NASA-UAP-D029, Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing (Continued), 1972

Okay, this is take number 14, tenuation of section 23.0 with Jack Schmidt. Okay flight data file, CSM. Generally I have nothing but praise for the flight data file, both vehicles. There was very, very few things that one could have asked for to improve that data file for Apollo 17 at any rate. One comment on the flight plan supplement. We had split pages for a number of the logging, medical and food logging, and that probably was a mistake. I think the idea was fairly good initially, but the pages we tended to only use that in the book as a whole and it was a good place to keep them and also the pages, if you had wanted them split, were too thin to maintain the split and they tended to fall out of the book. I would recommend either not splitting or having heavier paper if you want them split. We had an extra cue card built for panel 229. I think it was an excellent card that summarized the circuit breaker functions both on 229 and on Panel 8 because we had no systems and anomalies of any significance that would relate to that card. It was not used, but I would strongly recommend its availability if only for training during Sims. It is a good quick review of what you lose or retain for those two panels. I, in the flight plan, I added some penic cues along the margins for certain observational targets that I particularly wanted to look at. These were independent of any experiment, designated experiment, and I entered them as a function of time and that seemed to work very well for me. I think it had that kind of thing as an individual preference item and if you have experimented ought to be flight planned, if you just plan to use your spare time for specific observational targets or types of observations, then I think the penic is maybe the easiest way to go since it shouldn't concern any large number of people. We, Gordy Fullerton, fixed up the circular orbital cue card for me with a similar designation of craters as a function of time. I did not use that, not because it wasn't a good idea, but because a familiarity with the moon, which came very quickly after a couple orbits and you just, you could recognize your position on the moon fairly easily as a function of each rev, either the time in the rev, approximate time since sunset, or just because you could look out the window and tell where you were. In the limb we, the same comment supply, I think all the flight data file items were excellent. I did not use the data card book to the extent that I know it was used on 15 and maybe on 16. We logged most of our specific items such as alignment data and comparable kinds of things in the checklist at the point where they were collected rather than in the data book and had no, this did not seem to raise any difficulty at any time. The cuff checklist we've talked about, I think, in the surface items, I thought the cuff checklist was excellent. I think we did the things, we had the right kind of photo maps in there that were useful for reference where we were around a given station. I don't think we used them as much as I had anticipated using them, mainly because navigation was no problem and the points that we had selected pre-flight were excellent points for investigation and there was no need to decide on alternative points to try to study in the vicinity of a given station. The list of items to be accomplished at each station are to, really they were mine joggers to read at each station were not, again, not as used as much as I thought they would be initially but I think that was mainly because we both, at least I had become so familiar with the items that each station was in itself easy to recall as a result of having created the checklists, so checklists turned out to be more of a learning item rather than a reference item for use on the surface. I wouldn't have done it any differently however. I particularly want to compliment the Chuck Lewis on the timeline book that was, I really can't sing on it, but the timeline book was very, very well done and very, we had no problems with the timeline book at all but that of course applies to the, to every, every checklist that we had, there were just no procedural errors that I could, that I recall in any of the books that we used. Fortunately we didn't have to use an malfunction book or the only, once did I pull out the systems data book to check, to check on a systems problem and I, right now can't remember what that was, I don't remember where it was, or I didn't use it once. Charts and maps, I thought in the CSM that I would use the orbit, what did I see, orbit monitor charts, I guess that's what they're called, and I had an extra one put on so it wouldn't interfere with the planned activities of, of the CMP, I did not use that very much. I eventually did some sketching on it post-TEI, I think there are about five specific points that I labeled as areas, A, B, C, D, maybe E, and these are referenced on my crew notebook, for specific observations, but in general I did not put that to as much use as I expected. One item is that that chart should have been identical to the CMP's chart and there were a few pen and ink changes left off of it that caused some confusion at one point, pen and ink exposure settings for certain photo targets. The CSM, the landmark maps that the LMP had added in the rear of that book, again were not used, I really thought I would use those, but in the, you became reluctant as you were observing a specific point or area target, such as Gagarin or something like that, to take time out, to sketch on the photo. I tended for the two or three minutes that observation was possible of a given area. I tended to look and then at the first opportunity to take notes in the notebook rather than trying to sketch on the photograph. I suspect that this was because I tended to look for generalizations about the target that I was trying to observe