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ALEX NAGY: Good morning from the Kennedy Space Center. We are
at an eight hour hold which beqan at 10:00 this morning at T-2 7
hours on the countdown clock. This hold is due to be released
and the count is scheduled to be resumed at 6:00 pm this evening
Eastern Standard Time. This morning wo have with us Jay
Honeycutt from the Shuttle Program Office at the Johnson Space
Center for a briefing on the flight plan for the STS-3 mission.
Jay will also touch on somo of the payload experiments because of
crew involvement but I remind you that the 1:30 briefing this
afternoon is a detailed one on the payloads, the experiments and
if you have some detailed questions you should hold them for this
afternoon. Jay.
JAY HONEYCUTT Okay. You know we're going to launch on Monday.
The liftoff time is 10:00 the launch window will close at
12:32. We're going to launch into an inclination of 38 degrees
and a final altitude of 130 nautical miles circular. Mission
duration is about 171 hours. We'll land on seven days later on
the 29th of March at Northrup Strip at approximately 10:27
Mountain Standard Time and 116th orbit. You might note that_ _
these are basically the landing time is the same and the orbit is
the same as if we were going at Edwards just a couple of minutes
later. There are principal objectives of this flight are to
demonstrate the launch and entry performance, evaluate the
payload environment during launch and entry, to perform some long
term thermal testing on the orbiter structure and the
subsystems. We'll transport the Office of Space Science-1
payload into orbit, perform some experiment operations on it and
return it to Northrup. Again, this is the third in our series of
operational flight tests so we will be verifying some orbiter
hardware and software systems performance and acquiring data on
orbiter crew and the ground operations ability to support during
the operations phase. And we will additionaly provide some,
conduct some contamination analysis within the payload bay to see
what the environment will be for payloads in the future.
I'm going to run through these as Al said right quick and
just really to give you an idea of what the types of payloads
that we'll be flying and how much of this mission will be
involved to science. I don't intend to go into the details of
the scientific performance because of the fact you have a
briefing this afternoon on that. But basically we're going to
provide some, perform some measurements on emissions that come
from the orbiter that might effect scientific observation and
look at some of the effects of the orbiter in the orbiter tiles
on orbit.
Principal one that involves the crew is the plasma
diagnostics package which they will use. It's principally
berthed here in the OSS- 1 pallet. The crew will pick it ip with
the RMS and maneuver it around and above the payload bay to
perform some of these experiments. This one is on solar physics,
plk DATE 03/20/82 page 2
this is principally non crew involved experiment 1n which it 1s
basically turned on and 1t collects its measurements and the crew
is not normally involved other than in some pointing. This one
is a scientific experiment to determine perhaps some different
methods of heat control on orbit. It aqain does not involve too
much crew activity other than activation. Again this is non crew
involved principally once it gets turned on and collects
information while it's on orbit.
This one is a Life Sciences Experiment that we attempted to
fly on the last mission and didn't complete it because of the
fact that the mission was shortened. This is involved in
determining how well plants will grow in a nongravity
environment. Again, this is stored in a lower bay equipment bay
the crew basically checks it each day after their eveining meal
just to get a status of how well the plants are doing.
The three other ones which I don't have charts for, Induced
Environment Contamination Monitor is another experiment that's
stowed on the OSS - 1 pallet. The crew will pick it up with the
RMS similar to the way they are doing the Plasma Diagnostics
Package move it around and check for contamination in and near
the orbiter payload bay. The Electrophoresis Equipment
Verification Test is to determine whether or not this particular
hardware can be used for separation of some biological cells.
It's a similar piece of equipment which was flown on the Skylab
program and it's principally an equipment verification test
rather than a scientific test. And the last one is the
experiment that the young man I think is going to brief you on
this afternoon and it is involved with how well or lack of how
well insects can fly in the absence of gravity environment.
This is a quick summary of what we'll do each of the flight
days. Day one we'll do our normal activities that you saw on two
previous missions, ascent, main engine cutoff is at approximately
57 miles, we'll do the OMS-1 and OMS-2 maneuvers to get us into
130 mile orbit. The crew will go through their normal
configuration activties for the spacecraft. Get our of their
suits, and then activate the OSS - 1 -jcientific experiments and
then they'll perform a gravity gradient test which is a
controlled systems test of the orbiter in which basically the
spacecraft is put in a nose to the earth attitude and the crew
and the reaction control systems are turned off and it's to try
and determine whether or not the vehicle will stabilize itself in
orb it.
Then we start a series of thermal tests, the first of which
is tail to the sun thermal attitude which lasts for about one
day. These tests, there are three o' them in here an'd they are
to determine how well the orbiter systems will perform under
various conditions of thermal stress.
On day two, we'll start the first of the RMS activities, the
unloaded test is one in which the crew jet maneuvers the arm
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around unstows it maneuvers it around and basically becomes
familiar with the operation of the RMS. The Electrophoresis
Experiment is then turned on and run for some period of time and
then we begin the first of a series of payload bay door cycles in
which we are going to open and close or close and open the
payload bay doors after we have been each of these long term
thermal environments to see whether there's been any defamation
or any we have any concerns about operation of the payload bay
doors as a function of temperature. Which we don't expert to see
I might add. Then we'll end the UN to sun test. We'll start a
test of thermal control test which effectively as you know a bar-
b-que attitude control system where you just basically put the
vehicle in slow roll as it goes around earth.
Then we'll do on day three the first of the RMS loaded
operations in which we will pick up the IECM off of OSS-1 pallet
maneuver it around, and collect some contamination data. We'll
then stow the IECM and deploy the Plasma Diagnostics Package in
the same fashion. Once that's completed we'll start the second
of the attitude control mode which is a nose to the sun test. On
day four we're going to do some RMS heater tests, basically the
same as the other thermal cests that we're doing just to
determine how well the RMS functions as a result of the various
environments that we're in. Again some more EE VT operations and
the second of the deployment test with the POP.
Day five we're going to do some thermal back test on the RCS
thrusters which will be attempts to determine whether or not the
cold environment has any effect on the RCS jets and we'll do a
POP again. Day six is some more RCS tests, another payload bay
door cycle. We'll end the nose sun and go to a top sun attitude
which will have the payload bay looking at the sun for about a
day. And a number of OSS-1 experiments which will operate in
just top sun attitude. The astronomy experiment for one that was
shown on previous chart.
On day seven we'll do a flight control checkout activties
prior to entry, some more OSS-1, another IECM, another payload
bay door cycle, start our thermal conditioning for entry, and
then early in the morning on the eighth day we'll deorbit and
1 and at Nor thrup .
Now in the event that we for some reason have to foreshorten
the mission as we did on flight two, these are our priorities
activities for that mission. It will be * four day mission, day
one will the same as in the nominal mission. Day two we'll do
our tail sun attitude test as a number one priority the OMS test
will be second and then there's deployed POP science. Day three
we'll try to get in some top to sun testing some more OSS-1
science, do our flight control checks and then enter on day
four.
The end of mission activities as you know we're going to
land at Northrup Strip as the pi imary spot due to the lake bed
p 1 k DATE 03/20/82 page 4
being wot at Edwards. The alternate sites will he either the
Edwards or Kennedy hard surface runways. Northrup Strip is
35,000 foot runways, it has an MSBLS microwave scanning beam
1 a n d 1 n cj system on runway 17 which is used to support autoland
testing that next bullet should be familiar to crew. The crew is
trained out there for a n.mber of years at Northrup so they're
quite familiar with the terrain. We will have realtime telemetry
available. Voice will be through UHF. There will be no command
uplink but that's not a concern to us. Again our primary
objective as it was at Edwards was to get a crosswind landing.
We have two runways availble for that in the event that the winds
are not or down we will try to get an autoland test down to 300
feet we'll do that on runwc,/ 17. And that's all the charts that
1 have.
ALEX NAGY We're going to talk crew activties today Jay.
JAY HONEYCUTT Yeah, the crew is going to arrive at Patrick at
11:30 local. They'll T-38s for an hour and a half at Patrick and
they'll then depart Patrick for the crew quarters in the O&C
building here arriving about 3:00. At which time they'll go into
a review of the flight data file generally at about 6:00 this
afternoon and then they'll continue their flight data file review
and I think they're going to go to bed about 10:00. In the
morning they're going to fly the Shuttle Training Aircraft at the
Shuttle Strip out here between 7:00 and 9:00 and they have a Pad
tour after that. Then they have some briefings by Joyce Pages on
systems status and a reviev of the count and the hold
procedures.
Tomorrow afternoon they have as much free time as we can get
for them and some more review of the flight data file. Then
again it will be about 6:00 and then on launch morning they'll
get up at 5:30 to have breakfast, get a quick physical, quick
weather briefing and then we'll depart for the Pad and enter
during the L - 2 hour hold.
ALEX NAGY There will be hard copies of this briefing availble a
little bit later on the racks in the news center and the copies
are also being sent by facsimile to the other centers on the
loops so that they will be available at those places later
also. We'll take questions now if I don't call you please
identify yourself and your affiliation. Harry Colkum
HARRY COLKUM Aviation Week Mr. Honeycutt, you said the window
closes at 12:32?
JAY HONEYCUTT That's right. That's the nominal closing. That's
a little earlier than it was at Edwards and the principal reason
for that is because it gets for the REV 5 deorbit case it gets a
little bit it gets dark a little bit earlier. We can extend that
if we actually hold up into that period of time. The real
constraint will be the transatlantic abort site at Rota. It's
about 28 minutes later I think it gets the weather the visibility
p lk DATE 03/20/82 page 5
is unacceptable. So what we wil ! have to do 1n that event was
make well four hour early deorbit opportunity as opposed to REV
5.
CRAIG COVAULT from the 116.
JAY HONE YCUTT No this is for the REV 5 deorbit. This is to
support a REV 5 deorbit. That's what drives you toward the
closing of the wi ndow .
CRAIG COVAULT some confusion about that landing time. You said
it was 10:27 Mountain Standard Time. Shouldn't that be Pacific
Day Light Time?
JAY HONE YCUTT I don't believe. It was it's unless I just
converted wrong. I could have converted wrong.
CRAIG CUVAULT It was a different time from what was given me
just now by the people at . . .
JAY HONE YCUTT I thought the original landing time was about
9 : 30 Edwards t ime .
ALEX NAGY That's eusily found inside I don't think we have to
dwell on that one. Did you have any more right now? Okay in the
back Mark Kramer .
HARK KRAMER I must confess my confusion about the change in the
launch window. Could you go back to that Revolution 5 deorbit.
JAY HONE YCUTT Yeah, if you once you get on orbit you have the
first opportunity for landing in the event that you have some
serious problem the first planned opportunity is during REV 5.
MARK KRAMER You mean of course not included AOA.
JAY HONEYCUTT Not including AOA. Right.
MARK KRAMER And to make this possible to land at White Sands in
REV 5 you've got to close the window earlier is that what
because of darkness at White Sands. And what time would
that landing be at White Sands for REV 5 deorbit do you know?
JAY HONEYCUTT I'm not sure. It's extremely a low probability
occurrence anyway I'm not I can get that for you b'.it ...
MARK KRAMER Okay and then you said the other constraint the
Transatlantic abort was would you talk about that too please.
JAY HONEYCUTT It's the Some s i tuat i on . The transatlantic abort
site is at Rota, Spain and of course you have to get in there in
daylight also and so the launch window is constrained by when
darkness occurs at Rota which is about a half an hour later
than . .
pi k DATE 03/20/82 page 6
MARK KRAMER But of course that doesn't channe regardless of
whether you yo to Edwards or White Sands. I moan you're going to
have darkness at Rota,
JAY HONE YCUTT The only Doint that he was making was that it's a
little bit earlier than it was with the normal Edwards landing
and the reason for that is because we would not do our REV 5
deorbit into Edwards. We would deorbit into Northrup on REV 5.
MARK KRAMER One final question. So what you're saying is
you've got more sunlight at Rota you cut off the possibility of
landinq at Rota earlier is that what you're saying.
JAY HONEYCUTT No it does not change. It Rota doesn't change.
Is there any reason for aiming at a launch window
at 10:00 am when on the first STS it was 7:00 am.
JAY HONEYCUTT I think the experiment folks will talk to you
more about that this afternoon but it has to do with the sun
angles for the Beta angle for some of these experiments. It was
the driver that caused that.
LAZLO DOZZA Voice of America What ground facilities do you
have at Rota .
JAY HONEYCUTT It's principally those that are availble at a
normal naval air station. There are some capabilities there
minimal capabilities there to get the crew out and get the
vehicle basically powered down and certain of the experiments out
but they are very limited capabilities due to the fact that the
probability of going there is very low.
JAY BARBARY We were originally qiven when it was changed to
landing at White Sands that it would be plus or minus one minute
out of mission control the difference in the length of flight.
Are you saying now that it's at 27 past the hour that you were
going to touch down at White Sands?
JAY HONEYCUTT I believe that's right. That was the numbers I
was given in Houston.
JAY BARBARY Was 27. What do you recall the original was it 24
past the hour one 24 our time I think? So it's about what three
mi nutes 1 think .
ED TOBIAS AP Radio You're talking now about landing
possibility autoland of 300 feet. Is that not a little bit
higher than what you had planned for Edwards. Were you talking
about 200 feet at Edwards?
JAY HONEYCUTT No sir it's the same as at Edwards.
pH DAT E 03/20/3? page /
I'D TOBIAS Okay. One associated that if you have to ijo to a
secondary landing site do you lia»'o a preforance between the hard
runway at Edwards and !<SC hero?
JAY HONE YCUTT No it will be a function of the weather.
Principally the weather. T' i crew is obviously more trained to
go into Edwards, hut thoy arc equally trained here and we fool
comfortable that they can come in either plan.
DAN ...... Is this liftoff planned to be significantly more
stressful as far as max Q ami that is concerned compared to the
previous....
JAY HONE YCUTT . . . s i g n i f i c a n t 1 y more. It will be slightly more
since normal expansion of the envelope but it's not I wouldn't
call it significant.
Are you sure that auto land figure was 300 at
Edwards.
JAY HONEYCUTT 200 or a long long time
You said the 300 you said there was no change from
Edwards.
JAY HONE Y CUT T That's my understanding. It's always 300 feet.
Wo can confirm that for you a little later if you
want to check the query desk just to be sure.
JOHN WILKS Washington Post The payload bay sun and the nose
sun and the tail sun are three objectives, three priorities on
this. Could you explain that to us a little bit and why the
times were chosen for each one? One is 30 hours I believe and
one is 26 hours and one is 18 hours,,
JAY HONE YCUTT Those are tests to principally to determine the
effects of both hot and cold environments on the subsystems and
the structure of the orbiter. The length of time was determined
by our thermal people who feel that it takes that period of time
in order to adequately allow the surface and the equipment to
adequately stabilize at those particular temperatures that they
will see in those environments.
Why is the tail to sun the number one priority.
JAY HONE YCUTT You got me there. I'm not sure I'll have to find
that out for you .
Are there any more question here. Right here in
this second row .
CARLOS BYERS Chronicle What are the maximum temperatures and
minimum temperatures that you expect on that it's just not really
pU DAU 03/PO/85?
p a o o iJ
clear to me .is to what ttio maximum and minimum temperatures you
are expecting to see in this thermal testing.
JAY HONEYCUTT 1 don't have those numbers. I'll have to net
those. I'll try to got ^hose for you today. Hut, we have some
people down here... that m,aybo can qet that to me and I'll got it
out this afternoon.
K'hat facilities do they have for makinq the orb i ter
safe.
,] A Y HONHCUTT There's a romp le to capability horn. As you know
wo plan to land hero the plan ri'iht now is on flight r > sn we have
a complete all equipment all the people ore have been trained
here the convoy equipment is all here and so wo would expect no
impact to land her o .
REED COLLINS CBS Did you tell us that there is no priority as
to secondary landinq sites between the hard runway and the hard
runway here? Did you say that even though you have taken the 30
carloads of equipment into White Sands where in this case it
would be useless to you. Does Edwards have absolutely dominancy
in all that equipment?
JAY HONEYCUTT No sir, they don't have absolute doninancy. They
don't have they have basically the equipment that will be left
there that which is required to safe the vehicle and power it
down.
REED COLLING Well then having done that it gives Kennedy more
equ i pmont .
JAY HONEYCUTT That's correct. But on the other hand the crew
is perhaps a little more familiar with the Edwards landmarks and
that sort of thing. They have been training there so we'll make
the decision principally on weather I think. What the weather is
here versus the weather at Edwards.
Assuming that we are not able to go into Northrup
which is
Making the general assumption then making the
assumption that the weather is equally good here and at Edwards
and no good at White Sands there is no priority.
JAY HONEYCUTT That will be discussed in the by the management
in the management team meetings and we'll probably decide that on
the day before entry. But at this point we don't have a priority
as to which place.
Were there any questions from the centers? There
are none. If there are no more questions here, let me remind you
that the next briefing is at 1:30 this afternoon on payloads and
experiments. Thank you very much.
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ENO OF TAPE
* BECAUSE OF THE NUMBER OF QUERIES PERTAINING TO THE
LAUNCH WINDOW AND THE LANDING TIME AT WHITE SANDS, THE
FOLLOWING INFORMATION WAS RECEIVED FROM CLAUDE GRAVES,
Chief Entry Analysis Branch, Mission Planning and ;
Analysis Division, Data Systems Analysis Directorate,
Johnson Space Center:
Launch window 10:00 am to 1:16 pm EST
LANDING TIME 11:27 AM MOUNTAIN STANDARD TlME
10:27 PST, 12:27 CST, 1:27 EST
p2k PRELAUNCII PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 PAGE 1
Good afternoon, I'm Jim Elliott with the Goddard Space Flight
Center, which is managing the OSS 1 payload on STS-3. The format
for this afternoon: we will have the OSS 1 briefing and then we
will have questions. The next two speakers will be the Marshall
Experiment representative , Dr. Bob Noumann, and our getaway
special representative Jim Barrowman from Goddard Space Flight
Center, And then we will again have questions and then break and
we will bring Todd and his bee experiment up for a presentation
and questions at that time. Right now we will proceed with the
briefing on the OSS 1 pullet and the experiments on it, and here
to give you the presentation is Dr. Werner Neupert, the mission
scientist from Goddard.
DR. WERNER NEUPERT Thank you, Jim. I'd like to welcome you all
here for this briefing on the OSS 1 payload that's flying next
Monday, and hope we can convey to you some of the excitement that
we feel in having this opportunity to fly a very interesting
scientific package on an early shuttle flight. I'd like to
divide the briefing into two parts: first I'll give you some of
the background leading up to the development of the instruments
and their activities on STS-3. Then, for the second half, we
will have an abbreviated version of a video tape that actually
discusses the individual experiments. I think you will find that
very informative and certainly you'll be able to see it again if
you would like to do so.
T ,et's start by considering the background opportunities that are
available to us. Early on NASA identified the first several
flights of the Space Transportation System as test flights that
would evaluate the petformance of the orbiter systems. This is,
of course, the primary objective that supercedes everything else
that may be done on these first four flights. However, a second
objective was identified, and that was to demonstrate the
capability of the shuttle .j do scientific research. Also
included us an objective was the measurement of the environment
that the orbiter carries around itself in space as it travels
around the Earth. While the scientific activities, the
demonstration of the orbiter 's capability to do science is
secondary in terms of the entire flight, it's obviously extremely
important for the OSS 1 payload and the experimenters that are
flying on it. We are asking questions such as: What kinds of
observations can actually be made from the shuttle? It's not a
specialized spacecraft particularly clean for optical astronomy
observations or maybe magnetically neutral in order to measure
fields and plasmas in the Earth's upper atmosphere. It is a
vehicle for carrying payloads into space. Some care has been
taken to make it clean, but obviously we need to evaluate how
well the actual orbiter has satisfied those goals and we again
need to evaluate how well it can be used to carry out scientific
observations.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly, we need to explore how
that orbiter can be used for new directions in space research. I
think this is particularly important because right now we are
trying find our way, how to use that orbiter most effectively.
And sometimes we call the OSS 1 the pathfinder mission, because
we believe that there are capabilities in the orbiter that we can
take advantage of in carrying out a scientific program.
Opportunities haven't been available before, and that we may very
well discover scientific activities that can be carried out
extremely well from the orbiter.
So these are the two objectives of our payload that you want to
keep in mind as you view the film and as you look through our
documents. Perhaps I should wel 1 let me give you a little
more background.
Having decided upon this set of objectives, NASA issued an
announcement of opportunity. This is a formal way of telling the
scientific community that there's a chance to do some science.
There's an opportunity to build experimentation, take some data,
analyze the data, publish the results, and generally it's defined
in terms of a particular spacecraft that's being used. In this
case, the opportunity said, we have this orbiter available,
obviously the science is not the highest priority, but what can
you do with it. Here are our overall objectives. A very large
number, I think something like 140 proposals were received, and
of those eventually 9 were selected for flight on this particular
mission, under the heading of the OSS 1 payload. The OSS 1 being
the Office of Space Science, the department at NASA Headquar ter s
that had the management responsibility. May I have this first
vugraph please, and also the one in the middle. This shows you
the layout of the 9 instruments. It's difficult to see in this
vugraph, but basically 8 of them are carried in the orbiter bay
on this ESA supplied pallet, actually a photograph of it is shown
here during the integration into the orbiter itself. One of
them, the plant lignif ication experiment is carried in the
middeck of the orbiter's cabin.
I'd like to introduce you to the principal investigators or thier
representatives, really for the purpose of identifying them, so
that if you have any questions after the formal part of this
presentation, please feel free to talk with them. They have
displays, they have models and their own press releases that
they'd be happy to distribute to you. First of all we have
Plasma Diagnostics Package, and the principal investigator for
that is Stan Shawhan, who is available with here, stand up. We
have the Vehicle Charging and Potential Experiment, the principal
investigator is Peter Banks, and he's represented by Roger
Williamson; we have the Spacelab Induced Atmosphere Experiment,
Jerry Weinberg; Thermal Canister Experiment, Stan Ollendorf;
Solar Flare X-ray Polorimeter Experiment, Robert Novick; the
Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor, Guenter Brueckner;
the study of influence of weightlessness on lignif ication in
developing plant seedlings, (garble) Dr. Cowles is represented by
(garbled) Dr. Cowles is here and wo also havo Carol Peterson in
and Bill Scheld representing that experiment. Next one is the
Microabras ion Foil Experiment, Tony McDonnel from England, I
don't believe and finally the contamination monitor package, Jack
Triolo. Also I would like to identify three key people in the
programs that have been extremely instrumental in taking this
from a concept and making it into this flight package and the
operations behind it. We have Robert Kennedy the program manager
at NASA headquarters , we have Dr. Eric Chipman, program
scientist at NASA headquarters and Kenneth Kissen project manager
at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Well lets get into the
technical part now and ask well how are these instruments to take
advantage of the flight opportunities and I would like to walk
you through the scenerio. Could we move that to the right, well
we'll start over here on the left. The thermal attitudes for
this flight are predetermined for us because as you know this is
the flight in which the orbiter will be exposed to extremes in
temperature in order to evaluate the engineering systems. That
have to work under those circumstances and therefore the flight
atcitudes were defined to be three in number. Details of the sun
attitude at first is something like 26 hours which would heat up
the rear end, the engine end of the orbiter and provide an
evaluation of chat under very warm condition. Then the bird
would be turned around and fly for 80 hours and nose to sun so
that the engine end would become quite cold. That would be
followed by about 28 hours of bay to the sun in which the
engineers could evaluate the operation of the payload bay doors
under circumstances when the system was very hot. And these
three attitudes were then to be interpersed with passive thermal
controls to equalize the temperature in going from one mode to
another. Now you can see that these attitudes do provide us with
opportunities to carry out scientific observations. For instance
when we are flying with the tail to the sun so the sun is
invisible and also the belly to the earth we have a very good
view of the heavens, so this automatically defines an opportunity
for astronomical observations and that is in fact when Jerry
Weinberg's induced atmosphere experiment will be viewing the
heavens and studying the diaconal light and scatted light from
stars. It also provides an opportunity for the space technology
experiment, the thermal canister to evaluate its operations under
very cold conditions because obviously the orbiter bay is looking
out into free space and getting very cold. We will also begin
our space plasma physics observations during this period. On
day, well after the 26 hours and in particulary on days 3, 4, and
5 while we're aiming toward the sun, will be the prime operating
time for the space plasma physics investigation, the plasma
diagnostics package and its operation on the remote manipulator
arm deployed and mapping the plasmas in space around the orbiter
and I think its going to be one of the highlights of the
operations and we certainly look forward to success of th ~e
particular operations. Finishing with those 80 hours we <jo park
to the sun and obviously solar physics is the thing we want to do
here. The two solar physics experiments will be making nearly
continuous observations whenever the orbiter is in daylight.
Space technology will havt an opportunity to evaluate the
canister system under extremely hot conditions and then finally
at the end there will be a small amount of passive thermal
control to equalize temperatures before the orbiter comes back in
again. I think the, when you look at the video, you'll be able
to see how we have been able to take advantage of these
situations. And really the flexibility in operating the space,
the orbiter systems to provide an maximum amount of science, for
the investigators. For instance there will be a short interval
when the tail is actually dipped down slightly so that the
induced atmosphere experiment can get a better view back across
the tail t^a,\rd any contaminent clouds that may be there as well
as getting a. better view of the zodiacal light, While we ate
f*y{tV4 IVO^e U\ sun there may be a chance if a sort of flare
occ\\vs thM Vhe crew wouU\ be Able to reorient the ship and look
a,t thaA'Oare for something like S mi flutes so that the flare
experiment can get the maximum scientific results. During the
solar physics portion of the orbit the crew will actually be Cine
tuning the poinUng of the instruments themselves not the
vWMUHx in vudoi VhaA they are eeryteted precisely on the sun,
teomM'hing thA.t the ultraviolet ekper iment needs in order to make
t^i precision ultraviolet observations t.VU Me its objective. I
thVnK/as we yM&w thU film,' we can ftJUt \ to. appreciate the unique
capa^ili^ves '(tf\s\ the possibility that the orbiter'a flight
around the OftVlh opens up fov'%V\ae of these first space
exper imonta, As I say, I th\ftX wo look forward to a very
excising opportunity and ope\\\tio)\3 and we fully expect that we
will satisfy the word, "wVat^hf indor " mUftion in out title and we
will be able to yxpy \U**ot i ona '(or & pace science in
the next deca.<:W\
Now I would Yv\& \0 p.\\\ tor th$ '<&&-* \ HM pleano, the video
tape. I do >\i\y> topies, M the text so if there is anyone
here who has^vVV taking i\0te3 wW don't you just sit back and
enjoy it. I Should al&Vv add that there ate visual materials in
the press eite that people may want to pick up. I'm going to
apologize we ha,v\ set this up so that the first 3 minutes were
deleted. This is really a commercial for NASA, and we felt that
we really didn't need to, show this first part, I had expected the
tape to start with \he introduction to the experiments.
Obviously that isn't the case so perhaps we could just turn up
the volume and listen to the entire tape.
(TAPE) Included in Columbia's scientific cargo is a group of nine
investigations known as the OSS-i payload. This project was so
named because it was the first shuttle payload to be sponsored by
NASA's former office of space science, now called the office of
space science and applications. Management of the OSS-1 shuttle
payload project has been the responsibility of Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. After launch the Columbia
begins orbiting aproximately 150 miles above the Earth. Three
hours into the orbit the payload bay doors open exposing the OSS-
1 pallet to space. Except for the door opening and closing tests
at extreme temperatures, the doors stay open until just before
the descent phase begins. While in orbit the shuttle travels
through the ionosphere region which forms important buffer zone
between the Earth's atmosphere and outerspace. The ionosphere
contains plasma, an electrically charged gas resulting from the
energizing of the Earth's upper atmosphere by the Sun's
ultraviolet radiation. As the orbiter moves through the plasma
it creates a wake (tape delete) to remotely manipulate this
mechanical arm (tape delete) and lifts the PDP off the pallet and
moves it to several positions above the payload bay for
observations of the wake. The PDP also measures electromagnetic
interference created by onboard shuttle electronics. Knowledge
of the extent to which the orbiter is producing such static
interference will be necessary for designing and operating
sensitive receivers used in future shuttle experiments. After
observations are made the arm must restow the PDP in its locked
position on the pallet. Several times during the mission the PDP
operates in conjunction with other OSS-1 investigations - the
Utah State University vehicle charging and potential experiment
also known as VECAP. Part of this experiment consists of a fast
pulse electron generator. This devise emits pulsed electron
streams of varying duration and intensity above the payload
bay. The arm then moves the PDP through the stream of electrons
to study how electrons interact with the surrounding
ionosphere. These observations will further the understanding of
such interactions which occur in nature. If there are enough
atoms in the plasma to become disturbed by the electron stream, a
violet glow similar to that produced in a test chamber at Johnson
Space Center may be seen by the astronauts. The VECAP experiment
also consists of samples of some of the materials which comprise
the Orbiter's outer surface. These materials provide a means to
study the electrical charge buildup on the Orbitet caused by its
movement through the ionosphere and by the emission of electrons
from the VECAP generator. A sample of Orbiter insulation is used
to measure electrical charge buildup on the nonconducting
materials which comprise 98% of the Orbiter's outer surface. A
metallic plate is used to measure the flow of electrical current
from the ionosphere back into the Orbiter through uninsulated
metallic surfaces. A spherical probe, also part of the VECAP
experiment, is used to measure resulting voltage between the
Orbiter and its surroundings. Because electrical charge buildup
can affect scientific measurements on the shuttle, VECAP findings
will indicate how much compensation may be needed in calibrating
future shuttle instruments. Although the Orbiter is engineered
to produce a minimum of dust and other particle contamination, a
certain amount cannot be avoided. OSS-1 is studying the extent
to which such contamination might affect future sensitive
astronomical observations on the shuttle. The University of
Florida Shuttle Spacelab Induced Atmosphere Experiment, formally
flown on Skylab, consists of a combination photopolar imeter
camera system. This instrument makes observations of shuttle
induced dust clouds and other particles. It also scans the
distant sky to measure the polarization intensity and color of
light reflecting from dust particles in the Solar System and
Milky Way. During the mission, the astronauts plan to fire
thruster jets to reposition the Orbiter 10 degrees down from a
direct tail to sun position. This allows the instrument to
better observe how the contamination cloud created from a
thruster firing and other dust around the Orbiter might interfere
with viewing the heavens. The effect of water dumps and any
Orbiter leakage are also subjects for observation. During
shuttle flights, thruster firings, water dumps, and other
operations may also cause contamination to condense on
instruments in the payload bay. Although little of this
condensation is expected, an Air Force sponsored contamination
monitor package serves as a check on the buildup of condensable
contaminants on pallet instruments as it actually occurs during
shuttle ascent, orbit, and descent. Instruments carried in the
Orbiter 's payload bay are subjected to temperature changes which
can vary between 200 degrees Fahrenheit when the bay is facing
the sun to approximately 150 degrees below zero in the shade.
Presently shuttle experiment developers are forced to tailor
their designs to protect their experiments from such temperature
extremes. The objective of a Goddard developed thermal canister
experiment is to demonstrate a better way to maintain the desired
temperature environment around an instrument. The experiment
uses heat pipes which can work in connection with a computer to
transfer heat between hot and cold areas. If successful, this
technology could provide a controlled temperature environment in
which future space instruments could operate despite severe
external temperature extremes. During flight micrometeroids or
interplanetary dust particles may sporadically bombard the
pallet. The University of Kent in England has provided the OSS-1
pallet with a Microabras ion Foil Experiment as a means to learn
more about these particles. Mounted on top of the thermal
canister experiment, this one-square-meter sheet consists of 50
pieces of aluminum foil varying in density. As the
micrometeroids hit the foil's thin surface, they puncture the
foil and form craters. After flight, the foil sheet will be
returned to England for chemical and density analysis. There is
increasing concern over the possibility that manmade pollution
may change the composition of the Earth's upper atmosphere,
thereby allowing ultraviolet radiation from the sun to adversely
affect life on Earth. Because of this concern, accurate
measurement of this radiation is necessary. The Naval Research
Laboratory's Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor, known
as SUSIM, undertakes to make sach measurements. Containing two
spectrometers, the objective of the SUSIM is to constantly
measure the amount of emitted ultraviolet solar radiation during
the time that the payload bay is facing the sun. The SUSIM also
contains attached sun sensors which the astronauts plan to use as
a guide in pointing the payload bay directly at the sun during
the 28 hours of planned solar observation. A solar flare is an
occasional spectacular eruption of energy from the sun whose
nature is presently a scientific puzzle. Radiations from the
solar flare include x-rays that enable us to study the origin of
this energy. The major question is whether the x-rays come from
a very hot gas cloud or are the result of a beam of fast moving
electrons smashing into the sun's surface. Should a solar flare
occur during the mission, the solar flare x-ray polarimeter
experiment developed by Columbia University will attempt to
answer this question by measuring the degree of polarization in
the x-rays emitted from the flare. If a major flare is spotted
at a time when the payload bay is not facing the sun and if time
permits, the astronauts plan to reposition the Orbiter so that
the observation can be made. At present, little is known about
how plants will respond to weightlessness and how they will grow
in space. On Earth plants form lignin, the skeletal but
indigestable substance which allows them to grow upward in spite
of the downward pull ot gravity. Scientists are interested in
learning whether plants might grow less lignin in weightlessness
and instead produce more digestable substances such as proteins
and carbohydrates. This question is being investigated in the
OSS-1 Plant Lignif ication and Weightlessness Experiment by the
University of Houston. The first of several such experiments
planned for the shuttle, this experiment entails growing three
types of plant seedlings during the 7-day mission. Just before
launch, oat and mung bean seeds and germinated slash pine
seedlings are placed in a mini growth chamber. The chamber is
put into a stowage locker in the cabin's middeck. Within the
container, the seedlings are maintained with a sealed in Earth
atmosphere and supplied with heat, light, and water. Immediately
after landing, the 7-day old seedlings will be removed from the
Orbiter for photographing and chemical and microscopic analysis
of lignin formation. Other effects on plant development will
also be analyzed. The OSS-1 mission serves as a pathfinder in
many ways. It provides an opportunity to show how the shuttle's
unique capabilities can be used to explore new frontiers in the
space sciences and space technology. Its measurements will
characterize the shuttle as a vehicle for space observations and
help in planning effective future shuttle research. The
scientific information gathered by this and future missions will
contribite to a better understanding of the world in which we
live. {END OF TAPE)
I think that completes our presentation. Again I'd like to
remind you that we have displays here and after the formal
presentation by all of the experimenters, you may want to talk to
our investigator. I call your attention to two interesting
displays here. One is a quarter scale model of the plasma
diagnostics experiment and then actually the little green house
in space; the plants growing, provided by the University of
Houston, so you may want to check those later on. Thank you very
much.
All right, we'll follow the normal rules for
questions now. Are there any questions? And please identify
yourself and your affiliation when the microphone arrives. Go
ahead Kevin.
KEVIN SANDERS, C&M There seems to be some confusion about the
figures that we see in various publications that are being
released here and the film I've just seen on the .temperature
differentials that are expected to be encountered. Is it 200
degrees minus or plus centigrade or farenheit? It's farenheit in
the film, it's farenheit in Rockwell's handouts, it's jentigrade
in all the rest of the NASA handouts. Which is it and what are
Rockwell working on in their specifications?
NEUPERT My recollection is 200 degrees farenheit or about
plus 100 centigrade. It's about the temperature of boiling
water. It's minus 200 farenheit, minus 200 centigrade which is
about minus 150 farenheit I believe. There may be also some
confusion about the surface temperature and the temperatures of
instruments. Certainly the temperatures of the instruments that
we have to accommodate is about the temperature of boiling water.
PAO Can we settle on one figure then?
NEUPERT The figure is plus 200 farenheit which is plus 100
centigrade .
KEVIN SANDERS Well there are other figures around. I don't know
whether it's a farenheit or centigrade confusion or what. I
wonder if I could ask another question regarding the electron
beam gun. There had been talk I understand that there was a
demonstration planned of using the gun to skywrite on the
ionosphere or the surface of the atmosphere. Has any thought
been given to that, has the idea been aban^ned, and if so why.
Does the electron gun have any military application.
NEUPERT I think there may be some confusion between this
and some of the chemical release experiments that were planned.
Not under this particular program but in some of the applications
programs. You're well aware that there have been many rockets
experiments that have released barium and sodium into the
atmosphere. One of the instruments that NASA is considering for
the shuttle is called a chemical release module which would have
many of these charges of barium and other materials that could be
fired off at various heights and under various orientations. Now
those I think myself I've seen some fanciful concept of what that
might look like in the sky and perhaps that's what you have in
mind. So far as the military applications for electron beams in
space, I really don't foresee any. As a matter of fact, one of
the things that the experimenters are interested in is in fact
how far will these electrons get. You have to understand that
they are not going through a vacuum, there are going through the
ionosphere. They will lose their energy to the particles of the
Earth's upper atmosphere rather rapidly. Roger can probably give
us the number but it's probably hundreds of meters or perhaps
even less, maybe even hundreds of feet before the beam is
altogether diffused and lost its energy.
ROGER WILLIAMSON, Coinvest igator on the VCAP experiment from Utah
State University. The answer to the first question about
skywriting is that somehow you got a hold of a very fanciful idea
that we probably are to blame for at one time. It was a bit of
our humor unfortunately and I didn't know that that would ever
get out. It won't work, by the way. There is one little bit of
trutn in that and that is that on future missions there will be
experiments using electron accelerators and on these accelerators
the power will be as much as a hundred times greater and there
will be some possibility of generating an artificial aurora.
Most people are familiar with the northern lights or the aurora
borealis or aurora astrolis and these lights that we see
naturally occurring in the sky are produced by energetic
electrons very similar to the type that we are going to emit and
in that sense you may see something on future missions. Our
power levels are way too low. As for the second questions about
the electron beam guns or weapons in space, that is a completely
different type of an instrument. We do emit electrons from the
Orbiter but the characteristics are just completely different and
I dcn't know of any relationship between the two.
PAO Kevin, NASA doesn't have any guns. It's really a
generator .
DAVE DOOLING, the Huntsville Times I know that the PDP and SUSIM
are slated for ref light on Spacelab 2. Are any of the other
pallet instruments being considering for reflight, in particular
the x-ray flare polar imeter .
NEUPERT No, there are no plans for NASA to be flying any
other of those instruments.
CHUCK DECARO with Sage My question of PDP is this. If you're
going to check for electronic interference, a baseline electronic
interference from the avionics onboard the shuttle, won't that
change later when you've got KU-band transmission to TDRSS and
also when you have rendezvous radar. Won't it change
significantly and you'll have to fly the package all over
again. Second I have a question on a barbeque mode (garble)
NEUPERT Stan, perhaps you would like to answer that.
PAO This is Dr. Stan Shawhan from Iowa University.
SHAWHAN Yes, in the case of spaceflight 2 we're going to
carry onboard a KU-band receiver to look specifically for that
and we want to make a comparison on a partial Orbiter which all
this is is a two pallet Orbiter with a full up payload system on
spacelab. There should be different electrical levels for that
too. KU-band systems, same antennas, different transmitter and
receiving system, garble That's true. And we're particularly
looking for the garble. Want to see what the field strengths are
in and around the bay.
DECARO The other question is when you fly in the barbeque
mode, will you be flying with the radiators off and flash
evaporators off to see how it operates in that mode.
That's a technical question we don't have anyone in
our group I don't think that would be able to answer that.
(garble) RICHEY, Channel 9, Orlando Do I understand correctly
from the film that the SUSIM experiment is the first and only way
to measure whether or not more ultraviolet light is getting
through from the sur. since the chemicals have been in the
atmosphere?
SUNTER BROOKNER from NRL Perhaps I can answer this question.
It is not the first and only one of these experiments.
Ultraviolet radiation from the sun has been measured since space
research started. Actually the first experiment in space was a
captured German V-2 rocket in 1946 which carried a little
spectrograph on top of it and it was the first experiment which
measured ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Since that time we
have recognized that ultraviolet rays from the sun plays an
important role in the upper atmosphere. We have also recognized
that ultraviolet radiation from the sun in this specific
wavelength span varies with the solar cycle. So and also we have
recognized that the variability at the moment is less than our
measurement accuracy. So what we will do is to increase the
measurement accuracy to the point where we can really determine
the variablity. This experiment will be flown over and over
again over 11 year solar cycle from solar maximum to solar
minimum in order to determine what the variance of the solar
ultraviolet radiation is and then other experiments which measure
atmospheric parameters can then provide clues about the
correlation of how the upper atmosphere reacts to the varying
degree of solar ultraviolet radiation.
RICHEY Would it be safe to say then that this experiment
is the only way to measure over a long term whether or not we are
depleting the ozone?
BROOKNER Yes it's part of a more complex program which takes
this into account. The most important part is that we increase
the accuracy. What the unique capability of the shuttle is is
that the experiment comes back and can be recalibrated. These
experiments have the very nasty characteristic that they destroy
themselves in space. In other words they are destroyed by the
very thing they want to measure. Ultraviolet radiation from the
sun makes them blind so we must know exactly how much they are
degraded and in this respect the shuttle is absolutely unique
because we can go up there, measure for a day, come back,
calibrate it again and we know exactly how much the experiment is
decl i ned . '
CHICAGO SUN TIMES I have another question for Dr. Brookner,
there was some indication, I think in the press kit about a
relationship between the ultraviolet intensities at high altitude
and total energy output of the sun. Would you discuss that
br ief ly .
DR. BROOKHKR There are similar cycles of ultraviolet radiation
and the principal ultraviolet radiation over the whole solar
surface, so you wouldn't expect any difference. But, then it
comes very intensely from the active hodges, and the sun rotates
for 27 days and therefore the ultraviolet radiation. .. it
develops and changes with the solar maximum to solar minimum.
Now the ultraviolet radiation in the sun is only a very small
percentage of the total output of the sun, it's less than 1
percent and specific spectral region. But, it dominates
completely the atmospheric heating of the Earth above
approximately 50 kilometers, 30 kilometers to 100 kilometers. A
small variation in the solar ultraviolet output can therefore
create quite different atmospheric conditions. Now, and then go
into the very exotic part of this, which is perhaps the most
interesting. We have learned recently that stars, like the sun,
can emit 3 orders of magnitude, more ultraviolet light and yet
when you look et them in the visible they look like ordinary
stars. And so somebody may in a hundred years, may like to check
this again whether the sun has changed. So, he needs some base
line measurement, and that's some of the things we are looking
for .
PAO One question ' rom Johnson, go ahead.
This is Kelly Beedee from ykyand Telescope Magazine: A couple
of questions, quick ones, will the micro abrasion foil experiment
determine anything about the composition impact of the bodies,
and who will advise NASA of the active flare region should they
occur .
TONY MCDONALD from Canterbury Yes, the position of
penetration is enough so it wouldn't measure it optically at
first, and then those areas are extracted for scanning electron
microscopy, and in that, we examine the craters in great detail
to magnification up to 50,000. And at that time, we can then use
an (garble) x-ray analysis to actually measure the composition of
the amount of the cosmic dust particles themselves because they
are in fact partly evaporated and destroyed, but at least the
residues of those particles. The thing that's interesting on the
C9, the cosmic dust field, which the microfoil, microabrasion
foil experiment will examine, is the contamination in space from
rocket flights themselves because on the Skylab four windows, one
has found that there are a class of craters which are peculiar,
they're lined with aluminum, and these are in fact contaminants
from rocket exhausts in space. And therfore, this experiment is
very critical at this time to access not any of the cosmic dust
background but the manmade debris.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY The question about the, how we'll know
about the solar activity. A national oceanic and atmospheric
agency, I guess it is, in Boulder, Colorado usually monitors the
sun and radio optical bands. Also, it has access data from the
GEO satellite, and that data is radioed down to Earth, and in
fact we will have a readout in JSC of the x-ray activity, x-ray
flux from the s U „. and ■ ^ rulo 9 ?"m ^"spacecraft
^ar^he'sTLa C h Spo a ^ar:o ,0 can r =a t c„ a r>„. during the
operation.
NEUPERT l'.l*t f^^inr-r ^at?on?1n^nu^ the
might think. That in fact d ring °« * operations center and
flare occurred on the ^"J^^^ient through the procedure,
the payioad operations control center durinq tho
^fssir^d b Ld°UT; d en 1 L- i ^uai e m i S sion P we would have gotten
very good data from that flare event.
i- ^ pn^t Could you tell us why tail
NEUPERT ^Jin. }^^.?^^^ "
understand how the or ■ » s op e^.^ of ^ ^
pSaTlength"; time has boon selected.
I think .eT. going to have to "r«K thU one off
aSd « onto the next group "'"^'^Je « a?so emind you
^•11 ask Werner to step down and I o l^e t uiu be
that the prinicpal invest. gators on these exp coH aM „ if
around and available ( °' ^ " ° either talk to them
^reWeTorVseeTe ovlr" ingress site after this
br ief ing is over .
The speakers will be Dr. Bob Nor-n and James narrows.
END OF TAPE
p3k PAY LOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page I
(NOTE: This picks up at the end of the OSS-1 briefing)
PAO division of that center space sciences lab which has
scientific responsibility for the electrophoresis equipment
verification test and the mono disperse latex reactor. He is
also a former of project scientists where the induced environment
contamination monitor, so he will be briefing ycu on all three
experiments this afternoon. I might add that Dr. Naumann is
heavily involved at the first commercial use of the Shuttle, the
joint NASA/McDonne 1 Douglas electrophoresis effort which will
begin flying on the next Shuttle flight STS-4. You may want to
talk to him about this after the briefing and I would like to
spell out, point out that his name is misspelled in the briefing
sheet, it really is NAUMAN N , Rob.
Naumann Thank you very much, I'd like to take the induced
environment contamination monitor package first and describe a
little bit about what it does and what we've learned on the STS-
2, we flew it on that mission also, and then I'll move onto the
other experiments. The package itself, if I can have the first
viewgraph, are is a large box about the size of a desk, it
contains some ten instruments that are designed to essentially
monitor the environment that a payload would see from the time it
was delivered here to the Cape, go through all the integration
procedures that a payload would normally see through the ascent
phase of the Orbiter, the on orbit operation, the descent phase,
the deintegration and so forth and then provide us with a record
of what that payload has gone through in terms of the particulate
and condensable and thermal and humidity environment goes. So
there are a set of instruments on the package to do that, there's
simply thermocouples for measuring temperature, there's dewpoint,
and a hydrometer onboard to measure the relative humidity, there
are particle detectors, little air samplers that pull particles
through them and then essentially weigh them by having them
impact on various sensitive plates that are surfaced with quartz
crystal so they can be measured and weighed and then there are
optical samplers onboard which then we periodically can. take off
during the pre-mission operations and then post-mission to see
how much change in optical properties have occurred during the
exposure. The other part of the package then is designed to do
the on-orbit monitoring and here we're looking for things like
the particle and gas clouds that are around the Shuttle which
were mentioned earlier. The main differences in what we're doing
here, however, this the monitor package that has been flown on
STS-2, it will be flown on STS-3, and throughout the development
series of both the Orbiter and the Spacelab mission. So this
allows us to compare from flight to flight, get a baseline on one
and see how it changes on the other. We had an abbreviated
mission on Spacelab 2 as you know, this mission gives us a much
longer flight opportunity to study some of things that we didn't
get to see on the last mission. In particular we are very
p 3 k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 2
■int.re.ted in the . long P-iod where the tai U.^ ^to the
sun because this is an ideal viewing P 0 ^ mass
optical measurements we wa "£ /° ™*£*; ed „ 0 ?2 cu i es leaving the
ometer onboard to measure h induce the water
Shuttle and coming back and ^°J p h f " ecies that are
vapor around the Shuttle and other ^eous spec igator team,
associated with the induced atmosphere. The »nves g
by the way, as far as I should ^" t ^ ' oilkage ias developed
project scientist at Mar shal 1 , ™ d J ne P a J ^ t Leger at Johnson
primarily through the cooperation of Dr. WDe m
Ipaoe Center and he head, the^contaminati on I J ^try^ ^
and particles contamination ^k ng group ^ degign
they're the ones that- re "?P on J^^ e ^ ^ slons, if possible,
of the Shuttle and seeing that the ^sign contamination
are made such that it can minimise the amount . f t
that the Shuttle does see. I have a very f an idea
could have that please, ^ Ji 1 ^ a ^tl * ilm x please .
what some of those instf ^" t ^°^ e t^e dewpoint monitor being
Let me work over here. Here you see tn « *V b t refurbished
assembled on the clean benches, it " jctual £ D ^ u ent
from the first flight pr 10 to the insta 1 lat ion and
flight. The experiment scientist on this is a ^ ^ ^
that's who's operating it. Here V™ ^° ; boa J d to measure the
cameras, we have two camera ph ^meters onboa rd what
particles floating around the spacecraft and i ^ . s
that looks like in a second. ! . 5^ ? i im iS i t . This is the
out of it and he's about jo put the C 1m in it. responsi5le
optical effects mom to , this is Roger L ^ n . g loaded
for that, this carousel that you see up the samples are
with optical samples and t P«}° rt j^aiiy reflectivity
exposed and rotated back in ^ ^he instrument . fc
a nS the scatter from the opt cs are -a-red^ controUed quartz
Tell SlSc.S C in.i air S rou a ntain ^/^S^^t.u up here
reassembling. These have very sens t ve qua crys j they
at the top with thermo electr }c poolers under hi liko
can be cycled anywhere from P lu ^ J^htna on the order of just a
minus 60C and they can measure somet h ^ ° n ™ e Q ° C them so J tnis ifl
few nanograms per square cent J»eter ot coat ng on
how we determine the amount of de P?"tion rrom g inte grated,
components, and here you «f the final package f J So
or being closed up, ynt prior to shipment d ^ sort
that gives you a rough dea of J^e type ot P briefly the results
of things that we have in it. Just to ^vi dl8COVer qult0 a
of what we found on the SVS-2 «J» s ;^ n : a ^ b as a resu it of
r«rtn.n°K r «S«^ should plinr
Sly'I 1 ^ - - Cape to keep the
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 3
payload bay clean. Now, on this particular mission, considerably
more effort will be made so it will be most interesting to
compare what we see on this mission to what we saw on the la ^ 1
mission. We also have air samplers onboard which are essentially
grab bottles which open up at various times during ascent and
some during descent and the idea here is to see it we ingest
things like engine exhaust products into the payload bay,
hydrochloric acid among other things. The way these devices work
is that they're preevacuated containers and they have active
surfaces in them which are responsive to particular contaminants
that we're looking for, we take a grab sample and then close it
up and bring it back down to earth and then analyze the surface
to see if it absorbs materials that we were looking for and I'm
very happy to announce that we saw no ascent products whatsoever
in the payload bay on STS-2, nor did we see any descent
products. There we were concerned about some of the oxide and
nitrogen and hydrazine things like that that used to thrusters as
they are being jettisoned overboard. So we were pretty happy
that the payload bay does not seem to ingest any of these
particular, or any of these particular materials. We did see a
little bit of deposition on the quartz microbalances but it would
be about what you'd expect from a vehicle the size of the
Shuttle. It was under about 10 to the minus 5 grams per square
centimeter over the mission which we think is quite adequate to
keep from ruining thermal control surfaces of the payloads that
may be launched from the Shuttle and we also feel that it
probably meets the optical deposition for sensitive optics if
they have some degree of shielding on them. We saw very litt.e
scattering of heavier molecules, the offgassing molecules in the
mass spectrometer, we did see some considerable water vapor
coming back which is what we'd expect, our very preliminary
analysis, and let me say this.. it was very preliminary, indicated
that the column density of the water cloud was on the order of 10
to the 12th molecules per square centimeter which was sort of the
ragged limit of what most of the astrometers feel is alright for
doing most of the observations that they would like to do. That
measurement will be repeated with more precision, we have much
longer time to make that measurement on the STS-3, plus we have a
control gas release where we have a rad ioacti vely tagged water
which we will turn loose as predetermined time. It is different
from ordinary water in the fact that it is made out of 013 H2 and
it responds with mass 20 so we can distinguish it from the
Shuttle water and that will give us an opportunity to send out a
cloud of known material and monitor what comes back. The other
thing that we did see on the STS-2 particularly early in the
spacecraft, we saw these on Skylab also and, in fact, all tne
other manned spaceflights that have ever been made. If I could
have the next viewgraph, please, I'll show you what some of those
look like. As you may have been able to tell from the film the
camera photometer is a pair of 16 millimeter cameras that are
mounted with about 1 meter baseline between them so that gives us
a stereo view. And what I've done here, turn the lights down
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 4
just a little bit, please, so you can see them, please, Ok, what
you see here now are the two views of the two cameras
superimposed, we put a blue filter in front of one, a red filter
in front of the others so you can see then the particle tracks
show up in red and blue so this and this are the same particle
but the perspective is different because of the i^^.._ton of the
camera. So this gives us then by measuring this apparent
distance we can then calculate what the distance to the particle
is. By knowing the direction, we then can or the projection on
the film we then can work out the complete X, Y, Z position of
the particle and then we can back calculate the trajectory and
try to figure out where the particle actually came from. Now the
reason there are notches in here is because we periodically
chopped the shutter, we know at what rate we chop it so that
actually gives us the particle velocity. So this is one
particle that's moving that direction, moving away from us and
source was somewhere over here, these represent other particles,
and, of course, as the particles are further away, the images get
closer together. These two bright sides, by the way, are Caster
and Polyix, and, of course, they would have the same parallex in
both cameras, so the red and blue here superimposed to form
white. So this is the type of analysis that we can do on the
particle environment. I might point out that we saw numerous of
these particles earlier in the mission and particularly when we
were doing water dumps and things like this where you'd expect to
see ice crystals floating around. We saw fewer particles as we
went on into the mission and a number of particles seen actually
decreased rather dramatically toward the end of the mission. So
the STS-3 we'll get another chance over a much longer period of
time to see how the particulate environment essentially calms
down as the Shuttle stays up there. I believe that's about it
for the IECM, we'd like to entertain any questions on that
package now if anyone has any.
PAO Front row
Dave Dooling Huntsvillc Times Bob, how long is it going to take
to cycle the IECM between STS-2 and 3 and give us another quick
look at the data that you get on this mission?
Naumann I'm not sure I understand the question, let me see if
Dave Dooling How long to recycle the IECM itself and how long
till we'll have the Hrst quick look at the data that it gathers
during the mission?
Naumann Ok, I think your first question is how long it takes to
refurbish the IECM after STS-2 and get it ready for 3? Oh, I'm
sorry. Right. Dave, you'll have to help me. How long was it
between 2 and 3? We made it in that length of time, we really
had to work to do it, but I don't really anticipate it would take
any longer between 3 and 4. It's quite a chore to do that, but
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 5
its do-able and I zan't give you a precise figure I'm
sorry to say but it is something we can do. Well, of course, the
analysis continues, Right, 1 think we put out a 45 day report
which is a very quick look which is what we did on the last
mission and that gives us a rough cut at what each of the
instruments saw and some idea, and I think the quick look
analysis will be a little bit more definitive each time we go
because you know, the first time we had to figure out what the
instrument was really doing so after we fly it 3 or 4 times we
get to know it a little better and it's a little easier to
interpret what it's trying to tell us. But I would say in about
45 days we'll have a quick look out and the final analysis is
going to take some time longer than that.
PAO I understand from Marshall that the answer is 2 weeks?
Naumann Thank you.
PAO Are there any other questions?
Chuck DeCaro with Sage My question is on the decrease in
number of ice particles, are you looking for the reason for the
decrease as sublimation or vehicle movement or well are you
looking for?
Naumann Well, that's a very complicated question. First of
all just that ice is one of the things that we know is formed up
there and flakes off and forms particles but they could be pieces
of tile, pieces of insulation, dust that was trapped, a dust
particle sitting there against the black sky, if you will,
illuminated by the sunlight can be very bright, so we really
don't know what the origin of all the particles are, we hope by
detailed analysis, especially by looking at their trajectories we
can get some idea of the particle mass to see how they get bent
by the atmospheric drag, that is not an insignificant thing for
the very small particles. By being able to backtrack maybe we
can locate where they are coming, if they're coming from the
region of say a flash evaporator, or a dump nozzle, we can
determine that if they're coming from other regions then they are
probably something else. So we hope over the full analysis to be
able to give a kind of detailed description of where these
particles are coming from and get some idea of what the
generating functions of these are. I guess, in general, what
we're trying to really do is understand the particulate
environment, what generates it, so we'll know what not to do when
we don't want the particle.
PAO Ok, are there any other questions?
Naumann Ok, I'd like to move on then to the next experiment pk3
which is the electrophoresis verification test experiment. The
p3k PAY LOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 6
experiment team for this experiment is Dr. Dennis Morrison
from JSC who's here in the audience with us, and can answer
questions I guess when we come to chat. Dr. Snyder in Marshall,
Dr. Paul Todd from Penn State University and Dr. Grant Morrow
from the Michael Reece Research Center in Chicago. This
experiment is a joint Marshall/Johnson Space Center experiment.
It's actually a repeat or a reflight of an experiment that was
actually tlown on the Apollo/Soyuz mission. And the flight on
the Apollo/Soyu* mission was only partially successful but it did
have some i ather tantalizing results that have intrigued a lot of
people and there's b?en quite a bit of desire to see the
experiment reflown and the data that we saw on the Apollo/Soyuz
verified and essentially amplified. So that's how the experiment
got started. If I could have the first viewgraph, you'd get some
idea of the apparatus. This is sort of, this is the whole
experiment opened out, it actually folds down into this little
package here that can be stowed in a mid deck locker. In the
open out configuration the device at the top is a Hasselblad
camera which photographs the working area here and that's our
main data source. Although on the modification we'll be flying
on the Shuttle we will actually have some of the temperatures and
voltages electronically recorded. The other modification on the
Shuttle flight is the additional electronic accelerometer package
so that we know exactly what acceleration the experiment has
seen. I guess is that still on, Dennis, or not? Ok, good.
The readouts that you can see here, I believe maybe the next
vugraph might give you a better indication of what the actual
package looks like. This is a control panel here, there's a
clock here that is photographed by the camera that
temperature are read out with LED readouts and can be recorded on
film and on tape. Now the actual electrophoresis part of the
experiment takes place back in this region and I think that
perhaps a short film cut I have of that gives you a little better
feel of how the whole experiment is operated. The principle of
tha experiment is the following: We have a glass tube which is
placed in this receptor here and a sample of cells to be
separated are put in a little slide and a prefrozen slide is
inserted in one end of the glass column, allowed to thaw, the
voltage is turned on and the cells then pick up a charge by
ylrtue of the fact that they are immersed in an electrolite or a
buffer solution and the charge is determinted by the molecules on
the surface of the cell itself. So as you find the electric
field the little cells are actually then caused to migrate or
electrophoresed along a fluid column. And the amount or the
speed at which they migrate or the distance over which they
migrate is dependent on the charge to mass ratiole of that
particular cell and presumably that will be different for cells
of different types. So we now have a way of separating out in a
time domain or spatial domain by causing these cells to
migrate. When the experiment is finished then the current is
turned off, there's a thermal electric cooler down under the slot
p3k PAY LOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 7
right here and a thermal barrier or a insulation pad is put ovtr
the top and the thermal electric cooler is activated and the
cells are then frozen in place. They are then put in a cryogenic
refrigerator returned to earth and then they can be sectioned and
analyzed back on the ground. If I can roll film 2 this is a very
brief film clip of the experiment in the crew trainer going
through the motions of simulation. What you are seeing here is
the pad being or the insulation pad being taken off. This is the
electrophoretic column being inserted in the receptacles. Now he
would plug in the fluid loop (garble) here if he were actually
electrophoresing and turn the current on. This is now after the
electrophoreses has taken place, the top thermal cover is being
reinstalled and now the thermal coolers were being activated and
the column will be frozen solid. Then after the column is frozen
the thermal cover is removed. The column now is removed from the
fluid loop. Being very careful not to break it. The little end
caps now are rotated to be removed and then the frozen cells are
inserted in the cryogenic freezer and returned. The samples that
will be processed in this set of experiments are a set of
standard particles that are being supplied by the Marshall Center
by Bob Snider. These are human and animal blood cells that can
be easily identified by their morphology after the experiment
is over with and the purpose of that set of experiments is to
really just characterize the degree of separation that we can
get in a low g environment. Now this particular type of
electrophoresis really cannot be done on the at all on the ground
because the dual heating of the current passing through the
electrolyte produces sufficient convection and just simply stirs
up the cells and demixes them as fast as you can electrophoresis
them . There are techniques for separating these cells on the
ground but this particular technique does not work readily on the
ground. There is a variation where you turn the tube up and put
a density gradient into it called density gradient
electrophoresis and you can do some work with that type of
process for separation. So anyway what we really want to do with
the standard particles is to characterize residual disturbances
due to either crew activity, vehicle motion, residual electro-
osmotic disturbances or whatever else may inhibit the, or prevent
you from getting a good separation. Then there will be six other
columns which are supplied by the Johnson Space Center which
contain human kidney cells. And the idea here is to separate the
cells or attempt to separate the cells according to function.
Now this is one of the things that was done on the ASTP
experiment on the Apollo/Soyuz experiment. We only got one
successful column back from that unfortunately due to some other
problems but we did get at least an indication that we were able
to separate kidney cells by function, in fact, we were able to
finish out one group of cells that produce the enzyme
urokinase. And this caused quite a bit of interest and so that
experiment will be repeated and the aim here is to use what we
think and improved resolution we can get with this process in
space to see if we can get a better separation with this
PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 Page 8
particular apparatus in ^STechni/ues.^^SeHeve K.^."^^
available ground separation techn ques. and „ i say,
X" ^fson 0 irii?S°u , ""if ou°nave questions I'll either try
^fUMthemor "So. them to Dennis.
PAO Question, over here
PRESS How might the results . ft« "^"^J no^as. Is
you're going to tly i" the next miss* t<J change
N aumann I don't thinRU woulc ^change -^-^^ ^ 1
clear that this experiment is not <nr y £U ht of an
McDonnell Douglas D oint endea jor. jnx ^ early
experiment that we have *? ne , "Jit" i eal g n ed primarily to
electrophoresis experiment ?^ it £5 design T he McDonnell Douglas
JJaluatS the static ^^^ ou f ^ electrophoresis which is
experiment is using contin "°"* * AO ;L w there are some things that
SiSllar but a different process. Now there ^ ^ ^
can be learned. Control of electro o ^ someth i t ha 8
course is a premium ™ * h A" Douglas. Other things like
certainly of Merest McDonnell ^ g that can be used is
the amount of c 0 " 0 ?;"*^? 11 .^-??" to McDonnell Douglas, but let
something that might be o£ interest to separa ting cells and
The'Sc^^ prot^fns: Tacro
roIerule^^fn^L^^irmft^raL^nrK^t celfs. So the two are
not really connected.
PRESS , guess, what I really was -Icing was ^hat
°Lr:is?on 9 th "wa n s e mo £ re y Io P n!s 9 t!catea and more applicable to
pSframaoeauticals that the next one.
p3k PAYLOAD AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/21/82 PAGE q
But let me point out also that this one is primarily separating
cells and the McDonald Douglas experiments is at least Cor the
first several flights will be devoted primarily to proteins,
macro-molecules, in soluble materials and not cells. So the two
are not really directly connected.
PRESS Okay, I guess what I was really asking was what's
the point of re-flying this one if you got something that I have
the impression was more sophisticated and more applicable to
pharmaceuticals on the next one. I guess what I really, what the
question is, what's the point of this one.
NAUMANN Okay, Well as I pointed out, the McDonald Douglas
experiment does not separate cells. It may eventually want to
separate cells but that's not at least in the cards for the first
several missions. Cell separation is a very important biological
problem, and being able to separate out, for example, taking a
mixture of kidney cells which are very complicated, the kidney is
a rather remarkable organ and there are cells in there that do
all sorts of things. Being able to separate those out in
quantities that can be brought back and analyzed from the
research point of view has a great deal of biological interest.
PRESS Interest in who for what? Okay, well just I think
the ability just to separate the cells according the function, to
be able to use a purified group of cells and produce an enzyme
althouqh there are probably other ways of doing that. I would
say it was one of scientific interests because cell separation is
a major problem still in biological science.
PRESS Okay Bob, either for you or for Dennis this
experiment came into the STS-3 manifests relatively late in the
game. How was that accomplished, how did you manage it and what
would advise people following you not to do?
NAUMANN Goodness, not to do huh? I'm not sure I know how
to feel that one exactly let me start off by trying to answer
your first question first. It came into being the fact that the
hardware was there leftover from ASTP, and the fact that there
was interest on NASA's part to go back and redo some of the
things we did on ASTP, and the way the experiment actually was,
came about was through a letter that was sent from the Director
of Johnson Center to the Director of Marshall Center saying that
we understand you people have a piece of apparatus and we'd like
to fly it up on an early Shuttle flight why don't we cooperate
and do it together. So, that answer was, I mean, the letter was
answered affirmately and so Johnson then took the responsibility
of developing the columns and the kidney cell part of the
research which is also being done in conjuction with Paul Todd at
Penn State and Grant Barlow, and also supplied the cryogenic
freezer which is the life science freezer which goes on the
spacecraft and then Marshall refurbished there old MA-11
p3k PAYLOAD AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/21/82 PAGE 10
experiment and delivered it to Johnson. Now, your last question,
what would I do for, what was that?
PRESS in terms of how you got it into the manifests, the
cargo it was late in the game and was their any, you got it into
the cargo relatively late in the game and compared to some of the
other equipment aboard how did you accomplish that and were there
any particular problems that you encountered in doing it?
NAUMANN Okay I think Dennis can Probably answer that
question better than I could since he worked at the Center that
did that.
MORRISON Well you say relatively late, it has been
manifested for almost three years. ^And the project has been
underway for about three, three and a half years . It turns out
that some of the details of what we would have included in the
experiment, for instance, the acceleration package that Bob
mentioned we've had it late was actually a late manifested
addition but the fundemental verification test was included three
years ago.
PA 0 Will you identify yourself Dennis.
DENNIS MORRISON, the Project Manager for this.
PAO Any other questions?
NAUMANN Okay I like to move on then to the next package
which is the Monodisperse Latex Reactor experiment. The
principle investigator of this experiment is Dr. John Vanderhoff
from Leheigh University, and Dr. Vanderhoff is in the ground and
if any would like to address any questions to him plus his team
which is Dr. McCauley, and Dale Cornfeld and Dr. Allaser, and I
guess that ' s all .
The purpose of this experiment is to look at the
process called emulsion polymerization in which monodispersed
Latex particles are grown or produced. By Monodisperse Latex
particles, what I'm referring to are what the newspapers
sometimes refer to as little rubber balls, a little bit over
simplified perhaps but these are latex spheres from around two
and a half microns up to about twenty to thirty microns or maybe
even forty microns and by monodispersed we mean they have a very
very uniform size distribution in other words they are all _
exactly the same size or as near as we can make them.^ Now these
kinds of particles have been around for some time in face Dr.
Vanderhoff pioneered the, the some of the work in the production
of monodisperse latex spheres when he was at Dow Chemical And
they ahave been used for inumerable purposes from calibration
standards for sizing filters and pours var ious serological tests
'various other biological applications and I think if any of you
p3k PAYLOAD AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/21/82 PAGE 11/
have applications questions later I like to refer you to Dr .
Vanderoff for those. The reason for this particular flight was
at the time the experiment was proposed one could not make
particles much larger than two microns with at least in
production kind of quantities, and the reason for that is in the
polymerization process what you do is you take small seed
particles which are grown by a slightly different process, you
swell them with monomer which is stryrene monomer you protect
them from conglomerating with other particles by the addition of
surfactant soap then you polymerize them and form essentially a
rubber like material. Now the polymerization process is one
which the particles then loose some of the surfactant protection
they are very sticky in this process so you have to keep them
somehow in suspension, and if thoy bang together and stick
together you wind up either up with particles that are larger
than you've been trying to make, or in the worse case you get a
nice gooey mass that looks like some chewing gum or coogulant.
Below two microns, Brownian motion keeps the particles
suspension, above two microns you have to stir the particles to
keep them in suspension. Its the stirring process that causes
the particles to agglomerate. So, the experiment was proposed
then as a space experiment to then take away the tendency of
these particles to sediment and I might point out also that
during the swelling process the particles are actually lower
density than water which they are suspended in and during the
illumer ization process they had a higher density than water so
you got a ptoblem where you cant neutralize the density by adding
say heavy water or other things to them. So this was then the
reactor on the first slide that I can show you that we finally
put together. One of the experiment team Dale Cornfeld is shown
in the background there with the actual reactor, this then is the
can which holds four of these reactors that's bolted to the
Shuttle Middeck, and then this is the electronics package right
here which services the whole package. The electronics package
in the outer can were made by Rockwell International the reactors
were then General Electrics Space Division at Valley Forge. I do
have a film clip on this which shows the reactor being assembled
which may give you a little better idea, if you could roll film 3
for me please.
Here you see the reactor unit itself being installed into the
cluster of the four reactors that are in the can. And the
connectors being installed. This now is support electronics
package and the small eight track cassette tape is being placed
into the package. The cassette will record the temperature and
the volume expansion using a plunger with an LVT on it to measure
the expansion and that will give us some idea of the reaction
kinetics or how fast the reaction is taking place in space, and
now you see the package being bolted together and being ready for
installation. Now since this experiment was accepted for flight,
in fact only very recently in the last couple months, there have
been some developments in the field and some new processes have
p3k PAY LOAD AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/21/82 PAGE MX
been developed by various people which have allowed them to make
larger particles than the two microns which originally we saw as
being sort of the upper limit of what you could easily do on the
ground. These particles actually are being marketed now on the
open market, so when we saw this, of course, naturally we got a
little concerned about it, Dr. Vanderhoff did some of the
particles and at least had them analyzed, and it turns out that
the particles that are available in these larger sizes as I can
show you with an electron micrograph are very nearly
monodispersed that is very nearly of uniform sizes but as you can
see there are number of particles that do have condiserably
larger sizes. So by the definition that Dr. Vanderhoff uses for
monodisperse particles which I believe is plus or minus one
percent size variation the available particles right now the
commercially available particles really do not meet that. So,
really the aim of the experiment now is been changed a little bit
but what were really doing is trying to use the space process to
see whether we can actually improve on a commercial product that
is presently here and available on the ground. So that will be
the, I guess, the primary aim of the experiment, and if there are
any questions on that I will try to field them or refer them to
Dr. Vanderhoff.
PAO Alright if there are no questions here, are there
any questions at Johnson? Alright, no other questions then
we'll, thank you Bob and we'll move on to Jim Borrowman. You
can't buy your way into heaven I'm told but you can sure buy your
way into the heavens and you can do that by plunking down about
three thousand five thousand or ten thousand dollars to put an
experiment in space on what is called the getaway special. And
here to tell us about the getaway special verification flight
test that will be made on STS-3 is James Barrowman who is Project
Manager with the project at Goddard Space Flight Center, Jim.
JAMES BARROWMAN Thank you very much. Can I have the first
viewgraph to show you what the package that we have on STS-3
looks like it gives me a real problem by the way, I'm not quite
sure how to take a plain white can that is going to sit there and
doesn't look like it does much of anything through the entire
flight and make it interesting for you. I guess you have to view
it kind of like a seed that we planted back there at the back end
of the payload bay, one that is going to grow into three hundred
or more similiar experiments, or similiar containers which are
very diverse group of experiments in the future shuttle
flights. That is the number of payloads that we have currently
reserved in the getaway special program, this a precursor to
those experiments, those cans, that really is not a scientific
experiment at all, it is strictly an engineering kind of in the
same manner that the OFT series on the shuttle is an engineering
effort. We have included one scientific experiment in this from
Goddard which is, really involves film but as a rule we're
measuring things like temperature, radiation impacting on the
p3k PAY LOAD AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/21/82 PAGE »J 3
outside, that is thermal radiation. ^^-"or^n^.Jo^oi^
acceleration we see during lift of [ ™J JJ 1 ^ tne future
to be put together in a pac kage wh ich will p Qf
experimenters understand a little bit oecce ^ fching
environment they are going to s * e ' 0 °£ e ^ a * ons make s it, the
that makes this a "^J* 1 ^ ^iety of environments that are
thermal extremes and the wide variety extreme of
going to be seen, allow us to survey ana w i Centers even
environments and hopefully be able to give are f what fchey
though it's a one time measurement a reasonable i e yQu
cm expect in the extreme on their exper men t. witnout any
kind of, this is not ;us an empty c o t g g ^ ^
thing inside of it, Id like co 9* ' R b t £ om the video,
on the video if I could, not rom the bacK^ ed ^
Off to one side you just fee tn e P*y d batt ery system, it
Goddard it has a se » con » ej e cord er an owt / control
draws no orbiter functions at all we n t talks bet ween
system, I'll talk a little bit £jut later^ strlctly
the cabin and the P a yload can. b-L .thet Qf ^
a self contained pay load m the sense we have
payloads are going to b ° ^J 1 ™; that are not, that are
set up for the future payloads, the ones cna pro ducing
going to be using the same kin of data that we ^ gnd
here are going to start °" S ^; Vl ittle bit later on in my
you'll have a chance to e i f^ this launch. Now with the
presentation G is here at ^ fcnat we are providing
first slide fror 'back the accom ^ see . ne
for the getaway tial u sers are d pressure vessel so
picture and in thi* slide. It 1^ * £ e gear inside of it
that they can have a ^"^^^ 1 ^o tne^water of space
so that as there dipping their toe into c
experimentation they are P« tec ted -^at for ^ P^ that
environment and also has thermal insulation extremes tnat they
will „.v5 ?oVo"L™ SyStemS USide
p3k PAY LOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 0 3/20/82
pagf; tii
BARROWMAN Okay. There is a lino in the Shuttle Orbiter bay
that goes down through the wire trays and up to the sill area
where these containers will be mounted. There is a hand held
controller in the aft flight deck on this flight and all
subsequent flights containing get away specials and the
astronauts will use this hand held controller to select which of
the switches will be flipped either on or off depending upon what
the experimenters operational requirements are. The STS-4
experimenter on the next video slide is Gil Moore. Working with
Utah State University, the same people who brought you the VCAP
experiment on this payload on this flight, different, slightly
different group, but, and a slightly younger group, they are
going to be giving producing a group of nine different
experiments in that smalt, container the same size as the one that
we're flying. They range, they include biological experiments,
space processing experiments and physical science experiments all
in that one small laboratory. So they're doing quite a bit of
science. It's I think a very interesting precursor to the kinds
of science that we'll be going on in the get away special
program. There's going to be a lot of learning by young budding
scientists, they'll be a lot of opportunity for new companies to
try out new techniques on the Shuttle at a very low cost. Again
the price of a container is at most $10,000 and the up front
money is only $500 so they have quite an opportunity to invest a
very small amount and learn quite a bit about what's possible for
them in space. Like to entertain any questions about what the
program or this particular payload.
