we're in.
I don't feel necessarily that view but certainly we are
hopeful.
SPEAKER At this time, we'll entertain ques-
tions a couple of questions from Houston.
SPEAKER Oh. No questions. Okay, we have no
questions from Houston. I thought - apparently they have
been answered. I do have a couple i would like to sub-
mit. This is one from Mary Bubb, writers agency, - who
asks this question. It says, Doctor Garriott said in
an interview that certain patterns of corona appear to
be related to the high pressure areas on Earth, have
you seen anything in the corona of this type that would
relate to weather forecasting on earth?
SPEAKER The answer to the question is - we
haven't had an opportunity to look. There is a theory
which relates the long term changes in climate and short
term changes in weather to fluctuations in pressure
ridge and high latitude on the Earth, and this is cor-
related with the flow of material from the Sun out
through the corona and, of course, in the Earth since
the Earth is in the solar corona. This corelation
will have to await rather detailed studies both of the
meteorlogical data on Earth and our own interpretation
of the actual three dimensional structure of the corona.
The - there are several scientists at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research who are - Will he pur-
suing this study.
SPEAKER Our final question is from David Sals _
bury of the Christian Science Monitor who asks, To what ex-
tent is solar investigators so far profited by comparing
data gained in the synoptic modes?
VAIANA Well, Maybe I can answer a portion
of that question. Is is (Garble) that we have been too
busy at times to develop our film. And in fact, some of
us have not seen the others (Garble) data so far. It is
very easy to conclusively separate at what we are going
to gain by puttlng those things together at this point.
I think that by looking at one set of data you can see
that there's got to be a tremendous advantage for it.
So far we have not been able to reason that together -
it's Just a little too early for that. Of course - -
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SKYLAB NEWS CEN'f_:H
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
Bill Pomeroy,PA0
1'C7
r
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on the - No,
please? (garble)
that'showever
not the - If you one.
first haven't The got it, one
first thatis - printed _
that will be all, okay. The mineral balance experiment, we
measure everything that goes into the astronaut, either measure
or account for. Food and drink we have complete control over
all the food is Skylab food and the drlnkd streither
Skylab drinks or Skylab water. Medicines we obviously don't
control; they're prescrlped by the flight surgeon, but we keep
a record of all medicines in case they contain substances
that would deflect our results. And toothpaste - at least
get the astronauts to use a consistant method of usage
of toothpaste during the pre-, in, and postflight periods so
they won't he, for instance, swallowing toothpaste in flight that
might contain something of interest but spitting it out before
and afterwards. This sounds slightly a joke, but this is a
real problem. It is difficult to spit out into a wash basin
in Skylab, because there isn't one. But anyway we've - -
we've managed to control that situation. The output, we get
samples of all urine and feces during the whole of the pre-
in and postflight periods and those are analyzed. We only
had one vomltus from Skylab 2, which was due to regular old
sea sicknesses. That was also analyzed. The scaling of the skin
and the losses of substances (garble) sweat we obviously can't
measure but at least we - with this uee of a pre-and postflight
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mass measuring device. And, once again, this has the objective \
basically - first of all, finding out how it works and it looks '\
as though it works extremely well. The calibrations of that
were very satisfactory and it looks as though it is capable
I of giving extremely accurate measurements of the mass in
weightless condition. And it's also used for weighing any
• . o.
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food residues; any partially eaten food that the astronaut decides
he Just can't finish, and thls Is in support of the mineral balance
experiment or to see to see [f we know exactly what goes into the
astronaut in the way of nutrients. We have to know how much he's left
behind if he gets half way through a dinner and decides he really
can't finish it. In fact, it was only used for that purpose
once in the flight. The astronauts were very good at Judging
Just what they wanted to eat., and if they felt they couldn't
eat something they didn't open the can and start on it. And
only once did one of the crew get half way through a meal
and decide that he'd really got more than he could cope with.
The feces are also weighed, - tThere are ywo separate devices
that I might add; one for weighing food and one for weighing
feces for obvious hygenic reasons. We had one hardware
problem in the waste management compartment - the device was
accidentally -
left on overnight and the electronics
got overheated and backed up. But what the crew did was
to swap over the electronics module from the other device
which was the food weighing one which you practically didn't
need to use. And so we got the weights of the feces for
most of the mission. This is of interest in the water
balance part of the experiment where we measure how much water
goes in and out - A little bit of water comes out in the
feces. It doesn't perturbe the experiment greatly if we're
unable to get that measurement but it does give us a little
bit of extra data, if it's available. Okay, can I have the
next slide, please? This is the experiment that was i/
got on so late that he didn't get a number for itself. It's
called by the fearsone name of stereo-photogrammetry. What it
is again is a pre - and postflig_r measurement.
_ What we do
is to take therlseopic pictures of the astronauts from both /
L*"
infront and behind simultaneously so that we get four plates.
And then in the photo lab we can reconstruct approximately
the exact form of the astronaut in great detail at the
moment that picture was taken and comparing the pictures
preflight and postfllght we can then find out any changes
taken - taken out of the volume of the body or the contour
/ of the body. And the preliminary analysis of these results
show that the locked in weight of the astronauts is Just
about exactly mirrored by locked in volume and, but most
of this volume came from below the waist which is very
useful supporting evidence to the theory that the astronauts
weight loss was due to loss of the muscles they weren't using.
These muscles were principally they were below the waist.
That experiment has given some useful data. Could we have
the next mounted one if you will? This just shows the set up
for taking the telescopic pictures. You can see two-wide
angle Hasselblad has cameras with their flash cubes between
them pointing at the back - Actually that's a dummy, tell
me that's not a human being and there's another pair pointing
r. at the sun at the same time and the cameras have triggered off
all together. And that completes my presentation.
SPEAKER Okay. Mike, Thank you very much. And
I'd like to go on then with Dr. Kimzey -
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SPEAKER Dr. Whittle has mentioned that we use
bed rest to try to study the affects of weightlessness. It
is interesting that in bed rest during a time equivalent
to Skylab, the drop in the plasma volume of the fluid
portion of the blood would have approached 20 percent. So we
find then, in Skylab the fluid portion of the blood did not
decrease as much as we would have predicted. This was found
also in the longer Apollo mission and in the longest Gemini
mission but not in the shorter. And this leads us to believe
that there are changes in the spaceflight or in the weightless
environment not related or which do not occur in bed rest. And at
the present time the theory is that the hormone aldosterone
produced by the adrenil - This hormone for reasons not to sure
at the present time increases during the flight and brings
plasma volume which tends to want to go down, to the man - The
men are being deconditioned through the muscle mass and
so forth, - brings the plasma volume back to a fairly normal
level, and this is totally different from spaceflight -
from a bed rest. So we find then as far as the blood constituents
are concerned, the total amount of red cells is less and the
total plasma volume is not a drop as we would have predicted.
It opens up for this next Skylab mission two lines of questions,
and that is will this longer Skylab mission give the astronauts
a chance to reconstitute or bring back their red blood cells,
since they will be living in a longer period of time at a
normal oxygen pressure. And secondly will this return of the
plasma volume up to normal or near normal, will this be sustained
or another words will the increase the aldosterone hormone
stay, continue to stay high, through this longer mission?
As a side light on the alldosterone, we have talked about in
past potassium losses, and Dr. Leake, our endocrinologist,
feels that the potassium losses are secondary to phenomena
when related to the increase in the alldosterone, because
this hormone causes loss of potassium. And so while it may
be helping one part of the blood - blood picture by increasing
the plasma volume, it may be doing a little bit of harm perhaps
in the muscle in that it's decreasing the total muscle potassium
during the mission. Like the other three speakers we need
to point out that spaceflight is new and that, while we
have theories of what is happening, the theories are bound
to be changed as we continue to study and go to a longer
mission.
PAO Thank you, Bill. Okay, at this time
we will open up for questions, just as soon as we get our
mikes in operation. I'ii have to ask you to wait until
we do have a microphone for it.
SPEAKER Lee Prince of the Stokie News. Two questions,
first for Dr. Whittle, do you believe that if there will be more
exercise, such as the kind practiced by Mr. Conrad on the
last mission, if all astronauts on pre - subsequent mission
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were to take part in and there would not be the kind of degradation
in the blood and muscle chemistry that develop? And the second one
for Dr. Hawkins. Would be- Have you considered the psychologlcal
affect of longer term spaceflight, such as the 59 day mission, in
which although the dedication may be there, there may be friction
may develop?
whiC_HITTLE On the question on exercising effecting \_
the muscle loss, it would I think take a great deal of exerci_e_--
in weightless condition to even remotely approach the amount 1
of exercises we get by just standing around and - walking _ _ .
around in a l-g environment. It may well be that to really •
prevent any of this loss of muscle the astronauts will have
to spend their entire time exercising. The other side light
on this is, this is a - this lost of nitrogen and loss of
muscle is one of the things we are studying on Skylab and
obviously we don't want to ruin our studies by encouraging
our astronauts to taks large amounts of exercises. So when
it comes to considering on what we do on the run tomorrow
we Just don't know the answer because the astronauts have
prevented from occurlng the sort of things we are looking
for. We are not at anyway worried about the healthful safety
of the astronauts, from this muscle loss and I think at the i
moment we are interested in measuring it. And when they /
go to Mars, it may well be that they have to take a great /
bit of exercise, but we would like to be at least sure about/
that, before making that decision. /
HAWKINS On the other question now, we are always/
looking at the psychological aspects of individual in
relationship under any type of isolated condition.