rather than checking out specific individual features, and they really did not seem to be any need to make notes about specific points on the pictures and as a result I did not use them. Even though I think having selected them and studied them pre-flight made it worth having them around, the necessity for flying them was probably less than the necessity for having reviewed them and studied them. I think I still, if I had to do it again, I still would want to have that kind of data available in the spacecraft, even though on this particular mission it was not used. I do think though that the CMP used his visual target maps considerably and I did in a couple occasions use some of the ones that he had again, but for the most part that was post-TEI and I made some notes and sketches on some of those maps. I think that just a function that there was a lot of time to look at the moon and make a sketch and then look back and fix it up post-TEI, where in orbit the time just did not exist. As Dick Gordon said a couple years ago, and once you start flying the clock it was relentless. General flight planning. I was not very closely involved in the flight planning run, sort of carried the burden of that for both Jean and myself. The flight plan was excellent. We had no problems with it at all that I'm aware of. Tommy Holloway and his people were to be complimented on that. The number of different requirements and experiments and general operational items that were required to be integrated one with the other was very, very high and it was done in an extremely competent and usable way. I don't can't think of anything that I would change in the way the flight plan was written. Okay, 23.5 pre-flight support. Pre-flight support was excellent in the flight data file area. One specific item that I had was once the flight plan was well established just about at the final stage. I had two or three, I don't remember, two or three briefing sessions where in the portions of the orbit flight plan that I was going to be, during which I was going to be in the spacecraft and the CSM, we went over in detail the attitudes and maneuvers and the availability of the window availability so that I was able to plan in a very short amount of time with the minimum effort on my part, the my own personal observations of the lunar surface which went very well as far as planning was concerned. Appreciated that that was extra above and beyond the call of duty on the part of the flight planners and I appreciated their taking time out to do that for me. I think it was useful to have the, I think it was a day long session where the flight controllers and the crew and the flight planners sat around in one room and went over those portions of the flight plan which were not normally simulated. It turned out that the flight plan had been so well done that I doubt if there were any specific items that came up that we needed to change or there seemed to be a lack of coordination on. This was in contrast to previous flights where I think we were still learning, all of us were learning on how to put together flight plans and integrate requirements, the Apollo 17 flight plan apparently reached the peak of perfection. I was a little bit disappointed in that briefing and that some of the people who would be eventually involved in the mission were not at the flight plan review and I think this was because of conflicts with other programs which were the center that was carrying out at the time. Okay, 24.0 visual sightings. Well, we've covered the countdown and launch, I think, pretty well. In the previous sections, also powered flight, Earth orbit, I think the transcript would cover the visual sightings that I made with respect to weather and a few geographic observations and that same would go for the fairly extensive weather observations that I tried to make translunar, translunar, trans-Earth we had only a small crescent of an Earth and it was not feasible to do an extensive weather observations. I don't know whether I recorded yet that although we had light flashes just about continuously during the whole flight when it was when you were dark adapted and I may have even had one which I thought was a flash on the lunar surface during the first rev, that one period of time when we had the blindfolds on for the opnet experiment there just were no visible flashes although the next, that evening, that night before I went to sleep I noticed I was seeing the light flashes again. So it just seemed to be that one interval either side of that interval and either side of it where the light flash phenomena was not visible to myself or to the other two crewmen. Lunar orbit, I think the transcript and my crew notebook would cover all the visual sightings that I can remember at this stage without going over to orbit by orbit and feature by feature with the photography and I think that has to come later. Entry we covered in the previous briefings and I think the same goes for landing and recovery. Why don't you stop at a second Texan? Twenty-five point zero, pre-mission planning for the LNP. It's hard to think once again of anything that we didn't do right. I'm sure that might have been different had we had problems on the flight but right away the flight went. The total plan, the integration of the mission requirements into that plan, although there were periods of some difficulty pre-flight particularly in the area of medical requirements and in some last minute possible scientific requirements particularly on the samples. Everything seemed to get resolved as satisfactory as near as I could tell and I can't think of anything that was not handled very well. Between the people who were levying the requirements and the flight planners in particular and occasionally when the crew had to be involved that was handled almost entirely by the support crew of Bob Parker in the science area and Gordy Fullerton and Bob Obermeyer in the operational areas. There were no