CARLOS BYARS HOUSTON CHRONICLE (question not recorded)
BARROWMAN There is no power provided to either our precursor
or to any of the other get away special payloads. That's one of
the things, in order to be able to move these payloads onto the
orbiter on our last minute space availble basis, it was important
that we keep the orbiter interfaces to a minimum. And so the
self contained nature of the program is very key in that
regard. The only interface is bolting it into the orbiter and
plugging this one connector in which provides for the three on
off switches and those switches control relays in fact which can
switch the power that's internal to the can. There is no power
provided through those switches.
PAO Any other questions? All right. I understand
there are no questions from Johnson or Marshall and thank you Jim
and ask Bob Peterson and Todd Nelson to come up for the last part
of the briefing.
PAO Okay. The insect in flight motion study experiment
is to be conducted on STS-3 will be explained by Todd Nelson on
the far left who's a senior from Rose Creek, Minnesota and Dr.
Bob Peterson of Honeywell Space and Strategic Operations in Clear
Water, Florida, which is Todd's corporate sponsor. Before they
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS OATH 03/20/82 PACK %. t S
hog in their remarks I'd like to tako a moment to explain how Todd
became the first high school student to fly an experiment aboard
the space shuttle. He's one of ten winners to the first Shuttle
Student Involvement Project for Secondary Schools. Cosponsored
with the National Science Teacher's Association, the purpose of
the program is to stimulate the study of science and engineering
by engaging students in a competition to develop experiments for
flight aboard the shuttle. The ten NSTA regional directors
received 1500 proposals for the fjrst competition. Each region
selected up to 20 semifinal ist who, along with their teacher
advisors, were invited to participate in Shuttle Conferences held
at NASA field centers. All semi f i nal i sts proposals were
submitted for national judging held in Washington D.C. The ten
winners of the first year's program were announced in May of
1981. NASA then matched each student with a NASA consultant and
corporate sponsor. The sponsor was asked to assist the student
in turning the winning proposal into a flight ready experiment
pay for the development and hardware costs and pay for necessary
student travel, Todd is the first student to have his experiment
conducted on the Shuttle because he and Honeywell were able to
complete their work in time for integration into STS-3. The
other nine winners from the first year of the project are
currently working with their corporate sponsors and will ho
assigned'to the upcoming flights as their experiments are
completed and as space on the Shuttle is available. Additional
information concerning the Shuttle Student Involvement Project
can be found in the press kit, of course, and present in the
audience and available to answer question following the press
conference are Dr. Glenn Wilson, Acting Director of Academic
Affairs Division, NASA Headquarters. Glenn are you here?
Okay. Allen Ladwig, the Student Involvement Program Manager,
Allen, are you here? Okay. And Dr. Don McCurty, past President
of the National Science Teacher's Association and currently
Chairman of the NSTA student activities committee. Okay. We,
when we were down in Houston a couple of wee<s ago, they were
asking the astronauts about this project and they all showed up
for the press conference with this fly swatter to indicate that
they were going to take something along with them and from that
developed, into the theory that there's a new system going to be
onboard this mission called the ITS. Insect Termination
System. So with that I will turn it over to Bob and Todd.
BOB PETERSON I guess you want to go over just a brief
description of the experiment first as to what it is?
TODD NELSON Well, I guess that would nice. First of all I'd
like to kind of comment on generally what I've been through
first. The last time I was down here was at the National Space
Shuttle Symposium and the other ten national winners were in the
audience and we all kind of got together and gave our
presentations here. And since then I have been working with
Honeywell to develop this project and the main piece of hardware
p3k PAY LOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 0 3/20/82 PAGE
is the flight chamber. And to do that is has required a lavqe
amount of effort on a number of people and Bob Molton has been in
general the general integrator. Me kind of corporates the entire
procedures and then we have the project itself which is more or
less in the final stages of development here. This is the final
version of our flight chamber. And we could kind of go from
there I guess.
BOB PETERSON I could give a little description of what's going
to happen here. This, is this coming through all right? Okay.
The title of the experiment is insect Inflight Motion Study and
really the purpose is to compare the flight behavior of three
species is what we ended up with, and I'll explain what they are,
in 0-g and 1-g. They'll be two aspects to the experiment.
There'll be the 0-g testing which will occur in orbit on the
fourth day of the flight and there'll be a 1-g test and we'll do
it simultaneously as we can with that at JSC in the hi-fi middeck
mockup. The insects have been split in half so we have the same
groups of insects essentially fiom the same colony, from the same
age group in each situation. The hardware that we built is this
box, is the final version. There were three, this is the t nird
version of the design that we came up with. Each one, each
change that we made was toward less crew involvement. We re
trying to minimize that. The, there are four units like this
one There is, this one is essentially a demonstration unit but
it's identical to the other three. One of them is currently
already is now in the bond room over in the ONC building. It
will be the one that will go aboard the orbiter. Another one
just like it is at JSC that we use in the middeck mock up and
then there is one spare in case we finally damage one unpacking
or have a problem with it. We don't anticipate any problems with
them. There is two flight chambers in each of these boxes and
what we will have is that's the A and B chamber. What we'll have
in the A chamber our current plan and this is the way I think ■
we'll be loading the insects 9:00 p.m. Sunday night is that we 11
have 24 pupae that would be caterpillar moth adults in the A
chamber plus 12 cowmen house fly pupae which will hatch or emerge
at about the day after launch. In the B chamber we'll have 12
worker bees and 12 male and 12 female, that will be in
caterpillar pupae that emerge again like a day or two after
launch. The idea being that we want to observe how they fly
having only flown in 0-g never having flown in 1-g prior to
launch and initially it started out to be let's compare the
behavior and difference between 0 and 1-g but, there are other
things that are kind of fall outs of this, some of which are can
the insects in either the adult or pupa stage tolerate the launch
ascent. Toleration levels, which should peak at about 3.3 g s.
We're pretty confident that that won't bother them. Another
question can the pupae emerge in orbit in a 0-g atmosphere. So
that will be another question answered by it. The third one that
the entomologists are interested in is the in the case of the
velet bean caterpillar moths will be male and female will they
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 PAGE *<?
mate in orbit, will they reproduce, will there be any eggs in
eggs in the chamber when it comes back for example or
caterpillars.
TODD NELSON I'd like just to add that there is you know there's
been a lot of interest among the scientists, especially the ones
that are supplying the velvet bean moths for the fact that they
may be mating and that's that shows that the project is really,
it's a really neat project because it involves the students at
with the high school level and that's pretty neat.
BOB PETERSON Something else that's neat, I guess I'd like to go
on record, saying that we've had a lot of help from outside
people, outside of Honeywell and outside of NASA and that are
providing these insects and I'd like to go on record with showing
appreciation for them. One is one group is Dr. Norm Lef'a and
Dick Guy at the US Department of Agriculture lab in Gainesville
who are providing all the moths. Both adult and pupae. Another
one is Mel Copeland, has Copeland Bee Farms in Arcadia, Texas,
who is providing the bees for us. Mel is also a JSC employee.
But, he's providing the bees as the Copeland Bee Farm not as a
JSC employee. The third one is Dr. David Pemintel of Cornell
University that is providing the fly puparea. This is all free
of charge to us and these people are providing the insects in a
controlled way so they know the age and try and give us insects
that the fourth day of flight on the 25th they'll be at about
their prime or prime flying capability.
TODD NELSON First of all, the reason the project is being
carried out is because it's a basic research project and it
really has never been performed before on earth and because
gravity is such a hard factor to manipulate. So by, with that in
mind this project here will provide a pretty good data on the
insects and flight adjustments for a contiuous period in near 0-
g. That's pretty important. Because from there we can kind of
in the future have some data in particular on how the bee will
adjust and that may be important. Because there could involve
experimentation centering around the pollination of plants and
with that in mind we think that with the project here and the
data on that that would actually benefit them in other
experimentation in that area so...
BOB PETERSON Well, one thing I had mentioned before was we
changed the design of the box to reduce crew involvement. I
could just briefly go over what the crew will be involved to do
with that and currently this is scheduled for third day and seven
hour? five minutes after launch, MET of 3 days, 7 hours, 5
minutes. And I think that's scheduled to be at about 5:05
Eastern Standard Time on the 25th. What they'll do is the box
will be in a locker in the middeck, they will remove it from the
locker put it up on the forward surface of the airlock using
velcro pads, from that point on take video tape recordings of the
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 PAGE*|£
insects in flight for however much time we can get them to do
that. It doesn't have to be a continual filming. It can be
interspersed with other activities. They could take some video
tape, go about another task come back and take some more. What
ever happens to be the best way for them to handle it. At the
end of all this just restow the box back in the locker and that's
the end of the experiment. Initially some of the designs require
them to manipulate parts of the box, but it would have been a
little more complicated for them would have taken them more time,
but at the end of the experiment then I guess the, I guess now
the Shuttle will land at Northrup Strip probably on the 29th and
may be a little longer delay getting it back to the Cape but
we're expecting that there will be some time late April we'll see
it again back here at KSC. We'll get the box off, the insects
may or may not all be dead by that time. They can live long
enough I think with the food we are providing so we might find
some live ones in there. If we do, the entomologists are
interested in getting a hold of them and examining them as well
at the end of this experiment. I think that pretty well covers
unless you have something Todd.
TODD NELSON Oh yeah, we could comment on the design and
procedure and what we started out with. After I won the national
competition, I was assigned Honeywell for a sponsor. With that
in mind we took the idea that I had won, and that idea was taken
and we sat down and had a brainstorm with that we come up with
initial design flight chamber number 1. This is flight chamber
number 3 and I can see along that design process there has been a
number of things that have been worked out and with that in mind
you can center on first of all the procedures of which the
astronauts are required to perform. That's an operational goal
to keep that down to a minimum level. And, first of all, there
was on the first designs, we had moveable layer and that was
designed to separate the insects the species from one another and
to confine them and we had in the design number 2 we also had a
canisters that would store the insects and after we did a little
bit of investigation and experimentation, we determined that
would not be necessary to take the velvet beans and the bees and
place them in a container because that would require an
additional amount of space that would take up volume of our
flight area. And that was not very necessary and unwise. By
reducing that canister we also increase the flight volune of the
flight chamber and we also introduced a more practical design.
Because with that, with those little canisters out of there. We
had an extra area that could not fail. See part of the success
of an experiment relies on the factors that are involved in it's
performance. We don't want to rely on a large number of pulleys
and mechanisms and nails and all kinds of movable parts. So you
can see right here a very good example of the flight chamber that
has been thoroughly developed and researched into the areas of
minimal astronaut activity. And this was very necessary because
PAY LOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82
PAGE HI
to ensure the experiment, experimental success very simple
procedures are necessary.
30B PETERSON And everything we found with these canisters we had
in the bottom they were little drawers you could pull the cover
off and the insects would come up out of there. They're opaque
and the dumb bugs would hide down inside there so you wouldn't
often you wouldn't get all the bugs flying that you wanted to see
so with this design there is no place to hide. We're going to
see them even if they want to sit still. That's an important
thing to find out too will they fly.
PAO Ready for question?
CARLOS BYARS Houston Chronicle You're using three different
types of insects, is that correct? How are you dividing them up
in areas A and B? Could you explain that?
BOB PETERSON What we're going to do is in chamber A there'll be
24 male velvet bean caterpillar moths, adults. Excuse me, 12
male 12 female of the velvet bean caterpillar moth adult. And
the 12 fly pupae will be in that same chamber. Okay now in
chamber B we'll have the 12 worker bees and 12 male and 12 female
velvet caterpillar moth pupae. The reason we separated them
that way is that if we ever see any moths flying in chamber B
they will have had to emerge on orbit. So we've separated them
so they don't their not in the same chamber as the adults.
That's essentially the basic reason for the division. There'll
be 36 insects in each side. But it will be moths and bees or
moths and flys is the two combinations and they are, the word we
get from the entomologists there is no problem with them being
together they are not going to antagonize each other. They may
stimulate each other to flight we hope.
MARK BENNING (garble) Engineer Todd I was wondering if you've
decided where you are going to be going to college in the fall.
TODD NELSON I wouldn't mind going to the University of
Minnesota .
BENNING Have you applied and been accepted any where yet?
TODD NELSON I've been so busy right now I have really
considered ....
REG TURNELL, BBC I should probably have understood this but, I
didn't, is it the position in the locker they will be kept in
the dark and when they are brought out they will be exposed
briefly to light and that's what you hope will make them fly and
then will they be back in the dark again?
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 PAGE %>t>
TODD NELSON That's correct. Light is one of the experimental
factors. It's ueen a hypothesis of the research report light
plays a major role in the orientation of an insect and just what
effect that has in the absence of gravity we'll find out.
TURNELL And the other thing I didn't understand is quite
one can see how interesting it is to know this, but how will it
be of some benefit later on to have this knowledge?
TODD NELSON Well that's part of the reason it's being done or
performed because it is a basic research project. And, with that
in mind we can think of all the other things that have been
learned from other basic research projects that weren't
originally accepted or originally planned out. So this project
here will you know generate a lot more interest in this area by
being the first really continuous data provided on the Shuttle
with the experimentation regarding the flight of the insects.
TURNELL How much is this a follow up to the experiment with
the spiders on Skylab?
TODD NELSON The only catagory it would follow up into would be
just under the biological area of life science. Dealing with
life forms is one of the very interesting areas and the more
knowledge we can get on life in general in the 0-g environment
the better off we'll be.
JAMES WILKINSON BBC I like in thinking that there have been
experiments before in which flys were flown in space. There have
been previous experiments in which flying insects were flown in
space, what happened then.
TODD NELSON First of all I'd like to know what the title was on
the experiment of the other, what are you talking about?
JAMES WILKINSON BBC I don't know what the title of the
experiment was but I believe there were experiments where fruit
flys vere flown in space. Either by the Russians or Americans I
don't know which I can't remember.
PETERSON It seems to me the Russians did have a fruit fly
experiment. I don't recall what the results were. I don't know
of any we've done. The, Arabella of the spider that was a little
somewhat different, but I don't know of any flying insect
expfcriments in space that we've done as part of our space
program. We may have I'm not I haven't been associated with the
spacecraft flight control for about 20 years and I haven't paid
too much attention to what some of the bug payloads may have been
up to this point where I had to get involved and I've '.njoyed it.
TODD NELSON Well with the fruit fly you have to keep in mind
that the fruit fly is very small the size of a pin head and any
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 PAGE M
time you would observe this insect would be extremely difficult
to get any good flight data it's such a small animal. I think
they are probably concerned with not flight but more or less the
mutations, maybe, of the fruit fly if it ever was performed.
JAMES WILKINSON If the bees and the moths don't fly when they
are put on the wall, are the astronauts under any instructions to
shake the box or give it a kick or anything?
TODD NELSON Well, yes. There would be (laughter).
JAY SHAYBARRO KSTP TV Todd can you tell us why these particular
insects were chosen?
TODD NELSON Yes. The reason the criteria for selection of the
insects centers around the source for one thing. We have to have
a source that's willing to cooperate with us, to supply, to
integrate insects in the control at Houston and in the experiment
at Johnson, uh, Kennedy. That's important. And also, ti. ;
insects physical dimension the wing loading and the actual type
of flight control mechanism used by the insect. For instance,
the fly has a halter gyro, it's a type of mechanism that works
very similar to a gyro and it's in the evolutional history of the
fly that has played a role in it's flight. A bee has a pair, two
pair of wings and where as the fly has a single pair. And by
studying those two insects, we'll be able to determine whether or
not the fly which is a more highly sophisticated flight control
system is more apt to maneuvering and surviving in the near 0-g
environment.
PAO Are there any other question here? In the back
there.
JOE CATCHOPAL US AIR FORCE I was kind of wondering about, this
looks like it might be able to tie in also with the plants,
because we mentioned about the plant before that it's in 0
gravity they grow without that much I guess that stuff that makes
them stiff, ligament, anyway, so I was kind of wondering about if
we have a group with space stations up there that would need,
we'd have plants and stuff I was kind of wondering how we'd ever
have to pollinate I mean the plants up there and if this works
out I suppose we'd just probably use bees? Think that would
work?
TODD NELSON Yeah that would be very helpful. Because, and with
that in mind to be able to understand how those bees will react
in the first place will be very important.
PA 0 Any other question here? Are there questions from
the other centers?
p3k PAYLOADS AND EXPERIMENTS DATE 03/20/82 PAGE * ^
JSC PAO This is the Johnson Space Center. We have a
question submitted by in writing by a Mr. Michel Goldman. This
is the Johnson Space Center.
PAO There are no more questions (garble)
BOB PETERSON ...they may not do it intentionally but we may get
a lot of maneuvers that we've never seen before and it should be
interesting.
PAO ...next briefing is at 10:30 tomorrow morning.
END OF TAPE
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 1
HUGH HARRIS Good afternoon, I'm Hugh Harris at the Kennedy
Space Center with the participants in the prelaunch press
conference for the third launch of the Space Shuttle.
Participating in the conference today is Major General James A.
Abrahamson, Associate Administrator for the Space Transportation
System from NASA Headquarters, Glynn Lunney, Manager of the Space
Shuttle Program Office at the Johnson Space Center, George Page
who is Director of Shuttle Operations, and the Launch Director
for the Kennedy Space Center. Ken Kissen who is the OSS-1
Project Manager from the Goddard Space Flight Center and Dr.
Craig Fisher who is the crew surgeon from Johnson Space Center
and Captain Donald J. Green who is the Shuttle Weather Officer.
And we'll begin with a brief statement from General Abrahamson.
GENERAL ABRAHAMSON Hello, this is my first launch obviously and
the first time that I've been able to carry out this particular
function in the NASA team and I've noticed that as you have all
been concerned with this launch and pre"ious launches, there have
been a lot of questions about the machine and how well the
machine is doing and that's very natural. I think however, it's
probably worthwhile for you also to think about something that's
very clear to me as one who's fortunate enough to be part of this
overall team, that the Space Traaspor tat ion System is made up of
a very complex series or group of machines and backup machines
and computers. But, the system itself is also made up of
people. Thousands and thousands of people who work to make
procedures work, to make repairs work, co make tests work, and I
think it's worthwhile just remembering that those people are part
of this effort and to date, on this particular launch as they
have in the past in the development of the Shuttle, they're doing
a magnificent job.
HUGH HARRIS Okay, thank you. Mr. Lunney.
GLYNN LUNNEY While we're in the final stages of getting ready
to launch there are a couple of things the people are still
working on but, they'll be resolved satisfactorily and I think
we ' re ready to go .
HUGH HARi Thank you. George Page.
GEORGE PAGE I usually speak for the Launch Countdown phase of
it and I'm sure you've already been briefed a half a dozen times,
but it has gone very well to date. We're just now into the last
built in hold prior to picking up the terminal count and except
for one or two minor little cleanup things that we have to do
everything has gone extremely well and right now we don't see any
reason why we shouldn't be resuming the count on time and
hopefully getting to a good liftoff at 10:00 tomorrow morning.
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 2
HUGH HARRIS Thank you. Mr. Kissen.
KEN KISSEN Well, I've been told as payload from the gentlemen
on my left and my right that we're just going along for the
ride. That once we do get up there, we're looking forward to a
really successful flight and we're looking forward to it.
HUGH HARRIS Okay, thank you. Is Dr. Fisher here yet? Okay.
We'll go on to Captain Green the Shuttle Weather Officer.
CAPTAIN GREEN The weather is looking real good. We'll ^ave some
stratus and fog in the morning hours again, visibility is
occassionally down to 2 to 3 miles but by launch time we
anticipate partly cloudy skies 6 miles and haze. Winds will be
out of the southwest about 5 to 10 knots and temperature at
launch time should in the low 80's. Looking at the landing site
at Northrup Strip, Edwards and Rota Spain, they are all looking
good. Scattered cloud conditions, visibility is unrestricted and
surface winds less than 10 to 15 knots. In summary for the
launch phases and for the concigency side, weather is looking
good .
HUGH HARRIS Okay thank you very much. We're ready for
questions. If you would raise your hand and standup when I call
on you so that the mike handlers can find you expeditiously and
if the mike handlers will wave to me if there is somebody in
their area. If I don't call on you by name, please identify
yourself and your organization and apeak only in the mike.
Okay. Right down here in thn second row.
JAMIE MATHEWS CFCR Radio Is the fact that the external tank is
going to be about 550 pounds lighter going to significantly
chnnge the look of the initial shuttle liftoff. Will it still
rock back and forth and rock forward as it leaves the pad?
LUNNEY It should look exactly the same as the last couple.
PAGE You won't be able to use the same pictures you had
before though.
PETER ADAMS TODAY Yes Sir. How does the weather at Edwards
Air Force Base look at this point for a March 29th. Was it the
right move to move to White Sands? Could you land at Edwards if
you have to? Is there a possibility that Edwards could have been
the primary landing strip? Looking at the weather at this point?
CAPTAIN GREEN It's difficult to predict the weather you know 8
or 10 days in advance it's probably going to be seasonal weather
out there which would moan it would be okay for a landing. We
fully expected the lake bed will be unusable for probably three
or four maybe even longer, three or four weeks, or mayne even
longer. We felt at the time as we prepared to decide what
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 3
landing strip to use that we had the right answer with Northrup
Strip. That was before we got the indication that the lake bed
was going to be out of service for four to six weeks as reported
a few days ago. And we've thought that around the whole system
with everybody and especially with the flight crew they're very
comfortable that that's the correct decision and all of us are
too.
JAY BARBAREE NBC For George Page. George have you an up to
date assessment on the delay the landing at White Sands will
cause for STS-4?
GEORGE PAGE I don't understand your question Jay.
JAY BARBAREE Well we're going into White Sands. Have you heard
about that. It's all right. Is going to delay getting it back
here I understand a few days. How long is the delay?
GEORGE PAGE Delay getting it back. We've laid out a schedule
which is success oriented assumes no problems from the wind or
the blowing gypsum out there. Does we ought to be able to get it
back 9 days after we land. Which is about 3 days longer than it
would have taken at Edwards. Probably optomistic but that's what
we're working to.
HUGH HARRIS Right here Connie.
CARLOS BYARS Houston Chronicle One of the primary things that
you want to do on the landing is get a crosswind landing. Is
that, what are the possibilities for that on the, at the Northrup
Strip. It seems like your prevailing winds there are out of the
south and are you going to be able to get a crosswind landing
there?
ABRAHAMSON The odds are probably pretty good. We have two
runways out there, 17 and 23. And the winds are generally
variable out there. At this time of the year we've got a pretty
good chance at getting a decent set of conditions for the
crosswind landing.
DAVE DOOLING Huntsville General Abrahamson has there been any
feedback from military security at White Sands with the media
about to descend into what has been hitherto a closed domain.
GENERAL ABRAHAMSON You've dropped out in part of that Dave.
Actually yes, we've been working of course very closely with
White Sands and you're not all going to be housed in Juarez, I
understand. No, we will have arrangements so that people can be
bused out but it will be a major security problem and we are not
opening it to the general public at this time. We may have some
difficulty in that but the military people at White Sands are
concerned for their own security purposes, but also we're
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 4
concerned about the safety of the people just in the area. It's
many many miles from any source of water or any conveniences at
all and so we're only going to be able to only handle a limited
number of people.
ED TOBIAS AP Radio The question was raised this morning about
how concerned you are about the winds in the afternoon at White
Sands. Are you concerned that they are a little gustier on the
afternoon than earlier are you concerned enough to consider an
earlier landing?
ABRAHAMSON Well we're presently planning to land out there at
White Sands at 11:20 as I recall local time, which is usually
before the winds pickup on the runway in the area. I guess my
general reaction to that question though is given to a landing at
that time of day, we think it's reasonably good bet we have two
runways and we've learned to kind and wait and see what the
weather is when we get there and then decide what we have to do,
but it looks like we have the right kind of facilities out there
with the two runways to take advantage of whatever situation we
have and either get a crosswind or perhaps the autoland. With
the MPLSS data all the way down to 300 feet on runway 17 if that
were to make itself available.
JULES BERGMAN I though you'd never see me up here, Hugh. In the
left bleachers. This is for Glynn Lunney. How important is it
to NASA to get this launch off on time tomorrow and why?
GLYNN LUNNEY I think, Jules, we're always interested in
launching on time if we can, more importantly than that we are
interested in launching safely, so I think we are going to first
apply all of our standards for being sure that we are ready to
launch the vehicle. If that turns out to be tomorrow that's fine
with us, we would like to make it on schedule, if it turns out
tomorrow that we have to decide to wait a couple days, that's
what we will do.
REGGIE TURNELL Two questions I think probably for Glynn
Lunney. First of all do you intend to go on landing in the
desert until you get a crosswind landing before you consider
bringing it back here and secondly is there any plans to get the
crew on this mission to monitor the Mt. St. Helens eruptions.
GLYNN LUNNEY With respect to the first question, we would like
to get some data on crosswind landing before we come here to Cape
Kennedy where we have the concrete runway and don't have the
runout that we have availble to us in the desert. So in that
sense, we have planned our first four flights rather
conservatively in that we've opted to land in the area where wo
have very long runways and relatively minimum sensitivity to
landing conditions, over shoot, under shoot, or crosswind for
that matter. We have a general rule that we want to get some
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 5
crosswind experience before we come here to the Cape and we have
planned our order of priority that way to do that first if we can
on this next flight. I think if circumstances were such that we
weren't able to get exactly the crosswind landing that we had
that we wanted to that that would not necessarily change our mind
about where we might land want to land flight 5. We could still
go forward and take a look at conditions as they would apply.
First time we were going to come in here and decide how we felt
about it and decide accordingly. The second question had to do
with Mt. St. Helens. I don't know anything about that at the
present time. Does anybody? Pretty far up I'm not sure that
they'll really be able to see it very well thougli I can't comment
on that vary knowledgab?.y but,
BOB BIZZELL NBC This is a question for George Page. Based on
your experience with the first two are you getting to a place
where you think of these as routine or tell us how much more
comfortable you are with this launch than you were with the last
two.
GEORGE PAGE Well right at the present moment, I'm very
comfortable. I always am you know aprehensive about the last
five hours and then it narrows down to the last 31 seconds. I
think regardless of how well the checkout goes, there are still
an awful lot of things that have to work right in the terminal
part of the count. I think from the overall standpoint we've had
an excellent flow in this vehicle. I think the crew is probably
better rested. I'm talking about the launch crew now. Better
rested than we have been before. We've had some days free days
and from that standpoint I think we're probably in lot better
shape than we have been.
JULES BERGMAN ABC This is for Glynn Lunney. It's a followup
on my first question Glynn, but if any of the panel can take a
crack at it. What I was really getting at was isn't NASA
beginning to feel economic pressure because of the Arianne at an
early phase in the test program. In other words, are test and
operational programs becoming blurred?
GLYNN LUNNEY Well I say again with respect to answering the
question, we will launch when we are satisfied it's safe. Right
now we're satisfied tomorrow is safe. Pending any further
developments that might occur. We are have been trying as you
know and others know to move into what we would call an
operations attitude perhaps with respect to the Shuttle. We've
had all of two flights under our belt. The signs of the
experience of those flights are beginning to show up in terms of
what we are able to do here at the Cape and what we feel like
we'll be able to do with the vehicle in flight and how we feel
about it in terms of our confidence in the ship. So, we are
moving as best we can in»o a set of operational attitudes about
we can turn it around how we can fly it and how we can improve
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 6
it. I would view that as a somewhat natural flow of events.
It's not unduly pressure, it's not unduly influenced by any
external pressures such as economic ones with Arianne you
mentioned. We feel that we're on course in the program that we
laid out. We are pleaded that in a number of areas it's going
even a little better than we expect and we look forward to doing
our best to make that continue to happen.
RON LOCKHART NEW YORK I'm trying to figure out whether or not
when you get to the operational stage of the Shuttle now to
extend on Mr. Bergman's question, when you're in the operational
stages of the Shuttle and away from the experimental stages there
is nothing to indicate that you would not move up the countdown
if one was going very smoothly. If it did not have all the focus
that is has for instance today and if you were not in the
experimental stage. That once you got into the operational and
normal usage of the Shuttle, you would consider moving up the
countdown if it was going a smoothly as the last couple of days.
GEORGE PAGE I'll take a stab at that. Whether we're
operational or experimental phase, we try to set the liftoff time
compatible with what we think we have to do and the jobs we
have. I would think when we get operational we'll be a little
better able to determine exactly how long it's going to take and
we will establish the launch time and date on the basis of what
we know we have to do and we will probably be just you know able
to make those without in the absence of any big problem so I
don't think we'll be talking about moving up if we happen to be
doing better. We'll know of ahead of time pretty well what it's
going to take us to do it.
ABRAMHAMSON Can I add a prespective on this? Please? I think
the context of your question was within the count itself and
that's the way you were answering it, right George?
GEORGE PAGE Well I was answering not just the count no the
count itself we probably would never move ahead unless there was
some external situations that
PAO Wait a minute, we'll go back to you. Peter Adams
from Today is next.
PETER ADAMS TODAY I presume this question is for Mr. Lunney.
You're going to be out in White Sands for 9 days and obviously
you don't have the same kind of protective facilities for the
Orbiter that you would have at Edwards. What kind of
contingencies are being laid out in case of some inclement or
severe weather at White Sands and you don't have any place to put
the orbiter?
GLEN LUNNEY Well we are providing some temporary facilities for
people and equipment but you're right. We do not have a hangar
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 7
of sorts hangar of any kind to bring the orbiter into. We do
think that that is not quite as bad as it might appear on the
surface in terms of sand storms. You've heard a lot about this
gypsum stuff, but it is not as heavy as sand and not susceptible
to the same kind of damage that you might have if you have a sand
storm in the desert. So, with that situation we feel like and
the length of time that we're going to be out there, that we have
a reasonably controlled environment, reasonably controlled
situation in which we will have to get our job done and get the
orb. ; ter out as quickly as we reasonably can.
GEORGE ALEXANDER LA TIMES On the tail to sun and nose to sun
portions of the flight. Are their temperature limits where if
you got to that point before the end of the 24 hour or 80 hour
soak period, you would consider taking the spacecraft out of that
orientation rather than exceed a given temperature and if you do
have temperature limits, what are they?
LUNNEY George, I don't know what all the temperature
limits are however, we plan these tests with our thermal models
on the asumption that we can indeed hold the attitude that long
for those three periods of time and we will monitor in real time
the response of the vehicle thermally to being in those attitudes
for those periods of time and if we begin to see anything that
gives us any concern, we will just backout of that and go on with
the next test. I don't have particular limits that I have in
mind. Let me just give you one example. There was a discussion
at one time that if we stayed in a certain attitude a long time
and got real cold, somebody might want to fire up an APU to keep
it warm. Well, my conclusion would be that would be not an
advisible thing to do for example and we would not do that. We
would rather change the attitude or in some way change the
thermal environment that the APU was in and not go to that kind
of length to maintain the attitude.
re ID COLLINS CBS NEWS Was any thought given in official NASA
to moving up the count and launching earlier tomorrow. Was that
ever a serious subject or a subject at all?
ABRAHAMSON Actually not. I think all of us felt that what we
really wanted was we wanted a nice stable count one that afforded
the crews, the launch crews in the entire system to have the,
less stresses than we've had in the first two because that's the
way we think we're going to have to operate, you know, on a long
term repeatable basis. So there was never any serious
consideration. Obviously there were, there was an option that
was available to us but never any serious consideration about
moving up the date.
COLLINS How about moving it up by an hour, not a day. At
White Sands.
PHUOKCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 8
p4k
ABRAMHAMSON No
ABRAMHAMovJiN
„c a little background on
RON LOCKHART I wonder " .J™ f^St winner and whether his
Todd Nelson who was the student contes ^ ^ wUh him
experiment is in place. We ]ust naa
and he seems very excited about it. ^
I think it goes in at T-8 hours Jt-a ready, ^s
S.trtn^tl^r^trb&^olS In at s?orage at «
hours.
ABRAMHAMSON I'd like to comm ent ^/SaJ^Srwhe? e^e ale* in
position obviously to comme nt as Georg e £eel fche s
this particular experiment, but I hope really an import ant
excitement that I do in that I thinK tn really , i«ve talked
adjunct to the Shuttle Program and "at it real ^ icated
with several of these young people and they a ^ deli g h ted
aT^ats as as tarAS--
the date for the next flight?
...question,. will the late ^"^Ztlil^
ItI-4. was that the question a y ^^opportunity to sit
Sown and r ay h r t h STS-f flow «ith th ; ^-return -- ha J e
time frame for launch.
ED SIDER SPACE 82 BOSTO, ^ I heard th«. «. t .«. l£
^icTt'hit'U -l3 a ;.Mr» T-.J-.V — -an waUmg
the normal two days to Wednesday.
pMJE we now have a " "J^'SXlS bTcor recced or
the next day. ^
ROBERT TURNER ELIZABETH I AN ■««J«« le i ;Sr Hand iS^JTllSnSjy d °
?he White Sands Eacility be unavailable ^ here ^
Tended? ^lll involved in the area of the
personnel .
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page 9
find for an AOA tomorrow. Now with respect to the rest oE tne
would Tile to think that we could use the concrete r unway at
Edwards and over run and be allowed to overrun f it came to
>ult c?n if the weather was the same we'd probably opt tor tne
b w^rrcsjsssi a taps. £* h e * r s
the crew members too as to what they wanted to do m terms with
what they're most comfortable with.
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 PAGE lO
PAO Okay we're going to go to Johnson Space Center for
questions there and then we'll come back here.
Gentlemen from Sky and Telescope.
This is Kelly Beedy from Sky and Telescope, a question for Ken
Kissen, if you have to end the mission early and have to do it do
what you have in four days which OSS payloads will be most
adversely affected, especially the ones that require Top to Sun
pointing?
KEN KISSEN I believe the high priority mission the four day
mission that your referring to includes the full day to the sun
orientation which would permit the solar oriented experiments to
get there full share of the viewing opportunity. The thing that
would suffer that we would do less with all of them, in fact
probably the least affected would be the sun point experiments.
PAO Over here.
LEONARD DAVID National Space Institute, I guess for General
Abrahamson. What changes if any to the SRBs and the aft skirt
problem you had on the first two flights, I know that there was
damage, is there any changes in the SRBs ?
ABRAHAMSON I think the question was, changes to the SRBs, let
me see the only one I can think of right off hand is we did think
about two inches off the skirt area in the preparation of the
flight and inside the SRB inside the aft skirt area we have added
some bracing material from beefing up because as you probably now
know on the last couple of flights we've had some damage to the
equipment in the aft fa . ct area on water impact and we're trying
to beef it up back theie to minimize the damage that we would
sustain, that is not a flight issue, it's not a safety flight
issue but it is more a matter of refurbishment and improving that
the reuse of the SRB just as much as we possibly can.
PAO Okay coming back to the Kennedy Space Center Jules Bergman
had his hand up I believe next.
JULES BERGMAN Glynn I'm still not quite clear on this cross
wind landing subject. Must you get in a crosswind landing at
Edwards or Northrup before the flight comes back here?
GLYNN LUNNEY I would say the answer to must we is no, we would
like to get a crosswind landing in order to experience it,
obviously we could come back here if we didn't have any crosswind
at all, and it wouldn't even be a subject for discussion, so if
we were not able to get a crosswind in the next couple of flights
we would have to decide on how much of a crosswind we would be
willing to tolerate down here, right now our rules are, I believe
p4k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 PAGE Hi
ten knots but you know, as you know there's some reason to
discuss that and it's just mostly at this point a matter of
prudent program planning to try and get some experience with that
before we come here.
JULES BERGMAN What I'm getting at, is the fifth flight is
presently programmed or scheduled as I understand it, to land
back here, it is the fifth flight, if you have a crosswind of
twenty knots or twenty-five knots does that exceed the shuttles
capabilitity?
GLYNN LUNNEY I don't think its so much as exceeding the
capaibility as it is being sure that we've had some experience
that would give us confidence, if we don't get any crosswinds at
all and we had that kind of condition facing us here we would
probably and I am guessing at this point, but we'd Probably have
to reflect on what new experiences we had on STS-3 and 4 tnat
would contribute to that but if we didn't have any we might be
inclined to be conservative, that is and land on the lakebed.
MORTON DEAN, CBS If there is anything short of the minimum or
priority mission how much will Fullerton or Lousma actually do on
the way in, is the landing profile the same whether it's once
around turn or two day mission or a three day mission.
GLYNN LUNNEY I would say for all intensive purposes, yes.
CRAIG CORVAULT, Aviation Week Glynn do you want to speak a
moment to ascent risks from the standpoint of infant mortality so
to speak on the SSMEs, the fact that you've been through two, is
there any way to quantify how much more confidence you can place
in the mains now that they've flown two missions?
GLYNN LUNNEY Well I guess its difficult to quatify that Craig,
certainly having flown them twice is a confidence builder in
using them again we have run a certification program as you know
to qualifify these engines for this kind of use as part of the
certification program we only permitted, well we applied the same
kind of maintenance inspection procedures and replacement
procedures that have applied to the engines here at the Cape so
that in that sense we are flying them in a way such that tney are
in the same family of experience that we had during a fairly
extensive certification program on these engines. The part times
I should say, the times that we have on the parts in the engine
is reviewed every flight they all look like they are comfortably
within our experience, so we are fairly confident that these
SSMEs are going to do that job for us and will continue to do
that job for us for a number of more flights.
PAO Gentlemen in the dark glasses.
p 4 k PRF.LAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 PAGE /I
nob Gallagher from (garble) in New York, I've got a question here
I'm sorry Bob but we only accept ones from the newsmen here.
PAO first row
PRESS Based on what you know about the turnaround time what is
the quickest you may get the shuttle to fly again,
p4k PRE-LAUNCH PRESS CONF (KSC) 03/21/82 PAGK 13
PAGE Once we get it back here? I think we get it back
in early April. We're talking for STS-4 now. What'd I say late
June. That's two and a half months, something like that. Now
that's you know based upon the mods we are aware of now that we
have to do a minimum of problems in flight but somewhere around
that time frame and that's without working every one of those
days, that's keeping some open time.
ROB ZEA When do you see the turnaround time maybe getting
around to about a month?
PAGE Getting down to what?
ZEA Maybe a month, or six weeks?
PAGE I still think that's a little ways off. We're
going to get better each time and once we've got our full
compliment of Orbiter's and full compliment of facilities at KSC
we're going to be able to do a lot better and I wouldn't project
a month's turnaround yet.
MARK KRAMER.. CBS There was some talk this morning at the status
briefing about unacceptable, or undesirable sun angle at the
nominal landing time at White Sands and that was sighted as a
possible reason for launching early. I understand you've knocked
down the possibility of launching early, but there has been some
other talk at other locations about high winds at that time of
day at White Sands and I wonder if there is any consideration to
coming down a rev early to solve both of those problems or avoid
them?
PAGE Mark, let me correct something I happen to catch
that morning briefing and one of my men was the guy you were
asking those questions of and there was a misunderstanding there
to start with. We had never talked about an early liftoff for
any landing reason and I think as Glynn can explain the landing
limitation at White Sands has to do with coming in on the 5th
orbit and the amount of light, doesn't it Glenn?
PAGE There was a misunderstanding at that conference,
I'm sorry it happened.
LUNNEY I guess I would say one other thing about coming
down a rev early, if things go well we'll have a seven days here
to look at the situation at White Sands and if it became clear
that an hour and a half would substantially buy us some
improvement in the landing conditions that we wanted to setup by
way of winds or weather there at White Sands, we would certainly
consider taking advantage of that but that's the subject that we
can just wait and see during the course of the mission what the
p 4 k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page t 'Y
conditions ate up there. The difficulty with White Sands in that
Regard as a number of people have reported to me at least is that
i( .j 0 , f,i r i v variable place, as a matter of tact, you can iainJ
will consider that during course of the flight and it it
prudent to move it up to rev, so be it.
KRAMER That is it essentially the same position you've had
on the previous 2 missions is it not?
pA0 we'll only take a few more questions, now, over
here .
Conference and offering the same kind of ctudent participation
for the third world children?
ABRAHAMSON Right now we're in the ^selection phase S^erln
secondary school experiment program. That ph ase ° e
woSld have to be addressed if we were going to broaden the
program.
In the upper row, here.
ODV . M uaT T orMFPqKY from Space City Two MIT Have you
^er^^ufuunch crewfan? special private incentives to get
STS-3 off on schedule and faster than 1 and ii
PAGE i think the launch team we have out here is mature
enough and dedicated enough we don't have to offer them
incentives to do a good job. No we don't give them any extra
incentive.
PETER ADAMS from Today Just have two brief questions. General
Hist-E>3 =its
p4 k PRELAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE DATE 03/21/82 Page »/5
ability to move an objef through space you wee en- t^to
grapple on STS-2 and yet on STS 5 * 9 termG of
satellites, just how far o 1 you couldn't do the
actual deployment oe satellites tor hi&
arm exercise the next time around?
ABRAHAMSON On flight 5 we don't use the arm to deploy the
satellites at all.
u „l. crew. I did not have lunch
ABRAHAMSON Let me go back to the crew and we
with either Jack or Gordy today , *J ct a * how it is tha t we can
were having a discussion of belt make the decisions on the
in fact best understand ^f q b * aun "f e bu ? e f or the operational
weather, not merely foc T ^ VleaT that Florida is a rather
phase of the program. It clea t at *i q whafc we
unstable weather area and as we o U ut n be able fco
need is just the best Possible way )° in ta (Qt launch and for
decide that we have acceptab 1 J condition s r SQ that waS
return to launch site abort , those kinds of ^ f fche
the primary discussion and that was wiu « y
astronauts" John and Joe Engle and others.
PA0 Are there any additional questions? Ok, here in
the second row.
As the Shuttle 9-s into its ope.ationa^phase^o
IZAIVD To ^&n?£r"'w Pretty .uch the .... as
we've had so far?
Well, they'll probably , get a little bit easier, but
again, I think we're going to go kinda s i ow ^ iaunch
certainly want have decent land ond tio n minlinum
in case we have to RTIS. ^he range sate ty na we , u l
limits by the way as you know here a the cape^ prob ably
think we'll learn some things about that howeve especiall y
still Play that ^irly conservat ve ^opportunity to go to
since we will have during orbital 5!scuSsed here move the
another landing site or what has been discu ^ tional
landing time a little bit. When we g suppl ies to go a day
flight we will probably «rry onboard enoug h a day early
or two more than we now y o 0 f Some questionable condition
K. SSVyf Vt^rwe°find Ttsllts trying to exercise that
kind of flexibility.
Ok, we'll have a final question here from the front
PAO
row.
p 4k PRRLAUNCIl PRESS CONFERENCE DA »1 03/21/8? Page 4
half a million to a million and a half and I'm wondering what
Ume ? should get out here tomorrow. What are the latest crowd
estimates and what does it look like?
n Woll tho Civil Defense organization makes the
crowd estimate and my understanding is that it is
probably between 800,000 and a million would be w. t cl i n in U
center. 1 suggest that you get here well before daylight br.<au.,r
I think that is the time we get the biggest trp.nc.
Thank you all for coming and we'll soe you tomorrow
at the launch.
END OF TAPE
p*>k POST LAUNCH PRESS CONPKRENCK LATE W22/B2 PAGE I
GEORGE PAGE Wo ,iro d isappoi "tod th.tt wo didn't hit it right at
10:00. I'm sure you got some briefings alone} the lino about what
that problem was, but it is a pleasure to toll you that wo were
115 mi 1 1 i seconds early on tho .second T-0. Hut, tho countdown
except tor tho problom wo had with tho GSC and getting it
coitocted tho countdown wont very smoothly once wo got that
heater fixed and most of tho things that wo talked about in tho
way of problems after that v/oro sort of get busy kits to keep
pooplo doing thitv):;. Wo really didn't have any bit} problems
after that time. Tho woathor down towards T-0 was of little
concern but, John Young flow a couple of simulated landings and
determined that we had adequate woathor for and RTLS . Return To
Launch Site Abort and wo qot our GO just within a couple of
minutes of when wo had a pickup of T-0 and I tell you, once we
picked up at that point and (jot on the ground launch sequencer it
just wont beautiful. Everything clicked right in and when I saw
uii qot past 11 seconds into }0 I was pretty sure wo had a good
day going. And so far tho mission looks good. T . won't talk to
much on that, I understand wo did have to shut down APU 3
again. And it looks like the problem is associated with the
cooling system that is supposed to cool off the oil and
everything in there. 1 don't know exactly what that problem
was, I think probably we're still going to be able to turn that
APU on at. tho end of mission. We'll have to wait and see on
that. Hut, I've been sort of out of touch and I haven | t heard
any other problems since then. We were real pleased with the
performance of the launch team. We've got some corrective action
to take so that next time we have a problem like we had today,
that we can react to it a little faster. I think if we'd have
K.->en on our toes we could have gone a little sooner than we did
nut, we didn't want to push it and all in all, I think it went
very wel 1 .
We thank you George. We're ready for questions now
and do we have a question over here? Oh okay. Right here.
George, if you were to describe today's launch with
one word, what word would you use? You can use two.
GEORGE PAGE I'm not too good at one worders...
Okay take two.
GEORGE PAGE Well just getting it off the same day was
terrific. I think we all felt that way.
LYNN SHURR Either George or Hugh. I wonder if you could
clarify for us when the astronauts were awakened and when they
found out. There were two different reports as to what time they
got up or whether they woke up by themselves.
GEORGE PAGE Well I'm not sure. I called their coordinator over
there when it became obvious that we were not going to be ready
for them at the planned time, and we had talked over how much we
should slip in the block house there and we had chosen and hour
and I told them that it looked like we were going to slip and
hour and don't wake them up. The way he put it to me was, we
told them don't set any alarm clocks, therefore, we'll wake them
up when the time comes. Now I don't know whether they were up or
whether he woke them I can't tell you.
HUGH HARRIS I don't know either. We didn't hear. They were
supposed to be awakened at 6:10 and I think they might have been
1 1 m not sure .
There's a question right here,
(inaudible)
GEORGE PAGE I'm not sure the exact time I was trying to
recall. I believe it was somewhere, oh boy, had to be 7 8 or 9
minutes, somewhere in there. I'm sorry don't quote me on that.
DAVE DULING George, have you gotten any performance numbers
back on the engines and the boosters and any figures on the
trajectory.
GEORGE PAGE No Dave, I don't have any of that information...
I missed the last part of your question.
Even a qualitative readout.
GEORGE PAGE No I don't have anything at all.
CARLOS BYERS Houston Chronicle George, I know you haven't had
too much time to digest the APU problem. Do you have any inkling
of what the matter is and is it in the same sort of a filter
plugging situation as you had before.
GEORGE PAGE No we're at this point I think we're pretty sure it
isn't that. I think it has something to do with the cooling
system, not the oil system, not the filter. God, I hope it isn't
I'm almost certain it isn't that.
PETER ADAMS Today Yes, Mr. Page, two questions. One, did
you get any medical data back from the astronauts how they
responded to the launch, any heart beat rates anything like that
yet?
GEORGE PAGE No, again I fouled up I should have checked that
before I came over here. I got a little busy and I don't have
any of that data.
DWIGHT POWERS WHHY With the APU problem, do you preceive
pushing back the launch date of STS-4 any further than the July 4
date?
GEORGE PAGE Not at this point. T don't, don't quote that July
4 either. We're still hoping for a late June launch.
REGGIE TURHILL The start of the flight seemed much more
vertical today than on STS-1 and 2. Was there any difference or
was that just the cloud effect.
GEORGE PAGE No I think that trajectory was the same. It may
have been that the drift that the exhaust plume took which kept
it underneath the flight plan may have given you that
impression. I believe the pitch over and everything was about
the same.
HOUSTON CHRONICLE More APU stuff George. Do you expect, is
there any indication that this could cause, will have any effect
on the mission?
GEORGE PAGE No 1 .'on't believe so. We don't need APUs again
until we reenter and regardless of when we reenter, we'll have
whatever APUs and we can reenter on two very easily. But I think
we'll have three.
MORTON DEAN George are these brand new APUs or did these fly on
the second mission as well.
GEORGE PAGE We replaced one I believe Morton.
MORTON DEAN Was this the one?
GEORGE PAGE No I don't think. I thought it was APU 1. But, I
wish I had some of the experts with me.
MORTON DEAN You don't know whether this one flew on both
missions. Or do they change them all after the first mission or
not.
GEORGE PAGE No, I believe we just changed the one and I'm sorry
I don't have that data for you. Yeah, I think it was number one.
GORDON HARRIS George, you've had some potential bidders for a
launch processing contract watching your work for STS-3. Will
that continue for STS-4.
GEORGE PAGE Gordon, I believe that KSC is offering that
opportunity and I don't know where it stands. I don't whether
the potential bidders for that contract are all going to stay or
not .
Could you have the values for the over temperature
condition.
GEORGE PAGE The over temperature on APU
No not in the APU in the ground support equipment.
GEORGE PACK No I don't know, I'm not sure what that was. It
actually it was a false indication. It was an over temper ature
protection circuit which in error said we had an over temper ature
and therefore would not allow us to turn the heater on. We
simply jumpered out that over temper ature protection and it
operated normally. We did get the heat on and the system
operated normally.
By the way, we just had an input from Houston on
the heart rate. The Commanders heart beat was 132 and the Pilots
was 92 according to the data that we have.
BRUCE PRECORD Astromodia Is it correct in assuming that the
defective APU will be replaced by one from Challenger. If so
will this be the second one taken from Challenger.
GEORGE PAGE Well, I couldn't tell you on that. I thought the
last one was a new one from the vendor. I didn't know it was out
of Challenger. And I think it's too early to speculate on that.
TERRY VALENSK I Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Last time on
the first two flights, in fact, there was some concern about what
seemed to me to be less cloud on the launch pad than we had
today. Are you now less concerned more confident that you can
take off in worse conditions.
You're talking about the weather at lift off.
GEORGE PAGE No we still, the main concern is having good enough
weather so that if we had to abort and return to the landing
field here at Kennedy Space Center that we could adequately see
the landing field for their approach. And that's really the
governing factor and each time now we've relied upon judgement of
the pilot that flies the simulator and comes in on a simulator
approach. And this time John Young did it from both
directions. I believe he determined that at the time of lift off
that coming in from the southern direction was the clearer one
and that was the instructions that were given to the crew and
that was the information was put into the computer that we were
going to come in from the south.
CHUCK VICARO Sage News George, after, I couldn't get this
question answered yesterday at the Experiment News Conference,
they told me to ask you. After the nose to sun alignments when
the Shuttle goes into the bar-b-que mode, will the radiators and
flash evaporators be shut down to test the effectiveness of that
mode.
GEORGE PAGE I'm sorry, I'm not that familiary with the flight
plan.
CHUCK VICARO Okay, thank you.
Okay we only have a chance for a couple of more
questions. Mark Kramer. Mark changed his T-shirt.
Your right.
MARK KRAMER George, was there anything about the launch other
than the APU problem that was not normal or out of limits. Do
you have information on the dynamic or rather the over pressure
situation at launch that you experienced on STS-1.
GEORGE PAGE I don't have any data on it Mark. I suspect though
if it had boon anything different, I'd of pronably heard
something. I didn't ask that question specifically. But I don't
know of any other significant problem associated with the launch.
MARK KRAMER Okay thank you.
REGGIE CURNHILL Rack to the APU I'm afraid. You said you hope
to have three for landing. Does this mean they'll be started up
periodically during the mission to check them out.
GEORGE PAGE I'm sorry I didn't hear that last ....will they
start them during the mission to check them out? I doubt that, I
think they'll wait until the planned time just prior to reentry
because I believe I'm pretty sure that we can land adequately
with just one. So, I'm sure of the three one of them is going to
be working. Probably all three.
When can we expect a planned landing in Florida.
GEORGE PAGE A what.
How soon can we expect a planned landing in
Florida.
GEORGE PAGE Oh, I think it's the baseline is STS-5 isn't it.
Yes. STS-5 and it will depend upon what we, do we get what we
need out of this one and the next one.
PETER DOMINOSKY FM ... radio What impact will the change of
location and landing to White Sands have on the scheduling of the
next launch date.
GEORGE PAGE We haven't sat down and figured that out. I think
what we'll do is wait until we know for sure when the orbiter
will return here. I think today looking at that schedule based
upon the original return date, we had some contingency in the
schedule where we could absorb some slip. So, I'm not ready to
say yet that we can't make the final week in June. We're just
going to have to wait and see.
Does anybody have a 5 second question. Thank
you. Thank you all for coming. Wait a minute. George wants to
say something.
GEORGE PAGE I just want to say before we close. You know I
come out to these press briefings a lot and we have a successful
mission like this and you read the newspaper where NASA did this
and NASA did that. And, whenever we have any problems you read
where this contractor fouled up that and this contractor fouled
up that. I just want you all to remember this is a combined team
over here and I wouldn't be here sitting feeling good today if we
didn't have a bunch of darn good contractors out there doing a
fine job for us and I don't want to go through the list of names
of them because I'm sure I'll forget somebody, but I'm very proud
of the team we have and we those of us in government that are
lucky enough to be involved in it, we wouldn't he able to do a
darn thing without those contractors helping us. So if you get a
chance, put a little word in about them.
Thank you George.
END OF TAPE
STS-3 PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT p6j PAGE 1
Okay, let's get rolling here on a change of shift briefing with
the offgoing Flight Director, Neal Hutchinson, going over the last 8 or 9
hours of STS-3. Neal.
Well there isn't really a lot to go over. We apparently as
opposed to the last time out have really got a gem going here. We don't have
any big anomalies. Hie vehicle's cooking real good, the crew is doing very
well, and we got through all our afternoon and evening events without a
hitch. The crew is running a little bit behind time some of the time but in
general we executed everything we wanted to do today, I believe right down to
the last INT. We got every single thing done in the flight plan that we
planned on today and we're looking forward to a really busy schedule
tomorrow. First thing in the morning we'll be taking the arm out and from
then on for the next 5 or 6 days we expect to be extremely busy and there
isn't anything going on in the vehicle that is going to prevent us from
executing the flight plan as written that we know of. And I don't have
anything else to say but that. I think that if anybody has got any questions
we'll be glad to try and answer them.
(garble) let's go to questions. Do we have a mike handler
tonight or are we just going to wing it? Okay, yeah, will you catch the
gentleman over here.
PAUL FRENCH. . .VOICE OF AMERICA. .. Neal, about an hour ago, Jack Lousma told
Sally that he wasn't feeling too good earlier today but he was feeling fine at
the time. Was he referring to the effects of weightlessness?
Yeah, I think Jack wasn't feeling too swift some of the time
this afternoon and he's feeling a heck of a lot better now and we think
(garble) he's going to be fine and he'll do a great job.
Did he take scopetec or something?
Yeah. Let's see... I think he took two, two scopetecs.
Is that normal to take these?
(garble) prescribed. Both of them took scopetec after launch.
They both did?
(garble) as laid out in the checklist.
Is there a chance that the ill effects can recur?
No.
(garble)
No.
Okay, next question. Anybody else? This might be the shortest
STS-3 PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT p6j PAGE 2
(garble) Erick.
ERICK ENGBERT. . .CBS NEWS... What can you tell us about what was discussed in
the private medical conference.
Nothing. Nothing in particular that I think is... we had a
standard private medicon today. What time was it Terry?
It was around 6:30, 7:00, something like that. I don't remember
the elapsed time. Probably around, I don't know, 5 (garble)
And nothing extraordinary out of that.
Hov sick was he?
Oh, he wasn't sick at all. Jack I think (woozy garble). Yeah,
he was slightly nauseated. He took I scope tex and he had a small amount of
nausea just after he took his second. The scopetex were planned about 4 hours
apart 1 believe and he had a good fluid intake and was feeling much better as
the day wore on and by the time we got to this evening I think as he indicated
on the airground just before he went to bed, he felt pretty much back to
normal. I think the thing we gotta remember here is this kind of thing is
something that we've seen before. Seme guys are more susceptable than
others. I think Jack... I think we all kind of expected we might have some
small problem. I think it's over with, you'll never hear another thing about
it, and I think you'll find tomorrow morning that Jack wakes up and is rip,
ready, and r?.ring to go. I think he was rip, ready, and raring to go tonight
as a matter of fact if we would have wanted to keep talking, he would have
kept right on jabbering along. I just don't think it's anything worth talking
about.
Here in the second row, third row.
WALTER BAGLEY. . .ROITERS. . .Did Jack have a similar experience
when he flew Skylab?
Yes.
So you kind of anticipated it because of his previous...
Well I think it's kind of hard to anticipate those kind of
things but we and he certainly were aware that the potential was there for him
to not feel too good for awhile. You've got to remember that... I don'"- have
any read> statistics on it, but I'd guess that probably half the guys that
have gone, early on in flight have had some feeling of fullness in their head
and seme uneasiness in their stomach and some of them react to it differently
than others. The Skylab situation of course, we felt like the volume that was
available to move around in had a lot to do with it, aggravated it because it
was a lot easier to get a lot more motion. The Shuttle is a pretty good size
vehicle too in terms as opposed to Apollo and but again I think you ought to
be aware that none of us think this is going to have any effect whatsoever on
the flight. It hasn't had any effect if you were listening to the air/ground
STS-3 PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT p6j PACT] 3
This afternoon, you noticed that Jack was always there and always working and
always doing something and I think tomorrow you'll find him completely
productive.
Any further questions nere? Back over here to Voice of America.
On the checkout of APU Number 3, when may we expect this power
unit possibly being checked out for use on ascent or descent rather? How many
days into the flight?
Well, first off we haven't decided if we're going to do that yot
and second off we have a normal procedure on the seventh day of the flight in
the morning called PCS checkout where we exercise one of Lhe APlTs and we
normally use Number 1, and it is possible that we could iecide to use Number 3
instead for the express purpose of confirming what we a\l believe to be the
fact and that is that it doesn't have a cooling probler.i and isn't goinq to
have a cooling problem for entry and you'd just like to make absolutely
positive it doesn't. I really think there's probably going to be a lot of
conversation about that subject and I wouldn't look for us doing anything for
several days, if at all.
Front row right here.
DAN BEAVERS. . .GULF COAST SCIENCE FICTION SOCIETY. . .There was some discussion
of debris on the nose area. Doesn't that being rather noticable, being
ejected as described. Isn't that a little strange.
No, I don't think so. For one thing, Jack was describing where
it was going. I don't remember the particular attitude we were flying at at
the time. I'm not at all sure that it was coming from the nose. He was
describing it as he looked out over the nose the direction the particles were
going. As a matter of fact, I think one time I recall him saying something
about a wing tip or it was coming up over the wing tip. There were some
people in the Control Center speculating and that's all it is that very
possibly when we went to tail sun, we still had some ice back there that was
immediately being vaporized off and you were seeing some of that. All three
of the previous two crews have reported a considerable amount of particle
activity around the vehicle. Particularly early on after we get on orbit and
ah. . .
Is this still early on?
Oh yes. Definitely. As a matter of fact, when Jack was doing
some describing of what he was seeing there a couple of passes before he went
to bed, Crippen was standing behind me and said that sounds just like the
stuff we saw. No one's concerned about anything coming off the vehicle or
anything like that. The RCS jets of course, the hypergolic reaction, one of
the byproducts is some water. We probably ... the water boilers probably aren't
evaporating any water so the water boilers aren't going. But I don't think,
there doesn't seem to be any concern anywhere about what it is. They are
probably ice crystals.
STS-3 PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT p6j PAGE 4
Any further questions here?
Could you explain to us what's happening with your shift's
lengths. This is a lot earlier than 12 midnight as we were told it was going
to be.
He's got an early turnaround. He's coming back at 6:00 a.m. is
it?
Yeah, that's not the least... When we got off an hour late, what
we did was shift everybody's shift schedule one hour in terms of Central
Daylight Time. I went on a little early today, so Tammy Holloway, the guy who
was on before me could get out a little earlier and Harold Drawn relieved me a
little earlier and I apologize for getting here too quick. But there wasn't a
lot going on and this is a shift where my group comes back into Control
Center. We are going to relieve the team who just relieved us so you know, we
did it a little early. That's all.
Are the shifts going to be (garble)
No they will be very... once we get going in this, first couple
of days we have a kind ot a whifferdil that we do where a team has to leave
the Control Center then come directly back in and the reason for that is so we
always have a group of guys who are familiar with the entry available when we
have entry opportunities and once we get into the sequence which happens
basically at the end of the third day, ws'U be repeating a very similar, all
the briefings will be at the same time. Until then, you'll have to put up
with a strange ... for example, tomorrow and Wednesday I have 12 hour oncnnsole
days. So the briefings are not uniform at the same time.
(garble) whifferdil
You want to explain that?
Lack of sleep. No it just means we aren't running a regular
standard swing shift where one guy gets off and what I means is we get off and
have to come right back again. That's my definition of a Whifferdil.
I'm convinced (garble) Anybody else? Erick.
One last thing. Can you wa]k us through the exercise of the RMS
tomorrow?
In general, I could if I wanted to open the flight plan and go
through a great amount of detail but basically we're going to power the arm up
in the morning, we'll uncradle it, we will roll it outboard to its operating
position and roll it back inboard to make sure we have all the motors required
to roll the arm in and out. We're going to pick it up, of course, without
anything on it. All the arm work tomorrow is what we call unloaded, no
payloads onboard, very similar to what you saw in STS-2. The arm will be
placed in certain positions and tested by moving it and then putting the
brakes on while it's moving, and watching it stop, and making sure we gather
STS-3 PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT p6j PAGE 5
the data on the dampening characteristics of the arin. One test tomorrow,
which is very similar to one we are going to do on Wednesday, with something
on the arm, we're going to have it parked at a position and fire the big RCS
jets to deliberately induce a vibration in the arm. We will grapple the IECM
tomorrow, what that means is we'll put the arm on it and put the end effector
on the grapple fixture and close the snares down, but then we'll just let the
end effector loose. We're not going to pick anything up till Wednesday. We
are going to check out backup mode to make sure we've got a full set of
redundancy capabilities in the arm. That's a pretty good overview. The
entire morning is devoted to armwork.
Okay. Anyone else? Okay, one last one up front here and then
we're going to shut it down.
Why is there only one scheduled TV downlink? I see from our
schedule here (garble)
You mean tomorrow during the day? I can't answer that. PAD TV
requirements of course and TV requirements that we're doinc for our own use
are all preplanned and... I can toil you the general reason why. Whenever we
are using the FM links to transmit television to the ground, we can't use them
to dump data from the tape recorders and (garble) Oh yes, very definitely and
that's what limits the amount of television we can provide and that whole plan
has been coordinated. As a matter of fact, we are using the recorders
absolutely filling them up and just barely staying ahead of the game the
entire flight gathering data and that's exactly correct. It's a trade off
between the digital data and the TV.
I think there will be plenty of TV over 7 days. Okay, thank you
very much.
END OF TAPE
p7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/22/82 9:15 am PAGE 1
STEVE NESBITT Okay good morning and welcome to our Change of
Shift Briefing. This morning we have with us Harold Draughon I
hope and he is the Flight Director for the Crystal Team which is
just coming off duty and were on during the night and I'll let
Harold take it from here and explain some of the things that have
happened on his watch there and I'm sure you have some questions
about some of the recent events here.
HhROLD DRAUGHON I'll give you a brief overview of the activity
on the time I came in last night and then you can go into detail
on any one you choose too. The systems problems that you
normally expect to find everytime were extremely light covering
also the ascent day. We came in last night with hardly anything
at all to work on and in fact, the big task of that particular
shift is to put together any impacts to the ongoing timeline for
the failures you've had during ascent phase and in the first
flight day. There was not a single change uplink this morning to
today's planned timeline because of any systems anomalies or
problems we've had held over from yesterday. Very briefly to hit
those things that we were pursuing, the in the vehicle systems.
I think you all have been told a couple of times about the one of
the APUs, the water spray boiler on API' 3 did not control during
ascent. The lube oil got a little warm in it. We cut that guy
off. We're still evaluating when would be the best time to bring
that APU back up if it is going to be required at all to check
out the controller on that unit. There are a couple of
opportunities that are availble to us. The most likely one, but
we really haven't picked one yet, but the most likely opportunity
is on the day prior to entry. On that day it's a normal routine
event to bring up the avionics sensors, the tack ends, the
altimeters those kind o r : things and do a check out on those
things. Then again on entry day, there is a thing called FCS
check, a Flight Control Systems checkout. There we repeat this
LRU checkout of the avionics. But, in addition to that we bring
up one APU as a normal course of events and wiggle all the
surfaces much like preflight in aircraft on the ground. So, we
could either elect to bring up move that APU start back to the
day prior to entry and do it there or we could just select that
APU in the entry checkout preentry checkout if we chose to do
that. If there was that much concern about that particular
APU. That decision is still being discussed and has not been
made yet. During the night, we I think you are all aware that
one of the main thrusts of this flight are the thermal additives
that we're going to spend a lot of time in that are designed to
stress the design of the vehicle. We are currently in a tail sun
attitude and we anticipated having to do some work as far as
adjusting caution and warning lir.iits that we have in the
vehicle. These things are normally set to be sensed by the
computer and give the crew an oral alarm anytime a system were to
get outside of a fairly normal operating range just to alert them
to go look at it. We on the ground, if we see something going
out of range and it's not really a systems issue, it's something
that you'd like to be alerted to if you were awake, but it's not
something that's enough or dire enough that you need to wake a
guy up if he's asleep. And we saw those approaching on a few
parameters and we have the ability to command a change of those
limits to the onboard software. We use that on, I can't remember
exactly, but they were about 16 parameters. Some of those were
in the OMS RCS interconnect and crossfeed system in the aft end
of the vehicle. It turned out those were not related to the
thermal attitude, but to the heaters in that system regulating a
little bit differently than they did on flight two. And in the
RMS system the RMS on flight two we were in a much warmer
attitude for the RMS than this tail sun attitude which completely
puts the bay in the shade and the RMS in this cradle position
there is completely in the shade. So it's a little colder than
anything it saw on flight two. There are two sets of heaters,
redundant sets of heaters on the RMS and we'd expected those guys
to regulate the temperatures on that system between 14 degrees
and 42 degrees farenheit. The instrumentation that we had was
indicating that the temperature excursions were running something
on the order of 1 degree to about 24 degrees. It's well above
any real concern that there's a hardware limit at -50 degrees
that way you'd begin to get a degree of concern about the
hardware but it's you can see it's the place that it's regulating
at and there was really no real concern. It's just something
different than what we expected. We did intervene and change
those limits to avoid waking the crew up. There are a number of
reasons why it might be doing what it's doing. The most likely
is that the temperature sensors are not colocated with the
transducers that are regulating the heaters and we are measuring
these lower temperatures some distance away from the heaters are
really regulated. So, it's not really a concern. They guys are
planning to press on this morning and go into their normal RMS
operations. The one of the IMUs it's normally inertial measuring
units to have to adjust accelerometer biases and gyro drifts in
the number 3 IMU both the x and y accelerometer had a bias change
during the sleep period. And it if you deal in statistics it was
about a 6 sigma change, but what that means is we have the
ability to put a number into the software that adjusts the output
from the hardware or any set variance from accurate data and so
we did that after looking at the outputs for about 2 revs.
Figured out what the new regulating point was and put in an
adjustment for it that's has indeed compensated for that
accelerometer. So it's in the system, it never did get big
enough. There is some other software that impairs all three IMUs
to each other and if one of them starts to disagree from the
other two it will quit using that one. We never came near a
limit like that and now that we've compensated that particular
output there is no issue with it at all. Their only remaining
concern is that it might change again and we'll just keep an eye
on that. As far as consumables are concerned, we launched with
enough to fly the full duration mission plus a 24 extension
should you ever need it. That's common practice with us. We are
well ahead of that plan this morning when I left the control
center so we have plenty of consummables . We're slightly ahead
of the plan that we had as far as the surpluses we have on
board. One late development was the tile issue that some of you
may have heard about this morning. Jack repoted to us that they
had noticed three tiles or three areas where tiles have had some
come loose and it's in front of the windshield and between there
and the nose of the vehicle. There are roughly three areas on
the left and three additional ones on the right. So, it's kind
of a late developing thing and we don't have all the details
yet. But, we do know that there are three areas involved. I
worked on the tile team that worked day shift on flight one. I
happen to know that that particular area of the vehicle is
thermally quite benign, so there's not a real concern with losing
a tile in that part of the vehicle. The one of the things that
could have led to the tile coming off would be impacts from
anything coming off the booster during ascent. We are planning
to take the RMS system sometime either today or one of the days
coming up and do a survey of that part of the vehicle and see
what other damage there might be up there if any and just really
to get a good idea of what's going on in ascent. One reason for
doing that too is that once you land again, you have a some
possibility or probability of kicking up loose things on the
runways, particularly landing in lake beds, and you get some more
dings in the tile out there and you like to separate out what's
happening on landing versus happening on landing so that you can
figure out ways to minimize both of those things. Till you know
which one is doing it to you it's hard to figure out how to fix
it. So, that's one of the motivations for going into it and
looking at the damage and trying to quantify it. The crew status
Jack slept upstairs last night in the crew seat. Gordo slept
downstairs. Gordo got a much better, evidentally a much better
nights rest than Jack did. He had some interference that was
coming with the radios at one point in the orbit, and it woke him
up a number of times. We don't yet know what that again that
came in the second pass after they woke up this morning so we
have not yec worked that issue. We will go back and look and see
what's in that area and try to pin point the cause and if we can
do something about it. But, the only option he had last night
was either to put with it or to turn the radios off in which case
he would not be listening to any ground call that we made and so
he did not turn them off. He slept with that hinderance. Also
during the night, on the last flight the crews got a little
colder than they liked during the sleep periods. One of the
reasons is that where they slept they were right under some
exhausts coming out of the air handling system. This time we
readjusted the environmental system to combat that and hopefully
make them a little more comfortable and evidentally we overdid it
just a bit because they wound up instead of being colder, they
wound up warmer. And then about an hour and a half after we put
them to bed, we got to San Diego site and there is some things
you can look at you can tell when they've been up and been
accessing the display system, we say evidence that at least one
of them had been up and readjusted the flow rates between the
freon loop and water loops which is another way of balancing the
air temps onboard. So they had started to sleep, got into a
little thermal concern and or discomfort and got up and
readjusted it and went back to bed. It's not a big deal. As far
as the scientists are concerned, all of the experiments in the
bay have been activated and a number of them have already taken
some data. I'm not the world's biggest expert on the details of
those guys, but I know a little bit about it. Several of them
have taken actual science data and when I left this morning we
were bringing on the PDP a little earlier than had planned this
morning and everything seems to be cooking along really well.
That's about all I have. Right now to restate what I started out
with, the plan today is to do the exact published CAP timeline
that you all have copies of. So we expect to execute that
timeline today.
STEVE NESBITT Okay we'll take questions first here at Johnson
and then we'll move to the other centers and come back and finish
here. Sylvan Rodriguez.
SYLVAN RODRIGUEZ I'd like to ask you about the tile question.
Did you say three areas and next you said there were three areas
on the left and three on the right. Is that six areas?
HAROLD DRAUGHON Six areas all together.
SYLVAN RODRIGUEZ And how many tiles.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Sylvan we're not haven't finished the survey
yet, but there was not an area that had more than one complete
tile gone from the preliminary report we got from Jack. There
was one complete tile from one area and then some pieces of tiles
at two other areas on his side.
SYLVAN RODRIGUEZ Are they in an area that could have been seen
as a matter of common practice outside the windows.
HAROLD DRAUGHON You would think that and that's one of the
first things that occured me. I talked to both Crippen and Truly
and they said that that area is very difficult to see because
you've got to bend over the forward eyebrow panel in the cockpit
and get your head right up against the window in order to look
down over the nose. So it was not unusual at all that the crew
didn't notice that until this morning.
LYNN SHERR ABC Along with the tiles, I wonder if you could
show us on the model exactly where it is. And also tell us when
they discovered it and what they said when they discovered it.
HAROLD DRAUGHON They noticed it this morning and one is along
in here. There are two pieces back in here. There is another
one over here and frankly Gordo description wasn't good enough
for me to locate the other two but, they're out In this area
someplace. Two pieces out in here. I marked up another, if I
can find it, I marked up another one that's probably a little
better representation. This one tile, incomplete one here, two
pieces here, one here that's adjacent to these RCS jets upfront
and then two on the side that I just couldn't pick...
Can you explain what you mean by thermally benign
as applied to the area where the tiles are missing.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yeah, this, in reentry, which is what you worry
about when you go through the thermal region up around Mach 20
those high speed parts of the entry, these areas in here get
extremely hot. This area up in here and the top here and back in
here is very shielded from the airflow and the plasma of the hot
gases wrap around the vehicle, this area up here just doesn't get
the hot .
STEVE NESBITT Okay if I don't call on you by name, be sure to
state your name and your affiliation. We'll back to you on your
followup in a minute.
REVE COLLINS CBS NEWS Can you tell me, you mentioned that you
may do it today, you may do it tomorrow. Has a decision
definitely been made to use the RMS and make the survey.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yes.
REVE COLLINS On the subject of the interference in Lousma
headset in the northern latitudes I think he said. What's the
positive reason for that.
HAROLD DRAUGHON You mean what's the best guess.
REVE COLLINS Yeah. He has one, I wonder what yours is.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Some ground radar, some ground source.
REVE COLLINS On our side, this in this hemisphere.
HAROLD DRAUGHON During that part of the 24 hour day, the
northern part of the ground track is over China and Iran.
CARLOS BYERS Houston Chronicle I've got actually about three
questions here. First is following on the noise. Is that what's
commonly described by shortwave operators as woodpecker.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I'm not familiar with that. I don't know. It
was not distinguishable conversation. It was noise.
CARLOS BYERS Sharp pulse noise.
HAROLD DRAUGHON He did not describe it as such.
