Fwd: Apollo 7 Cunningham Comments & Corrections

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: October 19, 2013 12:47:37 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Apollo 7 Cunningham Comments & Corrections

I wanted to pass on Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham's comments and corrections to the report.

Gary

 

From: Walter Cunningham 
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 8:48 PM
To: 'Gary Johnson'
Subject: RE: 45 Years Since Apollo 7

 

Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it. Ben Evans always seems to do a pretty good job, but he does have a few errors here; the same ones that just keep floating around in the public. I do not know Ben. If you do, please pass on my list of corrections and tell him I said "Thanks."

 

Incidentally, when the power loss triggered the alarm, Wally and I were sleeping under the couch and Donn was on duty. When the alarm went off, I woke up, stuck my head up at the head of the couch and took the corrective steps. (Donn may have been asleep?)

 

Thanks for your patience.

 

Walt

 

Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham had spent nearly 600 hours in the command module simulator… I HAD A TOTAL OF ABOUT 88 HOURS IN THE SIMULATOR; THE OTHERS ABOUT THE SAME. SIMULATORS WERE STILL "UNDER CONSTRUCTION". MOST OF OUR COCKPIT TIME CAME FROM SYSTEM TESTING AT ROCKWELL.

At that point, thrust-chamber jacket chilldown was initiated for the Saturn IB rocket's S-IVB second stage, but took longer than anticipated, forcing a hold of two minutes and 45 seconds. NO. OUR HYDRAULIC PRESSURE WAS EVER SO SLIGHTLY LOW. THE HOLD WAS TO HEAT IT INTO THE RANGE.

Because that rocket puts out a plume, you had to have a cover over the command module so that you wouldn't coat the windows. ONLY TRUE FROM LAUNCH ESCAPE TOWER AND IT WAS GONE IN 61 SECONDS.

Not so fulfilling were the head colds which, first Schirra and then Eisele and Cunningham, developed during the mission. I NEVER HAD A COLD! DONN AND I TOOK A COLD SHOT AFTER A COLD, WET BIRD HUNTING TRIP 4 DAYS BEFORE LAUNCH. WALLY DID NOT WANT TO TAKE THE SHOT. DONN EVENTUALLY SHOWED A FEW SYMPTOMS BUT NO REAL COLD.

Going over the mission tapes and transcripts after the flight, Cunningham would conclude in his NASA oral history that he "never had any problem with the ground," NEVER HAD A BAD EXCHANGE WITH MISSION CONTROL. CHECK THE AIR-TO-GROUND LOG.

Deke Slayton, aboard the Essex, admitted to having "a few words in private" with Schirra, not so much about his own behavior, but about his effect on Eisele and Cunningham. DEKE WAS NOT ONBOARD THE ESSEX. HE CHEWED WALLY'S ASS WHEN WE GOT BACK IN CREW QUARTERS.

 

 

From: Gary Johnson [mailto:gjohnson144@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 7:46 PM
To: Gary Johnson
Subject: FW: 45 Years Since Apollo 7

 

One significant anomaly not mentioned in this report was the sudden loss of AC Bus 1&2 causing loss of power to panel lighting and power to all critical fans and pumps. During the mission in the MER responsible for electrical power distribution this kept me busy trying to find out the cause and how to continue the mission and was busy with the MER failure investigation after the mission, see attachment for discussion of problem, mission work around, and cause of the failure.

 

Gary

 

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
October 12th, 2013

'Yabadabadoo!' 45 Years Since Apollo 7 Charted a Course for the Moon (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

Commander Wally Schirra (center) and crewmates Donn Eisele (left) and Walt Cunningham restored America's confidence in the Apollo spacecraft and enabled NASA to put its bold plan for a voyage to lunar orbit in motion. Photo Credit: NASA

On 30 May 1968, a brand-new spacecraft arrived at Cape Kennedy, Fla. Known formally as "Spacecraft 101," it looked outwardly very much like the Apollo command and service module aboard which astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died in a launch pad fire 16 months earlier. Yet appearances were deceptive. Spacecraft 101 was heavily refurbished, and in October 1968—45 years ago this week—would carry astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham on a mission which brought President John F. Kennedy's goal of bootprints on the Moon a little closer. By the time Apollo 7 ended, NASA would be imbued with such confidence in the spacecraft's capabilities that it would formally commit the next mission, Apollo 8, to an audacious trip to lunar orbit.

