.

-APOLLO 5 PRE-LAUNCH PRESS COhJFERENCE

~ ~ Eb - -e m L o L r -

w--"

Dee. No.

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News center John ~ i n n e Space Center d ~ National Aeronautics and Spzce Administration

$ J

Sunday, January 21, 1968

2:30 P.M.

Participants

Wiilim C. Schneider, Apollo Mission Director, Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA Rocco A. Fetrone, Director of Launch Operations, Kennedy Space Center, NASA George M. Low, Manager, k p o l l o Spacecraft Program Office, Manned SpacecrnFt Center, NASA 601. William Teir, Manager, S a t ~ ~ I/IB Pi*ogrc?mOffice, Marshal! rn Space Flight Center, NASA
*

Col. Royce Olson, Director, Department of Defense Manned Flight Support Office Manned Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. , Director, Flight !lperiiio&, Spacecraft Center, W,SA E t r g c n ~ Kuanz, A p o l l ~ Ffigi~tDirector, F1 igh! Operations, F. 5 Maiined Spacecraft Get~teu,NASA

Mr. King:

The countdown for the Apollo 5 mission is proceeding toward a planned l i f t o f f time o f 2 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, tomorrow, Monday, January 22. To cover some brief logistics, here i n the News Center we w i l l be open a l l night tonight, phone 783-7781, and we w i l l have people available with up-to-date information on the status of the mission and the count throughout the evening and the early morning hours. We w i l l be coming up, probably just about the time we come out of the built-in hold, with the commentary which starts a t about T-3 hours and 30 minutes in the count. During the morning hours we w i l l have up-to-date information on how we stand up to that time before the commentary begins. There w i l l be a postlaunch conference a t Press Site 2 a t T 60 minutes, and there w i l l be a post mission conference some 7 1/2 to 8 hours following liftoff. This w i l l take place i n Houston a t the Manned Spacecraft Center. It w i l l also be piped i n here a t the News Center anci a t the Press Site a t the Cape.

I would now like to introduce the five gentlemen here a t the Cape and we have two gentlemen standing by i n Houston who w i l l participate i n this afternoon's conference. From my right, here a t the Cape, we have Col. Royce Olson, who i s Director o f Department o f Defense Manned Spaceflight Support Office. Next is Mr. Rocco A. Petrone, who i s Director o f Launch Operations for the Kennedy Space Center and Launch Director for the Apollo 5 mission; Mr. Wm. C . Schneider, who i s Apollo 5 Mission Director, Office o f Mantled Space Flight, NASA Headquarters. Next, Mr. George M Low, who i s Apollo Program Manager from the Manned Spacecraft Center, And finally, here a t the Cape, Col. William Teir, who is Manager of the Saturn IB Program Office a t NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. And to clarify right away, I believe the name i s correctly spelled i n front o f Col. Teir, and Correct? incorrectly spelled in several other places, it is T-E-I-R. we And standing by i n Hoi~ston have Christopher Kraft, who i s Director o f Flight Operations for the Manned Spacecraft Center, and also frorn MSC, Mr. Gene Kranz, who i s the Apollo 5 Flight Director. Mow we w i l l start with Mr. Schneider, please.

Mr. Schneider:

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, tve have just completed our examination of a l l of the vehicles and the systems, the status o f the network, the Department of Defense support forces, the aircraft, and last, but not least, the weather. And everything isas planned for our 2400 liftoff tomorrow. That's 1400 Eastern Standard Time. We did pick up the count this morning at about--at exactly--10 a.m., and as of right now, everything is proceeding smoothly and as planned. Mow we w i l l s t i l l plan our 6-hour built--in hold that we have always in our schedule, which ends 2t 10:30 tomorrow morning.