CARLOS BYERS Secondly, particles, there was a mention of cloud
of particles streaming back. I'd like you to comment on what the
source of those might have been and thirdly, what's the status of
the hitch hiker they picked up in Florida.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I don't know what he....
STEVE NESBITT The fruit fly, the bumble bee...
CARLOS BYERS No, no no. There was a report that a fruit fly
slipped onboard during the egress procedures in Florida.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I guess it's a good thing they're not landing
in California, they wouldn't (laughter) put us in quarantine.
Let's see, what was your first question. The particles. That
report I read it briefly and the handover was on the shift prior
to mine. It most likely is ice or moisture that is baking out
out gassing from the vehicle that came in from the launch
phase. That's just an educated guess. It is not coming from any
source such as our cryo tanks, water tanks, or fuel cells. It's
not coming from the vehicle as a source. As, not as an internal
something we stored on board. We've got much too much
instrumentation to let something like that get by us.
ALBERT SAILSTED Baltimore Sun When you use the arm today to
inspect the tiles, number one you'll be using the television
cameras on the arm and number two will it look all over the
outside of the vehicle or will it just be looking at the nose.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I image that those issue are still being
discussed, in fact, right at this moment. I imagine that we will
look beyond just the top part of the nose, but to what extent I
don't know. I don't expect that we would do a complete survey of
the vehicle. There is no reason that they would need to do that.
PAT DOLEN CNN Will the necessity to inspect the tiles with
the RMS put the crew behind schedule in any way.
HAROLD DRAUGHON No £nd to what extent it's obviously got to
occupy some time. There is some days where it is easier to
accommodate than others. This afternoon would be a good day to
do it. There is some free time late this afternoon that we could
get in there and it wouldn't take that long. We have, you know,
like most things like this, we've already thought about the
potential that you might want to use it someday so we developed
some rudimentary procedures, nominal kind of procedures that we
use. Those procedures are on board so it's not something we've
got to go and figure how to do. We already know how to do it.
Exactly what to do. If we could figure out exactly where we want
to look and what parts of the vehicle, that has to be done
first. And then direct the crew to the right parts, right
procedures and then just get it scheduled with some TV. Tomorrow
would be a less optimum day to do it. The day after that would
be a great day to do it. There are some holes, there is some
vacant places in the timeline on that day that would fit in very
nicely. But, it would if we get it all put together I imagine
we'll do it this afternoon, but that decision has not been made.
Lousma, did he say that he ...... .
HAROLD DRAUGHON Not this morning. He didn't say that.
PAUL REESER The medical report that we got last night chose not
to mention that Lousma experienced some nausea. I was wondering
if you could give a few details on that. How many pills he had
to take, was it profound nausea, complete with product or what.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I can't get quite that medical with you, but he
had nausea yesterday. As far as I know there was only one
occurrence. He did take some medication, scopedex was the name
of it. He reported last night just before he went to bed, before
we put him to sleep that he was feeling much better. This
morning he again iterated that he was feeling much better. We
were considering having another medical discussion with him this
morning and there was no need for it, so we didn't. He has been
advised to continue taking the scopedex throughout today and will
probably discontinue it after today.
How about Fuller ton.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Fuller ton had no nausea. Did not throw up at
least. It's not uncommon for different we run a lot of tests
preflight on all the crewmen and on a lot of test subjects to try
to figure out different peoples sensitivity to motion sickness.
And everybody varies. Not only do they test all the crewmen and
they test different medication on the crewmen and Jack, we all
knew that Jack was more susceptible to motion sickness. And some
of the other crewmen if you go back in your records, you'll see
that in Skylab, he had the same problem early in the flight and
gradually got over it. Yes he did.
Was it just Lousma that experienced the radio
interference. How many revolutions did he here is on all the
revolutions. Is it still going on and could you explain what the
reference was to radar that you made.
HAROLD DRAUGHON The only one that would have heard it was Jack
because the sleeping arrangements for this flight normally are
that one crewman will sleep downstairs off the headsets. The
other crewman is going to sleep upstairs in one of the crew
chairs so he's near the, our COMM systems both upstairs and
downstairs but only one guy is going to stay on the headset. So
Jack is the only one who would have heard it. Had Gordo been
plugged in he would have heard it also. His general comment and
you know we didn't grill him about it, but his general comment
was that each time he went through the most northerly part of the
orbit he heard it. Now, whether or not that means every single
rev or not I can't say, but most of the revs to the northern
latitudes, he heard the interference.
PETER LARSEN CENTINAL STAR Did Fullerton sleep strapped in his
seat or did he use that upright sleeping sack.
he did.
procedures
JOHN VAN Chicago Tribune
roi S k s m on n ^e T^Tee, M rowing or?. * That wasn't dear.
HAROLD DRAUGHON ^^^^^^^^^^
our simulations h-re ^% £ °^ n ™*s ^ nd giving us alarms and
try and do a good D ob of tr eking us an y ^ ^ gQ
that defeats us when f /° . fc qe e 6 US fight that problem
off. And Jack is used to that, -ing ^ ^ a single
during the simulat ons. ^ s ^ e the crew,
occurrence or an aiarm ma*.
LYNN SHERR ABC Bac J .on theti 1...,. l^,™^ ."ll* Jack
HAROLD DRAUGHON Oust about *V s,t h e, -°i- t *p* nt
they woke up and the attitude you attitu de. So it's not a
very soon after going to the tai V?u" ? tnere and particularly
surprise that they didn't even look out there a p ^ ^
get their head real ^^f^if^^he second pass after we woke
?he front. So this moc ^ g .^^s And they just said hey,
E5S?.?S £« ^s^sHon and^ack'told us about his side and
then Gordo described his side.
STEVE NESBITT Let j. ^^0^0^/0^ in the"?^"
?hey described the missing t.les.
PA UL REESER Spj.R.n, o< ^oso words Would Y-interpret
S.^^RinS^ch^S or^aKedVf fro* the top. was there
a color phase change there.
HAROLD DRAUGHON He Ji-^t d..« ^hat I know^hat ^ou • re
talking about. He 6 i olqo t t cfc fc tne
that out when we get the RMS out tnere. e fchat ifc
two places that they descr ^complete ti s described a«
ricr s b and C Ttarrrtangd^ e pie?;s coming out and they piobably
did not come off to the sep.
PAUL REESER M» these tile, that are ....In,, are they the low
density tiles. Everyone of them.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yes they are. They're undensHied white tiles.
STEVE NESBITT And he did refer I thin. In one case to 3/16 of
an inch depth and another case of 1/4 of an inch.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yeah, he did describe the depth of them.
STEVE NESBITT I think we'll go ahead and go to Kennedy Space
Center and we'll come back here to finish up with questions. Do
we have any questions at the Kennedy Space Center.
DICK LEWIS Chicago Sun Times I have three short questions.
Concerning the tiles, you indicated that they might have been
damaged by something coming off the booster did you mean to refer
to the ET.
HAROLD DRAUGHON To the ET.
DICK LEWIS Okay. That would be ice presumably.
HARCLD DRAUGHON Yes .
DICK LEWIS How did Jack Lousma that. Did he go forward and
peer through the windshield. You indicated this is a difficult
area to see .
HAROLD DRAUGHON Well, it's not difficult once you get your head
up there. It's just not a normal place that you have any reason
to go to. I imagine they were just going around and looking out
all over the place. We had asked them about to make to
assessments for us and report to us back. One was you already
eluded to the ice and stuff that you see coming by the windows
during ascent. We routinely have them give us a summary of what
they observed during ascent in those regards and after flight
one, we barely would ask them to take a look at any tile that
they car normally see from the windows all around the vehicle and
they do vhat.
DICK LEWiS Which camera on the RMS will be used to make the
survey. Is that the wrist camera and is that a black and white
or colled.
HAROLD DRAUGHON It's black and white and I'm fairly certain
that we would use the wrist camera.
DAVE DULING HUNTSVILLE TIMES Would you describe the video
problems that you'ro having with the rest of the TV system on the
bird. I've heard them say I think it was Charlie camera was down
and I have not seen too much video so far.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Starboard camera is the C camera. I haven't
seen any ....
STEVE NESBITT I'm informed that that's the only problem we had
was that particular camera.
JAMES WILKINSON BBC You said that the interference on the
headset occured when, they were flying over Iran and China.
HAROLD DRAUGHON A general area of the world. I don't know
exactly where they were .
JAMES WILKINSON Is it the sort of interference that might be
caused by ground radar tracking the orbiter.
HAROLD DRAUGHON That's certainly one possibility.
JAMES WILKINSON Do you think that is the most likely
possibility.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I imagine you can make a strong case for that.
Do we have any additional questions from Kennedy.
That wraps up the question from KSC.
qTPVE NESBITT I understand we don't have questions at any of
?E V 5th!? £S* centers so we'll come back her ^ Jo the Johnson
c narp renter Do we have any more questions here? Okay, it not
we'U caU the beefing to a halt and thank you all for coming
out and thank you Harold.
END OF TAPE
p8j TOM MOSIER - LOST TILES DATE 3/23/82 PAGE 1
PAO This special briefing from the Johnson Space Center
is being held to explain the loss of tiles we've had today on the
orbiter. This is Tom Mosier, Deputy Manager of the Space Shuttle
Orbiter Project Office here at the Johnson Space Center and we
have passed out a statement to you. Tom, I guess you were
responsible for writing it, and if you'd like to take over now
with a statement then we'll answer questions.
TOM MOSIER Okay. Let me state first of all we have two
regions on the vehicle where we have observed tiles missing.
It's in the forward fuselage region of the orbiter just forward
of the cabin. All these tiles that we see missing in that regijn
which we've observed with the television camera from the Remote
Manipulator System, the RMS, and from the crew description is we
have about, it looks like approximately 25 tiles missing in that
region. I'll talk through that area and then I'll go to the
other region. Temperatures £ia<5ed on predictions from STS-1 and
STS-2 will range from, I'm talking about the tile surface
temperatures now, that is the maximum, will range from about 400
degrees to about 800 degrees where we see these tiles missing.
This is not a safety of flight because these tiles are missing,
they are thin tiles. They are approximately 4/10 of an inch
thick in the low temperature region and up to about 6/10 inch in
the highest temperature region. Beneath each of these tiles and
still remaining on the vehicle is the strain isolation pad
commonly know as SIP. It's about .16 inch thick. It provides
some protection to the aluminum structure and with that
protection plus those temperatures we do not anticipate any
problems. The other region of the vehicle we observed today from
movie cameras from the launch pad, was during SSME, Space Shuttle
Main Engine ignition, after ignition and up to approximately Cull
thrust, it appears too right now. But, before SRB ignition, we
can observe what appears to be some tiles which are being lost
from the base region of the orbiter. It's either on the top of
the body flap which is the most aft control surface or on the
base heat shield of the orbiter. I think the thing that's most
significant about this area, these are black tiles. They
experience their highest heating during the ascent phase of the
mission. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 1400 degrees
maximum. The temperatures during entry back in this region are
very benign. They are about 400 degrees maximum on the surface,
and again, all the temperatures that I've given you today are
surface temperatures of the tiles. We do not anticipate any
problems with the flight because of losing these tiles. They've
seen their high heating environment. I think that's probably a
good synopsis of what we see today. We're continuing to map
exactly where these tiles are located, correlate with :?ome of the
debris that we found around the pad. Make sure that wo
understand where these tiles are and that we have in fact seen
all the tiles which we have missing. We can correlate with that.
PAO Okay, we'll start with questions here at JSC then
we'll go to the Cape. We'll start with Jules Bergman over
here. Give your affiliation if I don't recognize you.
JULES BERGMAN ABC NEWS Tom, how can you be sure that no safety
of flight issue that there are no black tiles missing from the
leading edge or under the wings which do take the maximum heat
when you don't have the wrist camera to examine them with.
TOM MOSIER Okay, that's a good question. There's a little bit
more we know about this in the same film that we observed during
liftoff. We can see the underside of the vehicle during the time
which we lost these on the top of the body flap and the base
region. Wexe clean there. All the tiles are in shape.
, Tiles on the high heating
region of the body flap on the underside are all in place. As
you saw from the TV pass with the RMS which inspected the top of
the wings which would give us another indication that we are in
fact in the more critical regions okay. Those two pieces of
information give us the confidence that we need. The other thing
that is primay interest in this is that as you perhaps recall
from our experience in STS-1, where we went through the scenario
of how we verified the integrity of these tiles, we put more
emphasis on those tiles which are more critical. These tiles
which we have seen missing today are the lesser critical tiles.
We havep^»fcd- >n the tiles, we proof loaded them, we densified
those tiles which increases the strength of those tiles and it's
attachment to the strain isolation pad by a factor of about 2 on
the more critical tiles. Most all the tiles in the bottom of the
vehicle are densified.
JULES BERGMAN So you're not concerned about there being any
safety issue during reentry.
TOM MOSIER That's correct.
CRAIG COVAULT Aviation Week Tom, do you have any concern at
all on the nose cap and have you given any consideration to maybe
doing a 45 degree entry instead of a 40 degree entry to protect
the top side of the nose a little more.
TOM MOSIER Craig, obviously we're looking at what all ✓anc.bito
we have left for us to work with. Anything to minimize the
heating there we will do and still keep the mission safe.
...followup. Does that mean you are seriously
looking at a maybe a 45 degree entry and maybe also seriously
looking at having them not do the PTIs and ASIs on the way down.
TOM MOSIER We're looking at all that. And I do not know what
we're going to do right now. I think I would point out though if
we continued if we flew this mission just like we did STS-2 we
would have no problem. We'll do anything to add and I think the
right way to say it, anything we can do to add margin, we will
certainly consider. Now what else that does has to be considered
also.
MIKE TONER Miami Herald Some of the pictures this afternoon
were coming from the elbow arm seemed to show in the area of
black tiles just at the limits that you ca'i see with the camera,
there seem to be some voids there. Are you sure that those are
not missing tiles.
TOM MOSIER Yeah, what we did on that is we have some
photographs of the vehicle just prior to leaving the VAB and some
that were taken thereafter what we correlated the black white
tile configurations. Now I think the thing you're saying and I
brought some photographs of that, we have some black tiles
interspersed amongst the white tiles in that region and there is
a sort of a sawtooth arrangement of black and white tiles down
below where you see the tiles missing as far off the center line
as we can see and we can see nothing other than above this about
800 deqree isotherm.
ALLEN I'm still unclear what caused all this.
TOM MOSIER Well we're not really sure. We're going back.
We're just now getting some of the data from liftoff. I think
first off we would say that, left me back up one step, first
thing we're doing is making sure that what we see there is not a
safety flight issue we've convinced ourselves that. Our next
step then is due to the retail investigation and understanding of
what caused the failure. We're not there yet, we just gotten
through that first and it's just conjecture as to what caused
it. Anything, we flew it a little bit higher dynamic pressure,
this time than we had on STS-1 and 2 which is part of the flight
plan, progressively increasing in dynamic pressure. On STS-1 we
saw a rather high overpressure from the SRBs. We didn't see it
on STS-2. We did not see it on this mission. On STS-3. So,
we're trying to get all the pieces of the data we can to put
together the answer to that. We're just not there yet.
CARLOS BYERS Houston Chronicle Tom, you did a higher dynamic,
you reached a higher dynamic pressure on the ascent stage and I
believe you had planned a little more strenuous reentty on STS-3
than you had on STS-2. You say you'd be perfectly safe doing a
reentry equivalent to STS-2. What about STS-3 reentry as
planned .
TOM MOSIER No even STS-3 ^ntry as planned we feel we're
safe. No l's>
PETER ADAMS L Is there indication that there was an accumulation
of ico on external tank before the mission began and there any
indication that the external, this ice may have damaged the tiles
on lif tot f .
TO;'i MOSIER There is certainly that potential. We've viewed
son.e of the films that we have here today. From the views that
we, from the film that we reviewed, we could not see any tiles
striking the vehicle, but that is certainly a possibility,
especially on that forward end of the vehicle. We feel like it's
not appropriate or in anyway playing a role for the tiles that we
soe on the upper surface of ' ie body flap and the wwcwev
region. But that certainly is a possibility on the tiles of the
forward end of the vehicle.
VICK RATNER ABC You haven't indicated why you are so
confident that the underside of the nose did not sustain debris
damage during t>e initial moments of the liftoff.
TOM MOSIER Well, let me say the reason I say that is the rigor
of installation and design of those tiles being greater than the
lower temperature regions. Most all of those, well as a matter
of fact, in the lower part of the forward fuselage on the v ,
underside as you say, all those tiles have a strength which,twice
that of those which we've seen missing so far. Let me classify
those two different tiles. The lower strength are the
undensified tiles and those are the only ones that we've seen
missing to date. The ones on the bottom of the vehicle and the
forward end are all densified tiles. Densi f icat ion just reflect
on that for a second is the interface of the tile that is bonded
to the strain isolation pad for the densified tiles we have
essentially put a denser layer of fine silica particles in the
tile itself which increases the local strength of the tile and
that's the area that's most potential to be lost between, for an
undensified tile. So in those more critical tiles we have
densified those in the forward end and most of the under,
complete underside of the vehicle has all densified tiles. Might
further add that our next vehicle, all the tiles are densified.
ALL SHULSTED Baltimore Sun When you say stronger tiles, do you
mean simply that they are densified or are they more securely
pasted to the skin of the vehicle. Is there a better bonding
there or is it just that they are stronger.
TOM MOSIER No, they let me step you through the layer of the
thing. First of all there is the aluminum to which has bonded to
it with a room temperature vulcanized rubber, RTV, the strain
isolation pad or the SIP, and to that is bonded the tile.
Okay. It's between and the SIP is a felt material. It has a
nonuniform 'stiffness if you vill, and the tile then an
undensified tile bonded to it, it' that tile SIP interface has got
a lower strength than densified fcj.le, or if you were to imagine a
piece of aluminum with SIP and a tile bonded to it and you was
pulling up on the tile itself, and you could take and just lift
up on the tile, the undensified tile always fails at the SIP to
tile interface. And it fails at an average stress about half
that of a Fame densified tile. The tile materials are the
same. It's like less than a 2/10 of an inch thick layer in the
bottom of the tile that has the densif ication.
JULES BERGMAN Tom, you have indicated the possible causes of
this phenomena. It sounds like there might be two. Ice up
forward maybe and vibration back by the body flap area.
TOM MOSIER That's that could very well be both of those. It's
probably vibration in the aft region of the vehicle and perhaps
ice in the front.
PAO Okay we're going to go to the Cape now for
questions then we'll come back here.
DICK LEWIS Chicago Sun Times You indicated that there were 25
tiles or pieces of tiles from the nose, the white tiles that were
knocked off. Do you have a number on the black tiles on the
under body.
TOM MOSIER There is approximately 12 from what we've observed
today. We're rtlimny both of those numbers I might add. Those
are the first cuts of them. I don't think there'll be any more
than that, but that's an approximation.
DICK LEWIS Do some of the pieces that you found on the beach
around the pad could they have been from previous flights.
TOM MOSIER I don't think so, we did the same inspection after
the second flight as we're doing here and walk around the pad and
we didn't see any problems of that type. We've correlated
somewhat one of the tiles we found and it appears to be a tile
that could have come from the 'region of the orbiter. "
And I believe and I'm not positive I believe that there's a one
of the white tiles that were found that was found had a number on
it that was correlated to a one of the tiles missing on the
forward fuselage region just behind the black line that goes all
the way around the RCS module there.
DICK LEWIS One more question, are these temperatures you're
giving us farenheit.
TOM MOSIER Yes, degrees farenneit on the temperatures.
HOWARD BENEDICT On STS-1 it was reported that you asked the
Air Force to use one of it's military satellites to look at the
base of the shuttle when there was some concern about the missing
tiles, was that done in this case and another question, did you
use either the Hawaii or Malibar camera to perhaps try to take a
picture. ;
TOM MOSIER I'm not personally familiar with either of those
activities so I can't answer the question. I do not have any
data from any other source other than what I said.
PAO No additional questions at KSC
PAO
Okay back here at JSC.
TONY MELISKY. Canadian broadcasting Corporation I have two
questions. The first is what if any data do you not have as a
result of not having the wrist camera and second, it seems to me
that every time we have a flight now we have this same press
conference obviously there is something wrong with the tiles and
might be some thought given to redesigning them or is that not
fair to say .
TOM MOSIER First of all we do have additional data from the
ground. We have we're still looking at some of the film. We and
that's our primary source of information. We're looking at it
more closely to verify what we've seen todate. I don't believe
we had this conference after STS-2. STS-1 we did. And are we
redesigning, we're not redesigning per se, but we certainly are
improving the strength and integrity of the tiles and that's the
issue we're talking about here, is the strength integrity
issue. We're improving the strength integrity of the tiles with
the densif ication and that's the primary change that we are
incorporated on the next vehicle.
1 f< 1 1 pifuvfV Are you satisfied with the way the tiles are
applied despite these failures.
TOM MOSIER Yes.
BILL WATTS KPRC RADIO Wanted to ask if the stuff that we saw
coming off the tail in the previous TV pictures for the past hour
does that have anything to do with the tiles or is that liquid or
do you have any idea.
TOM MOSIER I really don't know. I haven't had the opportunity
to see that myself. I've been off working this problem and I've
heard that reported and I really can't comment on that.
PAO We'll have an explanation of that on the evening .
briefing when we have the shift change.
JAMES WALKER ABC NEWS Could you explain what is the effect of
all the circuit breaker camera problems on the schedule of the
astronauts .
TOM MOSIER I really cannot. I'm sorry.
PAO Let's keep this to the tile situation. At the
shift briefing we'll be able to discuss some of those things.
JOHN VAN Chicago Tribune Is it likely that this tile problem
will add significantly to the turnaround time before STS-4.
TOM MOSIER I don't envision it adding significantly. We have
in our scheduled flow either the work on about 300 tiles I
believe is planned. And what we've seen todate is far within
that envelope and the reason we put 300, if we have, some of the
tiles we have to remove for instrumentation reasons, other tiles
we are continuing to remove and densify as we have time between
turnaround. Just to add that little additional margin. So I
don't envision the tiles themself adding any significant time to
the turn around .
CARLOS BYERS I'm curious, who first discovered this problem.
Was it the astronauts looking out the window or did they look out
the window, I know it's kind of a tight place I think they have
to squeeze up into it to really look out at the nose like that,
did they do that because you already discovered problems some
pieces on the ground and said, hey guys maybe you better take a
look.
TOM MOSIER No the first report was from the crew.
PAUL RECER AP Okay. Two questions. I just want to clarify
something. You said film from the ground, film from the ground
is a primary source of information, are you talking about the
film taken from the launch pad or are their other sources of
film.
significant time to the turnaround.
Carlos Myers
CARLOS MYERS I'm curious, who first discovered this problem.
Was it the astronauts looking out the window or did they look out
the window, I know it's kind of tight place they have to squeeze
up into to really look out at the nose like that, they do that
because you'd already discovered problems some pieces on the
ground and said hey guys maybe you'd better take a look?
TOM No, the first report was from the crew.
PAUL RE^&t' AP Okay, two questions. I just want to clarify
something. You said film from the ground is your, I'm sorry,
it's Paul Reese with AP, film from the ground is the primary
source of information, are you talking about the film taken from
the launch pad or are there other sources of film?
TOM No, I'm talking about the film taken from the
launch pad . '
PAUL REESE AP And you have no other sources of ground film?
TOM That's correct.
PAUL REESE AP Ok, and then the second question is, are any of
these films that you've discovered are any of these tiles you've
discovered missing the same tiles that came off in earlier
flights? I mean, not the same tiles but the same tile
location .
TOM The answer to that is no they're not. They're not
from the same exact location as from previous flights. I might
add that by virtue of the fact that in this, and to substantiate
that, the tiles that have come off that we've seen and identified
have all been undensified tiles. Anytime a tile is put back on
the vehicle it's densified, so any of those things so any of the
tiles that we repaired or replaced from previous flights would
have been densified.
f m lc > one more time.
Tom, a numerical correction here. The release says
25 white tiles were pieces of tile missing. Now you've said 12
black tiles. Are we, therefore, to infer 37 or nearly 40 or what
is the correct number?
TOM 25 white tiles on the forward end, 12 black tiles
on the aft end.
77VU L S . ■■. ■ .
So nearly 37 so it's 37.
TOM
37 total tiles.
37 total.
TOM Yes.
Question right here.
PAT DO LAN CABLE NEWS NETWORK Why not densify
Name please.
PAT DOLAN CABLE NEWS NETWORK Oh, I'm sorry. Pat Dolan with
Cable News network. If the tiles that come off are then
densified in the next turnaround period, why not densify all the
tiles and eliminate the problem?
TOM Well, densif ication the additional margin
enhancement with densif ication came into bring, the process was
developed after we had most of the tiles installed on the
vehicles. We densified those tiles which were most critical. We
densified those which were most highly stressed. The ones which
were not densified were proof loaded to verify their strength
integrity and in summary, they had adequate strength for any of
the environments we expected to see based on analysis and ground
tests for the full OFT program. So that's the reason for not
densifying all of them. We thought we had an adequate or nore
than adequate situation. Follow up on this.
A follow up, okay.
PAT DOLAN Will you give further consideration now that this
tile problem has reappeared to densifying all the tiles?
TOM We always consider any flight data and after all
that's what this is a flight test program. We will certainly
factor what we've learned from this flight back into those tiles
which must be densified and that's the second part of this
problem is understand fully what has happened here.
Okay, Peter Adams in the back.
PETER ADAMS Yes, did you do you have any significant tile loss
in the RCS area and if so, is that does that pose any problem to
the RCS, is there any concern for the for the reaction control
system if there is tile damage there?
TOM No, there's the only tile damage in the RCS area is
what you''ve seen. They were and there's no concern for the RCS
itself.
ABC, here.
JAMES WALKER ABC James Walker with ABC. I have a tile
question. How important is it to you to get the wrist camera to
work to take a look at the tiles under the belly underneath?
TOM Number 1, I don't know that we can do that. Number
2, I don't think you can reach around and see can see a small
region and that would just add additional information to what we
already have. But we're confident right now that we're ok.
JAMES WALKER Under the nose?
TOM Under the nose is yes. That's as I went back
through before, those tiles have all been densified and more
stringently controlled.
This gentleman here.
MIKE CONNER ROITERS Mike Conner from Roiters. Have you
thought of a space walk by one of the astronauts to examine the
unseen areas.
TOM No, that's not considered. We'll have time for a
few more questions here.
Tom would like to get back, I'm sure. So let's
wrap it up here with a couple of questions. Any more in this
area here? This side?
TOM We have some pictures here, Okay, here's a question
back here.
SAM ALLIS' TIME • A fe the black
tiles spread out, the lost black tiles, are they spread out in a
large area or are they concentrated under one particular area
under the body of the plane.
TOM Well, it was really hard to tell from the angle
which we were viewing it but they appear to come from the same
general area and whether they're all adjacent is hard to tell.
SAM ALLISON And that is under the main body of the Orbiter.
TOM No, it's at the very back end of the Orbiter but
it's on the top of the body flap or on the base region of the
Orbiter itself. Do we have a model, I'll point that out?
Yea. We had one here earlier.
TOM Our model is missing.
Tom brought some pictures along. They were taken
from the TV pass but we only have two copies of these and you re
supposed to take them back.
TOM Just one copy.
Can you use that?
I need a picture pointing out the missing tiles.
Let rue use it if i can, Okay. Okay, I'll hold
these here, Tom, if you want to.
TOM Hold it steady. Okay, these are, I'm going to have
to see them. Pull back. Okay. This is the view looking down on
top of the far fuselage, these are the windows, these are the
upfiring RCS thrusters. What I've done there are some other
black regions on the vehicle, some black tiles and other things,
what I've done is circled the regions of missing tiles so you
don't confuse those with some of these other things which are not
missing tiles. Again, these are all up in the nose of the
vehicle. Here are the ones again with the RCS thrusters. The
ones down in this region, you can see are still well within the
white region and are in the a^ea of maximum temperature somewhere
in the surface temperatures ot about 800 degrees. As you move as
you move up this is where you are reaching the 600 degree type of
surface temperatures. 600 degree farenheit.
You want to show them.
TOM This is another photograph of the starboard side
and you can see about the same type of pattern, a little bit off
the center line between the windows and the nose and down on the
side in the white tile region.
Wait for the microphone, here. Let's, we'll wind
it up here with Ok.
What about the high speed cameras and launch
pictures at Cape that showed the bodyflap tiles falling off? Do
you have pictures of those?
TOM No, I do not Just saw that film this
afternoon so we haven't gotten any stills made up.
Tor.. »:hank you very much. We have a change of
shift briefing -uled for 8:30. We'll try to have some copies
of these photos lul you in the morning for you. We just don't
have any, have the way to do it tonight. So that completes this
briefing .
END OF TAPE
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 1
Good evening, thank you for waiting, we apologize for be* n 9 l a J?
but it couldn't be helped. Change of shift briefing with flight
director Neil Hutchinson, who'd been heading out the silver team
of flight controllers for the last 13, 14 hours, lost track, I
think. And Dr. Sam Pool is chief of medical sciences division
here at JSC . Neil, you want to give us a summary of the shift.
NEIL Yeah, I'm not going to try and go through a blow by
blow account of the entire day. I would like to say that we
think got an awful lot accomplished today. We did have a fair
amount of problems as those of you have been paying attention to
the air/ground as the day has gone on that ended up causing us to
redo some things, and we're going to talk some about some of the
things we are going to redo for tomorrow, and the following
davs. I don't have a complete picture of all the flight plan
modifications, but I can give you a thumb nail sketch to give you
an idea of what's going to be going on tomorrow. Before we do
that, let me talk a little about today. As you're aware, we had
some problems this morning with video equipment of all sorts,
cameras, and film cameras and television cameras onboard the
vehicle. We did get all of our RMS work done, our unloaded arm
work done this morning with the exception of the grapple test
which was a basically is going to get accomplished later on in
the flight, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. The end
effector grapple test was not done, it was the only RMS DTO this
morning that we did not get accomplished. The only other thing,
believe it or not, in all this fuss that you've been hearing
today that we didn't get done w*s the CDR did not doff and donn,
donn and doff his suit. And we are going to reschedule that for
later in the flight. Other than that, we got everything done
today that we set out to do; and most importantly we got the
entire thermal tail, tail sun, cold soak completed. One of the
failures that turned up this morning which was a camera in the
f right aft television camera, in the right aft part portion of the
• payload bay, known to us as camera C, failed early on this
} morning and that caused us to immediately first thing today begin
thinking about flight plan modifications for tomorrow and
insueing days. And in simple terms, at that point this morning
i the flight plan modif iciations were going to consist of not
f deploying the IECM. And the reason for that is, really a couple
I of things. One, we need television cameras, one or the other o.:
£ those aft cameras to be able to berth that payload because you
; can't see it from the back windows. And we had pref light decided
I that if we lost, we have two cameras, one in each corner and in
f the back and preflight we decided that we were not going to take
j the IECM out if we lost the camera. And, as a matter of fact we
| even been simulated that way a couple of times in some of the
I practice runs we made and sure enough we lost the C camera this
* morning, and it has a short in it. We attempted to repower it ^
and the circuit breaker feeding the power to the camera will not
stand, and we won't be using it for the rest of the flight. In
any event, so we had decided this morning that we were not going
I
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 2
to deploy the IECM on STS-3, now he flies again on 4 so recall it
the primary reason we were picking him up on this flight was that
we needed, we desired the extra weight, he weighs about twice as
much as the PDP. We desired the extra weight for the loaded arm
test tomorrow morning. So about lunch time, that's where we
were, we were working on a flight plan for tomorrow that involved
the PDP only instead of picking the IECM up in the morning and
the PDP in the afternoon. And then we got into our second camera
problem, which turned out to be the one that caused us a
considerable amount of concern and a lot of work in the control
center, and that was the camera on the end effector. That's the
camera on the end of the remote arm, also malfunctioned. Again
it appears to be a short, the camera is inoperative, we tried to
regain it and couldn't. That camera is the prime device that the
crew uses for their remote eyes to put the end effector down on
the grapple fixture to attach the arm to a payload. So we spent
a fair amount of time today with a couple of crewmen in fact,
Hank Hartsfield in particular. In one of our facilities here in
JSC trying to determine whether, and we initially, common sense
tells you probably could, but trying to make absolute certain
that we could grapple and pick up successfully the PDP without
any cameras. And we indeed have satisfied ourselves that we can
do that. And so about the middle of the afternoon we started
working on another flight deviation for tomorrow to not only to
use, pick up the PDP, but to modify some of our procedures to go
get it without any end effector camera. Now you heard, well
we'll get into that later. Let met go on with the execution, so
that's where we were this afternoon and we basically had a plan
for tomorrow which picked up the PDP in the morning and I say had
because I don't think we're going to be picking it up, and we 11
talk about that in a little bit. We had a plan to pick up the
PDP, used it for the loaded arm test pretty much as their flight
planned in the morning and then kept it out and worked the PDP
science in the afternoon. And as the day wore on f we had a test
so we made lunch and went on about our business this afternoon.
We had tonight scheduled the first of our payload bay door cycles
which is a standard procedure that were using to gather test data
on the door closing capability after we have stressed the system
thermally, and as you know, we had been in tail sun some 20 or so
hours by this time. Tonight and, I'm sure if you've been
listening to the air/ground, you've heard the comings and goings
of this episode so I won't go through it in great detail but the
crew went through the door closing procedure. We could not get
the port door completely closed; we got the door closed. We
couldn't latch it. The aft bulkhead latches and we can talk
about that in some detail if you want to ask questions. So we
did the following, which was basically after talking about it
awhile what we had planned on premission if this was to happen
and that was wc aborted the thermal attitude a couple of revs, or
really a rev early. In other words, we left the tail sun _
attitude, turned the bay to the sun, warmed up the payload bay
which includes the latch mechanisms and the door seals, and STS-
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 3
attempted to close the door again and as you just heard, indeed,
it did close satisfactorily ana all the indications are back to
normal. The vehicle is now in passive thermal control attitude
which is the barbeque mode perpendicular to the sun which is the
planned attitude, that's where we planned to be at this point in
the flight. The only discontinuity on our whole thermal profile
that we incurred was the 15 or 20 minutes the top sun warming the
payload bay up before we went into the barbeque attitude and we
don't think that disturbed our thermal test or the recovery
which, of course the PTC was designed to demonstrate was a
recovery from the severe cold soak of the tail, or heat soak of
the tail and cold soak of the bay. Along about this time late in
the shift we also had a private medical conference and I'm going
to let Sam talk about that but the crew is tired and neither one
of them are still feeling real chipper and we have decided to
back off on the flight plan tomorrow. We probably won't pick the
PDP up, although that remains to be seen. We're going to let
them sleep in. I'm going to sleep in I hope, at least for an
hour and see if we can't get them a little bit more on track for
tomorrow and I think that's kind of a thumb nail sketch of an
awful busy but a very successful day. (garble) Sam, do you want
to . . .
DR. POOL Just briefly, during our conversation with the
crew this evening, they reported to us that they had had little
sleep last night and the reason was that they were awakened
several times by apparently noise in the headsets. Certainly it
was not our plan to wake chem up and I think in contrast to some
times previous, we had a pretty good plan going, not to wake them
up. Unfortunately, this did occur and the crew did not get a
good night's rest last night and we've had a long day today. I
think it's time to let them rest this evening. As Neil said,
we're going to give them an extra hour of sleep in the morning.
HUTCHINSON Or more, we basically told them that we won't call
you. You call us. They'll probably call us an hour early
knowing Jack, whatever.
DR. POOL As far as how they are feeling is concerned, I
think they are very tired. They have not eaten a lot today.
There could be a variety of reasons for that but basically I
think they have had appropriate fluid intake and we're not much
behind the power curve. With a good night's rest, I think we'll
be back on track.
PAO Okay. We're ready for questions. If I don't call
on you by name, please identify yourself. John Wilford, New York
Times.
JOHN WILFORD. ..NEW YORK TIMES... Have you sent instructions up to
the crew for tomorrow's procedures regarding the PDP? What are
they?
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 4
HUTCHINSON The answer to thv-'_ is kind of a partial yes John.
As a matter of fact, I brought to me the teleprinter message. We
did send up an overview of what we intended to do in the morning
and of course we've kind of chatted with them off and on during
the day about their feelings about picking the PDP up with no
camera and they did concur in the initial assessment that we
thought we could do it without any problem. We gave them an
outline activities. This was prior to us deciding that we really
didn't want to get into a real strenuous RMS job first thing in
the morning and so we've got part of the plan, we've got a
structure, an outline of the plan onboard. No detail procedures
to go with it. Those were going to be generated through the
night tonight and we probably will still generate them. I'm not
sure we'll put them up because I don't believe we'll be picking
up the PDP first thing in the morning. In fact, I can just about
guarantee we won't.
WILFORD Well are you just going to grapple it? Are you
going to actually pick it up?
HUTCHINSON Oh, no sir. We are going to go through pretty much
the standard thing we planned on doing just as if we had had the
camera. The one thing that's different is we're not going to the
IECM first; we're going to grapple it and then we'll pick it up
and then set it back down. We'll do a birth on birth test ]ust
like we planned with the IECM and then we're going to pick it up
and run the standard set of loaded arm tests that we had planned
for tomorrow morning. Not tomorrow morning. I keep saying that
over and over again, but probably not tomorrow morning but we
plan on doing exactly the same thing.
WILFORD But some time tomorrow.
HUTCHINSON I think what you'll ought to do is tune in tomorrow
morning and see how we're doing. I wouldn't ...
WILFORD We want to sleep in too.
HUTCHINSON Well, I think you can safely do that and you won't
miss anything before 8:00 o'clock or so.
JULES BERGMAN . . . ABC NEWS... Neil, I have two questions. One for
you, one for Dr. Pool. Has there been diagnosis, any analysis of
what the particles are flying around the spacecraft which we saw
very vividly on the TV feeds this afternoon.
HUTCHINSON No, we still, you know everbody's got their own pet
theory. We are absolutely positive we're not losing any
consumables overboard. We've checked and rechecked to see
whether we might have left a valve open in the main engine system
that could be putting some residual propellant out in the form of
ice crystals and believe that we don't have. We're still kind of
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 5
puzzled as to the source of that. I have talked to both, in
fact, I've talked to Truly, Engle, and Crippen and all three of
them say that that kind of phenomenon existed during their entire
flights at some degree or another and their observations of the
television pictures that we got this afternoon were "yeah, that
looks like the same stuff that was coming out the general
vicinity of the back of the bus when we were up there too".
BERGMAN Is that general stuff ice?
HUTCHINSON Jules, we really don't know. We really don't know
and I don't know whether we'll be able to get any of it in the
IECM. Of course, the contamination monitor is operative. It's
in the bay and I don't know whether any of it's drifting around
to the bay. It all looked to me like it had a fair velocity and
was pretty much leaving the vicinity of the vehicle fairly
rapidly. It's going into a different orbit than the vehicle's
in, rather than just following it around. I don't know if we'll
get a sample of it or not.
BERGMAN And for Dr. Pool. You say the crew didn't eat very
much today.
DR. POOL That was the report.
BERGMAN Is Jack Lousma still nauseous?
DR. POOL No I don't think he's had much difficulty with that
today. I think he's just not had much appetite and...
And in part, that may be due to the prophylactic
medication that we're using, the dexadrine, which is a component
of it. We're using scopolomine dexadrine tablet or combination
drug and the dexadrine itself is somewhat of an appetite
suppressant. So that doesn't alarm me.
MORTON DEAN... CBS... I
POOL I think tomorrow will be a better day.
DEAN Dr. Pool, to follow up on that. Did Gordon
Fullerton suffer from any motion sickness whatsoever, and what
was the reason why Commander Lousma decided he did not want to
don the suit today. Did that have anything to do with his
physical condition.
POOL I'll answer the second question first. I don't
have any information as to why we did not don and doff the suit
today.
HUTCHINSON Well, let me answer it. I think so MORT. I think
it's fair to say that Jack didn't to get into any situation that
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 6
required a lot of body contortions which that has a tendency to
do and the reason we didn't don and doff the suit today is
because Jack said he didn't want to and we'll catch it later, and
I think he's feeling a little better in the upset department and
he just wants to make sure he continues on the same path he's on
and doesn't want to incur any additional upset and that's just
smart, good common sense.
POOL Yes as far as Fullerton's condition, I think he's
very tired today. He has not reported to us any problems with
the motion sickness.
P"^0 This gentleman up here in the front row.
JOHN VAN. . .CHICAGO TRIBUNE... Is there going to be any
modification in the wearing of headsets and so forth so that
these guys can get a decent sleep tonight?
HUTCHINSON Well John, we left that up to Jack. The
configuration we slept in last night, was Jack had the headset on
and was up in a seat in the cockpit. I think he probably slept
in the left seat. Gordo was downstairs with the speaker box as
his communications means. We told Jack that (garble) we have a
speaker box, of course, and we told him he had the option to use
that and I believe that the noise, it's just like as if you were
listening to a stereo through a speaker with a set of headphones
on. It has a tendency to be fairly concentrated if you've got a
headset on. Jack, we gave him the option and asked him to please
tell us before he went to bed tonight which he was going to
choose and I suspect that since they are very tired that he's
liable to use the speaker box. So that is one modification.
Another modification we made, we are going to be recording the
uplink tonight on our tape recorders and dumping to see if we can
help isolate the source of the noise as whether it's in the
orbiter or outside the orbiter, or where it is.
CRAIG COVAULT. . .AVIATION WEEK... One medical question and a couple
of RMS? Did Jack vomit last night?
POOL We, as you know, have a discussion with them which
is very very short and somewhat cryptic and I think most of you
know that the symptoms of this malady, motion sickness in space,
whatever it is, can lead to a variety of symptoms, some of which
are fairly pronounced and some of which are fairly mild. I think
the best way to answer that is to say the symptoms we discussed
with him were not those that would make me think we were getting
into major difficulty with motion sickness.
COVAULT Did Jack vomit?
HUTCHINSON See, he does this much better than I do. That's
why he's here. Someone asked me last night, and I just said yes.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 7
COVAULT Moving to the RMS, Neal to reaffirm what you said
earlier, you do plan to get the loaded PDP, the loaded RMS test
done with the PDP sometime in the mission.
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
COVAULT And tomorrow, you do intend to pick up the PDP in
the afternoon for the PDP science.
HUTCHINSON The answer to that is I'm not sure we're going to
pick the PDP up tomorrow. I think a lot will depend on how the
crew feels when they wake up in the morning. The message for
tomorrow is that we really need to get the crew back on the
straight and narrow here and get them to, not tired, eating
reasonably well, and a totally functional part of tha airborne
system because you just don't get productive work when they're
not. We will not run the PDP for science prior to running the
PDP for loaded arm.
COVAULT I understand.
HUTCHINSON The loaded arm work is higher priority and if we do
pick it up tomorrow, we'll run the loaded arm first and if that's
all we have time for, that's all we'll run. I might add that we
haven't decided yet whether we'll put him away. We may just stay
grappled to him for 2 or 3 days, depending on how difficult the
grapple test is without the cameras. We think it's going to be
fairly easy, and if it is, I suspect we'll put him away just like
we normally would at night, ungrapple and tuck the arm away, and
then pick him up again the next day. If it's not, we have a
couple of options. Probably the one that's in most favor right
now is to sleep with the arm attached to the payload but the
payload birthed and latched.
COVAULT Okay. Have you given up on the DACs and the wrist
camera?
HUTCHINSON We've given up on the wrist camera. I've heard
that there are some procedures, when you say given up on the
DACs, the DACs are, of course, about, you cycle a circuit breaker
on and off is the extent of the troubleshooting capability
there. I think it's fair to say that we probably won't doing
much with the DACs. There are some folks talking about the
possibility of trying to get them repowered tomorrow with circuit
breaker cycling although I doubt it's going to do much good, i
really think we probably lost them.
PAO Carlos Byars Houston Cronicle
CARLOS BYARS Neil, how about any changes due to the tile
problem? Any thing developing along that line?
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:1b PAGE 8
HUTCHINSON I don't know alot about the tile problem, I did
read some of the briefing material, it was, it went on in the
briefing we had earlier. The on console bunch is not
participated in the tile analysis other than when we were asked
of course the day, you know, we ran an extra RMS operation to
survey as much as we could. That's really all I know about the
tile. There are no, no flight plan modifications for tommorrow's
activity, for sure that would have anything to do with the
tiles. At least that I know about.
BYARS All on a different subject. What has become of
that fly?
HUTCHINSON Well I'm sure he hasn't gone EVA. He's in there
somewhere.
BYARS Has he been seen around the cabin?
HUTCHINSON You know we were so darn busy today, I really meant
to find out and there were not a word one about him.
BYARS Gordon didn't smoosh him?
PAO Hal Selstad, Baltimore Sun
SELSTAD I didn't quite follow you on the closing on the,
closing of the payload bay doors. Did turning the spacecraft
toward the sun someway provide heat that solved this problem?
HUTCHINSON Yes we believe so. Yes we're sure. Yes it did.
Let me explain a couple of things. We have a lot of data
together about the mechanism of this thing, we took films of the
door, we took measurements of the door when it was shut and
wouldn't latch and all that stuff is going to have to come home
and be diagnosed and run through computer programs and so on and
so forth before we know the real mechanism of the problem.
People suspect, the biggest suspect right now on the door are the
door seals along the longeron and the stuff we call monkey fur if
you have ever seen it, its th? seal that goes up over the
bulkheads, its, I don't know what the material is, but its about
that long and it has a tendency to get very stiff when it gets
cold and if it has any moisture in it, it litterly becomes an
solid object. Now what we think, we had the door almost closed,
the door was basically down, now the way these doors work, the
door drive, drives the door 99% shut but the bulkhead latches
actually pull it the rest of the way and if you ever saw one of
these things when it was down and just compressing the seals,
when the seals are perfectly pliable, the door drive motors don't
have the capability to shove the door all the way down on the top
of the bulkhead. And the latches, there are a gang of them, four
of them on each bulkhead, when chey operate and they operate all
gang together, the latch closest to the hinge reaches its dog
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 9
first and its kinda going around and dogging a door in the old
days it just pulls a little bit and a little bit and then the
next one just pulls a little bit more. The door actually is bent
down to conform to the bulkhead. Now when we got to stall
current on the motors which was after about 15 seconds of driving
those latches, stall meaning they wouldn't go any farther. We
didn't have the door fully iatch indications, we never did get
them until we warmed the bay up. But we think the door was very
very close to being latched. And the, like I said the theory is
that we had some stiffness in those seals that were stiffer, we
didn't expect, of course to have problems latching the door and
that's one reason we're running these tests and when we went to
top sun and put a little heat in the bay and started PTCing and
about a half hour later they operated the door. Everything was
absolutely normal.
PAO Right here i the second row.
Tony Lawski, CBC, three questions really. The
first two are both on the cameras on the DACs. What do we know
about why they failed. On the video cameras was there anything
we learned from the failure of the elbow camera on STS-2 that
might tell us why these two cameras this time went wrong, who
made them and what do we know about that. And the third question
was, what was the impact of the absence of the IECM experiment?
HUTCHINSON Well the camera question. I don't know who
manufactured them. We did have a problem with one of the cameras
on STS-2, we obviously have had some further problems with them
which we didn't expect to have or we would have corrected them
before we took off. I do know that we have a new solid, well let
me back up, I know a few things about the camera. The cameras
are basically cameras we, similiar to the one we used on the
moon, infact I not sure they're not almost identical. They're
not state of the arts, solid state, the very latest and greatest
thing. We do have some new cameras which are in the program
coming in way on down the road aways. They were scheduled to
come in earlier but I think we moved them along down the road
because of budgetary considerations. We're not sure why these
guys are malfunctioned. We know that both of them have an
electrical short of some sort in the camera itself that caused it
to draw more current than its supposed to and its circuit breaker
protected and they won't stay powered. We don't know whether
temperature may have started the problem but the end result is
that the temperatures, or the cameras cannot be powered, (garble)
LAWSKI And on the DACs and the IECM.
HUTCHINSON I don't have really any knowledge of the DACs and
why there not operating and we may have a temperature phenomena
there too, of course they're all down in the bay and they were
all getting very, very cold. That's another reason why we may
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 10
Sii he 3 again \ The IECM ^called it, the IECM was not being
Hi 2 y Jk eor / , sc i ence P^POses on this flight, it is riding on
STS-4, they do have all of their science objectives already
program on STS-4 and of course they would have liked to have
gotten out here but we'd, just assume not go out since we don't
,J V k- III f? dundenc y of the TV system and we do need the TV system
to birth them as opposed to the PDP. You can't see the ICEM from
tne cockpit,
BERGMAN Neil it seems to me that we spent most of the day
worrying about the tiles. And from we heard from the air to
ground, so have you and the guys up there. Are you relaxed about
the tiles now? Do you feel they're safe for reentry?
HUTCHINSON Quite frankly, I would choose to disagree with your
statement just a tad, Jules. I haven't thought about the tiles
one iota. And most of the people in the room over there haven't
and I don't think the crew has either. We've been so busy
working on this execute day from what I know and have been told
about the tiles and I have talked to Tom Moser and I read his
parts at least of his press conference with you folks, I think
!? e ^ re u- n ' 1 would have the sam * personal feeling I had when we
had this anomaly, or similar anomaly last time and that is that
we re on, we're on safe ground here. It makes you a little
uncomfortable here when things come off the vehicle but based on
what we know about they are and the kind of temperatures they are
going to see, all the best minds around here think we're on solid
ground and I certainly don't disagree with that.
u ^ , , Let's go to the second one on the back row there.
Go ahead Jules .
^fS" n When we saw Chris Kraft and General Abrahamson and
„™ 9 6 311 clustered around your desk around 5:30 in the
MOCR. What was the subject?
HUTCHINSON You know I had a lot of people around my deck all
day, I'm not sure I remember.
: ?*° . . We identified the subject on the loop and I believe
the subject was the, you were discussing the procedures for
grappling the PDP tommorrow. I'm pretty sure.
HUTCHINSON Oh yes. There was, infact we were talking about
whether, one of the things we were talking about is whether we
were going to do the science first versus the arm first and of
course the scientist would like us to go do the science first and
the arm guys want to go do the arm first. it was that kind of
Ji^J! 810 !' W ! WeCe workin 9 on how to get this flight plan strung
together for tommorrow. •
PAO
In the back row there.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 11
WAYNE DOLCHFINO. . .KTRH. . .We were told that no critical heat tiles
were lost. There were reports on STS-1 that DOD satellites or
some sophisticated equipment on the ground to get a better look
at those critical areas. Has that been done or is there any
plans to do that?
HUTCHINSON I don't know. I don't know that either. You know,
I'm not trying to be smart. I really honestly don't know. I
don't know of any plans to do anything like that and I don't, you
know, the tile activity has just not been addressed by the online
teams in the Control Center.
PAO Go ahead, Mark Kramer.
KRAMER Neil, can you talk a little bit about the
latches. Did, I think there are 32 to 28, reach the fully closed
position and did 1 gang of 4 not or did all of them remain open
or what?
HUTCHINSON No. You're correct in the number and yes, only 4
of them did not get fully closed, and we think that of those 4,
really probably only the last 2 on the outboard side toward the
center line were the ones that weren't completely all the way
down. You know, as I explained, they're driven in a sequence.
Remember that what we're doing here, is we're closing only 1 door
and the idea is that we've been soaking the vehicle and we've had
some distortion in the vehicle frame and two bulkheads, the 582
in the front, the 1307 in the back, twist a little bit relative
to one another. Now the doors are very limber and they literally
take the shape of that twist. Now, what we're doing is we're
anchoring the door in the front and the back and then using the
theodolite to measure that door distortion. So the only door
that we latched down is the port door, and since we aren't
bringing the other door down, the center line latches don't come
into play. Okay. So there were only 8 latches attempted. The
forward and aft bulkhead on the port door and the 4, the one gang
of latches that we had a problem with were the aft bulkhead.
KRAMER Can you quantify th.-»t a little bit? Does that mean
that the door was jammed open, say a quarter of an inch beyond
where it should have been, or was it a 16th of an inch or 4
inches, or characterize it some way if you can.
HUTCHINSON Well, we didn't ever get any visual report and we
did get a verbal report from the crew and I think to quite them,
"by golly, it looks like it's down to me", which means, and based
on the amount of time the latches drove, we think that we were, I
would characterize it in very small numbers only. It was down
all the way up the bulkhead and probably, you know, an inch or
so. I really don't. ..I'm really not sure, but a very small
amount up at the inboard side of the back of the door. We'll
have some pictures. They took lots of TV of it and I'm sure it's
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83 : 2 1 : I •> PACK 12
going to got dumped onto VTR and probably get a look at it before
the f 1 ight ' s over .
KRAMER One final question remaining for that. If you were
about to come back and you closed the doors and you got, say, 28
latches latched, and you had, say those 4 not completely latched,
would that represent a safety hazard.
HUTCHINSON No, we have looked fairly carefully at the latch
situation and we nave, right now, a circumstance where we believe
we could reenter without any one set of the bulkhead latches.
Now the centerlines, we like to have all the conterlines made.
In think if we had a problem with the centerlines, we'd have a
real big debate about whether we needed to go outside and put the
spare latches that we carry on the centerlines; but the bulkhead
latches, we've pretty got it cleared to reenter without a set, 1
set of A of them not latched.
PAO We'll take one here in the 4th row. Right up here
and then we'll go to KSC for questions.
PETER ADAMS. . .GANNET. . .Are you finding that looking at the
payload bay door problem that Columbia has, doesn't stand up well
to some of these thermal tolerances. Are you finding that some
of these thermal tests are taking their toll a little more than
one suspected?
HUTCHINSON No, I... well, obviously, it's more than we
suspected, or we wouldn't have subjected the vehicle to a test
where we couldn't close the payload bay doors, but that's what
we're doing it for and I think we've gathered some very good
information here about the doors perform and how the seals
performed and recognize that we're going to turn right around
tomorrow morning and start, this whole thing all over again, cold
soaking the bay, and not as bad as this last attitude, but it is
going to start getting cold again and during the 80 hour nose
sun, we're going to check those doors several times and with the
same intent, to try and understand how the structure is
performing. I wouldn't say it's. ..I think we were a little
surpr ised . . .one thing that you should be very aware of though,
the reason the door didn't unlatch was not that" the structure had
deformed in any way, shape, or form thermally; it was ... everyone
really believes that we had a seal problem. One good piece of
evidence that tells you that is that we got out of it very
quickly. If it had been the structure, in other wovds, we had
actually twisted those 2 bulkheads relative to one another, it
would have taken us a long time, quite a bit of PTC to get
ourselves in a position where that door would close properly. So
we've probably learned something about the seals and I don't
think... the bottom line answer to your question is I don't think
we're learning that the vehicle's behaving, misbehaving. We're
just learning how it behaves-
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 13
PAO Okay, wo ' U go to Kennedy Space Center for
questions.
PAO This is Kennedy Space Center. We have a couple for
you.
MARK BLUME. . .MEDICAL WORLD NEWS ... A couple of questions for Dr.
Pool. Could you say Dr. Pool, when or if thr astronauts took the
scopolomino dextro amphetimine tablets or if indeed it was
prophylactic and what the dosage was?
POOL Yes. They took scopolomino dexadrine. The
dexadrino is 5 mg and the scopolomine is 0.4 mg . it's a
combination tablet. They took the first shortly after OMS I burn
which is something like 20 minutes into the mission. They then
had the option, based on their own feeling about their symptoms,
to take additional medication. We recommend they not do that any
more often than about 4 hours. I think on the firsv day we ended
up taking it about 3 times and I think about the sanv thing
today .
BLUME Is that hoth crewmen took it 3 times the first
day and today, or just Lousma.
BLUME Yes, and it was taken prophylact ical ly . I forgot
that part of the question. That is a prophylactic regimine.
BLUME
Both crewmen prophy 1 at i ca 1 ly?
POOL
That's correct.
BLUME
Both crewmen 3 times yesterday and 3
times today?
POOL
I believe that's correct.
BLUME
Okay. Now, in view of the fact that
Lcusma had a
similar upheaval on Skylab, the question is, why didn't you try
the scopolomine transdermal patch for him this time?
POOL We had some laboratory data provactive test data
which was done here which indicated that the scopolomine
dexadrine combination was much more effective than the
transdermal scopolomine patch alone, and that's not uncommon. We
run these sorts of tests on our crewmen preflight to try to
attempt to optimize the medication to the crewmen.
BLUME Just to follow up this one bit. I believe Lousma
took the scopedex on the previous flight or on the Skylab flight
and had his problem or was he one of the men on Skylab who did
not take it prophylat ically and then have the trouble?
POOL
As I recall a scenario on Skylab, it went something
STS-3 CMANGK OF SHIFT HRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 14
like this, He took it prophylat ical ly , but then waited some
considerable time before he elected to take it again and in the
interim he had some difficulty.
PAO No further questions from KSC. I'm sorry. One
more (garble) .
LINDY WADSWORTH. . .WUOM. . .Back on the topic of the particles that
are visible outside the shuttle. Are these visible all the time
or only in certain periods, or relative locations, and do they
appear to be related in any way to the particles that Glenn and
Carpenter and possibly some other astronauts had seen previously.
HUTCHINSON Well, to answer your first question, or answer your
second question, I'm sorry, first. Since we don't know what
they're made of, I think it's kind of, it's purely speculative,
obviously, I mean to try and relate them to something happened in
Mercury or Gemini or any other program for that matter. In term?
of their visibility, they seem to be there all the time? however,
they're most visible when sun angles are proper such that the
sun,... the particle is between the sun and the observer and that
obviously occurs around sunrise. And of course, it depends on
the attitude you're flying, but they seem to be when illuminated
against a fairly dark sky, fairly obvious. At other times,
they're not so clearly seen.
PAO Mark Blume
BLUME Yes. Was there a provocative test on Astronaut
Fullerton as well indicating that the scopolomine transdermal
patch was not as effective as scopedex.
POOL That's correct.
BLUME One further question. Why is Fullerton continuing
to take the scopedex on the second day (garble) that Lousma's
condition is a touch contagious?
POOL Like anybody that's been in that situation could
say it could be a little contagious. I'm not sure. It was our
plan going into the mission to administer these drugs
prophylaticaliy and quite honestly I'm a Mttle bit sketchy about
Fullerton's medication profile today. We tried to make sure Neil
had plenty of time to ask some other questions so we did attempt;
to minimize the amount of time we talked with the crew today.
PAO Any more quest ions?
PAO Okay. Let's come back to JSC for a few more
questions. Let's get this gentleman over here. He hasn't had an
opportunity yet .
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 15
JOHN BISNEY. . . RKO. . .Am I correct in (garble) hear you say you've
not nailed down the activities for tomorrow yet?
HUTCHINSON Yeah, that's a qood way to put it. Yes, we have
told the crew that we'd like to get up late and take it real easy
in the morning and (garble)
BISNEY (garble) idea at all of what might happen tomotcow
in even general terms?
HUTCHINSON Well, I think there are some cabin activities that
very well could take place. I'm sure we'll do things like EEVT
samples and non-high concentrat i ve tasks in the morning and I
think it all depends really on how well the crew feels. If we
can mutually agree that they want to take off again on a fairly
riugorous schedule, we probably will go to work on the PDP with
the arm later on in the day, but it's a fair assumption, I think,
that we probably won't be doing any arm work in the morning.
CARLO BR V ARS. . .HOUSTON CHRONICLE ... A couple of questions, the
first one will be either for you Neil or for Dr. Pool. Lousma
did get in at least one session of work with the electrophoresis
experiment. I believe you made a comment that it seemed to he
working well. Could you perhaps amplify on that a little bit?
....transmissions about obtaining some desirable
stereo pairs of a Mexico site, I'm just wondering what that was
in reference to.
HUTCHINSON On the latter question, didn't hear, I don't hear
every word that goes up, but almost, and I don't recall that
conversation at all. That happened on my shift, I'm real
surpr ised.
BYARS I might be mistaken about the shift now.
HUTCH INGSON Yeah, and so I don't know Carlos, about that. The
electrophoresis, we got started late but we did get, in fact, I'm
not sure we hadn't determined when we left there but I believe we
got two samples done today. The first one, which was the red
blood cell operation, as far as I know went fairly well, and I'm
certainly not a scientist. And I think probably you know you got
to wait till you get these things back, there cryogenicly frozen
and then they need to be examined fairly carefully to see how it
went. But procedurally and in terms of the execution and the
things that the equipment supposed to do and the crews interface
with it it seems to be going very well. And of course we got a
lot more of those to go you know. We got, I believe we have 8
samples aboard and we'll probably get to all of them before we
get home in a week .
PAO
Right back there.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 16
PETER LARSON Orlando Sentinal Star: Two quick questions; how
would you characterize or how have the astronauts characterized
this nocturnal radio interference? And secondly, is it true that
Lousma has been taking pretty much only liquids today?
HUTCHINSON Well I'll answer the first one. It's a static in a
radio system in your air and it's loud enough wake you up from
what probably isn't a very deep sleep, but what certainly is
sleep and Sam can...
DR. POOL Ok, both crewmen have reported eating today, but
not very much. And they both reported that they've taken onboard
quite a lot of fluids and we're pleased with that.
PAO Kay Ebeling
KAY EBELING With Lake Publishing Newspapers: What kind of
activity takes place on the ground here at Johnson Space Center
during the activation of the electrophoresis experiments onboard
the spacecraft. In other words how inany people are involved what
are they doing here on the ground in support of that.
HUTCHINSON Well you're going to embarass me Kay, because I
can't, we have a PI here and of course we have some, Sam may know
more about this since it's on the medical side of the house, but
we have the folks who built the experiment and I don't know, are
we running a ground model.
POOL No, we did our ground, baseline studies but not
being done during flight, those are done preflight. We have some
very interested principal investigators who hand on every word, I
think, the crew gives us.
KAY EBELING Ok, but they don't conduct any activity themselves
that's integrated with the experiment.
POOL No.
KAY EBELING Ok.
HUTCHINSON No, they are in the control center, though,
continually humming about things that are being reported back and
forth between the crew and us and asking us to ask the crew
things that so and so were, they're very active in the actual
operation in terms of gathering information.
POOL There's been a tremendous amount of work done on
the ground on leading up to this as well and there'll be some
after the flight.
PAO Ok, let's take one here and then we'll get Pete
Bulban up here next.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p9j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 17
JOHN PINER, REUTERS, Last night, in addition to the headset
noise, the crew complained temperature fluctuations in the cabin,
what was that about?
HUTCHINSON Well, a couple of things, the situation we were in
last night, first off, when you first get on orbit the vehicle
takes a while to get to an ambient temperature, in other words
the temperature, it's going to stabalize at without doing
anything to the control to raise or lower it. And as we've
discovered in the STS-1 and 2 that usually takes, oh, 10 or 15
hours. As we've also discovered in STS-1 and 2 when metabolic
activity and TVs goes down at night and the TVs get turned off
and so on and so forth the cabin has a tendency to cool off
some. And you'll recall on STS-1 we had some problems with the
crew being very cold the first night. On STS-2 we thought we had
that pretty well whipped. And on this flight, since we were
going into the cold attitude, in other words the an attitude,
you remember last night was when we first started the tail sun,
we didn't have a chance to see how the cabin was react to that
but we anticipated that was going to cool off quite a bit. Now
we had some standard procedures that are used to add heat to the
cabin air. And we recommended guessing on what the cabin, how
the cabin was going to respond to tail sun that the crew do a
couple of things. One of them was to pin the cabin heat air
interchanger full air full hot, which puts the minimum amount of
air through the heat exchanger taking heat out of the cabin. And
secondly we told them to niisbalance that heat exchanger so a dis-
appropriate amount, it was inefficient. It turned out that we
led the problem a little bit to quickly and the cabin warmed up
before the thermal effect of tail sun could cool it down and the
crew got uncomfortable. So they took the heat exchanger back to
normal efficiency, if I could put it in those terms, <*nd then
sure enough several hours later the cabin started to cool off
like we thought it was going to and they got cold and had to
change it again. It's kind of like setting the thermostat in
your house and not being quite sure whether the sun is shining or
not. It takes you a while to home in on an answer. I don't
think we'll have any problem tonight. The reason I don't is
because we're in passive thermal control and the cabin's pretty
well stabalized now and I think they'll be comfortable.
BULBAN Dr., were you able to determine just how muc sleep
Lousma got last night?
POOL Only the crew report.
BULBAN And did they say how much sleep they got?
POOL Very little sleep. We didn't take the time to
(garble)
BULBAN
You didn't qualify it?
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING p'.)j GMT 83:21:15 PAGE 18
POOL No.
PAO Okay. We've going (garble) we'll take one more.
We've been going almost an hour now.
PRESS Just one final question Mr. Hutchinson. Was any
change in procedure in the PDP testing either tomorrow or later
in the flight. Will the crew's role and that, as a result of the
camera malfunction, will the crew's role be incrased in any way,
and will be there be any change in the crew's role with the
failing wrist camera.
HUTCHISON Obviously, the crew's role in initially getting to
th£ ^V»\tU Y^VHe you. picked the device up is increased by the fact
t\\v\t ^h^Y ave having to use cues, visual cues from a non-optimum
OameVv\ source. We've actually given thorn some initial conditions
to place the arm fairly precisely over the top of the grapple
fixture. This one has got the grapple fixture sticking straight
u\\ In tho fftlnua Z direction up towards the tail, so thov'll be
^oAruJt Vo thai pos\t\oi\ ju,st by dialing in some numbers av.*
qtilYing the arm there > Thon they are going to have to depend on
t\V*U" lodgement and the cameras we have wM<ah don't include, of
^urae, the viampraa looking right down on top of it to go down
aiv.\ grapple th.0 pa.yload» Now, once H's grappled, the day looks
proiiy much tl\e same. The <VUQ trajectories are run, the picking
it up to ^he loaded arm po^W'ions. and firing the primary KOS iets
and. all those Kind of test! aio all going to look )ust about the
same, so the crew's involvement in t;hat would lie exactly the same
as it was without ^VO, i$<\\\"un<rt ^o.rvs * So the big deal is getting
hooked on,
PRESS ^v\l tH&Y actually look vut the window and do any
observation , W,v\\ \^ey ^VV^W>
HUTCHINSON That's how they're going to drive It down on top of
the... a lot of it will be out the window and some of it will be
using the TV cameras that we have loft and some of it will be
using numbers displayed to them from the HMS joint angles and
position readouts.
PAO Okay. We'll say goodnight now. Thank you.
END OF TAPE
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT plOj 9:30 am CST DATE 3/24/82 PAGE 1
PAO Good morning and welcome to the Change of Shift
Briefing I'm sure vou recognize Tommy Holloway who was Flight
Director during ascent and is fresh out of the MOCR after having
spent the past 14 hours in there and has the privilege of going
back in there at 6:00 this evening again. I'll let Tommy start
off with a summary of his shift and then invite questions.
Tommy
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well first of all the shift, I'm not sure I'm
fresh out of anything, right now I'm about to run out of steam.
The shift that the ascent team participated in was a very normal
shift and with only a couple of additional what we would consider
in terms of flying flight 3 minor failures which maybe worked out
before the day is over and I'll get to those in just a minute.
As you probably know we have restructed the flight plan very
slightly for the next two days to provide a little better
opportunity for the crew to catch up on their sleep and eating.
Yesterday as Mr. Hutchinson no doubt briefed you we had a problem
with the payload bay doors that kept the crew busy, additionally
busy. They already had a busy plan working on ascertaining that
we had a good condition with the payload bay doors, and as a
result of that and along with the additional fact that they were
not feeling quite as well we'd like for them too, we elected to
give them the opportunity to sleep a little late this morning and
make up for being kept up late last night. Although, we stopped
talking to them on schedule last night I'm confident that they
had another hour hour and a half of work to do before they could
really go to bed so we've restructured the plan and are flying
flight day four today and are planning on executing flight day 3
on flight day four. So, in general you can trade those two days
and we'll be accomplishing those activities that are in your crew
activity plan on flight day 4 on flight day 3. And most of the
activities on flight day 3 we will accomplish on flight day 4.
This morning we did ..in the morning we did experience a failure
of the commode as you may have heard on the air to ground. We
are hopeful that that situation will be remedied and some
nalfunction procedures that are currently being worked on and the
crew has part of them in place already. The second significant
thing or thing that of least of interest that has happened in the
last 24 hours is that for a period of time we experienced what
appeared to be a one or two one and a half pound per hour GN2
leak out of the GN2 that is used for the to maintain the cabin
pressure in the orbiter. There is a great deal of margin in the
quantities that are required to support the cabin pressure during
the flight and in fact, most of the GN2 that's onboard the
orbiter some 200 odd pounds Is used is on board for the
possibility that the orbiter develops a leak at some time and of
course of having flown It for these some three days, we would not
expect to develop a cabin leak at this time. So, back to the GN2
leak. It leaked for a while and then It appears to have
stopped. Now, that could be caused by a couple of things. It
could be an unusual thermal situation that's going on in the
orbiter that's faking us out and instrumentation is not really
correct and we may not even have a leak. And Mr. Hutchinson is
struggling with that now and trying to understand it. Or, it may
indeed be a leak, that remains to be seen, but we still have
malfunction procedures that we can do to isolate the leak and in
fact with the present leak if it indeed was leaking and did
reoccur we would expect to be able to fly the full duration and I
think that's about it for openers and we'll let you ask any
quest ions .
PAO Okay, let's begin with questions here at Johnson
Space Center. Please wait for the microphone and identify
yourself with your name and affiliation.
CRAIG COVAULT Aviation Week Tommy, would you review your RMS
for today and your outlook for RMS tomorrow a little more
speci f ically.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Okay, today we're doing the activities that are
on flight day 4 and the RMS that involves doing a thermal test
basically. We are not unberthing any payloads today although
they originally there was one unberthing of the PDP as kind of a
piggy back operation to the thermal testing. The purpose of the
basic day to day is to determine how the arm will operate and
react to not having the heaters on. So, we're basically going to
put the arm out along the longeron operate the heaters for four
hours then turn the heaters off for a couple of hours and see how
the temperatures react then orient the arm in a Z direction,
that's straight up relative to the orbiter and operate the
heaters for four hours to achieve some stability on the thermal
situation then turn the heaters off for two more hours and see
what happens and tomorrow with the exception of the IECM
operation which you've probably already been briefed that we have
under the camera situations we're in right now, we're no go to
grapple and unberth the IECM, but we do expect to be able to
grapple the PDP and do all of the science operations associated
with the PDP tomorrow.
MARK K RAM BR CBS Regarding the arm. There'll be no grappling
at all today. Is that correct.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY That's correct.
DAVE DOOLING Huntsville Times Just what is it that has gone
wrong with the cameras. Is it inside the cameras, is it the
circuit breakers, do you have an idea what it is if it is inside
the cameras.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, camera C has a short, electrical short
that is popping it's circuit breaker somewhere and I don't think
we know where. Probably require some postflight work before we
know. (That's the aft starboard side) Yes. Camera C, thanks
for helping me. And the wrist camera we don't understand. We
really don't know.
PAO And for you Marines, aft starboard means rear
right. And are we going to try to fix the wrist camera ...
TOMMY HOLLOWAY There's some consideration that the wrist camera
may have been a function of the temperature, particular thermal
profile that we were in and perhaps we'd try to operate it again
later but that's being reviewed now by the television systems
experts and will be decided at a later time.
JOHN PINER, Reuters As I understood it, the crew had to go to
sleep with the headsets on last night. Was there any
interference like they had the night before. Apparently there
was none. They had a restful sleep, but did you talk to them
about it .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I can only tell you what I know about
that. The crew reported that they slept, I heard, much better
last night. And I've not seen a transcript yet. My friends
heard better, so I don't know if it's much better or better, but
they did apparently have a better sleep period last night. And,
we know by looking at the playback data that the crew was up one
time and turned the UHF off for a period of 5 minutes which would
be indicative that they were having interference problem anc
turned the UHF off to see if that would cure the problem and then
turn it back on.
WAYNE DOTRAPHINO Jack Lousma , it may be the toilet situation
but still doesn't sound like he's feeling too hot. Anything more
in the medical situation. Are they still taking medication and
how long does an illness or motion sickness have to continue
before it becomes more of an issue.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well I think it's too early to tell anything
about Jack this morning. You know when I get out of bed in the
morning I can't find the floor with both feet and Jack may : us t
be a slow starter. But, as far as medication is concerned, right
now that's a thing that's between him and the surgeons and I'd
rather not speak to that.
DOUG ROSS More specifically about the toilet problem. Ju ^ fc
what is the problem what are they trying to do to fix it and if
you can't fix it how do they manage.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, the commode has a what is called a slinger
in it that separates the fluid from the other stuff. And the
pump the electrical motor that powers that slinger or separator
is pulling excess current for some reason and you would guess
because perhaps it was overloaded and I wouldn't draw any
conclusions from that either if I were you. And the circuit
breaker is opening up and the motor doesn't run anymore. Now,
what we have done is it has a different mode that and we run it
in a slower speed that's really not adequate for feces and we run
it at that speed to attempt to clean out the system and unclog it
or unstop it whatever the problem is. And hopefully that will
unclog the system, but if it doesn't we have a backup mode of
using a bag within this system which draws air through it and
then he basically has to deficate in a bag that's placed in the
commode itself and then he disposes of the bag in the waste
system in a stowage system. But there, rest assured we have a
way of taking care of those situations.
GEORGE ALEXANDER You gave them extra hour worth of sleep last
night. Did they take advantage of it to your knowledge?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY They certainly took advantage of it in terms of
structured work and the kinds of things that fatigue an
individual and as best we can tell on the ground, they were not
active all night long with the exception of the UHF switching
that I talked, spoke of earlier and about an hour or hour and a
half before scheduled wake up, someone switched on a CRT.
Probably Jack. Upstairs, but he didn't do any. .he very quickly
put it back in the mode and stopped using it so I have no idea
why he did that, he was probably curious about something turned
his CRT... and hopefully went right back to sleep.
GEORGE ALEXANDER And where did they sleep. In their couches or
did one of them try the bag in the middeck area.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I assume Gordo was down stairs and Jack was
upstairs.
DAVE DOOLING With juggling the timelines have you lost any time
on science instruments or are they moving ahead as was given in
the schedule we had.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well I think overall, that remains to be seen.