Wally Schirra—one of the Original Seven Mercury astronauts and a veteran of the Sigma 7 and Gemini VI-A missions—had wanted to call his spacecraft "The Phoenix," in honor of the mythical firebird which was said to end its 500-year lifespan on a pyre of flames and then return from the ashes, but NASA feared unpleasant reminders of the Apollo fire and vetoed the suggestion. The spacecraft itself was much improved, and by the time of their launch on 11 October 1968 Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham had spent nearly 600 hours in the command module simulator, operating 725 manual controls and responding to countless simulated malfunctions. They had tested the Chrysler-built slidewire, which would be used in the event of an emergency evacuation from Cape Kennedy's Pad 34, had crawled out of a mockup version of their craft in the Gulf of Mexico and had pored over hundreds of pages of documentation and flight plans.

Atop the giant Saturn IB booster—which Wally Schirra nicknamed "The Big Maumoo"—Apollo 7 roars away from Pad 34 on 11 October 1968. Photo Credit: NASA

In theory, Schirra's mission could be achieved in just three days, but according to Apollo Program Director Sam Phillips in a letter to NASA Administrator Jim Webb it would be open-ended to 11 days in order "to acquire additional data and evaluate the aspects of long-duration space flight." The countdown, punctuated by three built-in holds to correct any last-minute problems, began on the evening of 6 October and proceeded without incident until 10 minutes before launch on the 11th. At that point, thrust-chamber jacket chilldown was initiated for the Saturn IB rocket's S-IVB second stage, but took longer than anticipated, forcing a hold of two minutes and 45 seconds. The countdown resumed at 10:56 a.m. EDT, and the Saturn IB lifted-off at 11:02:45 a.m., watched by 600 accredited journalists.

Inside the command module, the crew experienced a clear sense of movement, but only Eisele had a clear view of the commotion that was going on outside. "We had a boost protective cover over the command module," Cunningham recalled later in a NASA oral history interview. "There's a escape rocket that you can use any time until you get rid of it, and that's a little after a minute into the flight. Because that rocket puts out a plume, you had to have a cover over the command module so that you wouldn't coat the windows and you wouldn't be able to see anything out of the windows in the event you were coming down on a parachute during an abort. So, the only place you can see out is over Donn's head in the centre seat. There's a little round window, about six inches across, and he was the only one that could see out. We had no windows until the boost protective cover [was jettisoned]."

Two and a half minutes into the thunderous ascent, the eight H-1 engines of the S-IB first stage burned out and it was released, allowing the S-IVB second stage and its single J-2 engine to pick up the thrust and deliver Apollo 7 into orbit. A little under six minutes after launch, as he, Eisele, and Cunningham became the first men ever to fly atop a load of liquid hydrogen rocket fuel, Schirra reported that the Saturn was "riding like a dream." On the ground, the situation was not quite so dreamy: for a minute or so, the Manned Spacecraft Center had suffered a power failure which temporarily knocked out its lights, control consoles, screens, and instruments. Fortunately, generator power took over and no telemetered data was lost.

Ten and a half minutes after launch, Apollo 7 was inserted perfectly into orbit and the S-IVB duly shut down. Both stages of the Saturn performed to near-perfection. Two hours and 55 minutes into the flight, the spacecraft undocked from the S-IVB and pulsed its reaction controls twice to turn back in a simulated rendezvous approach which Moon-bound crews would use to pick up their lunar module. Although there was no lunar module housed inside the stage, it provided useful practice and Schirra brought his ship within five feet of the spent S-IVB. Unfortunately, said Cunningham, one of the four adaptor panels had not fully deployed, due to a stuck retention cable, although they would be jettisoned explosively on subsequent flights to ensure lunar module extraction. It "had sort of bounced back," wrote Deke Slayton in his autobiography, Deke, co-authored with Michael Cassutt. "It posed no danger to the crew, but had this flight carried a lunar module, it might have been tough to get it out of there."

The final stage of the Saturn IB, the S-IVB also formed the component of the Saturn V which would house the lunar module. On Apollo 7, astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham performed several rendezvous activities with the spent stage. Photo Credit: NASA

Elsewhere, the performance of the spacecraft's big Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine was highly successful. It was fortunate, indeed, that this was the case, for this was a component which simply had to work or lunar crews would not be able to return home. During their mission, Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham oversaw eight SPS firings, the first of which posed something of a surprise. In contrast to the exceptionally smooth Saturn IB liftoff, the SPS jolted the astronauts, prompting Schirra to whoop "Yabadabadoo!" in imitation of Fred Flintstone. Eisele said that the entire crew "got more than we expected" and that the boost literally plastered them back into their seats. Later SPS burns simulated virtually everything from a return from the Moon to a rendezvous with a phantom lunar module.