significant spacecraft changes in the course of our training period. Ron I guess the biggest single area that took time was the one that Ron had to deal with and that was Luna's sounder. Most of our outset changes were all taken care of prior to our training and we had a few minor suggestions that were taken care of early in the training cycle and we essentially had an up-to-date concept to train with and all other lunar surface gear was up to date for most of the 12-month training period or the final 12 months of the training period. Mission rules and techniques were fairly well defined very early by Phil Shafer and his crowd and the techniques area and the mission rules are Jerry Griffin and people working on that. No major changes and only the only changes were all I felt in the right direction in that they enhanced the probability of making a landing and a successful mission. Generally we're in the area of opening up possibilities for workarounds so that a mission could be completed. We really never had to exercise any significant, any of the mission rules in a normal way. I think the one time that mission rule tended to, let me finish this check on everyone, a mission rule tended to be fairly clearly a controlling factor was in the limitation on the work at station four shorty crater where we were up against the walk back constraints and terminated that work after only 35 minutes where another 30 minutes there I think would have been extremely valuable although I hope that we got enough information that the phenomena exposed that that crater can be understood. They want you to stop it. 26.0 mission control. Typically outstanding support for mission control. I think this includes the number of extracurricular hours that the limb people and the econ for the CSM in particular put in with me on Saturdays and other times just generally talking over systems and techniques, mission rules and that was a major factor in helping me understand and keep up to speed on those items. I think the help that they gave me in designing and in fact as they essentially did it, they did the design of the emergency cue cards that we did for Apollo 17 for the limb were was a major contribution although fortunately not we did not use them they still made it possible to understand very quickly systems problems and to solve those problems in the simulations and had we required them I think it would have gone very well. I particularly want to point out the help that Dick Thorsen gave in organizing most of the limb sessions and even some of the joint CSM limb sessions that we had and he also Thorsen also was a major organizer of the creation of and the updating of Bill's emergency cue cards. Human factors 27.0 let's go back that's one other comment on 26.0 post-flight it's my understanding that some of the things I had hoped could be done during the flight were not possible because of real-time discussions in the mission control. Specifically one of those things was to have some summary of the thinking of the science background given to me while in flight and that would be the thinking based on the data that we had transmitted to them verbally and to sense visually through the television camera. I had hoped that I would have the benefit of their thinking but apparently this was not possible to do. I would like to think that in the future we can look at ways of using the team approach to science investigations in space rather than depending solely on the observational capability and the interpretive capability of the men who are performing the job. There's no reason that I can see to not use all the brain power that's available for any given task and part of that brain power is on the ground. 27.0 human factors pre-flight the broad of the discussions and organization from the crew point of view of the pre-flight health stabilization control program was born by the commander and the LNP just sort of went along with whatever was decided. I personally did not find any great difficulty in working out and adhering to the requirements of that program. I think medical care although a very limited requirement was good. A couple of sinus infections I had reacted just like they always had and we were able over a period of 10 days or two weeks to get those cleared up. Time for exercise probably was less than it should have been although I was able to get a good workout just about every other day in addition to the workouts we got as a normal course of our UVA training. Eventually Tex started scheduling putting on the schedule time in the late afternoon for exercise and that helped as a reminder and buffer to see that that exercise was obtained. It is generally hard at least in the lunar training program to get exercise periods in during the day and quite frequently the exercise was done in the Cape Gym at night. I think rest and sleep is an individual thing and I made a particular effort to always get as much as I possibly could and try never to get behind the park or on rest because my personal experiences at that is when I tend to get colds and resulting sinus infections. Medical briefing was good. The exams seemed to go very well in my estimation. They were as expeditious as possible under the circumstances. I think the operational medical personnel who carried out the exams are to be complemented in their efforts to see that the exam was as painless and as efficient as possible. This should also include the post-flight exams on the Ticonderoga. Eating habits and amount of food consumption were normal except during those periods of time when we were on the in-flight food prior to launch. Those times that tended to be in my case a decrease of appetite and certainly although the food was certainly powerable my appetite did go down and it certainly was not possible for me to eat the amount of food that was provided for me. This also applied to space work but in the case of the in-flight eating although I did not eat everything