But, our overall plan in general is going ^o accomplish the
majority of the activities that we are able to do considering the
failures that we have. Now there's some things that we don't
want to do because of the situation we're in like grapple the
IECM. But with those kinds of exceptions I think we'll
accomplish all that the majority of what objectives that we had
for the f 1 ight .
TONY MELISKY FROM CBC With respect to the RMS, the data
acquisition cameras being on the blink, the wrist camera's on the
blink and you're going to even if you do lift the PDP, it's going
to be a much lighter load than was planned for the loaded arm
test. My question is what is the impact of the failure to
acquire a lot of data on the RMS, in other words, are you going
to find out what you need to know about the behavior of the RMS
in flight?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I'm not an expert on the dynamics of the
RMS in terms of the data that's required to reduce, the data
reduction possibilities for determining the answer to your
question, but my impression is that the televisions that are
remaining even if the DACs do not work are adequate to provide
the basic engineering data that's we're after in those particular
tests. Also we're hopeful that the DAC cameras will work
tomorrow. We're going to ensure that the heaters are on all
night tonight by asking the crew to turn them on before they go
to sleep and hopefully after having warmed up all night, good and
warm system, that they'll operate tomorrow.
REED COLLINS CBS Where was the spacecraft at the time the UHF
was turned off. Was it in the same region where it's had the
trouble and you also made plans last night to (yes sir), in the
same area. you made plans to try to record onboard the
interference sound. How did that work out?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, that's that's the reason the UHF was
turned off for one period. We did record some of the
interference.
REED COLLINS What's it sound like.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY All the information that I have is that it's
apparently a UHF interference and not and S band. That's all I
know about it .
COLLINS Well what does that mean if it's a UHF rather than
an S band .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY It appears to be the same frequencies that are
used in common aircraft like a T-38.
MARK KRAMER CBS I recall that during Apollo they were always
very explicit descriptions of the astronauts conditions. In the
morning when the guys woke up they'd say Commander slept 6.5
hours the pilot slept 1.2 hours. You don't do that anymore. And
consequently when we ask questions about how long they slept, no
one really has a firm handle on that. What is the rationale
behind that more relaxed approach to things of that sort.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY On Skylab you know we were flying 28 days, 65
and 85 I believe and it was a long flight they were concerned
over continually monitoring the health of the flight crew and the
possibilities of the long term situations developing and it was
very important to make sure that they were getting their sleep
and also that data was part of the medical experiments that were
going on or at least supported the reduction of thf> medical
experiments that were going on so I think on the short missions
we're primarily concerned with how the crew feels the next
morning, whether they are able to execute or not.
MARK KRAMER Actually I was talking about Apollo which were
missions of about this duration or a few days longer. In those
days you did ask the specific question you got the specific
response .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, frankly I don't remember asking the Apollo
crews those kind of question. I think you're probably
remembering the Skylab.
LYNN SHERR ABC In addition to day four being substituted for
day three, will the suit donning and doffing happen today with
Lousma.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, the flight crew has the option to
accomplish that today if they would like to. The suit donning
and doffing exercise is primarily an exercise to give the crew a
little more confidence and they have a great deal of confidence
that they'll be able to put the suit on and the time is scheduled
on entry day. And, the two crews that have already flown
reassures us that that's not a required activity to demonstrate
that the time, but they can go ahead and say well let's go ahead
and give them the option to try it so, today the pilot I believe
is scheduled on flight day four and when he gets to it if he
feels like he'd rather not do it, we wouldn't be upset if he
cancelled it.
LYNN SHERR Last night Neil Hutchinson said that one of the
reasons that Lousma didn't do it yesterday was because of the way
he felt. Will it be up to him will it be up to Fullerton to
decide whether they do it or is it up to you.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY In that case it's up to Gordo.
MORTON DEAN CBS Could you be any more specific about that
frequency noise. Have you people figured out precisely what it
might be. Say it's a common frequency sound from aircraft...
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No sir, I've told you all I know about that
subject.
MORTON DEAN And concerning the trouble with the APU. Is there
anything new on that and will that effect the descent at all next
Monday .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY At this time there's not any new information. A
possible checkout procedure on flight day seven is being reviewed
and by the experts and at the present time we're anticipating
we'll be able to use the APUs as normally scheduled.
JOHN WILFORD NEW YORK TIMES Two questions. Are there any
plans to do more work with the cargo bay doors because of the
trouble yesterday. Do you plan to exercise that in different
thermal conditions again and the other question is, in the RMS
work today, will you again do photography of the tile situation.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Relative to the first question, there is not any
additional payload bay door operations scheduled over what was
already planned. But, currently there is a door closure activity
and thedollte and that's like a surveyors instrument very precise
instrument to measure angles and those measurements were made
yesterday. Those are scheduled again on flight day 6 at the end
of the nose sun attitude and at the current time we are planning
on closinq the doors and taking those measurements and see what
kind of situation we have at that time. We also close the doors
before entry and that's scheduled. Second question was...
WILFORD RMS any more photography any more inspection of the
tile si tuat ion .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY There is not any planned at this time.
CARLOS BYARS Houston Chronicle Getting back to this problem
with the GN2 leak, is that a cabin leak itself or is this from
the GN2 tank. In otherwords are they losing air along with the
nitrogen. I have a second more frivilous question.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Okay we'll get the first one. There are two
systems that supplies GM2 along with oxygen to the cabin and
proportioned out in the cabin as a function of partial pressu- •■
of oxygen in the cabin and if the partial pressure of oxygen is
high enough, the system flows oxygen, nitrogen and if it the PP02
that's what we need to breathe is low it flows oxygen. And the
tanks are out in the bay in the mid body of the vehicle and there
are four in two tanks two on each side and two for each system.
And they are ganged together, manifolded together and come
through the bulkhead the aft bulkhead of the cabin and then are
regulated down to lower pressures inside the cabin. Now, the
leak is not inside the cabin or we would be seeing effects on the
cabin pressure and on the partial pressure of oxygen and in the
cabin. So if there is a leak, it's outside the cabin in either
the bottles or the lines themselves. And I stress if there is a
leak.
CARLOS BYARS The more frivilous one is have you heard anything
yet from the fly. This is the Florida, alleged Florida Fruit Fly
that was creeping across the window enjoying itself.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No all T read in someone's handover that Jack
saw one and that's all I know about it.
SAM ALLIS Time Magazine What is how far have you gotten in
your space plasma physics experiments. How far along are you.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Rephrase your question.
SAM ALLIS How far how much have you accomplished in your two
man space plasma physics experiments
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well I can't answer that question quite
honestly. My job is to give the POCC the opportunity to execute
as much of that activity as possible and their about doing
that. Now we did road up a note from that was generated by the
POCC this morning you may have heard it on air to ground and they
sounded very enthusiastic about the quality and the amount of
data that they are receiving and so based on that interpretation,
on those words I would think that they are very excited about the
situation and the quality and quantity of the data that they are
get t i ng .
PAO We did power up the PDP yesterday as scheduled.
KENNEDY
DICK LEWIS Chicago Sun Timer, ... I believe by Col. Lousma that
the (excuse me could you back up wo missed part of that) Edwards
was drying out is there any more on that and is there any
possibility that i f . it does dry out the landing might be changed.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I haven't been briefed on the status of the
lakebed in the last couple of days. That may have been because
my schedule has not accommodated the last briefing I had we did
not anticipate the lake tied being dry enough to support a landing
in the time frame that STS-3 would be f 1 y i ng .
PAO That question was from Dick Lewis Chicago Sun
Times .
ROB ZEA Channel 2 Could you elaborate on the particles that
wore soon coming off the back of the spacecraft and whether they
could pose any serious problems.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, let me say two things about the particles,
first of all both the STS-1 and STS-2 crew believe that they have
soon similar particles although they report that it didn't stick
in their mind quite as well as the flight 3 guys have seen.
Perhaps that's caused by the orientation of space craft. We do
have different orientations and are flying we flew a local
verticle attitude constantly almost on flight 1 and 2 so we have
a different orientation and different sun angles and it may just
be a phenomenon of coming out the back end out of the main
engines that we also experienced on flight 2. Additionaly there
is a change in the main engine hardware that allows a constant
vent that's used during entty for purpose of purging the main
engines. It was not present on flight 1 and 2 and as of last
evening, there is a theory and or suggestion by our main engine
experts that what we're really seeing is some residual lox
venting out these new drains. These drains wore placed in the
vehicle to provide a vent capability during entry that doesn't
use as much helium as the system used on flight I and 2.
ZEA Apparently no serious problem.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We don't think so.
MARK RLUME Medical World News You said at the beginning that
the crew wasn't feeling quite as well as you would have liked.
Are you including Gordon Fullerton as well. Do you have any
indication that he is not quite up to snuff just as Lousma is
not .
TOMMY HOf.LOWAY Yes, generally that is correct. He's not
feeling as well as we'd like, but Gordon performed very well
yesterday.
BLUM?; The question was asked of you before whether the
crew was still taking medication and you referred that to the
physicians who fortunately is not sitting next to you. Could you
answer the question with yes or no. As the crew as the Flight
Director you must know. It's an operational point. Is the crew
tak ing mod icat ion .
PAO Well as a matter of fact that is private
information between the man and his doctor and I don't think we
have the privilege of releasing that unless his doctor says we
can do that .
BLUME I don't believe that's true unless the rules NASA
rules have been changed.
PAO Well I'm a: raid we're just going to have to defer
to the doctor on that one and let him decide and we'll try to
make him available to you.
MARK BLUME One final question. On the sleep problem. Surely
you must have some working theory as to the radio interference.
Chinese radar or God knows what. What are you people kicking
around the MOCR.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, frankly let me say up front that there's
people that are looking at that and they're trying to sort out
what it is. But, with the data that we have, it's very difficult
and it really doesn't make any difference what it is right now.
The problem that we have is bothering the crew and we' to doing
our best to get a situation that will prevent that from happening
and somebody else is off working that and when they tell me what
it is and what I can do about it I'll go do that.
REG TURNELL BBC I didn't fully understand the references to
reentry and landing. Is it a fact that you are considering
simplifying the reentry and final landing because of all the
technical troubles and perhaps cutting out some of the maneuvers
because of the loss of tiles.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY Not at this time. Right at this at the present
time the entry is planned as scheduled. If we should require an
entry tomorrow for example, and I was executing it I would do it
exactly as was planned pref light.
HOWARD BENEDICT AP You've had a lot of problems on this
flight. Could you give us, dispute them, could you give us your
overall assessment of how the Columbia is performing and what are
it's chances to complete the full to seven day mission.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY Well, you know I don't have any insight on how
long we're going to fly, that's kind of guessing, but I'm
confident that we'll be able to complete the mission based on the
status of the spacecraft right now. None of us can see in the
future on what might happen, but based on the- current situation
and the current set of problems that we have, I'm very confident
that we'll be able to fly full duration. In terms to the number
of problems that we have in the spacecraft, I guess we all would
like to have a spacecraft that was absolutely perfect. But in
terms of my own expectations, I think when I get honest with
myself considering that this is the third time that the orbiter
has flown, I thinl: we're doing okay at this point in the flight.
PAO Okay we're advised that the current assessment for
the lake bed at Edwards is it would take 4 to fi weeks for it to
dry to acceptable levels.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY That's the data that I had also,. I thought the
gentleman might have some new stuff.
PAO Okay for the benefit of Kennedy let me repeat that
that the current assessment for the lake bed at Edwards it is
would take four to six weeks for it to dry.
GEORGE ALEXANDER Tom, not to belabor the point, I just want to
make sure that I understand. The UHF noise is just unmodulated
carrier wave that the guys are picking up on their receivers.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY Well I think you've said more than I intended
for you to say because we don't have enough capability to tell
that much about it and really need the experts over here to
expound on that .
GEORGE ALEXANDER It's not some kind of a feedback loop which
you sometimes get in a public system you know that...
TOMMY HOLLOWAY
No I don't think so.
GEORGE ALEXANDER They are receiving radio energy from some
source other than what you anticipate receiving that particular
par t of the ....
TOMMY HOLLOWAY They are receiving something from the ground
apparently. If that's your question. It's not coming from the
orbiter .
PRESS not radar.
PAO Did you say it was not radar, Tommy.
HOLLOWAY No I said it was not coming from the Orbiter.
PAO You did not say it was not radar.
HOLLOWAY I don't know what it is except it's in the UHF...
MORTON DEAN Tom did you say that it is not effecting the
spacecraft in any other way, it's not being picked up on ...
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Absolutely we haven't no indication of any
problems that's caused by the radio interference onboard the
orbiter except the noise keeping the crew awake.
PEERS AKERMAN London Times Could you clear that up. Is it
radar or not radar and you say that it is not a single band
r ight .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY You know I'd really like to go back to what I
said in the beginning. All we know about it is it is apparently
a UHF frequency that's the same kind of devices that are used on
airplanes, airplanes talk to one another and talk to the ground
and that's all I know about it.
PRESS Then what you experienced last night is different
in it's characteristic from that you noticed the first night
isn ' t i t .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Not necessarily, I think we found out more about
it last night .
PRESS It's not it doesn't interfor with the S band.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I , at this point we don't think it's the S band
so that's an update from last night. That's what I said in the
beginning. It appeared to be UHF.
MARK KRAMER One question for John Lawrences and one for Mr.
Holloway. Will Public Affairs let us hear that, we play that on
the loop, I think Tom said he heard you said you heard some it
the ground heard some of it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We didn't record it on the ground, it's been
recorded onboard.
MARK KRAMER Oh, we was in the general sense. Okay the other
question well are they going to dump that to the ground will we
hear that today.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I'd have to check back with the guys I don't
know.
MARK KRAMER Let me ask you a landing question if I may. I
think that the chart shows there is only after the nominal
landing time at Northrup there is one more pass during which you
can land at Northrup and if you have an unacceptable situation
there due to weather or winds your out of opportunities at the
Kennedy Space Center. Does that automatically mean that if you
can't make it there you go another 24 hours and try Northrup the
following day .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY That would be the general plan, yes. We always
have the capability to fly through at least the early part of the
program. We maintain a capability to fly additional day after
the planned deorbit.
MARK KRAMER Is there any consideration being given to chopping
one rev off the mission to come into Northrup earlier in the day
when the winds are I believe generally lower.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, as you probably have guessed there is a
capability of doing that and it's not a major change to do
that. Is simply get the crew up an hour and a half early put
them to bed an hour and a half early the previous day and if
required we can certainly do that. nut at the current time we
are not necessarily anticipating doing that. We'll wait and see
what the situation is when wo get there.
PRESS One more question about the radio interference.
You said that is it S band. Does that mean that is not ....
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I did not say it was S band I said it was UUP.
PRESS Okay does that mean it is not ground radar.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I'm not a communications expert and you ought to
find you one and talk to him.
JAMES WILKINSON BBC I just want to clear my mind about the
nitrogen leak. IC it is a leak how much is leaking away and is
it possible that it might cause a shortening of the mission.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY During the period of time where the
instrumentation indicated that leak, that instrumentation
indicated we were leaking a pound, a pound and a half an hour.
Now in terms of the duration of the flight and I emphasize that
that so-called leak that we really don't know whether it's
leaking or not, has stopped at this time and has been stopped for
some 5 or 6 hours. Even if the leak continued at the rate the
instrumentation is indicating we have the capability to fly the
full duration of STS-3 if we elect to do so and have nitrogen
left at the end of the flight.
TONY MELISKY CBC At the risk of being gruesome, I'd just like
to clarify this toilet problem. Is the toilet blocked, can it be
fixed, or is there possibility of the crew may have to endure
this for the rest of the mission.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well I don't know whether it can be fixed. That
was being worked on when T left the control center. They may
have occurred by now, we may know. But, let's presume that it
could not be fixed there is a backup way of using the commode by
instead of letting the material fall down into the commode being
sucked down by air a fan and then separated by the slinger. The
slinger function is what's wrong what's broken. The fan still
works and there's a bag there's an alternate way of using the bag
in the commode where it can gohead and function with the commode
in a backup but less desirable fashion and continue to operate
and that will be the next step if indeed the slinger is
ma If unct ioned .
JOHN BISNEY RKO Is this radio interference only being noticed
night time or do you pick it up during the day. Does it
interfere with any transmission.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well we have not had any reports that I am aware
of occuring when the crew is active and working but that may be
simply because they're busy all the time using the radio all the
time and they may not be noticing it. I really that's about all
I can say about that.
MELISKY To got back to the toilet problem again, is the
have the crew complained that the air is foul or is it sweet
smell ing up there .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I have not had any reports of any problems with
odor on board the orbiter.
I'ETER LARSON Orlando Sentinal Star Two quick questions.
Again, on what basis are you so confident there are no tiles
missing from the bottom of the ship when you can't inspect
obviously with the wrist camera and secondly what were the
circumstances surrounding the discovery of the broken toilet.
Who made the discovery and roughly at what time.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well let me answer the first question by saying
Mr. Mo3er was over here yesterday and gave a very detailed set of
information about that he's the expert and I'd defer to him.
PAO That briefing has been transcribed and is available
in the newsroom.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY T don't mean to put you gentlemen off, but my
job is to fly the orbiter and make sure we get the most done with
what the experts tell me that I have and I leave that up to
them. In answer to the second question is that as I interpreted
what was going on Jack was down using the commGde and it stopped,
the separator stopped working and that was :u,out the time that we
first talked to them whenever that was.
PEERS ACKERMAN Times Approximately how many pounds of
nitrogen did you lose in that period when it was leaking 1 1-1/2
pounds
TOMMY HOLLOW AY About 20 pounds, but if you'd like based on
instrumentation we may not have lost any, but based on
instrumentation, if you chose to believe it, about 20 pounds.
Which is not a significant amount in terms of 250 or so pounds
that we had in the beginning.
LESLIE LINTER CAP NEWS Per this updated CAP that we now have
this morning on what's now flight day 4 and 5, about 45 minutes
before Col. Lousma goes to sleep he's due to do exercise. Now,
at least as I've always been brought up you're told never to do
exercise within two hours of the time you go to bed cause it will
get you too riled up you won't be able to relax. I was
wondering, is this an experiment. Is this per his own request or
what. I just looked on the other CAPs in the past three flights
or two flights and it's never been done before.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY Well, you probably didn't find any exercise in
the first two flights. We have a general ground rule or
guideline, is probably a better way of saying it that on very
short duration flights exercises are not required, flights of up
to 7 days at crew option we'd like for them to exercise 30
minutes a day and for longer flights there's additional
requirements and I forget what those are offhand. Now, why our
crew activity planning people are scheduling exercise just before
sleep is a good question, probably because it was an oversight on
their part and we ought to go fix that on flight 4 and not do it
again,
PAO Any further questions. Please get your questions
out of your system I really want to let this poor man go home and
I don't want a whole bunch of people running up and trying to get
one last thing. He's had a long day and he's got a long night.
Okay thank you very much. Appreciate your help and attention.
END OF TAPE
pllj CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/24/82
Neil Hutchinson, our surgeon is Dr. Jim Logan,
we'll start with a summary by the flight director.
HUTCHINSON Good evening again, today I've been there just as
long but I'm not even near as tired as I was yesterday. We had a
fairly productive and organized day today. As you're aware as we
talked about last night, we did kind of swap the flight p'an
around from day 3 and day 4, and we basically executed fl.ght day
4 in place of flight day 3. We did some RMS work connected with
thermal testing of the arm. Did not pick up a payload as your
aware. And tomorrow we plan on pretty much executing flight day
3 the way it is planned in the books with the exception that as
we talked about last night, we're not going to pick up the IECM,
we're going to go right after the PDP and we'll have it up all
day tomorrow. Today was a day which we recognized back ./hen we
planned the flight was kind of a back off day in terms of the
level of activity and I think it served the purpose well. And my
opinion is, the crew is doing a lot better today. They aren't as
tired tonight if you've been listening to the air/ground. There
making a lot more wise cracks and just seem to be in generally
better spirits. Jim can talk to you about what he thinks of
their shape, but I think they're doing a lot better and I think
tomorrow we're going to see a very productive flight day 3.
Okay, the surgeon will give a little health status here, before
we go to questions.
DR. LOGAN It's my opinion that the crew had really a very
good day. We were glad to find out this morning that they had a
good sleep period, a lot better sleep period than they had the
night before. They've been able to do everything in the cap as
planned, that's what we expected. I know I'll be asked this so I
might as well come forth with it. The crew took, each crew
member, pilot and commander took one antimotion sickness pill
when they got up, it's a scopalomine dexadrine combination. They
only took one, and the rest of the day the felt like they didn't
need any more. When I talked to them, they were much cheerier
than they were the day before and much more eager and just
feeling a lot better. They are eating better and taking fluids
fine. So basically, it's been a good day and I expect tomorrow
to be even better than today was.
Okay. We're ready for questions. Let's start up
here in the front row with the Chicago Tribune.
JOHN VANN. . .CHICAGO TRIBUNE ... I just wanted to ask something that
we're all wondering about which is the status of the toilet. If
it seems like that thing is going to be fixed or if they're going
to go into the backup mode, or what the. .. (garble)
HUTCHINSON That's enough of the question. I tell you.. .Well
now we'll get a lesson on the commode. Where we are on the waste
management system, the system has a slinger in it which basically
)
when material is put in it, whirls around and throws it around
the outside of the container and that's the thing we've having
trouble with. We got a bag in there that, at least this is our
theory now, we can't see down in there without taking it apart
and we have not taken it apart. That is a procedure that we
could implement if required. We don't plan on doing it though,
because as you'll see when I finish, we think it's working
okay. This rotating motor has two speeds and it will operate on
the slow speed. Now we have apparently what we think is a bag
which got tangled up rather than, it should have been shredded
kind of like a disposal in your sink and thrown off to the
side. It didn't get shredded and we think it's tangled up down
in the motor and when you put the motor on high speed, it just
drags it down, the motor stalls, and the circuit pops, and the
slinger doesn't work at all. When we run it on low speed, it
does work although it's rotating slower than we would like but it
is effective. It's rotating fast enough to throw solid matter
around, to distribute solid matter around the outside of the
container and so the answer to your question is that for now the
potty is working slow, but working. We've got a bunch of
procedures if it decides to do otherwise.
JOHN VANN But you won't impliment them unless it changes what
it's doing now.
HUTCHINSON Yes, which means the slinger stops slinging.
CRAIG COUVALT. . .Neal, did you get in all your RMS thermal tests
today. Both longeron and then up high and then, for tomorrow do
you plan to have any changes at all to the loaded RMS as opposed
to what you would have done with the IECM.
HUTCHINSON The answer to your first one Craig, the thermal cold
case stuff is essentially complete. We have not powered the arm
down yet. They're going to stow it after dinner tonight. We're
on the last leg of that and yes we did complete it, the entire
test, as a matter of fact we even, instead of executing heater
switches where we had planned on in the flight plan, we actually
left them off longer and let it get a little colder and so on and
so forth so we got an excellent thermal test of the arm and
tomorrow it's right by the book. We'll execute al? of the loaded
DTO's with the PDP.
We just have one mike? Is that all we have here?
We'll proceed kind of orderly then. We'll go on back in the
second row then. We'll get Carlos Byars.
CARLOS BYARS. . .Okay . I've got a couple of questions. Go back to
the waste management system. I've been told that the potty is
not cleaned out between missions. Is that the case?
HUTCHINSON I would say not. I don't know, but I think that's
probably bum data.
3
CARLOS BYARS. . .Okay . Has there been any complaint or comment
about odor problems (garble) .
HUTCHINSON None whatsoever.
CARLOS BYARS... None whatsoever. One other thing, two other
things, one on the comments on the general status of the mission,
how well is it going and finally, has anybody ever seen that
doggone fly again?
HUTCHINSON We asked them about the fly this afternoon, and no
it's disappeared somewhere and Jack promises that he didn't
squash it and not sure where it is, it'll probably come back home
with us. The general shape of the mission, I think we're just
cooking along really well. This maneuver we made today to run a
day that wasn't quite as busy for the crew is going to end up in
my estimation being an extremely profitably move because you're
going to find that when they get up tomorrow that they're really
ready to go after it. You might have noticed if you were
listening to the air/ground earlier, we tried to talk Jack out of
doing,... we got a little bit behind this afternoon, timewise, and
we wanted very much for them to go to bed on time tonight and we
had a thing scheduled in the flight plan, a standard thing
scheduled in the flight plan where he looks out the back window
for an entire night pass observing this electron gun while, or
shortly after we had dumped water out of the water tanks and it
takes,., it's about a 45 minute task. It takes both men. They
missed it on the night pass. It was scheduled and delayed the
whole thing and we tried to talk them out of it. Jack decided
that he would rather do that than eat, so they did that. And
that's pretty indicative of his modus operandi. He really does
like to work and I think you're going to find that tomorrow when
we, at this same time, we'll be right back on the nominal
execution of STS-3 with everything done we had planned to do up
to that point .
Yes sir . I was wonder ing . . .
Would you identify yourself please.
PETER ADAMS. . .GANNETT NEWSPAPERS .. .You ' 11 have had problems in
sleeping the last couple of nights. I was wondering if there be
any new procedures so that they'll get a better night's sleep
this time around. And also, the moth experiment, moth/honeybee
experiment seemed to look like it was proceeding pretty well.
Any comments about that. Any comments from Tod Nelson after
(garble) to the television.
HUTCHINSON I don't know of any. I have not spoken to him and
so I don't know of any on the moth; and yes it did, it went off
exactly as we had it planned with the television, the film
recording, and so on and so forth. The sleeping business, we
have changed the COM configuration so the CDR is going to be on a
squawk box, and that's about all. We think the cabin's going to
be plenty warm tonight because we turned the vehicle around now
and the sun's on the nose.
(garble) go right, right there and then over to
(garble)
DAN SHAPIRO. » .NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE ...I'd like to explore the
medications that have been given. Could I find out again, you
mentioned the antimotion sickness medication doctor. Would you
give us that name again and also what medications were given to
help sleeping and how many milligrams and who received them.
DR. LOGAN Okay. As far as motion sickness, we have a
combination scopolamine dexadrine tablet and we make the tablets
ourselves here at JSC. It has .4 mg of scopolamine and about 5
mg of dexadrine.
DAN SHAPIRO. . .NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE. .. Point five?
DR. LOGAN Five milligrams of dexadrine. I don't know how far
you want me to get into the theory of the medicine but it's
probably mostly the scopolamine that does the work. There are
some side effects of the scopolamine so the dexadrine is given to
kind of combat the side effects of the scopolamine. The crew did
not take any motion sickness medicine prelaunch. They take their
first motion sickness pill after they are on orbit and I believe
they took 2 on the first day.
HUTCHINSON Those were flight plans.
DR. LOGAN That's right. These were all planned.
HUTCHINSON First day ones were planned.
DR. LOGAN In advance, and the second day ones were also
planned. Two also on the second day. (garble)
DR. LOGAN Pardon me .
Four (garble)
DR. LOGAN Yes, there were two of them that were planned and
then one was added for the Commander and I don't know where the
fourth one came from. As far as I know, there were only three.
I believe Jack said three or four. v Okay. Then today, each crew
member took one when they got up and that's all that they have
taken today because when I talked to them this afternoon, they
didn't feel the need to take anymore. Sleeping medications in
the medical kit we have Dalmane, 30 nun tablets, and so that is
what they can use for sleep. Should they feel like they need it.
Let's get a microphone over there Neil.
I understand that Mr. Fullerton took sleeping
medications, at least on one occasion.
DR. LOGAN Gordon took a sleeping pill last night one sleeping
pill, one Dalmane and the commander did not take any.
Is that the only sleeping medication?
DR. LOGAN The only sleeping medication.
Okay Jules Bergman.
JULES BERGMAN . . . ABC NEWS... Neil, you said last night here, you
weren't going to wake them this morning, you were going to wait
til after they called you and yet if I recall correctly on the
air to ground, you called them at 7:30.
HUTCHINSON I was still at home, so I don't know. I can't
confirm or deny it. That doesn't surprise me, that's about an
hour or an hour and a half that's about a rev late probably.
JULES BERGMAN. . .Well then Tommy Holloway called then at 7:30.
HUTCHINSON Okay.
JULES BERGMAN. . .Why SO?
HUTCHINSON No particular reason. I guess we were all ready to
go to work.
JULES BERGMAN. . .Okay I've got two other questions then. Did I
understand them to report on the air to ground tonight that the
electron gun experiment had finally worked but the blue light if
you will was too faint to be seen by the eye but it showed up
fine on the TV?
HUTCHINSON Right when I was getting ready to leave they had
just finished this thing we call a v-cap visual beam search,
Jules, and I do recall Gordon saying something like that, we're
looking for that thing over night passes under various
circumstances and I believe what you just said is an acurate
comment on what he said which was they saw it on the TV but not
with the eye.
JULES BERGMAN ...Will that be televised down tonight, by chance?
HUTCHINSON I doubt it. I don't think so because we chew up so
much time dumping that VTR. Its probably not going to be
televised down at all. I suspect it will just be brought home.
JULES BERGMAN. . .And I have a final question. Did you ever pin
down a source of the nitrogen leak that you were reporting this
morning?
HUTCHINSON No and we gou a little pool going on whether that's
really a leak or not. I'm not sure we completely understand that
thing. Quite frankly it has stopped without any question, as a
matter of fact, we used almost no nitergen today at all. Some
folks think we might have a thermally induced situation here,
where when it gets real cold it leaks and when it isn't cold it
doesn't. The interesting thing about it was it didn't stop, it
really started when we started to warm the vehicle up and stopped
about the time the temperatures got stabilized so I'm not really
sure the theory, we obviously are not completely certain what we
are looking at there, you ought to recognize that the measure we
have of whether we are losing fluids, losing nitergen is a gas
equation, a PVT equation that depends on temperatures and
pressures and is a function of bottles contracting and so on and
so forth and it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find out after the
fact that we didn't have any leaks at all and we really got faked
out by the telemetry data. It stopped, whatever it was, is not
doing it now.
Okay, we'll start here and just go on across.
AL SLAGEL. . .DAILY NEWS ... Is there anything on the original day
three flight plan tommorrow that will be, any major thing that
will be changed or added or subtracted?
HUTCHINSON The only thing that we're not doing Al, is this
IECM thing. We are not picking the IECM up, which we have
already told you about and other than that, basically not. We
are going to run through it by the numbers.
GEORGE ALEXANDER. .. L. A. TIMES ... In a way I sort of expect an
answer to this question but, the fact that the spacecraft is
acting the way it is, sorta like a used car, does this give you
some thoughts about whether or not your going to meet your
committments to operational users?
HUTCHINSON Well I wouldn't, I don't believe if its acting like
a used car, I would certainly like to own it. The, we have
trucked, if you look back at the things we have experienced so
far in the flight they all have been really minor George, I mean
losing television cameras is like, a rock hiting a head light in
your car. It's something that's awefully simple problem to take
care of. I think the basic spacecraft is demonstrating to us
just as we thought it would that its a pretty sound piece of
machinery and its got a lot of redundancy in it and it's humming
along pretty well. And, the bottom line of the answer of that
question is: I don't think we're going to have any problem at
all using it as many times as we had planned and as rigorously as
we had planned.
DAVE DOOLING. . .HUNTSVILLE TIMES ... Ne i 1 , how have the EEVT and MLR
runs been going? I understand that there was a problem earlier
with the MLR that the crew was able to fix.
HUTCHINSON Yeah the EEVT is going along well, we did three
7
samples today, samples 3, 4 and 5. We have 3 to go, we're
probably going to get the extra sample done, at least it looks to
me like we are. The MLR had a, I wouldn't call it a problem, it
had a bad indication this afternoon. The MLR is finished, of
course, we started it yesterday, and turned it off today. And
when it got turned off, back to the preprocess mode, an indicator
came on on the control panel, it told us that it didn't go back
to preprocess properly. That indicator, we did a little
malprocedures , which basically involved removing power and
resetting a couple of relays and putting power back on. And it
rosct properly indicating that the indicator was false and that
tl -_i.e was nothing wrong with the MLR. So the MLR, we think is
complete and of course its success depends on what they find when
they get it back on the ground. As far flight operation part of
it, it went by the numbers.
WALTER BAGLEY. . . Nei 1 , Walter Bagley from Reuters Can you tell us
when you pick up day 3 tomorrow, :an you give us an original
mission elapsed time for that and tell us at what time in the
actual mission elapsed time that will be?
HUTCHINSON Yeah, it'd take me a while to thumb back here, but
I will, you mean so you can go back into a flight plan and see
what ' s going on?
DAGLEY Yea'
HUTCHINSON Yec [ * 11 do that. As a matter, you have a flight
plan that's very va '. What I would do is just go back to day 3,
the day 3 tab and just start right out at breakfast. And
remember that we're not going to pick up the IECM. Just where it
says the IECM, we're doing the PDP. I could make an exact time
later .
JOHN DRISNEY. . . RKO NEWS... I'm just wondering if you have any
additional information on that interference in the headsets, or,
is that going to be written off as sort of inexplicable?
HUTCHINSON Probably, I hope we don't get interfered with
tonight, and no we don't have any more information on it. We did
put the CDR is going to be on the squack box tonight instead of
that thing in his ear. So we hope we'll hope we do a better job
if it's still there of avoiding it.
MARK KRAMER. .. Nei 1 is Jack sleeping upstairs tonight again?
HUTCHINSON Yes.
MARK KRAMER. . .Okay , and was the V-cap thing taped or was it just
eyeballed tonight?
HUTCHINSON Taped, filmed, eyeballed, VCR'd yes.
MARK KRAMER... And the final question is: I heard a rumor late
>
1 )
today, that some people at. white Sands have heard the mission is
going to be terminated on Sunday, and I wonder if there is any
consideration being given for any reason whatsoever to end the
mission early or.
HUTCHINSON Not that I know of, I'm not sure where that rumor
came from, it didn't come from mission control.
DOUG ROSS . . . KPRC. . . In Tommy Holloway's briefing, he said you were
going to be turning the heaters on in the wrist camera of the arm
the hope that it may work tomorrow. How hopeful are you that you
will have a wrist camera.
HUTCHINSON We're not going to have a wrist camera tomorrow.
We changed cur mind and the reason we changed our mind is that
after going back and reviewing the camera failure data on STS-2,
it turns out that there is a failure mode that could possibly, if
we tried to repower the wrist camera take down the elbow camera
also. And we have chosen to let a sleeping dog lie, and we're
going to leave the wrist camera alone and so we retain the elbow
camera. So we're not going to do anything, and we didn't do
that.
DAN BEAVERS ... GULF COAST SCIENCE. . .Would you characterize Jack as
having a problem with he gas experiment, operating it?
HUTCHINSON No, I tell you what we did, Jack was fussing at us
a little bit tonight, something that we all worry about. And
that is, changes that come into the flight system very late and
that we don't have a chance to practice with in the flight
controllers don't have a chance to see and the crew doesn't have
a chance to see. And one of the things that did come in late and
I'm sure it was a valid input, I'm not critizing the input or
anything, but it got here very late f was the fact that when you
cycle through the relays on the gas, they want, they decided very
late, they wanted us to wait between a one sequence of input and
another sequence of inputs. Now what happened, we already had
the instructions on how to operate it in the flight data file, in
the cap onboard the vehicle. They were down at the Cape when we
got the input. We didn't have time to go back and redo them, and
what they wanted was two parts of the procedure separated by ten
minutes, I believe. I don't remember the time number, I believe
it was 10 minutes. And so what you do is you go in and you punch
the little keyboard and set some relays and then you go away and
you back and of course you're not going to sit and count one
potato, 2 potato for 10 minutes. So what happened very simply
was, last night, Jack did the first half of one of those and put
the instrument down and went about his business and forgot to
come back for the second half which is fairly easy to do,
particular ily when we had a tough day like we had yesterday. It
didn't hurt anything other than we didn't get some data we
planned on getting, and we're going to go back, we reset it
tonight, and tomorrow morning go back to normal operations with
the 10 minute waits and we might mess it up again we'll try and
be more rigorous, but that's what happened. He wasn't fussing at
the instrument, he was fussing at our system that takes late
changes .
MARK KRAMER. . . Nei I the gaseous nitrogen anomoly which is
apparently stopped, I'm puzzled by that, I want to ask you, do
you have temperature and pressure sensors on those bottles?
HUTCHINSON Yes.
MARK KRAMER. . . And with those sensors giving you temperature and
pressure, if you think you have a leak, I assume you think so
because the pressure's going down, is that right?
HUTCHINSON Yeah, you're using a gas equation to determine the
quantity and we know how much quantity we're using and we know
the volume of the bottle and the pressure in the bottle and the
temperature of the bottle. And through an equation of standard
gas law equation, you can determine what the quantity is and it's
not really with the pressure, pressure can down because the
temperature went down, and the volume, you know the mass of gas
in there is identical, is the same without any change. And of
course we thought that what we were seeing using those equations
that we had loss some 10 or 15 or I think maybe oven the number
was even closer to 20 pounds of gas. And then today all of a
sudden, although we're using a pound an hour or so, the use curve
has been absolutely flat as if we haven't used any. Now we know
darn well that there's a small amount of makeup gas that we've
used. And I don't know, wo just don't understand that. I even
have a tendency to believe it's instrumentation. We might have a
small leak in the system that's thermally sensitive and you know
when we're back in a cold soak that that area's down in the
bottom of the payload bay forward from the forward section of the
bay where the bottles are. We're liable to see something
again. That wasn't a very good explanation, we just don't know.
JULES BERGMAN... ABC... Neil, if Sunday afternoon is a forecast of
high winds at Northrup Strip, Monday noonish, what would you do,
would you land in orbit early?
HUTCHINSON We have that option, certainly have that option. I
haven't looked at, quite frankly haven't looked at the cross
range capability we have. I'm sure we probably have a rev early
option and as you and I are both aware, the winds get a little
testy around lunch time and from then on out there and our
landing time I think is from 12:30 or something like that. So
that is an option that could enter into that process.
CARLOS BYARS. . .Neil, I believe Fullerton was sheduled to put on
his suit today, and I think perhaps now it's for tomorrow. Did
that happen?
HUTCHINSON Yes it did. Gordon did his suit, donning and
doffing exercise today, right as it was scheduled in the flight
10
plan. That's another thing that we think is an indicator that
they're really feeling a lot better. That's not exactly a sit
still operation.
CARLOS BYARS ... I understand that. How about is Jack going to
suit donning exercise.
HUTCHINSON We have not rescheduled it, and no I don't believe
so, just because we haven't rescheduled it. It's not on the
flight plan tomorrow. I'm pretty sure it's not.
CARLOS BYARS... Mr. Hutchinson, are you planning any further tile
inspections between now and the landing, and are you satisfied
with the data you have on tiles?
HUTCHINSON No and Yes.
Up here in the front row.
CRAIG COVAULT. . . I keep hearing things out of the engineering
staff that some mods in the entry are being at least examined to
maybe protect the body flap a bit more, a different schedule.
Are you familiar with anything like that?
HUTCHINSON We've talked about it but as far as I know right
now, we are not planning on making any modifications at all to
entry, preentry procedures, entry procedures. I know at one time
someone was talking about not dumping all the forward RCS, which
we normally do for CG management, and we're planning on doing
exactly whatever we have to do to get the CG right on. It was
discussed at one time to do an alternate body flap schedule and
as far as I know that is not a candidate anymore. We just don't
think we have a problem that warrants any kind of procedural
stuff for entry. The entry pretty much by numbers. Now people
are still, you know we're still several days away from entry, you
know how we are, we're always scratching around looking, so you
never know. But right now as far as I know there's nothing going
on . . .
PAUL REISER. . .ASSOCIATED PRESS ... Heard Hartsfield describe the
efforts that they use to grapple the PDP tomorrow. But he failed
to mention lighting conditions. Are they limited to doing that
strictly in daylight or do they have to stop work when they reach
the night side or what?
HUTCHINSON I think we'll probably try it, make sure that we
are going down to the final part of the grapple in daylight,
Paul, but we know that with the pay load bay lights on we have
plenty of light to be able to see anything we need to do. The
MDF, which is the facility we did the practicing on here of
course, as your aware is not very fidelous relative lighting.
So, but the crew has, you know, they have, gosh having been there
three days, they're certainly able to judge what they can and
can't do and what they can and can't see in the bay. ■■■■■I'm mean
/I
they've been looking out the back window in every attitude and so
on and so forth. So, I would suspect that we'll probably, the
final grapple down on the fixture will probably be in daylight.
But then again, that's a completely judgement call we've put no
restrictions on them in that regard. It's a judgement call on
part of the man driving the bus, driving the arm.
Mr. Kramer there is very active tonight.
HUTCHINSON I just don't want you to leave Jack. Is the crew
going to record that spurious noise they heard the last two
nights, are they going to record it again tonight?
HUTCHINSON No, we have no plans to run the tape recorders
tonight. In fact we turned the voice recording off before I left
there.
MARK KRAMER... Do you plan to dump any of that audio down to the
ground tomorrow so we can all hear the mysterous sound?
HUTCHINSON I can't answer that, I don't know whether we have
or not. We did try and get some recordings last night and if it
was dumped down, there wasn't anything going around about it
today, because I didn't hear a word about it. I don't know, I
just don't know. I don't think we think that's a very big
problem by the way, because I really believe that tonight you're
going to find the CDR sleeps real well, because Gordon has not
been bothered by it.
MARK KRAMER... If it were to reoccur and if bothered them sleeping
wouldn't your curiousity lead you to have them dump it so you
might find out what the problem is.
HUTCHINSON I think probably the next plan will be to fly with
the UHF off. We don't really like to do that because we don't,
there's really probably, that cuts down your coverage a little
bit but it just doesn't make good sense to give up potential
sites where you could have a conversation with them. But that is
certainly another step that could be taken. But has not been
taken.
We'll take a couple more right in the back row and
then one up here.
WALTER BAGLEY ... REUTERS ... Ne i 1 when they do the RMS tommorrow and
the PDP, are they going to grapple and ungrapple first to make up
for the test that they lost on STS-2 and are they going then just
do a loaded arm maneuver before they actually do a PDP
experiment. Or are they going to start right off with the PDP
exper iment?
HUTCHINSON To answer your first question, first. We had an
end effector test yesterday that we didn't do because we lost the
camera. And that is, we basically are going to get that entire
test with the exception of an auto capture which is the very last
part of it during the normal grapple on the PDP tommorrow. Now
you may have misinterpreted some terms, we are going to berth and
unberth. Okay. Because that has nothing to do with the wrist
camera, that's the other cameras and the visual so we'll go
through a berth and unberth just like w^ planned on doing on this
day with the IECM but grappling we're going to hook onto it and
we will probably, it depends on how easy it is to hook up. If it
turns out to be a fairly easy task, and we think it will, we'll
hook on to it and pick up and run loaded arm test which is a
first priority basically in the morning and then in the afternoon
we run the PDP science and then we will put them away and put the
arm away. If it turns out that we have a hard time getting ahold
of it and this is not picking up, just getting the arm down there
because of the loss of the camera, I suspect we're not going to
let loose of him and we'll probably put him back in the rim, lock
it up and leave the arm attached to the payload overnight. So we
can pick him up the next day and don't have to go back through
the, getting hooked up, hooked on. You look puzzled?
George Alexander
GEORGE ALEXANDER. . .As an aggie says when in doubt whip it out.
Is that what your going to do? I mean the first time you grab it
are you going ...
HUTCHINSON We are going to do exactly what we planned to do,
George with the IECM.
GEORGE ALEXANDER. . .The first time you grapple it?
HUTCHINSON Yes we are going to hook on. But that's the
standard plan anyway. That's what we were going to do with the
IECM. We were not going to hook on and let loose. Let me go
back again and tell you that the grapple test that was on this
flight was yesterday. Okay. We didn't get it done and what it
envolved was hooking on, we were going to grapple the IECM
yesterday. And of course the camera broke and we didn't do it.
Now we are going to get on to this and we're not going to let
loose of him. We're going to get on to him and you get most of
the grapple tests right there and then we will decide whether we
are going to let loose of him once or twice depending on how easy
it was to get on him but not right at first. And that again was
the plan thats on the books for this flight date.
DAN BEAVER. . .GULF COAST SCIENCE. . .Would you describe the
recommended grapple procedure for tomorrow without the camera?
HUTCHINSON Well, I haven't got a check list with me but its
basically we're going to operater command the arm to what we call
a hover position which is basically a set of coordinates which we
know very precisely, its no eyeballs involved right up above it
and then just translate it in minus "Z" slowly right down on top
of the grapple fixture.
DAN BEAVER... By eyeball? I
HUTCHINSON By eyeball, television camera, binoculars, and all
other tools we have available. Well Pve just said them all.
And when your down there, grapple it. The one thing we're going
to link the arm before we pick up the, to take up any loads
because we might not be quite centered on the grappled fixture.
Okay we're not going to keep them any longer, thank
you very much .
END OF TAPE
PiZ
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 1
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the
Change of Shift Briefing. Let me introduce Dr. Ellen Schulman
who is the Flight Surgeon for the Ivory Team and of course you
recognize Ivo»-y Team Flight Director Tommy Holloway. Let us
begin with a summary of the overnight shift by Mr. Holloway.
Tommy .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well the last 12 hours has been relatively
uneventful and that's kind of the way I like them. We didn't
have a great deal to do. The spacecraft behaved perfectly for
the last 12 hours and we had zero additional failures with one
minor exception. A small instrumentation bias that showed up
that has no significance. The flight crew appeared to go to bed
about on time last night. They were up and into what we would
consider one of the more productive and busy days today, and they
were up on time. They reported as you probably heard that they
were eating much better and sounded to me like they were in very
good spirits and were eager to get into today's activities and
were feeling better than what they have on previous days. And
with that I guess, since it was sort of an uneventful evening,
we'll get on with the questions.
Well, let me see if Dr. Schulman, do you want to
make any remarks about the crew's health or anything.
DR. SCHULMAN I've nothing to add.
Okay. Questions here in Houston.
PETER LARSON Yes, Dr. Schulman did Jack and Gordon have a good
night's sleep? Did they get more sleep than they did on Monday
and Tuesday nights and how are you improving their ability to get
a better rest during the evening.
DR. SCHULMAN We don't know exactly how much sleep they got, but
from what they told us this morning, it sounds like they had a
restful night. We left some of the equipment powered up last
night so the cabin would be a little bit warmer and we were
careful to not wake them up with any alarms during the night.
What about their medical intake. Do you have an
idea of that?
DR. SCHULMAN What do you mean.
Medication. Did they take any last night, today,
yesterday .
DR. SCHULMAN Yesterday morning they each took a motion sickness
medication and to my knowledge they haven't taken anything since
then. They are feeling better.
STS--3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 2
Just to follow up. Was there any more discussion
of sleeping pills?
DR. SCHULMAN No.
PEERS ACKERMAN Times of London Was there any interference
from that UHF source reported last night?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, first, let me answer that question this
way. The crew slept without the headset on last night and
although they haven't reported it yet, we're hopeful that they
did not have any interference this time. Now we did take an
opportunity to record the intercom of the orbiter at a particular
time. Intercom A and we have recorded the interference and we
have that noise recorded.
PEERS ACKERMAN Is this recording you made, is this from last
night and if so, what do you what have you analyzed?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, we haven't analyzed anything an^ as far as
the quality of the data all It is is noise and it's not any
qualitative data that you can derive any analytical results from
in terms of the source of the noise nor what's causing it and so
on and so forth. So, we can't really analyze it. All we can do
is determine that the noise was there and it's a very irritating
buzzing sound of 1 to 2 seconds that occurs every 10 to 15
seconds. And that's frankly all I can say about it because
that's all I know about it.
That's correct. It was last night.
JOHN WILFORD New York Times Do they get any of this radio
noise during the day time? Or would you not notice it because of
your own communications.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I think that's probably correct. We have
not had any reports of it in the daytime, but I wouldn't draw any
conclusions from that. It might be occurring during the daytime
and because of the fact that we're communicating with them so
often and so contin...at times continuously, they may not be
noticing it.
LYNN SHERR ABC I'm sorry I'm confused about the difference
between the buzzing 1 to 2 seconds every 15 seconds and the
interference from the night before. I thought there was no
interference last night.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, as far as I know the crew did not hear the
interference because they were on a different system and we
recorded intercom system and they weren't wearing a headset last
night and we have speaker boxes in the spacecraft that is
attached to our communications uplink and downlink and the
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 3
intercom per se was not hooked up to that system and the noise
was recorded on intercom now. I got there, we're not sure of and
of course we don't know where the source of the noise is.
Is that something that happened every 90 minutes
the way it happened the night before on the spacecraft.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY It appears that that's the case. It's the same
noise that we've been talking about all three or four days. How
many ever days it's been.
So you heard last night what they have been hearinq
but they didn't hear it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes, we recorded it on an onboard tape recorder
and then dumped that tape recorder, played it back and listened
to it .
Okay and just to clarify, you said it's a buzzing
of 1 to 2 seconds duration every 15 seconds.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY 10 to 15 seconds.
Once every 90 minutes.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No, for a period of 15 or 20 minutes.
10 to 20 minutes. Okay thank you.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY 10 to 20 minutes, what was I don't (the
duration) oh okay of the...
MARK KRAMER What time did you dump that audio to the earth so
we can look for it on a piece of tape. And was that on the
mission audio or was it some other channel.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Is was on intercom A and Mark I don't recall.
It was I listened to it about 4:00 this morning.
Do you know if public affairs line put that out.
Yeah, we can get that. We don't have it yet but we
can get it to you.
Was not feed out on the...
No it wasn't fed out on air to ground or any of the
public access loops.
Could you make that available to us please.
Yeah. Yep yep.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 4
WAYNE DOLCEFINO Can you run through the experiment today with
the PDP just sort of from beginning to end what we're going to be
doing throughout the day with it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, we're doing a number of things with the
PDP and the first thing we're going to do in lieu of performing a
unberthing and berthing test with ICM, we're going to undock or
unberth or the PDP and then immediately do a berthing test to see
how well we can reberth a payload. That's the first activity.
After that point we're going to do a control systems evalution
with the payload on the RMS and see how the RMS operates with a
payload. Of course, up to this point we've operated the arm
without anything on the end of it and it was built to handle
payloads. At that point we're going to do what we call a primary
RCS interaction test that's involved in similar to the unloaded
interaction test involves firing the primary RCS reaction control
thrusters onboard the Shuttle to better understand the dynamics
of the RMS. After that point we'll spend the rf.st of the day
performing detailed science objectives of studying, looking for
the field the magnetic field of the earth and assisting in the
VCAP experiment for the scientists. And if you want to know the
details of the science of those operations, you'd best talk to
the DIs.
PEERS ACKERMAN Somebody I guess has to ask what's the status of
the head onboard the Columbia at this time?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Status of the commode? Well at the time we're
lipping along ON the commode. It's still operating based on what
Jac!< reported just before I left the control center it appears
that the commode in the low speed mode has slowed down a little
bit and he's worried that it may stop. We're still thinking
about some additional steps to take to clear it up and help that
situation, but that's undev review now by Neil Hutchinson.
ALBERT SAILSTED Baltimore Sun You referred a few moments ago
to dynamics test of the arm by firing the reaction control jets,
do you mean by that you're going to be holding the arm up and
then movin the Shuttle or orbiter and then seeing how the arm
reacts to iose strains as it were?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes sir absolutely.
ALBERT SAILSTED Will you have a payload on the end of it at the
time?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes. Loaded arm means that there is something
on the arm namely in this case the PDP. Originally that was to
have been done with the IECM, but since we're unable to or
unwilling, that's probably a better way to say it, to unberth the
IECM we're using the PDP for that function.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 5
ALBERT SAILSTED About what time today would you plan to do
that .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I don't have that information with me but I'm
sure you can get it.
Yeah, we brought back a summary timeline that's
being xeroxed and will be available out here it'll have that on
it for you.
What was the times you said.
TERRY WHITE About 11:30 local when it shows on the summary
timeline here.
JOHN WILFORD Dr. Schulman what are your instructions to the
crew as far as taking medication today and do you consider the
nausea a thing of the past?
DR. SCHULMAN You mean medication for motion sickness?
JOHN WILFORD Yes.
DR. SCHULMAN For the last couple of days the instructions have
been for the crew only to take it as they need it. We haven't
suggested that they take it on a regular basis. And, I think
we've turned the corner with the motion sickness. I think
they're both feeling up to par today.
JOHN WILFORD We were turning the corner yesterday. Have we
really turned the corner today. That was the phrase yesterday.
I want to know how far around the corner we are now.
DR. SCHULMAN I can't tell you that I think we're better today
than we were yesterday, and both crewmen sounded very good this
morning.
KENNEDY
REG TURNELL BBC A couple of questions. Can you tell me please
what happens to the RMS when it's not in use. Is it stowed away
or clipped down or what?
TOMMY HOLLO. /AY Yes sir it's what w< call cradled, Tt'n
initially the RMS is stowed Inboard in the orbiter and wo rotate
it approximately 60 degrees to get it in a position where it's
we're able to use it and then we do what wo call uncradlo.
That's undock the arm and move it into a position whore you can
use it. So, during the nonactive periods, that is the periods
that the RMS is not in use, it's put to bed so to speak and that
is put away and we do that primarily because that's the best
situation to be in should we encounter a contingency situation
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 6
where we would require a quick type deorbit and we wouldn't want
to be interested in having to worry about an RMS or payload.
REG TURNELL Thank you and the other point may have been dealt
with the previous change of shift, but I'm sorry I missed it.
What has happened about the pressur ization leak?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well at the present time the leak has
disappeared. It disappeared sometime, the so called leak I
should emphasize, it disappeared sometime yesterday and has been
infact we have used zero almost no nitrogen in the last oh, 20
hours or so. So the leak disappeared sometime yesterday and has
not reoccured. And we're almost caught up on our nitrogen I
might add. We're almost back on where we expected to be at this
point.
REG TURNELL Isn't that rather worrying though that you should
have a completely unexplained leak.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, to be honest with you I'm not particularly
worried about the leak as long as it doesn't start again and even
if it did start again, we'd have more than adequate margins at
this time and we'll be able to deal with what ever comes up at
the time. I might add that if all of the N2 should suddenly leak
out instantaneously, it would not be a serious situation. We
could still effect a normal entry into Edwards landing, not at
Edwards now at Northrup, landing site and all would be well.
(You called it a leak, we don't really know that it's a leak do
we) Not really.
ROGER CLARK You decided against an overnight heating of the arm
as a possible fix for the wrist camera if not the wrist taking
out the elbow camera. Could you explain how that procedure could
have jeopardized the elbow camera?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I'm sorry I missed the details of that
question. Try mo again.
ROGER CLARK You decided against an overnight heating of the arm
as a possible fix ror the wrist camera. And that was decided to
not to risk taking out the elbow camera. Could you explain how
that procedure could have jeopardized the elbow camera?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well the I still missed the first part of your
question, but let me answer it and see if I qet the intent of
your question answered. The elbow and wrist camera have common
power sources and their potential failure modes in the camera
power sources that would result in a, if there is a short on the
in the wrist camera system, would result in that short showinq up
In.o the elbow camera and causing it to fail should we ropowor
the wrist camera. So, rather than take a chance of losing both
cameras, we have elected not to repower the wrist camera.
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 7
JOHNSON
JAMES WILKINSON BBC Apart from the medical consultations that
the astronauts have been having are there any other conversations
they've had with the ground which we haven't heard.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No sir.
PEERS ACKERMAN One further question, this morning that Jack
Lousma said that a knob on the waste system came off in his hand
from one of the valves. What did that relate to.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY That's one of the knobs that is used to
manipulate the valves in the commode system and he is been
replacing that putting that knob back in place when he needs to
use the system. But it's, you could consider it a malfunction,
of course, he's worked around the problem and still using the
lever .
Sounds like the knob came off of your commode lid.
PETER LARSON Orlando Centenal Star Had the astronauts resorted
to using any of those backup bags that fit inside the commode.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY They have not used the backup bags as far as the
kind that are used inside the commode, when you do that it's
apparently drastic step in terms of the utility of the commode on
this particular flight. And I'm sure they wouldn't do that
unless they'd talked to us, and they have not done that.
But in terms of the storage of the solid waste, are
they using some bag system as opposed to the compartments where
the ...
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I don't think so, I think they're still using
the commode.
PEERS ACKERMAN Since they've been flying with nose to the sun
the thing has been cooling down. Have they done any more tests
on the pay load bay doors or any more scheduled today?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No sir. There's a dcor schedule door operation
schedule day after tomorrow. Very sinilar to the one that we had
on flight day 2. That will be in midday on day after tomorrow
and the test is identical in terms of the sequence that we go
through at that time.
PEERS ACKERMAN So, just to go that again, you said earlier on a
couple of days ago because of the problem you've had originally
with the payload bay door when you couldn't close the latches
that you would be paying more attention to testing it while it
was in this ATR nose to sun attitude. Have you decided not to do
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 8
that as to wait until the scheduled test?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Right now that's our plan. We're going to wait
till the regular scheduled door cycling test day after tomorrow.
GEORGE ALEXANDER Just to clarify something Neil told us last
night and make sure that it's still current, once you have the
arm on the PDP you're going to leave it there for the next couple
of days.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Neil is still considering all of the tradeoffs
in terms of what we were going to do with the arm and the PDP
this evening. At the present time the plans are to particulary
if the grappling goes well this morning, our plans are to reberth
the PDP ungrapple and put the arm away which is our standard
operation for the reasons that I explained earlier. Now there
are some advantages of leaving the arm out. The Pis would like
to get additional data, but, our standard operating procedures to
put it away during the evening and that's our current plan
although Neil has been provided all of the information in terms
of what it would take to spend the night PDP out and he'll make
that decision as the day goes on based on the circumstances at
the time.
MARK KRAMER CBS On that same subject. When you do that do
you actually cradle the arm in those arm holders and then rotate
it inboard so that it's completely prepared for door closing.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes sir.
MARK KRAMER There's no position whereby you just cradle it and
leave it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No sir. We rotated in. It's ready to go.
MARK KRAMER Okay.
Ready to come home.
Pete right here behind you.
JAMES WILKINSON BBC Are there any plans for President Reagan
to talk to the astronauts this time?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Any plans to do what sir?
JAMES WILKINSON For the President to talk to the astronauts this
time .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Not that I know of.
PAO
Anything further?
STS-3 CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 3/25/82 DAY 84 PAGE 9
TOMMY HOLLOWAY If he decides to I suspect we'll do it.
PAO We've got some people going over to the MOCR now to
get copy of that tape and we'll duplicate it and make it
available just as hastily as we can. I can't tell you how long
that's going to be but I think we can probably expedite that and
we'll also make arrangements to get it to the folks at Kennedy.
One final note, Malcolm Mines from Spar Aerospace Limited will be
here at 10:00 to give you an RMS briefing. Thank you.
END OF TAPE
p!3j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 3/25/82
Good evening and welcome to the change of shift
briefing. I think it's evening. It's always dark when we come
in and dark when we go home. This is Neil Hutchinson, the
outgoing flight director of the Silver Team on my immediate right
and he will give you a run down on some things and then
representing the OSS-1 payload, we have Dr. Werner Newpert,
program scientist from Goddard Space Flight Center, and then Dr.
Sam Pool representing the medical side of the house if you have
any questions in that area. We will go ahead and start with Neil
and then after we... I'm not sure what you had planned for the
OSS-1, perhaps Dr. Newpert will have some things to say and we
can go to questions at JSC and move to the other centers and then
come back. Neil.
HUTCHINSON Weil good evening. We had a really busy day today
and a very, very successful one. As you all have probably heard,
we're having a little fuss at the moment because we've had a
problem with the communications system and we'll talk about that
a little bit. As far as the day went, we accomplished one of our
really big DTO's on the flight by picking a payload up and you've
probably seen all the television as it. ..and listened as it
occurred today. We got all of the RMS loaded arm work done this
morning right as scheduled. We got all of the science done this
afternoon with the exception of about, I think we missed about I
REV or maybe an hour's worth of VCAP vane search activity this
afternoon. We ran several other smaller orbiter DTO's. We are
still in tail sun attitude. Vehicle is continuing to cool down
at about the rate we expected, a little bit slower than we
expected and it's not as cold as we had thought it would be by
this time. This attitude cools the vehicle off a lot slower than
the tail sun did so that's not totally unexpected. Basically, as
far as the flight plan goes, today we accomplished everything we
intended to do. You will recall, last night I told you that the
one thing that we didn't accomplish that we had been set out,
that we had set out to do promission was picking up the IECM and
you all know why we didn't do that. The only RMS DTO we have
left is backup cradle which we probably will get done before we
quit with the arm. That's just a fairly simple procedure, about
20 minutes long, where the crew puts the arm away in the backup
mode. Tomorrow's going to be another busy day. We have done
some things to start saving a little bit of cryogens to open up
our entry options. I guess about the only thing I want to say
about that is we're looking at weather and no decisions are going
to be made for a couple of days. We had a private med today.
DR. SAM POOL Shortly after lunch. We received a message from
the crew that they wanted to talk to the surgeon. The pilot,
Gordon Fullorton, said ho had some lower abdominal discomfort,
cramping, and he was interested to know whether or not there was
anything in the medical kit that we could prescribe which might
make him feel some better. We talked about that problem and
attempted to rule out anything serious. Our conclusion was that
he had some gas in his abdomon and this was probably giving rise
to some cramping. We prescribed Mylanta which has a combination
of an antacid and simethicone, which is a surface tension
reducing agent and we also thought it was time that they should
start to eat. We think that one of the problems perhaps in
producing this abdominal cramping has been due to the fact that
they've been taking in quite a quantity of fluid, but perhaps not
eating as much as they should and so we recommended that they
begin to eat, and as a matter of fact, just before we came over,
we heard on the air to ground loop that they were beginning to do
that.
HUTCHINSON Okay. I don't have anything else. I'm sure
there're going to be a lot of questions about what we're doing
with the end of mission and we'll try and answer them. Would you
like to say some things about the things: we accomplished with the
science today?
DR. NEUPERT Be happy to.
HUTCHINSON Then we'll back up to the operations part.
DR. NEUPERT The OSS-1 payload operated very well today. All
instruments that are active continue to be in good shape. Not
all of them are taking data. Two of them are waiting until we
get to bay to the sun and one, the solar overbottom, monitor the
irradiance monitor and solar flare x-ray polarimeter experiment
did not take data. The induced atmospheres experiment has
already had its primary data taking run. It was on for a short
period of time today. The two additional experiments, thermal
canistry experiment, continues to fulfill its scientific
objectives by demonstrating that payload's interior to a large
volume can be held at very comfortable temperatures in spite of
extreme temperatures on the outside using this heat pipe
technology and the contamination monitor experiment began picking
up slight amounts of molecular accretions on the surface of
quartz crystal microbalances primarily in the direction viewing
out from the bay. It was very small accumulations in directions
viewing toward the liner. Of course, the highlights were the
joint operations with the vehicle charging and potential
experiment plasma diagnostics package. You saw it on
television. You saw the crew scanning through the beam and
picking it up which was an exciting day, exciting time I can tell
you in the payload operations control center. We do have some
initial assessment of what that beam appears to be at first
glance. Of course, tomorrow is another active day but
interestingly, we can for instance, estimate that at a distance
of 30 feet from the emitter, the beam seems to appear over a
width of about 20 feet, so you can imagine that it starts out at
a width of that small aperture which is about half an inch and it
diverges to a beam of 20 feet. Not only did the PDP detect
charged particles but it detected a considerable amount of plasma
wave energy and this will be explored tomorrow with the sequences
that are going to be carried on in the joint beam operations.
They will be exploring as to why this beam is so wide. To give
you another idea of some of the things we are exploring, if this
beam of electrons were shooting out in a vacuum, of course, it
wouldn't diverge at all. Even in the pressures that we are
seeing, which are probably typical of orbital pressures, an
electron would traverse about a 1,000 kilometers of the
ionosphere before it collided with another particle and be
scattered so the width that we're seeing is not due to collisions
of the particles, the electrons coming out with the particles in
the atmosphere. It's due to some other kind of plasma
interaction. As I say, it's going to be explored to some lengths
tomorrow. One of the highlights of the vehicle charging
experiment, having to do with charging of the orbiter, they
noticed that the orbiter charged to some higher potential at
night than during the daytime. Not much potential, about 10
volts instead of 1 or 2 volts negative, and they hypothesize that
there simply is less opportunity Cor the charge to be neutralized
at night so they're investigating that further too. So,
altogether, it's been a fine day.
Okay. Thank you and I think we'll go ahead and
start with questions now. Have we got vine microphones. Okay.
Jules Bergman here.
JULES BERGMAN. . .This is for Dr. Pool. Did Fullerton say whether
the Mylanta helped him?
DR. SAM POOL We don't know yet.
JULES BERGMAN. . .And you said you recommended that they eat.
DR. SAM POOL Yes.
JULES BERGMAN ... Does this mean that they haven't been eating all
their meals or whatever.
DR. SAM POOL That's correct. For example, this morning that we
reported that the pilot ate granola with bluberries and
grapefruit drink with a total caloric intake of 400 or so. We do
not think they've been eating and they say they haven't boon
eating their entire meals.
JULES BERGMAN . . . Just too busy or what?
DR. SAM POOL Well no. I think the lingering effects of the
motion sickness problem which we've had and perhaps the schedule
had a part to play in that as well. I think they're beginning
to, I think Jack particularly is beginning to eat now and I think
Gordon this evening is also said he is going to eat.
JULES BERGMAN .. .You said the lingering effects of a motion
sickness problem. Do you mean that or the dexadrine and
scopetex?
DR. SAM POOL Well, the last time they took scopolamine
dexadrine was I believe yesterday morning and those effects
should pretty well have worn off at this point. I think they're
also beginning to get over their motion sickness. As I watched
them on the television today, I noticed they are moving about the
cabin quite freely in doing the job that needs to be done. As
far as the Mylinta and whether or not it's going to be effective
or not, we've had some experience with this sort of problem in
spaceflight before. Whether it's going to be effective in this
particular individual or not, we hope so. There's a private
medcom as a matter of fact along about right now and hope
(garble)
HUTCHINSON Providing the comm works.
DR. SAM POOL Yeah. Hopefully I'll have some feedback on that
soon.
Okay. And also, if I don't identify you, please
identify yourself and your affiliation. Right back here in the
next row back.
PETER ADAMS. . .CONNET NEWSPAPERS .. .Cou Id you discuss a little bit
about the weather problems and Northrup. Are we looking at a 24
hour delay or a one revolution (garble)
HUTCHINSON Yeah. I really shouldn't have said weather
problem. I think really t*v best way to describe that thing
is... we've been doing very • >. 11 on our consumable situation as
the flight has worn on here and with just a little bit of
tweaking, we think we can get ourselves an option to stay another
day. Now that doesn't mean we're going to do that, but it does
provide us some flexibility in case we might encounter a weather
problem later in the mission.
PETER ADAMS. . .Would you be more inclined to land earlier or
later?
HUTCHINSON Well, that depends on what the weather situation
turns up. And really, you know, it's going to be the middle or
end of the weekend I would expect before any decision is made on
what to do because we don't like to prognosticate that far, we
aren't successful in prognosticating that far in advance on the
weather .
PETER ADAMS... If you were to delay a day in landing, do you have
enough fuel to do such and do you have enough fuel for a
continuency if you had to land, let us say 48 hours in advance.
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
PETER ADAMS. . .Thank you.
48 hours?
HUTCHINSON Yes sir. The cryo situation as it exists now, and
I'm not exactly sure of the numbers, but we basically have been
running about a couple of kilowatts, maybe 3 average power level
lower than we thought we were going to run and of course as you
all know our hydrogen for the fuel cells is the critical
consumable and when I said management, the management techniques
are very simple. We were planning on going back to two computer
operations, normal operations today for the G&N computers. We
didn't do that. We turned off some heaters that we know we don't
need. For example, the heaters in the flash evaporator system
because we haven't been boiling any water since launch basically
and those kind of things with that little kind of a tweak, we're
going to be able to provide ourselves enough cryogenics to go 24
hours extra, another day at normal mission power levels, and
still have our 24 hour wave off capability.
CARLOS BYARS . . . You just answered one thing for me right then.
You have enough to go an extra 24 hours now I believe Neil. Is
that correct and you want to stack up enough that you can go an
additional 24.
HUTCHINSON No, no let me correct that. We have enough as
projected with the kind of power levels we've been seeing to
extend an extra 24 and maintain our 24 hour reserve that we
always will maintain. We have no intention of nominally cutting
into that 24 hour reserve. So right now on the books, projected
assuming we don't get into any ditties as we go down the road
here, we have enough for a 24 hour mission extension and then
come home and when we get home we'll have 24 hours left.
CARLOS BYARS... Yes, that's what I got. Would you comment please
on your communications problems. We've just heard some bits and
snatches and are you having some sort of a ptoblem there?
HUTCHINSON The easiest way I guess to describe the comm
thing, the comm system, like all our other systems, is farily
redundant, in fact completely redundant. There's really two of
everything and even more than that it can be what we called cross
strapped which means you can take one part out of one of those
systems and make it talk to one part in another one of the
systems and get a path that way to communicate. On top of that,
individual parts of each one of those two strings of
communications gear have redundancy in them. Today, during the
normal execution day, we had an experiment associated with the
plasma diagnostic package. One of things, you recall that it
does, it's mapping the orbiter's electromagnetic interference.
And one of the things we want to find out is when the S-band
system is in high power mode, what kind of EMI is around the
orbiter. And so, we have been operating in what we call low
power mode. The only time nominally we over operate in high
power mode is in launch phase. And the reason we do that is to
pierce the plume of the SRBs. So, once we get on orbit, we go to
low power and stay there, and that's what we've done in STS-1 and
u.
2. Today, we went back to high power for the expressed purpose
of cooperating with the science people to get this map of the
orbiter S-band EMI. And when we went back to low power at the
end of that exercise which we did, that was the last PDP activity
we did today, was the EMI mapping. And when we went back to low
power about, I don't recall, a couple of hours ago, the low power
side of the S-band transponder system number 2 was inoperative.
Now the problems that you probably heard when you came in and
when you were waiting for me to get over here were associated
with troubleshooting that problem and nothing else is broken that
we know of. We're just trying to explore exactly what it is in
the transponder that is not operative now. There aze 2
transponders on board, you use one of them at a time. They have
a high power mode and a low power mode. And inside each mode,
they have a high and low frequency, and that represents multiple
paths through that given transponder. The low power mode on this
transponder in both the high and low frequency appears to be
inoperative. And that's really all I know now. Now the thing
that happened at Hawaii we got ourselves a little bolixed up, the
ground did on the procedure we used and it turned out that we
left the vehicle in the configuration that we couldn't
communicate with the crew at Santiago without them doing an
action on their own. Which I suspect they did, they have their
little calculator that goes beep and tells them when we got an
AOS and I'm sure that they probably did panel command which will
switch us back to the bckup system and we'll regain
communications. Of coutse any sight where we have a UHF system,
which we don't have at Santiago, we have S-band and UHF voice.
Let me ask, to follow on to that very thorough
explanation Neil. This outage in the transponder, the affected
transponder, is that only in the low powur mode, or in both
modes.
HUTCHINSON We've been unable to check the high power mode
yet. As a matter of fact, t^at was one of the thinys we were
attempting to do at Hawaii that we didn't get accomplished. And
that's probably going to be checked before we go to bed, cause
we'd like to know if we've lost that whole unit.
DAVE DUELING. . . HUNTSVI LLB TIMES... How did reber thing on the PDP
go first and second times around. How did the retention
mechanism checkout?
HUTCHINSON Everything was completely normal in all of the
payload deployment and reberthing operations today. As a matter
of fact, in my estimate I was really amazed how smooth it went,
and I think that's a tribute to a lot of things, not the least of
which is of course the gear design but the training that we were
able to get in Toronto on the air bearing floor and here in
Houston in the MDF, apparently stood us in really good stead,
because it took us about 10 minutes to reberth it the first time
and I believe he said it took him 4 minutes to put it away
tonight, and latch it up. So it appears we've got a really fine,
good operational system there.
MORTON DEAN... Neil, if you loose your redundant communication
system, how does that affect the flight plan from here on and do
you have to come home early?
HUTCHINSON No. We haven't determined the extent of the loss
Morton, I think. If we lost all of that transponder, I think
we'll probably doing some pretty serious talking about what that
means. Because then you have the other transponder, which
basically is certainly not a single point failure, but if were
anything to happen to it, you have no S-band communications,
which of course is our last flood in terms of telemetry and
command capability and so on and so forth. But it would be pure
speculation, we don't know what we've lost in it yet. All we
know is the low power is not working, and if the high power is
working I would venture a guess t:,dt there would be no,
absolutely no impact whatsoever.
MORTON DEAN... But, if you find out you've lost both, does that
hard thinking include wrapping it up and coming home early, as a
distinct possibility?
HUTCHINSON I don't know, I really don't. I think we'd surely
discuss it, because that does have, it- does have some pretty
strong implications in terms of further failures, if you happen
to get one on the otherside of the comm system.
HUTCHINSON But, if you wait around a little bit you'll
probably find out the other half is cooking along, cause I think
probably going to check it before we go to bed.
MARK KRAMER. . .CBS. .. Isn ' t a transponder something which when hit
with a signal responds with another signal stronger, why aren't
we talking about transmitters, I'm confused. It's not a
transmitter, it's a transponder?
HUTCHINSON The shuttle is a RF system is, well a simple way to
put it. The shuttle locks on to the ground instead of the ground
locking onto the shuttle. So signals go up and get locked on by
the shuttle and get turned around. And that transponder is the
transmitter for data coming down. It is the turnaround devide, a
transponder as you described it exactly correctly for the S-band
radar and it is the receiver for our. In other words, all S-band
communication up and down, go through that device.
MARK KRAMER... And what kind of troubleshooting can you do from
here? Is it a question of having to throw some switches and
circuit breakers?
HUTCHINSON It's primarily commands from here. In fact, of
course, the crew got involved in it twice tonight because our
commands put us in a configuration where we couldn't command so
we asked them to go back and switch us over to the alternate
system so we could get back in and do some more troubleshooting.
MARK KRAMER. . , Is this the kind of failure you've ever seen before
on this equipment? I don't recall ever hearing about this.
HUTCHINSON Not to my knowledge.
Paul Reesner, right here. Second row.