This you definitely take into consideration, your selection
of your people, you want people that are compatible.
Now this does not guarantee that you're - you'rr going to have
a complete harmony throughout an indefinite period of time.
Individuals are individuals and there could definitely be some
friction developed and persons who go for a long period
of time in confinement - this is more likely. But we feel
that we do have as you said motivated, highly motivated and
dedicated people who are interested in doing the job that
have been trained to function as a team and they realize that
without that team effort, and their individual inputs into
the total - this whole thing is not going to work. And so
they are driven to perform in that manner.
SPEAKER Dr. Hawkins, if nothing especially
worries them was found after slashdown, why was it necessary
to recommend an additional three days in order to bring the
men down closer to San Diego, so they would not be spending
that much time onboard ship?
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your QUERY
look at the Skylab Bill data lead you
(garble). toward like
I would the to
conclusion
ask if
! that on the long term space flight that you may have to
, induce some gravity. And as follows to the psycological
question before I think, Dr. Kerwin's in his post-fllght
conference said that on such a long term mission that it would be
desirable to have a more normal socialogical environment.
Would any of you llke to elaborate on what that might
include?
SPEAKER I didn't hear his comment. I wouldn't know how
to- (laughter)
SPEAKER I think Dr. Berry answered that about
a year ago in TIME.
QUERY The first one then on the induced gravity.
r SPEAKER I don't think we yet know enough about
the magnitude of these changes to say whether artificial
gravity would he a good idea. You have to rotate the
spacecraft through a very high angular eacceleration to
produce anything approaching the sort of gravity levels
we think would be useful in protecting the system. And
this could very well produce such severe problems to the vestibula_
system that it wouldn't be worth doing. Also I gather the
engineers are unhappy about it. But I think that we would
first look toward some other counter measure such as exercise
or injections of hormones or additions of particular
dietary costituents before we start to go for artificial
gravity.
QUERY Tom Beldon, UPI. Dr. Hawkins, when the
announcement was made that the mission would be extended
to 59 days it was also said that the crews condition
would be looked at on a weekly basis. As I understand it
Am I understanding it correctly - There is a possibility
if something is saycauslng alarm that the mission could
be called off at the end of each week. And that being the
case, what are the - what sort of things would you -
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC 8
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and
L-bandwe have some
radiometer information
is a passive to system
show you on
operating that. at The
21 19__
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want data put into a magnetic tpae form for them to process through
their own computer facilities. That data has already gone to
the Pl's and they will be getting back to JSC in order to provide
us the information for processing of their 7- of 9-track tapes.
Okay, so that's kind of where we are relative to the data analysis.
So let's look at some of the examples that I brought with me. \
We'll look at a few of these in here, and I'Ii show you some \
of the discrete examples of what you can see. This one is
the 190B. It's essentially the color, aerial color. It's in
the sandhills of Nebraska, Holt County, O'Neill, essentially
on the Elkhorn
here is some
River.
acreages,
This is O'Neill.
the various types
Now what
of plots,
you see in
and the
\L
reetangulars. It's espeesially a dryland farming with wheat and 1
corn. Cow raising is the primary interest in this area. But
what does this do for the individual Pl's? Simply this it
provides a rather rapid assessment of the utility of the 190B
in determing the acreage under cultivation at the present
time. It also provides some of the people working in
hydrologic areas an assessment of the total river basin along
the Biobrara River which flows on over into the Missouri.
This is the Elkhorn. But in combination with the next slide,
this information can be very useful. Now this is in channel
12. Now take a look at the pattern so you can see what I'm talking
about. Here is the Elkhorn. Look at the same circular pattern,
that you can see in there. This is a drop out in data here. But
you can see that enhances the black areas, which are essentlally
irrigation areas. They're on a rather unique irrigation syste
out there. They center it on about a quarter section or perhaps
an eighth section of land and irrigate it, and that's what you see
is the water. The irrigated areas extend out over here as black
as does some of the patterns relative to the agrlcultural plots
But see how this is enhanced relative to some of this area which
is essentially the river valley through the Niobrara. Another
composite that we have put together is the next one. This is
the 192 color composite of channels I0 and ii, which is essentially
in the middle IR range. Now you can see the white areas, the circles
coming up in here. Now this area is essentially again showing
the vegetation of areas in the red along the river valleys. This
is the sandhill country down here with the sagebrush and things
llke that. Now as far as the Pi is concerned, again computer
processing of the data will provide a rather rapid assessment of
the kinds of vegetation, the kinds of agricultural products
that are being raised as well as in acreage, so that if you had
this over a major area, and we do have this kind of information
from the 192 scanner, the utility of the 13-channel scanner can be
assessed rather rapidly for future use in planning experimentation,
which is one of the goals, as I told you last May, of the EREP
Program: to determine the utility of the various sensors, the
channels, the scanners, the microwave for earth resource programs.
The field of geology of course is a very - finds a very great
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ust_ for color ph_tography. This Is the 190A, arelal color. Ilere
again, chose Las Vegas, klnd o[ turned around, but this is Las Vegas,
Nevada, wlth Lade Mead down in Hover Dam country falling on down
through forgot the name of the lake down in here. What it does
is to provlce the geologist a chance to look at the major structures
that you can see in the rocks in here such as this, a major offset,
a fault in the series of sedimentary rocks that are present in this
area. It shows also the major folding and anticlinal structures
that are always present in a major tectonic region such as the basin
range country in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Again this is a very
useful document for doing essentially geologic mapping, which is
indicated over there under the geologic application.
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the total snow cover out in the western part of the world, l
i_ where sunny and western part of the United States. We had
hoped that there would be an adequate resolution capability
as well as discrimination capability, and the 190A and the
190B photograph utilizing some of the 193 scatterometer data,
to accurately look at the total snow distribution in some
of the western states, I'm showing an example here. Mt. Ranler
is off to the north and west. This is part of the Cascade
Bumping River Plateau. Here , you can see, that for the
first time, a major area, sufficient discrimination and
resolution capability to map fairly accurately the snow cover
in this area. This is simply color OIR and we have not
experimented any further with some of the other parts, other
black and white of some of the color IR combinations in order
to see if we can enhance some of these contacts and look
at those to insure a more accurate mapping of the snow cover.
But Dr. Barns is interested in this and he is one of our PIs
END OF TAPE
f_
SLIII PC 8-E/I
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r_
SLIII PC 8-E/2 I
Time: 13:08
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QUERY EREP data has now been used by Pls to help in
certain of the land-use problems that skylab was designed for.
In other words, to help the average guy on the street. Have
there been any specific examples of cases where the data ob-
tained from SL-2 was used to help in certain of the problems
that you have identified.
SPEAKER No, we can't say that specifically, simply
from the standpoint that as you so stated the data are still
being processed and they are Just now going out to the Pls.
But as soon as they've had the data for some time we plan to
have a preliminary science conference in order to clearly
identify the kinds of features and results that you're talking
about. But right at the present time, no, we have not identified
any and the Pls don't have it. Sometime probably this fall, and
a lot depends upon how the Pls react and how their results are
coming along.
QUERY Did you get a pretty good figure for the
depression of that sea over the Puerto Rican trench? You gave
us the figure of 20 meters and 13 meters. Can you tell what
the EREP data indicated?
SPEAKER The chart that I showed you indicated on pre-
liminary analysis that there is about a 20-meter depression -
I think that's what it showed. But there is a theoretical calcu-
lation that there is approximately a 12- to 13-meter depression.
You can do the calculations, but based on results of our analysis
- it's preliminary and all it looks like maybe 20 but those
will certainly be modified based on further PI studies.
SPEAKER It also could be said that our measurements
of the Puerto Rlcan trench are not as routine as you might
expect from some other satellites. For instances, GOT, one of
it's purposes will be to study the Puerto Rican trench and some
of the data that we will get will be used by those investigators
to prepare themselves for more detailed studies.
QUERY I wonder what EREP passes have been made and
what EREP pases are planned for South and Latin America?
SPEAKER Well, on the chart I showed - had the passes
in South America on SL-2, And on SL-3 we plan a number of
them, I can't tell you the exact number. Most of the descending
passes over the United States will be extended into the South
America and there are a few extending passes which go across
Argentina into Africa. It's probably seven or eight.
SPEAKER John, we have a list of those downstairs.
Do we have another question.