Now, this i s the maiden voyage o f a very complex vehicle, and it i s a very busy plan, or very good plan, I should say, of about six and a half hours duration. During that time we w i l l be firing the descent propulsion system, or the DPS (dips) as you may hear i f referred to. We w i l l fire that twice, the first one occurring just after four hours into the mission. Following the second and last DPS firing, we w i l l stage the vehicle, and do a "fire i n the hole" burning of the ascent propulsion system and then finally on the last orbit we w i l l do the second and last firing o f the ascent propulsion system, a firing i o depletion. That w i l l take approximately six and a half hours i f everything goes as planned and w i l l conclude the preplanned portion of the mission except for one activity I should mention. We s t i l l w i l l be conducting one o f our major exercises. We hope we w i l l be monitoring the status o f the S-IVB until it quits, and we do expect that that w i l l last after that six and a half hours. We w i l l also have a couple bonus activities that we w i l l gain out o f this mission, the first one being an exercise designed to safe the S-IVB vehicle which we w i l l do on the first rev. And secondly, i f the mission goes as we had planned, as described i n the press kit, we do hope that we w i l l have some consumables left and we w i l l then go into a series of preplanned activities similar to what we have done in the past with the Agena, which, i f you recall was a t the end of the planned mission we did exercise some of the systems on the Agena to see how it would behave. Similarly, i n this mission, we w i l l be exercising those backup systems that we have not previously used and we w i l l be using some commands that we had not used, just to see what does happen and we w i l l be doing some reaction control system firings i n some phenomenal situations. Essentially I believe that takes us up to twelve or thirteen hours, i f we have enough consumables on board a t the end that we can do everything. I n addition to that, since this i s a relatively complex vehicle and it i s a maiden voyage, the people i n Houston, the flight control people, have come up with some preplanned ideas on what they would do i n case they had various types o f postulated equipment failures. I would like to say that we have these preplanned procedures but they do of course assume a failure, a type o f failure, and they do of course assume that we do have sufficient time to activate the backup modes, and some of these do require some pretty fast stepping on the part of Gene Kranz and his people. So, while we have these modes, these alternate modes, and we are looking, we are grateful that we have them because many of these alternate modes w i l l allow us to achieve most of our primary mission objectives, even in the event of some failures. I do caution you, howe\~cr,

that while we have the modes available to us, it i s not at a l l certain that i f we are called upon to exercise them that we will, I think that i s about a l l I've got to say about this mission, and I guess we can turn it over the Questions and Answers. Mr.King: Okay, we are ready to proceed with questions here a t the Cape. We w i l l also come to you a l l i n Houston i n a short while with questions from there.

Mr. Dederer:

A couple here first. One, how did the fueling go on the LM, and I understand it has been considered quite hazardous because o f the involvement o f the SLA and.1 just wondered how this fueling event went.

Mr. Schneider:

Doug, I consider that it went very well. It took a l i t t l e longer than we had laid out because o f extra precautions, but I be1ieve that it went very successfully

Mr. Dederer:

Another one, how long w i l l the LM remain i n orbit before it i s expected to come back i n ? Chris, why don't you answer that, or Gene? Primarily because we do not know the orbit the spacecraft w i l l remain i n after we get through, and certain tolerances on the cutoff condition. It w i l l probably be anywhere from days to weeks. Could you elaborate a l i t t l e b i t on what you did today as far a s preparations were concerned? Did you fuel the LM for example? The LM fueling was completed actually some days ago, I think it was about a week, you know you lose reference of time--we are working around the clock. But i n terms o f today, we say we picked up the count a t 1 0 o'clock this morning, that i s Eastern Standard. Up to that period o f time, we had been doing many checks which we do in any normal recycle. We came out o f our countdown demonstration, we dried out the bird, drained it, dried, go back in, make leak checks, and a t the time we picked up this morning, we started installations of batteries. These are batteries that have to be activated some 4 8 hours before the mission, These are put in, or are being put i n now, proceeding to a launch vehicle power up i n about 3 hours on into power transfer this evening. The activities we had planned today are p a t of the normal count and a recycle coming out of our operation late Friday night. A l l the propellant loading o f the spacecraft has been completed prior to picking up the count. The only loading we do during the cotintdown i s aboard the Saturn IB with the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

Mr. Schneider: Answer:

Mr. Salestead:

Mr. Petrone:

Question:

I wonder i f perhaps Mr. Low might be the right man to do this. I f you could run down those systems, subsystems I suppose, which are not on LM-1 which w i l l be on the L M which goes to the moon?
The first one that comes to mind o f course, i s the suit loop o f the environmental control system. Since we are not flying men, we do not i n L M - 1 include the complete environmental control system, but only that part that i s needed to cool the systems and enough oxygen to replenish the gas supply i n the cabin. There are a number o f other systems which are either not on the LM or zre inactive. We are not carrying radars on t h i s flight. B i l l points out we do not have the landing gear, but by and large, the vehicle i s a complete vehicle. It i s particularly complete so far as the guidance and propulsion systems are concerned. The test is, insofar as L M i s concerned, primarily a test o f the structure, the guidance system, and the interactions o f the guidance system with the propulsion system. For Chris Kraft, I think. .Chris, how tough i s this mission as compared t o past missions and what are the especially critical flight portions you are worried about?