PAUL REESNER. . .Yeah, you were talking about an option of staying
up another day regarding the weather. What have you been told as
to what the weather might be on Monday.
HUTCHINSON We haven't got, excuse me Paul, go ahead.
PAUL RRESNKR. . . Is there some weather prediction that triggered
your looking into this option?
HUTCHINSON No. We just want to make sure we have it and we
were very close to it, and so we just thought the right thing to
do was to make sure it was available to us, and like I said, it's
going be the middle of the week, middle or end of the week again
before anything is exercised in that regard.
PAUL REESNER. . .Okay . You have no particular concern about a
forecast for a sandstorm out there or anything like that?
HUTCHINSON No, and as a matter of fact, I didn't get any
weather data myself today at all.
PAUL REESNER. . .Now, I've got one for the doctor. Earlier in the
mission, Fullerton reported that when he filled up a bag with
water, there was a lot of bubbles in the water. Could this be
the source of his gastric distress or what?
DR. SAM POOL Could be part of it. I don't know whether that
has continued or not. We really haven't asked. I think the bag
as he described it contained something like 10% water. We've had
individuals before in spaceflight who have had some minor
cramping in the abdomen, who've taken by the way, the same
medication for it. Could be a variety of causes.
HUTCHINSON A comment on the water, 10% gas in the water is
not an anomalous condition and in fact, after we got to talking
about it, it turned out to be about what you'd expect as a
nominal amount of gas in the water. We don't think we have the
(Apollo) Shuttle 2 gas in the water problem that we experienced.
Right here behind you Mike.
AL SALSTEAD. . .BALTIMORE SUN... Just let me do the transponder bit
again. You have two transponders aboard. Right?
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
AL SALSTEAD. . .You 've lost low power on one of them. On the other
transponder, you have both low power and high power. You have
UHF communications through some stations for voice communications
all the time?
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
AL SALSTEAD. . . So, all you really know you've lost is the low
power on one transponder.
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
AL SALSTEAD. ..I'm a little bit confused as to why this gives you
pause about even possibly ending the flight when you have the
other transpon . . .
HUTCHINSON It doesn't.
AL SALSTEAD. . .Okay.
HUTCHINSON As long as we proved that we still have a
redundancy in transponders. Now the question was asked and
again, that's why I don't like to play what ifs. The question
was asked by Mr. Dean whether if we had completely lost that
transponder, whether it would give us pause, and yes it would
because then you've got all of your S-band communications. You
have to have a transponder to communicate on S-band. when it
goes, if one goes, and of course it has power supplies in it, so
and so forth, there are failures that could get a whole
transponder, although they are very remote. When it goes, then
all you have left is UHF voice. You have no command, no
telemetry, and no S-band.
AL SALSTEAD. . .You told him if two transponders go?
HUTCHINSON Yes sir.
AL SALSTEAD. . .But you don't want to take the risk of operating
with only one transponder. Assuming the worst, and the one
transponder didn't work at all, then you would perhaps come home
early because you don't want to fly around with only one
transponder because you don't have redundancy.
HUTCHINSON That's correct.
AL SALSTEAD. . .Thank you.
Okay. In the back here from about the 5th row back
on this side. Right here.
VIC RADNER. . . ABC. . .Can I follow that up please. Is there any
transponder hardware onboard, any extra hardware that could
replace something that might prove a problem, and second, I'm
so try, wh at wa s t h a t ?
HUTCHINSON No. No thoro's not. Wo havo no inflight
ma interlace for the t r anspnndot ■ s .
VIC RADNKR...NO r opl .acomon t power supplier, or things like that?
HUTCfllNSON No. That's correct. Wo do not.
VIC RAHNHR. . . And second , do the mission nil^M specify h* . d ,ind
fast that you have to come homo if you lo:in ono l r.mcpondi'i ?
HUTCHINSON Thoy specify a thing called a priority flight,
which as you aro awaro, wo havo alroady aci-omp 1 j shod , so you
could interpret them to say that, but recall that mission rules
are good places to start discussion.', .is; opposed to hard and fast ,
I've never seen ono that was hard and fast.
Okay. Right, next row. Yeah, there you...
JOHN B I SNEY . . . RKO NEWS... I understand there's boon a little bit
of jockeying for that precious flight time between the RMS people
and the PDP people for tomorrow. I wonder if that's been worked
out and a more general question, as the orbit or experiment
package becomes more complex, if that's a growing concern
engineering versus science time?
HUTCHINSON Well I don't know about any jockeying tomorrow
quite frankly. I think we are all squared away for what's going
on tomorrow, so I can't answer that and as far as the engineering
versus science, you know, this is the third flight of this
vehicle and the engineering is high on our list of things to get
done and we have one more of these test flights and hopefully,
the balance between those two is going to change, it is
changing. I mean that ought to be obvious in what we're doing
here on STS-3 as compared to what we did on STS-1 and 2 and the
scales are going to be tipping the other way. You'll probably
see them tip even further 4 and by the time we get to STS-5, it
will be primarily science or work deploying payloads and such as
opposed to gathering engineering data on the vehicle.
Okay. Next row up. Right there...
LOU COLE. . .MINNEAPOLEOUS TRIBUNE... If you were to lose both of
the S-band tansponders, could a landing still be made? Is that a
safe landing and still be made?
HUTCHINSON Yes.
Okay. Let's go to KSC for questions now and then
we'll come back and wrap it up here at the Johnson Space
Center. Do we have anything from KSC?
Obviously not.
It
No, wo ilo. Thoy'ro working on it.
It' 5 an hour la l or ovor thoro. Thoy'ro a little
mo r o t i i od .
Okay . Havo wo qnt anything at KS<*. I'm going to
j i vo you about 10 more soconds horo. Okay.
Having a fow toohnioal <M f f t cu 1 t i or. ovor thoro.
Why don't you tako quo.'it ions from horo whilo we're
wa i t i iv} .
Yeah, 1 think if wo'ro not qoinq to havo anything
from KSO, wo' 11 havo to qo hack to thorn in a minute .John. Is
that all riqht? Okay. I'm sorry, wo ' 1 1 havo to como back to you
at KSC. Okay, in tho back of tho room hor<->.
PKTKR 2 ACK LAND. .. LONDON T I MF.S . . . Han thoro boon any dotor m i na t ion
yot on that buzzing noise? Is it side band radar? Is it UHF?
HUTCHINSON I don't know and I don't think it's qoinq to
bother us anymore because tho commander is not sleeping with his
headset on. I honor, tly don't know and wo have done nothing more
except for our own comm on f i qur a t i on .
Okay. Riqht up here about the third row back,
I have two quick questions, does the failure of the
low power .do of the transponder change any way the procedures
in which you communicate telemetry and command to the orbiter and
also, this evening will the end effector be disengaged from the
grappling of the PDP?
HUTCHINSON The low power will have no change on how we
operate. Now wo are going to operate in a little different
configuration but we'll operate with the rest of the S-band
equipment back on the system, the string that failed and operate
on the good transponder, so we will have one of these cross
straps made where we're operating on system 2, NSP, and all the
rest of tho gear that we need, but on transponder 1.
So in other words, you'll be shifting a great deal
of your capabilities on the good transponder I presume.
HUTCHINSON All.
All of it? Okay.
Okay. One more here and then (garble)
HUTCHINSON We berthed the PDP tonight. Ungrappled, put the
arm away, and we'll go get him again tomorrow.
Okay. Lot's go ahead and swap over to KSC now and
:">oo if they're awake and...
KIRK FRANK. . .UPI ... I have two questions. First off Neil, we've
heard a lot of talk tonight about some problems. Are you
satisfied so far with how the orbiter is working and secondly,
has there been any indication from the solar flare x-ray
experimenters of any unusual solar activity?
HUTCHINSON Well the orbiter answer first. The answer
certainly is yes. (Are they reading me all right) Is certainly
yes, until we had this little anomalie with the coram system of
course, we went all day today without any problems at all in the
orbiter. The only malfunction I had with this entire day of very
busy work was another minor problem with camera in the payload
bay. One of the cameras zoom in and out has frozen up on us.
This comm thing is likely to turn out to be nothing but one small
part of a very redundant system and I think the orbiter is just
behaving super. We've been up 4 days and there just isn't
anything in it that's not behaving fairly well. I've forgotten
what to say. Oh solar flare. We've been being kept aprised by
the NOAA folks about the flare activity. We haven't had any m=5
events since we've been up and every day they are hopeful as you
are aware some of the days we are allowed, or we have allowed
ourselves to go look at flares, if one presents itself of
sufficient magnitude. I can't remember whether tommorrow, I
believe tommorrow is one of the days we can go flare chasing but
we need something to go look at since we do have to go out of
this solar inertial lattitude to go look at one, we're very
careful to only go, we can only go once a day until we can get to
the top sun attitude at the end of the flight where they're able
to get a flare anytime they want. So were very careful to pick
and choose and as a matter of fact I'm sure we wouldn't go
looking for one unless he was five or better.
That's all the questions.
Okay that's all from KSC and lets go back and see
if we can rap it up here with just a couple more and let these
gentlemen go home. Right here in the green.
JAMES WILKERSON. . .BBC. . .Can you just outline very briefly the
plan of tommorrow. Is it as printed or...
HUTCHINSON Very much.
JAMES WILKERSON. . .And you say, what are the most important items
tommorrow?
HUTCHINSON Well we're doing a test burn in the morning and
we're going to pick the PDP up and do a lot more science. Those
are the two big ones. We're going to do some, remember that
we're still staying in the thermal attitude, nose sun, and that's
' 3
continuing on, and tommorrow you're going to seo some testing
that's advantage of that, for example, this L2U burn in the
morning. And more science.
Okay lets take one final question. The gentleman
in the blue coat back here.
WALTER BAGGLEY (ROITERS) . . .When do you think you will know
whether you will have the high power on the number 2
transponder?
HUTCHINSON It depends on what the team did tonight, if we
finish the troubleshooting that I started before I left, we will
know before we go to bed and if not I'm sure we will know fairly
soon in the morning because we will want to find out if we have
the other side of that transponder.
WALTER BAGGLEY. . .Neil, can you tell us what they are doing to try
and determine that?
HUTCHINSON We will want to look at the high power mode on
that transponder. And its a command from the ground and the
first thing we tried to do like I said was look at another path
through the low power mode that didn't work and you know the high
power mode of course we were on it all day today. You know that
is what we were using for this CMI search that we ran with the
PDP.
WALTER BAGGLEY ...Neil, this transponder in the high power mode.
HUTCHINSON So we have every reason to believe that the high
power mode is operative and is going to work when we get it
turned on.
Okay and thank you for coming and we'll see you at
the next one.
And other items in this crew checklist, we'll have
acquisition of signal again in about 30 minutes through once
again through the s-band station at Hawaii for about 4 minutes
duration. The flight control team is now discussing
troubleshooting the s-band problem. There are two s-band
transponders on board the vehicle.
END OF TAPE
pi 4 j CHANGE OF SHI FT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATR 3/26/82 PAGR 1
Good morning ladies and qontlomen and welcome to the change of
shift briefing for the Ivory Team. Let me introduce the
participants I guess most of whom are familiar to you by now.
Dr. Ellen Schulman the Flight Surgeon for the ascent team and of
course Tommy K. Holloway, Flight Director and on my extreme right
Al Pennington who is the Integrated Systems and Communications
Officer, INCO. I don't mean his presence to suggest we have a
communications problem, but we thought maybe you'd have some
questions for him. Let Tommy begin with a summary of the
evenings events.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We started off last night about a couple of
hours before cnw sleep period and at that time we did have some
difficulties with the COMM system and by the time the crew went
to bed, which established a mode that was satisfactory for
communications through the evening and during the evening Al and
the experts worked on and examined the information that we have
in the control center and have developed a plan to determine the
details of what the problems were or what the difficulties were
with the COMM system and I'll let him talk about that in more
detail later on or at least answer your questions. At the
present time we are operating with full communications capability
and we anticipate that today we'll be able to determine the exact
nature of what happened to us last evening and are looking
forward to reestablishing all of our redundancy or at least most
of our redundancy in the COMM system. I would emphasize that we
do have redundancy in the COMM system in terms of being able to
communicate and both with our command system and our voice with
the flight crew and the spacecraft. The plan that we have for
today is flight day 5 modified a bit to adjust to some propulsion
DTOs that you will hear executed today by the entry team. Harold
Draughon is in for the second shift of flight three and we'll do
several propulsion burns and we'll also unberth the PDP again
today and do some more of the PDP field mapping and EMI searches
and VCAP PDP joint searches and so on and so forth. And with
that I'll turn it over to you and see if you have any questions.
PAO Before we do proceed let me make one point of order
here. We've got a funny with the satellite this morning and
we've got some downlink TV scheduled of the PDP deployment at
9:05. So, we're going to take a kind of a 10 minute break in
there and go in ectasy over the PDP deployment and then return to
the press conference assuming that the questions go that long.
Roy Neal?
ROY NEAL Can you be more detailed Tommy, particulary can you
give us some details on when you would expect PDP deployment
especially for TV and when you might be prepared to exercise with
the crew whatever procedures you've figured out to try to bring
that transponder back on line?
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 2
TOMMY HOIiLOWAY The PDP scheduled for today is the plan that you
have been given, the pref light plan, and I don't have those times
at my fingertips, but they are as scheduled.
PAO Yeah, the TV plan still is
ROY NRAL You're not going to make any unscheduled
transmissions. You're not going to exceed the Jack Lousma's
desire to show us a little more of the United States if you could
bring something up for us.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well today is a very busy day and I don't
expect, we never there's, and Al can tell you more about this.
There's quite often an opportunity to do unscheduled TV and when
it comes along we always try to do that, we can't guarantee that
that will happen today.
ROY NEAL How about the transponder? When do you plan to
exercise that procedure?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, the men that worked last evening and they
worked very diligently looking at the data have a plan in place
and we're going to spend about another half a day having the
second shift or the morning shift evaluate that plan and make
sure that in the wee hours we didn't miss anything and that we've
got the proper procedures and we'll probably execute it this
afternoon.
PAO Jules Bergman
JULES BERGMAN Tommy, I want to make sure I understood you
correctly. You said at the present time we've got our full COMM
ability.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We have our full capability as far as
communicating with the spacecraft yes.
JULES BERGMAN Both transponders are working in both low and
high power modes.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No sir I didn't say that. I said we could
command and we had full voice and command capability and downlink
capabilty and I'll let Al tell you just a little bit about what
we know. And I emphasize that we don't really know what our
totally capability is at this time, but he'll tell you just a
little bit about the, what we do have and what we do know. Al.
AL PENNINGTON Yeah, basically the operational mode that we were
in when we first established that we had some kind of a problem,
we were running in an operational mode that had the transponder
number 2 on line in a power amplifiers configuration on system
1. We do have two redundant systems, they are cross-strapable
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIRFING 8:30 AM DATK 3/26/82 PAGE 3
within every LRU (or line replaceable unit) . This gives us a
quite of bit of redundancy in the fact that we basically then can
conceive of four separate downlinks, four separate uplinks
because of the the capability of the cross strapping those
particular guys. The initial problem happened when we were
commanding out of the mode that we were utilizing for PDP NI
nominal operation on yesterday and the problem was basically that
we had lost the PM downlink carrier at that time. We recovered
that successfully by crew switchover and at that time everything
was operational. We had at that time three separate systems. We
only knew of one potential problem at that time and we continued
at that time to press on with our normal troubleshooting
activities as we do at Mission Control and we had exercised these
procedures at length in simulations and after about 3 or 4 sights
we got into some unusual situations and last night we were able
with the help of our ND personnel and our own flight operations
personnel to come up with what we think is a potential solution
to the problems having to do with some logic on the input to the
control of these systems. We have a very detailed and dedicated
box on the front end of the communications system that controls
it. A guy called it ground command interface logic controller
unit. But, basically it's a solid state unit that has a massive
amount of logic relays (solid state however), that allows us to
control those guys. And that would, we think, is where we're
headed to try to troubleshoot that this afternoon.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Now what Al just told you is that rather than,
perhaps what he didn't tell you is rather than him going ahead
and pursuing the malfunction procedures last evening when we
might have to wake up the crew, we elected to hold that, study
the problem and once we get it all squared away, we'll go back in
and figure out what our real situation is.
JULES BERGMAN But, Tommy, what Al is telling us is that you two
are confident you've got a work-around procedure and the flight
will not have to land early.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Right now we're confident that we'll regain
enough capability to have the redundancy we're required to
continue yes.
PAO Lynn Sherr, And if I neglect to call on you by name
please identify yourself and your affiliation.
LYNN SHERR Can you go into a little bit of detail that I might
understand that would explain the nature of the exercise when you
do get around to trying to figure out what happened and how to
make it work again? What will you do and what will the
astronauts be asked to do?
AL PENNINGTON Basically, it's a strictly matter of an operation
that we wil] try to set up the onboard system in the same pl4j
CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 4
configuration we're operating in now, a configuration where we
have all the capability. We'll proceed by ground command which
we have total command capability of that system.
AL PENNINGTON That means the astronauts won't be involved or
{they will not be involved) ... his counterpart will be doing it.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY We'll try to do this on a very noninterference
basis with the spacecraft and maintaining all of our voice and
telemetry capability at the time as much as we can. What we plan
to do primarily is exercise a configuration where we would go in,
if you will, is to try to reset. That is to ^oggle logic on and
off to see if we can unstick something that we think is on. And
the reason we're waiting to later on this afternoon is we're
bringing in the Rockwell Contractors to make sure that after
we've looked at all these procedures, that the actual contractors
on the box have looked at the unit to make sure that everything
we're doing is exactly correct.
PAO Peter?
PETER ADAMS Mr. Holloway, one option you have is to land a
little bit later to go ahead 24 hours. To land on Tuesday if
weather is a constraint at Northrup and last night you were
talking about the possibility of landing earlier if
communications was a constraint. When will the decision be made
just when you're really going to land and when will you have the
decision on your full communications capability? When will you
really have it tacked down?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I would expect and that we'll have our
communications problem situation I'd rather call it a situation
than a problem, sorted out by evening (this evening) so at that
time we'd know our status relative to the communications
problem. Now as far as landing early or late for the weather
situation, that is entirely dependent upon the weather. There
are people that are watching the weather continuously and as we
approach the planned deorbit opportunity and, if the weather
permits us, we intend to land at the planned time and as we
approach that time, we will start making decisions based on
weather forecasts and short term and long term on whether we
ought to come in a day early or whether we ought to try it on a
normal day or whether, and once we get to the normal day, if we
don't like that we have the capability to go multiple days late.
AL SAILSTED Baltimore Sun This question of weather came up I
believe last night for the first time at Mr. Hutchinson's
briefing and I infer from what he said and what you have just
said that you have some kind of long range forecast which
indicates that the weather at White Sands might not be too
good. Is that true or am I wrong?
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 5
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No I don't think that's true, but I wouldn't,
it's just that the weather always, you always have the
possibility that you're going to have bad weather at any one
particular place and if you've been in Houston the last few days,
you can probably understand that. It changes regularly.
MIKE TONER Miami Herald You said you had multiple day stay
capacity. Could y >u tell us exactly what that capability is.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well at the present time (well I'll back up just
a bit), the orbiter is actually using less of the critical
consumable which happens to be hydrogen that's used in the fuel
cells to make electricity than what was predicted up to this
point in the flight. So, relative to the predicted, we're
actually gaining hydrogen as a function of time while we're
flying. At the present time we have a capabilty of flying jc two
extra days without any significant powerdowns or any compromise
in our capability onboard the orbiter and there's not any
intentions of doing that at this time, but as far as a functional
spacecraft and both as far as the consumables are concerned, we
could fly two extra days at this particular time.
JULES BERGMAN Tell me, I guess what we're all interested in is
if the recalcitrant Transponder fails completely and you're left
with just one transponder, the mission rules say, at least I have
seen them, you must have both transponders operating to continue
the flight.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY You have interpreted that correctly.
JULES BERGMAN Will you, (I may have answered my own question
then) . Will NASA continue the flight with only one transponder?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well as you probably know, the NASA management
can waiver mission rules based on the circumstances and the
situations that we find ourselves in at any time so they might
elect to go ahead and fly the full duration. Our flight rules,
our mission rules would indicate that we would terminate the
flight early if we did not have redundancy in the fundamental
COMM system. Now, I should flavor that by saying as a member of
the operation team, that our recommendation would be that we
select a landing opportunity that would provide us with a very
orderly preparation and deorbit into the Northrup Strip
opportunity and we would not do a big hurry up and deorbit and so
on and so forth, but our at that point we would be looking
forward to an orderly deorbit into the Northrup Strip opportunity
and the NASA management at that point, based on the condition of
the spacecraft and all of the overall view of the where we are in
the flight and how far it was to the end of the flight, they
might elect to fly additional days over what the current flight
rules say.
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 6
JULES
BERGMAN
But
one, you haven't lost the transponder yet?
TOMMY
HOLLOW AY
We
do not know that we've lost the transponder.
JULES
BERGMAN
Two ,
you're hopeful you can get it back?
TOMMY
HOLLOW AY
Yes
sir.
JULES
BERGMAN
And
three, even if you have lost it, the first
landing opportunity might be Monday anyway?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, based on the weather that very well could
be.
ERIC ENGBERG CBS What is the reason for the mission rule that
requires two operating transponders? What I'm trying to get at
here is what critical function would you most be concerned about
in the remaining phases of the mission that the transponders are
involved in?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY As much as we talk to the crew, it would
probably appear that the ability to communicate with the crew
verbally is the most critical thing that we have, but in fact,
the ability to transmit a vector definition of the position in
space of the spacecraft to the onboard computer is the most
critical thing. And as a matter of fact, if we lost the uplink
the ability to communicate and could still send commands, we
would, spacecraft would fly around and the crew would deorbit it
to next good opportunity into Northrup and we would be sending
commands along the way, including updating their state vectors to
support them even though we could not communicate with them.
ERIC ENGBERG As a follow up, if you lost both transponders,
then you would have no way to communicate with the computer
onboard or . . ?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes sir that's correct. Al, why don't you fill
in the details.
AL PENNINGTON Let me make one thing perfectly clear. The
transponder loss, (sorry about that) the transponder loss that
w*»'re talking about is a downlink only. We have verified in
every configuration that we have up to this point in time, that
the uplink voice and the uplink command operations do work. We
further have the capability just by monitoring the links that we
have turning those links on and off that we do have a good uplink
and with that that does give us some more confidence in the fact
that the transponder itself has a problem in the downlink. Like
I said , let me point it out . It's only there.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We didn't talk about it only being downlink.
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 7
AL PENNINGTON That's right and that's the problem we've
experienced so far is the downlink which is our ability to get S
band voice and telemetry.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY And Al wanted to explain this simple system.
I'll tell you it's extremely complicated system and he does a
good job of managing that system in the control center and
keeping us with a basic capability all the time.
ERIC ENGBERG The philosophy for the mission rule is a redundant
system though in essence is that correct? That NASA policy is
that redundant systems and, if you don't, you come on back.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes sir.
JUSTIN FREEMAN ABC What you're saying to us about transponders
is that over the last evening you have tested uplink transmission
with the high power and the low power side of both transponders
AL PENNINGTON That's affirmative.
JUSTIN FREEMAN And all four of those sections have accepted
your uplink .
AL PENNINGTON In the configurations we've been in which is
majority of the configurations that we can be in with those
units, we have checked uplinked and been successful in all
cases. Both uplink command and voice at this time.
JUSTIN FREEMAN Just to follow that. Your problem last night
was with the low power downlink of transponder number 2.
AL PENNINGTON Yes, that's correct.
JUSTIN FREEMAN You have not yet exercised the high power
downlink of transponder number 2 because that would have required
you delaying the sleep period of the astronauts?
AL PENNIGTON Now let me, like I said, this system is extremely
complicated in a fact that we can operate in several different
operational modes. The mode that v*e're in right now is a high
power mode and that is we're using it for pre-ampl i f ier and power
amplifier system. Okay. We're just doing it in a cross step
mode. We're using systems 1 power amplifier and preamplifier
instead of systems 2. We have not at this point in time checked
out the system 2 preamp and power amp. We don't think that it's
required at this point because that's not where we're going on
our failure analysis.
LYNN SHERR As a result of the switch to White Sands and the
fact that you had to bring in communications equipment there that
wasn't already there, does that hurt you any in terms of landing
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 8
thinking about landing at White Sands perhaps with one
transponder down? Is there anything that's missing in that case?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No I don't think so.
PAO We'll take one more question here at Houston. Then
we'll go to Kennedy. Carlos Byars.
CARLOS BYARS Houston Chronicle Seems like everytime we go
through an explanation of what you're testing and what you're not
testing things get a little bit fuzzier. Have you yet tried on
the faulty, using the faulty transponder for a downlink in the
high power mode and i f so was this successful?
AL PENNINGTON Well we have experienced some difficulty we have
tried the alternate mode, the various modes and we've had some
difficulty acquiring in some of them that's why we're about
getting ready to test them. To answer you question yes and we
did have some difficulty with the other modes and now we're going
to go find out why we did and we expect to regain them.
PAO Okay, let's try Kennedy Space Center and then we'll
come back here to Houston.
RICHARD LEWIS Chicago Sun Times We're having some difficulty
here really getting an understanding of what you're telling us.
And it appears as though you do have some difficulty from what I
just heard with the downlink on the high power system on the
transponder number 2. Is that correct?
AL PENNINGTON The answer is no we do not have a problem with
that. We are operating currently with transponder number 2 in
the high power mode. That is where we are today. The strictly a
matter of which system we're on like I said we have redundant
cross strap systems. The problem we've had is the low power side
to that transponder and we're operating on a high power side of
that transponder at this time.
RICHARD LEWIS Okay. That's clarified. I though the way we
heard it here you were operating on the high power mode on system
number 1. But you're in the high power mode on system number 2.
AL PENNINGTON On system 2 transponder. I want to clarify that
because of the way we utilize the term systems. Okay and
basically we work in a string operations and there's at least 5
LRUs in this system we're talking about.
PAO LRU is line replaceable unit.
Yes sir.
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 9
TOMMY HOLLOWAY And Al can switch any one of those 5 back and
forth from the ground.
Is there any relationship between the operation of
the PDP, the electron gun experiments last night and this
problem?
AL PENNINGTON Absolutely none.
REG TURNELL BBC Do I understand that you prefer to go to a 9
day mission if there's weather problem at White Sands in order to
land there rather than come back to the alternate site here at
Kennedy on the right day?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I think that's probably correct.
REG TURNELL And we've not heard anything about the health of
the astronauts this morning. Can you tell us if they're now 100
percent fully recovered?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I'll give you my impression and then I'll
let Dr. Schulman give you hers. It appeared to me on the air to
ground based on what they said, they felt well and they were up
and eager and were really hustling this morning and I would it
sounds to me like they're in very good spirits and are feeling
very well.
DR. SCHULMAN I agree.
PAO No further questions from Kennedy.
PA0 Thank you. Back here at Houston. Dave Duling.
DAVE DULING Huntsville Times Considering the success that you
had yesterday getting the PDP berthed and attached and
everything, have you locked at the possibilty of picking up the
IECM? I understand that some astronauts were in the simulator
working on that yesterday.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No, I don't believe that we're actively
considering. I suppose there's always someone in our
organization considering other alternatives and trying to work
out something to recover a situation that we've lost, but as far
as I know at this time there is no plans to pick up the IECM. We
really need those cameras that we've lost to do that and there is
not a way that we're willing to attempt that without them.
REEVE COLLINS CBS Did you lose the lower power of the second
transponder at the time you switched back from high power after
the PDP experimentation was done? Was that the period?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yee.
m
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 10
REEVE COLLINS But you still think that using it on high power
in that regime had nothing to do with the loss?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No, and in fact during the test and checkout
that we were doing, we have successfully gone bac'c and forth to
this same mode at least three times and we're very confident this
is a very good mode of operation.
REEVE COLLINS Just to followup. What will the astronauts have
to do and how long will this troubleshooting thing take and will
it impact anything else that they might otherwise be doing?
AL PENNINGTON The basic thing we're going to ask them to do is
at the beginning of the set of procedure is to strictly set
themselves up in a mode that corresponds with a mode that we're
in at this time. And from that point they would only be asked
depending upon a particular situation they set up to throw one or
two switches onboard the spacecraft based on where we are in the
procedures .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY You know I can probably answer that question
more in a layman's term than Al can. He's the expert and I'm
kind of the layman. Over in the control center the crew will be
asked to set a series of switches up in the spacecraft so they
can make, throw one switch and get the COMM configuration back to
the one that we know is working. So if they are unable (you
probably heard me use the term panel and command last evening),
we were asking them to throw that one switch and get us back to
that mode that we know will work.
PAO Al Sailsted, Baltimore Sun.
AL SAILSTED I assume, I don't want to be too tedious about
this, but I assume that high power means just that, you're
putting out more energy, lower power means you're putting our
less energy. Why do you have the two power energy levels, Al?
AL PENNINGTON The two energy levels Houston and the STS initial
program are used only primarily for operations during the initial
boost phase to punch through the plume effects to the Merritt
Island launch station. Later on those same power amplifier will
be used with the tracking and data relay satellite we will use
after it's deployment on flight 6. So those things we're getting
some very good initial testing in this program while using those
modes and we're also providing some testing in the PDP area. In
this case the EMI modes.
Switching course completely at the moment. You had
a long convsersation with the astronauts about the tiles and what
happened to them on takeoff. Fullerton said there was a lot of
"shaking and rattling" I think was hia word, just after the SSME
mm
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 11
start before the SRBs went off and Lousma allowed us it was about
that time that things started hitting his windshield then he had
to look down at the instruments so he wasn't quite sure v?hat was
happening after that. We have that slow motion pad film that
shows us something falling down between the orbiter and the ET.
Do we think that what that is falling down is tiles, do we think
it's ice. Has anybody identified that material for sure?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I've not participated in the analyses and
the activities that's been going on with respect to the tile loss
and the work that's going on to understand or try to understand
where we believe the loss occurred and so on and so forth. So,
I'm really not in a position to answer that question.
The Tom Mosier brK ' j that was held Monday, I
guess about the most sophisticate f statement on it so far that's
transcribed and is availble out here.
LYNN SHERR Tom, was there any rop^-t.tion of the radar or
whatever it was the noise interference last night? Was that
recorded again?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No, it was not recorded and at this point we're
in a configuration where it's no longer bothering us as far as we
know. The crew has not reported any problem. We believe being
on the speaker boxes at night has solved the problem and as far
as I'm concerned the problem has gone away.
LYNN SHERR Is there any follow through on it though? Ts
somebody still trying to figure out where it came from and what
have you learned?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY My Might control team in the control center is
not doing anything and I don't know what other people are doing.
GEORGE ALEXANDER LA Times Dr. Schulman, any other medication
taken by either crewmen yesterday other than the Mylanten by
Fullerton.
DR. SCHULMAN No.
GEORGE ALEXANDER No motion sickness.
DR. SCHULMAN No.
JOHN PINE REUTERS The crew were they woken up this morning
when that alarm went off? That alarm that meant nothing or had
they already been up using the terminals?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I can't answer the question, I don f t
really know whether the alarm woke them up or not. If they were
asleep, they did get woke up. That thing will wake anybody up
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 12
and it's supposed to because it might be serious some day.
IE nothing happens, if nothing changes from your
current capacity with the transponders, do you have two of two or
are you coming back?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY If I have two of two?
Do you currently meet the flight rules.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, I honestly don't know yet. I've got to
wait till these we do the malfunction procedures this afternoon
to find out.
Well, is the malfunction procedure to determine
what is malfunctioning or to provide the solution or a little of
each .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Both.
PAO You might explain that you don't just frivilously
let go of a channel that's working to see if ...
TOMMY HOLLOWAY You know we're very careful about our switching
back and forth and we want to make sure we really have a squared
away situation before we do that because we like what we have.
It's we're advised it's a full capability.
PAO The point being if you let go of that to go see if
the other guys working and you come back, why maybe nobody's
there.
PAO Anything else, Carlos Byars?
CARLOS BYARS Let's puruse this a little bit more. As to the
impact of this situation as you understand it now on the
continuation of the mission. Does 'it look to you like you're in
a go-ahead mode, that you've got enough communications with high
power low power available on transponder one, high power only on
transponder two, to go ahead with the mission to it's normal
continuation and normal completion or perhaps even an additional
day?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY At the present time I honestly don't know that
total status of the COMMs system, but right now we have a total
communications capability, in otherwords I have all the functions
of a COMM system and we're going to find out the answer to your
question this afternoon.
PETER LARSON Orlando Sentinal Star. Could you just clarify the
role that the UHF channel plays?
pl4j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEF1HG 6:30 AM DATE 3/26/82 PAGE 13
TOMMY HOLLOWAY UHF channel is a voice only channel up and
down. Two frequencies
PA0 And S band gives you data telemetry as well. In
addition to voice.
PAO Anything further. Okay I guess in about 2 minutes
we're going to have the PDP deployment downlinked to us. ^Thank
you very much for you time and attention and appreciate you
coming out.
END OF TAPE
p!5j KRANZ PRESS CONFERENCE 5:22 p.m. 03/26/82 PAGE 1
PA0 Okay, we have with us this evening Mr. Gene KRANZ,
who's the deputy director for fliqht operations at the Johnson
Space Center, and Mr. KRANZ is here to clairfy our confusion over
the transponder situation and also speak to our p.Tans as in terms
of the mission itself. I'll turn it now to Gene KRANZ.
GENE KRANZ Okay, first of all, let me just a make a couple of
brief opening statements here. First of all, I can understand
the confusion from a stand point of the discription, the
operations, the management of the S-Band communications
systems. I think, possibly with the exception of the data
processing system it is as complex a system as we have onboard
the Spacecraft, and it is one like the data processing system has
significant amounts of flexibility. The discussions that
apparently created some of the confusion was a result of end of
shift briefings, first of all by a Mr. Holloway when he had
essentially run across the initial problem and had not been able
to do any significant trouble shooting prior to the time that the
crew went into the sleep period. And secondly, by the orbit
teams shift that came off this morning, which, as far as I can
determine in looking at it was more a symatics, the question of
full capability verses full redundancy which I believe is where
possibily some of the confusion came up. what I would like to do
is to give you to our status as of now, with the communications
system, and give you our interpretation of the mission rolls that
pertain to the management of that system. First of all, let me
describe the system briefly first. If yon look at it as two
systems, two basic S-fiand PM communication systems that are
composed of a network signal processor, a transponder, a power
amplifier, a pre-ampl i f i er and the antenna electronics. If you
look at it as two separate strings composed of those elements,
and then is subsequently you look at the ability to cross-strap,
i.e., to tie string one and strinq two together you get some idea
of the flexibility that this system provides. Let me describe
another term here, what we call STDN and low power verses high
power. STDN and low power directly takes the output of a
transponder and routes it to the antenna switching electronics.
High power takes the output of the transponder runs it through
the power amp and pre-amp and moves it to the antenna
electronics. At the current time we believe we have a hard
failure in transponder number 2 low power mode. We have an
apparent failure, and when I say apparent failure I'll describe
that a bit further on, in transponder number one, high and low
power systems. Now this systems are managed through what we call
the ground interface and control logic, that's basically a logic
box that routes switch commands from the crew cockpit as well as
ground uplink commands to all elements of communication
systems. We believe we have a logic hang up somewhere in this
interface box that prevents us from exercising the full
capabilities of the downlink portion of transponder number onp.
Now you have to look at this also as a downlink process which
brings telemetry and the S-Band voice to the ground and an uplink
function. The uplink function for both strings one and string
two are operating properly. So what were talking about, is the
downlink portion for transponder number two low power and the
downlink portion for transponder number one. Both uplink
functions are operating correctly. In addition however, tied
into this relatively complex system we have what we call the FM
system. What I have been describing previously was the PM
system. We have the FM system which takes the output of the
network signal processors routes them to the onboard recorders
(ops recorders 1 and 2) and routes them through the FM signal
processor, the FM transmitter, and RF switch and multiplexer and
again to that same antenna electronics. Both of the FM elements
and this are two redundant systems again are operating
properly. The FM system is that system which is normally used to
acquire routine systems information, what we call our operational
information system onboard the Spacecraft, we record the data,
dump it to the ground during a site pass and play it back into
the MCC. We do this routinely orbit by orbit, day after day
through out the mission. The question of the mission rule
interpretation has come up. The mission rule basically says that
we should have communications redundancy, within the S-Band
system wo have full uplink communications redundancy excuse me,
that was within the PM systems, we have full uplink redundancy,
we have one downlink that is currently operable, as well as the
FM downlinks where wo can take data and dump it and bring it into
the control center in a matter of minutes to hours depends on how
long the recording interval we want. So for all intents and
purposes, we have maintained both the uplink redundancy and the
downlink redundancy. One further statement that you may have
heard, in listening the Flight Director and Air to ground loop
over there, we have elected not at this time to exercise any
further trouble shooting on transponder system number one. The
trouble shooting that we could do is actually remove the power
from the (garble), this interface box to see if we could reset
the logic, that option does exist. In a similiar fashion, we
could exercise the cross-strapping operations of string I and 2,
that option still exists. However, since we have met all of the
requirements of the mission rolls for uplink and downlink
redundancy we have elected at this time to not accomplish any
further trouble shooting unless wo have problems in transponder
system number 2, high power mode , and that's basically it.
PAO Okay, we'll throw it off in to questions now.
Please wait for the mike, identify you name and affiliation as we
call on you, unless I do it first. John Wilford, New York Times.
WILFORD So, we're to infer from that as of this time, the
mission is planned to go full duration?
KRANZ Yes, I think from an overall mission standpoint.
And I'm sure your awaro you see, that wo for instance daily go/no
goes that we accomplish on a regular routine ba3is. Wo do this
every day, we take a look at the weather, how the overall flight
systems are working, whether we've met all of requirements for
redundancy in the flight systems onboard. What mission
accomplishments have or not have accomplished. As far as I'm
concerned right now the mission is going full duration
considering the fact that we still make our daily go/no goes.
And weather is going to be a very important factor in determining
when we will terminate this mission.
Well then with weather that is more apt to cause
you to extend the mission rather than to curtail it.
KRANZ I believe this is more subject for a dicussion about
two days from now or a day from now, mainly because we're
continuing to watch the weather, we've taken a look at the
weather at Northrup Strip, doesn't look particularly good
today. We're going to have a frontal passage there tomorrow. To
me that's part of the daily go/no go process.
There will not be a landing tomorrow?
KRANZ I can't say there won't be a landing tomorrow. A
lot of stuff could happen tonight. There will not be a landing
tomorrow based on the communications problem I have just
discussed unless something further occurs.
PAO Gentlemen of AP
Paul Rayburn, AP The as the flight rules that I've seen, say in
reference to the transponders there's a footnote that explains
that the references to the downlink capability and it says if
there is less than one of two transponders then the earliest
possible landing should bo sought. Can you interpret that rule
for me please.
KRANZ Yea, when you say if there's less than one of two
currently we have one of two now operating. The second one wo
have not exercised. Those options still remain to us to
troubleshoot that system and in addition as I stated earlier wo
still have the FM system.
RAYBURN With the failure of one of the modes in number 2
don't we have one half of 2 at this point.
KRANZ No, we have full capbility through that one
transponder that is operating.
GEORGE ALEXANDER l.os Angeles Times Gene does this FM system
that you mentioned that Is operating through transponder number 2
is that correct.
KRANZ No. That has it's own signal processing actually
when I said we actually take the output from the network signal
processors and route it to the recorders and from then on it's
entirely separate system from the PM system. Transponder number
1 and number 2. Entirely seperate system.
ALEXANDER If you lost the high power side of transponder
number 2 you would still have an FM a complete Ff' system that you
could operate on?
KRANZ We would have two FM systems.
ALEXANDER With their own transmitters?
KRANZ Yes sir.
JIMMY WALKER ABC Gene, what time did the first transponder
fail?
KRANZ I have some brief notes here written down, a piece
of paper I took this morning. I believe it was on orbit 55 over
Hawa i i .
WALKER Was that 8:43 pm.
KRANZ Well, I don't think in pm. I've got a MET time. I
really think, I really can't even hardly read it. If you just
backtrack over Hawaii 55 I think you'll find the answer.
CARLOS BYARS Houston Chronicle That's when you lost number 2
when did you lose number I? And I'd like to follow that along
with why have you elected to not to do further troubleshooting is
that because you fear it could knock out you're remaining S-band
capabi 1 i ty?
KRANZ That is always a possibility. The reason we elected
not to troubleshoot number 2 is one we've met all the
requirements for the mission rules, secondly we're now looking at
some of the hardware facilities KSTL, those type of facilities to
see if we can try to duplicate the logic hangup so that any
crosstt ack ing or any further troubleshooting that we would do we
have not compromise the systems.
When did you lose number 1?
KRANZ I'm gonna have to put my glasses on. I'll cross
check this time for you. It looks like it was somewhere around
Hawaii orbit 57.
57?
KRANZ Yes sir.
JOHN WILFORD New York Times Does this... are you going to have
any degradation of the data you receive? None whatsoever.
KRANZ No sir, no degradation.
LOU COLT Minneapolis Tribune As you spoke of the potential bad
weather at White Sands tomorrow. If indeed you had more
communications problem would that mean that you'd use one of the
alternate landing sites if you decided for communication or any
<->»-her reason that you need to land tomorrow?
KRANZ No I doubt it. Basically, what we try to do is
optimize several factors and I believe that for instance today
White Sands were totally clobbered tomorrow. We lost the
remainder of transponder number 1. Troubleshooting wouldn't
bring back 2. I believe we would continue to operate using the
FM data it would somewhat handicap. But again it's not an
operation that is not familiar to us. We take and routinely play
and use with dump data every maneuver we complete every alignment
we complete. Those kinds of things we actually acquire the data,
process it, look at it. So we're very familiar with those kinds
of procedures. I think it would take a bit of adjustment to, but
I have no doubts that we could accommodate and continue flying
safely in that mode.
Okay, and another question, you are able to get
everything up to the shuttle, all commands, all information,
everything on all channels. There's no limitation on any of the
transponders on that. Do I understand that correctly?
KRANZ That is correct, we have full uplink capability in
both transponders.
VICK HERL. . .ABC. . .Yeah, Gene you said earlier that you had a hard
failure in number 2 and an apparent in the high and low of number
1. Could you explain apparent to me, again? I'm not sure t
understand.
KRANZ The apparent goes back to we are not able to route
data through tranponder number 2.
In other words then,
KRANZ I'm sorry, transponder number I, I keep getting
these all mixed up. Transponder number 1, when I said apparent,
it's because the end function cannot be accomplished. It is the
control for those transponders that we believe is the problim.
HERL So that then, in the other one the hard failure is
an electronic failure.
KRANZ We really don't know, we really don't know.
AL SEALSTEAD. . .BALTIMORE SUN... If then all these alternatives are
open to you such as the cross strapping you described and
everything else. Is it fair to conclude then that you do not
have a serious communication problem?
I believe that's a Eair statement when you say serious
communications problem. I like to have everything working for me
all the time. We certainly have the capability of continuing the
flight in our current posture. We have lost some of the
redundancy. If, for instance, we would have another failure,
then we would try the cross strapping options. We have nothing
to lose at that time. And I tend to believe that it may work,
that we may be able to recover a transponder.
PAUL RESER. . .ASSOCIATED PRESS ... Are you able to receive voice
downlink from the FM.
KRANZ No we can not. We have the UHF backup capability
there .
PAUL RESER... All right, not all your stations get UHF?
KRANZ That's right. All stations but Orroral and Santiago
get UHF.
RESER. . .Okay . On the S-band then, you have voice downlink
through only one of 4 systems. Is that correct?
KRANZ You can say it's basically one of two systems, the
high power, low power mode I believe, in fact, I'd probably be
guessing, the high and low power mode principally refers to the,
no I'm wrong there. Yes, we have one S-band voice downlink that
is operable at this time.
RESER AP One S-band voice downlink, and if that one goes out,
all you have is FM?
KRANZ No, no, at that time we have UHF remaining.
RESER And UHF?
KRANZ Yes sir.
RESER And the FM is not voice downlink.
KRANZ That is correct.
PAO George Alexander, Los Angeles Times.
GEORGE ALEXANDER Los Angeles Times The FM is not voice down?
KRANZ Principally TM. We do have some recorded voice.
GEORGE ALEXANDER Los Angeles Times Is this module this logic
circuit, is it common to both transponders one and two, in other
words Is it a bottleneck through which both transponder systems
must pass enroute -o the antenna to transmit down?
I don't really know, and I can get you that answer
after this conference here. I believe it is, but they'd prefer
not to speculate now.
PAO Ok, we're going to take two more questions from
Houston, then switch to the Kennedy Space Center for questions,
this gentleman on the first row.
MIKE TONNER Miami Herald Since you're unsure of the exact time
when these two failures occurred, I think you said orbits 55 and
57, do you know on whose shift that occurred?
KRANZ I believe the initial failure and the initial
troubleshooting was done on Mr. Holliway's shift, but again, I'll
get the exact time and give you the individuals who were on shift
at that time.
TONNER Would flight director Hutchinson have been aware of
those failures.
KRANZ Yes, he was there.
TONNER At last night?
KRANZ When you say, there's differing degrees of
awareness, we first of all had another twenty four hours when I
came in this morning at four o'clock, they had been working with
the engineering development, the Rockwell people, nr, woll is my
flight controllers throughout the night, there wore numerous
commands that were sent to configure those systems, if you really
take a look at all the options that are available many of those
options, with the exception of the cross strapping options wore
exercised, you then have to sit down and break out those commands
at. times of occurrence, what data did we see at this time, and
then try to piece it together, so there are different levels of
awareness as time marches on.
TONNER But do you, You've described a very complex system
and you've talked about some confusion, is there a possibility
that the flight director was confused about this last night?
KRANZ No, I doubt it. I believe that possibly the ond
results were 24 hours smarter, and we've accomplished some
further troubleshooting this afternoon, from both the spacecraft
standpoint as well as the ground command standpoint.
PAO Ok, we're going to take one last question from
Houston and then switch to the Kennedy Space Center, the
gentlemen on the third row.
UNKNOWN To simplify it to the bare bones, if l may, because
it's rather complicated. Of all the communication systems you
have got originally, what percentage of them are now out?
KRANZ
You'd have to break that down to each of the modes,
o
that question, I don't think can be appropriately answered. If I
looked at it as just the two single PM links without the
operating, what I'd say, without the sub-modes within those links,
I'd say fifty percent of the system was operating. If I take a
look at the submodes I could say twenty five percent is
operating. But if I add in the FM systems where I've got two
more, I could say 75 percent is operating. So, it's a question
you have to discretely bend the question you want back there.
UNKNOWN Ok, when you said that if you added the FM and the
UHF and everything, if you put all those together you've got
about twenty five percent out.
KRANZ I'd be inclined to say if considerable uplink and
downlink and the options that we got, it's about a twenty five
percent outage.
PAO Ok, we're going to switch now to Kennedy Space
Center, we'll come back to Houston, wrap up with a final few
questions.
DICK LEWIS Cnicago Sun Times I have a couple of brief
questions, Gene. One is, in the event you lose the downlink on
the PM you can, you're saying that, as we understand it, you can
continue the flight on the FM and the UHF voice backup, it that
correct?
KRANZ Yes, I can continue the flight in a safe fashion
until I find acceptable weather at a primary landing site to
deorbit. Now there may be othei nitigating circumstances, but
the basic intent with another failure in the PM system would be
to utilize the FM system until I could get to an acceptable
landing area and make sure that I have an orderly preparation for
the end of the mission.
DICK LEWIS My second question is based on some confusion about
the time when the, these partial transponder failures, we have
the impression that the number two downlink on the low power
downlink failed some time around orbit 55 or 57, is that correct;
failed at the same time?
KRANZ No, they fell at discretely different times, the
initial failure was transponder number two low power.
DICK LEWIS And that was followed some time around orbit 55 or
57 by number one, is that correct?
KRANZ Yes, that's correct. And I'll confirm these times
or at least the orbits, and I'll get the specific times in
through the commentator over in the Mission Control Center and
get you the specific times.
DICK LEWIS The reason for this question is that the commentary
overnight indicated that the number one transponder was operating
without any difficulty all night, that
transponder, that's in the commentary,
the commentary incorrect?
the crew shifted to that
is that correct? Or is
KRANZ I really don't have the commentary in front of me,
the status has not changed since orbit 55 and orbit 57, that is
that I think is the salient point of this discussion.
DICK LEWIS Orbit 55 and 57 was yesterday, was it not?
KRANZ Yes sir.
DICK LEWIS
Thank you.
PAO Ok, no more questions f rom. . ok , wa i t a minute we
have another question from KSC, would you identify yourself?
JOHN WOLMAN AP The weather is terrible out in New Mexico, you
see to whether or not the .landing weather is related to your
decision to press on to Monday?
KRANZ Say again please, I was distracted during your
question, could you give me that one please?
JOHN WOLMAN We understand that the landing weather is going to
be awful in New Mexico perhaps until Monday, I'm wondering
whether or not the decision to press on until Monday would bo a
radio problem after your people are saying most of the goals of
the mission have been accomplished, is related to the bad weather
in White Sands?
KRANZ Well, weather is always as we approach the end of
the mission is one of the principle elements of making a decision
when we want to terminate the mission, and again I indicate the
entire preparation for deorbit has to be an orderly process, the
crew, the controllers, everybody working the mission, including
the people for landing site have to be thinking about deorbit,
entry, landing, rollout and then the vehicle turnaround
activity. Weather is one of the principle considerations there,
overall systems status is another, crew status is another,
readiness of network and the ability of everybody to support
it. All those factors go into making your mission termination
decision. All things being equal, we intend to fly through the
planned mission duration. If any one of those parameters is
going to be favorable on one day and not favorable another, we
could come in a day early or maybe even go a day late, it's a
question you have to find that set of conditions which optimizes
the chances for successful conclusion of this mission. And
that's true of any mission we've ever flown.
KSC PAO
No additional questions from KSC.
JSC PAO Okay will we'll come to back to you, in the
mear while I've been passed a note from the control center which I
believe partially responds to one of your questions, which says,
flight director Neil Hutchinson was aware of the first
transponder problem. It happened on his shift, the second
problem with the transponder occurred on the following shift
which I assume is Mr. Holloway's shift.
PAO So lets take questions now gentlemen on the fourth
row there.
(GARBLE) To follow up the Cape's question. Had the weather
been okay for tommorrow at White Sands, would you have aborted
the mission today in view of the (garble) tommorrow in ideal
conditions at White Sands.
KRANZ Depends on what the weather would be the following
day. No I wouldn't plan on aborting the mission tommorrow,
unless the weather the following day would be unexceptable for
what I would say is a good mission termination.
JIMMY WALKER. . .ABC. . .Gene , I'm confused, in the transcript at
10:00 p.m. last night, the PAO says the vehicle is presently
configured using transponder number 1.
KRANZ That's very possible, that could have been part of
the troubleshooting process. Okay it depends upon, no it depends
upon when you snapshot these transcripts again I cannot
establish what I would say is the factual accuracy of all the
transcripts that are used in the mission. The situation from the
time that we had the initial problem, with the STDN Low mode on
transponder number 2 and then the subsequent is somewhere during
the troubleshooting process, we appartently had a failure of
transponder number I. That's situation has not changed in the
pass, well since rev 57, or orbit 57. Now we're a heck of a lot
smarter twenty four hours from now. (garble) we have
accomplished additional troubleshooting.
CARLOS BYARS. . .HOUSTON CHRONICLE . . .One technical thing of sorts
and that is I would like you to clarify this about the FM systems
which you have two is that correct, and how many UHF systems do
you have and are these separate distinct discrete systems?
KRANZ Yes we have a single UHF system. We have two FM
systems. And these are separate and distinct systems.
CARLOS BYARS The transcripts by the way from the change of shift
briefing indicate responces 180 degrees out from what we have
been hearing this afternoon and from you sir. Well that's change
of shift briefing sort of thing
mm
KRANZ Like I said. It's very easy to mix up transponder
number 1 and 2, cross strapping PM systems, FM systems. It's
tough. You see me referring frequently to 1 2 cross strap and
that kind of stuff up thc;re. It is tough, it is real tough. The
best guys and probably the most knowledgeable people in these
systems are the INCOS. That's why we have them specially
positioned in the Control Center for that purpose. Boy, that's a
tough position to train for.
PAUL RESER ASSOCIATED PRESS I hate to beat an ailing horse,
but given that the weather was pristen pure and perfect today,
tomorrow and in the foreseeable future at White Sands and given
that you have the radio conditions that you now have would you,
in fact, recommend the mission to continue as first planned?
KRANZ Okay, I would recommend the mission to continue.
PAUL RESER ASSOCIATED PRESS Okay, were there those who did
not so recommend in your discussions?
KRANZ No, we haven't had any, what'd I'd say is
significant discussions, relative to early mission termination to
date in the Control Center. Again, I identify, we're still
trying to find what the problem is. We're working very well with
very hard with the hardware. We would like to troubleshoot and
recover the full capability in the systems. We have not given up
that transponder yet and for all intense purposes, I believe, we
have met the intent of the mission rules.
CHUCK WOLFE KIKK RADIO Chuck Wolfe, KIKK Radio. The FM
system. Does that going to that kind of a system, does that slow
down the information coming in, cause you have to go to the
recorders? I mean, what's the turnaround difference between the
PM system and then going to the FM system?
KRANZ PM we'll be getting real time as it happens with
just momentary delays for downlink processing and data display.
The FM system, it's hard to define what the time delays could
be. It could be as short as a few minutes. For instance, you
could take a site pass, record the data during the early portion
of the site pass, dump it towards the tail end of the the site
pass, get it in the ground, play it in, you're talking in the
order of minutes there. So it would depend upon where we were in
the mission, what we doing at that time, what objectives, did the
crew have any problems, was there any troubleshooting and work,
that type stuff, which mode we would operate in. The most
efficient mode is to basically dump through an entire site
pass. If we have a problem with PM transponder we would probably
adjust that. But again, this is a procedure that we exercise
offly a lot in the Control Center.
PAO Any other questions? Vicky Leonard, ABC.
VICKY LEONARD ABC Hi, two things. One, I still don't quite
p
understand if there's a logic problem with number 1 and you don't
get the same thing leaving the system as you sent into it. How
you can still use it if there's a logic problem of getting
answers I mean that's really very basic. And the second thing
is, is it all of us and our imaginations thinking that this is a
critical situation and in fact, you never considered it a
critical thing to come home early about?
KRANZ Let me answer your question. Let me see if I can
remember the first one. You're talking about the logic problem,
first of all we are not using transponder number 1, we're using
transponder number 2, hi power. I'd have to go back to the exact
transcripts to figure out where we were during that period of
time and I honestly haven't had the time to do that. Secondly,
the mission rules as are stated talk about confirmed failures in
systems. We have still met the intent of the mission rules and
basically, the mission rules are for very discrete cases, Okay.
You don't, I mean if you tried to separate, for instance,
communications systems and write all the possible missions rules
for all the possible combinations of things that could happen,
you'd have a book that thick. The key thing is to identify
intent in mission rules, and basically, what we want in the
mission rules is duplex communications up, two communications
loops going up, two communications loops coming down. We have
met the intent of those rules in our current situation. We'd
like to recover additional redundancy. We don't feel it is
necessary to pursue that until we better understand what may have
caused the problem to occur.
PAO Does that answer your question?
LEONARD So, basically it was never critical then and you didn't
look at this problem and say we've got it and bring them home
right away.
KRANZ No. NO. No. No.
LEONARD Never that
KRANZ At no time. As I said before, whatever you're going
to do it has to be orderly, has to be well planned, everybody has
to think entry, get their mind adjusted to the entry process.
The whole team has to start moving along that direction and we
haven't done that at all. As you see today, the entry team's
flying shift.
PAO Craig Covalt, Aviation Week
CRAIG COVALT AVIATION WEEK Gene, all things being equal
Monday, what issues will you have to examine on entry with the
radio situations you have or the telemetry situations you have on
areas over Guam and just that a blackout.
KRANZ Retaining the full capabilities we've got right now
I don't see any hot issues. I believe, that in a precautionary
sense, we're going to make sure that the NAV state stays tuned
up, that the IMU alignments are virtually perfect. We're going
to make sure the fuel cells are tuned up and those kinds of
things. It's n;ore or less the housekeeping things.
PAO Any other questions? We have no other questions,
we're adjourned.
KRANZ Thank you. T hope I didn't confuse other people
further because clipping these l's, 2's, high, low, and that kind
of stuff I can't wait to see the transcript of this one.
END OF TAPE
pl6j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING J '26/82
Hello again, Change of shift briefing with flight
director Hal Draughon. And in the fervent hope that Gene Kranz's
lecture in COMM 101 settled all of the questions about the s-band
system. Let's move on to going over todays log out of Hal's
flight director log here. Hal.
DRAUGHON Okay I'll try to just give a brief recap of the
major activities that we accomplished today and then we entertain
any questions you might have. The first thing we did this
morning right after crew wakeup was change the computer
configuration onboard. In support of the planned RCS maneuver,
it was called a L2U burn, that means there was a left firing jet
on the number 2 manifold and there was a upfiring jet. The
objective of that test was to test the performance of one of the
RCS thrusters after it had been in a cold environment, the burn
duration, magnitude rather was 32 feet per second with
approximatly 20 foot per second in plane. In a positigrade
direction in order to change the orbit just a little bit, that
burn and everything about it went absolutely normal. Directly
after the RCS test maneuver, we activated the RMS, went over and
picked up the PDP package and for the next eight and a half hours
roughly today we operated with the PDP in a deployed mode. The .
activities we were persuing were first of all a B-field mount. I
didn't break these down by times but I could if anybody needs
them, then on the EMI search, which is an electromagnetic
radiation, checking that environment around the vehicle. There
are two types of those, one where we look specifically at those
known sources of the EMI, looking directly over a UHF antenna,
directly over tacan antenna, directly into one of the s-band
systems and after we've completed that, there's what's called a
generalized EMI search where we make just almost, like mapping
out of an antenna pattern, if you're familiar with that, and went
generally around the periphery of the pay load bay looking for,
and the objective of that is to be able to define to future uses
what the radiation patterns are in the bay that their packages
might be having to live with. After the EMI search, there was a
thing called a joint ops which was taking a PDP and putting it
into the path of the v-cap, the v-cap is the guy that accelerates
electrons and there are a couple of objectives associated with
that particular one. One of the instruments on the PDP can
detect the charged particles from the v-cap and we were trying to
map exactly what the paths were as these electrons were leaving
the spaceship and that path varies as a function of what the
magnetic field orientation Is that your in at a particular time
and that of course varies depending on whether you are In the
orbit. So we went through that, we went through eight sequences
in that particular set which were probably the most, from a
laymans point of view, the most exciting, the moat Interesting
set of things we did today. The first six of those were In an
RMS auto mode, we had predefined a set of points that we wanted
the RMS to take the. PDP and put It In an attitude and the
location, it would sequence it through those points, it would go
to one then pause, and then the crewman would take data for a
certain amount of time, hit a procede button, it would go along
to the next program step. After they had done that and those
were predefined before flight and by the scientific community
based on where they thought these particular streams of particles
would go. After that we did two manual searches, that the crew
had practiced, where they just take the arm and manually search
for the beam and they have a meter onboard that measures the
intensity in electron volts that their detectors are detecting.
And so they can tell when they have found the beam and when
they've gotten into it and they go out the other side, just by
the analog measurement their getting out of the instrument. And
they were quite successful in fact, I don't know what their
scaling of the units was, but in the automatic modes we were
getting readings of something like 40 and I know Gordo at one
time got up to size 72 and so he was doing a better job of
chasing after and finding where the beam was then they had
predicted in preflight and you'd expect that. He could adapt and
they would be a little off and it would move, he found also it
would move from one time to another it would be a bit further
down on the longeron. But the scientists were extremely pleased
with that particular set of data, and I think the PDP scientists
were all day long just jubilant with the amount, the quantity and
the quality of the data that they were getting. Follow that up
with a wake search which again is looking at the magnetic fields
surrounding the orbiter, again trying to define for future users
what the magnetic fields are that they're packages would be
riding in. Then we added in a test that had been dropped out,
first time it was dropped out was in flight two and then it was
dropped out from this flight two days ago just because of some
other problems that were incurred and we're getting behind the
time line. The RMS has a number of modes the most rudimentary
mode is a thing called backup and if any of you have seen the RMS
panel, and one right in the center of the bottom, there one
little extra panel that kind of looks segregated from the rest of
it, from all the meters and all the other digital readouts and
what not. And that is the backup controls, there is only three
control devices, it uses a different power source from the ship,
its a main B power, versus main A that all the other primary
modes use. It is not computor supported in any mode, the
crewman, its much like, in the spaceship in driving with the RCS
stuff which you think of as a direct mode. He's physically going
straight from his hand control out to the motors of each of the
joints. And we wanted to prove that it is possible for one of
the crewmen to manually stow the arm. We don't anticipate doing
a lot of extra, a lot of work, going out planning co do work in
the backup mode, that's mostly a save the arm kinda thing. But
he did a cradle in the backup mode and it went very well, in fact
he got it almost cradled and it had gone so well compared to the
amount of time that we had allowed it, and we really hadn't
allowed it but about 20 minutes, He took the thing back out
again and had Jack take pictures of him doing it all over
again. So that went very well and we were glad to get that
behind us, we would have rescheduled that for flight four had we
not. The crew generally today were, if you have been listening
to the air to ground, they're in much better spirits, they're
beginning to, its very evident by listening to the kinds of
little asides, if you know them, listening to the kinds of little
asides that they throw in, that they begin to quip with us,
little smart remarks, little jokes that they toss along. Gordo
got in one good one on Jack today. We were coming across Camp
Lejuene I believe, and Jack being a Marine he said he sees the
marine airbase down there and the marine airforce and Gordo says
yes I see both of them. So you can tell that when they start
that, you haven't been hearing much of that the previous days,
you can tell when they start that kind of thing they are feeling
a lot better. And its very evident there was absolutely no
indication in the latter part of today that there was any
fatigue. They did everything ^sked of them in the latter part of
the time line this afternoon without a single hitch. I don't
know of a single thing that the crew missed today. Right now the
vehicle is back in the cold sun attitude continuing the 80 hours
of nose sun thermal testing that we had planned to do. The orbit
right now is 126 by 134, that will decay down to some lesser
value. I could give you a wild yes, but I'm sure Terry or
someone could get you the right number if you need it. It will
decay a few miles from that by the end of the mission. Gene's
talked to you about the transponder problem that happened on the
shift prior to nine. What we did on my shift today with regard
to that particular test is that we did a little bit of rudimetary
testing on transponder number 1. We did not do an exhaustive
test of it, we had so much RMS activity today in days 3 and 5. I
think Neil has told you a couple of times days 3 and 5 were the
biggies for this flight. They were really just shoehorned full
with activity. And there wasn't much time to work in stuff. We
tried a couple of things and didn't learn anything useful from
them so we are about where we started as far as checking out the
transponders is concerned. The other failures I don't know if
you know about yet, the Ooddard, Goddard has, there are two tape
recorders defeated to the OSS-1 pallet data. They are called
the Goddard iDe : ^ne and the Goddard number two tape
recorders, tiil, r. indeed a redundent set of recorders.
Goddard number twu .ias failed, if nothing happens to number one
there will be no loss of data from the flight, so that is going
right along. The milestone they still have in front of them is
to get the top sun data. Most of the guys that have been running
to date, really have a lot of good data. The guys that need the
top sun attitude, the guys that have the sun sensors haven't had
hardly anything yet, because we just haven't been at the attitude
that they need. The N2 system you've been told about a small
leak that we saw show up yesterday or the day before, its started
and ran for a few hours, and then it stopped, it again yesterday
or yesterday morning I believe, it started again. It was leaking
early on our shift and we started a few procedures to try and
isolate the guy. The second configuration we tried stopped the
leak but it didn't uniquely tell us what location it was at. We
then tried one more configuration leading up to about an hour and
a half before we put the crew to bed. We think its into system
4
2, there is a system one and a system two that has tanks,
regulators, just a main stream of equipment lead and then another
redundant path exactly like the first one. System 2 it appears
is the one that has the leak. Its conceivable that, well we
haven't conclusely proven is that there isn't also a leak in the
other one. The leak rate is one that, it would not be a major
concern to us as far as flight duration is concerned. We put
them to bed on system one, because the leak rate is so small that
even if there is one, we could afford to feed it during the sleep
cycle and we'll get one more piece of data that way. The only
other thing that we worked on this particular shift is some of
the details, you know about the APU 3 problem during ascent, we
worked on defining some of the details of how we'll go about
checking out that APU. I talked about that briefly the last time
I was over here if you want to hear some more details about that,
we can go into that. The only other piece of hardware worth
mentioning I guess is the IMUs which are, only because they are
working so well. The last alignment that was scheduled for about
an hour and a half before sleep was just deleted. We just didn't
need it. It was just perfect. That's roughly a recap of today's
activity.
Okay identify yourself and then please wait for the
mike. Morton Dean, CBS.
MORTON DEAN .. .CBS .. .Gett ing back to the transponder issue, as
they used to say during Watergate, what did the astronauts know
and when did they know it? Did they know anything of the major
problem or not. We certainly didn't hear anything.
DRAUGHON No and COMM is one system that the astronauts,
either it works or it doesn't. And they have very limited
insight to it. We usually try to keep something on line thats
working and when we understand a failure, we'll summarized it to
them, but we generally, its not like the RC, the control system
or something where when they go to try and use it and it won't
work for them. We generally don't get into a lot of detail in
discussing COMM configuration or COMM problems until we can tell
them this particular piece of hardware is hard failed and we're
not to that place yet and we haven't briefed them in any detail
on that problem.
MORTON DEAN... When did you folks actually know that there was a
problem of three out of four, rather than one out of four parts
of the two transponders.
DRAUGHON I really don't know. It was known when I came on
ahift this morning that all of system one was having some
difficulty and the only thing that was really, and in fact I
think its still true, the only thing we knew for sure or think we
know for sure is that transponder two the low power mode, one of
its modes, we think we've done a through checkout on it and it is
broken and not recoverable. Transponder number 2 high power mode
is the one that we have been flying on all day today. The system
that you really don't know the status of yet is transponder 0
number one and its strings and the different ways you can hook it
up.
CARLOS BY ARS. . .HOUSTON CHRONCLK . . . Lets touch on the matter of
consumables for just a moment. You have been trying to stack up
enough excess that you could comfortably go another day without
cutting in to the 24 hours surplus that you're supposed to
have. How's that going.
DRAUGHON It's going quite well. We could fly three days
longer than the planned 10 days mission without a problem.
Front row, Associated Press here.
PAUL RAYBURN ASSOCIATED PRESS... Did I understand you correctly
to say you are not sure that there is not a leak in nitrogen
system number 1 and where was the leak that was reported the day
or two ago. Which system or the possible leak?
DRAUGHON The reason we're not sure is that when the leak was
first seen, the two systems are manifolded together. You've got
two tanks in system two and two in system one but those two pair
are manifolded together and while you were feeding that manifold
of four tanks into a regulator, it was leaking. And the
configurations that have been checked since then have not
uniquely isolated it down to just one of those systems. We kept
it all off and the leak stopped. So we know the leak is not in
either of the tanks sets. We know the leak is net downstream of
the last regulator. Its somewhere between the second valve from
the tank and the regulator. And there is a check valve right at
the main bulkhead where it goes into the pressurized vessel, into
the cabin. So its somewhere in that line. But whether or not
its, whether or not there's a complementry , if I had a blackboard
I could show you, I think it could tell you maybe you had one in
both but you just don't know until you finish this other test.
Are the leak that was suspected a day or two ago.
What did you know about where that one was.
DRAUGHON Not a great deal. It's the same leak. It's the
very same leak. Yes.
CRAIG COLVALT. . .AVIATION WEEK ...I'll take you up on your offer on
APU 3 checkout scenario and also while you're at it, I've been
sitting here all week wondering why you've got your elevons up so
high. You might tell me what I missed there on launch day to put
those up.
You mean after you saw the TV on orbit.
■ ' ■■ Yes. ' ' ' ' ■ ■
SPACECRAFT I was surprised too. And we didn't do it on r
purpose, its just where their modes take them and they're not
constrained to be any place so that's where they go. We do a
thing when we bring the system back up with hydraulic power on
them rather than just bring the hydraulics back on with the zero
command and slam the boards back to wings level. The first thing
it does as part of that start sequence is that the software goes
out and reads the feed, position feedbacks, and then sets the
output commands equal to the position feedbacks so that you crank
them up and they're there and then it slowly brings it back. So
the first thing that happens when you bring up the hydraulics is
that it will slowly bring everything back to trim.
You didn't get them up like that on STS-1 and 2 as
I recall.
DRAUGHON It varies. Sometimes you sit in the hanger,
sometimes one board will droop. And it just varies.
On the APU now.
DRAUGHON On the APU , the thing that we need to do there, the
uncertainty, we know the APU are on, no reason to doubt that the
APU will run. The uncertain thing about it is the cooling, if
the APU, if the water spray boiler that cools the lub oils and
the APU doesn't function correctly, that APU can be used
comfortably for about 10 minutes. In my mind we clearly need to
ascertain whether or not that boiler is going to work or not
prior to reentry. If I didn't find that out, the only sensible
thing to do would be to wait until about 80,000 feet and bring
that APU on and have it for landing, which is where most of that
activity is with the elevons. If you bring, if you say well its
going to work and you crank it prior to entry, you may just wind
up about MACH 15 or so having to turn that APU off. And then you
had it running when you didn't really need all that help. So we
do a flight control systems check out on orbit right now we're
planning to check out APU 3 during that flight controllers, use
it for the flight controllers systems checkout and we'll
accomplish two things at one time. We'll validate the APU
performance and we'll do the preflight on the aircraft like we'd
always do prior to reentry.
GEORGE ALEXANDER. . .LA TIMES... If this question was already asked
before, forgive me but I just got here. What scenario can you
devise that allows the high power setting on transponder 2 to
operate while knocking out low power number 2 and high and low
number 1? Some kind of path way has to be opened for number 2
high to keep on operating. What scenario..
DRAUGHON Its a complicated system and one that has a whole
bunch of serial boxes in it that has lots of redundent ways of
lashing together, nnd I really can't answer your question.
I. ..I'm sorry, there...
DRAUGHON I would be surprised if there is a single failure
that could exhibit the results that you just described. I don't
know of one but we have not done a complete checkout on Number 1
by any means.
But all the troubleshooting that's been done today
has' not'given you even a hint as to what the problem is?
DRAUGHON No. The testing we did today eliminated some
potential failure points. They did not check out. That
transponder is interfaced with one of the NSP's at all. You
know, there are several modes we never even got into and the
reason was we were doing so much work with the arm, we just
didn't want to impact the RMS work.
J Jules Bergman, ABC.
JULES BERGMAN ABC I have two questions. One, is there any
hope that either of the S-band transponders will come back
completely?
DRAUGHON There's hope Jules. I don't know, I can't quantify
it for you.
JULES BERGMAN Could it just be an anomaly is what I'm saying,
or is it a whole circuit that's gone.
DRAUGHON You really can't say. There's just not enough data
known. That system has a lot of different configurations you can
put it in and we have not looked at all of them.
JULES BERGMAN Aren't the TRW specialists here to do that?
DRAUGHON I don't know how many of the subcontractor are on
site. There are a number of specialists in E&D and in flight
operations that are quite familiar with that hardware, but they
need some time to put together a good rigorous check.
JULES BERGMAN And the second question is, will you lessen the
reentry angle because of the lost tiles?
DRAUGHON Absolutely not. We have looked at, with the stuff,
with the history of the tiles prior to flight 1 and then the
history on flight 1, and whatnot, we have spent a lot of time
looking at tile losses and we're quite familiar with where the
temperature profiles are and what can be done to shift entry.
You got to encounter the heating somewhere to get the drag to
reenter, so you got to take the heat, but there are some things
you can do to manipulate it. You can take heat off the body, for
instance, but if you do the elevons going to get hotter. You can
put heat at the back of the vehicle but you got to take it on the
front. But we have looked at all those for this flight, and with
the tile problems we know about and have finally concluded that
we plan to do nothing different. There is no requirement.
JULES BERGMAN ... Do I understand you correctly. You're saying
that if you lessen the reentry angle to 45 degrees from 43, for
example, that you're going to transfer the heating from the body
flap to the elevons.
DRAUGHON That's not the way you would do it, and you
wouldn't change the body attitude of the vehicle. What you would
do, you've got to keep the pitching moment right. You've got to
keep the same attitude alpha angle of attack for the vehicle.
What you've got to do is change a pitching moment. If you think
the body flap, which is normally down, has lost some thermal
protection, then you might say, well I'll fly it a little further
up, but if you do that, then something has got to keep i:he
pitching moment equal, so the elevons have to come down. The
body flap comes up, the elevons have got to come down. That
moment has got to be there. So all you do is you transfer the
heat that used to be going to the body flaps and they're going to
the elevons. It would be not a wise trade to begin with, because
we can enter with the body flap just about torn off the
vehicle. Thct's a fact. The elevons are they guy you've got to
have and the reason is not for the elevon control itself but also
the most critical control aspect of this vehicle right now still
is the lateral control, which the elevons give you lateral
control by differential elevons ailerons down low so you wouldn't
want to jeopardize the elevons to help the body flap. That has
all been looked at and the conclusion has already been made that
we will fly the same body flap schedule which is the name of that
game, where is the elevon going... the body flap going to be all
the way through entry. It does change. It's going to be the
nominal one that we're planning to fly.
ROBERT COLLIN. . .CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR... If you lost all comm,
could they use those little hand computers to come in?
DRAUGHON Yes. Yes, there arc adequate data onboard for the
crew to reenter using that computer. In addition, another thing
that we routinely do, of course, there's a vector already in
their vehicle, and we keep them appraised with the vector to nav
state that they have onboard at any given time. We let them know
continually how long that one is good onough to enter on.
ROBERT COLLIN... Are these little hand held things accurate enough
to actually get them down?
DRAUGHON Yes .
Carlos Byars...
DRAUGHON You won't, you may not get down where the runway
is, but you'll get down.
ROBERT COLLIN... Is that good enough.
