David Scott sent these greetings to the Honeysuckle / Apollo 11 35th anniversary reunion on 21 July 2004.

 

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.

Best to all,

Dave Scott.

 

† And please have at least a dozen Swans for me....!!!

† (And maybe a few Minties tomorrow to tidy up...!!)