QUERY After SL-2 there was some talk that the
passes over Africa could be used to gather data that would
indicate the extent of the drought over there and possible
some of the land use or some indicators as to how it could
be coped with. At that time my recollection was you were
talklng about one pass over Africa and that was over Mall -
now you say there will be several passes. Does that indicate
_ that you have increased in your planning the effort to find out
SL-III PC 8-E/3
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
,-_ PC-9
SL-III PC-9A/I
Time: 14:15 CDT
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WAITE But one thing I wollld |lke 1o _ay there, With the
dedication of the crew of giving up their day off each week and
starting early and working late, they were able to accomplish most
of the things that we had hoped to accomplish. And they had a lot
of interest and a lot of perslstance in making - in successfully
completing the experiment program. We had several hardware malfunctions.
The thing that I am most pleased about though, in every case the crew
was either able to make the necessary repairs or procedurally we were
able to work around tl. So none of our malfunctions on the experiments
caused any real loss of data. I will briefly mention In going
through it rather quickly, I won't spend a lot of time on all the good
things that came out. I will, though_ Just mention to you a few of
the problems as I go through. On our DO24, the Department of Defense
Thermal Control Coatlng_ when we were trying to pull the solar panel
out that first time, we did - on the flyaround, we did get some
thrustor impimgement on that experlmen_. We amy take up a new
package on SI-IV on that one because we did have quite a bit of thrust
impimgement on that one. Our student experiments worked out very well.
We had one exception: the ED31, the sacteria and spores. We lost a
good bit there because of the high temperatures. We will - we are
going to send another package up and rerun the ED31. The ED76, the
neutron analysis. We deployed i0 panels. Four of those were returned.
You know these are covering several energy ranges. They've so far looked
at the lower eneray ranges. I think they're rather excited about -
you know, the results from that experiment. This is coming out real
nice. The neutrons in the lower energy range were quite a bit more
than had been anticipated there. The materials processing experiment.
We did conduct M551, 2, and 3. r. Stuhllnger will be covering those
a little later. Those were successfully completed with a lot of
persistence on the part of Pete. The nuclear emulsion, the SO09 experi-
ment. This one - we knew it was marginal. We did get this back.
Dr. Spiro is the principal investigator at NRL. We did lose that
because of the high temperature in the film vaults. We will sent up
another package on SL-IV on the SO09 nuclear emulsion. On the French
experiment, the S183. it was in two parts. We had the - you know, the
SC-5 film, 35 slides, in each of two carrousels. The SC-5 film - we
did have - we did have rather extensive volume on that. And then the
data acquisition camera - we had - we had a low focus problem there,
but we can also, but - we have partial data on that. We're planning
now on SL-IV to sent up two carrousels. We're going to be sure we
have the film problem solved. And we will be sending up two carrousels
on SL-IV. We'll probably take some data acquisition camera data on
SL-III, hut we will not try to use the carrousels. We - on the -
(garble) cosmic ray experiment, $228, of course we did deploy that. We
will not bring that back until SL-IV; those 36 panels. The infllght
aerosol analysls. We've Just gotten a preliminary report back.
Sl.-Ill PC-9A/3
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use it quite a lot, becuase it's very easy to handle. Another one that
we were comparing this to was Z93, which is again the same pigment, but
in a sodium silicate, which is an inorganic binder, with a lot smoother
harder surface. (garble) that has to be baked out. I might liken that
that is some instances to the porcelain enamel (garble) you would have
on your refrigerator although it's not quite that hard or smooth.
SPEAKER You can understand that these differences in
smoothness and hardness and so forth are the kinds of things we're
looking at in the way they react to retrorockets, wated, and dust,
which is exactly what we get from retrorockets. We're trying to see
exactly which would be the better coating and which would be the better
grades of these coatings to use to overcome these launch problems.
While the results of the experiment so far - and by the way, the
experiment worked very well. We got very precise temperature meas-
urements back and we have reduced all these themperature measurements
now to adsorptlvity/emissivlty ratios, which show that just the
rainfall, the salt air, and all that handling of, getting ready on
the Cape changes these coatings. And I'm Just going to talk about
S13, it's a typical one, from a ratio of 0.2 to about 0.26, even
before we take off. Now of course we had known this from ground tests,
we Just wanted to check this out on the vehicle_ but then what we
didn't know was how much this would change due to the retrorocket fire.
The retrorocket - of course, right up close to it, puts out a lot of
heat but up along the vehicle where this experiment was, which was
incidentally, 46 feet away from the retrorocket, we got very little
change in tempera ure when the retrorockets fired but a lot of dust
and it changed in the skirting to 30 0.31. Which means something
like 20 degrees centigrade or 36 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than if
the skirting had stayed clean and like it had been in the shop before
we left. One of the things that we've learned so far is that we may
have to live with this situation as long as we have the kinds of
retrorockets we have. That seems to be our major cause. We were
looking for this, we were even trying to plot them using different
positions; the differences we might see around the vehicle. The
answer to that was that the dust clouds of the retrorocket, at least
at that distance away from the nozzle of the retrorocket, puts the
cloud, homogeneously around the vehicle and all of the coating got
darkened the same amount. And so our thermal people are going to
have to learn to live with and to design with this higher figure,
rather than having the material people keep trying to make lighter
coatings. It doesn't help you to make lighter coatings if you keep
covering them up with dark - with dust. It's kind of like living
next to a steel mill in a sense. You know, it doesn't matter how
often you paint if the smoke keeps covering your house. So that's the
basic preliminary result, with lots of finer and more subtle data
still being collected on Just exactly how much of the coatings were
attracted to the, the paint and which exact paint it would be
SL-III PC9B/3
Time: 14:15 CDT
7/28/73
/_ SPEAKER (CONT'D) better to use in the future. But you can appricate
that in engineering a spacecraft and in maintaining long life of
spacecraft, maintaining its temperature white coatings is indeed very
important to us. I think at this point I'd like to open I think I've
said enough. I'd llke to open this to questions, if there are any.
SPEAKER I would llke to apologize to the speakers. Many of th
vies and slides and to expedite things since we're
running late I asked them to cut them out so Gene left off his movie,
nd so Gene, I apologize for the time.
QUERY Mr. McKannan, was there any problem in terms of
your sensors caused by the shroud difficulty at the top of the vehicle?
SPEAKER No. No, we didn't. I neglected to mention I
should have to you - that this particular experiment was on the 206
S-IVB stage, which was the Skylab 2, which carried the astronauts up
there. So we weren't even on Skylab i, That was my omission in not
mentioning that point.
QUERY Can you do a little interpretation for us, and
would you say that if your paint chips or your coating had been on
Skylab 1 it would have been a better thing to have than a micro-
meteoroid shield?
SPEAKER Well, no. The micrometeorold shield there was
needed, and incidentally I think that is a real interesting question,
of course, because it is very much related to what our experiment was
trying to measure. Because we had these little chips or patches on
there. The micrometeorold shield had, very largely, a white coating
llke this which would have kept things nice and cool, but the underside
of it had a dark coating in order to radiate heat rapidly between the
shield and the skln_ of the Skylab vehicle and of course when the
shield was ripped away, that left the dark coating there so it adsorbed
a lot more heat and it's just as simple as that. The - these coatings
- well the - then the answer came that the parasol was put up, not
only simple to shade the vehicle but again the adsorptivlty/emissivity
ratio of the parasol was very important so that it would again just
adsorb Just right amount of heat and reradlate the right amount of heat
tokeep the temperature down, so it was more than a matter of shading
the vehicle with the parasol but of shading it with the thermal coat-
ing of Just the correct adsorptivity/emlsslvity ratio.
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all this, the sample array says that, yes, there is some sur-
face deposition, but it appears at this time that the ground
controls, that the controls of the various venting in space
allows us a clean environment around the spacecraft, and
there should not be a problem with respect to optical in-
struments. The second vlewgraph, as a result of the photom-
eter, again the performance - it was performed at six different
days, running the different modes, eight of the 15 minimum
modes that we requested. The real data - the data from the
telemetry system in terms of magnetic tapes has Just become
available, and so there is really insufficient materials to
make any statements about that. However, during the flight
we had some new real time data come down in terms of strip
charts. And from the strip charts, we've look at particularly -
Well, again this is only when we had ground site coverage, so
that we have again a scarce amount of data at this time. But
what we have in particular of mode IA is where we're in a
fixed position and we're operating in the daylight for a
series of scans with our 10-filter photoelectric photometer
that Jerry showed you on the previous slide. Looking at the
difference between the light levels we see in the daylight
and the light levels we see in the dark. Again, signifi-
cantly, the only change is that the contaminant cloud around
the spacecraft is not illuminated. Therefore, we are not
measuring scattered light from this particular cloud. We
see levels of around i0 to 14, the ratio of the scattered
brightness to the brightness of the Sun. Essentially, what
this means is that only for experiments of very low light
level in the range in the order of zodiacal light and less
is this particular cloud at this time going to be in effect.