-I ' ■
DRAUGHON If you can see it, you can (garble) to it I
guess. The main thing is to get down to where the seats work,
and then you get below deck and you hope there's a runway
there. But you know, you're talking about way out stuff. In the
routine maintenance of the thing, the way you worry about extra
reentry is, we give them things we call pad messages. They're
just listings of deorbit times and the site, which way the
initial bank angle is going to be, and the range. And a few
words about the weather. With those data and if they know that
their vectors still good, you can come down and you'll land
there. If you go, the reason we have the calculator and the
reason you use* that other mode is that there are times when you
can have some massive failures of a large hole in the cabin, you
just can't decide, well I'm going to reenter right now, crank up
the engines and come home. You've got to be, you have got to be
about 4,000 miles from where you want to land because that's the
way the vehicle works. That's the way entry guidance works.
It's going to fly that entry range so if you don't do the reentry
maneuver at the right time, when you get to the bottom, you | re
not where you want to bo. So, if you get a hole in the cabin and
you can't stand to wait to get around, say you were trying to
land at Edwards, if you can't stand to wait to get around to
about Yarragadee, about Australia, when you do the maneuver, then
you're not going to land in California. If the you do the
maneuver over the U.S., you're going to land back over at the
Indian Ocean some place. It's just the way the world turns, so
you like to have that, you've got to have that capability for the
hole in the cabin case, and catastrophic, real short, crisp
failures. But just for losing comm with the crew, they know how
to do that with the other data and land at a landing field.
, I'd like to ask you again on the communications
problem. You've done very little (garble) troubleshooting
today. Do you plan to get into that more heavily tomorrow with
making some of these cross connections and things and how far
will you try to go with that, or are you simply going to wait
until you get it back on the ground? Lets see...
DRAUGHON I would expect them, tomorrow is one of the lighter
flight days. In the morning, we've got on the shift that I've
got early in the morning, we've got quite a few additional test
manuvers checking out some short pulse firings of the engines
again. But in the latter part of the day, there is some free
time and some time could be made available and I know that the
engineering community are already looking and trying to define
useful and meaningful tests to run. If they do, they'll be
scheduled and they will be run.
Was that logic box included in the testing today?
DRAUGHON The GSUL?
, believe that's what it's called, I believe it's
iaiied'Wc'box and perhaps perform some routtn,...
. , n f \t- what that box does is, it's
DRAUGHON Ves . A portion of It. What tn Qn q£
one of the major components that does the c g Cnang ing
switching these things n g the chains together
which one is talking to which ones. p ^ting gsul wag
and those modes that we ; h ^Ked, yea, that p jfc ^ Qne
checked out today, bu it was not a exa^ fcQ u>
stateside pass. That s an we
.Okay.
OF LONDON ... I may have missed this. rd
DRAUGHON Okay. . I'll, try to ^^^^S" oblem with all
communication that is available, we ave se en_n P Unks
of the uplink modes, so we've got UHF an normally
and the digital command link going up. Everytni y
and the
have.
is that one digital uplink?
DRAUGHON TWO.
You've got both?
DRAUGHON Two , two ^nd dijltl.l ^1^"^ t^Eo^'Sn I i-
The part that is not validated, or t hat we g ^ fm signalg
the S-bands downlink and that s the P ^
that come down. It we were w * . fch f its PM downlink
transponder and found out that ^ r ^ b ° 0 \ ose the one that we
capabilities are gone and then we were ^ way tQ fly
are now working jn, there is s t pCM y data is still
this aircraft, and that is tne aigi tax fche tape
generated by the PCM units onboard _lt s still g g ^
Recorders and V^'d dump those r and dump it! It's kind of
links. So you could record dat a an d d ump it. ^ enough
clumsy and it's not what you d like to do, d Nort hrup,
to fly with if ?ii.y° u ;^ r t ^„:? question had to do with why
another day to land . ^ Your ot ne F is that we are saving
we're saving consumables, and the answer is ^
for that, just because °J*he weather .we t N0 rthrup
because of this comm system P^blem. The w ble) wea thec
that I looked at this »™ n i"2 t if wS had to land in we could, but
^Sli^S^ prediction for Monday is
that it will be quite acceptable.
.So the follow up on that is that if the weather
tomorrow and the next day were acceptable, you would prefer to
land early.
DRAUGHON No.
Because of the communications.
DRAUGHON I'm not sure that's true. That's the trade you'd
have to make, but it's not a black and white,...
Would you say that the weather is a factor in your
decision not to land early.
DRAUGHON All those things are a factor. Another factor is
that we have not gotten the guys that want it, all the top sun
data, any of that data, you know, there's a set of people that
are right in this bay that have accomplished essentially almost
nothing because they're all sun looking guys and we don't go to
top sun until the middle of tomorrow. So you have got to weigh
all of those things.
So this time, the data is the important...
DRAUGHON The data is important, the fact that we need the
test time on the vehicle, we need the top sun for a thermal test
that was also a thermal test attitude. The thermal guys need
that data, the scientists need that data, we want to see this
vehicle fly for a duration as long as it's safe. If we thought
we had to enter tomorrow, we could. Those winds are, they're 15
knots gusting to 25,... the report I saw, the last one I saw, and
we've got 2 runways there, we could find one that had an
acceptable crosswind component and land on it if we needed to.
Could you just give me just one percentage of the
communications available. Somebody said that you have 75%. Do
you think that's an accurate figure?
DRAUGHON I don't know how to quantify that. Yes, I guess so
as far as what the total capability of the vehicle used to be
functionally, as long as nothing else fails, it's doing
everything that it could ever do. It only gives me one PM
downlink at the time anyway. It's still doing that out of that
r.iie transponder that I have.
Thank you.
Paul Rayburn, AP.
PAUL RAYBURN ... AP ... A couple of communications questions. Is the
teletype that you use to send messages co the crew, is that
independent of the S-band UHF and FM systems and the other
question is, is that thing working in a downward direction as
well .
DRAUGHON No. It is not independent and it does not work in
a downlink. It works on the, it can work on either uplink S-band
frequencies. We have it set for S-band, what they call S-band
system 2, but we could put it on system 1 if we chose to.
PAUL RAYBURN ...I'm sorry. One more question. The delayed FM
downlink, could voice be recorded and sent down on that or only
digital information?
DRAUGHON The voice can also be recorded and routinely is.
Commentary on TV, for instance, you routinely see that.
TERRING LUSKY. . .CBC. . .what, if anything, can you tell us about
why these communications Eailures have occurred, and wnat can you
tell us about whether they might be fixable?
DRAUGHON I really can't tell you anything till I know what
they are and right now we honestly don't know what they are until
we've checked them out. The only way we could fix them would be
to lash these systems up and if you could find out which box in
each string is broken, this GSUL, what it does is restring
things, it puts them together in different segments and perhaps
you can put them together in a chain that now works by picking
one out of this link, one out of this one, and work your way
through it, but you can see that that's a fairly tedious thing to
sort out .
John Wilford, New York Tittos.
JOHN WILFORD. . .NEW YORK TIMES ... A question for Terry. Could you
shed some light on why until 3:10 when you made your
announcement, we were not told the full extent of this problem?
DRAUGHON Oh, I guess I could back into that thing we used to
use back in Apollo. That didn't happen on my shift, but we ran
the thing through the INCO and I checked with the flight director
on the current status of the S-band transponders and they all
blessed it and that's what I went with, because I was getting a
lot of heat from over here on what the current status was, so
that's what I went with and I had not read the transcript of the
earlier press conference where apparently it didn't really
surface that we had parts of the second transponder unusable.
At the morning press conference, it was understood,
and the transcript shows that transponder 1 was fully operable
and the high beam on transponder 2 was operable, but the low
frequency went out during the PDP, yesterday. So could you, I d
like to follow John's question, you know, could somebody here
establish when transponder 1 was unusuable and why we weren't
told.
DRAUGHON Well, I don't know if I can help Terry out or not,
I wasn't there either because I was off working on some other
things, working on the, you know I've been off shift for the last
3 shifts. But, I do know that if he was talking to the guys on
the console, I talked to one of them just before I left there,
because I figured you guys were going to be interested in this
topic. They were not then, and they still are not convinced that
that transponder is deep six'ed. They think that there's still
some numbered, number 1. Number 2, the one that we are now
riding on in high power mode. They believe that the other part
of that, the low power mode. They believe they have adequately
checked that out and that we're not going to get that back. But
the other one, transponder 1, they don't think that they have
adequately tested it enough to say that that guy's gone. And I
don't doubt that they didn't tell you that it was gone, They
■;now it's got problems, they just don't know what the extent is.
Rev 57
The communications people, instrumentations
communications people.
Kranze said that transponder number 1, apparently
failed completely, and he also said that they're not going to
troubleshoot it anymore. That on transponder number 2, that the
low power wasn't working yet, hard failure on the low power
because they operate in the high power.
DRAUGHON Of what you said there, I'm curious what you
interpreted Jean to say. I don't believe that he believes that
number 1 has failed completely. I think he does believe that low
power number 2 has failed completely. But we the indeed may
decide to checkout number I.
He said number 1 apparently failed, and he also
said that you would not troubleshoot it anymore, unless you had
further trouble .
DRAUGHON We're not going to troubleshoot it, certainly until
we give to the off line guys time to puzzle over what might the
potentials be and what's something smarter to do than that one
state side pass that I did which was fairly rudimentary. We
tried some major straight forward things, and they weren't
productive and that's the kind of thing that is not wise to
continue to just go in there and keep switching around in the box
that you know has a problem. You ought to think about it first.
Right next to you there.
I lost the end of your sentence when you were
talking about the weather sometime ago. The weather tomorrow and
the next day is adequate but not very good. Is that what I got,
gather you said?
DRAUGHON That's correct.
What are the preliminary forecasts like for Monday?
DRAUGHON For Monday, this morning, the last time I talked to
the weather folks was around ten. And the weather forecasts for
Monday were quite good.
CARLOS Back to this business on the radios. Genes'
response about not doing anymore troubleshooting. I had a
followup question to that as I recall. Was that they don't want
to monkey with that sucker because they might knock it all off.
DRAUGHON You could hurt it and right now it's not doing a
lot for you, so it's a question of how much you loose. But you
ought to understand what you're. One of Chris' from the Gemini
program, one of Chris' old axioms, when we were all learning how
to be flight controllers was, if you don't know what you're
doing, don't do anything. And that is still a pretty axiom that
we sometimes follow.
If it works don't fix it.
JOHN BIZNEY. . .RKO. . .Yeah, I wondered if you could just briefly
run down the major events in the cap tomorrow for us.
DRAUGHON With some help I can.
Radio guys that need overnight tape.
DRAUGHON There are some NAV base tests in the morning, I
believe those are checking out the ability to, for the long pull,
in a very preliminary staqe we're looking at perhaps using Tacm
units as a wav of doing on orbit navigation, position
determination*. We have some of that kind of activity planned in
the time line during this flight over various parts of the
country, not just U.S. There's some of that in the morning.
There are some pulse burns, where we do several short cycle burns
with a minimum, but a very specific time delay between the burns
trying to get some thermal soak back data on one of the
engines. It's one of the small engines, this one this morning
was one of the big engines. We finish up tomorrow to nose sun
activity, and as you recall, each time we finish up one of these
thermal attitudes, we always check the doors to see what that
long thermal stress did to the doors, that will be done about
midday tomorrow. After that we go directly into the top sun,
If
which in tho last thermal tost attitude that wo go to. When you
first go into top sun there's a sot of activities with the SUSIM,
which is one of the sun sensors, w! ire we try to very precisely
align it pointed at tho sun vector. And so we do that about 2 or
3 times prior to the crow going to sleep to make sure that guy is
going to got some good data during the crow's sleep perio.i. And
that's the major activity for tomorrow.
MIKE TONER. . .MIAMI HERALD .. .Gi von the sequence in which things
happen on the transponders. What do you think the possibilities
are of the- troubleshooting you were doing on number 2 caused the
apparent failure of trar^pondor number I?
I think that's not very likely at all.
Over here on the side by the patch panel.
Do you forsee time in tomorrow's schedule for a
transponder 1 test of any kind, and not tomorrow, when?
DRAUGHON I think that if a meaningful test can be developed
by the systems people, that are now looking at that thing, there
is time in the schedule to conduct the test, and it would
probably occur in tho latter part of tho day.
MORTON DEAN. . .CBS .. .Hope you'll excuse my befuddlement here, but
is it now stands, you're not sure whether number I is kaput.
DRAUGHON That is correct, we know it has problems, we don't
know if it's completely failed.
MORTON DEAN... And there may or may not be an attempt tomorrow to
bring it back on line if it is kaput, there may bo an attempt
tomorrow to bring it back on line.
DRAUGHON Yes. Only if you can develop a reasonable scenerio
that would support the evidence, the failure evidence that we've
seen today. And with that scenario that there's another way to
defeat that scenario, that you could get into another
configuration that could defeat the failure modes that might have
g.ven you the case you have today. If we could build a case like
that, then I think we could check that out.
If there are all these various ways of maintaining
communication between the ground and the spacecraft, why were the
ground rules written, and I know they can be stretched
somewhat. Why were they written to say that if you're minus one
complete transponder one and a half, it's time to bring the
spacecraft home. Why was it important, and it's not important
now. ;.
DRAUGHON No, the intent of the communication, or I can tell
what the intent of the flight rule is. The intent of the flight
rule is to, to not continue to fly past a convenient, if you've
. ■ If,
got a convenient place to terminate the mission. You should not
fly past there when your in a situation such that one more
failure can take away all your communications. The reason for
that is that it can determine attitude with IMU alignments and
those kinds of things but it doesn't do well in position. So,
and that's why we tell the guys how good their state vector is.
So, if you loose all your communications capability, you've lost
the ability to tell the crew their position. So, that's the real
intent, is don't fly, it's poor judgement to fly when you're one
failure away from the ability to toll the guys anything.
Aren't you at that point now?
DRAUGHON No you're not, you've got the UHF system, we've got
1 S-band system that works. And as far as getting data down to
even help them manage the vehicle, if we loose the PM link we've
got, we've got tape recorders which would bo just introduce a
little delay and that's \ooking at their systems.
You forsee anything that would bring the ship home
Saturday or Sunday.
DRAUGHON There's nothing known. There's no known problem
right now that has any potential for doing that. None at all.
JOHN WILFORD... What makes you think that number 1 may not really
be failed? Was there something about its behavior when it
failed, or something that you've boon noticing?
DRAUGHON No.
WILFORD. . .And by the same token, what makes you sure that number
2 is failed in its mode?
DRAUGHON I talked to the communications guy that was on
shift during part of that and he told me that he thought he had
done and exhaustive test of system 2, the low power mode. Ho
though it was a conclusive test. At the same time, the same
group of people feel that they have not done exhaustive and
conclusive tests on number 1. And there was nothing in the
failure mode that would make you think that it's really going to
be all right. Those indications are not there, it's just that
there are a lot of ways to lash that system up, and you need to
go check them out before you declare it failed.
You said that the science wasn't complete because
we haven't done the top sun. Except for that, if you did have to
come home early, would everybody else be satisfied with what they
got .
DRAUGHON The other major thing that you would loose is that
this flight was .also aimed at getting some thermal data in top
sun, where we're checking out the vehicle response itselt in top
sun. There happens to be, 1 believe, a 40 hour test in the next
17
flight too. So, it would ican that it's not tho end of the
world. And if you loose that, we certainly do want to get that
26 or so hours of top sun for the thermal test also.
Yos, but the rest of the OSS-1 pad is that fairly
Yes, I'm speaking for some other people now. But,
the quantity of the data that they have been getting and they way
they've been talking about it in and around t'le control center, I
think they have gotten a qroat deal of data.
And one technical question, could you explain very
quickly what you moan by a state vector.
DRAUGHON A state vector is a mathematical way of telling, of
defining a position and a velocity at a particular time. And
it's a way of defininq where something is in an orbit. You say
it's x, y and z location. It's delta x, y and z velocities and
at a particular time. It uniquely defines where you are and
which way you're going.
CARLOS BUYERS... If you were betting on the matter. Say something
substantial, like a cup of coffee. Which way would you go on the
matter of coming in early or coming in late?
DRAUGHON I think we'll land Monday.
BUYERS. . .Think you'll land Monday.
GEORGE ALEXANDER. . .Not to beat this in the ground, but just a
sequential quenchal questions. Where they using low power
number 2, in orbit 55 when it failed? And were they, did they
switch over to number I transponder in 57, when it failed? In
other words, how did you find out that these units had failed?
DRAUGHON I honestly don't know the answer to that. But we
don't routinely run in low powers. It's my understanding that we
don't routinely operate in a low power mode.
We had that you only use high power to punch
through the plasma sheath at ascent.
But it may be right.
DRAUGHON Terry can check cn that and got it back to you.
Okay. Isn't it true that you have effectively
overwritten the mision rules at this point?
DRAUGHON No, not yet.
You don ' t know.
DRAUGHON
We had a rule, give you an example. We had a rule
in Apollo that you would never, TLI was the translunar injection
move. It's a maneuver that took you out of Earth orbit to go to
the moon. We had a rule that said, that you would never do that
maneuver with the secondary coolant coop failed. We never flew a
flight where we checked out the secondary coolant loop before we
did TLI. There's some power failures that you could have deduced
if the pump was not going to run, that the loops going to run,
but you can't draw the conclusion that I'm going to go figure out
that there's a hole in that coolant, cause you didn't go look. I
mean there are things that if you knew they were wrong you
wouldn't operate with. But that doesn't mean you're going to
check everything that you can't stand to have go wrong with you.
At the moment you're saying you know that the
transponder number 1 is not working, but you don't know why. And
therefore, you're not prepared to declare it's not working. Is
this so?
DRAUGHON
it is .
right?
DRAUGHON
DRAUGHON
We know it's got a problem, but we don't know what
And that's the problem, that it's not working
We don't know to what extent it's not working.
Were is the gray in this?
The gray is that I'v still got a system that's
working and if it fails
Is that transponder number 1?
DRAUGHON
The one that we're runnin on now.
No, that's transponder number 2.
DRAUGHON We now have one that's working, it gives me every
bit of capability that I require. If it fails, then I'm forced
to go checkout this other guy, and it won't do anything for me.
Is that the guy that's sick.
DRAUGHON Yes, number 1 .
So you've got a sick guy, who doesn't work,
DRAUGHON Why don't you let me tell it. We're flying on
number 2, and it's doing every single thing, if I had 50 of them,
that I could get. It does everything that the vehicle
requires. If that one failed, and I went over and then checked
out number 1 and got zilch out of it. I can still safely land
this vehicle, by using the FM downlink and a tape recorder.
(7
I'm sure you can, but we're just looking at the
black and white here, without getting in to the semantics. What
you're saying, is that you've got a number 1 is not working, but
you don't know why?
DRAUGHON That is true.
Okay, so you're assuming that parts of it work.
DRAUGHON Yes.
And you* re operating on the working parts of number
2?
DRAUGHON That's correct.
So, in black and white terms if number 1 is not
working, you've already overwritten the rule.
DRAUGHON That's true and if the landing gears are flat, T
should have landed yesterday, but I don't know that.
John Getter Channel 11 over here. You got anymore
hor sebeating?
GETTER Just listening to the air to ground, Jack Lousma
said he'd had a wonderful day and suggested that he'd like to
stay up for another week there having a good time. Response from
capcom was, well check your messages tomorrow morning. How
serious consideration is being given to extending the mission
beyond its current Monday landing- regardless of the reason?
What are the odds it's going to be extended?
DRAUGHON John, I can't put odds on it. The only motivation
that I'm aware of towards making the mission longer is the
weather at Northrup. We're watching it very closely and the way
the patterns develop out there, you go for a period of time when
you can't predict what the weather's going to be and then one of
those pressure fronts comes across, then you know what it's going
to be for about 3 days. And then they stack up again and you
just don't know what's going to happen for awhile again until
another one pops out. We're managing the consumables to be able
to deal with that little quirk of nature that we have no contol
over. I have not heard anyone talk about extending it just to
bore some more holes in the sky.
Will you extend it simply to avoid making a landing
at your current secondary airport?
DRAUGHON If we thought we could get back to Northrup, yes.
Yes, we would certainly extend if Northrup were socked in and we
thought in a day we could get it back, we would certainly extend,
no doubt .
Okay, let's take a couple more and Hal has a short turnaround
before he goes on back there, and then one back by the patch
panel again .
If you have the rest of number 2 fails, and you
have to go back and look at number 1, I want to know how long you
think you can fly in that condition, and when will you start
really thinking about coming down?
DRAUGHON In that condition, you would immediately start
trying to come down to the first acceptable and reasonable
opportunity. We could fly for a very long time with the tape
recorder operation and FM mode. It's clumsy and it's far
different from what we are accustomed to working with, but its
very doable .
You would curtail some activity, you wouldn't go
around doing test maneuvers and doing engine burns, things that
require close coordination and making sure a lot of configuration
things are right. But you would take a relaxed entry
preparation, make sure you could get it into the entry
configuration correctly, get some tape recorded data and you
could do it very safely.
Would you be relaxed if you couldn't go into White
Sands? And were going to what, to KSC or Edwards concrete?
DRAUGHON It would not complicate that one oit. That's a
trajectory aspect, not a systems monitoring issue.
Okay back in the corner there.
You've been talking about coming back early, now
possibly coming back late.
DRAUGHON All I talked rbout was coming back early, you guys
were saying coming back late.
Does it have mostly to do with the weather.
DRAUGHON Yes, the only issue that's now a consideration in
picking the end of mission time in any discussions that I have
been involved in are Northrup weather. There's been no other
issue discussed .
Thank you very much.
pl7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 1
Okay, off going Flight Director Tommy Holloway has been on the
overnight sleep shift and he will now run through his log of the
overnight shift. Tommy.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, it's kind of short this morning. We put
the crew to bed last night on time. We talked to them about 30
minutes prior to their bedtime and for the last time for the
evening. They had an uneventful evening. No Alarms, no wakeups
that we know of, no reasons that we could see that they were
bothered during the evening. They woke up on time. Started off
to gat off t\\ a good 'It tart. Looked like they vere up and running
and readv to do their work thai we have outlined for them
tod \v. did modify the flight plan a little bit last evening
to y^iay some activities and cancel some minor activities to
a 1 1 Ox Jack and Gordo to do something they had requested to do.
They would like to put together 16 mm footage on the normal
activities of operAHng \n the spacecraft and they're about doing
t\\\\ piolv\V>ly At this very moment* Basically, it was a pretty
slow night last;, night the way that I Vpo thov stav for the rest
of thQ> tUg\W And with that, \\U entertain AUV questions.
MARK KRAMER CBS Mr. Holloway. \YHterday when we had the
morning brief ir\<l> I think everyone V'\ thia room walked out with
the distinct "aonn.a,t\on ov feeling \\v be\ief impionsion that
everything was wel\ vith the Vt Aniponders with the exception of
one downlink and the cour^ \>f cyer\t3, yesterday leMU us to
understand that your ^ti WA^ aware And that you w*Ke aware of
the failures that, W<iur r e<.\ aj\rt you to comment on
that and tell \% al\ ^\^det stood, ^hat happened.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY H*' VeU Know * nat ^ to a<M to Anv further
confusion that's goA» on in \he COSVm world, but let me answer
your question as I understand it and I really hope wo communicate
one with another. Last evening wh^t 1 told you is t didn't know
what the configuration was. I believed wo would be able to
recover all of the systems except the one that we knew was failed
and I had confidence that V© would be able to do so, but as the
testing went on through the day we found out that we had further
failures. Now what has happened to us in the last 36 hours is
that wd've gone through a shift of three different flight control
teams that have been troubleshooting some problems that were in
the spacecraft and the status at any one time was in terms of
what we thought we had or what we thought we might have and what
we knew and what we suspicioned was varying from team to team and
that no doubt has added to some confusion, but basically what I
intended to say and what I meant to say if I didn't say it was
that I thought at that time that we had one failure and that we
had a situation that we did not know totally what was going on in
some other areas and that the troublesnooting of the day would I
had confidence at that point would turn out to show that that was
the only failure that we had. So, I left yesterday morning with
the same impression you did and when I woke up and my wife
pl7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 2
informed me that we had a serious communication problem onboard
the orbiter based on what you folks had reported to the public, I
was very surprised.
PAUL FRANCH VOICE OF AMERICA Have you definitely allotted some
time today to troubleshoot on transponder number 1. There was
some question last night.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY No sir. We are not troubleshooting the
transponder today .
PIERS ACKERMAN LONDON TIMES If you're not troubleshooting
number one and it's I presume it's still not working, could you
outline which of the communication systems aboard are currently
working and who's decision was it to override the mission rules.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Mr. Kranz talked to you in detail about where he
thought the flight operations were was that yesterday and I'll
refer you back to those discussions and I think there's a
transcript of his press conference, but as far as we're at right
now we're operating on transponder number 2 in the high power
mode and it's working fine.
JOHN PINE What's the latest you've got on the weather situation
out in White Sands. Anything new since last night?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I received a briefing on the weather last
evening and at probably about 2:00 am. At that time, the weather
appeared to be marginal today for a landing at Northrup Strip
with the predictions being for good weather on Sunday, that's
tomorrow, and the reason I'm going slow is I lose track of
days. So tomorrow the weather is predicted to be good a Northrup
Strip and deteriorating sometime Monday afternoon for a front
coming through that will pass through and if it's typical
probably clear out by Tuesday. So, right now it looks like we
have quite a few options in terms of selecting a landing site
landing time.
WAYNE DOLCEFINO KTRH If the weather is going to deteriorate
Monday afternoon does tomorrow look like in your opinion a better
time to do it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Wei), If that was the only consideration is
picking the best time to do it tomorrow would be the best time,
based on information I had some four or five hours ago.
PIERS ACKERMAN LONDON TIMES If what other considerations do
you have at the moment then.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, you know, we have the consideration of
wanting to complete the flight and having the basic desire to
complete the flight and accomplish the activities that we have
pl7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 3
scheduled for the seven days we'd the management will decide
today probably this morning and if they'll deorbit tomorrow or
wait until Monday. And, frankly I'm not participating in those
processes. They decide to deorbit, I'll put the mechanism in
place this evening to bring it about tomorrow.
MARK KRAMER Two part question. Let me go back to the
transponders again because I'm really very interested in this.
The failures occurred I think if I recall on orbits 55 and 57.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We had some difficulties on those orbits and
it's hypothesized when the failures occurred, but I'm not sure
exactly when the failures occurred but we had problems
communicating on those revs.
MARK KRAMER But, was your shift unable to determine that at
all. I mean.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY My shift did not know what the status of the
communications was when I talked to you nor on rev 57. We
established an acceptable communications mode through transponder
number 2 in the high power mode, slept that way all night and we
came in this time a little later than this time, we came in
yesterday and told you that we had one failure and we thought
we'd be able to recover the rest of the system that was suspect.
MARK KRAMER Okay, the final question goes back to weather. Do
you have specifics on weather forecasts for Sunday Monday and
Tuesday. Visibility.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No I don't, I sure don't. I didn't bring that
with me and I can't recall it from memory.
PAUL RECER ASSOCIATED PRESS You said management may meet this
morning to determine whether or not they're going to land
tomorrow or Monday. Are they also considering the options of
extending the flight beyond Monday?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well, no sir. I don't think they are
considering that as an option at this point. Obviously as we
consider the weather as we approach Monday itself, we could elect
to extend if we thought Tuesday was a much better day than Monday
once having approached Monday. What I'm trying to say is that
we're not anticipating extending today deciding to extend today
for the sake of extending and making the space shuttle three a
day longer. But, as we approach the actual deorbit, if at the
planned end of mission if we determine at that point that in our
judgement it would be better to extend a day for the purpose of
achieving a better situation weather situation we have that
option and it might come to pass.
pl7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 4
PAUL RECER Okay, if in the event they decide to land tomorrow,
you know when during the day approximately the best opportunity
would be?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well as an operator I'd like to know around noon
today so that we could put some mechanisms in place to get
prepared this afternoon, get some preliminary stowage and work
done this afternoon and our management understands that
requirement and I hope they follow our desires to make the
decision by that time.
PAUL RECER Okay, well I'll go at it another way. What is the
best deorbit opportunity or when is the best deorbit opportunity
tomor row.
PAO Rev 101 isn't it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY I have that someplace. It's 24 hours early
than, approximately 24 hours earlier than rev 115 at the end of
mission.
PAO Be 16 revs , be 99 .
PAUL RECER And one other further thing, do you have any plans
to deorbit earlier than 1:15 on Monday in the event Monday is
selected in view of the deteriorating weather for the
afternoon. Do you have an opportunity earlier than that.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We have multiple opportunities each day to
deorbit as you already know and if the weather situation is
deteriorating and we believe that coming home one rev early can
solve that problem, we can certainly do that. Now, at this stage
of the game some two days ahead of the planned landing
opportunity by you would not entertain such a suggestion. You'd
wait till you get much closer before you think about those kinds
of activities. Those kind of decisions.
PAUL RECER Okay, and one final question. t do understand that
the management is meeting today on this and discussing the
landing times and days and therefore some conclusion should be
drawn by when, this afternoon?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes sir I would think so.
PINE REUTERS The impression I get now is that Northrup is it no
matter what. And Johnson and Kennedy, the concrete runways would
only be really a last resort. Not Johnson, I mean Kennedy and
Edwards concrete runways. Is that your impression as well.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well certainly we've always wanted to land at
either Northrup or Edwards back when we had the lake bed. Now
only having the Northrup Strip with a long runway we certainly
p!7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 5
would want to land at Northrup Strip as long as it's a reasonable
thing to do considering the weather conditions at Northrup
Strip. On the other hand, if the situation comes to pass that
Northrup Strip is unacceptable from the weather point of view, we
certainly have the capability to land at either KSC or Edwards on
the concrete and when the time comes to make that decision we can
do that .
PINE There's no priority on which of those two is number
2. They're both equal.
TOMMY HOLLOW AY I think in most people's judgement, the minds
that would be involved in that sort of a decision, that's
absolutely correct. There are considerations on both counts and
based on the situation at the time and the weather at each site
and so on and so forth, it could go either way should we not be
able to deorbit at Northrup Strip.
RON OGGLE ABC In terms of the lake bed itself is Edwards a
viable option on the dirt.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No sir I don't think so. The last report I had
tne lake bed was 4 to 6 weeks away from being suitable to land an
orbi ter on it.
MARK KRAMER If you decided to come back at a given time, let's
say the planned end of mission time which I think is about 2:27
Eastern Time, 1:27 here, what's the latest point at which you
could a chop a revolution off that. Could you do that as early
or as late as 6 hours prior to that time, or would you have to
make such a decision 12 hours prior to that time or when.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY We'd certainly prepare, prefer to make a
decision 12 hours ahead of time but, we could make a decision to
come home a orbit late in the order of say 6 hours ahead of deal.
MARK KRAMER Would you say that's the deadline.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Unless it was an emergency situation, that's
about correct.
MARK KRAMER So, let me understand something, I think you said
that you would want to know that is, the flight controllers would
like to know 24 hours before landing that you're going to land
and the crew would start making preparations approximately 12
hours before, that is before they went to bed and the cutoff for
change of 1 rev would be say 6 hours prior to it.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes.
WAYNE DOLCEFINO KTRH Tommy, can you explain this last thermal
maneuver we're going to be doing this afternoon, top to sun
pl7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 6
basically what that's intended to do. Just in general terms.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Well the top sun we're going to spend the day
top to sun, we're going to go top sun this afternoon and be there
all night tonight and all day tomorrow. There are really
probably 3 basic reasons we want to go top sun. First of all to
see the transition thermal transition between the nose sun
thermal condition after having approximately 80 hours in that
attitude, and watch the orbiter react to having gone from one
extreme to the other. The second reason is that we want to warm
the top of the vehicle and close the payload bay doors tomorrow
afternoon and see what the deflections are in the hot part as far
as the doors arc concerned in the hot case. We've already had
some experience in the cold case on a previous attempt after of
closing the doors after the tail sun exercise. The third reason
is that there is experiments onboard that like to look at the sun
and they'll get their opportunity to operate this evening and
tomorrow.
PIERS ACKERMAN LONDON TIMES Could you tell us what the
modifications to todays schedule will be. Briefly run through
todays operation. Thank you.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Okay the modifications in terms of general
things are very small. The plan is basically to do what was
scheduled. We did make some delay some activities this morning
to give Jack and Gordo another hour to do their 16 mm photography
production that I spoke of earlier. But, today basically we're
doing some additional some more propulsion testing. We're going
to fire some the little vernier thruster at two different times
after having let it operate for a period of time without any
firing and see how it reacts and how it soaks back. That's about
4 hours from now. The first one, the second one is about 6 hours
from now. Also, we've reinstated this afternoon in a period of
time that was very relaxed from the standpoint of crew schedule,
we've reinstated a cold OMS engine restart burn that was not
performed yesterday. In addition to that we are currently
planning to close the payload bay doors around noon and determine
how they operate and what the thermal deflections of the doors
are after having spent this 80 hours in top sun. I might add
that we're debating on whether we really want to close those
doors or not and it might it's possible that we'll cancel those
that door closing before it occurs.
MARK KRAMER I think Hal Draughon last night mentioned a flight
control system check to be performed at some undetermined time or
unmentioned time which would involve a checkout of APU 3. Can
you talk a little bit about that. Does that call for firing up
the APU and then shutting It down in space.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY In a planned in the preflight plan, we had
planned to do what we call a flight control system checkout about
pl7j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 6:30 am DATE 3/27/82 PAGE 7
5 hours prior to deorbit in which an APU is fired up if to use
your term, and used to cycle elevons and put a load on the system
to see if we have some failures that we want to checkout prior to
deorbit and in the aerosurface amplifiers. That has been in
place and in fact has been done on all of the orbiter flights to
date. The change that Harold talked to you about is to allow
that APU that we use to power the hydraulics for that test to run
a few minutes longer like 8 to 10 minutes, instead of 4 to 5
minutes and allow it to heat up like it did in ascent, and at
about 6 or 8 minutes, it would be expected to get up to the 250
to 260 degrees at which time it requires cooling and the water
spray boiler if it's working correctly will come on cool the APU
and the temperature will stay at 250 degrees. If it doesn't
cool, we'll switch to the backup controller on that water spray
boiler to see if the backup controller works and if it doesn't
work we will then know that the APU water spray boiler has failed
and would overheat if we powered it up early in entry. And
Harold at that time would exercise an option to delay powering
that APU until close to landing just prior to TAME and at that
time these APUs will run about 6 or 8 minutes without any cooling
as we demonstrated during launch. We shut it down at about 7 3/4
minutes or maybe 8 minutes to ascent. So, that's basically what
he was talking to you about and we expect to do that in the
afternoon of Sunday afternoon, flight day 7.
PAO Okay thank you very much.
END OF TAPE
pl8j HOLLOW AY CIIANGK OF SHIFT BRIKPING 2 PM 03/27/82 PACK 1
TOM HOLLOW AY Good afternoon. Welcome to the change of shift
briefing with flight director Harold Draughon. Let Harold begin
with a statement about his shift and then we'll invite
questions. Harold.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Okay, our shift today was as normal as the one
yesterday. A brief summary of events early this morning. The
first major objective was a test bearing on one of the vernier
RCS engines that was a what's called L'SD, it was a left vernier
manifold r > downfiring jet and it involved a series of pulses of
that engine in this particular cold attitude. We have to keep
that jet and the surrounding structure cool. We are now
operating in a configuration that uses the right hand OMS pod
jets and the nose iets and for attitude control we're firing nose
jets even to give any thermal soak back or thermal heat into that
region, trying to keep it real cold. That we have executed it
correctly and we'll have to wail until after the flight to learn
what we will about how the adequacy of the models of this thermal
group have in predicting those kind of temperatures, which is
really the intent of the test. There have been a variety of
science objectives, the normal timeline to if you've got copies
of the CAPs we have been doing just exactly what was planned
there so I think there was some VCAP visual beam search which was
the electron emitter firing up above the bay and this particular
one yesterday I discussed with you taking the PDP with the RMS
and trying to ascertain where the heam was. Today, the objective
was to, in addition to creating a charge on the vehicle, the
other objective was to have the crew look out and see if they
could actually see the beam the electrons as they stream out.
They could not on one particular pass they oven turned out the
lights in the cabin to help them the best they could and they
couldn't they never reported any sightings. And one of the tests
that was done pref light in one of the vacuum chambers they had
that particular instrument operating and they could see a glow
from the experiment. Obviously, the difference is between the
chamber pressure and a perfect vacuum. We've done several KF.VT
samples under those the last one was blood cells, the last one
before I came off shift. The crew volunteered an extra TV pass
about mid morning and they put up the bees again and we got
another good show of that. In general, there seemed to be a
little less activity until you stimulated them and there was the
first time they put them up. I think Jack commented that more of
them tend to stay around the sides of the container now and just
if there is any adaptation going on they've just learned to quit
trying to fight the conditions. It was a very interesting show
and then they gave us another scheduled TV pass at that showed
them at work in the forward crew station. The IKCM has been
operating today and that operation has gone very normal. That
took it up to the handover, right now Neil's has the orbit team
on and they are we're just finishing up that nose sun thermal
test that we've been in roughly 90 hours. At the end of it as
all the other thermal attitude test attitudes they're
right now fixing to try cycling the payload bay floors. At the
end of the door cycle there is a rescheduling of the OMS burn
that we had yesterday afternoon. We've that particular burn is a
cold engine cold engine test and we wanted to get the engine very
cold, burn it for a short period of time, very short duration
burn, wait a few minutes, I think it was 2 minutes, and do
another burn. We didn't have the thing as cold as we wanted to
get it yesterday. The thermal environment was just a little more
benign than we had anticipated and we were hoping to get it
colder. It looked like the thing has reached equilibrium and we
weren't going to get it any colder so we went ahead and put it
back in this morning, scheduled it back into the timeline. So
that is scheduled to occur in a couple hours. After the test
burn there are some one of the solar experiments, the SUSIM, is
scheduled to get some alignments and they'll be doing that just
prior to going into the sleep period. Some interesting things
from the shift, the PDP has a mass spectrometer on it, actually
could detect the pressure change when we did one of the scheduled
water dumps today which was interesting. The I've already
mentioned we didn't have any luck with the crew looking for the
VCAP visual beam. We had the crew reported during their last
meal period, I think you've all seen these little accord i an
looking beverage containers where they've got dried powder and
they just add water to them and it blows them up, shake them up,
and you've got some cherry coolade or grape coolado or whatever
you like. They've had three of those guys fail they told us.
After the third one failed we didn't know they never mentioned
the first two but it's a little mess of a cleanup job. We'll be
looking at some way to improve the stiffness. They said all
three of them had failed in the same area, that's up near the
neck but they didn't go into any details. And we didn't offer
them any help in suggested ways to clean the stuff up. If they
coped with that problem twice before I'm sure they'd figured out
a way to cope with it. The SUSIM experiment which will be
activated which will bo aligned just prior to sleep period
tonight has had a malfunction in it. It's designed to look at
several at a frequency band at a wavelength band when viewing the
sun. The unit that causes the gradient to sweep through the
various wavelengths is not functioning at the present time and
therefore, it's stuck looking at one particular wavelength and I
don't remember which I don't remember the frequency it's
looking at. So those folks will be trying to determine if
there's any troubleshooting we can do of that. There's not a
great deal that I'm aware of that you can do with that particular
instrument but those folks will be dealing with that and deciding
what else they can do with that particular instrument. The
weather at Northrup is good for Monday. At the present time wo
have every intention of having the end of mission this coming
Monday at the nominal rev. The weather out there as of an hour
ago was the forecast was 25,000 feet scattered, another layer at
12,000 foot and scattered, visibility is 7 plus which is they
don't define how good it is beyond, that just moans you get good
visibility, and the gusts are quite low in the morning and go to
about 18 knots up to 18 knots In the afternoon. That varies
daily. The touchdown times central standard it's 1:27, at
Northrup it'll be one hour different 12:27, if you'd like to deal
with MKT it's 7 days 3 hours 27 minutes and 14 seconds. And if
you'd like it in GMT it's day 88 19 27 14. And with that I'll
take any questions.
TOM HOLLOWAY Is that is there an OMS burn figured in that
landing time. We decided
HAROLD DRAUGHON That particular OMS burn is it is but it
doesn't affect that. The attitude for that OMS burn is going to
be directed out of plane. So it won't affect the ephemeris.
TOM HOLLOW AY Yes sir, Wayne Dulsopheno, in the back seat
there please .
WAYNE DULSOPHENO Any change in the transponder situation and
also it sounded like one of the guys has lost a transmitter. I
think it went from B to C transmitter. Is that any big deal, or
is there a backup?
HAROLD DRAUGHON No there are I believe there are three. There
are you know that we built a new v;ireless headsets and that's
what broke. There's an A, B and a C. And the one that Jack was
wearing malfunctioned and he took it off and the problem he had
with it was it wouldn't transmit. He was still receiving. So he
just went and put the spare on. There's been no change in the S-
band s i tuat ion .
TOM HOLLOWAY Mark Cramer, please. And if I neglect to call on
you by name, please give mo your name and affiliation.
MARK CRAMER CBS Regarding the landing. I understand that
there's a forecast for winds aloft substantial speeds of 100
knots and from a westerly direction. Do you know has anyone
given any thought whether or not the approach will be done with a
right hand turn or left hand turn into 17.
HAROLD DRAUGHON We've given quite a bit of thought to that.
The general rule that we've worked out with Jack in simulations
prior to flight were the place that's most Interesting is between
20,000 feet and about 50,000 feet and if the trailing wind if you
have a tail wind coming into the HAC, the place that you actually
get onto the HAC circle, if that's bigger than roughly 70 or 80
knots, and the runway you're going to has a turn angle on that
circle bigger than 270 degrees then in trying to make that
approach a left hand turn approach then we'll reverse it and take
the short way around the hack and go to a right hand turn. The
reason is that on a long turn angle if you're, alright I'm going
to have to use my hands guys sorry about that, if you've got if
you're trying to come into a circle here and land on the runway
then you come in and counter it, fly around down here. If you've
got a large headwind tall end coming in this way, if you
turn it tends to blow you off the circle and then you get way
out. If you get too far out you can't come back. You can come
back but you never get all the way back.
MARK CRAMER CBS I guess I didn't understand the answer. Is it a
left hand turn or a right hand turn?
HAROLD DRAUGHON It depends on the winds.
MARK CRAMER CBS Well, if the winds are as they are today you
have he's flying essentially due east, is he not? So he would
have a 270 degree turn to make.
HAROLD DRAUGHON He's flying due east but again we prefer to
make a left hand turn so the commander has the best view out his
window. If there're tail winds in that altitude band I quoted
you are not excessive we will do that. We'll make a left hand
turn. If those commonly called jet stream winds are higher up
above say 80 knots and we're going to a runway that you have to
fly a long ways around the hack to get to and that's a function
of the surface when it's another whole discussion. If you go
into a runway where you have to fly a long ways around the hack
then you go right hand turn if you've got excessive tail winds.
It's I can try to make it clear for you.
TOM HOLLOW AY John Wil ford
JOHN WILFORD Have the crew been informed of the Monday
decision? Do you still hold an option for Tuesday landing? And
were there any other considerations besides the weather when you
were looking into the idea of landing on Sunday?
HAROLD DRAUGHON The crew has only been we've given item passing
comment the weather looks good for Monday and I'm sure they've
encurred for that. That's when we intend to have the end of
mission. We have given them no word to indicate that we were
looking at a shorter or a longer mission. So there's no need to
tell them we've reanchored on Monday because we really as far as
they're concerned we've never left there. Sunday, the weather
forecast if anything is slightly better than is Monday, but
Monday is a perfect fix up and we plan to get to the
nominal end of mission.
JOHN WILFORD My point was, is there anything else in your
consideration for an early landing?
HAROLD DRAUGHON No.
JOHN WILFORD No problems with the spacecraft?
HAROLD DRAUGHON If there were then we'd come down Sunday because
the weather is indeed better.
TOM HOLLOW AY Yes sir, your name is?
JOHN VAN CHICAGO TRIBUNE John Van with the Chicago Tribune. In
the course of making your landing on Monday, how flexible are you
with relationship to the winds and the idea that you'd like to
get a crosswind landing? Might you come in a bit earlier if it
looked like you could get a decent crosswind? Do you have that
capability? What is the what are the parameters in this?
HAROLD DR AUG HON We have the ability to come in on several
revs. The way the winds behave at Northrup, what they tend to do
is between 10 and 12:30 they tend to grow and in the morning they
tend to very calm and in the afternoon they tend to get a little
higher than what we'd prefer to land with. In the morning
they're on the order of 5 to 7 knots. After 1 or 2, well after 2
o'clock or so they on a mean wind is 22, 24 knots and sometimes
higher than that. We can the landing opportunities that we have
we've got three good revs that are in that general time frame.
The one that we're anchored on which is the same rev that we
would have come in on to Edwards is almost an equal split and it
would we obviously didn't plan it that way statistics just came
out that way once we left Edwards and went to Northrup. You have
a low probability of having a very benign wind which would be
early a.m. We have also have a fairly low probability of having
one of these excessive 20, 25 mile knot winds in the afternoon
landing at about 12:30 which is. So we have a fair possibility
of getting what we would most like to get v/hich is a crosswind
landing. We'd like to get a crosswind landing with a magnitude
of between 10 and 15 knots. If it's less than that then we don't
if it's significantly less than about a 10 knot crosswind we
don't think it's a very good test. If it's much bigger than 15
knots then we'd rather not do that the first time out. So we
think we're at the right place on the right road.
JOHN VAN Rut what I was getting at, on Monday morning when you
can actually see what the wind is doing would you be flexible
enought to say we'd like you to come in a rev early or a rev late
if indeed it looked like you'd get the optimal condition then?
HAROLD DRAUGHON On Monday morning the winds are going to be 5
knots like they are every morning. And I won't know a couple of
hours before entry as far as late changes the latest and you can
comfortably do it. You can comfortably change your landing rev
easily with almost no sweat down to 6 hours before entry. It's
almost no impact to do that.
TOM "OLLOWAY (garble) Marcia, we'll get way in the back there
nex way back .
WALTER BAGGERS KOITERS Walter Baggers from Roiters. Can you
give us some MET time frame for D orbit and entry and blackout
and things like that? Because we don't have the timeline now
that is accurate.
HAROLD DRAUGHON I wish I brought one with me. I believe it's 30
minutos between deorbit and it's 30 minutes and 1/2 between entry
interface which is 200,000 feet and touchdown. And it's 29.4
minutes between deorbit ignition and entry interface and if you
add those two together you get within a 1/2 minute of an hour.
TOM HOLLOW AY Yes sir. Would you wait for the mike ple UOCi
about the question about the
TOM HOLLOWAY Pardon me for interrupting again, but thank you.
Question that broods here is when you speak of a
cross wind, do you mean quartering crosswind or 90 degrees right
over the wind over the wing, define crosswind for us, what.
HAROLD DRAUGHON The criteria that I stated which is greater than
10 but not greater than 15 is a perpendicular component. We
access it by resolving it to a perpendicular component and if
it's 90, it's a 90 degree component in that magnitude.
TOM HOLLOWAY Carlos Byers
CARLOS BYERS We go back and plow a little of the old ground for
a moment. Couple of questions. One, have you done anymore
testing, troubleshooting, what have you with the communications
systems. Secondly, have the crew done anything or anything as
far as the space potty is concerned.
HAROLD DRAUGHON The answer is no to both questions. We have
done no troubleshooting on the S-band system and don't plan to
unless we have a problem with the one we're on and they have done
nothing to my knowledge to the waste control system.
TOM HOLLOWAY George Alexander. Marcia, would you find Dave
Dooley and we'll get him next.
GEORGE ALEXANDER You said something about the IECM. It was
turned on. You can operate that package without removing it from
the
HAROLD DRAUGHON Oh yes, yes it has other modes where it's
looking for contamination right there in the bay and they have
had it operating in that manner.
GEORGE ALEXANDER The arm is cradled and it's going to remain
that way?
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yes.
GEORGE ALEXANDER And the final thing, is I just didn't hear you
say, the PDP MASS SPEC did detect change in something during
water dump. I just didn't hear what you had said.
HAROLD DRAUGHON You can correlate and I'm talking about a
scientist's data here, I believe you can collate the number of
detections that they're getting on ionized particles to
pressure. So by virture of the count they're seeing on that
instrument you can deduce what the pressure must be.
Dave Dooley, then after this question we'll go to
Kennedy.
DAVE DOOLEY HUNTSVILLE TIMES What is the situation on
consumables right now and I arrived a little bit late I believe
when I came in here saying they had finished up the test runs on
the EEVT
HAROLD DRAUGHON They haven't finished them. There is one more
scheduled for this afternoon that I know of. I don't know if
there are any scheduled for tomorrow or not. I know there's one
more this afternoon. Consumables, we have roughly nominal into
mission plus three days capability left. I expect it's net been
decided yet, but I would expect that some of the systems like an
extra GPC and some of the heaters might be turned on tonight in
preparation for the sleep period just because we've got a good
enough handle on the weather now that we don't need as or don't
wish to keep this big option on extending the mission should the
weather force us into it.
KENNEDY
DICK LEWIS Chicago Sun Times I have two short questions. If
it's decided to take advantage of the lighter morning winds, what
rev would you come in on.
HAROLD DRAUGHON We would not, I don't think it is reasonable to
assume that we would entertain coming in any earlier than one rev
early.
DICK LEWIS The flight is extended about close to a thousand
miles coming into White Sands. Is there any difficulty coming
over the mountains as this vehicle descends. Air drafts,
unsettled atmosphere and so on and do you fly over any cities.
HAROLD DRAUGHON They do fly close to a couple of cities at high
mach numbers if you're thinking about the breaking the sound
barrier, but we're at a high enough altitude we have looked at
all those kind of things and we're at a high enough altitude that
we don't think there is any concern; as far as the weather in
those vicinity of the mountains that the weather is there that's
where thunderstorms tend to stack up but again for the same
reason we are so high when we come across that mountain ridge to
the northwest that it's all well below you and not an issue.
There was a ground track that we had availble at
Kennedy I know I pasted it on the wall myself a week ago and It's
probably still around there somewhere. I'll show you where...
DICK LEWIS The only trouble is you can't read it.
HARRY ROSENTHAL Associated Press We missed the first 10
minutes or so of this briefing and you may have covered this
before, you had a very ambitious schedule of experiments and
tasks for the spacecraft, can you sum up just how murti of it
you've accomplished. How successful you were at it.
HAROLD DRA'IGHON 1 think it's been it's really has been
extremely successful. It would be hard for us to put a
percentage basis on it. There was a test or so that didn't get
done on the early RMS checkout. We went back yesterday and
picked up one of those on my shift which was cradling the RMS in
the backup mode. That went 100 percent. I'm not sure, just
because I didn't pull that shift, how much of the loaded arm and
RCS system got accomplished. I know that they got a significant
amount of it. Whether or not they got it all I just don't
know. As far as the science is concerned, I know that the folks
that are not the top sun oriented scientists have gotten all or
more than they ever hoped for. And it's too early to speak for
the other guys. We do know that the SUSIM is going to have some
reduction because it's got this failure and without talking to
him directly, I couldn't quantify that for you.
HARRY ROSENTHAL And another question, should you decide to
come home an orbit early, can you describe to us in layman's
terms how you do that.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yes, you do it just like the other just like
you do for the nominal rev. You just start hour and a half
early. The burn will occur a little more to the west of
Yarragadee, Australia, the only thing that you lose out of that
is we have a pass a station acquisition after the deorbit
maneuver over Guam on a nominal rev. You come in a rev early the
ground track happens to not fly over Guam so you would lose
that. That is not a mandatory requirement. It's nice to have
it's a nice to have feature that you can check the vehicles
configuration and give the crew an extra helping hand there just
before entry. It's nice to have. If I needed to come in a rev
early because of the winds were building too quickly at Northrup
and I would certainly exercise that option.
JOHNSON
MARK KRAMER On that same subject I want to make sure I
understand this. At landing -6 hours you could say let's come in
one rev early and the crew has enough spare time to lose that 90
:.v minutes .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes. If you know it, if you see it coming and
know it ahead of time, we would probably get the crew up a half
hour 45 minutes early, but we normally consider deorbit
preparation to begin at about deorbit -6 hours TIG -6 hours.
Ignition -6 hours. And there is time in there, we have practiced
that, we get into simulations where they'll routinely do things
give you leaking propellant tanks and things where you just can'r
stay on orbit and you try to accelerate your preparation and we
can handle that part readily.
JAMES WILKINSON BBC Can you describe very briefly again those
times you gave for deorbit burn and interface and so on,
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Okay. The touchdown time is Central Standard
Time for that is 1:27 at Northrup that's an hour earlier 12:27.
The time that your into sensible atmosphere which is something
ya'll hear us talk about quite a bit entry interface, is roughly
30 minutes. Before that the deorbit ignition itself the burn is
another 30 minutes in front of that. And there is a half a
minute error on both of those margins. So it's an hour between
TIG and landing.
JAMES WILKINSON And the communications blackout is when. At
interface or?
TOMMY HOLLOWAY It's a few mach numbers below that. It's you'll
lose commu ... actually you lose communication because you lose
Guam and then entry interface is just past there. Then you go
into black out and at around mach 26 or so and come back out
around mach 16 .
JOHN VAN Chicago Tribune Just one other thing that we've
heard about the last few days. What about the leak with the
nitrogen is that still leaking, what's the status.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No, we found that rascal finally. It's in PCS
system pressur i zation system number 2 and we can we have a way of
connecting either the system 1 tanks or system 2 tanks to the
other pressur i zat ion system and we can completely isolate that
leg and not have to feed that leak. The magnitude of the leak,
we were to have a failure in the other system now like a
regulator or something, the magnitude of that leak is one that in
general could feed could afford to feed if we had to. But, we
will not go back to that system unless we need to.
PETER ADAMS Is the plan still for a Gordo to land 200 feet. Is
there any change in the way the astronauts will be coming in due
to the S band problems or anything.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY No there's no correlation at all.
TONY MELASKI CBC Two questions, firstly on the TV pass of the
meal time routine, do you happen to know what they were eating
and secondly we've heard only general comments saying that the
RMS tests were fine. Could you characterize the performance of
the RMS to date in this mission .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY The RMS performance was spectacular. The crew
was very jubilant over it and as were we. That TV pass we had
day before yesterday when they had one of the forward bulkhead
10
cameras on the a,, as It ""-J. ^Cr""
£ r "sris ssr^ss.issM^irun,!' ^ryU is
awfully happy with it.
. , .meal time .
TOMMY HOLLOWAY > "
was orange juice, one
of those squeeze, no I'm sorry grape juice.
is it a nauseating looking plastic pouch with
purple ....
it . W eil wait a minute I don't know
TOMMY HOLLOWAY Yes that b it. Well «JJ it . . . . conf irm
if we're going to confirm it was nauseacmy,
the other part of that.
CARLOS BYARS *ou*nowwhen V^et ,ea -y f to brin, th.
iS; 1 "K. C S?X , ."^io£!nrSp"SS ^want to come a rev early.
^.^r^en-yoi geHhat^se iS en^rair of ^
management friends are close by.
TOMMY HOLLOWAY You have all of the help you can stand.
Anything further here in Houston. Okay thank you very much. We
appreciate your attention and your time.
END OF TAPE
pl9j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 3/27/82
Good evening. They told us there was going to be
sparse attendenoe but it doesn't look too sparse. We've got
Flight Director Neil Hutchinson and Dr. Sam Pool, Chief of
Medical Sciences Divison here at JSC. We'll start with a summary
of the Silver Team shift today.
HUTCHINSON Good evening. This is... not hearing mike? How
now?
Fine up here.
HUTCHINSON I'm getting good feedback in my ear here. You
okay? We had a very, very quiet shift today, on my shift, in the
Control Center. Much quieter than, and particularly at the end,
than the last time I was here which was a couple of days ago. We
got everything done today that we had planned on getting done. A
hundred percent of everything. We are now in the top sun thermal
attitude and will be there until we get ready to equalize the
temperatures prior to entry, which is late tomorrow afternoon.
Today we did the next to the last of the EEVT samples. Did our
cold OMS restart, not quite so cold, but did it, did the cold OMS
restart. Started some cryothermal tests and we are operating,
since we are in top sun, the experiments, sun looking
experiments, the x-ray polarimeter and the SUSIM, the solar
ultraviolet system. Tomorrow is going to be pretty much as it is
in your published flight plans. We are going to start APU 3
tomorrow, in the morning, during the FCS checkout and we have a
procedure already onboard to run it a little extra length of time
to verify both controller A and controller B on the water spray
boiler on that APU. Right now that's the only extraordinary
thing that's anything different than what you have in your hands
printed for tomorrow's activities. We're still planning on
coming home on Monday. The weather's looking reasonable, and
with that... Sam may want us to make a general statement, although
my impression is the crew is just superb. If you listened
tonight to any air/ground, you probably heard the thump, thump,
thump of the Thornton treadmill. Both of them were using the
treadmill tonight after dinner. Well, I guess Jack before dinner
and Gordon after, and seemed to be enjoying it, learning how to
use it in 0-g.
DR. POOL During our discussions with them this evening, I
think we determined, and they said they were in top shape
physically and mentally. They've been eating well, sleeping
well, and apparently enjoyed their exercise session.
Okay. We're ready for questions. Back there
Aurthor.
WAYNE DULSOPHENO. . .KTRH. . .Does the S-band system play any special
role in the reentry part of this thing from the orbit burn down,
and if not can you just explain what role it does play.
HUTCHINSON No different than the role it plays while on orbit,
and that is getting data to us and getting data to the recorder
as well. The transmitting part of the s-band system, of course,
is getting data to us, and as you're aware, we get a pass after
retrofire, after the deorbit burn over Guam, a couple or three
minutes worth of data, and then the vehicle goes LOS and then
shortly after that, it goes into blackout and is unavailble for
radio communications till around 180,000 feet and from that point
all the way to the runway, we have telemetry data and radar data
and voice data through that system.
DULSOPHENO ...I'm talking real if's here, and excuse that, but
what would happen if, lets say, during the period of blackout if
we lost the other high power side of the S-band. Would it
present a problem once you came out of that blackout period?
HUTCHINSON No.
DOLSOPHENO. . .Okay.
HUTCHINSON And remember, we have UHF for air/ground comm along
with that .
DAVE DOOLING. . .HUNTSVILLE TIMES... How much, I presume, warmer
than expected was the OMS thruster and am I correct in my
impression that it seems that all around on the thermal tests
that things have been more benign than you had been projecting?
HUTCHINSON About 10 degrees on the OMS question and yes.
Things are not cooling off as fast and as far as we had
expected. The vehicle seems to be considerably more benign
thermally than we had expected.
DAVE DOOLING. . .Okay . Is that a good sign for future planning?
HUTCHINSON Oh yes. Yes. The reason it's a good sign is
because, not that we hit any thermal stresses in the vehicle, but
primarily, it allows us to operate at lower power levels, which
means that for a given amount of cryogenics, all these systems
have heaters on them and in particular, the hydraulic system is
the one that we've been concerned about, and you know, we have
some pumps that run and they take a lot of power. I'm talking
about the circ pumps that run, one on each system, and cycle
based on the temperatures being observed in the system and their
duty cycles are a lot less than we expected in these attitudes
and, of course, that in plain English, means you can fly longer
in a colder attitude with a given amount of cryogens onboard
because you don't have to spend the power for the heaters and the
pumps , and things like that .
We ' 11 get you next Paul .
JOHN GETTER. .. KHOU. . .How concerned are you about conditions at
3
White Sands for landing. At what point do you have to make a
decision on whether you go to White Sands or go to Florida.
Missing from the prognostications we're being given today are the
visibility guesses for the landing period.
HUTCHINSON Well John, I really hate to speculate on the
weather situation. You ask a lot of different questions there.
The weather situation, of course, the closer in we get, the more
accurate we get on what is actually going to happen. We are
making a flight in the shuttle training aircraft with John Young
at the controls about the time the crew wakes up on entry morning
and, of course, another one on the way in and if there is any
question on the visibility circumstances, or the wind
circumstances, those are going to be answered by the shuttle
training aircraft flight, as well as, of course, the
prognostication on the part of the weather people. Let me say
something about the second part of your question. I don't really
think we've made any kind of a decision on any kind of a backup
runway. We have, obviously, the hard surface at the Cape and we
have the hard surface at Edwards and I have personally not heard
any conversation exhibiting a preference of one over the other.
There may be but I haven't heard any, and our preference is to
get down in the desert and we're going to try real hard to do
that. Our visibility requirements, again, let me say although we
have some, and I'm not sure I can remember them, but they're
basically, if there is any question on the visibility in terms of
the crew being able to see the runway or see the aim point, or
see the landmarks or anything, it will be determined by an actual
flight by the shuttle training aircraft just like we've done
previously at both the Cape for RTLS and at the end of mission
site.
Paul Reiser right here, and then we'll get Jules
over here .
PAUL REISER. . .Could you give us a kind of a summary
characteristic or assessment of the success or failure or
accomplishment of this mission?
HUTCHINSON Well, I think, quite frankly, I'm sure it appears
with our little problem with the S-band comm and the television
cameras and everything, that we've had a bunch of things nipping
at our heels it seems all the way along, but if you put it into
context of the fact that we appear to be going to go our full
duration here, we better than doubled the total amount of time in
space that we have on this vehicle, we have gotten some
outstanding performance out of the systems working against one of
the tougher tests we had in the program, which, other than just
getting up and getting down, which were these long thermal cold
and heat soaks. The arm has performed impeccably. We got
another really big first by picking up and putting down a payload
several times and doing that without the aid of all the devices
that we would have liked to have had at our disposal. I think
the thing has just been a tremendous success. The tiles, they
A-
have to bug you a little bit, I think, of course, we didn't
liftoff thinking we were going to lose any tiles and we haven't
lost any that are going to bother us getting back, but that is
going to have to be something that will need to be re-examined
when we get back to make sure that we understand why and how and
that it doesn't happen again. But in general, you've got to
really be pleased with the performance of the vehicle and the
people and the whole system.
Jules Bergman.
JULES BERGMAN . . . ABC NEWS... Neil, CAPCOM on the line this
afternoon characterized the mission as a 100% success and
Fullerton then came back and said, I couldn't quite hear it,
would you make that a 101%, or words to that effect I thought.
HUTCHINSON Well, the transmission that went up was when we
finished the OMS test today, was that we had gotten every single
thing on the flight plan that we had set out to do premission up
to this point and I believe the guy that answered, and there were
really two answers, was Jack and he made a remark about wanting
to be more than 100% and I don't remember whether he said a 101
or 110 or something. And he also said, I'd like to count that
100% when we've finished the landing, in an obvious reference to
the fact that we've got a pretty good sized event to go which we
are all confident that it's going to be successful.
JULES BERGMAN. . .Second question, what would you do Monday morning
if the ST A aircraft cannot see the aim point or the runway or the
target point because of blowing dust? Would you then change from
White Sands to the Cape or Edwards, or what?
HUTCHINSON I'll tell you. I am really not sure. My
inclination is that if we had a weather problem that, in our
judgement, at the time we were preparing for reentry was going to
put the stops on us, I think we would'nt prepare for entry and
we'd probably wait until Tuesday hoping it would clear up. If we
had, a lot of it depends on how far down in that preparation
period you are. If we were a long ways away, for example, if it
was just after the crew woke up and it was an early STA flight in
the morning, I suspect we'd probably truck on and get ready and
then decide fairly late that, hey, lets just back out of this
thing. Probably before we closed the payload bay doors and try
again another day. Now you all are aware that we have been
managing our consumables to allow us another day or so without
any effect and that option exists. It's really hard to say, you
know, you just have to get to the situation and look at all the
variables and decide what the most prudent course of action is.
Yes sir. Is there any indication...
Would you identify yourself please.
PETER ADAMS . . . KINET NEWSPAPERS ... I s there any indication that the
minor problems that you ran into on this mission will in any way
extend the turnaround time. Does it look like those problems can
be easily fixed without having any significant extension on
turnaround?
HUTCHINSON I can't honestly answer that. I think there are
probably a couple of things that are going to have to get looked
at pretty close. One is this S-band thing and the other is the
tile, obviously. I would guess, generally, electronics boxes
aren't the kind of thing that get you in dutch in that regard and
the tiles, I just really wouldn't want to speculate. I frankly
don't V.pow, It certainly has a potential if we had to go in and
density a bunch of tiles or something like that.
i
PETBR ADAMS . . .One q«..t ion for or Pool ^Ooctoc jooj^
tolerable with this long dur J n ^ J™- ^ ^ hat are
that you've learned on this long ^"tion m ^ uration
applicable to future missions in terms ot ionj
spaceflight?
dr. POOL Well in t-ms of the habitablilUv of aKyl-b ver»«B
shuttle, skylab was a very hab table spacec aft ^ ^
sleeping guar ters s c a g a.le y , n c e habitab ie although
works. The shuttle we "jea very n accom odat ions are
its somewhat smaller. I think the J mission. And
adequate Thojaloy d< The waste
should add to the habitability situa working out some
management system is new and 1 w u lso be good . i
bugs but I think the ult imate re ?^" ™* re ? hey 're both very
think the shuttle is J f woufr th i nk L Ear as what
good habitable places to live, k ™ Seven tlays ls
we've learned in terms of long duration miss se oxperiment
a short mission. But I think Dr. Thorn ^ t the data
is very Interesting to us. We r e ve t nterc ^ ^
deconditioning of spaceflight.
JAMES WILKINSON... BBC.. On ^e question of ( th e tiles, which we
haven't talked jrj recently. ^ u e 5^ a ™ guesl, or do you have
problem on reentry. Is that an e«iu- * tiles
hard evidence that there is no damage to any ot
underneath .
HUTCHINSON I *nov anything .ore than I *new thr-^or ^
^SW^ ^^r^^'tS haSe any proofs an,
that's all I know.
WIL KINSON Ana thafs an educated q uess, rather than based on
hard evidence?
HUTCHINSON You could call it that.
We'll get Jules and then we'll go down the line
there starting here with Reiser.
JULES Neil,
HUTCHINSON I wanted to blow my nose, but excuse me go ahead.
JULES No go ahead blow your nose.
HUTCHINSON I couldn't get my hankerchief out.
JULES
Take your time.
/
HUTCHINSON No go ahead.
JULES Be my guest, be our guest, we're here at your
mercy. Like a tissue?
HUTCHINSON All depends on your prospective.
Your using up your time Jules.
JULES You say you know nothing more about the tiles than
you knew three or four days ago.
HUTCHINSON Right.
JULES Yet everyone speaks with such confidence that the
tiles will not bo a problem. Is it not true that something more
is known either through telescopic cameras or recon satellites or
some such thing.
HUTCHINSON Not that I know of Jules, we reviewed all the data,
I have not seen, and this is the honest injun truth, I have not
seen a piece of paper floating around that control center, heard
word one after the last tile summary that we saw that looked at
our own photographic data prelaunch, looked at the preliftoff,
the liftoff pictures with some tile coming off the bottom. Took
all the tile counts that we observed with the cameras onboard.
The tile that were found on the beach at the Cape. And put all
that together in a story, and analyzed each one of those things,
and the place they were missing on the vehicle and what was
underneath it. You know, whether there was a piece of critical
equipment up close to the skin, and so on and so forth. And
concluded from that data that we don't have a problem and we
don't think we have any other missing tiles. And I don't know
anything more than that .
JULES But would have seen it, had the top secret already
gone out from the air force or DOD, I assume there are operatives
here at NASA to use the KH11 recon-sat or another satellite, or
long range cameras from Hawaii or California, would you have seen
that data?
HUTCHINSON Obviously I haven't so how could I tell you whether
I would have seen it or not. I don't know.
JULES Other words, you don't know.
HUTCHINSON I don't know.
Paul Reiser .
REISER When you test APU 3 tomorrow, and if in fact it
does repeat the ascent experience, will you? I, use it on
reentry; and 2, are you, if you do use it are you going to change
the procedure on that particular APU?
HUTCHINSON Well first off, see if I understand your question,
we're going to start it up tomorrow. You know we have a standard
procedure, preentry to use an APU. We were going to use APU 1 as
the guy we were going to start up. And the reason for that,
there are a couple of reasons, but they're not critical
reasons. He has a little more fuel and we changed APU 3, we're
going to start him up and we're going to run him a little extra
amount of time. And I think the time will probably end up, we
normally would have him on for three of four minutes, and we'll
probably have him on for 10 or 12. And we are going to go
through a sequence that looks at both spray boiler controller A,
which is the primary, the system that's on now, that was on in
ascent and B , and make sure we have good cooling on both of
those. If for some reason the cooling didn't work in either one
of those and we have no reason to believe it won't because
whatever this phenomenon is that seems to be getting that guy,
it's the same sort of thing that happened to us on STS-2. And as
your aware that same APU worked well on entry on STS-2 and cooled
well. If we were not to get any cooling at all, we will bo
shutting that APU down before we get into any overtemp condition,
probably around 2 70 degrees or so on the low boil. And I suspect
that we'll start nim, and I really don't know, I'm not for sure
but I would guess we would bring him up a tame about two thirds
of the way through the entry, so that we would have cooling.
Three APUs during the tough aerodynamic part and he'd run all the
way to the ground with no cooling.
John, did you have a question? Okay.
DAVE DUELING. . .HUNTSVILLR TIMES ... Ne i 1 , I believe earlier it was
said the detector wheel on SUSIM was jammed in position. Is it
still, and is there any possibility it might be fixed, or do you
have any idea what the problem is?
HUTCHINSON I'm not real intimate with the instrument,
intimately familiar with the instrument. It is still partially
inoperative. I understand it has something to do with the
spectral grating that cycles through the different wavelengths in
the ultraviolet frequency. And the answer about fixing it is, no
there's really nothing we can do to it. And they are operating,
and operating very well. They're extremely pleased with the
orbiter's ability to keep them on the sun and the kind of
corrections that we're getting, we're continually measuring their
instruments, sun center capability and the kind of corrections
we're getting thermal distortions in the orbiter body are very
very small. So the instrument, at a single grating setting is
working well. But I believe that it's still malfunctioned and
we'll complete the flight in that condition.
Right there .
.JOHN BISNEY . . , RKO. . . I wondered if you could just touch, Neil, on
the major points of the cap for tomorrow?
HUTCHINSON The biggest thing is right off in the morning. The
FCS checkout. I really need to get it out here and take a quick
look at it. But the FCS checkout is the big thing for the day
tomorrow. We are doing a continual bunch of, we have KEVT, the
last electrophoresis sample going on tomorrow. The IECM gas
release is also going on tomorrow. Let me make sure I'm looking
at the right day here. We are continuing the thermal test in top
sun and at the end of the day we've got another one of our check
the payload bay doors to make sure we can close them, things.
The primary experiment stuff, other than the IECM gas release is,
are the IECM gas release, singular, there's only one of those.
Are the SUSIM work, looking at the sun. It is not in the
terminology of the days that you have seen happen here a busy
day. After we get through that early stuff in the morning its
mostly, there's a lot of stowage stuff going on and tidying up
the ship, getting ready for entry. The crew will be updating all
their reentry books, and will probably be out looking at them,
just kind of reviewing procedures, and so on and so forth. It's
getting ready to come home day, basically. It's like going on a
long trip, or after you've been on one, cleaning the car up
before you get there.
Jules has another question.
JULES What time do you expect to fire up the APU?
HUTCHINSON I think we're going to do it, are you going to ask
me a Houston time? Oh
JULES Take your choice.
\ HUTCHINSON I guess about, mission elapsed time, Jules around
? 2230 or so. Quite frankly, someone could get him a very acurate
f; time. I'm looking at the premission flight plan, and we did not,
'{ are not deviating much from that at all, 2230 which would be
| fairly early in the morning, it's a couple of hours after the
| crew gets up.
| Query Desk can call over and get the precise time
for you , Jules
HUTCHINSON And it's already been stuck in the flight plans for
tomorrow. So, and it's about right where it was planned.
That gentlemen
DICK RATNER. . .ABC. . .While you've got the papers out. Has there
been any change in the deorbit times and the times on down. The
last landing time, I think we got was 27 minutes and 14 seconds
past the hour .
to
HUTCHINSON Well, I'm going to read you, I knew someone would
ask that, and I brought the lastest run off the latest vector.
And there have been some very slight changes, but again you ought
to get this again tomorrow, ycu know just because the vector
continually changes and we're continually tweaking it. Prime
deorbit rev is orbit 115, as it was. The ignition time is 7
days, 2 hours, 34 minutes and 57 seconds. We'll arrive at
400,000 feet at 2 days, I'm sorry 2 hours, 56 min^ues and 23
seconds. Landing is at 3 hours, 27 minutes and 36 seconds, which
is about 15 seconds off the number you quoted me, that's 12:28
p.m. in round numbers.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much.
p20j CHANGE OP SHIFT BRIEFING 5:30 a.m. DATE 3/28/82 PAGR 1
PAO Okay. Good morning and welcome to our change of
shift press conference here today with the offgoing Flight
Director Tommy Holloway. It seemed like a pretty quiet night to
me but I'll let Tommy tell you about that.
HOLLOWAY Well, we came on last night after the crew was
talked to the last time before sleep, about 30 minutes before
their scheduled sleep time. Through the evening we saw no
activity indicating that they were awake. The spacecraft has had
no change in status in terms of configuration or failures during
this shift. We called the crew at Orroral Valley about 15 or 20
minutes ago and they did not respond during that pass. I expect
that was because we either had a configuration problem on the
ground and didn't get up or it was inconvenient for them to
respond because they hadn't put their wireless headset on yet
and/or they were shaving, or so on and so forth, again, without
the wireless on and when you're not on the wireless, you have to
go to the speaker box and push a button, or sort of push a
button, it's really a switch to be able to respond to the call so
I suspecc they chose not to do that, but we'll find out in a
couple of minutes when we get to Mila. We did do some flight
planning last night, some crew activity planning last night. The
primary changes that were made were minor in that we moved some
activities around a little bit to allow the crew the opportunity
to stop talking to us and get to bed or relax an hour earlier.
