Dear Honeysuckle Creek:

All best wishes for your 35th, and many thanks for being there for us, 
for all of us, all the time....... and especially Apollo 15 -- in 
particular during one of our darkest hours.  Had you not been alert, 
ever-present, and in high commission, we might have sunk (or drowned) 
in the dark void of space.  Perhaps the story is best told through the 
words of our new book, "Two Sides of the Moon":
___________

"It was 61 hours and twelve minutes into the mission - 61:12 GET - as I 
was carrying out a small "housekeeping" chore of adding chlorine to our 
water supply, that we noticed water droplets floating around the cabin 
of the Command Module.

"Hey, Houston, 15," I radioed to Mission Control.

"15, go ahead," came the reply.

"You might take a look at this real quick and see if you can come up 
with any ideas on the thing," I asked the CapCom, in Houston with a 
note of urgency after explaining the problem. "It seems like we're 
accumulating a fair amount of water right now." We had no idea where 
the water was coming from despite Al clambering down into the lower 
equipment bay to try and locate the source of the leak. But Houston's 
reply was a striking example of how difficult it is for anyone with an 
earthbound perspective to appreciate the effects of weightlessness.

"Can you give us an estimation of how many drips per second it is?' 
Karl Henize, then on duty as CapCom wanted to know.

Water does not drip in zero gravity; it just accumulates into big 
droplets, until the surface tension of the growing mass is such that it 
floats free. This made the immediate source of the leak very hard to 
trace. It was a big-time problem, a major safety hazard, should water 
penetrate into the sealed system of electrical wiring. Most of our 
systems were water cooled too and, if our water supplies ran low, this 
would also seriously compromise the running of the spacecraft. If it 
couldn't be fixed we would not be going to the Moon. All we could do as 
Houston tried to figure out how to solve the problem was start trying 
to soak up the leaking liquid with towels.

Communications between our spacecraft and Mission Control during these 
tense moments had to be transmitted via Honeysuckle Creek relay station 
in Australia. Someone working at the station told us later that Captain 
Cook's ship Endeavour had also sprung a leak. Despite this slight delay 
in communications it took Houston only six minutes to come back with a 
series of instructions they believed would solve the problem. They 
didn't. The water continued leaking at a steady rate. It was nearly a 
quarter of an hour after I first noticed the problem before Houston 
came back with another solution for tightening a seal in the 
spacecraft's chlorination system, which they believed was causing the 
problem.

"Okay, Houston. It looks like that did it…That was good thinking 
because we about had a small flood up here," I reported finally, with 
huge relief. I found out later that some technician at the Cape was 
driving home from work late that night when he heard on the radio that 
we were having this problem. He had pulled over, got to a telephone and 
called Mission Control to say he had detected a leak in one of the 
chlorination valves before launch and had worked out a procedure for 
stopping this from happening. It was this procedure that was 
transmitted to us in space: an illustration, for me,  of the total 
dedication of every individual who contributed to the Apollo programme.


Finally it looked like we were in good shape. All we had to do then was 
hang a few towels out to dry. Over the next few hours our spacecraft 
took on the appearance of a laundry room as we hung these up to dry in 
the tunnel leading from the LM to the command module. Then it was time 
to get some sleep. The next day would bring us within lunar orbit. It 
was a big day. We needed to be well rested."
________________

Thanks again team, you did just an outstanding job throughout the 
program, we are all extremely grateful and you will be remembered 
always.  And please have at least a dozen Swans for me....!!!  (And 
maybe a few Mintys tomorrow to tidy up...!!)

Best to all,

Dave Scott