Post-Flight:

Post-Flight: 2-47-84

DATE: August 3, 1966

PILOT: Maj. W. Knight

Everything went along real well up through the checklist, except sometime on the way out the inertial system had 100 feet/second rate of climb. Of course, this was showing up on the velocity and I kept checking with Jack Russell on it and we finally got it back to zero and then it went minus 100 feet/second and the altitude went clear on down to 1200 feet/second. About this time I had already aborted. (?) 12,000 feet, it went to. (?) Did I say 1200? No, it went down to 12,000 feet/second. About this time, as I say, I had already aborted, and that's why we got behind in the checklist a little bit because I really wasn't too concerned with it. I figured any minute Bill was going to call up and say, well, the inertial system was out of spec; but everybody kept pressing on and I said OK, I'll catch up. We got through the SAS check, I picked the time up there, and then we got a little bit behind again. I still wasn't convinced at the four minute point. Getting the jettison check, and I'd like to ask a question here on the jettison check. Somebody had already said, at one time, that you have to have the jettison into jettison for a long enough period to get the valves open. I knew that I was going to be short on fuel, and I went to jettison and back to pressurize about as fast as I could go, and Chase #1 called a good jettison check on both of them. I would like to know where this valve time comes in, because boy if you can do it any quicker, I'd like to know how. I don't think that there is that much of a delay in those valves, that you are talking about, because I did it about as fast as I could do it and it was probably much less than a second, in jettison. (?) But we do get a jettison check. OK. All right, we did get the jettison check and went on in there. One other thing we missed back here on the BCS, and I don't know why. This is the second time I've done that. The BCS check I don't get the data on. Nobody called it, nobody caught it, no nothing, but as soon as I was all through the BCS check, went down to turn the data off and it wasn't even on. Well, I don't know why I missed that, but that is the second time I have not turned the data on for the BCS check. The launch was real good, The call for heading change was pretty obvious. I had looked at the Startracker instrument and I knew I was off heading. I had already started the correction and the call that Bill made, to correct 5° right, for track correction was real good. We caught that and made it up, I think, before we ever got on theta. We made that correction there, and between that correction and running out of trim, and we did run out of trim at about Mach 2. I was real conscious of that, trying to get more, and the alpha dropped off to about 10 and that's all I could get out of it with full trim in. It did come up on theta, and I don't know why I had so much trouble holding theta today other than the beta offset considerably earlier than I had anticipated. It came in at about 3. I had probably a half degree to a degree of beta offset at 3, whereas, in the simulator it doesn't come in until about 4. I started correcting the beta and by the time we got 47 or 48, I had almost full rudder in to try to correct the beta and I still didn't have that zeroed. At that time, I noticed that the theta was off again and Bill called for a theta correction. We got it back on theta a little bit, but then trying to get the theta back and holding the roll, the theta went to hell. It was probably off a degree or maybe even more. No, much more than a degree at that time. I had almost full rudder in trying to hold that thrust misalignment. We got up to the shutdown and Bill called "standby for shutdown." It was real good, I had a real good eye on the velocity and as it came up to 5000 I started back on the throttle and I never did get the throttle all the way off before it quit. It actually shut down before I got the throttle off. The time on the clock was 81 3/4 seconds. Almost exactly what the simulator said. After that, I got right on the BCS and got the beta lined up and the delta psi on, and then went to zero alpha. I did not get it to zero alpha as quick as I thought I would. I went down to zero alpha and a little bit negative. I can't reach the experiment and test with my right hand, as I was doing in the simulator. I sure can't do it, so I had to get it all lined up. Then as the needles were lined up, I called "experiment on," I think. Did you get the call? )Yes I did) (?) Yes, it was, but I still had not gotten down to the theta that I wanted, to get the needles lined up. As soon as I got everything lined up, then I called the experiment on and I was going through about 250,000 on the inertial altitude. So when your call came in that I was going high it wasn't really a surprise. I was a little bit concerned about the reentry then, because I didn't know whether you were correct or the inertial system was correct and I thought if it were 238, it was going to be a rough one. We got the experiment on and the tracking was probably within one or two units all the way around, on the tracking. We should have gotten that with no problem. (?) Yes, it was all lined up, I engaged it, the light came on and things jumped to zero and we had it right there. It was a long 42 seconds before the light went out. I wasn't really worried about anything until that light went out. I think somebody called "experiment off" and the light had gone off about 3 or 4 seconds before that. Then I reached over and turned the experiment off manually, after the light went out, and it also had been trimming in, the trim on the side stick, but I had not gotten it to full trim yet. Then I turned the RAS off and about that time the alpha started down, and Bill came back and asked me to get the alpha back up. I think if I had had the full trim in it would have been a little bit better. That's what I had planned to do. The other thing was that, on the top, when I made corrections with beta, roll and pitch, each time the needles would jump. I was getting interference with the BCS system and the ball nose. They would really jump. I think that the needle, on the beta, went left most of the time. I can't really coordinate between the needle position and what control I was using, because the minute I saw it I knew what it was and then I kind of discarded it and said, well, (You should not have seen that on your beta needle.) Well, it jumped a couple of times. I am sure that beta needle jumped. We will look at the film. (?) No, I don't think so. I think when I hit the BCS a couple times the beta needle jumped. We will look at that on the cockpit film. Coming back in, people began to get concerned about the beta and the alpha, and I could see what was happening. I didn't have the full trim to