Prelaunch, the flight plan had a 7 hour sleep last night before
deorbit and it was decided yesterday that we'd add an hour back
in and give them a full 8 hours off this evening prior to
entry. The SUSIM experiment has encountered a failure yesterday
and I'm sure Mr. Hutchinson talked about that last evening. It's
unable to change wave lengths and so that has limited the amount
of data that we can take, or the pot can take with that
experiment and has reduced the time that the crew is involved in
that experiment and that was one of the major things that allowed
us to have a little more relaxed day today. Additionally, we're
also giving the crew the option to pick up the last EEVT sample
today that was an extra one that was not planned in the prelaunch
flight plan. And that's all I have for a summary so we'll open
up for questions.
PAO Okay. I'll call on you and wait for the mike .
Mark.
MARK... How are the infamous pair of transponders doing? Any
changes whatsoever or suspected changes?
HOLLOWAY Absolutely none at this point.
MARK. .. (garble) absolutely none meaning that (garble)
PAO
Please identify....
p20j CHANGE O? SHIFT BRIEFING 5:30 a.m. DATE 3/28/82 PAGE 2
JOHN PINE. . .REUTERS. ..I'm sorry. Absolutely no changes right
through landing I imagine. The transponders as they are now are
going to be as they are when they touch tomorrow. As planned?
HOLLOWAY Yes .
PINE... Okay.
PEERS ACKERMAN. . .TIMES. . .Are you worried that you haven't heard
at all from the astronauts since they were awoke'i this morning?
HOLLOWAY No sir.
HOLLOWAY Okay. Now start again, we're in??? I don't know
why we don't get it working and they don't start talking to us,
but right now I'm not worried.
MARK KRAMER. . .Have you got any new times for the landing
sequence. Hutch gave out some new times last night that advised
that they constantly change. Do you have any changes?
HOLLOWAY No I didn't bring any with me but when he said that
constantly change, he was talking about in the minutes and the
seconds area. They're not going to change much. If your needing
exact times, you know the closer you wait till the actual event,
the better off you are because, you know that sort of thing
varies as we move along. (garble) Yeah. Just make something
up. That's all right.
PAO Okay. Do we have any more questions here. Yeah,
go ahead.
JOHN PINE. . .REUTERS. . .Weather ' s, no change, no major change on
the White Sands since you got on the shift. I means it still
looks good both sides of ...
HOLLOWAY Yes. I received a weather briefing in again about
1 or 2 a.m. this morning, and as far the weather, is about as I
talked to yeu about yesterday morning and I'm sure as the other 2
flight directors talked to you yesterday, it looks like Monday
will be an acceptable day and that's tomorrow now I guess.
Did you burn up any of your extra consumables last
night by leaving on some extra electronics for heat. Someone had
mentioned that possibility, and therefore, do you still have the
72 hour pad or are you somewhere loss than that this morning?
HOLLOWAY We still have a 72 hour pad and yes the crew hab
been given the okay to stop worrying about their consumable
management quite as much as they did earlier in the flight in
p20j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 5:30 a.m. DATE 3/28/82 PAGE 3
that we do have plenty of margin in our consumables in the H-2
area which is the most critical one from the standpoint of
electricity.
Okay. If we have nothing else, I understand that
we didn't have any questions from the other centers. Is that
correct?
That's correct. No questions from the other
centers.
Okay. Well, thank you all for coming out to this
early morning session and we'll se^ you at the next one.
END OF TAPE
p21j DRAUGHON CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 2PM 3/28/82 PAGE 1
Good afternoon and welcome to the change of shift briefing with
Harold Draughon, the Flight Director for the Crystal Team. Let's
begin with Harold's summary of this most recent change of shift
here .
HAROLD DRAUGHON Okay, this morning's shift started out with the
flight control systems checkout. Normally that activity is
composed just of a wringing out of the flight control displays on
the vehicle, the ADI, the eight ball, the rate meters, the normal
aircraft type instruments and the sensors, the altimeters, the
radars, the TACANs, those kinds of things. You've all been aware
of the anomally with APU number 3 during ascent and so what we
did today, as I told you yesterday that we probably would, we
brought forward a check that we normally do not during entry prep
which is a flight, we have, the flight control system checkouts
are part 1 and a part 2, the way it's documented. Part 2 is the
dedicated display checkout, the sensor test and the other one,
part 1 is the APU where we crank the APU and actually use the
horsepower from the hydraulic system to move the vehicle's
control surfaces. So we brought that forward today to combine
those two tests into one test segment and get a good wring out of
the APU water boiler, the cooling system on the APU. Both the
FCS checkout and the APU are 100 percent successful. We did not
find a single thing wrong with any of the avionics. Nothing
wrong with the flight control systems, the hydraulics, the APU
regulated right up at the temperatures it was supposed to and
that really wasn't a surprise. APU 3 has had a similar
malfunction to the or we've had the same lack of understanding of
how APU number 3 works in ascent on all three flights. It is not
worked the way we thought it would on any of the flights and it
always works correctly on orbit and for entry. You probably, if
you've been coming to all these things you recall those kind of
discussions, it's always APU number 3. So that checkout went
well. We followed that up with the we call it an RCS hot fire,
that's an activity where we, the way the control system on orbit
works, as you try to do attitude, or tr anslat ional maneuvers, the
digital autopilot in the vehicle decides which thrusters to fire
to accomplish a particular maneuver. Clearly there is more than
one set of thrusters that will accomplish a given rotation. Rut
the autopilot always uses the same ones. Rather than get into
entry and find out that you've got several thrusters that you
haven't tried to fire for seven or eight days, we take this block
of time and schedule out a very specific sequence that will test
every thruster to make sure we go on into entry with a known set
of hardware. Every thruster checked out correctly. So, all the
testing we did today that was a precursor to the entry operations
tomorrow, was 100 percent successful. Another activity that's
gone on since yesterday, I think I told you that on the first
sleep cycle, we changed a gyro bias, which is a compensation term
on one of the IMU gyro's the first night, and that was when we
were in the tail sun attitude. We changed thermal attitudes
yesterday as you recall and went into a top sun. The gyros are
■In-
sensitive to the thermal environment and we think what we're
seeing is a response to the new thermal attitude to that
particular sensor. We put new gyro bias terms in for 3
accelerometers on IMUs number 1 and 2. They changed once, they
haven't changed since then and we think we've zeroed out those
terms and expect them to work properly. The circulation pumps
which are some small pumps that circulate the hydraulic fluid
through the hydraulic loops while we are not trying to use them
to move the control surfaces, but just to keep heat distribution
to where you want it, we were running those in all of these test
attitudes to get again to get a good handle on heat transfer and
get the thermal models that the guys use in analyzing missions
down, we've decided to run those on through the sleep period
tonight and we will terminate circ pump operations tomorrow
morning. The exact time hasn't been scheduled yet, but it'll be
sometime like 6 hours prior to deorbit. The loops are actually,
the problem you worry about with circulation pumps the reason
they are there is you worry about a local spot in the loop
getting cold and then later on when you want to flow hydraulic
fluid to move a surface if you've got a cold enough place that
you've frozen the loop up, then of course you can't get any fluid
and you can't move the actuator. The loops are actually running
a little warmer than had been anticipated. We are bringing them
on now at 0 they've got a temperature mode that they are
controlled to. We're bringing them on at 0 degrees and then
turning them back off at +20. The kind of numbers that we were
talking about trying to protect preflight wore -10 and you begin
to get a little more concerned at like -30 degrees. So we are
well away from any concern. The N2 reg or the N2 leak was in the
system 2 that we talked about a couple of times that I told you
yesterday or the day before that we have isolated that to the PCS
system 2. The number 2 distribution system in an effort to get a
leg up on the turnaround post flight, we had narrowed it down to
which systeiv the leak was in. The one thing that had been common
to all the times when we had that thing in different
configurations and had seen the leak was that the system was very
cold or. all of those occasions. There had been times when we'd
had it in other configurations that had not leaked so today we
are running one additional check that's designed to determine if
the leak is ind* 1 correlated to the thermal environment or if
it's a mechanic problem. Just to help the KSC folks when
they're chasing that p-oblem post flight. The most recent
development is one with CRT number 1 in the keyboard. One of the
keys doesn't seem to have an interface with one of the CRTs,
That happened just as Neil and I were handing over a minute
ago. The plan of attack when I left there half an hour ago was
to, the easiest thing to do is to change out that particular key
with one of the keys similar keys on the aft keyboard 3ince you
don't need that during entry. If that is unsuccessful then you'd
change out the whole OKU or DDU display electronics which is a
kind of a special processing minicomputer box. We have done that
before. Joe F.ngle changed out one on the last flight. In flight
he did that. Takes about an hour to do. As far as entry we plan
to reenter on the nominal published rev tomorrow, rev ll r >. The
deorbit maneuver is currently 285, for folks who like rubers,
285 feet per second. That will require about 6,000 pounds of
fuel. We've computed that maneuver so that we have a downmoding
option to in case we could not get the engines to work and
?h«e"s no reason to believe that they wouldn't but we always
like to Save two or three ways to do something. We've computed
that maneuver so that we could execute it two minut e a he
nominal time and use the RCS engines, the four + X RCS engines,
and accomplish a deorbit off that same solution to the same
targets. Our landing time is 12*34, that's 3 minutes different
than what I told you the last time.
12:34?
HAROLD DRAUGHON 12:34 at Northrup, not here.
12:34 Mountain time?
HAROLD DRAUGHON I think they are Pacific, aren't they? Whatever.
Could we get an MET perhaps? Matter of fact, I'd
like (garble) get some numbers starting with the deorbit burn
(garble) .
HAROLD DRAUGHON Okay, I've got that data. Let mo go on through
this. UUP coverage and we have got UHF coverage at ignition for
the burn over the Yarragadee station in Australia, course we
won't have any telemetry from that station but at least we can
talk to the Jew. AfteJ the burn is over we will nee them again
at Guam for 5 and 1/2 minutes with telemetry. We'll briefly talk
to them there and discuss their configuration and what not.
There's nothing mandatory at least to go with that pass, it s
just a good opportunity to look at them after the burn and prior
to entry. They go into blackout and since we're now landing at
Northrup course they come in over the coast, Cal i forn . a coast ,
higher and faster, but the C-band radars can tr ack the ii re ba 1 ,
what you'll refer to as blackout. They can track the fire ball
and give us very useable trajectory data. So we'll be tracking
them a lot higher than we normally do when we're coming into
Edwards because the fire ball will he over the hor i /on or the
west coast radars. Normal systems data we would have are f t
telemetry and S-band voice. You lose Goldstone and nuckhorn at
about 2 and 1/2 minutes after they come out of blackout. J™
this flight there have been two S-band systems activated at White
Sands that are that can give us real tin- data routed back to
here. It doesn't have all the redundancy and geographic routing
and all the backup systems that one of our normal st at . onn does
but when we committed to land them the Goddard Spaeef ight folks
went to work and got us the quickest thing they cou d to give us
tie capability there. That system is i n pi ace We ' ve been us ng
It on a daily basis and the data Is fairly stable. It has a f w
more dropouts than a normal state end site does but they don t
have the same kind of RF receivers that the lest of our stations
do, but it's quite unable. Any questions?
Yes sir, right here please.
JOHN BENCH CHICAGO TRIBUNE John Bench, Chicago Tribune. If
you decided tomorrow that you wanted to come in 1 rev early for
the wind conditions, is that exactly 90 minutes early or there in
other words 12:34, that'll be like 11:04 would be the time you'd
be landing, or do you have an exact time?
HAROLD DRAUGHON GMT 1701 for rev 114, 1835 for rev 115, the
prime rev. I think we have MET there too. PET is 1 0, 7 days 1
hour and 1 minute, nominal rev 2 hours and 35 minutes.
JOHN BENCH CHICAGO TRIBUNE What's the local time on that again
for the
HAROLD DRAUGHON For the local where, here?
JOHN BENCH CHICAGO TRIBUNE The local there. In other words,
if it's going to be 12:34 there what would it be 1 rev earlier?
HAROLD DRAUGHON Hour and half earlier. It looks like it's an
hour and 34 minutes.
JOHN BENCH CHICAGO TRIBUNE An hour and 34 minutes earlier.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yos .
George Alexander, please.
GEORGE ALEXANDER Harold, the reentry fire ball. Is there any
chance it might be visible to residents of southern California
albiot it's in the morning?
HAROLD DRAUGHON I'm guessing but I would think not. I think
the sun angles would be up too high. The local landing time is
around noon. It's even on the west coast. It's the same rev we
come into Northrup on, I'm guessing, but I suspect not.
Roy Noil of NBC
ROY NEIL NBC Now could you give us some hard clock numbers
starting with doorbit burn so wo can follow you in. Perhaps in
MKT's so wo all are working on the same clock.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Okay, lot mo see what rabbit I can pull out of
this hat here.
Hero I can help you with that. Go ahead with any
numbors you got thoro.
HAROLD DRAUGHON You don't moan that. Okay, lot mo find out.
Can wo all work in you want to work in MET or central standard
time?
r
ROY NEIL NBC MET or central standard time.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Thank you. That was very helpful. Let's work
in mission elapsed time. That'd be easy to add to the clock.
Entry interface, well I gave you TIG, GMT PET of TIG is 7 days 2
hours 34 minutes. PET is phase elapsed time or mission elapsed
time. Entry interface is 2 hours 7:02:56. Let me get with the
PET. 7:2:34, 7:2:56 for entry interface which is 200,000 feet in
a place you should start active guidance.
ROY NEIL NBC 200 or 400?
HAROLD DRAUGHON 400 K. And in beginning the blackout for S-
band is 7:02:59. End of blackout 7:03:14. I don't know what
numbers you're interested in. The air data system deployment is
at 7:03:20 if you're pilots, anybody. TAEM interface which is
the place that we change guidance up modes within the entry
guidance and it's also happens the place that you fly through
MACH 2.4 is 7:03:21. A lot of our decision processes are keyed
around that particular event. The vent doors are opened at
7:03:21. Auto land interface is 7:03:27. That's another change
in guidance logic, uidance logic in entry is, there's ent. '
guidance that takes over at 400,000 feet at .05 g. That flies
you down to TAEM which is Mach 2.4 at about 80,000 feet, and that
flies you down to approach and land guidance which flies you
around the MAC circle and through landing. And touchdown is
7:03:27. That is the PET of TIG, 34, yes. Okay.
(garble) That's right. That's correct. I tried correcting it
in pen and those corrections are wrong. The type written
versions are what's correct.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Don, I'm afraid all we've done is confuse the
issue here right now. I think we'd better get this very
■ .raight .
DON Well there's a handout that came out earlier today
that got it typewritten and the typewritten times and they're
just completely faithful to what Harold told you.
HAROLD DRAUGHON These are hard copies out of control center and
these were taken off of that, so if you get a copy of this you
should have the right data. And it'll change a few seconds, you
know, by the night as the orbit changes a little bit, so.
DON Harold gave you a couple of figures like TAEM
interface and some of the others, auto land, that we didn't have
on the typewritten thing. Pote, right here, please.
AL SALES BALTIMORE SUN Al Sales, Raltimore Sun. Sometime
between Thursday or Friday and perhaps yesterday afternoon,
touchdown time changed from 27 minutes after the hour to 34
minutes after the hour, as I understand it at least. Is that
I,
correct, and if so, how come?
HAROLD DRAUGHON We just changed it back, it's 27 after isn't it?
37 after.
DON It shouldn't have changed that much.
HAROLD DRAUGHON It should not changed that much.
AL SALES BOWMAN TIMES It should he then 27 after the hour, is
that what you're telling me?
HAROLD DRAUGHON 27, yes. Yes. No. It's not anything, it's
27. Not a lot of things. Craig Corvalt, Pete please.
CRAIG CORVALT AVIATION WEEK Craig Corvalt, Aviation Week Hal,
would you discuss as per what was transmitted up to them. Pros
and cons of the right hand turn and be specific on things like
getting a little hot coming around that side of the HAC if you
have to be in there.
HAROLD DRAUGHON That's an interesting topic. The and we got
into this a little the other day with the HAC turn angles. If
everything were equal a crewman would prefer to turn left, make a
left hand turn, onto the runway. The reason is the guy on the
left side is driving the bus and he can see where he's going.
You've got plenty of instruments to follow if you want to turn
the other way and there's a fair amount of visibility even
then. We have if you have a large tailwind when you're coming up
onto the HAC it's a little more difficult to fly an exact
circular groundtrack, earth relative, because the winds tend to
blow you off of that. You have to keep steepening, changing your
bank, as you go around the turn. There is a G limit on the
aircraft and if the wind is big enough you cannot keep from
pulling more g's or going into a bank angle at a particular
airspeed that would pull more g's than we want to pull on the
aircraft. The way you get around that is rather than flying this
very precise circle, predefined groundtrack, you'd turn it a
little earlier than you need to, let the wind, because the air
mass you're moving in is moving, you would let the wind take you
onto the HAC and a little past it and then you come back out. So
you bias it going in and you get blown off and you come out on
the other side. We have done a lot of training and a lot of
simulations and figured out when the that your sensivity to that
process is clearly a function of how long a turn you're on the
HAC. If you're only going to come and just turn 90 degrees
around the circle and land that's one thing. If you're coming in
and got to go half way around the circle you're goinq to be a lot
more sensitive. The wind is working on you a lot longer. If you
got to go all the way around then the wind's going to work on you
a lot more. So it's there are a lot of parameters that vary.
We've done a lot of simulations on that and figured out that the
right set of things to make you revert back from a left hand turn
with a better visibility for the commander i3 a criteria that
7
does something like if the HAC turn is greater than 270 degrees
and the winds are larger than 70 to 80 knots of tailwind at the
place you're going to encounter the HAC, then you ought to quit
trying to make a left hand turn and make a right hand turn which
will have a smaller turn angle and you wouldn't have to bother
with the winds as much. And the thing that changes there is now
that wind helps you get to where you're going quicker and you're
going not as far around the HAC so you're flying a shorter
range. Therefore, you just tend to get pulling out onto your
final heading runnway heading with more energy. The way we
combat that is the thing that we were discussing with the crew
and we ought to take the speedbrake and it's normally at I
believe it's either 45 percent or 65 percent and at Mach .95 just
as you go subsonic we're going to take the speedbrake from that
intermediate position that it has been at for quite a few Mach
numbers and open it wide up, wide open, to kill off a little more
of that energy. It's not a problem that the vehicle and the
guidance and the crew can solve a problem of landing at the lake
bed at the runway. There's absolutely no problem in converging
all of that. The major problem that you have to deal with is if
you don't do something to slow down a little bit you're trying to
rendezvous with those chase aircraft who are going to be taking
some still pictures and getting some engineering data and they
give the crew some airspeed calls. So you're going to go by them
so fast that they just can't catch up with you. So it's a
rendezvous problem with the chase aircraft more than anything
else. That's really the only issue.
CRAIG CORVALT AVIATION WKKK A couple follows, then it would
not affect if they were a little hot on the last part of the
HAC . It would not affect the nominally your goal for auto land.
HAROLD DRAUGHON No, you'd converge those errors much before
that. If you had planned to make a left hand turn and had
decided late to go to a right hand turn you would be a little hot
at that instant that you decided to take this other route to the
touchdown point because you'd go a shorter path. But soon after
you tell the computer that you want go this other route it will
quickly figure out that it's too hot and it'll dissipate the
energy.
CRAIG CORVALT AVIATION WKKK And one last one. How much higher
will you be able to see them on C-band this time as opposed to
Edwards landing?
HAROLD DRAUGHON Way up, Mach 18, probably.
CRAIG CORVALT AVIATION WKKK as opposed to
HAROLD DRAUGHON 14, it's quite high. I could get you a better
number later on that.
They're coming in
z
PETER LARSON ORLANDO CENTENIAL STAR Peter Larson, Orlando
Centenial Star. You're going to come down autoland to 200 feet
this time?
HAROLD DRAUGHON That's correct.
PETER LARPOU As opposed to what was it 2,000 last time?
HAROLD DRAUGHON It was something like that.
PETER LARSON And you'll be flying additional maneuvers still to
increase the aerodynamic pressures or?
HAROLD DRAUGHON To just get some response data on the
aerodynamics of the vehicle, not in that particular flight regime
we won't be but up and away, we have other test maneuvers that
are different than the ones we flew last time.
If we could get the gentleman way in the back,
please.
JERRY HANNAFAN TIME MAGAZINE Jerry Hannafan, Time Magazine.
Couple of quick ones. What is the g limit on the aircraft, on
the spacecraft?
HAROLD DRAUGHON 2 g's.
JERRY HANNAFAN And what's going to be your altitude and Mach
numbers as you go over Los Angeles and Phoenix and will you
estimate the sonic boom hitting the ground?
HAROLD DRAUGHON I can't give you those numbers from memory. I
know that they have been looked at and judged to not be a
problem. The reason being that the altitudes are so high that
as we come across there that they shouldn't be a problem by the
time the shock wave gets to the ground.
JERRY HANNAFAN Do you have an estimate on Los Angeles?
HAROLD DRAUGHON I really don't we're going to be way up.
JERRY HANNAFAN Over 100,000?
HAROLD DRAUGHON I honestly don't know. I doubt that we're over
100 though. The g limit is, Jerry, we're probably over 100,000
there .
DON We probably are over 100 K there. G limit is
different for ascent isn't it. Yes, and well when you ask a
question like what the g limit is it there're a lot of ways to
answer that. There is operational envelope g limit that we
normally plan to design flights to. There are factors of safety
in their structural limits and their ultimate limits. You can
over g an aircraft and you got to go X-ray something you can go
to another g limit and you bend something and sooner or later you
can pull something off the aircraft. 2 g's is the limit that we
don't design trajectories to exceed. If we took it to 2 and 1/2
g's we would not have a concern about reflying the aircraft.
JERRY HANNAFAN And again, that's entry.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Yes it is.
DON John Disney.
JOHN DISNEY The APU test this morning. Did that show you then
that the 3rd APU will be functional and it'll be started along
with the other two and that you can use it all the way through
the landing phase?
HAROLD DRAUGHON. Yes, the APU is 100 percent. We ran it for
about 10 and 1/2 minutes. The water spray boiler regulated the
oil temp to 255 degrees. It's supposed to reg between 240 and
260. It was right on the money. It's got A and a B
controller. We checked them both out.
JOHN DISNEY One other question for you. On STS-2 when we saw
those little plumes from, I don't know if it was the RCS or the
verniers as they came in just before landing, I'm wondering were
those manually or automatically being fired.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Those are the RCS.
DON I didn't see them.
HAROLD DRAUGHON The contrails?
JOHN DISNEY Right.
HAROLD DRAUGHON No that was neither. It was just not any
aircraft.
DON There were some RCS jets firing, forward RCS and it
was firing during aero entry.
HAROLD DRAUGHON Where did you see this from, from a cockpit
camera or from the ground?
JOHN DISNEY Prom a chase plane camera I think or ground.
DON It's got to be from chase plane.
HAROLD DRAUGHON And it's got to be from above Mach 1. All the
jets are turned off at Mach 1. We don't use them beyond that.
The nose jets are turned off essentially on orbit at a very low Q
bar. We come in with attitude control in just the aft jets. And
if you saw the jets firing it would be the aft jets and roll yaw.
10
JOHN DISNEY What I'm asking is whether those firings were
manual or automatic?
HAROLD DRAUGHON At Mach 1 they would have been manually induced,
manual crew inputs. They could be either but that particular
part of trajectory is under manual control.
DON Paul Reser .
PAUL RESER How do the mechanics differ if you're coming in a
rev early or a rev late or several that is are you doing your
deorbit further west or further east and using up more crossrange
and if so how much and etc?
HAROLD DRAUGHON The crossrange you have to fly is purely a
function of if you look at the Mercater maps, the sinusoidal
groundtracks, if you look at where the geographic location of the
landing site is with regard to the Mercater projection. That
determines the crossrange whether how far it is away from it and
on the north or the south. The downrange problem is all the
same. You just pick you just go back the right downtrack range
and do the entry maneuver there, but you still got that
crossrange to fly out.
PAUL RESER So most of the adjustment for coming in early orbit
or a later orbit is in the crossrange.
HAROLD DRAUGHON No, its in the ignition time.
DON Well, ignition time and then later the
crossrange.
HAROLD DRAUGHON The crossrange comes out. It's a non issue as
long as it's not too large. With our current knowledge of the L
over D of the vehicle the crossrenge capability of the aircraft,
we try not to pick landing fields that are above about 800 miles
away from the groundtrack. As we learn more and more about the
aerodynamics of the vehicle we intend we expect that number to go
up above 1,000. Right now we operate with 800.
DON L over D is lift 2 words over drag. Wayne
Dolcefino, eight next to you Pete, please.
WAYNE DOLCEFINO Have you developed a procedure for checking the
S-band system post landing maybe during roll out?
HAROLD DRAUGHON There's one being developed. My comm
specialist is In a meeting right now with those people so that he
will understand that thing quite well. After landing and we have
an exchange crew like we had last flight that's going in soon, as
soon as we get the APU's shut down then the people out of SCAPE
suits can go up to the vehicle and we'll open the doors, change
out the crew, get the exchange crew in. We already planned for
the exchange crew to do a lot of the vehicle powerdown that the
//
flight crew did last flight but in addition to that which is
normally the place I would hand over the control of the thing to
the KSC folks we're tacking on to that a comm checkout we don't
know how long it will run. Sometime between 30 minutes, an hour
and a half.
WAYNE DOLCEFINO It's my understanding that all you're going to
basically do is just reset it and see if it works and that was
something you were afraid to do in flight is that not too
general?
HAROLD DRAUGHON There's more to it than that.
.■ II
DAVE DOOLING Huntsville Times Has the last run been completed
on the BEVT and are you starting to shutdown the instruments on
the OSS-1 pallet or will that wait until tomorrow?
DRAUGHON The final deactivation is tomorrow I believe the
last EEVT run which was a kidney cell run has been completed.
MORTON DEAN CBS News Could you looking back over the past few
days, could you give us a thumbnail assessment of how the ship
performed and how the astronauts did?
DRAUGHON I think the ship has performed beautifully, the
execute shifts that I have been on have been just a piece of cake
to walk through. They're have been just no issues at all hardly
to write about. It takes me 35 minutes to write my shift
handover which is a thorough briefing to the oncoming flight
director. That's not alot to write about. There's just not much
going on and an anomaly sense. The only thing of significance at
all was perhaps the payload bay door incident after the first
thermal test and that was readily cleared. That got us a little
bit off the timeline going back to top sun and thermally
preconditioning the seals and proving that door closure
capability at that time. Other than that, and another good gauge
of that, another way to tell when we're things we don't normally
plan to do is to look at the traffic that goes up each night to
modify the next day's activity. You take the CAP and write all
of those things into it that we're gonna do differently it's just
a smattering of things, not much at all. It's been very
successful.
DEAN I had a followup to that but getting back with all
the problems that were encountered certainly on the shifts, could
you look at the mission and once again give us an assessment, not
only of how the ship performed but how the astronauts performed.
DRAUGHON Yea, I think the ship has performed very well. The
thermal to try and quantify it for you the thermal response
has been, has shown us I think, and this is preliminary, but the
thermal extremes are not as severe as I was lead to believe that
they would be. The vehicle responds slower thermally, does not
seem to get as cold or as hot as we had thought it might. So, I
think we have reason to be very optimistic about what the long
term data reduction is going to show us there. The crew was a
slow, a little bit slow getting started because of the their
motion sickness but in the, after the first day and a half or so
of that, with a little bit of adjustment, the last few days all
the tell tale signs that tell you, that that's completely gone
are there. They're looking for new and unique things to do.
They're volunteering, yesterday on my shift they volunteered
another TV pass of the bees and moths. They're all the time
looking for extra things to do and volunteering things and that
was not something that we do in the first, during the first two
'3
days, so it's quite clear that they're back on their feet, so to
speak, and going about business and looking for extra things to
do .
ERIC INGBERG CBS News A three part question on the S-band.
Has there been any change in the status of that equipment during
your shift.
DRAUGHON None whatsoever. We had, the only COMM related
activity was, we had a UHF receiver that failed at Yarragadee,
went through about, half of a pass thinking that we might have a
COMM problem and it turned out to be the ground receiver that we
switched it out and got COMM back there. Nothing has changed.
INGBERG Do you still have one downlink channel on the high
power mode?
DRAUGHON That's correct.
INGBERG At what point in the reentry sequence tomorrow is
it no longer important to have S-band downlink capability?
DRAUGHON It varies. All of our instrumentation is on the S-
bard. The only thing we have on UHF is voice, air-to-ground
communications . Any systems monitoring that the ground is gonna
do depends on that telemetry. The only way we can aid the crew
if we don't have that telemetry is for them to describe
indications and meter readings to us and then we can assess from
that. So as long as you want us to provide that service, then
all the way to the ground you need the voice. Had we not gotten
these 2 S-band antennas out at Northrup strip, we were perfectly
willing to have LOS, or loss of telemetry, 2 1/2 minutes after
blackout aid have the crew fly from there to the ground with us
just having UHF voice. And the way you would do that would be
with a thing that's called the Entry Pocket checklist and it's a
what you s?e in the cockpit of any major aircraft. It's that
little book like this with the systems tagged on there and you
flip it open and it tells you what to do if an APU malfunctions
or if i cooling system malfunctions or what have you. It gives
you 4 or 5 little steps to do, this, this, and this. And what
the ground provides is another level of sophistication to that
support.
PAO Let me take one more question here and then go to
Kennedy and take care of those guys, then come back to Houston.
JULES BERGMAN ABC News Harold, if you were tracing cut the
major or failures that need attention on this flight before the
next flight, before STS-4, what would you put down on your list?
DRAUGHON The only significant thing that needs attention
right, now, and I hope I don't forget something, is the
communications system. We need to psych out what we've really
got going there. The other major systems that are involved, but
I don't think they're a major issue, are the APU. That silly APU
has done that for 3 flights in a row, it gets hot towards the
later par tof ascentand i twor ksgreateverywhereelse .We
need to figure out what's going on there and perhaps modify the
system so that that unit doesn't do that. But it's not a
problem. The only other semi-glitch that we had was the payload
bay door response after the tail sun attitude. That particular
thing was cured with a 15 minute transfer to top sun to heat up
the seals or the latch mechanisms whichever one it was, and that
was a stressful thermal attitude that was put there as a test to
try to stress to system.
BERGMAN How about the payload bay door, payload bay
cameras, wouldn't you include those?
DRAUGHON Yes, the payload bay cameras do need some attention
and more than likely, and I'm guessing some, but more than likely
there's also a thermally-related problem and the DAC cameras,
those DAC cameras haven't performed that well.
PftO Okay, let's go to Kennedy Space Center, Florida for
some questions, then we'll come back here to Houston. Please
identify yourself.
DICK LEWIS Chicago Sun Times
length of the deorbit burn?
DRAUGHON
LEWIS
DRAUGHON
LEWIS And both engines?
I have 2 questions. What is the
Two minutes and 40.8 seconds.
Two minutes and what?
Two minutes 41 seconds.
DRAUGHON Yes, that's a 2 OMS engine burn. If you only used
one it would just double it.
LEWIS And second question. When does autoland take
over? When do you go on autoland on the descent?
DRAUGHON It's at around 1600 feet just as you're on like the
last 10 degrees of HAC turn coming onto the final approach
azimuth, getting lined up with the runway.
LEWIS Shuts off at 200?
DRAUGHON At roughly 200 feet assuming there are no systems
failures on the vehicle.
LEWIS
Thank you.
TOM BOLE Conservative Publishing Co., Timpton, Iowa With
you're final groundtrack being over the land, are there any
further chase aircraft, such as higher performance maybe SR-71 or
F15B?
DRAUGHON No, those aircraft can go high. But not at those
speeds. They couldn't stay up with you.
BOLE What's the altitude crossing the coastline?
DRAUGHON I honestly don't have that number. I don't know.
PAO Yeah, that's been asked before, we don't have it
here, but we can sure get it to you and we will make it available
here and phone it to you gjys at Kennedy.
BOLE Thank you sir..
PAO Do we have anymore questions here at Kennedy?
PAO Okay, that's all for KSC.
PAO Our altitude coming across the coastline is 190,000
feet. Did Kennedy copy that?
PEERS ACKERMAN Times of London If you've got a closeout crew
coming aboard to do the shutdown this time, does this mean the
astronauts will be coming off the craft earlier than they have on
the previous 2 shuttles.
DRAUGHON There is a potential for that. I can't guarantee
that, but we're trying to relieve those guys of those chores.
You never know what kind of postmission, we try to perserve, if
we do have any anomalies, one thing we do try to do in the post-
landing and it's exactly what we doing in this COMM case. Alot
of times, if you shut one of those systems down then bring it
back up 2 days later you've destroyed the evidence, the problem
won't be there anymore, and you don't know how to fix it. So, we
don't want to keep a flight crew around for those kind of things,
so we just routinely setting up a routine way of going about
getting the crew out and putting some other guys in there.
ACKERMAN Have the previous crews complained about the amount
of time spent in shutdown exercises?
DRAUGHON No, John on flight 1 was anxious to get out and run
around the vehicle, but no, no one has complained of it.
CARLOS BYARS Getting back to recommendations that might be made
as far as changes go. Will you, or you know of anyone that's
going to make a recommendation as far as the radio communication
system is concerned, that you get rid of a single black box that
has everything going through it? That seems to be what has
thoroughly disrupted your redundancy.
DRAUGHON Well, I don't know, Carlos, if that's the right way
to describe that system. Perhaps they are in one enclosure, I
don't even know that, but even if they are, there are a bunch of
submodules in there that, if you draw them out on a schematic,
and I have schematics here, off the COMM system, they are, it is
modularized. There is 2 or 3 of all those components in there
and the GSKL that you've been told about some, selects you a
different encoder, a different transmitter, a different power
amplifier, so it may be in one hardware box, but it's, there's a
lot of redundancy in that box.
JAMES WILKINSON BBC I have two questions. Can you just go
over again very briefly, when they come out of the blackout, are
we going to be able to hear them from then on in, or is there a
period before.
DRAUGHON You wouldn't be able to hear them any differently
than you could before. There are two things that govern when you
can hear them and when you can't. One, you got to be able to
station with an antenna, within the line of sight and the other
one is you got to be below a certain velocity at a certain
altitude so you don't have the fireball that's an ionized sheath
around the vehicle it won't let RF out. Coming to Edwards, we
were, we had an antenna with a look angie to the vehicle, when it
got to a flight condition that would allow us to communicate. At
Northrup we have that same condition, and because Edwards is up
range of it, we have been looking at this fireball alot longer,
so we will acquire them at the same velocity and altitude that we
always did. It's just that Northrup we see them for alot longer
before we can talk to them because of the fireball.
WILKINSON Yes, I appreciate that, but sorry, for a simple-
minded Englishman, after they've come out of the fireball and
they are back in contact with you. You then have an antenna on
them from then on until thc?y land?
DRAUGHON Yes, we do.
WILKINSON Fine, and one other question. On the autoland,
again I'm sure you've covered this, but I haven't caught up with
it yet. Am I right in saying they fly the thing manually until
1600 feet? Then autoland takes over, and then they take it back
again to fly it manually for the last 200 feet.
DRAUGHON Yes, that's correct. There is another precision
navigation that comes into being at about that altitude, that's
called a microwave landing system. It's the standard kind of
system that's used on aircraft carrier approaches and on anybody
trying to make a zero-zero approach in weathered-in aircraft.
We're waiting to go into the autoland test until the orbiter
acquires that ground transmitter, locks up on it, and we know
that the onboard navigation system is being, is receiving this
very precision data. Then we give it to the system.
MARK KRAMKR Rack to landing for a rromont, if you will. Can you
describe the precise criteria which must be mot to hfvo a landing
on not 1 7, but I guess 3 5, or is that not considered.
DRAUGHON I can tell you that the criteria that we will be
used in selecting the landing runway. The highest objective that
we have for this particular landing is to get a crosswind
landing. The range that we are willing to accept in a crosswind
is between 10 and 15 knots, perpendicular, component or
crosswind. If it smaller than that or much, and these things are
a little bit gray, I moan, I sure we would take 0 and a half.
Somewhere around there you, it becomes so small that you might as
well not do it. You're not going to get enough data, if it gets
a lot bigger than that, its more than we want to do the firrt
time out. We would rather land into a headwind. The f.econd
highest objective is to got the autoland test. The only runway
at Northrup that's instrumented with one of these microwave
systems is runway 17. At Edwards there wore two runways that wo
could do that on, so if you can vou will go to a runway thats got
the right crosswind component, if you can't do that you'll try to
do a autoland test, and within all of that you've got to get one
that's got an acceptable headwind tailwind crosswind.
KRAMER I guess I'm more confused than I thought 1 was.
Is there a runway 23 also at Northrup.
There is . . .
Are there two strips there.
There is 05 that 1 s ...
05 and 23,
Yes
And 17 and 35.
That's right.
Do you contemplate ever landing on 35.
It would be a unusual wind that would have me do
So you're principal choices are 17 or 23. Okay.
But its purely a function of the groundwinds.
Where ever the ground wind is blowing we are going to go with the
criteria that I discussed.
HUTCHINSON
HUTCHINSON
HUTCHINSON
i HUTCHINSON
I that.
HUTCHINSON
HUTCHINSON
These are the same runways that you have at
Edwards, aren't they?
HUTCHINSON They have l oin hut wo have .1 lot more.
Yes hut I mean those are ( ho two prime ones.
HUTCHINSON 22/04 rather than 2)/0 r , .
Why don't you get th.it one way in the hack there
who hasn't had a chancre to ask a <|tiostion there.
CLIFFORD COLLFRLY. . .DAILY COUGAR ... For the, after the landing
will the exchange crew remove the plant growth unit or that he
done a little hit la Mm' on.
HUTCHINSON The flight crow is not do i ng it. I doubt that the
exchange crew is doing it too. I believe one of the early tasks
that the exchange crew does it package up a bunch of film and
other stuff that needs to bo taken off the aircraft right away
and 1 don't know who they give it to, soinebody comes up there and
(jets it and some real spiffy like they put in a baggie. I mean
its a big trash bagger, store a lot of stuff in and they hand it
to some guys.
Would the film, or would the PGU be included with
the f i 1 m.
HUTCHINSON I doubt that the PGU is in that set. It's got
some other environmental constraints on it, I believe and I'm
sure they're handling it a little more carefully and there is a
minimum time limit on getting the PGU out, I don't know what it
is, the ...:change crew won't do that, they'll take it out and give
it to somebody that will take it away.
Craig Corvalt please.
CRAIG CORVALT. . .AVAITION WKKK ... I want to make sure I understand
your tossing around to altitude 1600 feet here. My understanding
is your actually go for reengage auto flight controller about
16,000, turn on the final...
HUTCHINSON I made that mistake, it is 16,000
CRAIG CORVALT ... And then you transition auto land guidance as low
as 6,000 feet when you get everything settled out and ...
HUTCHINSON Yes there are a lot of criteria before the onboard
software will actually engage auto land. Just because you ask it
to take control of the ship and go into the auto land control
mode, it won't do that unless you're within a very narrow capture
envelope. We let the craft continue to try to converge those
errors down to that criteria, that meets that criteria as low as
6,000 feet. If it hadn't made it by then, then we have the crew
take over and begin to fly it again.
CRAIG CORVALT. . .And secondly if you are unable to restore CRT 1,
could you review briefly the ability to fly the aeroentry
maneuvers with the other two remaining forward CRTs. The
procedure there.
HUTCHINSON Well its hard to conceive that we wouldn't be able
to get it back because we can change it out, we can take the
fourth one out of the back and put it up front. But if you
couldn't, if you can't do that for some reason, or if that
doesn't work, the C3 unit is between the two crewman and lower
down and I'm sure that's the one Jack would use and in which to
execute the maneuvers. T think he could, have adequate
visibility to do that.
Just wouldn't display the BFS.
Please wait for the mike
HUTCHINSON You would reallocate where you were going to look
at SM, or the BFS function.
Mr. Sehlstedt.
HAL SEHLSTEDT. . .BALTIMORE SUN... One more brief question on the
problems. Are these kinds of problems such as you've had with
the APU, the kinds of problems that would, will normally occur in
the operation of the shuttle when it becomes operational? Are
these the kinds of things that you will just live with, just as a
person driving a car lives with an overheated radiator, or are
these the kinds of problems you expect to get rid of? In other
words do you expect to fly, say a year from now, a nearly perfect
aircraft or do you expect a certain number of problems to occur
all the time? Or can you say?
HUTCHINSON Yes, I can speak to that. We certainly do not
expect to have a perfect vehicle that's never going to have
problems, that's why we have the redundancy in the vehicle that
we do. The reason that we are as cautious as we are now, is
you've got to make sure that you have a lot of confidence on the
redundancy that you have. That when something fails that it's
not a generic problem, that if this one fails probably your other
two backups will go right behind it. So anytime in a development
test program or a flight test program you're rather cautious at
the onset. After a while, if the APU doesn't work, you'll log
it, and go on and fly the full duration of the mission, when you
land and the guys will come up and change it out for you.
Peter La r sen
PETER LARSEN . . . Just to go over this one more time. The
microwave beam auto land system, it's from 16,000 feet down to
200 feet this time?
AO
Yes, I think we're confusing microwave with auto
land. MSBLS and autoland...
HUTCHINSON The microwave system is a navigation guidance aid,
its acuracies are required to successfully do autoland. But it
operates from, and it depends, its a fixed antenna and it has a
certain size beam. When you get within that beam and going more
or less towards it. You will lock up on its data.
PETER LARSEN ... But the autoland the is within 16,000 to 200 feet.
HUTCHINSON Wo expect to acquire that data, have two way
communications with that instrument and be able to assess that
that data is being processed by the onboard computers in that
general range. And it could be 200 higher or 500 lower but
generaly in that range.
Paul Reiser please.
PAUL REISER . . . Just as we were coming over here and if I
understood it correctly we were talking about the CRT problem,
they were saying they were trying to fix it with the keys and if
they were unable to they were going to have to, it involved a
much more complex repair in which they would have to go back in
some panels. Could you kind of go over that a little bit.
HUTCHINSON The keyboard, its like the terminals you've got
out here, its hexidecimal system with numbers and numonics and a
few keys that are special function keys like a proceed and
execute or just like a equals and plus on your calculator. And
then some ones through nine and zero. One of those keys I
believe have two switch contacts under each one and each keyboard
can talk to two systems. One of those contacts under one switch
is lost its interface with one machine. The easy fix is those
switches, those keys, you can individually extract them. The
easy fix is to take that that key out, go to the aft keyboard,
pull one out of there and put it in, you don't even have to get
right one. It will just have the wrong name on it and you just
put a piece of tape on it and write on it the location that
determines what function it performs. So if its some mechanical
failure in the key itself that would fix it, if the problem is
not in the key mechanism itself, but in the interface or the
wiring from there to the computer box then that won't fix it and
you will have to pull the whole electronics assembly out and
change out the whole aft box. And we have done that on another
flight.
Are we sure its not the DEU?
HUTCHINSON No we're not. And the DEU is the box we were
think ing about .
And how about the CRT, it could also be possibly be
the tube I guess.
HUTCHINSON Its conceivable. Probably by now they may even
know. We'll have to wait to see what they find out but that's
the range of things you can get into.
Yes sir, the gentleman from TIME .
JERRY HAMILTON ... TIME ., . Nonf r i volous question sir, will the
VORTAC at Truth and Consequences, New Mexico be providing
navigational guidance on the downwind to this circling approach
HUTCHINSON Surely you know that.
I don't know.
HUTCHINSON We can find out for you.
Yes .
Any thing further.
Thank you. We appreciate you coming out. Thank you Hal.
END OF TAPE
p22j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 8/28/82 i
Hello again, and it's time for Neil Hutchinson to
do his final change of shift briefing of this mission. Over the
last 8 or 9 hours, the crew's asleep at this time and we trust
they'll stay asleep until time to get up and prepare to come home
tomorrow morning. Neil, why don't you browse over your log there
of the last shift.
HUTCHINSON Well, by the fact that I don't have anybody with
me, that's indicative of how well we're doing today. No doctors,
no systems experts. Everything is cooking along real well. We
had a not too busy but successful day and ran through basically
our intended flight plan. As you're aware, from Harold
Draughon's briefing this morning, we checked out the flight
control system and that APU water spray boiler 3 and it worked
fine and the operations are going to be normal with that coming
in. I had a minor anomaly tonight, which we're not sure exactly
what the cause is yet but it will have no etfect on us. We were
running the last of the 3 payload bay door tests tonight and the
door test, by the way, was very successful. We didn't see any
gap between the two doors when they were downliked, we thought we
might see, after we had been heat soaking the top of the orbiter
and cold soaking the underside as we have been and are still
doing. Well, we actually stopped just before I came over.
During that door closing test, of course, whenever they close the
doors, we have to fold the radiators up against the doors and
latch them in place so you can get the doors closed and in that
process, when we were redeploying the radiators after the doors
had been checked for back open, one of the radiators, the one on
t-he port side of the vehicle, drove out slower than we expected
it to. It drove out in a time such that we were sure that it
only had one motor driving it open. They have redundant motor
systems to open those radiators to deploy the radiators. We ran
a little test. It turns out that there are some microswi tches
similar to the ones that we had a little problem with in the
payload bay several days ago that are, in this case however,
hooked to the drive motors and basically, it's a very simple
mechanism. The microswitch is on the latch drive and if it
doesn't indicate that the latch is driven open, it won't allow
the motor that opens the radiator to drive. Obviously you
wouldn't want to drive the radiator open against a closed or
latched, against a closed latch. Turns out, we cycled the
radiator basically. We closed it up again. It drove closed on
two motors. We latched it again and the second time through
everything worked exactly normally and we had two motors on the
open side, so our only concern there was we wanted to make sure
we had two motors on the closed side. You need to be able to
close those in order to get the payload bay doors closed, and if
we had not have had two motors on the closed side, we were
planning on closing it and leaving that one panel on the port
side closed tonight. Like I said, it worked all right and there
hasn't been any further problem. Quite frankly, that was the
only thing in my entire shift today that didn't go right exactly
by the numbers. I'm sure everyone is interested in the
weather. The weather tomorrow, and by the way, we ought to, I
understand there's a lot of... seem to be some questions about
coming in 2 REVS early or 1 REV early. We're getting up, we went
to bed an hour early tonight. We're getting up on time
tomorrow. We'll he looking at the weather in the morning. The
prime landing REV is still 115, REV 115 and I have the data here
if anybody wants it. The weather tomorrow looks acceptable. We
do have some gusts in the area. We've got that are going to have
to be looked at in the morning. We do have a 25,000 foot cirrus
deck, let's not call it a deck. It's somewhere between scattered
and broken, as expected to be somewhere between scattered and
broken and we'll be looking at that again in the morning and
rather than me speculate on the weather, I'd just say that our
plans right now are to come down on REV 115. We're going to get
up in the morning. John Young is at White Sands and is going to
fly the STA and take a look at the weather and the wind situation
and then we're going to have to play it by ear. We have no plans
right now to come in 1 REV early or 2 REVS early. I'll say that
for a second or third time because I understand there's some
folks thinking we might be going to do that. The weather as we
saw it in terms of this wind situation, it doesn't look like it's
particularly thermally induced and if we get some wind, we don't
think there is a great deal of benefit in trying to hurry up the
deorbit preps in the morning and get down 1 REV early. The cloud
situation, of course, is just going to have to be evaluated when
we get there. We have the option, as we've been telling you for
several days, if we don't like it tomorrow, to wait another day
and the prognostication for, or forecast for Tuesday is about the
same as fcr tomorrow so I think we're probably going to work real
hard to try and get in tomorrow. And the spaceship is great.
The crew is great. The private med com tonight was, we actually
cancelled the private med com once because it turned up right at
the time they had the little problem with the radiator and then
we rescheduled it and it was very innocuous. So I think we're
ready to come home and that's all I have Terry.
Okay. We're ready for questions. Wait for the
mike and identify yourself. Up here, Harry Kingburg.
HARRY KINGBURG. . .Having been through these landings twice before,
how would you compare your state of readiness, both the men and
the machinery, this time around as compared to the other two and
generally, your readiness?
HUTCHINSON I think everything is certainly a lot calmer than
it was on STS-2. I think we were ready on both STS-1 and 2 to
come in or we wouldn't have come in. This last couple of days
where we have been, I am sure that the crew is more organized
than STS-2 was. My recollection on STS-1 is that they were
really fairly well organized too. By organized, I mean they've
had a chance to really collect their thoughts. The spaceship
obviously tonight, we discovered some things that we thought we
were going to have to stow tonight had already been stowed this
morning, so their housekeeping, and I think that's a function of
having been there for 7 days. I think their housekeeping is just
better organized. There were fewer, way fower teleprinter
messages concerned with checklist changes and that kind of thing
going up over the last couple of days and almost none tonight.
It's going to be an almost nominal night. They're really no
modifications to be made. Tomorrow morning, since we ran the APU
today, we are not going to run it tomorrow and that whole segment
of time called FCS checkout where we went into OPS 8 and checked
all the controls and displays and wiggled the flaps and so on is
not going to be done tomorrow, which is going to make tomorrow
morning even more relaxed than STS-1 and STS-2 were. So I think,
of the 3 flights, we clearly are in a more organized state
here. Most of it's due to the fact that we haven't had a lot of
failures and we've been there longer and the crew has just had a
chance to really get their act together the last couple of days
as opposed to the STS-2 guys that got up the'-a and had to turn
rig... work like the devil, and then turn right around and hurry
up and come home with a lot of modifications to their checklist
because of the fuel cell being down.
A follow up on that please, and that is having not
ever before landed the orbiter at White Sands, can you give us
your assessment of the way you feel and the crew feels about
that?
HUTCHINSON We feel fine about that. I surely do and I'm sure
the crew does and the entry team does. We've practiced it in
simulations, landing there and landing at Edwards over and over
and over again. The crew probably because of the runway status
at Edwards this spring, has more time flying the STA in to White
Sands than they do in to Edwards. I'm not sure about that but
I'll bet they do. So, it's just not a factor.
Jules Bergman.
JULES BERGMAN. . .ABC NEWS... Neil, do you think you're getting
closer to operational status now with this flight and how do you
assess operational status after, with flight 5?
HUTCHINSON Well there isn't any question that, you know
yesterday we passed the total amount of time from STS-1 and 2 on
the orbiter and we have turned up the fact that the vehicle is
not using as much power as we thought and it doesn't get as hot
and as cold as we thought, and the systems that we need to make
the thing cook along on orbit and get it up and get it back are
all working great and we basically finished checking out the arm
and it works exactly as advertised and you have to believe that
we're a gigantic step closer to having a vehicle that doesn't
require as much babysitting, if you want to put it in that state,
and that's what the operations thing is all about. It's to be
able to put this thing up and back and not have to work at it
quite so hard. In STS-5, I am sure that we'll take that one as
it comes and certainly nothing has turned up on this flight that
A
is going, would put any kind of a shadow on that being our first
operational flight.
Okay. Back here. Chicago.
JOHN VANN. . .CHICAGO TRIBUNE ... As a kind of an extension of those
comments. When you first fly the Challenger, how will your
experience from these flights spillover into that. That is will
the Challenger start out having to go through the tests, or will
that start out operational given what you've learned from the
Columbia? Or do you know?
HUTCHINSON I thii* it'll end up being a kind of a mix. We're
not going, there's not another orbital flight test program. We
have proved the basic capabilities of the vehicle and certainly
there are, you know the first time you take a new car out on the
road, there are things you want to pay real close attention to,
and I think OV99, or Challenger, is going to require probably
some extra effort that first couple of times out to make sure we
got it, we understand everything about how that vehicle works and
doesn't work. There are some new pieces of equipment, in
particular the software on that vehicle. The onboard computing
system is better and more sophisit icated and there's more of it,
and that's going to take some examination. But in, you know the
real answer to your question is, is the flight test... we're
trying to build vehicles that are very similar although there are
some improvements in 99, and the basic flight test of the
concept, and the airframe, and all systems onboard is finished
after STS-4 and we certainly won't be going through that again.
For example, we won't go through all these thermal things again.
Back over here please.
JAMES WILKINSON ... BBC .. .Can you just briefly outline what
remaining development tests you have to go through on STS-4?
HUTCHINSON No James, I can't. I'm not sidestepping you. We
do have some more thermal testing to do. The arm testing .s
basically finished. There are some more orbiter system detail
test objectives that have to be done, but quite frankly, I'm not
familiar with the STS-4 flight plan. I've been buried in this
thing so much that I really am not that familiar with it. By the
way I can't imagine that somebody doesn't have... we have an STS-4
flight plan on the straight already and it's available I'm sure
yeah, see me tomorrow and I'll show you the flight test
objectives. All the DTO's have already been mapped i^»to the
flight and there'll probably be some that after we get u^ck the
data from this one and look at it we'll want to change up a
little bit, but that wasn't a very good answer. I really don't
know.
Back up here. Dave Dooling, Huntsville Times.
Over here on the isle.
o
DAVE DOOLING. . .Given the confidence that you're expressing in the
vehicle now and presumably through STS-4, why then will you be
carrying the DFI on STS-5 and possibly on 7?
HUTCHINSON That really doesn't have anything to do with the
confidence in the vehicle but I think a lot of it has to do with
optimum tim'.* to take it off and the fact that we're using this
vehicle on those flights and it allows us an opportunity to get
some more engineering data and you know engineers, we never have
enough. Fiut that has absolutely nothing to do with not getting
everything absolutely rigorously done in these first 4 flights or
the way the vehicle has been adding out in the testing.
Jules.
JULES . . . Nei I , if you were summing up briefly the lessons you've
learned from STS-3, what would they be?
HUTCHINSON Gosh , that's a tough question Jules, I haven't
thought about it, always hate to answer questions like that, off
the cufE. I think that we have a couple of things that we have
set out to do, we've really done a good job of, in terms of our
basic mode of operating the vehicle and that is we have gotten
ourself in a mode where we, on the first day we go up and the day
we come down, we've gotten our flight plans and our operations
set up so that we really allow the crew a chance to get up there
and get organized. The first day's flight plan on this flight
was considerably different and not anywhere near as strenuous as
it was on 1 and 2. And on 4 it's going to be the same way. And
it gives for us a chance to get the vehicle up there and settled
down before we really, really get after it. That's one thing,
and of course the entry's the same way. We've had a fairly clean
ship here, but we're awfully, seem to be awfully
compartmentalized and organized to get ready for the come home.
Other lessons learned, I don't know. I think we've learned we
really don't have to pay much attention to thermal.
JULES What I was getting at specifically, are the
failures or the problems you encountered, like heat tiles,
cameras, S-band transponders.
HUTCHINSON Well lessons learned on gear that didn't quite do
the right thing, you really haven't learned a lesson yet. All
you really know about it is it didn't do what you intended and
you can rest assured, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of
activity on tile. That's something that's going to require, and
I have no idea, I mean we may end up having a density a bunch
more tile. I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows at this
point. We need to get the vehicle back and it's going to take a
bunch of engineering analysis to decide exactly what needs to be
done. The things that didn't work right, cameras, and the T.V.
system and things like the S-band problems we had. Those are all
going to have to be treated, you know we're still not exactly
sure what's wrong, if anything with that number I transponder.
It may not even be the transponder. And that gear has got to be
gotten back on the ground, examined, and the failure modes
identified. And then some plan of attack to make sure that
failure doesn't happen again. If it requires some kind of
different design work or whatever. So, lessons learned in terms
of things that have broken probably the biggest one is that we
can, this ship has capability to sustain a lot of things that
don't go exactly right, and it still hums along really well.
Over here.
TONY MALES KY. . .CBC. . .How long do your options remain open to
decide to stay up longer in the event that you should make that
decision? But by the same token, when do you have to decide if
you want to come home earlier than you currently planned.
HUTCHINSON I am not intimately familiar with that timeline.
But I would guess if we were going to make a crack at an earlier
;
REV, we would want to do it fairly early in the morning. Shortly
after we get up and really get going. I wouldn't guess it to be
more than an hour or two. Because there are a nice set of things
that have to be gone through to get ready to come down, and we
have a timeline all laidout and we like to see things like
payload bay doors closed over sights and things like that to
verify the vehicle configurations. So, if we decided we were
going to do it an hour and a half early. And I'll say it again,
we are not waking up early. So that is not an easy thing to do
and right now we don't see any advantage in it either. But I
would suggest that that kind of decision would have to be made
fairly early. Now just the inverse is true on the wave off. I
think we could go all the way down to the point of closing the
doo-s and might even go farther than that, and decide that we
just didn't like the weather, and I'll try again Tuesday. Now if
turns, out that we can ever prove to ourselves or convince
ourselves that the weather thing is sensitive thermally. That
means better real early in the morning and getting progressively
worse. By the way, the circumstances we've got now, I don't
believe, that that's a consideration at the moment. In fact I'm
sure it's not, it wasn't the last weather briefing I got. There
is always the possibility that we could go to bed early tomorrow
night and then deliberately, you know, just shift the system
around and get up early to get in a REV or two earlier on
Tuesday. That is something I would consider to be a very
feasible thing to do. Tomorrow morning, I really don't think
so. I think we'll be coming down when we said we were going to,
or not.
Back here.
PETER LARSON. . .ORLANDO SENTINLE STAR... Two quick questions, one
do you have any data on exactly how cold and how hot the ship did
get during the various attitudes maneuvers performed during the
seven days? And secondly, do you know anymore about why space
sickness was such a particular problem on this flight and not on
the earlier shuttle flights?
HUTCHINSON Well that second question first. No two humans are
alike, I mean that's easy. There's no particular reason for it,
other than as you're aware, as we have gone through our manned
spaceflight program. We off and on have had those occurances and
they happen. So, and I don't think, you know maybe next time
this same two guys go and they wouldn't have anything. You know,
I'm not sure we understand the physiology of that thing. And
each individual's reaction to it well enough to make any kind of
prediction based on what we know about them on the ground before
they go and so on and so forth. What was the first part of your
question?
LARSON How cold
HUTCHINSON How cold, yeah. I don't have any direct numbers.
But they're surely available and we've been keeping continuous
plots that on certain temperatures that show that attitude things
that we've done. And Terry could get you specific, if you'd like
to know it got up to a minus 150 here and plus a 150 here, that
data is available. In general they didn't get as hot as we
thought they would get. And they didn't get as cold as we
thought: they would get. And the vehicle's thermal capacitance
appears to be much greater than we thought it was. In other
words the rate of change of temperatures aren't quite as
dramatic. And we very definitely are not requiring the levels of
power that we thought we were going to have to have to keep
things warm when there supposed to be warm and cool when there
supposed to be cool, by quite a bit. A couple of kilowatts worth
of power average that we didn't use on this flight. That's why
we have so much hydrogen that we thought we were going to have to
use premission.
MARK KRAMER. . .CBS. . .Nei 1, what do you see as the most serious
problem the mission faced?
HUTCHINSON Oh, I think the tiles. I think that's the one that
suprised everybody the most. And it's the one that's going to
get the most attention, I suspect. Because we're going to find
out, you know the electronics things, they're black boxes and
people take them apart and understand exactly what happened. And
I'm sure we'll understand exactly what happened with the tiles,
but I think that's the one that you'll find in the end is going
to end up getting the most attention. Because that really did,
did suprise a bunch of people.
KRAMER I'm curious to look at another issue because of the
play we in the media gave the story late this week about the
transponders. If can quantify in any way on a scale of 1 to 10,
10 being very serious and 1 being very minor. Where does the
transponder problem fall?
HUTCHINSON Let me, before I answer that, you know everybody's
got their own opinion of that. At the time the thing happened, I
think you would have said maybe it was over a five. After we'd
looked at for a while, and as I sit here and look at it now. I
think it's probably a two or three. And let me see if I can, and
I know that's kind of a weazel word, just to give you an example,
something 1 didn't mention that might be worth mentioning. You
remember after we got to looking at the situation, people told
you that we had a method to use the our recorders to record data
and then dump it down. And if we really ever got in trouble and
lost all the S-band PM links that we thought we could probably
manage the spaceship by recorder dumps. And that's a true
statement. Well, guys got to looking at that and believe it or
not, we have over in the control center a procedure, we haven't
put It onboard, because we don't think it's going to be needed.
But if it was needed, we have actually fabricated a cable out of
parts that are available onboard. We have a cable kit, for
making cables with pins and connectors and all kinds of things.
And we have fabricated a cable that connects the input of that
recorder to the output of the recorder and literally just jumpers
right around it and will allow us, if we lost all the PM links to
connect the telemetry system, the PCM telemetry system, directly
to the FM transmitter and get real tima data, just as if we'd
never lost anything. And we've actually built one, we've hooked
it up over here in Sail, and it works like a charm. And it's
been going on the last couple of days. And when I came to work
today, the procedure was completed. It had been verifed and we
had a teleprinter message built ready to send up. Now we didn't
send it up and aren't going to. But the point I'm trying to make
is that if you just give those kind of things enough time to
settle in. Given is an absolute black and white failure that
thing looks pretty tough because you look at the percentage of
downlink you've lost or may have lost. And I keep saying may
because remember that we never really did go back and cycle power
on those command encoders that control that system 1 and there
are those around that still, and by the way, as soon as we get
back on the ground is one of the first things we're going to
do. As a matter of fact there is a test procedure that has been
put together that we are going to run from Houston via command as
soon as the changeout crew gets in there to find out exactly what
we have and haven't got in that PM system. But the point I was
trying to make about the recorder thing, if you just look at,
just let those things sit for a little while, you're really
surprised about the number of things you can come up with that
allow you alternative means to get something done. That in the
end make you feel a lot better about flying around in the
configuration you're in.
Final question, dealing with that same issue. Can
you characterize how close, NASA Management came to ending the
mission early as a result of that failure? Were you very close,
very far, or somewhere in the middle?
HUTCHINSON I can't answer that, honestly Mark. And the reason
I can't is because I wasn't here that day. You know that
failure, the first failure the only hard one we know happened.
Happened to be the night, right, just before handover when low
power of transponder 2 went. And I went back over to control
center, after I got out of here, long enough to see Holloway get
on transponder I and then I went home and went to bed. I didn't
have a shift the next day, and was not. When I got back,
everything had kind of sc-ttled out. There had been a lot of
hoopla amongst you all, but you know it had kind of settled
out. So I don't know.
JOHN BISNEY. .. RKO. . .Wonder if you could outline for me the crew's
activity between wake-up and deorbit burn.
HUTCHINSON Yeah, it is going to follow the flight plan if
you've got one, pretty much straight, John. With the exception
that that entire block of time that occurs may be, well we're
going to get up, you know and they got some time for getting
organized and then breakfast. And then we start working on the
m
stowage of the vehicle and I think you're going to find the
vehicle is awfully well stowed. I have the feeling that it's
ready to reenter right now from the scuttle/butt you hear coming
down on the air/ground, they seem to really have things pretty
ship shape. The one big change tomorrow is that the FCS checkout
that was scheduled maybe 3 hours after we got up to about 4 hours
after we got up. Is not going to be done, we're not going to
take the computers into OPS 8. We won't be checking the
dedicated displays or anything. We're just going to go directly
from OPS 2 into the entry computer programs. So you know the big
thing is to get up and get going. Get the system into OPS 3,
then we're going, you know close the payload bay doors, get our
suits on, get a snack and come home. It's a pretty straight
forward day.
CARLOS BUYERS . . . HOUSTON CHRONICLE ... No i I , is there any particular
reason why you were emitting t! checks?
HUTCHINSON Yeah, we did them yesterday. Or today, I'm sorry.
CARLOS They've already, I ^<n't feel from reading this
schedule that this was something that you kind of went through
today, then went through again tomorrow.
HUTCHINSON Well, we had, let me put it this way. The FCS
checkout is basically divided into two parts. And one part of it
is the part that starts APUs and wiggles surfaces and the other
part is the part that checks displays, hand controllers and
things like that. And premission, the plan was, we were going to
do the part that checks the displays and controls both days. And
do the APU stuff on the reentry day. And as you're aware, the
reason we changed that plan, was we wanted to make sure we
understood the water boiler. We got it all done today, we had no
failures at all and so it was just felt that there really isn't
any point in doing the display part of it twice, no other reason
than that. As a matter of fact, on STS-4, I suspect
End of tape.
p23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 1
NESBITT Good morning and welcome to the final change of
shift press briefing for the third shuttle flight and off going
flight director Tommy Holloway is with us this morning, and spent
the night with his group of flight controllers, updating the
plans for today and getting everything ready and I'll turn it
over to Tommy and I think he has a little information for you
about some of the entry things and a little bit of weather data,
maybe. Tommy.
HOLLOWAY Well, I did have but I can't find it. I don't have
it, left it over there. Sorry about that. Last night the shift
was uneventful. We put the crew to bed on time, they appear to
be up for the first pass after they were scheduled to be to
bed. We saw no activity after that, we had no alarms. They woke
up on time this morning and all is well. The entry is planned
for REV 115. Ignition is, in the minutes is 34 minutes instead
of what Mr. Hutchinson gave you last evening. So if you'll take
the numbers that he gave you and modify the minutes by 30 to
34. What was it 3520 last evening? If you'll change it 34, 5
minutes and 20 seconds, if you'll change the minutes to 34,
that's what were using now for planning number. That change was
made to improve our capability to down mode from a OMS deorbit
burn to a RCS, reaction control system burn, and affect the
deorbit. The weather, I had the details, but I got that little
piece of paper mixed up with all the othor little pieces of paper
I carry around, and apparently I left it in the Control Center.
NESBITT We can get that for everybody after the briefing if
you like in the newsroom here.
HOLLOWAY The weather is, I can remeber the numbers though,
there's 6500 scattered, 12,000 scattered, 25,000 broken, and the
winds are 12 gusting to 25. At around the predicted landing
time. That's about it, so we'll open it up for questions.
NESBITT Okay, Wayne Dolcefino back over here. If I don't
call on you by name, be sure and identify yourself.
DOLCEFINO KTRH Tommy, this talk of gusts of winds between 10
and 12, even before we're supposed to land of up to 30 35 miles
per hour. What are the qusts situation, what do we need in terms
of constant wind, in terms of our strength, how high can we go?
HOLLOWAY That depends upon whether your gusts are down the
runway or crosswind. We wouldn't like gusts greater than 15 to
20 on a crosswind situation. But on down the runway situation,
which they'll be able to affect today, 25 or so are okay. And
that's about what we're looking at.
WAYNE Something else I was going to ask, so I'll go
ahead. Can you kind of talk us through, without getting really
p23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 2
to deep into detail. Can you kind of talk us through some of the
highlights of the late morning before we do the ignition for
today?
HOLLOWAY Well the crew, the first couple of hours, the crew
is going through the normal activities that they do every
morning. Get up, get themselves and the spacecraft in shape,
have breakfast. And then after that point, they go into the
deorbit prep. The first major activity in the deorbit prep was
deleted because it was completed yesterday. The FCS checkout was
completely done yesterday, and our water boiler checked out very
well, so there'll be a little spare time, next. After that, the
next major activity is closing the payload bay doors. And that
occurs, as I remember around a minus 4 hours. The next major
activity after that point is suiting up, both crewmen donning
their entry suits. After that comes some configurations,
verifing all the switchlists, the vehicles configured the way we
want it for entry. And they transition the computing system into
the entry programs, in about an hour and 15, 20 minutes to go to
retro-fire Then they come over the states and make sure
everything is okay, and then we'll have retrofire at 34 minutes
on the hour, currently. And that may change a few seconds
through the day. And then a normal entry which you are used to,
of 400 k, a blackout exit, and so on and so forth. And those
numbers are still the same as they were last evening when Mr.
Hutchinson talked to you.
DOUG ROSS KPRC You mentioned a change in numbers to optimize
the situation or whatever you said for possible RCS deorbit.
What is that, just a contingency in case the OMS does not fire?
HOLLOWAY Yes sir. And that's standard operating
procedure. I think the numbers Mr. Hutchinson gave you were just
done by, without considering that, and it was an over-sight, to
be honest with you.
ROSS Okay.
HOLLOWAY And we have always done that on all the shuttle
flights to date.
NESBITT Okay, back over here, the gentleman in the blue
shirt.
ACKERMAN TIMES LONDON Is there any possibility that you may
bring the shuttle down an orbit earlier? If so, when will that
determination be made? And also, if the gusts come around to 90
degrees to the shuttle, and you decide to keep it up, when will
that determination be made?
HOLLOWAY Well, the first question, currently we don't intent
to land a REV earlier. Ideally, if you wanted to land a REV
p23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 3
early, you should have started yesterday. Put the crew to bed an
hour and a half early and woke them up an hour and a half early,
and all would be relatively the same this morning, except we'd be
seeing an hour and a half early landing. There's still an
opportunity to affect an hour and a half early by deleting some
activities, some measurements we take associated with the payload
bay doors and some nonessential activities that already been
identified in a deorbit prep. That option probably exists under
normal circumstances up to about the time we close the payload
bay doors at a minus 4 hours. After that point, it would take
and emergency situation to, for us to want to deorbit early. As
far as how latf you can delay and go tomorrow, if that was the
third question. Technically, you can delay right up to ignition
time and decide you're not going to go and wave off, and we'd put
a plan in effect to spend another 24 hours or 22 and half hours
and deorbit preps an orbit early tomorrow. So, technically, we
can wave off and go a day later right into tig. Was that all
your questions?
NESBITT Right in front there.
DICK RATNER ABC Could you do an anomoly check please? What's
happened with the S-band, what's happened with the CRT that was a
problem, was it changed, was just a key changed? What ever
happened to that Florida fly?
HOLLOWAY Well let me take those in back. I have no idea
what happened to the Florida Fly, I imagined he got smooshed
somewhere. (Laughter)
HOLLOWAY I think Jack, that he hasn't seen him for a couple
of days. But who knows what happened to the Florida fly.
Obviously, he's not flying around in the spacecraft, because we
haven't heard the crew say anything about it. The second
question on the CRT, we have a spec key that calls a specialist
function, that is certain kinds of displays out of the
computer. That display failed on one of the keyboards, yesterday
and that key has been replaced with another key, off of the aft
keyboard that is not normally used, acknowledge key that is
routinely not used very much. And a little repair business, we
call it In-flight maintenance. They took the key out of the, the
fail key out and replaced it with a nonused key from the aft
keyboard. So the guys upfront, both have functional systems,
complete functional systems. And the fail key in the back,
there's no key in the back in the place where this one came out
of is, the fact that we don't have it is of no consequences.
Your first question about the status of the communications
systems, it's the same as it's been for the last 2 or 3 days,
after the initial failures. And rather than try and summarize
that, I'll refer you to the previous hand over briefing.
p23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 4
RAINER I'll follow that up, who's keyboard had the key
failure and who changed it.
HOLLOWAY I don't know who actually did the work. I didn't
ask, and I believe it was commanders left keyboard, the one that
normally the commander uses.
NESBITT Right here next to him.
HOLLOWAY And someone might be able to find out if they
reported which one changed it. They may not have even told us
which one changed it.
(Garbled), FRANCE PRESS Could you tell us what that keyboard
does in the aft cabin, what's its usage in the aft cabin?
HOLLOWAY Well, anything the crew wants to do while they're
in the aft flight station. A typical activity would be closing
the payload bay doors, looking out the window, one guy over on
the left side where the keyboard is at, the other guy looking out
the window and doing the work.
FRANCE PRESS REP Is that used for the arm as well? That one?
HOLLOWAY Yes.
FRANCE PRESS REP And they have a CRT on that keyboard as well
too?
HOLLOWAY Yes. In the same area. And again, I'll emphasise
that that keyboard is totally functioned as far as its purpose, a
keyboard has multiple keys on it to perform different
functions. It has all letters and it has all of the digits, 1
through 0 and 1 through 10, or 0 through 9, and there's some keys
on the keyboard are not,... perform functions that not required,
absolutely required and we use one of those keys to replace one
up front and so you ought to consider the aft keyboard as being a
completely functional keyboard at this point.
FRANCE PRESS REP In any event, it's not utilized during
reentry, or anything.
HOLLOWAY No sir. Not at all.
NESBITT Back over here with Doug Ross.
DOUG ROSS Following Mr. Ackerman's question just a little
bit. Now John Young's going to take off I believe at 8:00
o'clock in the STA and make an assessment of the wind conditions
and the possibilities for landing. Now from what you've said
about the difficulty of coming early and the ease with going
late. Would you say that If a waveoff is determined or If they
p23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 5
think the winds are going to be too high at the intended landing
time, they would probably go another day rather than try to come
home a REV early.
HOLLOWAY Well relative to the work that the STA is going to
do. It can only do it at particular times and if it said it was
okay at a time phasing that would allow you to deorbit early, it
would have no of determining it's going to be bad at a later
time. So as far as the STA work is concerned, it could only be
used to determine that you were in a situation that would very
undesirable to land in and the management might and the
patentiary flight director might at that point just decide to
wave off for a day. But basically if the STA determines that the
landing conditions are difficult and we determine that that's not
a safe situation we will have the capability to wave off and go
another day.
ROSS I guess what I'm getting at is odds are that you
would, ...if there were. ..if you weren't going to land on the
scheduled time, odds are you would go long rather than come
short .
HOLLOWAY With respect to the STA work, that's absolutely
right. If we wanted to decide and land the orbit early, it needs
to be done in the next 2 to 2-1/2 hours and that will be based
on... would have to be based on weather predictions, and not
actual information from the STA and I don't expect, personally
expect that's going to happen, although, I would imagine at about
this very time, the entry flight control team is receiving a
weather briefing and it's possible that they might decide to try
to de-orbit early but I don't really believe they will.
NESBITT Okay. We'll take one more here and then we'll go
to KSC and if necessary, we'll come back here for questions right
here.
PAUL RAYBURN AP If you go long, is it possible you'd long for a
REV or 2 or would it be 24 hours?
HOLLOWAY Well it's possible that we could wait 1 REV, up to
1 REV and based on changing conditions elect to deorbit on a plus
1 REV situation, very possible.
NESBITT Okay. Let's go to KSC for questions and we'll come
back here to JSC if necessary Cor others.
NESBITT Did we lose those folks?
NESBITT Do we have any questions.
No. We're not getting the questions.
P 23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 6
HOLLOW AY Well. We're not the only ones that's having
complications.
_ 0 okay. If we have any more questions here, we'll go
aSead and take those Cor a minute while we get squared away at
KSC. Yeah, right over here.
