Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown 199
[page A21-23] 20 degrees and back as we had planned, because it took a
little extra time to verify that retropack jettison had occurred.
22. “I went down to reentry attitude on fly-by-wire, and I think I made
the general comment already that as far as I am concerned, the trainers
– all the trainers that we have – the procedures trainer as well as the ALFA
trainer, are all pretty close to the actual case. I say this now, because
on these I have a tendency to be able to control these trainers on the
manual system better than I can with the fly-by-wire system. And I think
it’s just a matter, really of not using fly-by-wire very much. By that I mean
that normally we’re controlling retros manually and normally controlling
reentry manually, and when you switch to fly-by-wire as we had been doing
here, the first tendency is to over-control in rate – at least for me – because
the microswitch distances for the high and low thrust jets are very small,
and we’ve had trouble on this. With these microswitches, particularly
capsule seven, you get high torque right away, whether you want it or not,
and so I noticed the same thing on the capsule. The first thing I do is
over- control and get a higher rate than I thought I should have gotten.
23. “On fly-by-wire I went to reentry attitude, and switched to ASCS
which stabilized at about 40 degrees, then at this point, the periscope
came in on schedule, and I remember reporting ‘periscope in.’ Then
I got involved with looking out the windows for the starts and anything
else that I could see. At this time in the flight, of course, this window
looks generally at the horizon, at the moon and the stars. 11 There was
nothing there at all – I couldn’t see anything in the way of stars or planets
out in that area, and I did move my head around. I got a little confused
because I though I ought to get my head up to see the horizon out that
window, but I never did get a horizon out that window at this point,
and I think it was because of the attitude. We had figured out it was 15
degrees above the horizon as I recall, and I thought I ought to be able to
see the horizon but I never did see it. Well, that, plus the fact that I was
looking for the stars that I couldn’t see out of that window, actually got
me behind in the flight – this was the only point in the flight that I felt
that I really wasn’t on top of things. What happened here was that .05g
came quickly, as I reported, and I started switching to manual control,
and I thought I had time to get on to manual control, but I didn’t. The
g-build-up started sooner than I figured it would. I don’t know whether
it was just that [page A23-26] I was late because of being on the time,
or whether we don’t have the same time difference between .05g and g-
build-up on our trainer that we actually had in flight – we can check this
later. What I’m talking about is the time period between .05g and the
g-build-up in reentry. As I can remember on the trainer, I would have
time to go ahead and get on manual control and get set up before the
g’s built up, but I was surprised when the g’s started building up as soon
as they did. I wasn’t ready for it, but I thought we were in good shape
11. The stars he was to look for.