We've also been able to look at some mode 3D, as I mentioned
before, where we look back at the vehicle and se scan the
regions and see is there - what is the special distribution
of the contamination around it, and again in this case, there's
very little data but what we've been able to look at. We're
talking about scattered light levels of the range i0 to 13
of that of the Sun. So to date we do see the presence of a
• cloud, but it is of such tenuous nature that unless yon have
a very sensitive experiment, that is looking at low light
levels, it will not he significant.
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able to salvage from the SC-5 film. They do have the film
from the data acquisition camera. You know that Is the
French experiment. We're planning, at the present time -
We haven't been able between missions to resolve the film
problem. We went basically to - The French shifted to
basically the same film that Dr. Henlge was using, and we
have a material compatability problem, or something, so what
we plan to do is solve our film problem and send up a
couple of carrousels on SL-4.
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which you can say when or whether or not or how much trouble
it would be to get some more energy from the Sun and from
_-- space, in other words, to supplement the energy available.
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SL-III PC-9K/1
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this SPEAKER
time. We are Thank
running you,behind
Jack. s chedule.__t_
_,___Ifyou don_d, hear
I'd _ _e_ _
like to integrate some remarks here_on _reatur comforts into
all of this science by talking about 4_, also. Let me speak
to two experiments then instead of just the one that's adver-
tised before you. The experiment I'm principal investigator
for M516 entitled "Crew Activities, Maintenance Study." In
addition to tha_y_mmediate boss is the principal inves-
tigator for the_M48_xperiment entitled, "Habit ability Crew
Quarters." And _eh_o are basically inseparable. And I'd
like to speak to them in an integrated sort of a fashion
here for Just a few minutes. Somewhat differently from
what you have heard so far today associated with science
as a pure medium instead of using a particular piece of
hardware to gather information on a particular subject
area of science, we are indeed not experimenting, per se,
but conducting more of an observational investigation on
board in an attempt to evaluate the design adequacy of the
man/machlne interfaces on board Skylah. And instead of
using a tool or a sensor in a mechanical sense, we are
indeed using the man, the crewman, as our predominant
sensor. Consequently, most of our data is subjective
in nature, and the difficulty in an operation like this
is to reduce all of that subjective data to quantitative
numbers that can be used in the design and application of
._ downstream vehicles and products. Now with that kind of
disclaimer at the very beginning, let me say that the team
that has put together the protocol to conduct these two
experiments or operational analyses, if you will, is also
the same team that is going to have to reduce the data and
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SPEAKER (CONT'D) system, per se, worked out quite well, and
_- there were a minimum number of problems associated with that.
Hygiene also was one of the more pleasant surprises. And it's
interesting to compare the comments of the first timers with a
veteran. Pete had flown three different other missions, two
different types of spacecraft, and had been confronted with a
very Spartan type of hygienic facility, with which to do business
previously, And now he had one that was not so much different
than what you have at home. And for elimination of body wastes
and collection of those wastes and sampling of those wastes, it
was very well done, worked very well, and at no point during
the mission was there any sort of a major catastrophy. There
was no major urine spill, a major fecal catastrophy of any kind.
All of those collections went very nicely and smoothly and
were not a problem, and that particular kind of a device is
now a good candidate to be continued in future programs.
Certain engineering aspects of it, like the flow rate of the
air that moves through the fecal canister, it looks like it
could be increased to manifest a bit better retention. A bit
better separation of the bolus from the individual, but never-
theless, it did work fine. It was not a problem, and that
was one of the more pleasant surprises, ousekeeping turned
out to be what we sort of expected it would be. It takes time
to do and you must allot time within the mission time llne to
take care of that particular chore. The spacecraft stayed
extremely clean, and you heard previously, that the interior
of the spacecraft, from the aerosol analysis, was quite clean.
There weren't too many unusual things running around in there,
in terms of atmospheric containments, and very little contrib-
uted to that, other than in the wardroom, where the food was
consumed. There seems to no way at all that you can open one
of these snackpack cans and sever the membrane inside the
can without emitting a certain amount of what is in the can
into your habitable atmosphere. Occasionally, as you depart
from the can with the spoon, or the fork, or the knife, to
your mouth, yon' re going to separate a small amount of what-
ever it is you're trying to move, and you essentially spatter
a lot. And one of the more predominant comments that we re-
ceived from the crew along this line was that the wardroom
was the only place that seemed to get very dirty, and it was
full of a lot of nooks and crannies, t had a grid floor
for a ceiling and for a floor or had a gridwork for a
ceiling and a floor. And the recommendation was that in the
future, wherever it is in future spacedrafts that you eat,
that you make it flat surface. The waste management compart-
ment in Skylab consists predominently of flat surfaces, and
it was put together that way, Just so that the things that
go on in there could not leave that compartment and go out
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS :
PC 10
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SPEAKER Not with the camera, with the human eye,
" mainly from the crewmen, in terms of trying to evaluate the
capability - the spectral - the special characteristics and
extra capability the human eye observing features might add
to the complement of cameras. If there is such it's not
clear that there is, but it's something we want to investigate.
The human eye, after all, does serve many special functions.
One, is being able to integrate a scene as it moves over it, and
get rid of the flat view that a single photograph has. And is
able to pick up and zero in on many small obJeetsj which then
become - tend to get lost in the large-scale photographs that
are frequently taken. We're trying to make some sort of esti-
mation with these sets of observations of Skylab 3 and 4 in terms
of what, if any, partlcular type of visual activities might be
useful in space in terms of Earth Resources or is it all going to
be Just photographic. Almost unmanned-type observations. These
are this essentially completes the general llst of new experi-
ments which you can expect to hear about on Skylab 3, which were
not performed on Skylab 2. I might comment that in general,
beyond this, you will hear a great deal about most of the same
experiments about which you heard today. These experiments -
I might n_te are being repeated on Skylab 3 and will also then
further be repeated on Skylab 4 again for most of them; for a
couple of different reasons: i_ is Just plain to gain exposure
time, to observe the Sun with ATM for one pass, for one rotation
of the Sun is one thing, to gain more data, to know whether or
not that particular flare is what we saw. We saw a flare, but
one flare is not necessarily the same as all flares. So to con-
tinue those observations, to Just give you Just one particular
example, hoping to find other flares to see if they're all the
same or to see what differences there are from flare to flare,
which again would be a way of helping to understand them. is one
particular example. The other one is, in the medical area, for
instance, is another particular example, to extend_ of course_
from 28 to 56 or right now, 59 days. Beyond that, there is the
other fact that Just because three men react one way - a sample
of three men react in one way for 28 days - does not mean that
we don't want to enlarge that sample to look at the statistical
variations from man to man. That has always been one of the things
that plagues space medicine, in terms of the small number of
people going up, it is a very - not the sample of thousands which
doctors llke to work on in their national surveys and studies.
In EREP, for instance, as an examplep we're looking for seasonal
changes. Particularly now that We've seen the beginning of the
growing season, we'd like to see the end of it, and then of course,
on Skylah 4, the winter season. And also_ new geographical areas,
which is an extension of time. That's all. If you find you get
something - I guess it's a nubbin that it all comes down to anyways -
/
SL III PC10-B/2
Time: 16:30 CDT
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SPEAKER if you're trying to get a whole bunch of sites
done and you've Just three men for 28 days, you Just can't set out
to do it all at one time. You can do part of it in one mission, and
then set up to do part of it in the next mission, and part of it in
the mission afterward. We will see, by and large, 90 percent of the
mission of Skylab 3, will sound an awful lot like the mission of
Skylab 4. That's the way we intended it and I hope you're not too
surprised or disappointed when it comes out that way. There will be
new surprises and new interests, I'm sure. But it will sound 90
percent of the time very much llke three different people doing the
same thing all over again D and that is because there is so much to
be done. Thank you.
SPEAKER Thank you, Bob. Again _ I'm sorry that we can't
allow for questions_ but we are very late and welre gown g to have to
run along. I hope that Dr. Parker can perhaps stick around if some-
one wants to see him afterwards. At this time_ we'll move on to the
countdown status
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/
,- SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houst on _ Texas
PARTICIPANTS :
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- were over the limit 13,500 on the load. And since then you
have come down like 90 pounds. That seems llke an awfully big
off load from what you were last week.
KAPRYAN Well, that came about _s a result of
coming up with the optimum stowage configuration. We do
of course have concern that should have an unfortunate failure
shortly after llftoff and would have to have an earlier
abort such as the spacecraft would be impacting or landing
on land t we wanted to have the maximum clearance envelope
for the crew. And we have been working on that and finally
came up with the best configuration we could, yesterday, and
that required off loading some equipment. Also because of the
fact that it was necessary - we feel necessary for us to take the
rate gyro six pack up. That could cause a real of
p rob le m.
QUERY Are you still packing?