JOHN PINE REUTERS Your 're talking about the weather problem.
l.. i- aQ stands now, it's coming at approximately 12:30, a
UtUe before 12:5o fountain Standard Time? There's no doubt
about that"
HOLLOWAY Right on time today.
JOHN PINE Right on time. Thank you.
HOLLOWAY I'm going to go home, set my clock and wake up in
just in time to see it.
NESBITT Okay. Now we'll try KSC again. Do you have any
questions there?
MARK MAYFAIR UPI Tommy, you may have just answered my question,
out in your own feeling" do you think they're going to land today
and land on time?
HOLLOWAY Yes sir.
MAYFAIR How about the weather. Would you classify the
weather right now good, bad, fair?
HOILOWAY Well, I would classify the weather fair with the
"uuaUon...! would like for them not to be bo gusty but he
weather to be fair and acceptable assuming that it doesn t
deteriate any more than we expect it to.
MAYFAIR Okay. Thank you.
NESBITT Okay. That's all the questions from KSC. We can
come back here. I do have a weather report that came out of,
apparency out of White Sands this morning, no this is the last
niaht's weather report, so I think the things we have here is a
little more up to date This generally described a headwinds for
£ne priSe runway 17 and winds to be 5 to 10 knots w th gusts to
15 but I think... is that about what we heard for for...
HOLLOWAY ...Gusts a little higher than that.
NESBITT Yeah. I was thinking we had gusts to 25 perhaps.
NESBITT Okay. One more question in the back. Mr.
Ackerman .
p23j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING DATE 03/28/82 PAGE 7
ACKERMAN Mr. Holloway, these gusts of 12 to 25 your
describing, are these head on to the proposed landing direction
of the shuttle and second question, what's the pattern out there
for weather where you get this gusting situation at this point,
what are we likely to be looking at? 1:27, whatever.
HOLLOWAY Well, those are predictions for 1:27. They're not
the winds... the winds right now, I believe, are less than that
and the gusts are a lot less and the gusts tend to build as a
function of time in the daytime. We have two runways at Northrup
and the entry flight director will be making a decision on which
runway to use to take advantage of being lined up with the wind
the way he wants to be and generally he' 11... once he decides that
the winds are such that... of a large enough magnitude that he's
unwilling to do the intentional crosswind landing where we'd like
to land with winds of 10 to 15 knots. Once he exceeds that and
decides that he's going to do the best he can on the wind, he'll
pick the runway that gives him the best margins in terms of winds
and take the runway that puts the winds down the runway.
ACKERMAN Okay. I understand that one of the prime
objectives of this landing has been to get a crosswind landing.
We'll have the wind a beam. If that doesn't look like occurring,
would he bring it down or would he rather go till tomorrow to
effect that test?
HOLLOWAY We would not go until tomorrow to effect the
test. If we have acceptable landing conditions at any runway
we'll deorbit today.
ACKERMAN Thank you.
NESBITT Okay. If we have no further questions, we'll call
this one over and thanks for coming out today.
END OF TAPE
p24j KRANZ CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 3/29/82 4:50 p.m. PAGEl
PAO Ok, we're ready to start now, we have with us this
evening Mr. Gene Kranz who's Deputy Director of Flight
Operations. We'll open this session with an opening statement by
Mr. Kranz, and then we'll throw it to questions.
GENE KRANZ Ok, let me tell you basically, I'm sitting in for
Harold Draughon here this time. Principally because we're going
to be doing a relatively short turnaround and Harold's team got
office replaced by Neil's team, we'll even bring in Tommy's for a
short period of time, just try to keep the teams fresh.
Basically, the entry team will be onboard again around 1:00 this
evening local time. Let me briefly summarize the planning
process as it has occurred in the Control Center over the last
several hours, and rather than trying to copy down all these
numbers, I'll leave a copy of the sheet here that I think PAO can
reproduce and the only thing I can't signify is to the
authenticity of is the local time. Because when I try to convert
to Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, that kind of stuff... I
think it might be worth while to recheck a few of those
numbers. But all the MET times, and everything else as far as I
know is correct on here. In looking at the opportunities for
tomorrow, remember the last time we talked here I think, or the
last time I had the opportunity, it did indicate that from the
standpoint of weather, we're going t.T have to play the weather
real-time. In fact I said we may consider coming down 24 hours
earlier or even going 24 hours late from the standpoint of
deorbit. And that's pretty much the posture we find ourselves in
right now. I think you're all aware that the weather out at
Northrup strip today was unsuitable. We pressed it right up to
the very end, when I say pressed, we're in a safe posture all the
time and basically our wave off time is generally the last pans
over the Continental United States prior to the deorbit
maneuver. In a similar fashion, we use the Shuttle Training
Aircraft in the same fashion that wo had used for the previous
missions. Because no matter how good the forecasters are, what
you're really after is a crewman who is aware of the handling
qualities of deorbit or whoso flown the entry and can provide you
an on the spot evaluation as close to your time for the deorbit
maneuver as possible. In fact we continue the STA flying after
the deorbit maneuver just in case we'd be faced with for
instance, a change in runway direction, which is possible. So
basically, we exercise the same procedures that we exercised in
STS-2, and will exercise these procedures for foreseeable
missions. Whenever we feel we have a weather difficulty, such as
the one we had today. Now let me briefly go into the planning,
and I'll give you a bit of the rationale behind it. As soon as
we had waved off, we starting taking iook at landing
opportunities tomorrow at all three landing sites, Northrup, KSC,
and Edwards. And wo had some early morning opportunites that we
had looked at, and basically we scrubbed the orbit 128
opportunity, principally because we wanted to again, get the STA
up and perform the same type of evaluation that we performed
today. In addition, we got, we had to watch out for how much
further backward we'd have to change the crew sleep time to allow
them to get adequate time for sleep in the evening. At the same
time, we couldn't put them to bed too early, because we still
have some orbiter cleanup to get ready for this upcoming sleep
period. So basically, we found ourselves in a posture, or a
basically scrubbed out on the orbit 128 opportunities. Our basic
planning now has a crew activity plan and all these numbers are
preliminary, they're good within about 30 minutes I'd say at this
stage right now. But, we'll get the crew to bed roughly around
6:00 this evening, possibly even a bit earlier. And again the
times I'm talking here are central standard. And we're getting
up the crew about 2:00 a.m. central standard tomorrow morning.
In all cases for all deorbit opportunities we'll exercise the
same basic timeline and it's the same deorbit prep that you saw
today less two items. We've eliminated the flight control system
checkout and basically that was basically pad in today's deorbit
prep, and at the same time we've eliminated the theodolite
measurements on the payload bay doors. So, basically those two
items will not appear in the timeline. All the remainder of the
timeline items and the sequence is basically as we had
established at pre-mission, as we exercised it today. The
deorbit opportunities that we'll be exercising, and again this
basic timeline, getting up at 2:00 in the morning, and basically
running for a 7 hour deorbit prep, puts us in a posture where we
could deorbit to Northrup strip on orbit 129 with a landing at
Northrup around 9:07, that is mountain standard time. in a
similar fashion, depending upon how clear the weathei decision i .*>
early tomorrow morning we will have targeting available, that
could allow us to deorbit into KSC on that same orbit for a
landing at 11:13, eastern standard time. Again, wo would
exercise this decision process, again looking at the weather, as
we had today. Also taking into account such things a;i wind:;
aloft, how it's going to affect the entry guidance, the crew
status, I expect to be excellent, the spacecraft systems status
will be excellent, and I expect that the recovery capabilities it
Northrup strip as well as KSC will certainly be suitable. So
basically, on orbit 129 our primary targeting will he for
Northrup, again, with a relatively clear cut weather decision,
and the weather in a totally satisfactory fashion, that's more
than likely where we would go. However, i f we find out we're
faced with the same type problems that we had today, wo have the
option to go into KSC. On orbit 130, wo would be planning that,
more loss as a backup in case wo normally would wave off from the
Northrup deorbit opportunity. We would plan in goinq the next
rev or orbit 130 into KSC, landing times thero would bo 12:47
local. The pre-deorbit and post-deorbit tracking for both orbit
129 and 130 are basically the same, we've got good communications
coverage, good tracking, for those opportunites. All of those
opportunities are within our, what we consider acceptable cross-
range limits. We also have backup opportunities continuing
throughout the day at both Edwards and Northrup strip. Now the
weather status is going to continue to change throughout the
evening into early morning. And, I think the basic fooling of
the flight co"trol team is that the weather outlook for Northrup
for Tuesday and even Wednesday is not particularly good. Now
there has been some discussion about the possibility of a high
developing off southern California, and we're going to have to
watch that throughout the nighttime period. KSC weather, with
very high confidence, is good. Tomorrow, however, it's possible
that the weather could be deteriorating on Wednesday. At Edwards
the winds are forecast to be high, and we have the possibility of
a tail wind on the approach and landing phase. So basically, I
think that the opportunities into Northrup, we're going to have
to watch very closely. The KSC opportunity looks very good
tomorrow. I don't know if there's anything else, just a couple
of other notes from a standpoint of consumables, we're in
excellent shape from a standpoint of consumables. We've got
between 72 and 96 hours, depends upon how we track... 72 hours
that we could continue at the power levels we're at right now,
we're still at 24 hour reserve beyond that. So basically, for
those of you who are familiar with mission rules and redlines,
the redline basically accounts for some of the uncertainties in
the measurements and a 24 hour wave off capability. Well, we
have 72 hours of consumables above that redline at the current
time. We have no spacecraft systems problems at in any way right
now that would compromise using this flight duration if it became
necessary, but I don ' c expect it will be necessary. That's
basically it.
PAO Ok, we're ready n i for questions, please wait for
the mike, raise your hand and if I don't identify you give your
name and affiliation, Roy Neil.
ROY NEIL (NBC) Gene, can you give us what you think would be
your optimum choice, in other words, what are you really looking
for, what would make you the happiest in mission control, and
about when do you think that weather will solidify well enough
for you to be able to project which site you're going to land at?
KRANZ Well the optimum choice would certainly be the
choice that we had exercised premission, and that's basically to
utilize the Northrup strip facility. The lakebed capability out
there because again, this is our third flight, we've got several
fight test maneuvers, and we'd like to have, as I think you're
all familiar, a pretty good margin about anything we do early in
the program. So, basically I believe the primary choice would
certainly be Northrup. However, I consider either KSC or Edwards
fully acceptable. We have to be prepared for such things as the
RTLS capabilities, a lot of the AOA training we've done to go
into a runway, all of our contingency sites during course of the
mission or to a runway. So basically, we would reduce our
margins slightly by going into runway, but 1 would consider it
perfectly safe. Second part of your question talked about the
timeline for decision, and again, the basic times that I've
quote! hei* are basically central standard times. We expect a
weat'io: observation update from Northrup strip, roughly around 3
to 4:00 this coming morning. The flight control team intends to
get together with the program management, and the weather
personnel, somwhere around 5:00 in the morning. Basically, we're
baselining our first look, first look, at the weather at 5:00
a.m. central standard time. My preference would be if it's clear
cut, we're going, saying in to Northrup or we're waiving off
Northrup, to make a decision by 6 if possible, because to make it
easier on the crew I'd like to make this decision part of suit
donning, so if we're going to slip an orbit, they can make that
decision, they won't have to don the suits any earlier in the
timeline than is normally called for. However, if necessary we
can go right up to just as we did today, the last stateside pass
prior to the ignition time to deorbit to Northrup and wave off.
So, basically our basic timeline that we would exercise is very
similar to that which we exercised today. We will have, and we
are in the process of moving an STA aircraft to KSC, so we can
get the same observation and services from KSC as we get from
Northrup strip.
NEIL Could I just follow through? Am I reading you
correctly Gene, what you're really saying is your going to try
for Northrup first time around on rev 129, then if that fails and
the weather starts to deteriorate there you are going to
seriously start looking at KSC?
KRANZ Yes sir.
NEIL I'm reading you correctly?
KRANZ Yes sir. We'll look at Northrup and its not only
the short term, we also have to take a look at how we handle this
vehicle after we roll out. What is going to be the weather
there, but the principal concern is obviously to have the
greatest margin possible, this early in the program and basically
we would use crew safety as the principal discussion, I mean the
principal element of the decision process, but again I don't
consider unsafe to go to the runway. Just provides me a little
bit more margin.
Pat Dolen, Cable News Network
PAT DOLEN... CABLE NEWS NETWORK . . How high could the winds at
White Sands get before you would be forced to scrub the landing
again?
KRANZ Well the principal concern today, it's a question
of when the orientation along the runway in the crosswind
component. The principal reason for scrubbing today was more
associated with obscuration because the winds had finally swung
to the point where they were just about down the runway. So I
would say one of the primary reasons for the scrub was just the
obscuration, the other one was there was significant turbulance
<n the area and these two prameters were the ones that you can't
readily evaluate from forecast, which is why we have the STA
airbornes, so it was a combination of winds, but todays scrub was
more the obscuration of limitations and visibility and the
turbulance that the STA crew encountered. I think you heard his
recommendation, we had pretty much come toward the same
conclusion in the control center also.
Jules Bergman.
JULES BERGMAN. . .ABC NEWS... Gene would you reach a clean cut
decision at 6:00 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. or would you wait until John
Young and the STA aircraft had flown, to do so?
KRANZ Well let me give you for example, I'll cite a
(garbled) case. Suppose this wind kept blowing all night long,
and people out at Northrup strip had indicated they had all kinds
of duning out there and they just didn't have a chance to clear
it, that's an obvious choice and a wave off choice. If we get
into a situation like today, I doubt if we're going to be able to
make it by six, I think we're going to wait til the STA is
airborne and again that is one of the reasons why we didn't
consider that earlier opportunity we had. Just so we could get
the STA up to do the kind of job it did today. There is a
possiblility of a clear cut decision early, but unfortunately it
never seems to work out that way, it always, you keep working so
right down to the very end.
JULES BERGMAN. . .Second question. Are you happy with the 300 foot
wide runway at KSC? In case there's a crosswind blowing or isn't
it true that you and the rest of the controllers, control team
would like to have a crosswind landing under your belt's before
going there.
KRANZ Yes we've always wanted a crosswind landing under
our belt. We've established on STS-2, 3 and hopefully in 4 as a
relatively high priority objective. We placed this above the
other ladden objective but to some extent we consider it
replaceable. We're going to try to get either one or the
other. Again I believe its a common feeling that while we would
like to have it, that the spacecraft is reasonably capable of
being handled, in fact I think its a rather solid machine to
handle in a crosswind, I think what we're interested in is
getting some experience in the rollout aspects. From the
standpoint of the runway width, I think we've got full confidence
in our ability to maintain directional control of this vehicle,
we've got the brakes, we've got rudder to some extent, but also
we've got the nose wheel strings. I don't think we are
particularly worried about the rollout, again its a question we
would like to have as much margin as possible as early in the
program.
Dave Dooley, Huntsville Times.
DAVE DOOLEY. . .HUNTSVILLE TIMES... How close did you actually get
to firing today and what will the crew be doing with most of the
time they have today? Will it be just standing back and then
resuming?
KRANB Actually if I remember, we were about 50 minutes,
in fact we were less than that, I would say we were about 35
minutes. At that time we were in the process, I personally and I
think several of the people there had recognized that we were
going to wave off. So my principal concern, recognizing uhe
relatively short period of time we had was to get the cycle of
planning started so we could have something to say right now.
I'd be inclined to say we were within about 20 to 25 minutes of
deorbit take, but again, we play it pretty close to the best when
we are playing with weather. We had talked about it if you
remember over the states and we had made up our minds that we
were going to have a clear cut decision over Ascension, and
that's basically what we did.
DOOLEY And the crew time?
KRANZ , Crew time right now, basically if you have been
listening to the air to ground, we have been in the process of
reconfiguring the spacecraft, we going to be giving them a little
bit of free time but we're going to get them to bed about one
hour from now, because again we hf.d to further adjust the sleep
period to get them up around two in the morning.
Morton Dean CBS News.
MORTON DEAN ... CBS NEWS... Gene someone suggested earlier today
that there might be a problem in the buildup of loose sand on the
runway at Northrup. Is this a problem, do you have to sweep it
clean, or what?
KRANZ Yes, there were some indication and it would
probably be better to let Northrup folks talk for themselves, I'm
sure they're not tagged into this, but one of the discussions
that we had with George Page, just shortly ago, was basically
there was some indications they may be getting some duning on the
end of the runway and yes they expect the winds to taper off
tonight and they expect if the winds drop down by around 10:00
this evening, that they will be able to go out and more or less
take a look at the surface conditions and do whatever clean up is
necesary .
Al Sohlstedt, Baltimore Sun.
AL SEHLSTEDT. . .BALTIMORE SUN... What about the people Mr. Kranz,
do you have enough technicians and people with experience to
handle the equipment at KSC or are you going to have to move some
of them, fly them over from Northrup or just what are your
procedures there and the second part to that question briefly,
when you refer to Edwards as an alternative field, you're
speaking of the hardstrip there, I take it?
That is correct, we are talking about the runway at
Edwards. I don't have the specific answer to your question about
the availability of crews at KSC, I'll get you this after we
finish this conference but again in the discussion with George
Page, he indicated that he believed they could handle it down
there and other than that generalization, I could get you more
details if necessary.
Carlos Byars, Houston Cronicle.
CARLOS BYARS . . . HOUSTON CRONICLE ... Th is morning immediately after
making his comment that they have time to bring this to a halt,
John Young commented that the turbulance was very, very bad, in
fact I believe he said that it had popped something loose he had
never seen that before. Could you tell us a little bit about
that?
KRANZ Basically there a certain set of flight conditions
that are set up principally for safety of the G2 airframe.
That's what they call SIM disengage and there's a variety of
conditions that can cause the STA simulation of the orbiter to
disengage and there is a large variety of conditions under which
that will happen. He basically saw what he called a SIM
disengage.
PAUL RESER ASSOCIATED PRESS If you land at KSC are you qoing to
have to sacrifice some of the aeronautical engineering tests that
you're going to perform on the way in?
GENE K RAN Z I really don't know. We haven't taken a look at the
entire phasing of the entry process. I don't believe that we
would compromise too many of the aerodynamic maneuvers that are
planned. And one of the advantages of KSC is we've got microwave
landing systems in both ends of the runway. So I think we
certainly continue to pursue that objective as planned, but the
details to that level the specific elements I'd say in general
yes we intend to accomplish the planned entry maneuvers and to
try to satisfy the autoland objectives but we're going to have to
take a look at that overnight.
MERV CHAPMAN ABC RADIO First a clarification and then a
question. Because it's somewhat different than we think we were
told earlier. The opportunity on rev 130. Are you not going to
land at Northrup but only at Kennedy if you go to 130 and second,
the question, since there was a lot of speculation the last three
days about landing 1 rev early at Northrup and an hour and a half
before the schedule landing John Young found conditions
acceptable. Are you now kicking yourselves that you didn't?
GENE KRANZ No I'm not. And I'll answer that last question
first. I think John Young did the same thing we as flight
controllers do. What ho wanted to do was to make his final
observation at the last possible opportunity. He knew the basic
process for preparation for deorbit. He knew that the basic plan
allowed ,* waveoff within that last rev prior to deorbit and
again, he was playing it close to the vest just like we try to do
in other areas of the control center. So no we're not kicking
ourselves in that area. I forgot, the first question was the one
associated with the deorbit on orbit 130. Two Northrup strip.
The reason I didn't include that that opportunity always exists
but the basic indications we have for tomorrow is that the winds
the gusts the turbulence will be less early in the morning than
it will be as it progresses through the day. So our basic
planning we could go either way but our basic planning tends to
feel and basic indications are if it isn't good early in tho
morning it isn't going to get any better.
ERIC INGBERG CBS What kinds of changes would be required in
positioning the spacecraft for TIG if you go to Kennedy?
GENE KRANZ Basically it's principally adjustment and I'll give
them to you relatively. For instance, if we want to move from
Northrup to Kennedy we delay our Ignition by about 6 minutes.
Excuse me, about, yes about 6 minutes. That is the principal
adjustment we make.
CRAIG CORVALT AVIATION WEEK Gene two questions. First on
crossrange, discuss the crossrange you have to pick up on rev
129 and 130 and how that affects the initial bank and the
subsequent roll reversals and I have a second question too.
GENE KRANZ Craig, we really haven't, I hive the numbers on
crossrange that are on this sheet. I have crossrange left and
right of the groundtrack on there. There's a note when I give it
to you that will indicate whether we are left or right of the
groundtrack. We haven't really taken a look at all the phasing
of the maneuvers. We're going to have to take into account the
winds at that time to set up what our initial phasing will be.
We haven't done that yet.
CRAIG CORVALT Okay, and second, is on a contingency landing into
KSC would you expect Jack to go control stick steering all the
way around the hack and all the way down. I think you spoke
really to that a minute ago on autoland.
GENE KRANZ No I think that that's really dependent upon the
winds that you have at that time and basically that gets into how
we approach the hack for various KSC approaches, but again I
believe that we would try to stay with the autoland as long as we
could.
MAX RUSELY THE GALVESTON NEWS If they go into KSC tomorrow and
everything goes fine would they possibly just start going in
there beginning with the next flight rather than flight 5?
GENE KRANZ That's an interesting question. I think that
certainly is a possibility. Again, what we would have to do is
take a look at what kind of margins did we maintain, how far down
the runway did we touchdown in a lot of those parameters. I
think again the whole question of landing sites and I think this
brings up a point that might be worth considering not only for
this mission but for subsequent missions. The reason we got the
consumables is because we managed them such that we had weather
options. I believe weather options are going to be with us for a
considerable period of time in this program. And in our flight
planning I think in the future we're going to be looking very
heavily at considering mission duration to satisfy the flight
objectives but keeping an open end from the stand point of being
able to pick the best possible weather. Our preference will
always be I think to go into KSC.
Let's take 2 more questions from Houston and then
go to the Kennedy Space Center. The gentleman with Agency French
Press.
LUCY NAME FRENCH PRESS Mr. Kranz do you consider this perhaps a
blessing in disguise that it proved to you the 'flexibility of
your planning and of different landing sites that you can move it
any place you want really?
GENE KRANZ I think that's a good question. To some extent I'd
say yes. I think that there's few surprises that I've had in the
program that have been very worthwhile, very beneficial. I think
in the flight 1 if you remember we had basically what amounts to
as a perfect flight. I mean spacecraft, no anomalies, nothing
like that. Flight 2 we had a bit of conservatives bit of
conservatism in that flight but again we continued to satisfy the
basic flight objectives in spite of a power plant failure,
basically the fuel cell failure the second mission we were
flying. This flight here I think we're starting to see the
overall maturity of and our confidence building in the
spacecraft. We've developed several work arounds, we discussed
communications here awhile back. I don't know if you may have
heard we've already got a jumper worked out if necessary that we
could exercise onboard to provide us real time data over the FM
transmitter. I think we've got significant amount of maturity
and confidence in the flight control teams. The planning process
I mean we've juggled it back and forth several times during the
course of the mission. To my knowledge we've satisfied 100
percent of the principal objectives that we had. Yea, I almost
do consider it a blessing. I'd like to be on the ground right
now because I think a lot of people are getting tired but again I
think we've got the confidence that with no risk to the crew or
the spacecraft we can continue until we get a more acceptable
landing situation. And that's sort of a judgement process we
went through.
JIMMY WALKER ABC NEWS A couple of question. What is the first
consumable that will run out? When will that occur?
GENE KRANZ It's hydrogen right now and as I stated we've got a
72 hour margin above our redline so we have approximately 96
hours of hydrogen remaining in the spacecraft.
JIMMY WALKER And you talked about the greatest margin of safety
being at Northrup. Could you compare in that context Northrup
versus Kennedy?
GENE KRANZ That's very difficult to do. Because what you have
to do is you have to equate the landing conditions all things
being equal. Perfect weather at both sites. We have slightly
increased the margin of safety out at Northrup strip for such
things as, assume we'd blow a tire. Remember what we're trying
to do is to find a cross, we wanted to satisfy the crosswind
landing which was brought up earlier. We've got margins for
various minor failures that could occur that could cause you know
small perturbations in directional control of the crew. Now
again we believe that the crew can control the vehicle in case of
a blown tire but we won't have any problems there. From a
standpoint of energy margins, we always we want to get a few more
flights under our belt prior to the time we go into a runway
landing because we have to be very close in management of the
energy. But again, our experience has been for STS-1 and 2 that
the flight systems have performed exceedingly well and we really
didn't need that margin. We've got several flight test
maneuvers. We've got the autoland that we're attempting to
satisfy in STS-3. We'd like to have maybe just a little bit more
margin there. I don't consider it unsafe it's just it is good
technique in a flight test program to have that added margin if
R is available. Right now we may not have that availability and
in no way do I consider that we're unsafe.
PAO Okay, we'll go to the Kennedy Space Center now for
questions and we'll return to Houston for a few final
questions.
ROBINSON CHANNEL 2 Could you elaborate on the main factors that
would necessitate a landing here at KSC and how much time would
you actually save in turnaround time if you land here?
GENE KRANZ I'd say the principle factor that could cause us to
move into KSC and I'm not leaving Edwards out, but again I think
our basic thought processes if you got to go to one runway you
might as well go into the facility down at KSC. But again, we
are going to look across both KSC and Edwards tomorrow and select
that site which we feel is going to provide us the greatest
margin. From a standpoint of the fact that it could put us into
KSC just assuming that was our next best place to go. I believe
a weather situation very similar to today, the fact that possibly
they couldn't clear the runways in time for our planned deorbit
time. Those are the type well what I'd say is contingencies.
Those are the type problems that could cause us to waveoff. Now
is there another question there please?
ROBINSON Turn around time?
GENE KRANZ Turnaround time. I can't speak specifically to that
one, I'd guess that would be in the order of 7 days to 2 weeks
but don't quote me on that one. I'd suggest you contact the KSC
personnel.
LYNN MARSHAL In the event that the weather is not acceptable at
Northrup, Kenir , *t Edwards which site would you go to after
that?
GENE KRANZ If it was not acceptable we'd keep flying. No,
basically the the basic theme it looks like KSC is going to be
excellent tomorrow and that's why during a good portion of the
discussion that I've had I tend to look at KSC as our next prime
site. The weather there looks like it's going to be quite
good .
JERRY LIPMAN Specifically what individual will decide when and
where the ship lands, you, James Beggs, whom?
GENE KRANZ I believe that's a composite of several
individuals. You have the program management and the people on
site at each one of the facilities providing you their status.
You have weather observations from each of those sites. You have
the input from the crew flying the STA, John Young, he's had
STS-1 flight experience and as you are aware he made the call
today. You've got the airborne crew. And the airborne crew has
to some extent already expressed their opinion that if they have
to go to a runway it's their preference and their belief that KSC
might be the place to go. But basically, there's several
individuals who all contribute to this decision process and
generally Dr. Kraft and Glenn Lunney working with the other
program managers will make the decisions.
JOAN HELLER TODAY I assume that you've spoken to the astronauts
about all the different possibilities. What do they say?
GENE KRANZ No we haven't. They may have by now. They gave them
a sort of oan earlier indication, early in the day, probably
about 2 hours ago. We just finished the preliminary look at the
timeline. Neil Hutchinson's team, the Orbit team was in the
process of getting the crew put to bed and I just fed them
various thoughts that had come up in the basic timeline we were
working to just prior to the time I came up here, so I can't
vouch that they have given them all of the thought processes that
have occurred so far. It will be prior to the time they go to
sleep however.
REGGIE TURNHILL BBC It sounds as i f you need an astronaut with
flight experience to be flying over KSC tomorrow. Have you
arranged that?
GENE KRANZ Yes. We're moving a STA to KSC and to my knowledge
right now I think Dick Truly may be flying that one. But I'll
check on that one after this conference also.
JERRY LIPMAN To follow up on Lynn Marshall's question. Will you
consider an overseas landing at all if all the, no? ok.
GENE KRANZ I don't see any advantage in an overseas landing. We
have much better tracking, much better communications, much
better navigation aids and with the period of time that we could
still continue to fly this time I'm sure we could find a set of
weather conditions that was appropriate for landing.
TOM BOYLE CONSERVATIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY, TIPTAN, IOWA What
would the groundtrack be on these two approaches to Kennedy?
GENE KRANZ That's probably about the one piece of information I
didn't bring. But I'll get a copy of it and provide it to my
knowledge it'll go just about clean across the United States from
west to east and the approach azmith should be pretty close to I
imagine about 90 degrees into the heading alignment circle at
KSC, but I'll check that.
PAO We have one more question.
LARRY CALTHUR ST. PETERSBURG INDEPENDENT If all factors are
equal the weather Is perfect at Northrup and perfect at KSC would
you say now that the tendency would be to land at Northrup?
GENE KRANZ Yes.
PAO We do have one other question.
JERRY LIPMAN Everybody on the telephones this afternoon here
said you folks in Houston would have information on chase planes
if the landing is here. Can you tell us how many, where they'd
fly from, the patterns, pilots, that sort of thing?
GENE KRANZ No, but I know Dick Truly was working on that late
this afternoon and I have not had a chance to tag up with him.
I« ve been worrying the timeline deorbit opportunities that type
stuff, but again we'll get that information for you.
PAO Sounds like the kind of thing we can get overnight.
GENE KRANZ I just wondered, do we have somebody who takes notes
of all these actions I got here so that I don't miss any.
PAO Okay, let's switch back to Houston now, the
gentleman with the London Times.
PEERS ACKERMAN London Times Let me get this straight Mr.
Kranz. What I understand is, if you go down to the wire and you
get a wave off at Northup then KSC is, you're 90%, 99% choice
then.
KRANZ . That's about the size of it, that's it.
ACKERMAN Thank you.
KRANZ Yeah, basically the key thing is if we wait right
to the very last minute, to wave off to Northup, it is doubtful,
in fact I'm almost sure we would not try KSC on the same orbit.
We would slip, we would go in 1 orbit later.
ACKERMAN Wouldn't consider staying on that 130, it would go
straight through.
KRANZ Again, what we're gonna have to take a look at the
weather and establish priority sights tomorrow, but KSC looks
pretty doggone good.
Okay, I just copied a report from the control
center that Bob Crippen will be flying the STA at Kennedy
tomorrow.
KRANZ One action closed.
JULES BERGMAN ABC News Gene, if both White Sands and KSC look
unfavorable tomorrow, would you try Edwards, or would you press
on till Wednesday?
KRANZ That'd be a pretty tough decision. I think it
would depend on the winds out at Edwards, whether we're picking
up a tail wind as we were going in. There has been some limited
concern about the approach, considering the fact that the lake
bed is not particularly good to use as an overrun right now.
BERGMAN I ' talking about the concrete runway at Edwards.
KRANZ Yeah, what I'm talking about though is again
considering such things as overrun and for the tailwind case I'd
think there would have to be some consideration towards the winds
in that area and how the heck we could approach it. But I
believe the basic intent would be, we don't want to paint
ourselves in to a corner. Okay, we've now, as I stated, we've
got plenty of consumables, what we have to do is take a look at
the long-term weather forecast and see if we were absolutely
beyond a shadow of a doubt, sure that we were gonna have landing
weather suitable the following day before we'd wave off
Edwards. So I think th*t is a possibility that I think has to be
considered, and again I can't forejudge what the weather's gonna
be.
BERGMAN And the second question. Will the MLS at the Cape,
can the MLS at the Cape, fly the Shuttle down to the runway hands
off?
KRANZ Basically, the basic intend if you remember, was to
pick up CSS in the preflare time frame, and again I think that's
still our basic intent. I wouldn't see any reason for changing
that particular set of flight objectives. We'd like to again
approach the, again going back to margins we discussed earlier,
we'd like to ease into getting this type of flight experience,
and I believe we'd continue to pursue the auto-land objective
just as we'd planned premission.
PETER LARSON Orlando Sentinel Star Two quick questions. If
the weather's not substantially better tomorrow, what would you
say are the odds of landing at KSC, and secondly, what is the
greatest risk of landing at KSC?
KRANZ I think to indulge in the first one would be pure
speculation trying to outguess the weather, cause we thought it
wasn't gonna be as bad as it was today. In fact, it'd probably
be best not to speculate that. I think the chances are, well the
fact is that KSC weather looks like it's gonna be good. Northup
weather looks like it has several of the same characteristics we
saw today with the possible exception that a high may be
developing in the Gulf of California area and push some of that
stuff north. Best decision there is to wait til] about 4 in the
morning or 5 when we take a look at it and see how it goes. I
think the greatest risk of landing at KSC, I don't see any risk
as substantial, because again as I stated earlier, I believe the
navigation performance has been excellent. I think the crew's
ability to land this aircraft with relatively low sink rates, and
have good directional control during the rollout process, has
been demonstrated to be good. If there is one concern I'd have,
it would be landing either short or long. But I think it would
be principally the short landing case. I don't consider that a
reasonable probability, however.
PAUL REISER AP Two questions. Do you anticipate, or are you
planning to powerdown some systems or take further actions that
would further conserve your consumables, that's one.
KRANZ Okay, the first question is, we've already powered
down, we're very close to around 11 kilowatts load and that's
what we're basing it on. We've got DPI off, we've got a good
portion of the OSS packages off, I don't expect any further power
down because I don't want to deviate, we're gonna be powering up
here in roughly about 8 hours and I don't want any major
deviations in the checklist. I just don't want to put the crew
through that kind of trauma, and we have a healthy margin right
now.
!<ECIER Second question is, how much in your management
process, how much weight did you put on the observations of John
Young today. In other words, if there had been conflict of
opinion, which way would it have gone, and the second part of
that is, have you got someone making similar observations at
Edwards tomorrow along with Northup and KSC.
KRANZ We'll work out procedures. Our principal concern
since we considered the KSC weather as what you'd say is better,
or more favorable tomorrow, we decided to move in that direction,
we haven't established, to my knowledge yet, specific plans for
weather observations at Edwards. The basic decision process, I
think that the people in the control center arrived at the same
conclusion John did, just about the same time. I think everyone
had been watching it quite closely, the weather decisions were
definitely continuing to worsen throughout the day. I think the
basic process was a combination of Dr. Kraft's, John Young's and
the flight directors.
REFD COLLINS CBS Radio About crew training, at the relative
sites, it's always been said they've had more practice landings
at White Sands then any place else. What about the practice at
KSC, they've had alot of return to launch site abort practice,
have they had alot of normal approach, east to west, or west to
east?
KRANZ To my knowledge, this particular crew has possibly
spent more time in the STA on approaches at KSC then they have
out at DRFC. The second point is, immediately prior to launch,
once we knew we were going in Northup, and the lakebed was wet,
we set about to run several integrated training runs, both stand-
alone as well as integrated, with the crew into KSC. So, they're
not unfamiliar with the approach, approach geometry, and some of
the characteristics of KSC as a landing site.
JOHN BISNEY RKO I'm just wondering if the importance of
looking for an opportunity to do a crosswind landing has
diminished at all in importance in comparison with just getting
the craft down properly.
KRANZ We're still continuing to pursue the crosswind
landing, but again if you remember the mission rules, it was a
question of autoland and crosswind. The crosswind had the higher
priority, but my gut feeling is, we'll take whichever one we can
get, principally to get the experience. We're satisfying one of
our principal objectives, either way we go. At KSC I think
there's reasonable probability we would see a crosswind.
W ARK KRAMER CBS Gene, there were reports this morning that the
weather was significantly better at White Sands earlier in the
day, and you made a remark in this conference to that affect,
that the weather seems to be better earlier than it is later.
The othsr day, I think it was yesterday, Mr. Hutchinson made a
remark which was diametrically opposed to that. He said in
response to a question about coming back one rev early. Well, we
don't see any advantage in the weather in coming back earlier in
the day, as opposed to later in the day. Which is it?
KRANZ Well, that's very interesting, because White Sands,
there is a statistical weather that basically indicates that the
winds tend to build up more in the afternoon in the month of
March, and if I remember right, for about three days in a row, it
was the opposite, out at White Sands. And I believe that's
probably what Neil was basing, and it's just a question that you
have statistical weather and then you have what actually happened
the day before and the day before that and we sort of play our
own Kentucky windage in that. interestingly enough today, the
forecast wind difference between one rev prior to the time we
were scheduled to deorbit and the deorbit rev was only about 5
knots difference.
CARLOS BYARS Chronicle Couple of questions. First, a moment
ago that you commented that some of the people were getting
tired, and I'm wondering whether you're referring to people in
the control center or to the crew, or all of the above?
Secondly, on the west to east path, what kind of affects do you
expect to have from the sonic boom?
KRANZ I haven't looked at that, and we haven't mapped out
the sonic boom yet, I'm sure that will be a consideration this
evening as we get into more detailed planning. From a standpoint
of the people getting tired, I think the crew is in excellent
shape. We've gone to lengths in the last couple evenings and
again this evening to make sure they get a good 8 hours sleep.
They seem to be sleeping well, I think the control teams are
pretty good in managing the system so that we don't have any
unnecessary alarms that we might wake them up. T believe the
basic concern I've got, and it is a concern of significance yet,
is that we've done several, what we call whi f ferdills , in the
flight control team, we've ended up, as a result of moving day 4
up to day 3 and moved the team around, and then we decided we'd
make soma changes in day 5. It's just been a constant period of
juggling of the shifts, and we thought that we had finally gotten
back into the right cycle day before yesterday, and now we're in
the process of turning around the entry team in a short cycle.
But again, the controllers are exercised this type process, and
they've got a good sound team structure, they've got a good
handover process. It's one thing to be tired, it's another thing
though to walk into that control room knowing you're gonna
deorbit this day, you got these activities to do and boy the
adrenaline get's going and you don't Know you're tired until 3
hours after splashdown.
KRANZ Splashdown, wrong term, rollout (laughter).
We've been advised by the control center that JSC
will provide one chase aircraft to the Kennedy Space Center, and
the pilot is a gentleman named Guy Gardener. He's an astronaut,
and in the back seat will be astronaut Jerry Ross.
PAO Let's take about two more questions, then close it.
STEVE MCVICOR National Public Radio You may have already gone
over this, but do you have equal amount of recovery equipment at
both White Sands and KSC?
KRANZ Yes, KSC is obviously our ultimate land .* • site for
the majority of the landings in the program, and yes twdy do have
all the necessary equipment there to support the vehicle landing
and turnaround.
MICK CONNOR Reuters In simplified terms, you will deorbit on
129 at White Sands and 130 at KSC?
KRANZ That is correct, and let me make sure everybody
understands that. The numbers I give are deorbit revs and the
landing is the orbit orbits, and the landing is the subsequent
orbit. So, when I say we deorbit on 129 we actually land on
orbit 130. Basically, when you see this sheet of paper here
which might be useful to you, basically, the orbits that are
listed there are the orbits for deorbit. The landing will be on
the subsequent orbit.
PAO Okay, this is next to the last question. I guess
we're gonna have a change of shift briefing at about 8:30 so we
need to close this. Morton Dean.
MORTON DEAN Gene, on the track to Kennedy Space Center, you're
going across land almost the whole way, for Edwards it's >ver
ocean for most of the way, if there's an emergency onboard do you
have additional plans for this flight track whereby the commander
would take the ship out to sea and so that it would ditch there,
or do you have different types of emergency procedures because
it's going over land most of the way.
KRANZ No we do not in a specific sense. But I think like
any pilot in a high performance airplane, I believe that they
have the concern of the public, the ground track, the safety of
the people that they fly over very well in their minds, and
assuming they had controllability and knew they weren't gonna
make the landing site, I'm sure they'd put the spacecraft in a
posture where it would result in minimum damage to the local
areas and avoidance of hazards to the population. That's pretty
much standard .
JIMMY WALKER ABC Gene, to go back to your comments earlier
about landing short or long at Kennedy. On the first space
shuttle flight, Columbia landed 2800 feet beyond the planned
touchdown point. On the second, it was 1000 feet before. Is
there anything in this instance, should you land at Kennedy chat
you can do to assure pinpoint landing?
KRANZ No, basically either of those cases would have been
acceptable. If you remember we actually target down the runway
we've got an under run as well as an overrun. And to my knowledge
if the crew really got on the brakes they could stop in, if I
remember right, it's around 7500 to 8000 feet. I think we've got
a healthy margin from a standpoint of veaicle capibility for
braking, and actually that's why the runways are as long as they
are, to just provide that again margin that we like.
PAO Okay, thank you very much. We'll see you at about
8:30 with flight director Neil Hutchinson.
END OF TAPE
p25j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 3/29/82
In this change of shift press briefin your host is
Flight Director Neil Hutchinson who will have a brief statement
and then we'll go into q and a.
HUTCHINSON Well good evening. I obviously didn't expect to be
here. However, here I am and you all are aware why I'm here.
Things are going along fairly well. The outline, I think I
caught part of it, but I understand Gene Kranz was over here
earlier and kind of told you an outline of where we were headed
tomorrow and what we were doing. There hasn't been any changes
to that basic plan. As far as the vehicle goes, the vehicle, the
crew, of course, has been put to bed. We attempted to put them
to bed a couple of hours early tonight. As would be the case
with you if you had been sleeping on a particular schedule and
then .ill of a sudden somebody decided you ought to go to bed a
couple of hours early, it was kind of hard for them to get to
sleep. As a matter of fact, about 35, I'd say 30 minutes or so
after the last pass where we intended to talk them and it was
\ actually maybe 15 minutes after the start of the sleep period,
they called us just to chit chat. Nothing in particular and then
about 30 minutes after the start of the sleep period, we had one
i of the very few on this flight, but an alarm woke them up on a
heater temperature on one of the APU's, in fact on APU Number
3. They'd just barely tripped the limit that we had set in
■ there. We've changed the limit and they got up and turned on the
; CRT and looked at it. From the time the alarm went off until
\1 they turned the CRT bick off was about 5 minutes, so they weren't
up for very long and it was really shortly after that they went
to sleep. I kind of doubt they were asleep anyway. Since that
h time, which that happened a couple of hours ago, everything has
| been very quiet on the ship. We're not conducting a payload
operations tonight. We've got a minimum amount of power going to
?, the payload, primarily just to make sure we keep the very
[, comfortable margine that we have attained in the cryogenics. The
t; vehicle, we did take power off on a couple of things. We had the
I; DFI instrumentation powered off which is a pretty good sized
% user. That's probably about 1-1/2 kilowatts, in tha
k neighborhood. Since we're not doing any more thermal testing,
| most of that instrumentation has to do with gathering temperature
I data and strain gage data for the thermal testing, so, of course,
I there's no affect to the flight operation or the flight data
1 retrieval by that, having that powered off. As far as our, let
I me talk a minute about tomorrow morining. I don't know whether
I you got a flight plan or not but there has one been put together
I and it looks very much like a normal deorbit morning with the
I exception that times are shifted a bit. The crew is going to
I wake up tomorrow morning at about 16 hours elapsed on day 7, I
I think that's about 7 hours or so from now, 6 hours from now. We
1 have a fairly, if you can call getting ready to come home
1 leisurely, a fairly leisurely deorbit preparation, just like we
1 did this morning. There's no FCS checkout. The primary deorbit
§ REV is still to Northrup REV 129 with an alternate to KSC on REV
ft
130. The plan surrounding how we're going to do that and so on,
which I assume you all have been briefed on by Gene earlier
remain the samo. T have kind of gotten myself pumped up on that
and probably cai; at least try and answer questions if you're
still unsure about how we're going to go about doing that. As
far as our consumables and so on, our ability to hang in there if
something doesn't work out for us tomorrow, I mentioned the
cryogenics, we are able to support a wave oft" tomorrow and a wave
off on Wednesday if we got pushed into it. Propellant status,
we've got about between 600 and 700 pounds which is about 3 days,
3 more days like we did today in terms of, when I say a day like
today, in both of these, both the cryogenics and the propulsion,
I'm talking about the fact that we wake up in the morning, power
up, get all set up to come home, and then don't make it, wave
off, go back down again and go to sleep and get up and try
again. Of course, when you get up into a configuration to come
home, the power usage goes up considerably, just about doubles.
We're running about 10 kilowatts right now and we go up to about
19 or 20 when we're full up getting ready to come in. We've got
lots of food onboard. There are 4 extra days of food, not
counting the stuff that they didn't eat the first couple of days
which we're not sure how much they've been into that. I kind of
imagine they've got, probably got most of that cleaned up, but we
have plenty of food onboard and, of course, plenty of water. So
our consumable status is completely adequate to support tomorrow
and a wave off Wednesday if we really got into a fix and had to
use it. We're obviously intending to come home tomorrow just
like we were today and believe that each day we'll probably try a
little harder. Tomorrow, we've got a couple of plans if we don't
make it into Northrup. I think that's about all. Everything's
going along real well. The crew's in good spirits and we had
about a 15 second private medical run comm with them tonight.
They said hello and good bye and they're fine and the control
center's fine and we're ready to do it again tomorrow and I hope
I'm not back here talking to you tomorrow night.
We'll go to questions at Houston and then to KSC.
John. May we have your name and affiliation?
JOHN VANN. . .CHICAGO TRIBUNE . . .You say you had a coule of things
if Northrup didn't work out. Now we know about Kennedy and
Edwards was mentioned by Mr. Kranz earlier today, but there were
no times mentioned and it was very unspecific. Have you folks
worked up anything regarding Edwards so that if there's any
likelihood that there could be an Edwards landing tomorrow?
HUTCHINSON Yes. The capability exists, and of course the
targets are there and everything else, but right now we ' re
looking at Northrup and KSC.
AL SEHLSTEDT. . .BALTIMORE SDN... I just wanted to clear up one
thing you said. You said the prime REV to Northrup was 129 and
the alternate to KSC is on 130. Does that mean that if you're
heading to Northrup on 129 and decide not to land, you would go
all the way around the Earth again?
HUTCHINSON Exactly.
SAILS'PRAD. .. Right. Thank you.
Carlos.
HUTCHINSON Yeah, as a matter of fact, just to make absolutely
clear, since I did hear part of that conversation that you had
with Gone, and of course, some of these things, when I'm giving
you deorbit times, I'm giving you the REV that the retrofire,
that the deorbit maneuver occurs on, and obviously, sometimes we
cross a REV marker before you land and when I'm talking about REV
129, I'm talking about the same one he talked about, that's the
REV the deorbit is on and when I say REV 130, that's not the
same, you know, 15 minutes later type of thing. It's all the way
around the Earth and back around the states again and the deorbit
time is about 90... well it's about a hundred minutes later
difference in the deorbit time.
What about the sonic boom question. This came up
during the (garble) briefing with Mr. Kranz and really hadn't
been thought through at that time. I wonder if you have had a
chance to take a look at what you might have in the way of a
sonic boom travel. . .assumsing a KSC landing.
HUTCHINSON No. I didn't work on that at all and haven't had
any conversation about it Carl, so I just don't have any data but
I can't imagine why we don't have some data available about where
it's going to be, because there will be one. Somebody ought to
go get that answer for him. And nobody got one for you. I'm
sorry. I just don't know. I just didn't work on it so I don't
have any data .
We ' 11 get it .
JAMES WALKER . . . ABC ...Neil, clarify something for me. Gene had
talked about a 7:00 o'clock weather briefing meeting. At that
time, if New Mex co should be socked in, would they go ahead and
land on orbit 129 at Kennedy?
HUTCHINSON I think, well first off let me tell you that orbit
129 at Kennedy has a 500 mile crossrange and orbit 130 at Kennedy
has a 140 crossrange. We do have a backup to Kennedy if we
decided to come in there on 130. That option obviously exists to
be able to do that. The targets are there, the capability is
there, and if we knew early enough, there wouldn't be any problem
in switching the whole scheme around to go to KSC as prime on
orbit 129. I don't see any, I personally don't see any big
advantage of that particularly, because the crossrange is within
the vehicle capability certainly, but it's 3 times what it is on
REV 130, so. . .
It makes more fionno to wait until you go around
again.
HUTCHINSON I think so and it preserves all the rules we have
about having a backup HKV for a wave off against a prime RF.V
because we can make 131 into KSC also.
Noil, have you got any updates from the weather
forecast for Northrup?
Paul, identify yourself for them would you?
PAUL RRISER. . .ASSOCIATED PRESS...
HUTCHINSON I did get a tag up with the weather guys about half
way through my shift and I would say that at that tine, we didn't
have anything worthy of, you know the thing people are looking
for is whether this high is going to develop southwest of
Northrup to a great enough extent to cut the winds down. It's as
simple as that. And, I guess I'd say at 6:00 o'clock, we hadn't
seen anything. That doesn't mean to say that it's not going to
happen but no one had seen anything that would indicate that it
had actually started. I don't think I really have anything to
add to the weathercast. KSC looks pretty good. Northrup has a
potential for looking good if we can get rid of the winds and
we're still planning on Northrup if we can get in there.
JOHN BISNRY . . . RKO. . . Nei 1 , when Gene Kranz was over here, he
seemed to keep emphasizing over and over how good things looked
;t Kennedy. The weather there looked excellent. Things are so
questionable at Northrup it almost left the impression that
you'll do a check there to make sure you can't land at Northrup
and then go on into Kennedy.
HUTCHINSON Well, I think, you know we had not exactly the most
pleasant experience at Northrup today and it looks like the
potential is definitely there to get ourselves into exactly that
same scenario tomorrow and obviously as wo go on here we are not
in a... we are in a finite situation. I mean, we are going to
have to do this thing sooner or later and the longer you wait,
the less options you have and there's no doubt in my mind i f we
get yocked out of Northrup tomorrow because of the winds and KSC
remains as good as it was forecast to do, we're probably going to
come in there. We all think that's a perfectly acceptable thing
to do and the crew's ready to do it and we're ready to do it and
it's just a day later. We've flown another day and you get a
little stronger desire to get where you're going.
DAVE DOOLING. ..HUNTS VI LLE TIMES... Just what is the forecast for
Kennedy right now? We've all been dwelling on how bad it is at
Northrup.
HUTCHINSON Oh boy . I didn't bring one with me but let me see
if T can recall it. Again, believe it or not, the two systems
are simi-connocted. Wo don't have any cloud problems at Kennedy
that I know of. We did have some crosswindn in there today. As
you know, wo only have one runway and wo did have somo east-
southeast winds. Holiovo it or not, if this system that is, wo
hope is qoinq to kind of build up to tho west-southwest of
Northrup qcts to any size and maybo that will end up making
Northrup acceptable, but that also is proportod to push the high
that's holdinq all that weather stuff in on top of Northrup, tho
big high over tho eastern United States a little further east and
maybe cut down a little bit on tho crosswinds. Now tho
crosswinds weio not unacceptable by any moans but tho numbers
were like, I remember a crosswind like 10 knots, somethinq like
that. I can't remember tho total wind but the wind was not
unacceptable. We hope it'll be a little lighter tomorrow.
We'll take one more and then qo to KSC and then
return here for a f i nish .
PETER LARSEN . ..ORLANDO CENTINAL STAR... I think they dispatched
someone to bring back somo information on tho flight path into
Florida, but could you describe, will it come ovor north Florida
or swing across tho Gulf and ovor tho central portion of the
peni nsula . Any idea?
HUTCHINSON I don't have a ground track in there but again I
can't imagine we haven't available, that's a very simple
question. We did bring, I brought, it's only because ... I brought
over with me a computer printout of tho ground track, okay, into
KSC for REV 130 that you can look at and got yourself a chart and
a map, you can plot the Theol and is . It's not drawn on there. I
can't look at Thoolandis and toll you whore you are
geographically. Somebody will have to do it,
- To KSC ■■
HUTCHINSON I'm not very helpful. I should have brought more
data .
DICK LAROUSH. . .CHICAGO SUN TIMES ... I just want to be clear on
these orbits (garble) you're talking about orbits and REVs in the
same breath and I gather, now this orbit 129 becomes orbit 130 as
you cross the ascending node of the equator, but it's not.
Wouldn't you then have your retrofire on 129 and your landing on
130?
HUTCHINSON Yes.
DICK LAROUSH... At White Sands? '
HUTCHINSON Yes.
DICK LAROUSH. ..All right. Next question. When you talk of 130,
that is the orbit of retrofire, then is the landing at Kennedy
131? : ■ ■ ■ ■ ' ' '
HUTCHINSON YOS.
DICK LAROUSH . . . And is 131 140 nautical miles crossrange?
HUTCHINSON Yos.
DICK LAROUSH . . .Okay . And can you give us the retrofiro times for
each landing?
HUTCHINSON Yos. Tho doorbit burn times for the Northrup 129,
which is our primary target are 7 days, 23 hours, 13 minutes and
10 seconds. That gives you a landing at Northrup at 9:07
Mountain Standard Time. And the Kennedy information on RKV 130,
the deorbit tig is 8 days, 0 hours, 53 minutes and 10 seconds and
it gives you a landing at 12:47 Eastern Standard Time at the
|5 : Cape .
A call from Kennedy .
Okay.
ERICK INGBERG. . .CBS NEWS... For nonavaitor, what are the
implications for having to land on a runway without, having to
land at a airport that doesn't have crosswind runways, if you
have to go to KSC?
HUTCHINSON Well speaking in the nonavaitor, I probably can't
give you a very good answer. You know that's a matter of
obviously of a piloting skill, and doing a slight amount of
crabbing of the airplane, leading the turn circles appropriately
because you are going to have to turn through, where you start
off for example, if you are on a crosswind landing there which
recognizes the wind, I can't remember but the direction was like
120 and the runways are 15 and 33 there, so we had like a 30 off
the, blowing out of the southeast. Which means as you go around
the heading alignment circle, depending on whether the winds were
staying pretty much out of the southeast as you went up, you are
going to have to lead the turn a little bit, but I think its
certainly nothing that these folks don't practice over and over
and over again in the STA, both there and at White Sands. I
don't think its a particularly difficult piloting tast, and of
course we have for a long time wanted to get a crosswind landing
under our belt at one of these desert landing sites before we did
one at KSC, but its certainly never has been a mandatory
requ i r oment .
COOK. . .UPI .
COOK. . .UPI ... From the time that you commit to a landing to the
time that you actually have to weight on wheels, how long of a
per iod is that?
HUTCHINSON Well you commit to a landing at deorbit time and so
you can just subtract those two numbers. But its about 45
minutes, I would have to subtract the numbers, just take the, I
guess you would have to convert, well no I've got them right
here, lets see, we've got, I'll let you subtract the numbers.
The Northrup 129 time, the inition time of course once you've
started to burn, you're pretty much committed to going down. 7
days 23 hours 13 minutes and 10 seconds and the landing time, in
mission time is 8 days 0 hours 7 minutes and 20 seconds. 55
minutes.
Today as I recall, the wave off team during the
ascension pass, would you expect in the envent that there is a
wave off at Northrup tommorrow that it would come about the same
part of the orbit?
HUTCHINSON I think a lot depends on what the weather situation
is. If we've got one of these things where we're feeling pretty
good like we're going to get in there, and we're really pretty
much depending on John's making another STA run or several STA
runs, he made several today. That provides us with the last
convienent opportunity to decide we don't want to and as a matter
of fact his runs are timed so that he reports in off the last run
after the states LOS and prior to ascension exactly as he did
today. That's exactly the way we've practiced it, now he made
three or four asceller runs before that and we qot a couple of
enter (garbl e) reports in there. And if we are pressing hard to
get into Northrup and of course that is a function of really how
close we think we are to being able to bo successful then I think
you could look for us trying to get in there and running down
just like we did pretty much to ascension and deciding we're not
going to and retargeting is going to envolve several things,
we're going to have to go back into Ops 2, reload the computing
system with the KSC runway so we get the microwave and all the
tack hands everything like that and then we'll go back into Ops .3
and come around and do it again. If we're in a situation where
somebody asked me right off the bat if we had a situation where
Northrup was clearly unattainable, would we strike right out for
KSC and 1 suspect we would, I'm not sure we would do it on rev
129 but it all depends on when, what that five or seven o'clock,
or when ever that big weather pow wow is going to bo in the
morning. I thought somebody said five, seven o'clock in here, I
though it was going to be at 5:00 and I really think that's when
its going to be and right then wo are going to decide whether to
try for Northrup and if the decision is made to try, we will
probably will have some, hopefully have some good evidence that
we will have a pretty good chance of getting in there.
JOHN BANGE. . CHIACAGO TRIBUNE . . .One thing that I was wondering
about is you've got all that equipment that you shipped from
Edwards over to Northrup in order to take care of the ship once
it gets in, it took a long time and it was a big effort, do they
have all of that stuff at Kennedy as well and if they don't have
it, what is that going to mean for the ship?
HUTCHINSON No they do John, and recognize that Kennedy of
course has had the requirement all along to accomodate a return
to launch site abort and they have been equiped to handle the
orbiter for that purpose if for nothing else right from the very
beginning. So Kennedy is completely capable of taking care of
that, taking care of the orbiter in as good of fashion as Edwards
or Northrup does.
PETE PAUL. . . AVAITION WEEK... If you have a real problem with the
transponder one and you have to go to that onboard, work around
with the onboard !;it. How long would that, how long does it
indicate it will take to do that?
HUTCHINSON Well first off we would have to have a problem with
a tianspo, with the one we're on and then we would have to go and
do the power work on the other one which we think might recover
it and then if that didn't work, we would probably, that's a
several hour job, we have to build a cable from cable kit and pin
kit we have onboard. We've done it once on the ground over here
in (garble) I frankly don't know how long it took, but you could
rest assure t' at it would be a several hour job, if you're
thinking we could get up tommorrow morning and go build a cable
and still get down, I rather doubt it.
PIER ACKERMAN. . .TIMES OF LONDON ... Ne i 1 , I just want to run
through this thing that Kranz said and he saiu that the weather
update for Northrup was to bo expected at 3:04 a.m. central time
and that the flight controllers and the management team would
meet at 5:00 a.m. our time.
HUTCHINSON As far as I know that's correct and that's why the
5:00 meeting I was quoting is that 5:00 meeting. Their all home
sleeping by the way so..,
(garble)
HUTCHINSON The question was when does John go up the first
time in the STA. I don't know. I'm not sure if he'll make a
run, a couple of runs for the purpose of providing a assessment
at that meeting. Let's see 5:00 a.m. our time, is it daylight
out there. No John will not be up. We don't make STA runs at
night
COOK. . .UP I . . .Night landings have been ruled out so far or at
least been considered undesirable. In the event of a wave off
tommorrow, do night landings become less undesirable?
HUTCHINSON I don't think there's any, that that even under
consideration here. I think that we have enough opportunities
that at the three places that we have a potential to get down in,
in the United States, over the next three days, it is, would not
be in anybodys thoughts to even discuss a night landing and I
have noc heard one discussed and I would think that we would try
to advoid that pretty hard.
JAMES WALKER. . . ABC ... Are the astrounauts wives in New Mexico?
And has any provisions been made for the VIPs in case they have
chosen the wrong...
HUTCHINSON Jim they are in, the wives did stay in New Mexico .
and I can't answer that if we end up at KSC, I am sure that we
will make, that provisions will be made to get them down there
fairly quickly. I don't know maybe they'll all meet in Houston
but you know the crews do come home fairly quickly these days.
You know they're back in Houston in the afternoon. But the wives
did stay in Northrup.
" Mr. Hutchinson, when a decision is made, as one was
made today to scrub the landing, or to change the landing site,
how high up in the NASA hierarchy is that decision made? Did
General Abrahamson make that or was the (garble) brought in the
teleconference or was it Mr . Beggs who made the decision. What
is the mechanics in making such a decision in the bureaucracy?
HUTCHINSON Well frankly I can't tell you exactly. I was over
in the control center but I can't tell you exactly who made it.
Quite frankly those kinds of things are unilateral . NASA does
everything by committee. We had a lot of people, and I don't
mean to, we had a lot of people who had inputs into that. Not
the least of which were all the people you mentioned. And
certainly not the least of was John Young, who was flying the
STA, My impression of that activity when it was going was that,
you know, we all started out with high hopes. And as the day
wore on and we began seeing pictures and people, we had several
observers. We had a couple of other crewmen out there, we had
our chase pilots. We had the STA, we had the weather people at
White Sands, and our own weather people, and we had television of
coutse, as you folks here saw. And it as we wore on there,
getting the spacecraft ready. It was becoming more and more
obvious that the situation was deteriorating. And people began
to thirvk about well, maybe this, wasn't the right thing to do.
And, ve talked some wove, and in the end of course the real nail
in the oofUn^as vlohn'a comment. That STA evaluation is very
very impo,i;Vv>t \i| piobably the tuggost single vote in that
whole, process.
PKTRK I.ARSOHx W^KI.ANOON CKNTINAL STAR.wWo've now seen the
\m\ikely h.apV^Vi $\anoo that both Awards and Northrup are socked
out. \ am from Florida, I know how fickle the weather can be
thot<\\ Do. you there's a Ukelyhood ever that we're going
UVsco ^egiviav V&utine. landings of the shuttle and one site in
^\6t i«h\ tyi ■■'V4 \here ' .\t\y consideration to having 3 sites up and
VvmnvrV^ V<*A B tant\y fo\ ahvittle operations.
HOVOH I NR.OH ■ N,o, when we finally get to the operations phase we
intend, to only have one. Now we are going to keep of course,
always Keep as a contingency operation perogative of going to
Kdwards. I'm not sure how long White Sands will be in that
status. Kdwards Air Porco ttase is a facility and as a alternate
place to put the shuttle down. The continential United States is
exit's,' and will. Our intent is to go to Florida regularly.
We've been asked to pass on and remind you that the
change of shift briefing is 5:00 a.m. here. Weather briefing,
we'll bring it to a closing.
Rnd of briefing
p26j CHANGE OF SHIFT BRIEFING 3/30/82 f
This is our March 30th, 3:30 a.m. Central Time
Change of Shift Briefing which was originally scheduled for
2:30. We have with us Flight Director Tommy K. Holloway and I'll
turn it over now to Tommy .
HOLLOWAY What was that name?
Bill Polmoroy .
HOLLOWAY Okay. I came on shift last night after the crew
was already supposed to be in bed and they probably were, at
least they were powered down for the night. We just experienced
a thermal alarm in the APU system. It turned out to be a
transient in one of the temperature measuring devices and we
reset the limit in the fault Detection System and flew the rest
of the night without any further alarms. Crew woke up this
morning on time and were in very good spirits. They were about
their business of getting ready to deorbit and were on schedule
when I left the Control Center just a few minutes ago. Now they
were, one new thing for them this morning since we got them up
early, they're seeing a different part of the world than what
they've seen before so they were eager to get a look out the
window and look at the Mediterranean. Last night, we developed
some updates to their procedures to enable them to deorbit a
little, in an hour and 1/2 less time today than what we had
yesterday to provide an opportunity to either get into Northrup
Strip on urbit 129. Our prime deorbit opportunity is Northrup on
129 with a deorbit TIG time of 7 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes, and
21 seconds and a landing time of 8 hours, 8 days, 0 hours, 6
minutes, and 28 seconds. We have a backup opportunity 1 REV late
either to Northrup Strip or to Kennedy and we could exercise
either one of those options in real time. If it was Northrup
it's 8 days, 46.0 hours, 46 minutes, 25 seconds, and with a
landing at 8 days, 1 hour, 40 minutes, and 32 seconds. If it
turned out to be KSC it's 8 days, 0 hours, 52 minutes, 17 seconds
for deorbit, 8 days, 1 hcur, 46 minutes and 24 seconds out if it
turned to be KSC. I did not receive a weather briefing last
evening primarily because I was involved in developing some
procedures changes through the evening and didn't have time and
frankly, the weather problem belongs to the people who are on
duty now, the entry team and the NASA management. I did listen
out of one ear while the entry flight director was receiving a
briefing a few minutes ago and I'd characterize the weather is
Northrup Strip as improving, it seems to be improving every hour
in terms of the blowing sand and the winds. The weather people
are optimistic that today will be a good day at Northrup Strip.
The winds are predicted to be less at landing time than they were
yesterday by a significant amount, I believe 10 gusting to 20.
The situation at KSC is not as improved as much for today as wo
had hoped, had expected it to and Is perhaps in the area of being
a marginal site for today at the current time and Edwards
Airforce Base is about like Northrup strip or maybe a little bit
better. The good news is that/ at least if you want to go with
predictions, is tomorrow, Wednesday, is expected to be a good day
at all three landing sites. So things are looking up in the
weather world and I expect that we'll get in today at Northrup
Strip, although I told the ones that are here last evening that I
was gonna wake up and watch the landing with you, but we didn't
make it yesterday. I'm hopeful that: we will today and I'm fairly
confident that we will today and if not today, then certainly
tomorrow. Are there any questions?
Please do the usual. Give your name and
a f f i 1 i ation .
Why we're here would-be a good question.
WAYNE DOLCEJWINO. . . KTRH . . .Tommy, you say the weather looks better
at Northrup today, but I'm getting the feeling that we're going
to try on 129 at Northrup and if we see the lovely weather we saw
yesterday there that we may just blow it off another day. Is
that the way it's starting to shape again? It's either going to
be Northrup or it may be another day?
HOLLOWAY Well, we have the capability to look at Northrup
and Kennedy at the same time. John Young will still be at
Northrup. Bob Crippen is now at Kennedy flying an STA just as
John is, so we'll be doing a dual evaluation today and we'll take
either site. So if we consider weather at either site acceptable
on 129 for Northrup and 130 for either one, we'll take the good
si te . ■ ■ .. .
WAYNE DOLCE^HINO.. .You ' re not mentioning Edwards. Does that mean
that it's really, .. .even though it's third, it's really a real
low third in terms of landing there?
HOLLOWAY Right now in the planning it is. There's a
possibility downmoding to Edwards if the weather observations
were such that provided you the capability to do that and the
local observations and so on and so forth, is a very straight
forward thing to do. We could downmode on 32 or 33 and go ahead
and go into Edwards if we decided to so, but right now, it looks
like the Northrup Strip or Kennedy.
WAYNE DOLCE^HINO. . .One other question. Could you do, I guess the
usual, like you did yesterday and kind of run us through in
general terms what we might expect to see in the next few hours
in terms of crew activity?
HOLLOWAY Okay. Well, for a bit now, you probably are not
going to be able to tell what's going on. The crew is right now
doing the morning business of getting things ready to go. They
should be aligning the IMU's at about this very moment. They're
cleaning up a few things in the spacecraft, stowing some items,
getting things picked back up. The FCS checkout has been
cancelled as it was yesterday. The payload bay doors and
theodolite citings have been, the theodolite citings have been
cancelled since the objectives of those were accomplished
yesterday to determine the door deflections and the situation
that we have before entry where we have deferred the closing of
the doors and setting up the radiators for entry a little bit.
The doors are going to go closed at about 3 hours and 10 or 15
minutes instead of 4 hours, primarily to save some water. We've
used, yesterday we used up some of our water and to maintain our
margins to keep flying for another couple of 3 days, we wanted to
boil a little less water today. Also save a little RCS because
we use more RCS when we start boiling water up and it starts
venting and so on and so forth. So the doors will go closed at
about 3 hours. We'll... suit donning will. ..3 hours and 15
minutes, suit donning will be about 3 hours prior to deorbit.
We'll go into the entry configuration on the computers at about
an hour and 15 minutes to go and then deorbit at 0 and land at a
plus 1.
PAUL RAYBURN . . AP . . . I ' m sorry Tommy, I missed the touchdown time
at Northrup on REV 130 and I have a question for you as well.
HOLLOWAY Touchdown time on 130 to Northrup is 8 days, 1
hour, 40 minutes, and 32 seconds.
PAUL RAYBURN. . .Okay . And...
HOLLOWAY I have a recommendation, you guys don't pay any
attention to those seconds. Count them off to the nearest
minute .
PAUL RAYBURN. . .Why is KSC not an option on REV 129?
HOLLOWAY Primarily because of the tracking geometry that we
have in getting into KSC. What we'd really like to have is an
opportunity to go early, fairly early but have a backup REV and
we can do that on 130 and still have a backup into KSC on 131.
So we'd rather wait if we can. Now the reason we're going into
Northrup so early is because we felt that that would help the
weather situation. And time is not a dominant factor in the
weather, at least it has not been in the last couple of days.
There's not a dominant factor in the weather at KSC at this
time. I might add that if it were required for any reason, we
could go into Kennedy on 129, but that's not in the plans right
now.
DICK RATNER. . .ABC. . .Could you walk us through the decision
planning please? Is there still going to be a mission management
shortly before dawn and when do you get the first STA weather
reports, that's gotta be presumably at the first light and what
happens, when do you make the go, no go?
HOLLOWAY Well, those processes will be very similiar, in
fact, almost identical to what they were yesterday. I'm not even
positive that the mission management team's going to meet
I
persay. They have met yesterday. As Mr. Kranz briefed you
yesterday afternoon, the basic strategy for today has been put
into place 129 to Northrup with the backup to Kennedy and you
could go to Northrup, depending on the circumstances that kept
you off of 129 into Northrup. All of those are in place so at
this time it's merely a matter of implementing the mechanics of
doing the STA flights at both sites on the schedule that we have
had since prelaunch and frankly, I can't quote you that schedule
because I'm not involved in the details of running this entry and
I don't remember what it was but it will be the same as it was
yesterday. And we can wave off at a number of different points,
depending upon what the situation is. You know, as soon as it's
time to take off and fly the flight, you could look out and say I
don't have any visibility and we'd best not do this, or you may
have to fly the flight and then determine that you best not do
it. So the wave off point is a variable depending on how bad or
how good the conditions are.
After this question, we'll switch to the Cape and
see if they have some questions.
JOHN PINE. .. REUTERS ... Is it safe to say that the entry team right
now has two groups of people, one working on the 129 at Northrup
and maybe another set working on the 30 Northrup at KSC, or is it
all just handled by the same team as an essential type process?
HOLLOWAY It's all handled by the same group of people. And
generally, it would be handled serially. They'll work on 129 and
then they'll work on 130, and depending upon the situation when
they go to 130 and whether,., they may carry the option to go to
Northrup and KSC and to 130 .
Okay . At th is t ime , we ' 11 see if there ' s any
questions from KSC.
Yes. We have some questions and please identify
yourself and your affiliation please .
TOM BOYLE. . .CONSERVATIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY, TIPTON, IOWA... We
have some mach numbers at different points across the states for
a landing at Kennedy. Do you have any altitudes.
HOLLOWAY No sir.
Do we have any more questions?
Yes, up in the front row,
STEVE JALLEVARA . . . FORT LAUDERDALE NEWS . . . Hoi loway , I'm sure that
data could be ... expressed any anxiety or willingness to get
back today rather than tomorrow?
HOLLOWAY I'm sorry. I missed your question. I spoke over
you. Repeat it please.
J
STEVE JALIiEVARA. . .Have the astronauts expressed any desire to get
back to day rather than tomorrow? Have they showed an interest
in getting back to Earth as soon as possible?
HOLLOWAY They've not expressed an opinion one way or the
other that I've h>?3rd.
Do we have any more questions here at KSC?
I guess that's it from KSC.
Okay. Do we have any more questions here? Yes
■ one.
WAYNE DOLCE^HINO. . . KTRH . . .Tommy , what we saw yesterday at
Northrup was pretty lousy in terms of wind and we saw, you know,
5 minutes we had winds of 10 miles an hour and yesterday it was
like the Sahara Desert there. Are you guys at all a little bit
now unsure about that place in terms of an alternative site
seeing how quick things can change there? I mean have you lost
any confidence in it?
HOLLOWAY I don't think so. I think the phonomena yesterday
was a function of the particular weather that was going on at
that time. The weather people are looking at a high that is
coming in off the west coast of the United States in the southern
part and down in Mexico that'll be dominating that area starting
Wednesday, and hopefully for Thursday, and those weather patterns
are more predictable and more steady so it's, I think it's just a
function of what's going on at at particular time. Kind of like
in Houston, sometimes it rains every other hour and sometimes
occasionally you have some decent weatnir in Houston.
I got here late, so I'm sorry if this was asked
before, but leading up to the first opportunity for retrofire on
129, what will the astronauts be doing this morning. They
probably got a lot of the pre-deorbit activities out of the way
yesterday I would assume.
HOLLOWAY Well, they'll be repeating most of the terminal
activities so I'll pick up with those. You're right in some
respects. Some of the activities are not required that were done
yesterday. As I explained previously, we've deleted the
theodolite citings that we associated with closing the payload
bay door and deferred the payload bay door closing about an hour
to sa...when we close the payload bay doors, we have to start
boiling water and the fuel cells make water but we're not making
as much water as we used yesterday so we have a little less water
than we'd like to have onboard. To help that situation we've
deferred the door closing about an hour. The doors will go
closed at about a minus 3 hours and 15 minutes. After that,
we'll be back on the same schedule you saw yesterday with suit
donning in about 3 hours and with the configuring right after
suit donning/ checking the cockpit and making sure all the
switches are squared away, and then at about a minus hour and 15
minutes, we'll be putting all the computers into the entry
configuration and coming back up over the states and doing the
normal things. So starting about 3 hours in, it's the same as
you saw yesterday .
RATNER. . . ABC. . .How long does it take to change the computer
programming if you have to change the landing site from Northrup
to KSC.
HOLLOWAY If we wave off from Northrup Strip and decide to go
into Kennedy on 130, what would be involved and how long it would
take, it would take about 5 minutes. What is involved is that we
would recall the onorbit program called G-2 and reload the
definiton of the landing sites into what we call a mini-table,
which is just a definition of the landing site locations and
update the TACAN's hands and the microwave landing system
definitions of where they are and then recall OPS 3, that is the
entry computer programs. That entire process would take about 5
minutes and then the crew basically would be waiting an hour and
a half with not a lot to do as they came around to the next
opportunity. Getting new data from the ground, you know all
these uplinks and voice calls that we make, they would all be
made over in that last REV and they'd get new target data and a
new entry pad and all that information and would be generated and
would be commanded up on that REV. But the answer to your
specific question, it would take about 5 minutes to get the
computers squared away.
Okay. Thank you. ..one more question.
JOHN PINE. .. REUTERS. . .Again. That APU alarm that, I'm trying to
think, what time, how far in that sleep period did it go?
HOLLOWAY Right after the sleep period had started, and I
don't know precisely but it was in the order of 30 minutes so I
don't expect it had a big impact on the crew's sleep. You know
we tried to get them to bed early anyway and they probably really
weren't sleeping. It's hard to go to bed and go to sleep before
you've been used to going to sleep. I've kind of gotten involved
in that in the last 7 days .
Okay . Thank you very much .
END OF TAPE
END
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25
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