that was available to me in my food packages I apparently should needed to if I hadn't wanted to avoid losing weight. My appetite was down but also apparently for some reason I had a loss of weight and at this time of this recording my weight is still down and has not gone up to pre-flight levels which may have been a little high by the way. Okay 17.2 flight appetite food preference well I just discussed that a little bit and the appetite in flight versus two weeks pre-flight was less again except for when we were testing pre-flight food when I also had a low appetite. No notable differences in the taste of food I think the things I like pre-flight I liked in space and the things I didn't like I also didn't like I didn't notice any differences. Changing food preferences of flight progressed I tended to start to prefer to eat the wet packs and would eat those in preference to any of the other solid foods. I would strongly recommend my personal point of view at any rate that the wet packs be used in preference to the rehydratable. I know I think that probably you get a different opinion from the other crewmen. These juices were good after the first period of one and only a period of difficulty with loose bowel moments I did cut out the potassium indicated foods and although I can't say whether that had any effect or not but I did not have any other bowel moments and certainly no more loose ones before the end of the flight. The first bowel moment after flight on the ticonderoga was normal, the second was very loose, the third was normal and the fourth and fifth very loose. The size of food portions and the meal portions of course were pretty much constant in terms of availability. Packaging but my appetite was very low the first day and gradually increased over the next two or three days and remained essentially the same. After about the third day I mentioned the most acceptable foods were the wet packs and the juices. The food cake I thought was good although it was possible to eat too much or to get to the point where you didn't want anymore. The chocolate was good. I think of the dry crackers or cookies or graham crackers were probably the most tasty. And peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were quite good. Deviations from the menu and the periods are all recorded in the flight transcripts I'm sure. Food preparation and consumption. Rehydration went I think normally and the nominal gas was present. Food temperature tended to prefer the foods that were warm or hot and the hot water was quite adequate for water. Warm foods we actually I think missed the warm foods considerably in the limb where that hot water was not available. I did not notice an effect of water flavor. Water was reasonably tasty. I never noticed a high chlorine taste of any kind. All the gas content did make it a little bit uncomfortable to eat at times. Boombo packages worked pretty well although those that were finally divided I tended to cut off the other end of the package. The water insertion end and use them as a squeeze package. Spoons worked perfectly adequate. I tended not to use the fruit in the cans because of just the messiness of opening. I think the technique that Ron worked out of opening it in your mouth is a good one. Puttings and this kind of thing were very good. It was only the fruits, the canned fruits that I tended to avoid just because they were inconvenient to use. Food bars during the EVAs were good to have although I never ate more than half of one. It was not because it was not tasty just because of a lack of interest in eating and using that time during the EVAs. I think after the before and after the EVAs and the limb ate very well. There were some things though we avoided and I guess in my case after having corn chowder once and that's simulating a major album with although not a loose one. I did not eat corn chowder. I did not eat the cocoa because I tended to feel like I got a little more gas from cocoa. After taste I did not eat the shrimp, the seafood item shrimp and the lobster biscuit and these sort of things. Because of the pre-flight I had noticed that they tended to have a long after taste. But otherwise I think all the other foods were certainly acceptable. Many times I did not eat potato based foods because of just they were very filling. Food, waste, storage, I do not know how the German side old tablet worked. The pouch was okay. It would have been nice to have a little dispenser that was easier to use than the pouch. I don't know whether that would be possible to do or not. It seems to me it would have a little tube dispenser of some kind where they came out more easily. We generally just cut the corner off the pouch and squeezed them out but it was a little inconvenient, nothing major. We used the German side old tablets. I did any raid in all the juice bags and the food spoon bowl bags and the wet packs. I did not use them in the tea and coffee. Unders are the holders really except for the passing of gas occasionally by the other crewmen and occasionally by myself. Unders are the owners of the minimum. I did not find that the atmosphere was unpleasant as a general rule. I might say that I generally had a continuous, almost continuous passage of gas, most of which apparently was significant older. The only occasionally that seemed to be objectionable to the other crewmen. I think most of that was the water gas. The reason I think that is that upon starting to eat, there would be an increased desire to pass gas. The increased pressure of my stomach apparently was transmitted almost immediately into the bowels. After eating it would pass gas for a couple of hours to three hours. Just before eating the next time the desire would have pretty well dissipated and then it would start immediately upon eating. Before any digestion was possible I am sure. I suspect water gas was the main culprit in the LNP's gas problems which were not significant. The quantity of food