Mr. Low:

Mr. Bergman:

Mr. Kraft:

I think I have to say that from the standpoint o f the work that the spacecraft has to do, as well as the people on the ground, it is probably one o f the most complex missions we have ever flown. The guidance system that we are using i s literally the system which we are using for the descent and ascent from the moon, and we have had to "Kluge" that system so that it is able to work in earth orbital fi ight. This means that the platform had to be displaced. We had no means of realigning that platform. We have to be very careful of the orbits we fly. This vehicle i s meant t o fly from here to the moon and not around the earth, 2nd therefore i t s instrumentation system is a rather peculiar one in that we have no means of recording the data. This means that we have to keep our maneuvers over our tracking stations and try t6 get as much coverage a s we can on each one of these revolutions. You put a l l this together, it i s indeed a very complex mission from the standpoint o f controlling the trajectory and monitoring the system.

Mr. Dodd:

to Did I understand Mr. LOW say there i s no test of life support systems i n this particutar mission? Only a partial test of the tife support system. The portion of the l i f e support system that feeds into the pressure suit irr a manned flight i s inoperative i n this mission. Thoroi~ghlytested? Yes, it w i l l be tested first o f a l l in a very cornprehensi\~e ground test program. There i s a

Mr. Low:

LEM test article, LTA-8, which w i l l be subjected to a l l of the conditions o f the space environment in a large thermal vacuum chamber. And, the complete test of the enviroilmental support system w i l l be carried out i n that test faiclity. Mr. Orlando: Just a simple question o f terminology. Have you put back the "EH in

LM ?
Answer:' Mr. Orlando:

LM is spelled "LM,"

for Lunar Module.

Yes, but in the actual lunar flight, does the "exploration" come back or not? The terminolgy remains the same all the way through. out and w i l l remain out. The E is s t i l l

Mr. King:

Mr. Benedict:

I s crew fatigue s t i l l the determination for cutoff tomorrow, or would darkness halt the countdown, and also, what i s the turn aroundsituation i f you have to scrub tomorrow? Crew fatigue as we see it now i s the essential fzctor. Darkness i s not. Our window not being based on any of the conditions of daylight for uecovery and so on, crew fatigue w i l l be the determining factor. That i s something that has to be judged i n real time, based upon what i s going on, what the problems you face are. Therefore, we have used the word "approximately" i n the press kit. What was your secoid question? Recycle? I f for some reason we don't put cryogenics aboard, that would mean, let's say, a t 3 hours 30 minutes--T minus three thirty--tomorrow we could recycle to a Tuesday count, depending on the problems, o f course. I f the problem could be fixed in the remaining time, we could recycle to Tuesday. Beyond that, we would have to judge i n terms of what has to be done. If we put cryogenics aboard and get f i ~ l l y loaded with our prope!lants, then our recycle on this one i s going to be four days. Do you put the cryos i n a t T minus 3 hours and 3 0 minutes, after you pick up the built-in hold count? When we pick up the count after the built-in hold, the first step w i l l be t o skirt the loading o f liquid oxygen. That w i l l be 10:30 tomorrow morning i f we stay on our present schedule. Within about ten minutes o f the time we pick LIP our count we w i l l activiate our liquid hydrogen ground system and start flowing illto the bird. When you start moving into that you go into a four day recycle. L e t ' s say four days. The window on this

Mr. Petrone:

Mr. Benedict:

Mr. Petrone:

one not being set to a recovery time leaves us some flexibility as to whether we schedule for morning or afternoon. We have to look at the total work to be done. We use the word "approximate" on that four days too.

Mr. Benedict:

Just to clarify, when you said you would recycle for Tuesday prior to propellant loading, does that mean a launch time on Tuesday or would you pick up the entire 30 hour count again. We could hold a t T minus 3:30 three hours and thirty minutes we could hold a t that.. If something came up that would force us to go into the bird, then determining how far you have to go in, we could hold for 24 hours where we now have our six hour built-in hold. L e t me clarify this a l i t t l e more. The cryogetiic loading o f the liquid oxygen and the hydrogen goes from about T minus 3 hours and 30 minutes down to about 55 or so. Did I understand you to say, Mr. Low, that there would be oxygen i n the cabin, that you would fly this with oxygen i n the cabin rather than nitrogen? No, we are flying with nitrogen i n the cabin, but any makeup during the flight w i l l be with oxygen. I n that connection, has this vehicle been fireproofed as North American i s trying to fireproof the Apollo.