KAPRYAN Yes. The final stowage should be underway
its way at this time. We have some experimental - some
experiments that have to be installed. The time of stowage
is critical to llftoff time. i
QUERY Dr. Hawkins, again. Let's go hack to this
question of them not leaving the spacecraft immediately and
walking down the steps. What were some of the things
that you found that you would llke to have seen on the
crewmen on the first mission after splashdown? What were
some of the things you would have liked t@ have seen that
did not happen because, or as a result of hls walking in - -
HAWKINS I think it was quite o_vlous to
everybody watching TV that all 3 crewmen were unsteady on
their feet when they first got on the deck. And they had
a step to climb down and this was a struggle for them,
really, which I feel llke we can do a little bit better and
provide a little better arrangement for g_tting them out
of there and into the lab without adding a lot of extra
effort on their part to accomplish it.
QUERY But in no way was it a factor of the medical
examination ?
HAWKINS No. It was exactly what you saw and
I saw on TV in the way that they were able to navigate.
SPEAKER Do you have anymore questions?
Gentlemen thank you very much.
END OF TAPE
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
_ Houst on _ Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-If
SL Ill PC II-A/I
Time: 13:00 CDT
J'_ 7/27/73
r. 7/27/73
spend a few moments reporting to you on that. First, the
condition of the workshop in orbit - we have had a comprehensive
examination of the condition fo the workshop. Briefly, the
thermal situation is under control, the temperatures inside
vary as the beta angle of the orbit changes but they are
right now around 79 degrees. The electrical power system has,
if anything, gotten better since we were last there. And
our one major problem is the rate gyros which continue to
be in an area of uncertainty. But the vehicle is well
Icontrolled. Our uncertainty is in our redundant systems.
_Whlch brings me then to the readiness of Skylab If. And,
_brlefly there, the countdown is on schedule. Scheduling for
llftoff at - right now, it says 7:10 and 50 seconds for
approximately a 10-minute window. We have had some great
changes in the i_nal storage of the spacecraft, primarily
related with activities designed to allow us to repair the
rate gyros if they deteriorate any more. It has resulted in
some changes in our internal storage. Most notable, we did
remove two scientific experiments, SOO9, which is a nuclear
emulsion experiment and our friend M555, which we were
forced to delete from the Skyiab II spacecraft. Both of
these we hope to get on Skylab iV. The@'re both rather
large, heavy experiments. In addition to that, we had
some problem with the films on the French experiment - the
S183 panoramic ultraviolet panoramic camera. And because
of that uncertainty in the film we have not taken up any
camera cassettes. But we do have on board, as I stated,
a 6-pack of rate gyros which we may have to install when
we get up there - sometime while we' re up there. The launch
vehicle is in good shape.
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- were over the limit 13,500 on the load. And since then you
have come down like 90 pounds. That seems llke an awfully big
off load from what you were last week.
KAPRYAN Well, that came about _s a result of
coming up with the optimum stowage configuration. We do
of course have concern that should have an unfortunate failure
shortly after llftoff and would have to have an earlier
abort such as the spacecraft would be impacting or landing
on landt we wanted to have the maximum clearance envelope
for the crew. And we have been working on that and flnally
came up with the best configuration we could, yesterday, and
that required off loadlng some equipment. Also because of the
fact that it was necessary - we feel necessary for us to take the
rate gyro six pack up. That could cause a real of
p rob le m.
QUERY Are you still packing?
KAPRYAN Yes. The final stowage should be underway
its way at this time. We have some experimental - some
experiments that have to be installed. The time of stowage
iS critical to llftoff time. I
QUERY Dr. Hawkins, again. Let's go back to this
question of them not leaving the spacecraft immediately and
walking down the steps. What were some of the things
that you found that you would llke to have seen on the
crewmen on the first mission after splashdown? What were
some of the things you would have liked t_ have seen that
did not happen because, or as a result of hls walking in - -
HAWKINS I think it was quite o_vious to
everybody watching TV that all 3 crewmen were unsteady on
their feet when they first got on the deck. And they had
a step to climb down and this was a struggle for them,
really, which I feel like we can do a llt_le bit better and
provide a little better arrangement for getting them out
of there and into the lab without adding a lot of extra
effort on their part to accomplish it.
QUERY But in no way was it a factor of the medical
examination ?
HAWKINS No. It was exactly what you saw and
I saw on TV in the way that they were able to navigate.
SPEAKER Do you have anymore questions?
Gentlemen thank you very much.
END OF TAPE
•__ ._ T_ _
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PARTICIPANTS :
PC-12
f
SL Ill PC-12AA/I
TIME- 07'11 CDT
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7/28/73
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QUERY Looking back over the entire countdown
of those nearly 2 week periods, how would you stack that up
with other countdowns?
SPEAKER I can't think of any that we've had thetis
been smoother than this one. We had in the last 2 weeks_
we had - as you know we did have to change out a master event
sequence control on the spacecraft_ and a nitrogen package in the
SPS system, which was_ we donVt normally have that kind of
change out to do. But it was a straight forward operation_
so there was no panic to it. And of course todayls countdown_
I guess was about the smoothest weVve ever had.
PAO Craig, down here in the blue_ in front
of you. Thank you.
QUERY What's the time llne on stacking SL 4 in the
VAB_ and roll out on it? Well roll out would depend on the
scheduling. But what stack - -
SPEAKER No, roll out does not depend on schedule.
As you recall, we have to be prepared to fly a rescue mission.
So we're planning to roll out to the pad on the 20th of
August. The total launch vehicle minus the spacecraft will
be stacked by Wednesday. We'll stack the IB on Tuesday, the
SIVB on Tuesday also and we'll finish up the stack with the
boiler plate on Wednesday.
QUERY We seem to get a lot more of these little
minor anomolies that come up on the IB than we had on the
Saturn V. Would you attribute this to the age of the hardware
and the storage it had been through?
SPEAKER No, I don't think so. Z guess in all,
being candid about it I'd have to say we had as many minor
anomolies with Apollo, but we had a few bigger ones in the
countdown, we Just talked about the bigger ones. I don't
think we have - this countdown was as smooth as any we've
ever performed.
QUERY At llft-off what were the crew's reaction
llke, heart rate, that sort of thing?
SPEAKER Well, I can Just give you unofficial
information. I talked to Chuck Berry very briefly after the
lift-off. And speaking from memoryj I think Jack Lousma's
rate went up to 118 or 119. Garriott's went to 1 think a
peak of 108. And A1 Bean's went somewhere between 130 and
140. At one time during the - prior to lift-off_ Jack Lousma
actually dozed off quite a bit and his heart rate went down
to 38.
PAO Do you have any more questions. Do you
have any more questions from Houston?
SPEAKER None from Houston.
8L-II PC-12E/2
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Houston, Texas
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HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTI CIPANTS i
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HAWKINS No.
QUERY Will there be?
HAWKINS No, not a- not at this time.
HUTCHINSON No, we have a standard - I don't know
whether we got that thing done. we've gof a CO measurement, done
here during activation, which is be picked up in the
morning, I suspect, but it's just a - carbon monoxide measurement.
It was a standard thing in the Activation Flight Plan and we are
not doing anything special or out of the ordinary - - to
measure any strange constituents in the atmosphere, which
there aren't any. If you recall, we Just filled it up with
fresh 02 here anyway, the last over the last couple of
days, from almost a vacuum.
! KUKOWSKI We got a couple of questions handed
in here from Mary Baba. All but one has been answered, Mary.
Third question was did the crew get any rest period today?
How long? Dr. Hawkins said they had about an hour's rest.
KUKOWSKI ABC News - What time has been established
for EVA on day 5? Any hard time hack on that?
HUTCHINSON No. I don't think the time when - the
day we pick to do the EVA, the times will be effectively
the same Just about, plus or minus a little hit, because we
are Jockeying around to get the best station coverage, hut they
will be more or less the same as they were on the original
day.
SPEAKER One final question from Art Hill, Chronicle.
Will MII0, the blood letting experiment as he puts it here,
(laughter) be conducted in the morning?
HAWKINS Put that in quotes, will you?
KUKOWSKI Right. It's in quotes. (laughter)
SL-III PC-17D/2
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j-- SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
IIOUSTON, TEXAS
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PC15
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QUERY
nominally scheduled. Could you go through some of the EVA "_.
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"_ all in the right place. Still have some things to take out
of the CSM and so the afternoon we have left completely open
for them to kind of regroup and then we will pick up Wednesday
with what we hope is a fairly normal flight plan routine
leading to an EVA on Thursday. Now, if we don't make a lot of
progress tomorrow on finishing up the activation we probably
- delay the EVA another day - wouldn't surprise me. The point
here is what we want to do is get the vehicle turned on and
get everything settled down including the crew so when we do
pick up with full-bloomlng experiment operations we aren't
going to have to do it in a nonnormal fashion. And I'm
satisfied that thing s are going along pretty well. It's slow
but we are certainly making progress and we are going to work
on it again some more tomorrow.
