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

Exploring the Unknown 333
White
Sweat was just pouring down. In fact, I could hardly see. It was in my eyes.
McDivitt
So I told you, “Just sit there and I’ll get a repress. Don’t even move for 30 minutes.”
I just left the repress valve where it was. I closed the vent valve, and we had a lot
of instructions from the ground to close the water seal and a whole bunch of
other things that didn’t make any sense to me. I knew that the spacecraft was
repressurizing. I watched. There wasn’t anything else that we had to do right then,
and we were both bushed, especially Ed. He was perspiring so that I could hardly
see him inside the face plate. So, I just said, “You sit there and I’ll sit here and
we’ll just coast around. When we get the thing repressurized, we’ll start doing
something.” That was exactly what we did. I did finally extend the HF antenna
and try to call somebody on HF and let them know that we were back in safely and
that thing was repressurizing. I didn’t get any response until we got to Carnarvon,
which was about 3 minutes later. I called and told them that we were repressurizing
and had the hatch closed.
White
You know, that was some pretty good gage reading that we saw when we got the
first ½ psi.
McDivitt
The first ½ psi. Ha! Ha!
White
That was a really big one. Since we’ve described the whole operation, we’d like
to go back now and specifically point out the pieces of equipment that we used
and our opinions of them, a few features that came out loud and clear to use in
operation, general conclusions on EVA as an operation, and what we have to do
to make it an operational procedure. So the first thing I’ll do is go down through
the equipment. As an overall comment on the equipment, I would say I felt very
confident the equipment would do the job. And without question the equipment
performed as it was advertised. It performed just exactly as it had been designed.
There wasn’t one thing on them as far as the VCM, the umbilical, the gloves, the
gun, and the visor that didn’t perform just exactly as it had been designed. There
wasn’t one thing on them as far as the VCM, the umbilical, the gloves, the gun,
and the visor that didn’t perform just exactly as it had been designed. I’ll take
them all one piece at a time, and discuss them a little. I’ll start right with the visor.
The visor was a rather controversial piece of equipment from the beginning. And
I, for one, doubted a little bit the necessity for quite the protection that we were
providing, although I had helped right from the beginning in the design with
some of our ideas on the visor. It turned out, though and I commented on this
during the time that I was out, that I was very happy to have the visor. I was able to
look directly into the sunlight. I did so in installing the camera on the back of the
adapter. I felt that the vision out of the visor was about as it would be on a normal
sunny day [4-55]. This is because it is so bright up there in space. I felt as if my
vision was what I would consider normal. I was looking at the different parts of the
spacecraft and down at the ground, and the view that I received at this time was
what I would expect on a normal sunny day. I was certainly glad to have the visor