When I went to pressurization on the tanks, I got a pretty good bang, and it was similar to what I heard on the test stand with the Lox tank pressure and the Lox line pressure oscillating. I even got this as low as 30 pounds, 20 to 30 pounds when I first heard it, and I heard this on the captive flight, the same thing. It is a little bit different than what I heard on the engine run up. It comes in a little bit earlier. From there on to launch everything was normal. All systems were real good and into launch. I thought the launch was very, very smooth compared to what I might of expected. It wasn't very much different from the captive launch. It was about the same except that I got the feeling that I might have been falling a little bit further or under zero g a little bit longer. I delayed a little bit on the engine light only because I didn't get my hand on the throttle, and finally had to look and make sure that I had my hand going to the throttle. The tendency would be to try to grab the pressurization handle again. Came up on thrust and the airplane handled real well. I wasn't aware of any oscillations that I saw on the TM afterwards, and pulled it on up to 13° and between not being trimmed off and the stability that it had, I was very well satisfied with that condition. I didn't think it would be any problem in flying the airplane at 12 and 13° and I very much settled down for a good ride when Jack told me the fuel tank hadn't been feeding. Rather than come on home when he said that the fuel tank hadn't been feeding I decided right then and there that I might as well go into Mud, because I wasn't sure of the fuel load, and I did not want to get into an asymmetric cg condition, so I pulled the throttle back to minimum power right after I pushed over, which was my normal procedure from looking at the simulator, and the airplane handled real good through this maneuver. I reached over and switched the internal flow, saw both lights come on and just hit the full button. Well, because it was the full button I hit. If I had thought another second, I might have gone to the partial button which probably would have been best, but they went off and I had the impression that they did not go off exactly the same time. I did get a rolling motion along with the pitching motion. As the airplane flew right through it, the damper system stayed on real good and flew right out of it within just a few seconds and wasn't any problem. I shut the engine down and made the turn back to Mud. I had the impression that I, at the time I looked at Mud, I was in a much better shape than I had seen from looking at this condition on the simulator. As I recall, I was doing this on the simulator and I was getting back to Mud at about 25,000 feet, and I ended up with over the middle of the lake with 35,000 feet. From there on down to the touchdown it was really standard approach pattern, a little higher on speed and the touchdown was about normal, 200 knots and as the skids hit the ground I pushed hard over, pulled the speed brakes and finally after a mile I pulled back hard on the stick.

One other comment. I watched the internal jettison cycle to a point where the emergency pressurization light came on on the Lox side first, and I didn't time it, but I was of the impression that the fuel light, indicating low pressure, did not come on for about - I am guessing 30 more seconds, which gave me an indication, at that time, that I still had a near full or at least a normal fuel load for burning fuel out of the external tank. The condition looked exactly to what I expected. For the length of time I flew it I couldn't see much difference, tanks empty. I thought that the airplane handled better than the simulator showed. It had a more lateral stability than I have been seeing on the simulator and, of course, the control forces of the airplane are lighter than the simulator anyway, so I didn't think there was any problem there at all and I was pleased when I got up to 12 and 13° angle of attack that it was as good, if not better then the simulator, all the way. The question of anybody flying it, I would say that the launch characteristics aren't any worse than in the impression that you get on the first launch that you do. Yes, just that the first flight launch seems to be more severe than this, and by the time somebody gets through several launches I didn't think the characteristics were abnormal at all, but of course, I probably put 100 hours on the simulator on this one flight; that would change it a little bit but I didn't think that it was as bad as I had expected.