Other systems aboard Apollo 7 performed equally well. Occasionally, one of the three electricity generating fuel cells would develop unwanted high temperatures, but load-sharing hook-ups prevented any power shortages. Visibility through the windows was mixed, with sooty deposits noted shortly after the jettisoning of the Saturn IB's escape tower and spots of water condensation seen at other times. Two days into the flight, however, Cunningham reported that most of the windows were in fairly good condition, although moisture was gathering between the inner panes in one case. A similar situation was seen by Schirra a few days later. Nonetheless, the windows proved adequate, particularly during the rendezvous and station-keeping with the S-IVB, when they were almost clear.

On a more mundane level, the "waste-management system"—a euphemistic term for Apollo's rudimentary toilet—proved adequate, if annoying. Its defecation bags, which contained a blue germicidal tablet to prevent bacterial and gas formation, could be sealed easily and stored in empty food containers in the command module's lower equipment bay. However, they were far from ideal, still produced unpleasant odors and took each astronaut 45-60 minutes to complete. Bill Anders, who flew Apollo 8, would later tell Andrew Chaikin in A Man on the Moon that, since nothing in microgravity "falls," it was necessary to "flypaper this thing to your rear end and then reach in there with your finger—and suddenly you were wishing you'd never left home!" To add insult to injury, the germicidal tablets then had to be kneaded into the contents of the defecation bag to ensure that they were fully mixed. Not surprisingly, many astronauts found themselves postponing their "need to go" for as long as possible.

Sleep brought mixed blessings, with Schirra complaining about the around-the-clock operations which disrupted their normal routine. Sometimes they might go to bed as early as 4 p.m. or as late as 4 a.m., he said, and a consensus was finally reached whereby Eisele kept watch on Apollo 7's systems whilst Schirra and Cunningham slept and vice versa. Two sleeping bags were mounted beneath the couches and the astronauts typically zipped themselves inside, although the incorrect positioning of restraint straps made them less than ideal. Cunningham preferred to sleep in his couch with a shoulder harness and lap belt to keep still. However, if two crew members did this, they invariably disturbed their colleague who was awake. By the third day of the flight, thankfully, they had worked out a routine to get enough sleep.

A tired Walt Cunningham glances through one of the command module's windows during the 11-day Apollo 7 mission. Photo Credit: NASA

Not so fulfilling were the head colds which, first Schirra and then Eisele and Cunningham, developed during the mission. To be fair, this caused severe discomfort, because it proved extremely difficult to clear the ears, nose, and sinuses in microgravity. Mucus rapidly accumulated, filling their nasal passages and stubbornly refusing to drain from their heads; indeed, their only relief was to blow their noses hard, which proved painful on their ear drums. A little under a day into the mission, an irritable Schirra, already annoyed that Mission Control had added two thruster firings and a urine dump to their workload, cancelled the first planned television transmission from Apollo 7, "without further discussion." It was the first of many conflicts with Mission Control.

According to Schirra, it was Donn Eisele who began the dispute with the ground over rescheduling the first television transmission early on 12 October. "When I awoke," Schirra wrote in his autobiography, Schirra's Space, "I could hear Eisele in an argument. I put on a headset and heard a ground controller say, rather insistently, that our first television transmission was on the agenda for that day." Schirra backed Eisele that they had enough to do on their second day in orbit, with engineering objectives, rendezvous practice, and SPS preparations, without having to worry about the transmission. However, there was more to it than that. "We were scheduled to test the TV circuit later that day," explained Schirra, "and we'd test it before using it. It was an electrical circuit and I had not forgotten than an electrical short had resulted in the loss of the Apollo 1 crew."

In fact, Schirra had complained about the scheduling of the transmissions on the ground before launch. He "hadn't been able to win the battle," wrote Deke Slayton. "He probably figured there wasn't much we could do to him while he was in orbit, and he was right, but it made my life kind of difficult." The commander's antics also upset the flight directors, including Chris Kraft and Glynn Lunney, when he began sarcastically criticizing "the genius" who designed a particularly balky piece of equipment. "He might have been right," continued Slayton, "but it sure didn't endear him to the guys on the ground to have the astronaut implying they were idiots over the open line for everyone to hear."