PAO Thank you, Nell. Dr. Buchanan do you have
a statement you would llke to - -
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followed medical advice. We have given them some latitude
In - In the rate at which they approach this and I don't
th[llk that there has really been any violation of that. I
think that what they are doing is - and certainly the move-
ments that they are making are as effective as if they were
seated and going through the prescribed head movements which we
had proposed. It gives you the same results.
QUERY One final - Just one final follow, if
it gives you the same results to go about and Just do your
business, then why do you have the head movements planned in
the first place?
HAWKINS Because we proposed this as a means
whereby they could sit still and do it and not have to be
going about the activation phase if they in fact did not feel
up to that task.
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with the longer time frame of this mission that some of the
runs that we might have to put off now, some of the 487
evaluations, you know, where the crew is giving their subjective
feel of the spacecraft, that type of thing, which you try to
do early in the mission, those things are not going to be
seriously impacted by a few days' delay. And as the crew
becomes more and more acclimated and more proficient in how
they accomplish their activities, we feel llke we're going
to regain a major portion of those items.
QUERY There's one thing on the EVA slipping
that I wish you would explain to me. Maybe my concept on
this thing is wrong, but I suddenly have the feeling that
the ATM has been clicking away unattended now for quite
some period of time and I'm wondering about some of those
cassettes running out of film if the EVA is delayed too
long, and you having to sacrifice something there.
PUDDY No, no, we still have some film. Also,
if you will remember, we did have some concern a few days
ago, when we lost the primary UP/DOWN gyro, and as a
consequence of that loss, we did delay for a period of
about, I believe it was about 5 days, accomplishing any of
the unmanned ATM operations. So, we have at least that 5 days
and even then, we had extra film. So, noj there is no
concern about running out of film on the three experiments
that we are running in this phase.
QUERY Don, I'm curious when the decision to
go on the EVA no earlier than Saturday was made, when yes-
terday evening we were still no earlier than Thursday. Was
this an emergency call overnight type thing? I mean, the
crew got it before wakeup time and we didn't really know
anything about it.
PUDDY No, I don't think it was any emergency
at all. In fact, I sat down last night with the mission
scientist and some of the ideas that he had come up with
as representative from the various Pls as to what was the
most optimum to try to aecomplish in the time frame, and
we looked at those items and Just said, well look, we're
really not convinced that everything is going to go Just
exactly as planned. In other words, some of these things
may take a little bit longer. We've come up with a couple
of anomalies, llke this condensate tank that we spent quite
a bit of time on yesterday and weren't really able to solve.
We had a star tracker, as you probably - Ne_l briefed you on
last night that the door on it stuck and we haven't quite
psyched all that one out yet. We've had a little concern
on the SO55 door. Finally got that operating perfectly wlth
two motors, late yesterday. A few of these things that we
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8/1/73
MEDICAL BRIEFING
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
AUGUST 1_ 1973
5:24 PM CDT
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PC-26
SL-III PC-26A/I
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8_2_73 _
recovery posture that is available is one that says If we \
wanted to return the vehicle quickly, we could always retur,\
it very quickly, but if we wanted to return it in a reasonable \
well planned way, we would probably be thinking about comlng _
down probably tomorrow in the Hawaiian area and recovery with \
the helicopters. I should hasten to point out that we are
not necessarily planning to do that, that is one of the
options available. The other option which looks some what
more favorable at this time is to sit tight ad try to better]
understand what is going on with _s, and
understand whether there is any related condition in the ]
spacecraft that we might find in effect later in the other
quads and at the same time we have talked to the Cape about
planning, making plans necessary to accelerate the next /
vehicle in flow such that it could be available as a rescue /
vehicle. We have not turned that flow on, that is to say /
we have not made the decision that we should actually fly /
the next vehicle as though it were going to be flown as a /
rescue vehicle, but we are now verifying all the plans, et /
cetera, that would have to be made in order to /
premlt that to happen. The earliest launch date for such /
a rescue mission would be perhaps on the order on 5 weeks /
from now. I heard a September 10, but you have to accept /
that is a very preliminary number as the earliest time whlc_
/
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What are the factors that would cause you to bring it down
quickly or the factors that would cause you to distort the
flow on the rescue mission?
LUNNEY Well, I'm inclined to think that where
we are now, we will probably end up sitting tight, Paul.
If we had a further problem, depending on what it was, that
might force _s to either come down or to stay, depending
on where the problem was. But with the conditions as
they are now, and having some feel for what we're going to
get out of the research of what kind of oxidizer we put in,
et cetera. That is, looking at what might possibly have
happened and how we could characterize it. I don't see any -
I can't put mY finger on any fact that I would llke to uncover
that says hay, everything is fine and we can use the ship
and come on in. I don't think we could make the risk that
we would have with that, go away. That may not be an entirely
adequate response to your question, but so far everything
that we have turned up, and I don't know how much else we
can, does not give any cause to correlate the problem with
th_ two systems. And therefore you're left kind of with the
uneasy feeling that you can't prove anything, but you sort
of suspicion that there may be. And you are therefore a
llttle bit reluctant to go ahead and undock unless, for other
reasons, you really think you have to.
QUERY I want to be sure I understood what you
Just said, Glynn. Because if I'm reading you correctly, you're
pretty well throwing out the idea of coming down tomorrow.
You're looking at taking at least a longer time to study
this thing and work it over.
LUNNEY Yeah, thatts my opinion, Roy. It's obviously
not a considered opinion of everybody in the business. But
my opinion right now is that we will continue to look at it for
a while, and not necessarily come down tomorrow. But that's
really one of the options in your hearing Glynn Lunney's opinion
of whatts going to come of looking at those options. Okay.
PAO Any further questions? We had several
questions called in, but I think in the course of the questions
that we got from here we've answered them. We'll pick up
with Chuck Lewis when he arrives.
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HOUSTON , TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-29
SL-III PC-29A/I
Time: 18:00 CDT
812173
PAO A1 Flagle.
WINDLER In fact, I haven't even read that
transcript so y'all know more than I do about it.
QUERY Having not heard probably all the alr-to-
ground, has the crew had anything to say? Have you sensed
any feeling they've had so far as this new problem is concerned?
QUERY Any psychological - -
WINDLER Well, you need to get the transcript of
the conversation between they and Dr. Kraft and read it.
They seem to be very happy about the decision to continue.
QUERY Milt, have you got any inputs on the
science types that they're concerned that these so-called
spock was floating around and might contaminate the area and
degrade some of their experiments?
WINDLER No. No, I haven't. And I guess the
,i
SL-III PC-29A/2
Time: 18:00 CDT
8/2/73
_-_ reason for that is that number one, the of course the ATM
equipments is generally buttoned up. We have had another
malfunction on one of the ATM doors - the S055 door. Or,
I should say an anomaly I guess, in which it didn't at f_rst
indicate OPEN. It's similar to the things that have happened
in the past. So we're still looking at that. But the corol-
lary people - the only one of them that has an instrument
out is having trouble with that is, the S073 gave us some
trouble yesterday - or I guess this morning. Excuse me.
So really we're not in a full-blown experiment mode which
is kind of - tended to not make that question you just asked
come up yet. If we'd been in a normal ATM viewing, why we
probably would have - they would have been more concerned.
QUERY Do you have - - Go ahead.
QUERY Do you have any feeling for is there
some way of overcoming this? Is there some way of doing
something to overcome this?
WINDLER The sparkllngs?
QUERY Yes.
WINDLER Well, I think they'll go away. I'ii
presume that that's the oxidizer that was leaking - it'll
vaporize and go away.
PAO Tom, do you have a question
WINDLER In fact, we haven't seen anything on the
QCM - these contamination devices. We haven't even seen
anything on those. But then they don't respond to all kinds
of contamination of course.
PAO Tom O'Toole?
QUERY I might be repeating something that was
answered earlier, but how does this rescue thing impact the last
Skylab mission? Does it - -
WINDLER I don't know the answer to that. You'll
have to get Mr. Schneider's briefing. Let me tell you - I
wanted to answer that. I've been busy trying to work with
the crew all afternoon and make trying to make S073 work,
and get through all the medical runs and do the startracker
and watch condensate tank, and a few odds and ends like that.
And all the off-llne people have been working on running down such
things as where the batches of oxidizer came from and what
the status is of all the vehicles at the Cape, et cetera. And
so I really have not kept up with that. But I understand that
all that was discussed by Bill Schneider here a couple of
hours ago - an hour ago. So I really don't have anything
else to add to that.
PAO Right here.
QUERY A couple of - MilE, dealing with things
that you ought to know about, I guess - -
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go into those. You probably know what they are. The - the cooling
systems - we've had, you know, the trouble with the AM cooling
system and refrigeration system. A similar type device where
apparently contamination is in a valve that goes from the
cold source back to the bypass and doesn't allow complete
flow through the cold side. The pressurization system - we
had a bad indication on one of the valves, but that didn't
cause us any problems and that's of no real problem right now.