Mr. Petrone:

Mr. King:

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Low: Mr. Lewis: Mr. Low:

b 4 -5. has not been fireproofed, because it is an unmanned flight. The R LM vehicle as a whole has been fireproofed in much the same manner as
the command module has and we have completed successfully a flamability mockup series of tests with a complete LM model to prove that this type o f fireproofing has been successful.

Question:

A couple of questions as to staging the S-IVB stage. I s this the first

time you have dumped sizeable quantities of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into space, and what w i l l happen to them? W i l l they remain i n that state or w i l l they float away, or what?

Mr. Teir:

I n this program this i s the first time we have actually had a planned dump o f the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, and as to just exactly what would happen to them, I think we need a physicist to answer that for you. Someone else may be able to help me, but there i s no real problem connected i n any way with this, because, o f course, a l l o f the other fiights, even though you do not purposely dump, it is dumped a t some time i f the vehicle breaks up or i f you have a pressure failure. So we see no problem as far as the ciurnp of LOX or hydrogen i s concerned.

Mr. Alexander: Mr. Schneider:

What are the Agena-like maneuvers you are going to try with the S-IVB? We are not going t o do any maneuvers. If I misled you by mentioning Agena, forgive me. We, of course, stage and have the ascent stage part from the descent stage and we w i l l as part of our second firing fire the ascent stage to depletion. We w i l l be firing the reaction control system under some abnormal situations with'the small thrusters and the attitude thrusters, and we w i l l be doing some stabilization checks using the attitude thrusters, but there are no major burns scheduled in that period. Just to clarify, George, you mentioned S-IVB. Does that satisfy the answer. He was obviously talking about the lunar module. May I correct a statement I made a moment ago. In LM-1 we are not replenishing with oxygen in order to maintain cabin pressure. We are loading with nitrogen. We are not reloading beyond that point. It's different from the way we handled Spacecraft 17, where we did replen is h. What was the nature of the power problem with the computer power supply yesterday?

Mr. King:

Mr. Low:

Mr. De Long:

Mr. Petrone:

I can handle part of that, and maybe Bilf Teir would like to add more. There were two failures during the latter part of the countdown demonstration. The two failures were both in the same power supply tray, however, thorough arialysis Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon, both at Marshall Space Flight Center and here, indicated that the two failures were not related and it turns out that the particular circuitry of the electronic components, you might say, experience a random failure. It has been repaired and put back in action, I believe it went back on the line at two o'clock yesterday, so the computer has been up almost 13 hours now. We are makitlg some special measurements and watching the currefit trends and they have indicated no problems as far as we are concerned. I think we have it totally solved. Bill, you may want to add to that, because Marshall has done quite a b i t of work, especially during the evening hours, I know, on that one. *
In general, I can't add too much. I might say that failure analyses, both at Marshall atid here, have indicated that they were both problems with the regulator, component problems two different components, one on the i n p ~ i side, a rectifier there, and thc other was a diode on the t o ~ ~ t p side. They can't be tied together and Rocco indicated that the ut

Mr. Teir:

computer has been on since yesterday, I believe he said at two o'clock. The power s u p p l y has been operating, actually, since eight o'clock yesterday morning where the problem was, and it looks good now. We have no reason to feel that there is going to be any problem remaining. Question:
I note that in the press kit it says that the manned LM will weigh 3 1 , 7 0 0 and advised the weight of the vehicle to be flown tomorrow. Does tomorrow's weight include compensation for the gear that has been removed ?

Mr. Low:

Yes, it does. What is the total, exact weight of LM-1 flying tomorrow?
.

Mr. Fontag:
Mr. Low:
Mr. LaMont:

31,530 pounds.
For Col. Petrone. I know there has been a constant fight out at the pad with rust and..

Mr. Petrone:
Mr. LaMont:

The Chamber of Commerce wouldn't agree with you there.

I know there have been a lot of measures taken, Are you satisfied that the preventive, or corrective, measures, whatever they were, suit your needs ? And could you explain a little bit about what was done ?
kre you speaking generally, or are y o i ~ talking about Apollo 5 ? We do take normal preventative measures, i will answer this in part. Then I will have Bill Teir acid some things that Marshall, in turn, also did. There are normal preventative measures to prevent our atmosphere here in Florida from taking over, certain nitrogen purges, dry gas, dry nitrogen, things of that nature. On any vehic!e we do run certain inspections, and on Apollo 5, because of the time it has been here, there were certain, you might call them more thorough quality inspections set up, and we in turn, with Marshall; made some very detailed check1ists. We go in periodically and look at various things. You have to keep in mind that the vehicle essentially is purged. Wd do keep the tanks under -.-.press% with dry nitrogen in there. The engines-are-purged. You keep -a constant dry pad pressure in there. On our inspections, I think we were very wAT$F%ed and fiGiiZ nothing to indicate the state of the hardware was deteriorating. Biil, I'm sure you want to add to that. I know it was of great concern to the people i n Marshail too.
.