hold it. I went off RAS, and when I turned the RAS off, then the alpha started down; but I had something else to do right then and it probably went clear down to 7 - 8°. I knew it was there and I knew I had a little time to get it back up, and then Bill started hollering about the alpha. So we got it back up and it went back up about some 20 - 21 or 22°. (25) OK. I knew it was up there, but again I was not worried about it because we still were not back down to any q. So I got the alpha settled down and the beta squared away. As the reentry came on and the q started to pick up we got just a little bit of beta oscillation, probably a half degree or a degree at the most, of beta. That steadied out, I had good alpha, I had full trim in, and I held the full trim and I got up to about 5 g and the q went to about 1400 and no higher, on my indication. As soon as the q stopped I went back and I looked at the h dot, and the h dot was coming through about 400. I backed off and we stopped it at about 200 to 100 feet per second. and then had to really push over to get it started back downhill with the full brakes. The q never went over 1400 throughout the entry nor on the way down. From then on somebody asked if I had the field in sight. I did not have the field in sight. I had not even worried about looking at it yet. The next thing that was of significant value was that Bill called something like 50 or 60,000 feet and I was still showing about 80 or 90,000 feet on the inertial. So, I went to the pressure, at that time, and I was down to 50. Then I rolled it and looked for the field and could see the field then. I rolled it back out and headed out towards California City. That's why I was concerned about getting altitude checks from Jerry, Chase #4, because the inertial system had gone kaput. It was still way up 60, 70,000 as I came down through 30 or 35. The pattern from then on worked out real well, I crossed the field about 30, probably a little higher. Turned and landed about 2/10 of a mile short of the smoke. It should have been a real good touchdown and probably about 5500 feet rollout, push and pull. All extend was pulled at about, oh, Mach 2, and whatever altitude it was when it turned. I did not see anything on the pressure system, nothing at all. Everything worked good all the way down from there. I don't think I had time to look at the outer trim. It did not feel like it was, once we had shut down. Of course, on the way up when I had almost full rudder in I had a lot of aileron in too trying to hold it. It seemed to be almost the opposite of what the simulator showed, in the fact that I did need almost full rudder. I did not need nearly as much aileron as I thought I was going to need to hold the roll and the beta. I probably did not get the beta within two degrees of center, but I did come off of everything at shutdown. I didn't get too many transients in there at all. (?) No, I did not. Reentry was very smooth and I thought it was a very good reentry in that we held everything until it all steadied out. (?) No, I used full trim and you may find a little bit of force on the stick, but I don't think very much at all. I knew I was high and I knew it was going to be a higher q reentry than I had anticipated, but I don't think I pulled in that much. I don't think I can tell you. I was concentrating very strongly on making sure that I held that alpha until the h dot came up to a reasonable figure. I did feel the doors open and shut. Being as it was the first time, I can't tell you which condition it was, but I thought that there was a little bit of a pitching motion with the doors either coming open or going closed. I can't remember which one, Jim, but I did feel them. I did not see the light. I heard the doors and then looked and the light was on. My max altitude, on inertial, was 258. The inertial was bad, on the way down, and when I stopped on the lakebed I called out the readings on the inertial system, and I still had some pretty good altitude and some pretty healthy h dot. I don't remember what it is now. I think it was about 800 feet/second climb in h dot. I forget what the altitude was now. (?) Everything came back in before drop and we were reading 45,000, 44 and about zero h dot and about 800 feet/second, and it all looked good. Then Jack said the platform is in spec, we went. That was a comment I was going to make to you, Butch. After last night, you wanted to abort four o'clock. Visibility was good everywhere and even coming back in. I heard the calls all the way down and knew pretty well where I was. But when you called "did I have the field in sight," I didn't. I had not even started looking for the field yet. I knew I had plenty of altitude and you kept calling on track so I knew I was pretty close to right on. Then, after I got everything all squared away and got my head back up out of the cockpit, then I rolled it left and looked down and right there was the field and it was right on. Everything worked good except the inertial altitude and that, I wanted to get some good correlation between my pressure altitude and what Jerry was reading. We seemed to be a little bit off, on the higher altitude. As we came down to 25 and 30, then we were pretty close. Before, either I misread it or something, but there was quite a difference in what he was calling and what I was showing on my pressure altitude. On the way back down, once I got the q on and I felt some acceleration, then I knew that things were coming along; so I dropped off the BCS and I can't tell which was the last BCS input. Pitch, roll or yaw. (?) I don't think so. No. I did not feel anything like that. No, I didn't. I would say that if we could get the engine aligned, to get the beta out of there, that it would help. Although it did not cause as much of a problem as I thought it would. When I came off of everything there were no real large transients at burnout as I came off of all controls. It just kind of stayed there, I had about 10 or 15° left roll and about 2° needle right on the beta. As I came off it, it kind of all stayed there. So it really wasn't a big transient and it did not seem to be a real large problem. I don't know what you would get if you left your feet on the floor and let it go out there 4 or 5° beta and then shut down. I don't know. This is the way we had talked about doing it, and that is what I did and it seemed to work out real well. I think next time we should be able to zero the beta and zero the roll; knowing now what kind of control displacement that is required to do it. Yes, I would say it was pretty close to full rudder and I was still out on beta. (?) Yes. There was some beta oscillations right at the beginning on the way down, but nothing more than about 1/2° and it wasn't bad at all. I was kind of set for the reentry because I really did not know whether I was at 257 or 247.