After one test which he perceived as pointless, Eisele, clearly annoyed, quipped that he "wanted to talk to the man, or whoever it was, that thought up that little gem." The man turned out to be Flight Director Lunney himself. Going over the mission tapes and transcripts after the flight, Cunningham would conclude in his NASA oral history that he "never had any problem with the ground," although Deke Slayton felt that all three men "were pretty testy." One flight controller even muttered, only half-jokingly, about letting the Apollo 7 crew land in the middle of a typhoon. …

It was a difficult beginning to a mission which would establish itself in the annals of space exploration—perhaps fairly, perhaps not—as one which generated a particularly difficult relationship between a flight crew and a flight control team. However, as will be discussed in tomorrow's history article, the enormous success of Apollo 7 and the incredible achievements of her crew would enable NASA to commit the next flight to lunar orbit … and bring John F. Kennedy's goal of human boots on the Moon significantly closer.

 

Copyright © 2013 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
October 13th, 2013

'From the Lovely Apollo Room': 45 Years Since Apollo 7 Charted a Course for the Moon (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

Glorious view of the Florida peninsula from Apollo 7. Photo Credit: NASA

Forty-five years ago this week, Project Apollo—the effort to set American boots on the surface of the Moon—rose from the ashes of despair and triumphantly flew an 11-day mission in low-Earth orbit. Apollo 7 astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham launched atop a mammoth Saturn IB rocket from Cape Kennedy's Pad 34 on 11 October 1968, to undertake a thorough shakedown of the most complex piloted vehicle then in existence. As recounted in yesterday's history article, the mission's engineering success had been tempered somewhat by a spell of head colds and a rather testing relationship between the astronauts and Mission Control. It was a situation which would prove legendary and which remains controversial to this day.

None of the alleged testiness was apparent on the third day of the mission, 13 October, when Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham performed the first live televised event from a U.S. manned spacecraft. The event was the first of seven scheduled TV transmissions, timed to occur as Apollo 7′s orbital path passed over the Corpus Christi, Texas, and Cape Kennedy, Fla., ground stations. The crew opened the first telecast with a sign which read "From the lovely Apollo room, high atop everything," then aimed their camera through the window as they passed above New Orleans and over Florida. Later transmissions included tours of the command module, demonstrations of the Exer-Genie, and explanations of how food was prepared in space and how dried fruit juice was reconstituted with water. All in all, the telecasts were well-received and the astronauts enjoyed them, telling viewers to "Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming In, Folks" … and offering Schirra a chance to gain revenge on Deke Slayton by asking him, live, if he was a turtle. After the flight, these "Wally, Walt and Donn Shows" proved so popular that the astronauts won a special Emmy award.

The final stage of the Saturn IB, the S-IVB also formed the component of the Saturn V which would house the lunar module. On Apollo 7, astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham performed several rendezvous activities with the spent stage. Photo Credit: NASA

By 12 October, Apollo 7 had drifted about 70 miles from the Saturn IB rocket's S-IVB second stage. The crew's task was to re-rendezvous with it. This was not as straightforward as it had been on Project Gemini, since the command module lacked a rendezvous radar and the astronauts were unable to read their range and closing velocity to the target. However, wrote Schirra in his autobiography, Schirra's Space, "we made it through the rendezvous, with each of us aging about a year," and Apollo 7 edged to within 60 feet of the spent rocket stage. The maneuver proved quite traumatic, with no clear awareness of their closing motions, and the S-IVB itself was spinning throughout like an angry whale. Sixty feet was close enough, before moving away.

The final days of what Apollo Program Director Sam Phillips lauded as "the perfect mission" were marred by the worsening head colds. Schirra's, indeed, had materialised 15 hours after launch, forcing him to admit that he had "gone through eight or nine Kleenexes," so he had to endure it for most of the 11-day mission. (He also took Actifed, to which he became so attracted that he helped sell it on TV commercials after leaving the astronaut corps.) Years later, Walt Cunningham would blame Schirra's cold on a dove-hunting trip that the Apollo 7 crew took in a rainy Florida shortly before launch. "Wally was kind of a General Bull Moose complex," Cunningham told the NASA oral historian. "What's good enough for Bull Moose is good enough for the world. So, when Wally had a cold, everybody had to be miserable." A head cold anywhere is miserable, but in the pressurized confines of a spacecraft, it proved much more so, and Eisele and Cunningham quickly succumbed.