Mr. King:
Mr. Petrone:

Mr. Teir:

Yes. At the time we foresaw that the vehicle was going to be on the pad some time, we had our own designers at Marshall and each of the contractors' designers, the quality people, and the operational people here at the Cape get together and come u p with very detailed inspection criteria, to look at those areas you wouldn't look at i f you made a normal inspection of the vehicle. After coming up with these very detailed criteria we conducted the inspections, using both the quality and the operational people, and after-ro nu we were quite pleasantly surprised that there was no more deterioration than there was. This was made in A p r x - M a y - - o n the various parts of the vehicle. And eack three months, at leastevery threemonths, we continued to make these inspections. Each time what we found was less ; than the time before. W had to change out no operational components due to corrosion. This is a followup on this q~estion the weight. Could you tell me of what is the weight of the components elimina,ted from this flight? The things vire mentioned before.

Mu. Howard:

Mr. Low:

I can't give you a specific answer because there are some deletions and some additions also. For example, we are carrying a LM mission programmer, .a box that carries out the functions of the man. We are carrying a lot of instrumentation on this flight that we will not be carrying to the moon. So there are a lot of plusses and minuses and I don't have with me details of that. I should also mention that some of the structural components, the skin is somewhat heavier on this LM than it wil i be on later ships. So to answer your g~restionspecifically, it takes a lot of numbers I don't have with me. To give you a genera.1 answer, 1 mentioned the weight for this LM as 3 1 , 5 5 0 pounds. The expected weight of later ships is going to be as high as 3 2 , 0 0 0 pounds.
A couple of related questions, Mr. Schneider. What are some of these alternative rnissions i f you get into orbit and have some trouble? The second question is, if you have trouble in orbit, how long can you delay and still get in ail four engine burns ?

Mu. Wilford:

Mr. Schneider:
Mr. Kranz:

T h ~ s e both flight questions and I would like to ask Gene Kranz to are answer them if he will. We have several alternatives. Our first alternative starts during launch phase. If for some reason we should have any spacecraft problenis or launch vehicle problems d ~ ~ r i n g launch phase, we have two systems the we can call upon to execute both descent stage ignitions and both ascent stage burns with the "fire in the hole." Once we get into orbit

we s t i l l have these two sequencers we can c a l l on and perform over any site. This w i l l essentially satisfy a good portion of our objectives within a period of time of about four a ~ one half minutes. We d have other alternates based on certain spacecraft failures. Mr. Low talked about the L M mission programmer, This is a very critical component i n the spacecraft. We have techniques developed to work around certain relay failures within that L M miss ion programmer. Generally, from a standpoint of slips in the mission, we have two opportunities for spacecraft separation. The first one is over the Carnarvon site i n the first revolution and the second opportunity is over the continental United States--excuse me--over Carnarvon, in the first revolution, is the first L M separation opportunity and over the continental United States at the end of the first and the beginning o f the second revolution. Thereafter, we have one relatively critical maneuver we must perform very close to schedule. That is the descent propulsion number one burn. This occurs on the third revolutipn over Carnarvon. Once we get past that burn we can essentially s l i p the remaining two burns, the descent nutnber two burn and the ascent number one burn, which are a l l one long sequence of about 13 minutes i n duration. We can s l i p that one revolution. If we accomplish that one, then we can come back and s l i p the ascent burn number two one revolution, so the one major maneuver that a good portion of the mission i s based on is the descent propulsion system number one maneuver over the Coastal Sentry and Carnarvon site in the third revolution. Mr. King:

f understand there are no questions from Houston, so we w i l l continue

here a t the Cape. I'd like to pursue the weight just a l i t t l e further, Mr. Low, i f I might, For instance, could you reassure us about progress being made in the weight of the rendezvous radar, which we realize won't fly this time, but we understand is one of the major overweight items, plus any others. Could you give us a status report. I'd like to correct one conirier~tyou made. 1 don't think that the rendezvous radar is any more of a weight problem than any other component, or the LM or the whole Apol lo spacecraft. In the Apol l o spacecraft prograrn we have bounced against a weight limit for components, a l l systems and a l l modules of each spacecraft. On the other hand, we do have this weight limit well defined and well under control so that we know that with the weights we have now, measured with weights that we are predicting for those things that have not yet been weighed, the performance capabilities of our propulsion systems and with the amount of propellants we can carry we have a weight situation that is very tight, but manageable, a weight situation with which we can accomplish the lunar mission,