eaten on the lunar surface I think was high although probably no more than half of that food that was available. It is hard to say exactly and I think that could be worked out maybe with a detailed look at the menus if that is desirable. And to estimate the quantity would be very difficult. Food quantity of food discarded on the lunar surface would be difficult without looking at the detailed menus and checking off those items that I am sure we ate at I ate at any rate. Skylab fecal container. I don't know what we have yet. We use the blue bag. The bag is not a bad way to defecate unless the stool is loose. If it is loose it is just about impossible to use. I don't know what you do in your gallery for loose stool. I don't know of any clever way to prevent that being a problem. The best thing you can do is to work out prevention of loose stools rather than trying to handle them after you get them. A loose stool is one of the major hygiene and sanitary and operational problems that you can have on a flight. I can't emphasize that more. If it happened on a regular basis, on a daily basis, you would I think eventually cut the efficiency of the crew member with the problem by a significant percentage, possibly as much as 30% depending on the magnitude of the problem. I think it's important to try to understand why Apollo 17 was different than 16 and at least in the delay of the problem of loose stools until about the 11th or 12th day. In the case of the commander, no problem with loose stools and my personal opinion at this point based on very little information other than observation in flight and thinking about levels of electrolyte intake is that with the electrolyte quantity down from that imposed on Apollo 16 that we did not reach the electrolyte saturation level until the 11th or 12th day in terms of this CMP and the LMP and in terms of the commander because his electrolyte intake was generally less I think and that can be documented. He did not reach the saturation level at all and when that saturation level was reached however, in the case of the CMP and LMP, I suspect that the electrolytes we were eating were dumped in a sense or concentrated in the intestines and tended to act pretty much as a laxity and as an Epsom salt type laxity, if you will, in concentrated water in the stool. I think it's important for Skylab that first of all we probably reduce the electrolyte intake so that saturation is never reached and secondly that if loose stool problem develops it appears to be an electrolyte problem other than any other biological problem that we decrease the intake of electrolytes. This is what I did on my own and whether or not it worked or not it's hard to say because the flight was terminated before any other stool occurred. Okay water, orientation odor was not apparent to me except during chlorination. Addentation odor is very slight apparent in the limb water but not any significance to the LMP. Physical discomfort, no physical discomfort for the LMP other than tiredness on occasion and in the case of the EVA work sore muscles and the bruises under the fingernails. The gas water separator didn't work very effectively and I'm sure that's been discussed elsewhere. The intensity of thirst or animation never really extensively thirsty even during the EVAs although I did stop to take a drink of water occasionally. But I never drunk, I never drank all the water in the in-flight drink bag, in-suit drink bag. Work, rest and sleep. Okay. Hey Tex, could you try to call the, call the trailer or was I? Work, rest, sleep for the LMP. Okay the difficulty in going to sleep was variable and when seeking all was used generally no difficulty in going to sleep when it was not used I guess there was a tendency to stay awake a little bit longer but on other occasions the absence seeking all did not seem to affect the rate of going to sleep. There was a tendency on a couple on several nights to go to sleep and then wake up fairly soon after going to sleep within an hour. And then the second time took a little bit of, maybe sometimes took up to an hour to go back to sleep. But I feel that the medical law reports that for the LMP were generally valid that a probably an average of five and a half to six hours of sleep per night was good and I don't think except for maybe one night somewhere in there did I go much below that. But the sleep was rarely, probably never continuous for more than three hours without waking up. I feel that six hours is adequate sleep for the kind of work we were doing in space however the programming of eight hours is necessary in order to get six hours because of the periods of wakefulness during sleep periods and for just the difficulty in getting the cabin organized and everybody to bed at the right program time. So maintaining an eight hour sleep period is I think mandatory in order to obtain the six hours that is probably all that is required to perform the mission without getting tired or getting behind the power curve. I would say respect to sleep. Restraints, I had the feeling that, did you find him by the way? I had the feeling that I wanted to have my head and limbs restrained in order to get a good sleep although I did sleep at times without that restraint. If I were rebuilding the sleep restraints for my personal use I would make them smaller with somewhat more feeling of restraint. They're a little bit large I would say for use. When I slept in the couch I tended to put a shoulder strap over my head and sent you down very lightly so that I had that feeling of head restraint. Probably the biggest two things that made sleep difficult when it was difficult was the loss of sensory perception of limb position in zero gravity. When they were not being moved that perception came back immediately upon moving them. But when they were just static and in a rest position they tended to be for the LNP at any rate of loss of sensory perception of the position of the limb position.