Physician Chuck Berry advised them to take aspirin and decongestant tablets and, as re-entry neared, they began to worry that the build-up of pressure whilst wearing their helmets might burst their ear drums. During his days at test pilot school, Schirra had made a short flight with a head cold and "almost busted an ear drum." The choice he now faced on Apollo 7—not wearing a helmet or running the risk of lifelong hearing loss—was a no-brainer.

"Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming in, Folks!" The Apollo 7 crew was the first to perform a series of televised broadcasts from their spacecraft during the 11-day mission. Photo Credit: NASA

Deke Slayton explicitly ordered the crew to wear their helmets, but Schirra refused, agreeing only to keep them stowed in case of emergencies. There were, admittedly, contingencies options in place for returning home without suits, perhaps in the event of contamination, but after almost 11 days it seemed unlikely that cabin pressure would fail during re-entry.

Each astronaut took a decongestant pill an hour before hitting the atmosphere and endured no major problems. As the command module's pressure was raised to conditions approximating normal sea-level, Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham performed the Valsalva maneuver—holding their noses, closing their mouths, and vigorously exhaling through their nostrils—to keep their middle ears equal to the increasing cabin pressure. In doing so, they avoided ruptured ear drums … but aroused the wrath of flight controllers. All three men would be "tarred and feathered" for their insubordination during the mission. Schirra had already announced his retirement from NASA, but Eisele and Cunningham would never fly again.

In spite of the criticisms levelled at them in the wake of Apollo 7, both Eisele and Cunningham were considered for backup roles on future missions. The former had already been assigned to serve as the backup command module pilot on Apollo 10. For Tom Stafford, the commander of that mission's prime crew, writing in his autobiography, We Have Capture, Eisele's assignment was little more than "a temporary step into oblivion." Cunningham, on the other hand, would work for several years on the Skylab program and trained for a time as backup commander for its first mission. He "wanted to fly again," wrote Deke Slayton in his autobiography, Deke, co-authored with Michael Cassutt. "In spite of the flight operations opinion that he shouldn't, I wasn't going to rule him out. But it was a numbers game."

Despite the success of Apollo 7, there was also something different about Wally Schirra. "I had changed over the span of time that encompassed my three flights," Schirra wrote in his autobiography. "As the space program had matured, so had I. I was no longer the boy in scarf and goggles, the jolly Wally of space age lore." He steadfastly refused to allow Apollo 7 to be jeopardised by what he perceived to be the influence of "special interests"—scientific or political—and declared that he "would not be an affable fellow when it came to decisions that affected the safety of myself and my two mates."

Exultant and exhausted, the crew of Apollo 7 greets well-wishers after the second-longest U.S. manned spaceflight at the time. Photo Credit: NASA

As the mission approached its scheduled end on 22 October 1968, after 11 days, it established itself as the second-longest manned flight to date, surpassed only by the 14-day Gemini VII. With 163 orbits under their belts, Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham jettisoned their service module and the cone-shaped command module re-entered the atmosphere. Shortly thereafter, descending beneath three red-and-white parachutes, it dropped into the Atlantic Ocean, just southeast of Bermuda, after a mission of 10 days, 20 hours, nine minutes, and three seconds. Apollo 7 splashed down at 7:11:48 a.m. EDT, just a handful of miles from the recovery vessel, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Essex.

Heavily bearded, tired, and unsteady on their feet, the astronauts had all lost weight, but their humor remained intact. Deke Slayton, aboard the Essex, admitted to having "a few words in private" with Schirra, not so much about his own behavior, but about his effect on Eisele and Cunningham. Others were less complimentary. Chris Kraft is said to have announced that nobody from Apollo 7 would ever fly into space again. "I made the selections," admitted Slayton, "but I wasn't going to put anybody on a crew that Kraft's people wouldn't work with. Not when I had other guys."

In a year which had seen the steady rise of the hippie movement in America and protests ranging from civil rights to the war in Vietnam and outrage over the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, NASA's public affairs officer Paul Haney knew precisely why the bearded Schirra and his crew had been so irritable. "Something happens to a man when he grows a beard," Haney joked. "Right away, he wants to protest!"

Copyright © 2013 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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