Sue Butler:

Mr. Low:

Mary Bubb:

Were there changes or modifications made on the booster as a result of the fire ? As a result of any damage in the fire there were no major modifications of any type made, or 1 should say there were no modifications as a result of damage in the fire. We have made modifications on a l l three of the stages--or the two stages and the instrument unit--since moving it to Pad 37. 1 would say a good portion of these are mission required changes that must be made and others are changes from R and D information that we get as we continue through the program, and information from other flight tests, flight tests of 5 0 1 , but none are due directly to any damage in the fire. The question was, were there any major changes made overall? No, there were no major changes that I would call major changes in vehicle design made. For Mr. Schneider or Mr. Low. As I recall, L M - 1 was originally scheduled for delivery on November 16, 1966, and it showed up in late May 1967. In addition, it was oviginally scheduled, I believe, to be launched in the second quarter of 1967 and it is now being launched in January 1968. Could you run down the problems that caused this long clelay ?

Mr. Teir:

Mrs. Bubb: Mr. Teir:

Quest ion:

Mr. Low:

I think 1 can speak specifically only about the problems that have occurred since I ,have been on the Apollo program, which is since
about April of this last year. At that time, L M - 1 was scheduled for delivery to KSC, I believe, in May. It was part way through with checkout activities at the factory. This checkout was completed, and the only significant problems that we had at that time concerned the special instrumentation for LM-1, the so-called development flight instrumentation. We had some harness problems, we had to replace the wiririg harness in that, to assure ourselves that our measurements would hold up through the flight. Following the delivery, and during the checkout period here at the Cape, the one significant difficulty we had was concerned with a large number of leaks in the propellant system. Now, when we say leaks, we ought t o be very careful to define what we are talking about. Because we are talking here about minute leaks, measured with pressurized he1ium, escaping extremely slowly through some of the joints. I made a calculation at one time and I forget the exact numbers, but taking the kinds of leaks that we had, and i f you had to think in terms of quantities we know, it wouid take several years to f i l l up a milk bottle, for example. We are talking in terms of numbers like 10-7 or 3.0-8 cc per second. Yet, we had specifications for the system that indicated

we had to fix those leaks and this took quite a b i t of time. Once we had fixed the leaks, L M - 1 was a very good spacecraft in going through checkout here at the Cape. Once we got into the actual test and checkout procedures, it went extremely smoothly and very well, and we have had no significant problem. Question: Then perhaps Mr. Schneider could tell us then, from November 15, 1966, to April, why there was that delay. I'm afraid I can't --I'm sure we can supply you with that information later. A double barreled question for Rocco Petrone. Do you really mean, Rocco, that you w i l l launch in total darkness tomorrow night at seven, eight, nine, or ten, a l l things being the same, i f you are proceeding toward a good launch setup? Yes. You went down a little further--total darkness w i l l not affect our ability to launch. Right up to midnight or 1a.m. as long as the crew holds out? The determining factor w i l l be crew fatigue, and at both here and at Houston and the DOD activities. We say crew, we mean the total crew supporting the mission--launch, f l ight--but that is the determining factor, Jules, not the specific time of day. Okay, Second question now. For B i l l Schneider, on the mission itself. If your mandatory mission objectives are not met, you don't get a good flight burn, or a flight burn plus DPS and ascent stage burns, does that mean you w i l l have to refly with a LM-2 unmanned, and i f so, how w i l l that influence the manned flight schedule for the remainder of 68 and 69 ? Welt, I think, as was announced by Mr. Webb in our scheduled activities for the year, we do now presently plan a LM-2 on top of the 206 vehicle. So, the schedule as outlined some months ago does include a LM-2 flight as part of the planning.

Mr. Schneider:

Mr. Bergman:

Mr. Petrone: Mr. Bergman: Mr. Schneider:

Mr. Bergman:

Mr. Schneider:

Mr. Bergman:

Conversely, Mr. Schneider, i f everything goes well on the LM-2, the present flight or mission profile, what do you hope to prove or find out with LM-2? LM-2, just like the 020 spacecraft, i s configured such that let LM-2 is configured so that it can me retract and start all over duplicate the mission of LM-1 and the plan for a LM-2/206 mission precisely duplicates the LM-1/204 mission so i f everything was achieved, and everything was successful (andwewill not be able to tell that for some timelwe would hope to be able to delete that flight, the L M - 2 flight.