In fact, that system has worked very well. The the basic
instrumentation on the spacecraft is working well. The
communication system is. We have one transmitter that's
degraded. But that's not really causing us any problems.
Not any problems. We have the - today's video tape recorders
apparently acted up and may have a problem with that. I
guess that's perhaps more serious to y'all than to the rest
of the mission. But all of us since we're all interested in
getting that, but it doesn't affect the scientific return, really.
We ought not to overlook the fact though, of course, that that
there is We've always said that the Skylab is a complicated
vehicle and there is - there are a lot of systems on Skylab,
itself and most of these systems are working very nicely.
And it may be it's behaving a lot llke - like an airplane.
You know, the more you fly them, the better they are. And
leavin 8 them sitting around in the ramp, and they tend to
get hydrolic leaks and things llke that. And so, as we
keep using these systems, theyVll probably get better too.
I didn't about cover them all, but _hat's probably a reasonable
synopsis.
PAO More questions here. Milt's expressed
a desire to get back as soon as posEible. So, if we have anymore
questions - Thanks, thank you Milt.
END OF TAPE
S
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston_ Texas
PARTICIPANTS :
PC-30
SLIII PC30-A/1
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Time: 09:32 CDT
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-31
SL-III PC-31A/1
Time: 15:06 CDT
8/3/73
SL-III PC-31A/2
Time: 15:06 CDT
8/3/73
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Time: 1506 CDT
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-32
SL-III PC32A/1
Time: 1707 CDT
8/3/73
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-34
SL-III PC- 34A/I
Time: 16:54 CDT
8/4/73
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Time: 16:54 CDT
8/4/73
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-33
_. SL-III PC-33A/1
Time: 09:52 CDT
8/4/73
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8_4_73
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Time: 09:52 CDT
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-35
SL-III PC-35A/I
Time: 17:34 CDT
8/5/73
probably will do the 149 next and then the 230 S230 experiment
which is taking some aluminum loll off of one of the experiment
mounted on one of the tubes or the structural numbers on
the TRUSS there. Somewhere in there, when it's convenient,
in the daytime, of course, we'll go around to the side and
look underneath at this thing they call the power distribu-
tion transfer distribution box that, we think, contains the
area that's shorted, to see if there's anything they can
see there. I don't know if they'll see any wires discolored
or whatever, but they will be looking at that and they will
also be looking at the RCS quads. We're not sure exactly
what we're going to get from this but we feel like we have
to do the - try of going ahead and looking at it so that if
there is anything out there we'll know it, or we'll al least
satisfy ourselves if there is nothing. Tomorrow that's
about all there is on the flight plan, is the EVA and the
post-EVA. We still need some time for the crew to sit down
and work on their checklists and if they should happen to
get through earlier, why, they could do that tomorrow. They've
got a few small housekeeping tasks that they have to do
associated with their normal operations. You've asked
me several times about when the EVA was going to be, and we
want to give you the work in estimate - working man's estimate
on the AM depressurization and that's 10:50 tomorrow morning
central daylight. So you can make a note of that. That's
the concensus opinion among the procedural experts. My guess
it's a little bit earlier than that - -
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SL-III PC-35D/I
Time: 17:34 DT
8/5/73
they did noticed a very slow leak rate for some period of
time before the large larger rate was observed early in
the morning, whatever day that was. So other than that that's
and that's all really kind of old data, so that's all I know
now, you now what I know. Let me tell you that they tried the
malfunctions on the spider and the couldn't make the equipment-
camera equipment work, so they shook her out of the little
vile and I understand she didn't want to come out, but they
finally got her out and she kind of provoked for awhile, but
then clung on to the screen, and I hadn't heard any words
on any webs spinning starting yet. But, anyway the spider is
activated I guess, as far as that goes.
END OF TAPE
SL-III PC35F/I
Time: 17:34 CDT
815173
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS :
PC-37
F
SL-III PC-37A/I
Time: 09:47 CDT
8/6/73
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SL IIl PC-37B/I
TIME: 09:47 CDT
816173
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Time: 09:47 CDT
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TIME: 09:47 CDT
816173
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-36
SL-III PC36A/I
Time : 0 :40 CDT
8/6/73
END OF TAPE
SL-III PC-36B/I
Time: 00:40 CDT
8/6/73
THOMAS
(CONT'D) in or around the 60-day time frame, you
can see that far exceeds the - the original magnltude of the
Skylab 3 mission, so there no reason to believe that we cou]d
not complete the normal Skylab 3 mission.
PAO A1 Rustler, UPI.
QUERY Do you loose anything when you switch from
the primary to the secondary loop as far as operations?
THOMAS No, the two loops are - the two loops
are completely redundant. Everything cooled on the primary, is
also cooled on the secondary.
PAO Ed Pipp.
QUERY Do present mission rules permit you to
go with just one coolant loop, this isn't continue to hazard
considered a hazard of any sort?
THOMAS No.
QUERY How could something llke this come about
a leak over a period time that reaches a point where they
get what I understand is a low level light on during this
period of time without it being detected on the ground sooner?
THOMAS Well, I think what I was talking about
earlier Ed, was the fact that there is a lot associated with
this loop. We've got i0 reservoirs in this particular loop - -
END OF TAPE
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Time: 00:40 CDT
816173
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Time: 00:40 CDT
8/6/73
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Time: 00:04 CDT
816173
_" do you feel? Do you think the chances are good that you
can the next crew can go up and replenish the supply or
what?
PUDDY I'm always optimistic.
QUERY But you don't know for sure?
PUDDY No. I could sit here and say that tomorrow
we'll have all the procedures and all the thoughts worked
out where you can go up there and reservice or that you
can even reservice?
QUERY And if you can't then you'll lose the last
mission?
PUDDY If there was no way to reservice and there
was no way to operate only on the ATM electrical power system,
you would lose the Skylab-IV mission. And I'm not say_ -
I'm not ruling out that we could not operate in the CSM,
with the ATM power system for a fairly lengthy Skylab-IV
mission. The fact is we've still got quite a bit of power
from the those two sources. And if you'll remember, we
ran quite a while without the AM system.
QUERY If you had to reservlce, how much coolant
would you have to take up? And how would you _plenish?
What is there a little valve that you open up and you pour
the stuff in to, or what?
PUDDY There would have to be some special
equipment developed to put this liquid in the loop. How
r much we take up of course, is - when we take it up and how
much we've leaked during the time frame like I say right now,
we're down about 7 pounds in the primary loop. So, you know,
if we reserviced tomorrow, you're talking 7 pounds. And
we're leaking we think somewhere around ,074 pounds per day.
So you can more or less take that - I think what is it
around 7 or 8 pounds a gallon - give you some rough feel
for the amount of liquid you've have to carry.
THOMAS Total reservoir capacity is about 26
pounds .
QUERY Twenty-slx pounds? Does it - what does
that work out in gallons?
PUDDY I don't know what the density of coolanol is.
QUERY It's several gallons.
PUDDY Let's make a rough guestlmate and say it's
somewhere between 3 and 4 gallons, l'm sure it's close to
that. I
END OF TAPE
SL-III PC36G/I
Time: 00:40 CDT
816173
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SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-38
SL-III PC-38A/1
Time: 16:31 CDT
816173
f
SL-III PC-38A/2
Time: 16:31 CDT
8/6/73
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SL-III PC38B/I
Time: 16:31CDT
_-_ 8/6/73
SPEAKER (garble)
QUERY Are you saying now that the secondary
loop has the capacity, as you see it now, to go throughout the
whole SL-IV mission into mid-January ifthere is a November
launch?
HARDY Let's see I'ii have to do a little mental
calculating here in days, but the answer to that is yea,
assuming that the situtaion remains stable as it does and
our calculations doesn't show any differently, but we feel that
way about it right now.
QUERY What is the rational behind the using
up the primary down to this point that you were talklng about
before to switching to the secondary?
HARDY Well it the leak in the system would be
very difficult to isolate and there is pressure on the loop
even when the pumps are not running in fact the pressure
upstream of the pumps is essentially the same whether the pumps
are running or not. It's some what a kin to the refrigeration
system in your refrigerator where you have a locked up pressure.
QUERY Bill, what is your mission rule, assuming
that you deplete the fluid in the primary loop during this
mission. Would you go for the SL-IV without reservicing the
primary loop, in other words would you - -
SCRNEIUER We can't reserviee the primary loop as
we are now.
QUERY Last night we were told that there might
be a possibility of reserviclng the system in that - that is
inoperative now?
SCHNEIDER I wasn't no, no, no, no, no.
SCHNEIDER Hey, let me just say, you guys want to what
we're thinking and our thought process is very dynamatic and
so you get very dynamatic stories from us, so don't so don't
be surprised if they do change. We try to do it that way, so
that you know the way that we're thinking at all times, but I
think - I didn't hear that press conference last night, but I
would assume what they were talking about last night is that's
we're looking at an option of bringing up a servicing kit, much
like the six pack, but obviously there's nothing like that in
orbit now and we would have to bring that up on Skylab IV. Now
Marshall will continue looking at that and I assume that if
we do have one go bad and six - servicing kit is available
for us before, we'll probably try very hard to get it on.