Mr. Schneider:

--

--

I might add this. This i s completely in consonance with our previous planning, where from a spacecraft standpoint, not a launch vehicle -standpoint, the 020/502 flight spacecraft objectives were identicai to the 017/501 flight, so that either one would satisfy our spacecraft objective. However, obviously on 502 we'll have the 502 objectives by themselves.
Mr. King: Question was LM-1 and LM-2 the same type of spacecraft? Mr. Low answered YES

Question:

We have heard a lot of talk today about random fai!ures and repairs, problems with regulators, relays thus and so, and I believe Mr. Teir was pleasantly surprised how l i t t l e damage was caused by the Florida weather, I want to ask just one question and to answer it, I guess Bill Schneider is it. How confident are you?

Mr. Schneider:

I would say I am as confident in this mission as I have been i n any. We always prepare ourselves completely and we never go forward into launch with any reservations. We recognize that in any flight, there are certain things that you cannot predict beforehand, but believe me, i f I had any reservations or i f any of the gentlemen up at this table had any reservations, we would be putting out an announcement saying we were not going tomorrow.

Albert Salestead: Is the second ascent burn the lunar-abort simulation? Answer: No, the first ascent burn is a simulation of the lunar abort and i t occurs it is initiated while the second descent burn i s s t i l l i n progress.

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Question:

Following up Jules Bergman's question about a launching i n darkness, I believe we have the same interests at heart. Mr. Schneider p o s t ~ ~ l a t e d

crew tiring based on an 8:00 a.m. launch as about 4 i n the afternoon. Have you, among yourselves, decided when the crew w i l l get tired? Mr. Petrone: That has to be decided i n real time. So much depends on what the problem is. You see, you can get certain rest. Depending on at what stage certain things happen we could bring i n certain people later and we can do a certain amount of rotation. It i s really an item we have to keep our fingers on throughout the time we are proceeding in the count, whether or not the fatigue problem is one that w i l l bring us to the point of saying we are not going any further. For the benefit of those mutual interests we w i l l attempt to get it before the 11100p.m. news show. Following up these wrong questions and my questions, i f you were making a random ballpark guess, what would your guess be as to when crew fatigue might become such a determining factor that you would say you'd better scrub? What time of the evening, would you say? Jules, really, that's not a thing to be determined by a computer. It i s to be determined by people on the floor at the time. And that judgment just has to be made right there, depending upon what your problems have been and what our forecast would be for proceeding, the status of support, and there i s so much involved that you cannot put an arbitrary l i m i t on it. Sometimes maybe these l u n a windows help 1 us, for i f its 1 o'clock you're through, whether you are ready or not. But i n this one, without a window set by other factors, it is the crew, and I say both launch and support around the world. It w i l l have to be determined i n real time. You'd like to go at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon? Yes, that's when we're going to go. I f you're asking i f we're going to go through and n i t pick it, the answer cannot be that we are going to be able to do that, because not only do we have to worry about Rocco's crew, but we have thirteen hours of flight activity afterward, and we do have all of the flight controllers, particularly the Goddard network people who w i l l be on the line, so i f we run into troubles early i n the game, then Rocco's postulating about going on into a late night launch becomes a possibility. I f we are proceeding down toward a two o'clock i n the afternoon launch the same four, six, eight hours, something general type of crew restrictions

Mr. King:
Mr. Bergman:

Mr, Petrone:

Question: Mr. Petrone: Mr. 'Schneider:

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on that order i s a possibility. If there i s going to be any night time launch I think you w i l l be able to condition yourself to the possibility about the same way we are. You'll get long notice on it. Mrs. Bubb:

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I f you get a good L M flight and a good second Saturn V, what do you think the chances are of manning Apollo 3 ?
That i s one of those qualifying questions. You have to s i t here and think. The spacecraft i s being configured and the launch vehicle is being prepared so that eventuality could take place, but I wouldn't want to say anything about the probability that we w i l l be able to do it until I hear post ff ight from George Low that the spacecraft, the LM, has passed all of i t s objectives, and from the launch vehicle people that they are satisfied. I cannot say any more than yes, it is a possibility. We are not precluding that option, but it i s one that we w i l l have to exercise. You see, we have a launch vehicle objective i n there-too. We have to not only have a successful 5 0 1 command module test and we are tomorrow, I hope, going to have our successful L M flight. We s t i l l have to get that second successful Saturn V flight under our belt too.