QUERY That's my question really. Would you
commit to another mission knowing that you had only the
secondary loop available?
SCHNEIDER Oh, yes, yes, yes.
SL-III PC38B/3
Time: 16:31 CDT
/-_ 8/6/73
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SL-1II PC-38C/1
Time: 6:31 CDT
:_" 7/6/73
loop and what could you say at this point about possible
causes for the leak in the primary coolant loop?
HARDY We will, as you can well imagine, go into
a concentrated program for very close periods of monitoring
both temperature and pressure in this loop, in order to get
a finer granularity in the predictions than what we have right
now. We're working sort of on a day-to-day basis. And we'll
obviously be looking at temperatures and pressures now, on
an hourly basis trying to get a finer trace of what's hap-
pening iobetween those points. I would think that several
days of that - tracking that will give us a much better -
will, I think, confirm what we now believe that there is no
leak in the secondary loop, or a very small leak indeed. And
I think we'll be able to quantitize that leak from that from
monitoring that data. With regards to the source of the pri-
mary leak in the primary system, I think again, that it is
certainly reasonable, very reasonable postulation for this
week. And many fittings that we do have in the system. There
was an incident that we are not necessarily connecting at
this time because we haven't researched the data sufficiently,
in the - during the first EVA where we did experience an
anomaly in the control valves in these loops, such that we
feel like we did expose some heat exchangers that have water
passes through those heat exchangers. And the temperature
is at resulted in freezing of those heat exchangers. Now
whether anything could have happened at that time which could
have initiated a leak, we're not sure. We're going to look
at that. We're going to have the crew do some inspection,
internal to the cabin. But I would say that it's certainly
a very reasonable postulation that with over a thousand con-
nections of this type that we could very easily be leaking
in one of those connections. Especially since many of them
have been ther - subject to the thermal cycling on a multi-
daily basis.
QUERY I'm a little confused now. I thought it was
the secondary loop that was associated with theEVAand the
primary loop with launch. And you just used the primary con-
nected with the EVA.
HARDY That was what you were told I believe last night,
and I had mentioned earlier,I don't think in looking at the
data, particular in the earlier part of the mission, when we
were, as you well know, orbiting the vehicle in various atti-
tudes to maintain thermal stability. It's extremely difficult
to look in - at that data and that time frame and determine
where the leak in the primary may have started. The leak
rate that we talked about last night and the prediction of
mass that we have in the - -
END OF TAPE
SL-III PC 38D/I
Time: 16:31 CDT
8/6/73
Ir
SL-III PC 38D/2
Time: 16:31 CDT
8/6/73
END OF TAPE
SKYLAE NEWS CENTER
HOUSTONI TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-39
SI,-I [ t PC-39A/1
Time: 20:05 CDT
g/6/73
F •
SL-III PC-39A/2
Time: 20:05 CDT
8/6/73
f-,
got each - each rod that we string out is 55 feet long and
it's ii rods that are each 5 feet. To connect these rods,
one rod goes inside another and it's got two little pins
and you stick it in and rotate it. But with a lot of motion
and torquing we get with this rod, you can bend the joint
here, so we have a nut, that once you go in and you rotate
It - a bayonet-type connection and make the connection, you
run this nut down on top of it to give you a tight fit.
Woll, in zero g, nuts and bolts, if they don't have a lock
washer or something llke that - constant tension on them,
they tend to just float there and there's no friction
between the nut and the thread and they'll Just unwind.
They can unwind by themselves with just any little motion
they'll unwind. So, after running this nut down to give you
a tight fit, we had a rubber grommet that's like
a rubber doughnut, on the rod and all you have to do
is push the grommet and it rolls down on top of the
threads and it stops this nut from backing off. So
that's what we used the grommets for. Now, in - the
rods are all stowed - on a rod pole plate. That's how we
drag all the rods out there on two plates. And they're
stowed - say where Owen pulls them out like pulling an
arrow out of a quiver. The nuts down here and the grommets
sitting here and it's a nylon tether that goes around the
rod and it holds it on that plate. That's what holds the
rod and he's grabbing this end up here and he's pulling
trying to get the rod out. And until he got the fix or a
better method of getting that rod out, it was taking him,
we calculated, 7 minutes to get each rod out and get it
affixed to the rods exceeding it. After he came up with
a better way of doing it it only took him about 2 minutes
per rod. And of course you heard his pass up to him that
he did have some scissors in _he airlock to cut this thing.
And we were worried that the grommet was sitting on top
of the nut and when he pulled it out that little nylon
retainer slid the grommet down over onto the lower part
of the bayonet portion of the rod and therefore he'd have
to lift the grommet up and roll it back which with a gloved
hand would be very hard. So what he did is he reposltloned
himself with respect to the pole plate so that he hmd a
method of torquing the rod and at the same time rolling it.
And so he rolled the grommet underneath the retaining line.
And that's a very simple basic thing, but it points out
one of the differences between getting a method of doing
something. And the other thing is that the flight item
was different from what we had in training in the water.
If we had a high fidelity trainer in the water we would have
SL-I [I PC-39A/3
Time: 20:05 CDT
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Time: 20:05CDT
816173
think they are exaggerating how in their own minds - how big
they think the sall should have been. There's no way you can
_et that parasol covered up. Lengthwise you can but not
[atera]ly or in width. And I have faith it's deployed exactly
the way it ought to be, but the way the temperatures are coming
down it looks llke it is.
QUERY One final remote question it's almost
redundant but just a little bit - have they taken any pictures
of Arabella as yet?
SPEAKER Yes, they have, they've taken still photos.
PAO Any more questions from the floor. Yes
wait for the microphone.
QUERY I may have been late when you started, so
I don't know whether you answer that question about the tem-
perature. Do you know precisely how much it decreased since
the sail is on?
WINDLER What we said was they've already started
coming down it takes awhile for that to stahlize so they.
SPEAKER I didn't hear the numbers we were AOS and
we heard them calling it - to call it up to the crew and we
only had two stations what was it Vanguard and Ascension
after they got in. But it looks like a pretty fast response.
PAO Pete.
QUERY Milt, why did you say that didn't really
expect to see anything in looking for particularly evidence
of coolant leaks because we've been told that the coolant
leaks were external now is there some reason why yon wouldn't
see a_ything?
WINDLER Basically.
QUERY Even if it were external?
WINDLER The fluid is expected essentially to
sublimate - freeze and sublimate and not really smear
all over the place. The engineering people they told us they
didn't have much hope for that any - in any of these areas
really but - -
SPEAKER Then where leaks is covered up by thermal
blankets or behind boxes and that sort of thing.
QUERY It wouldn't tend to impinge against something
and that kind - dribble around the edge and leave some - -
SPEAKER I suppose it would if it didn't freeze first.
PAO No further questions, thank youStory.
M[It thank you.
END OF TAPE
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
Houston, Texas
pARTICIPANTS:
PC-40
SL-III PC-40A/I
Time: 09:40 CDT
817173
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SL III PC-4OB/I
TIME: 09:40 CDT
,-_ 8_7_73
SL III PC-40B/2
TIME: 09:40 CDT
8_7/73
END OF TAPE
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS
PC-41
SL-III PC41A/I
Time: 15:53 CDT
8_7_73
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-43
SL-III PC43A/I
Time: 17:29 CDT
_.. 8/8/73
818173
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SL-III PC43B/I
Time: 1729 CDT
8_8/73
(CONT'U) that the - this spider actually eats the web at night
and then starts afresh the next day.
QUERY Only on the center of it center part.
SPEAKER Right. Now as far at the - -
QUERY That_ that the framework in the corners
of the cage?
SPEAKER I cantt answer that. But I can say that
we were curious about that and there is a question going up
to the crew tonight to find out Just exactly what Arabella's
doing.
PA0 Any further questions?
PA0 I have two questions phoned in. Any
further word on Arabella. Can camera systems record
the spinning of the web.
SPEAKER I think we've covered both of those.
QUERY Yes. And the other was that tomorrow's
EREP pass, we covered that -- Thank you very much. That's
it.
SPEAKER I do have a map up here if y'all would llke
to look at it that kind of shows the track for today and various
instruments that were used. That'll give you a better feel of -
END OF TAPE
SKYLAB NEWS CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
PARTICIPANTS:
PC-42
SL-III PC42A/I
15:02 CDT
8/8/73
END OF TAPE
SL-III PC42B/I
T_me: 15:02 CDT
8/8/73
END OF TAPE
SL-III PC42C/I
15:02 CDT
8/8/73
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SL-III PC42D/1
Time: 1502 CDT,
8/8/73
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S|.-II I PC42E/I
Time: ].5:02 CDT
/_ 8/8/73
END OF TAPE