Mr. Schneider:

Question:

Two questions. One for George (Low) and one for Gene Kranz. First, Gene, at what time w i l l you and your crew be coming aboard tomorrow The majority of us w i l l be sleeping i n the crew rest quarters here i n the control center and upon notification that they have picked up the count after the built-in hold and completed the initial set of command checks which w i l l occur immediately after picking up the count, we w i l l receive notification that they have picked up. We should be on station sometime between three hours -- T minus three hours -- and T minus two and a half hours. And George, i f all test objectives are met, can the L M be considered man-rated after this flight or w i l l .it also have to depend on the outcome of L T A - 8 ? Certainly we'll have to depend also on the outcome of L T A - 8 and a number of other tests -- ground tests that are going on and w i l l continue to go on for some time yet. We have not yet completely qualified all subsystems for manned flight i n ground tests.
'

Mr. Kranz:

Question:

Mr. Low:

Mr. Benedict:

Mr. Schneider, i n your recent Washington press conference you mentioned the possibility that even i f you didn't achieve orbit you migilt

s t i l l be able to carry out a lot of the LM mission objectives. I ' d like to ask Gene (Kranz) how this could be possible, just what the options are here. Mr. Kranz: They are basically during the launch phase. The powered flight phase i s ten minutes i n duration. From about two minutes and thirteen seconds, or about the normal staging time, we enable the -- what we call the abort monitor routine. From this period on until we insert into orbit we have three possible alternatives. We have a contingency orbit decision alternative similar to that which was discussed i n the 5 0 1 and which exists i n the 502 mission. They are essentially the same. In addition torthis, i f for some spacecraft or launch vehicle problem after staging we should end up faced with an abort situation, we can execute what we c a l l a LGC suborbital sequence. This particular sequence pressurized the RCF system, separates the spacecraft from the launch vehicle, initiates a very short descent number one descent propulsion system burn; we'd have a short coast time, would reignite the descent propulsion system, go to a 300 percent throttle on the descent system, an abort stage, and light off the ascent engine. We'd again have a short coast sequence and reignite the ascent engine i n a period of twenty seconds or sixty seconds, depending upon which sequence we choose.

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I ' d like to point out that what you have i n your press k i t says we are going to do certain maneuvers at certain times i n a planned flight. Once this flight gets underway, because of the trajectory limitations as well as the computer limitations, it may well require a great deal of real tirne flight planning to reshape that flight plan and we won't want to be judged by the flight plan you have in your press kit. There are many ways of accomplishing the objectives of this flight and we may well have to choose them once we get into orbit. Question: There was one thing i didn't quite get clear earlier when they were talking about after you load the cryogenics -- start loading them at T minus three hours and thirty minutes. You said after that i f you had to recycle you'd have to recycle for four days, but I wasn't sure for how long you could hold during that period. What would be the maximum length of tirne?

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Mr. Petrone:

'The quantities i n our storage containers -- I'm assuming no other problems and that it is just a question of replenishment -- we have automatic replenishment going on and we also have planned to re-top our storage containers. Let's say there was a problem other than that at the pad. We then could cycle in transfer trucks to re-top our large

storage containers they now have some 125,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, so I think you have to get back to the fact the problem comes within the bounds of crew fatigue. We w i l l have enough hydrogen and LOX i n our containers to take us through the window of the human factor. Mr. King: As is the usual case i n Apollo, we have several gentlemen who need to catch a plane, and I see Mr. DeLong has the only hand up, so we'll take that as the final question. What are your weather constraints on launch and the long range forecast? Does it look like

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Mr. DeLong:

....

Mr. Petrone:

We see nothing i n the forecast we got here a few hours ago to indicate that there should be any problem to launching tomorrow or i n the immediate days ahead. Before we finish up, Col. Teir wanted to make a brief statement.

Mr. King: Mr. Teir:

I wanted to make one comment i n answering the question on changes after 204. I did not mean to indicate that we have neglected any lessons learned. We have made several safety reviews and have made sorne minor changes i n the vehicle as a result of those. These are changes that are considered minor i n circuitry and things like that, but no major change, and none as a resuli of it. We have tried to apply the lessons learned to a lairnch vehicle of this type.
One final matter of logistics. As far as transportation to the press site tomorrow, bus transportation w i l l start at about T minus four hours i n the count, and the last bus w i l l depart from here at about T minus sixty minutes. The buses w i l l also stop at the south gate of the Cape on the way out. Thank you very much.

Mr. King: