Driving to Station 2

Return to the LM

 

Geology Station 2 on Mt. Hadley Delta

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1996 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan and panorama assembly credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Except where noted, audio clips by David Shaffer.
Last revised 4 August 2017.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 20 min 04 sec )

122:35:29 Scott: Okay, Joe; I'm going to give you the Nav updates, soon as Jim gets off.

122:35:33 Allen: Roger.

122:35:35 Irwin: I was going to give them some...

122:35:36 Scott: Oh, you give it to them.

122:35:37 Irwin: I'll give it to them.

122:35:38 Scott: Good. Let me go get the TV.

122:35:40 Irwin: Okay, Joe. If you're ready to copy, here we go: 280 (heading), 017 (bearing to the LM), 5.5 (distance driven), 3.9(range to the LM), 105, 110 (amp-hours), 090, 090 (battery temperatures) (Pause)

[These readings put them 4.5 grid units west and 14.9 grid units south of the LM; that is, near BC.5/68.8. This is quite close to the planned Station 2 location. However, if the 0.3 to 0.5 unit westward bias of the nav readouts that we saw earlier in the traverse apply here, too, they may be closer to BC.5/69.1. Readers checking my arithmetic should note that, in the north-south map coordinate system, there is no BI between BH and BJ.]

122:36:19 Irwin: You having trouble, too? (Laughs)

122:36:22 Scott: Yeah, man. Moving.

[Scott - "Soft stuff. Hard to work on the slope, hard to move on the slope, as we point out even more definitively later on. This is our first experience on a slope; and it's hard to move, because it's so soft and steep. So we're getting tuned into it. And, as you note, there's a lot of puffing."]

[Figure 5-1 ( 2.1 Mb ) in the Preliminary Science Report suggests that, in the vicinity of Station 2, the slope is about 30 m in 125 m or about 13 degrees.]

122:36:30 Scott: Oh, look back there, Jim! Look at that. Oh, look at that! Isn't that something? We're up on a slope, Joe, and we're looking back down into the valley and...

122:36:39 Irwin: That's beautiful.

122:36:40 Scott: ...That is spectacular! (Pause) (I'll) get the (TV) antenna pointed here.

[Scott - "Boy, do I remember this!]

[Photos AS15-85- 11448 to 11454 are part of a pan Jim starts at 123:17:16 that shows this amazing view.]

122:36:53 Irwin: I'm taking a pan.

122:36:54 Allen: ...when you finish your pan; and, Dave, we'd like one from you.

122:36:59 Scott: Yes, sir.

122:37:02 Allen: And if you're still near the Rover, we missed the heading and bearing.

122:37:07 Scott: Oh, I'll get you that, Joe.

122:37:09 Irwin: I'll do it, Dave. (Pause) Okay. The heading is 270; and the bearing, 017.

122:37:27 Allen: Roger. And if the Rover's fairly level, we'll give you a Nav update later on.

122:37:35 Scott: Give him the readings on the Rover. Jim, give him the readings on the Rover.

122:37:39 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

122:37:46 Scott: (Pointing the high-gain) Ah, shoot! (Pause) There.

122:38:01 Irwin: Okay. The shadow (device) is reading 1 to the right. Pitch is 0. (Long Pause) And roll is 8 degrees, right.

122:38:28 Allen: Okay, Jim; sounds good.

[Because Dave parked the Rover on a due-west heading of 270, the 8-degree right roll means that Jim's side of the Rover is tilted down to the north.]

122:38:34 Allen: Roger. (Brief static)

122:38:46 Allen: Can hardly wait.

122:38:47 Irwin: Let me take a pan here, Dave.

Jim's First Station 2 Pan ( frames AS15-85- 11422 to 11438 )

122:38:48 Scott: Okay; get your pan. (Responding to Joe) This is unreal.

[TV on.]

122:38:53 Scott: The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. (Long Pause) Man, we're walking uphill, too! Is that ever uphill! There is one boulder! Very angular, very rough surface texture. Looks like it's partially...Well, it's got glass on one side of it with lots of bubbles; and they're about a centimeter across. And one corner of it has got all this glass covering on it; seems like there's a linear fracture through one side. It almost looks like that might be a contact; it is, within the rock. It looks like we have maybe a breccia on top of a crystalline rock. It's sort of covered with glass; I can't really tell. But I can see a definite linear feature through one side of it which is about a fifth, and the glass covers both sides of what I guess I'm calling a contact.

[Hadley Delta, like most of the Moon's mountainous, non-mare terrain, is composed of very old rocks which were repeatedly reworked by impacts before, in the case of the mountains of the Apennine Front, they were uplifted in minutes that followed the gigantic impact that formed the Imbrium Basin. Prior to the uplift, rock fragments derived from a variety of sources had been repeatedly fused together by impacts and then re-broken by others, creating complex rocks called breccias. In the case of the Station 2 boulder, it seems not to be a piece of Hadley Delta bedrock, as Dave discusses in an extract from the Technical Debriefing reproduced after ]

[Fendell has begun a clockwise pan and, at about this point, we see Dave's back as he examines the boulder. He is carrying the gnomon and his tongs in his left hand. Fendell gets the camera properly aimed and then zooms in on the boulder.]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "At the time, I did not realize that the TV would be showing this - or even that the TV would work at all! If we had known that it would work and about the framing and quality, some coordination here could have helped the productivity. Maybe next time!"]

[In 1996, I asked Joe Allen if people in Houston were at all surprised about the quality of the Apollo 15 TV and if, as they became aware of how very useful it was proving to be, they changed their mode of operation.]

[Allen, from a 1996 e-mail message - "In thinking back, I remember that everyone on the ground felt pretty dependent on the verbal description of the astronauts during the EVAs prior to Apollo 15 where the TV coverage was spotty - especially so during Apollo 12 when, sadly, the camera was fried by the sun very early in the EVA. However, in planning for Apollo 15 we - the lunar traverse teams including CapCom - assumed we would have much better coverage than in previous missions because of the improved equipment that included, among other things, the remote (operation) features. Accordingly, on at least two occasions we trained with similar equipment (to the flight TV system and), thus, the experience of the actual flight was what we had to some degree become accustomed to. People did exclaim about the clarity of the TV, but I don't remember planning and directing activities changing all that much because of an unanticipated availability of good TV."]

122:40:28 Scott: And there's also - parallel to that contact - one surface which is quite flat, (although) only for about 8 inches or so. Looks like it's been chipped off. The boulder itself is on the order of about a meter across and maybe....Gee, it looks like a half meter thick or so. It's got a fillet up one side, and the other side is in a shadow. I can't really tell whether - It doesn't look like it's filled. It's got a fillet on the downslope side, and the upslope side is open and free. As a matter of fact, it looks like it's almost excavated beneath it.

[Scott - "We're not conscious of the television camera. We're off doing this sampling, not realizing that the guys in the Backroom can actually see the rock."]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "It (the boulder) didn't look to me like it came down from above (that is, from higher up on Hadley Delta). I didn't see any tracks (that is, a line of craters and gouges that the boulder would have made had it rolled/bounced/slid down the mountain). My best guess would be that it came from the Secondary Cluster (South Cluster), or was the secondary from below."]

[In the TV image, we can see a crater between us and the rock. As indicated in Figure 5-67 in the Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report, this crater was probably formed when the rock hit the hillside. The best picture of the crater may be AS15-86-11545.]

[Scott - "You're right, in the foreground is the hole it made when it landed. From the perspective, here, it looks like you can see the excavation, which would tell you the direction from which it came."]

[Jones - "Something tossed out of the South Cluster, perhaps."]

[Scott - "Most likely. Which would then, maybe, tell you the direction of whatever made the South Cluster, which the geologists said was probably Aristillus or Autolycus. I'm sure our geologist friends have put all that together. The observation of the depression in front of the rock is a good one. I don't remember having consciously seen that, perhaps because we were standing up and the TV is at a lower level looking more across the slope."]

[Evidently, the rock came in from roughly the northeast and, after it hit, bounced or flipped over and ended up in its current location. The prominent fillet is between the rock and the crater and, as suggested in the Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report, may represent soft soil on the crater rim that shoved aside as the rock settled into place. The boulder may have been thrown up onto the mountain side by the relatively-low-velocity impacts that formed the secondary craters of the South Cluster.]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Another thing that I remember is that the fillet was clearly on the downhill side of that boulder. There was no fillet on the uphill side, which was rather interesting. You could almost see underneath on the uphill side. And there was no crater as such (that the boulder was sitting in); it was fairly on the surface. It looked like it had been deposited on the surface and the fillet had somehow accumulated on the downhill side, like the wind was blowing from downslope."]

[The fact that no soil had collected on the uphill side of the boulder suggests that it has been in place only a short time because, over time, impacts uphill of the boulder would create preferentially-downhill soil motion which would, before long, result in the creation of a fillet on the uphill side.]

[The down-slope fillet is actually the uphill(south) rim of the crater dug when the boulder hit and then tumbled uphill to rest on the up-slope side of the rim. The best picture of the crater probably is AS15-86-11554.]

[The boulder may be a piece of the Aristillus/Autolycus ejecta that presumably formed the South Cluster, or it could be a piece of local material dug out of bedrock by the South Cluster impacts. The fact that the Station 2 boulder is a breccia with a partial glass coating - while the large boulder Dave and Jim will sample at Dune Crater during EVA-2 is a basalt and, mostly likely a piece of the local bedrock - suggests that the Station 2 boulder is a piece of Aristillus/Autolycus ejecta. If so, it may have hit first near the South Cluster and, from there, bounced up onto the hillside. Had it come in directly from Aristillus/Autolycus, the crater at it's present location on the hillside would have been much deeper.]

122:41:07 Scott: Yeah, it sure does! It sure does, and I can see underneath the upslope side; whereas, on the downslope side, it (the soil)'s piled up. Boy, that is really something. Hey, let's get some good pictures of that before we disturb it too much.

[Fendell has pulled back on the zoom and we can see Jim standing up-Sun of the boulder getting his camera set for his down-Sun pictures. Dave moves in and emplaces the gnomon.]

[Irwin - "We had to set the distance and the f-stop. It would be great to have automatic cameras on future missions."]

[Jones - "Did you spend a fair amount of time in training learning to set the camera?"]

[Irwin - "Yeah. It was almost automatic but it still was time consuming, and somewhat difficult, because the glove is so stiff and you're feeling those small detents of the settings on the camera. After a while, the cameras got so dusty you really couldn't tell. You had to keep cleaning them off to see the markings."]

[Jones - "Now, you didn't have a viewfinder."]

[Irwin - "No. We just aimed."]

[Jones - "So you practiced aiming and got good at it. There certainly are a lot of well-aimed, properly focused and exposed photos."]

122:41:26 Irwin: Do you want a sample ...

122:41:28 Allen: ...See you crystal clear, and we've got a beautiful tally-ho on you and boulder on the TV.

122:41:31 Allen: And it probably is fresh; probably...

122:41:34 Scott: Okay.

122:41:35 Allen: ...not older than three and a half billion years.

122:41:41 Scott: Can you imagine that, Joe? Here sits this rock, and it's been here since before creatures roamed the sea in our little Earth.

[Although the gnomon is still swinging, Jim has taken the first of his down-Sun pictures and steps to his right to get the second. These are 85- 11439 and 11440. We can see Jim's SCB and his scoop in his shadow. Dave has the tongs in his left hand as he uses his right hand to adjust his focus so that he can take AS15-86- 11544 and 11545, which is a cross-Sun stereopair taken from the north.]

122:41:55 Scott: Hey, Jim?

122:41:56 Irwin: Yeah.

122:41:57 Allen: ...well said.

122:41:58 Scott: We ought to check the dust on the lens of these cameras. (Pause) And this has just got to be impressive. (Pause)

[Scott - "Here's a case where Jim and I didn't consciously hear Joe's transmission, because we were talking and, at this time, we're totally focused on the rock. Jim and I are in there, doing our thing and we don't hear anything."]

[Jones - "There are examples in 17 where Jack and Gene are doing separate tasks, and they are both so focused that, if Parker's talking to Jack, Jack hears Parker. But, if Parker's talking to Gene, Jack doesn't hear that conversation at all."]

[Scott - "Sure. I believe that. We were really focused on the boulder. We finally found one that we can sample. That's a big deal. That's exciting. Now we've got a boulder we can go look at. We probably don't see anything else, anywhere, now, except that boulder. It could be sitting on a table, and we wouldn't see the table."]

[Jones - "There were only two rocks of any size that you saw on the Front. This one and the green boulder at Station 6a."]

122:42:27 Irwin: Yeah.

[Dave has gone around to the uphill (south) side of the boulder to take the stereopair AS15-86- 11546 and 11547.]

122:42:28 Scott: Okay. Now, I think to not disturb things too much, let's try the fillet first. I'll get you a bag. (Pause) And then we'll corner the rock. (Pause) I'm stepping on a piece of glass, right by the tongs. I'll remember that.

[Fendell has gone to maximum zoom and after examining the surface between the Rover and the boulder, now has the TV centered on the boulder.]

122:42:54 Scott: Yeah. (Pause) See if I can get a bag out. Okay; 180...

122:43:01 Allen: Roger.

122:43:02 Scott: ...for the fillet material.

122:43:04 Irwin: I'll get the fillet right here.

122:43:06 Scott: (Stopping Jim so he can get a before photo of the fillet) Wait, wait. Before you do, let me poke a picture at it. (Pause)

[Dave's pre-sample photo is 86- 11548. Jim had just touched the scoop to the fillet next to the boulder on the east side before Dave stopped him. Dave is holding an individual sample bag to receive the soil. Note the orange color of the light transmitted through the Teflon.]

122:43:23 Irwin: Got it.

122:43:24 LM Crew: (Laughter)

[Because Fendell is looking at the rock with maximum zoom, our only information about this little episode comes from the shadows that Dave and Jim cast on the boulder. From the shadows, it appears that, in an effort to get the sample bag low enough for Jim to get the soil in, Dave loses his balance and stumbles forward, toward Jim.]

[Fendell pulls back on the zoom and we see Dave standing downslope of Jim, to Jim's left, holding the bag quite low in his right hand. They are both facing uphill, with their backs to the TV.]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "Part of the reason for this (loss of balance) is the high, aft center-of-gravity due to the PLSS. Think of leaning downhill with a heavy backpack on Earth. Because of the one-sixth g, mass/weight effects are more pronounced on the Moon. You have less downward force to control lateral motions."]

122:43:34 Scott: Yeah. Get some more. (Long Pause)

[Dave moves uphill a couple of feet and turns to face the boulder as he receives the next scoopful of fillet material. In order to get the bag low enough, he puts his left leg behind him and bends his right knee. He struggles a bit to maintain his balance because of the resistance of the pressurized suit.]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "The suit is only part of the problem. Don't forget the soft soil, the steep slope, and the offset center-of-gravity."]

122:43:57 Irwin: Okay.

[Fendell has resumed his clockwise TV pan.]

122:44:00 Scott: Hey, you know what we're going to do when we get through with this thing, Joe? We're going to roll it over, and we're going to sample the soil beneath.

122:44:07 Irwin: Yeah, I'll take it right out here by the gnomon.

122:44:09 Scott: Yeah; good idea.

122:44:11 Irwin: It (the soil next to the gnomon) hasn't been disturbed.

122:44:14 Scott: Okay.

122:44:15 Allen: That a boy, Dave. That might fill a square for the football-size rock.

122:44:21 Scott: (Responding to Joe) Haaa! Sure would!

[To "fill the square" means to record the completion of a task. They are supposed to bring back a football-sized rock and Joe is joking that the Station 2 boulder would fill the bill.]

122:44:24 Scott: Okay. Get another one, if you can. (Pause) You can't see with my shadow there very good, can you? Okay?

122:44:34 Irwin: Got it.

122:44:35 Scott: That a boy. (Pause) Okay; hang on to this one (possibly sample bag 180) for a second.

122:44:41 Irwin: Okay; I got it.

[We now have a stunning TV view of the rille.]

[This 'reference' soil sample, 15220-24, weighs 466 grams.]

122:44:45 Allen: Roger; 181. And we have a view of the rille that is absolutely unearthly.

[Fendell has gone to maximum zoom and we get a good view of the large number of boulders that litter the rille floor and the sunlit portions of the eastern wall.]

[Jones - "This is an absolutely gorgeous picture."]

[Scott - "It's nothing. I mean, you ought to see...(Both chuckle). What do I say? This is nothing."]

[Jones - "Compared with being there."]

[Scott - "Unbelievable. Especially when you've been driving uphill and you haven't been thinking too much about it, and you turn around and see this big hole in the ground."]

["This is where you start seeing the layering in the (east) wall. Really quite good. And don't you know (that) the guys in the backroom are going bananas with this!? Just give me a television view and some experts, and they will find more in that view than you can possibly imagine."]

[Jones - "Fendell has zoomed in and we have the white crater on the east side at the upper left corner. You've just pointed to some layering - which I think I can see - in the south-facing wall just left and above center."]

122:44:56 Irwin: (To Joe) Glad you can enjoy it with us. (Pause)

122:45:02 Scott: Yes, sir, Joe. Tell me this isn't worth doing, boy. (Pause)

[Fendell has raised his aim and scans right to left along the east rim of the rille.]

122:45:13 Irwin: Yeah.

122:45:14 Scott: Let me get...Give me your hammer. (Pause) Okay. I got it.

122:45:20 Irwin: Look at the vesicles in that rock.

122:45:22 Scott: Those are glass bubbles.

122:45:24 Irwin: Glass bubbles; yeah.

[Vesicles are the imprints of gas bubbles trapped in molten rock or glass as it cools and solidifies. In this case, the bubbles were trapped in glass that formed during the impact that ejected the rock. The glass may have adhered to the rock during ballistic flight.]

[Fendell has pulled back on the zoom and has resumed his clockwise pan. The western face of Mt. Hadley is still in deep shadow.]

[Scott - "There's a completely separate exercise going on in Houston with Ed Fendell and the Backroom. I'll bet if you go back and see what they're doing, they're now surveying the whole area. See, he's zooming in on Mt. Hadley. Which says you have the third man there, exploring the area with the television. And I'll bet there's a group in the Backroom totally separate from Jim and I and Joe, doing this exercise with Fendell."]

[Jones - "While another bunch is listening to what you're saying about the boulder."]

[Scott - "And, in the Backroom, they're having a tough time deciding what to listen to and what to look at, I'll guarantee you."]

122:45:30 Irwin: Okay.

122:45:31 Scott: Let me get my trusty tongs. As a matter of fact, if you'll pull a bag out, Jim, I'm going to get a quick selected sample here.

122:45:42 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

[Dave is talking about using the tongs as a ruler to get the right distance from the boulder for a close-up. However, he doesn't actually take a picture here. Previously, he had probably stuck the tongs in the ground to free his hands.]

122:46:26 Scott: Huh? Here. Yeah, I'll grab some soil right there with the tongs; it'll stay. It seems to be fairly cohesive here. Look at that.

122:46:37 Irwin: You can even dig a trench.

122:46:39 Scott: Got my big chance.

[Trench digging is normally one that Jim does with the scoop. It is not a favorite task.]

[Dave has probably noticed how well the tongs are standing and takes a stereopair, AS15-86- 11549 and 11550 and then, after he removes the tongs, 11551 to document the resulting hole and the fact that it stayed open.]

122:46:41 Allen: And, Dave and Jim, you might want to get some material from the top and under the upslope edge of the boulder.

122:46:50 Scott: All right; we'll do that. We'll get it from under...Well, I'm going to roll the boulder over; and I might even roll the boulder down in the rille, Joe. I got a feeling here (that) we ought to do that. (Pause) Okay. Let's see. (Consulting his cuff checklist) We got those. Now, let me get a close-up. Hold the hammer. (Pause) Is my lens too dirty to use?

122:47:13 Irwin: I don't see any dust on it at all, Dave.

122:47:15 Scott: Okay...

122:47:16 Irwin: Looks good.

122:47:17 Scott: The top is...

122:47:18 Irwin: Yeah. I know. The top of mine is covered with dust, too.

[Fendell stopped his clockwise pan just short of up-Sun and is now panning counter-clockwise.]

[Dave's stereopair is 86- 11552 and 11553.]

[Scott - "Could be Gary Lofgren I was talking about. Who was the other Gary? What do I do next? (Thinks) This is not a written formula; this is just a procedural thing."]

[Jones - "Maybe there's a decal on the camera with f-stops as a function of pointing angles."]

[After our discussions, I found the decal in question on page 406 in Apollo 15 Final Lunar Surface Procedures.]

[Scott - "Yeah. That's probably what it is. I was going to put the tongs on the rock to measure distance. Is that where I am? (Thinks)"]

[Jones - "I don't see a page of photographic tips in the checklist, but maybe there was a decal..."]

[Scott - "It's probably something we learned, by rote. You put the tongs on the rock and you know exactly where you are in terms of distance. So what I'm probably doing in putting the tongs there and setting the range and f-stop based on some little formula we learned. You have no depth of field at that close range, so you have to be precise in your range setting. You notice the pictures with tongs are really crisp. Whatever the formula was, it worked very well."]

122:47:47 Irwin: Yeah. It does.

122:47:52 Scott: Okay; right exactly there. (Pause)

[Dave has gone to his right around the boulder to get another stereopair, AS15-86- 11554 and 11555, measuring his distance carefully with the tongs.]

[Fendell reaches down-Sun and the panning stops. For the next several minutes, Fendell moves the camera left and right and up and down. As Joe mentions at 122:53:39, the camera has hung up and, on the assumption that the problem is a cable snag, Fendell tries to free it without bothering Dave and Jim. Ken Glover and I speculate that one reason the cable may be hanging differently than it did on the one-g trainer is the lower lunar gravity.]

122:48:10 Irwin: Do you want me to hold one of those (individual sample bags)?

122:48:12 Scott: Yeah. (Laughs)

122:48:17 Irwin: (I'll) stow this sample in your bag (SCB).

122:48:19 Scott: Yeah; good idea. (Pause) Okay. (Pause) "After" there, for the fillet. And an "after" there, for the material around. Okay. Let's try the old hammer. (Pause)

[Dave's "after" photos of the fillet are 86- 11556 and 11557. The 390-gram fillet soil sample is 15211.]

122:48:48 Irwin: Yeah. Standing by. (Long Pause)

122:49:01 Scott: (Laughing) Man.

122:49:04 Irwin: Get a good one?

122:49:05 Scott: No.

122:49:06 Irwin: Real hard.

122:49:07 Scott: Ahhhhh, is that hard!

[Although it sounds like Dave may be trying to pry a piece off the boulder, he is almost certainly hitting it with the hammer. There is good Apollo 17 video of Gene Cernan hammering on another very hard rock at Station 1 near Steno Crater.]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "I was hammering on it."]

122:49:10 Scott: Wowee. (Pause) Ahhhh! Ahhhh!

[The sound of two very hard hammer blows, transmitted through Dave's gloves, into the suit, and to his microphone, can be heard between his grunts.]

122:49:21 Scott: Yeah.

122:49:23 Irwin: Probably the best you're going to be able to do.

122:49:24 Scott: Ahhh! After all that instruction I got...

[Jones - "I gather that you were taught how to hit rocks."]

[Scott - "Yeah. You always try to hit them so that you get a fragment off."]

[Jones - "With a minimum number of whacks."]

[Scott - "Of course. This was a hard rock. Not that we hadn't hit rocks with hammers. We hit lots of rocks with lots of hammers. That's one of the fun things you do in field geology: hammer on rocks. And boulder rolling. Those are fun things. So we'd done a lot of that."]

[Jones - "It takes a little training, I gather, to pick out where, exactly, to hit it."]

[Scott - "Sure. You just can't go slam it on the side. And I think we spent a lot of time learning how to hit rocks to chip off fragments quickly. This one was not really chipable. And, at the same time, we're in one-sixth g, and you can't get as much force with the hammer. You can (get sufficient force) if you swing it fast enough, but you've got the suit on and you don't have gravity with you. But it was a hard rock."]

122:49:32 Scott: Yeah; right here?

122:49:33 Irwin: Right there. Yeah. (Pause) Yeah, it's coming loose. (Pause) Yeah.

122:49:38 Scott: There it is. I got it. Oh. Oops. (Whispering) That's it, right there.

122:49:52 Irwin: Boy, that rock is really ready to roll!

122:49:54 Scott: There it is.

122:49:55 Irwin: Yeah, good show.

122:49:57 Scott: (Breathing hard because of the effort) There's one. Let's get one down here. (Pause) Yeah, it is. Boy, you ought to see the down-Sun...Ooh! Look at underneath the rock! We got to roll it over and get some of that too. (Pause) Underneath the rock is, looks like, either glass bubbles or vesicles; I can't tell which because it's in the shadow. (Pause)

122:50:31 Irwin: Okay, Dave.

122:50:32 Scott: Got your eye on it?

122:50:32 Irwin: Yeah, I got it.

[Jim has his eye on the piece that just came off the rock.]

122:50:36 Irwin: Watch it; I'll go up and get this one.

122:50:40 Scott: Dark black, very fine grain basalt. By golly! (Pause) You got your eye on that one?

122:50:52 Irwin: Yeah.

122:50:53 Scott: Well, are you going to pick it up or...?

122:50:56 Irwin: Yeah, I'll get it.

122:50:58 Scott: Here, let me get the tongs, and let's get those two. I was hoping I could get a larger frag here. (Pause) (Subvocal) But I'm not going to. Whew. It's a hard one. (Pause) Okay. Did you get it?

Video Clip   2 min 47 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 25 Mb MPG )

122:51:14 Irwin: Yeah.

[Fendell finally gets the TV camera aimed at the crew just as Dave runs around the west side of the boulder. Dave is moving with considerable agility and easily brings himself to a stop as he turns by sticking out his outside (left) leg. Note the fresh, 6-meter-diameter, raised-rim crater behind him at the lower right of the TV picture.]

122:51:17 Irwin: How about the other one? I can get the other one, too, if you want.

122:51:19 Scott: Yeah; where is it?

122:51:20 Irwin: Huh? Both of them, you mean?

122:51:22 Scott: Yeah. Yeah, but don't put them both in the same bag. Let's separate the bags. Here, give me that bag. I'll fold the bag up, and you get the other...Here. Yeah, I'll get a bag...

122:51:31 Allen: And, Dave, need a number off that bag.

122:51:33 Scott: ...160, Joe, is for the...(Stops to listen to Joe) Yeah; 160 is for the chip off the corner uphill. I hope that makes some sense to you, but when you get the pictures back and it's the one that doesn't appear to have any phenos (phenocrysts) in it. It just looked like a fine-grained basalt, nonvesicular.

[The samples in this bag are 15200-204 (fines) and 206. Although Dave believes he is looking at a piece of basalt, 15206 is actually a 92-gram breccia. See, however, Dave's comment at 122:54:35 where he realizes the boulder is, indeed, a breccia.]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "'Fine-grained' is probably the key word."]

122:52:05 Irwin: How about the dumbbell fragment there beside it? You didn't knock that off, did you?

122:52:15 Scott: The dumbbell frag beside it?

122:52:17 Irwin: Yeah, hold the bag here. I'll show you what I mean.

122:52:18 Scott: Okay. (Pause) No, I think that fell off, Jim. That looks like the same kind of stuff.

122:52:26 Irwin: This one right here?

122:52:27 Scott: Yeah, it fell off when I hit, I guess.

122:52:28 Irwin: But I didn't see it fall off, though.

122:52:31 Scott: I didn't either, but I don't think...

122:52:32 Irwin: It looks like a different type of rock.

122:52:33 Scott: It sure does. Not sure it was there when we started. (Pause) Okay; let me just look at that one.

[Jim picks the fragment up with the scoop from near the east face of the boulder and Dave takes the fragment out of the scoop for examination.]

122:52:43 Scott: Got a lot of glass.

122:52:44 Allen: ...press on with your comprehensive sample, please.

122:52:49 Scott: (Responding matter-of-factly to Joe) Okay.

122:52:51 Scott: Lots of glass on it, but can't tell the inside too well. (Pause) (To himself) Okay; what number is that?

[Dave turns to his right, so that he is facing west, and raises the bag to get enough light on it so that he can read the bag number.]

122:53:11 Allen: Roger.

122:53:12 Scott: Frag on the top of the rock.

122:53:14 Allen: Roger; copy.

[This sample is 15205, a 337-gram piece of breccia taken from the highest point on the rock. The sample is roughly cubical in shape and has a thin glass coating on five of the six sides. The photographs taken after the flight - such as S71-46341, S71-46350, and S77-22162 - give a good idea of how thin the coating is.]

Dave raises the cover of the SCB on the right side of Jim's PLSS and puts the sample bags in. He then goes around to Jim's left side to stow the hammer on that side of the PLSS.]

122:53:27 Irwin: If you want, I'll go over and get the...We'll probably going to need the rake for the comprehensive.

122:53:32 Scott: Yeah, why don't you go get the rake and let me...Let's see; I want to roll the rock over...

122:53:39 Allen: Okay, Jim. If you walk back there, could you see...

122:53:39 Scott: ...and try to get a picture of the underside, here.

122:53:41 Irwin: I'll get the rake.

122:53:42 Allen: ...if we have a TV cable hung up on the LCRU someplace? We are having trouble commanding the...

122:53:48 Irwin: Okay. Stand by.

122:53:49 Allen: ...direction of the TV.

[Jim goes out of the picture to the left on his way to the back of the Rover.]

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122:53:57 Irwin: Yeah, I'll get it.

122:54:05 Allen: Roger. Could you give that unmanned vehicle a little help, please?

122:54:12 Irwin: Okay. (Pause as we briefly see the cable) Done. (Long Pause)

[Journal Contributor Olivier Dulieu asked "Is Joe Allen alluding to the debate over manned versus unmanned exploration of space ? Was that debate particularly vivid at the time of Apollo 15?" Dave Scott replied " Yes! It was always vivid."]

[Dave does a two-footed, kangaroo hop as he makes his way uphill to the far side of the boulder. He appears to adjust his camera and takes the stereopair AS15-86- 11558 and 11559, stepping to his right between frames. He then goes to his right to take a down-Sun after of the boulder, 11560.]

[Dave comes around to the northwest face of the boulder, hops down into the crater the boulder made when it landed, puts his right hand on the top, preparing to push it over, and then stops to examine the rock more closely.]

[With the TV cable now loose, Fendell pans counter-clockwise and, consequently, we don't get to see Dave push the boulder over. The photographs he takes later indicate that it rolled on to what was the west face.]

[Scott - "When Fendell gave it a command earlier, it didn't move. Maybe it's now picking up that command and he doesn't want it to move."]

[Jones - "Or, he wants to finish the pan that he started and couldn't finish because the cable got hung up."]

[Scott - "As typical, everybody watching this would have a different idea of what to do with the TV camera. And poor Fendell, fortunately he's got a filter between him and all the people with the great ideas. But can't you imagine poor Ed sitting there in the Control Room and everybody in the viewing room having their own idea of where to point that camera? (Chuckling) We all want to put our fingers in the pie, right? That had to be funny, and frustrating"]

[We then watched a little more.]

[Scott - "See! You just said, 'Oh, Ed!' You want it pointed at us pushing the boulder over. I'd never thought about this before, but I can just see everybody down at the Control Center wanting to drive that camera."]

[Fendell finally reverses direction to go back to the boulder.]

122:55:11 Irwin: Do you want me to bring the other tongs?

122:55:13 Scott: No, I can get them.

[Dave hops into position to try to get down to get the tongs, which are lying flat on the ground. Fendell zooms in on the boulder and we lose sight of Dave.]

122:55:23 Scott: Yeah. (Pause) A couple of pictures, and we'll get some of that material (that was) underneath the rock. (Pause)

[Dave moves the gnomon and, after he places it on the soil which had been covered by the boulder, we can see it swinging dramatically from side to side.]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "I must have been in a big hurry!"]

[Jim crosses the field-of-view as he goes off to the right to retrieve Dave's dropped tongs.]

[Dave takes a stereopair, AS15-86- 11561 and 11562, stepping to his left between frames. A 2x-detail from 11562 shows a number of glass droplets on the newly-exposed surface. Many of the droplets show reflected images of the Sun. The biggest droplet in at the upper left in the detail. There is a large number of droplets on that part of the rock. Photos 11564 and 11565 Give much better views of a portion that has a large number of glass droplets. A labeled, 2x-detail from 11565 is centered on a fracture in the rock face with numerous blobs of glass -completed with reflected images of the Sun - on the rock face above the fracture. At 122:38:53, while he was first examining the rock, Dave commented that

122:55:57 Scott: Okay.

122:55:58 Allen: ...getting a local vertical off the gnomon now.

122:56:01 Scott: (Laughing) Get her, Jim?

[Dave goes to the right side of the picture to help Jim retrieve the scoop.]

122:56:06 Scott: Oh, no, no. Let me...Okay, pick it up again.

[Although we can't see exactly what Dave and Jim are doing, Dave's movements suggest that Jim is getting the scoop under one end of the tongs and then rotating that end up high enough off the ground for Dave to grab it. Dave has to bend his knees and lean dramatically to his right to get his hand low enough to grab the tongs and, indeed, it takes a few tries before they are successful. In hindsight, it probably would have been better for Jim to bring the second pair of tongs over and use them instead of the scoop. On Apollo 16 and 17, the crews sometimes saved time by going to their knees to retrieve dropped tools.]

122:56:19 Scott: (To Joe) Yeah, we're starting. (Pause)

[Dave and Jim will use the rake to collect rocks and soil from a typical patch of regolith. Jim's scoop is mounted on the extension handle and, before he can get the rock portion of the comprehensive sample, he will remove the scoop head and replace it with the rake. The scoop head is shown in S71-22472. Apollo 16 photo AS16-116-18690 is an excellent portrait of the rake in action. The rake tines are separated by about 1-cm and, when Jim drags the rake through the soil, he will collect rocks larger than that size. This collection will give geologists a look at the variety and relative abundance of rock types present at the site. Some of the rock fragments will be examples of the Hadley Delta bedrock, some will be pieces of mare basalt thrown up from Elbow and other craters, and some will be pieces of rock thrown onto the mountainside from distant impacts. Note that the sides of the rake are made of sheet aluminum, which will let Jim use the rake as a scoop so he can collect the soil portion of the comprehensive sample.]

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122:56:30 Irwin: The underneath portion there?

122:56:31 Scott: Yeah.

122:56:32 Irwin: Okay. (Long Pause)

[Dave hops upslope around the east side of the boulder to get some pictures. Jim comes into view carrying the rake head in his left hand and the scoop in his right.]

[Dave's cross-Sun stereopair from the uphill side is AS15-86- 11563 and 11564.]

122:56:54 Scott: Okay, let me get it; 182.

122:56:58 Irwin: Looks like pristine material, all right.

122:57:02 Allen: Roger.

[Although Dave is partially hidden beyond Jim, he has his left leg out behind him and has bent his right knee almost to 90 degrees in order to get the bag low enough for Jim. His left knee appears to be brushing the surface.]

[Scott - "That was always a problem, getting the soil in the bag. Probably because we didn't take enough time; 'cause we're in a hurry."]

[Jones - "He has to be on the downhill side to sample because, if he was uphill then he'd have to be leaning forward to get the soil. So it's your job to get as low as you can. This looks like reasonably well-coordinated, like something you'd practiced..."]

[Scott - "Done it hundreds of times. I mean, the whole procedure of the documented samples - the 'before' and 'after' pictures and such - was exercised a lot."]

[Dave changes position, coming downhill a few feet so that he more to Jim's left side. This time, standing sideways facing Jim, he extends his right leg sideways (downslope) and back a little, bends his left knee and has an easier time of getting the bag low.]

122:57:28 Irwin: Meantime, I'm going to configure here for a comprehensive.

122:57:32 Scott: Yeah. (Long Pause)

[While Dave closes the sample bag, Jim puts the rake on top of the boulder so that he can remove the scoop from the extension handle. He then puts the scoop head on top of the boulder, picks up the rake, and attaches it to the extension handle. While he's doing that, Dave takes stereopair AS15-86- 11565 and 11566. 11565 shows the rake on the boulder and 11566 shows the scoop on the boulder. Dave then comes around the west side of the boulder to put the sample bag in the SCB on the right side of Jim's PLSS.]

[Jones - "The Apollo 16 and 17 crews had two extension handles and had to take things on and off far less frequently."]

[Scott - "This could have been a weight trade-off, a weight-saving compromise that says, take only one extension handle and two devices for the end, because that saves the weight of a second extension handle (about 0.8 kg), although it takes more time to make the change. Those are the kind of third and fourth order trade-offs that get made at the end of the day when you try to find out how much you can take to the Moon."]

[Jones - "And by the time of 16, they may have slimmed the LM down or shaved the margins so that they could take two and save some time."]

122:58:17 Scott: Yeah, let me get the gnomon out here, and I'll...

122:58:20 Irwin: Okay. Don't knock my scoop over.

122:58:21 Scott: No. (Laughing) That's a good place to put it. (Pause)

[Dave hops sideways to his right, circling the rock counter-clockwise to get the gnomon which is still on the patch of soil that had been covered by the rock. He ends up downhill of the gnomon, looking at the former bottom of the rock. Note that his tongs are stuck in the ground uphill at the spot from which he took the pictures.]

122:58:49 Allen: Roger.

[They move 8 to 10 meters east of the boulder. Dave puts the gnomon down on a patch of undisturbed soil and goes uphill to get some cross-Sun pictures. Jim goes farther east to get the down-Suns.]

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122:59:24 Irwin: Okay; I have a down-Sun.

122:59:26 Scott: Okay. (Long Pause)

[Dave's cross-Sun stereopair from the south is AS15-86- 11567 and 11568. He steps to his right between frames. Note that we can see the rake in Jim's shadow. Jim's down-Sun stereopair is AS15-85- 11441 and 11442. In 11441, Dave is at the left, taking his cross-Suns; and in 11442, Dave has turned to take a "locator" to the boulder, AS15-86- 11569, which shows the scoop head still on the boulder. Note that, because of the low-Sun angle, Jim has had to go another 8 to 10 meters east of the gnomon to keep his shadow off of it. Finally, Jim heads toward the gnomon, walking flat-footed, perhaps to keep from kicking soil on the sampling area.]

122:59:53 Irwin: Okay; I'm going to start to rake, Dave.

122:59:55 Scott: Okay. Have at it! (Long Pause)

[Fendell has been watching Jim and, when he pans to the gnomon, Dave is not in sight because he has gone to retrieve his tongs. While he is near the boulder, Dave takes a close-up stereopair of the bottom of the boulder, AS15-86- 11570 and 11571.]

123:00:20 Irwin: Help me take this clip off. (Pause) (Garbled) with that.

[This is probably the yo-yo clip attached to the extension handle. Jim is standing downhill of the gnomon and pulls the rake toward him through the soil.]

123:00:33 Irwin: Nothing.

123:00:34 Scott: Dig deeper, if you can. (Pause)

[Fendell had zoomed in on the rake and, when he pulls back, Dave is standing next to the gnomon with the tongs planted in the soil in front of him.]

123:00:53 Allen: Roger.

123:00:55 Scott: If I can get over there without falling down. (Pause)

[Dave goes a couple of steps toward Jim, stands sideways to him, puts his left leg out behind him (uphill), leans to his right, and holds the bag out to Jim, with the top at about waist height.]

123:01:01 Irwin: Try another couple swaths here...

123:01:03 Scott: Yeah. Just keep going across in that direction. That worked. We're bound to get something. (Pause) Joe, the soil is dark gray; and it's fine grain, and I haven't seen any difference in granularity between the LM and our position at all. It all looks about the same. It's fairly cohesive with very few fragments in it. Jim's getting about three or four with each scoopful. Well, two or three.

123:01:36 Allen: Roger.

[After Jim drags the rake through the soil, he holds it just above the surface and shakes it for about three seconds to get all the soil out.]

[Irwin, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The operation of the rake went just like our simulations in the K-bird."]

[The K-bird is the KC-135, the military version of Boeing's 707, that was used to fly one-sixth-g parabolas.]

123:01:44 Scott: Man, we are really up high. Rolling smooth hills as far as you can see. And on the near side of the rille as we go up to the north, why, there seems to be quite a bit of debris; whereas in our present position near St. George, there's very little.

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123:02:23 Irwin: It (the rille rim and wall below St. George) might be covered just with a downslope...

123:02:25 Scott: Yeah.

123:02:26 Irwin: ...movement (of soil on the flank of Hadley Delta).

[Fendell pans counter-clockwise. For the third swath, Jim appears to back up as he pulls the rake through the soil, using his legs rather than his arms to overcome the resistance.]

[Scott - "I can't help but keep looking around. I mean, there's so much to see; and, even though we get focused on rocks and rakes, I can remember thinking, 'Okay, so Jim's raking. I don't need to watch him rake, seen him do that a lot, so now take a look and see what else is out there to see. Give them a little description of block coverage and keep moving along. Get ahead and stay ahead."]

123:02:32 Allen: And, Dave,...

123:02:33 Scott: (Garbled under Joe) that's it.

123:02:34 Allen: ...We're hearing every word.

123:02:35 Scott: Well, we don't have much for all that raking.

[Fendell reaches the counter-clockwise pan limit, looking over the Rover console, and reverses direction.]

123:02:39 Scott: Yes, let's take one more. That's about, I think, all we can do then. There's just not that much in there. (Pause) Boots go in about an inch or so when you press on them. Packs it down nice and smooth. Guess you can see the dust jumping up as we walk.

[Dave and Jim come into view and Fendell stops panning. Jim is just finishing his swath, using his legs again. In the TV, we can, indeed, see a low spray of dust going out in front of the astronauts when they step forward.]

123:03:08 Irwin: (Still raking) Not a thing, Dave.

123:03:09 Scott: ...Okay...

123:03:10 Irwin: Let me take one more.

123:03:12 Scott: Near the Twins (a pair of fresh craters at the edge of the rille near BW/64, about 4.5 km NNW of their current position) I can see several very large boulders. Very angular, and I guess when I say 'large', they must be 10 meters across. They're sort of unique in the bottom of the rille - in that particular area. The other ones look like they're a half the size anyway. And there does seem to be quite a bit of debris up there along where the Twins are, up on the rim.

[As indicated in the EVA-3/Part-B traverse map, they are planning to do geology Station 11 at South Twin. Because of troubles they will have with drilling at the ALSEP site, the stop at South Twin will be eliminated. 500-mm photo AS15-84- 11287 shows the large blocks at the bottom of the rille and, according to the caption for Figure 5-31 in the Preliminary Science Report, the largest of these blocks is 15 meters across.]

[Fendell resumes his clockwise pan.]

123:03:39 Scott: Okay.

123:03:40 Irwin: ...Looks like about five or six.

123:03:41 Scott: Okay; let's call it quits there.

123:03:42 Irwin: Yeah. And get some soil. (Pause)

123:03:48 Scott: Yeah (Pause) Okay?

123:03:50 Allen: Dave and Jim, we're happy...

123:03:52 Scott: Yeah. Okay, let me. (Stops to listen to Joe)

123:03:53 Allen: ...with this comprehensive sample.

123:03:56 Scott: Okay. We'll press on to...(Looking at CDR-11) We got documented samples. We'll pick up a double core.

123:04:03 Allen: Right on.

[The TV seems to be caught on the cable again, this time with the cable in the lens. Fendell reverses direction.]

123:04:06 Allen: Roger. One bag soil with the comprehensive; and then double core.

[Fendell stops panning when he has Dave and Jim in view. Dave backs up several steps to get some "after" photos.]

[Dave's stereopair is AS15-86- 11572 and 11573. The bootprint he made in the sample area is centered in 11573. He may not have changed focus after taking the close-ups of the bottom of the boulder.]

[Scott - "You take a picture after the sampling, anyway, so they can see the swaths and what we did."]

[Jones - "And, in principle, you shouldn't have stepped on the swaths."]

[Scott - "I shouldn't have stepped on it."]

[Jones - "But, you were working on that slope, and making sure you don't drop those hard-earned fragments."]

[Scott - "And, also, to let them know there is a footprint there, as if they couldn't figure that out."]

123:04:34 Scott: (Prior to hearing Joe) Okay; 187 (will be the soil bag).

123:04:37 Allen: Thank you.

123:04:38 Scott: It must be 186. I've got 187 for the soil.

123:04:41 Allen: Rog. Agreed.

[This time, Dave is facing east with his left leg downhill, holding the bag out for Jim. The sampling operation is now going quite smoothly.]

123:04:57 Irwin: Okay.

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123:04:59 Scott: Okay; the next thing on the agenda is a double core.

123:05:02 Irwin: Yeah. Okay; I'm going to go over and configure for it.

[Jim heads for the boulder so that he can remove the rake. Dave faces southwest, looking uphill at a possible site for the double core.]

123:05:22 Allen: Stand by. (Pause)

123:05:28 Scott: There's a change in albedo on the rim; it's much lighter.

123:05:31 Allen: Roger, Dave. Drive the core right down through the rim.

123:05:37 Scott: (Playfully) I thought you might say that! Okay. Take some of this stuff (meaning the rake samples) back (to the Rover), and we'll have to walk up there. But that won't take too long.

[Dave runs down to the Rover, using a mixture of gaits as he negotiates the downslope.]

123:05:59 Scott: Okay, Jim. You got everything you need? And I'll just come up there with you.

123:06:02 Irwin: Yeah. Come on up here, and I'll get the cores out (of Dave's SCB).

123:06:03 Scott: Okay. Here we go. Let's head up to the crater. Think we can get there without any trouble?

123:06:09 Irwin: The first one right here, you mean?

123:06:11 Scott: No, I was thinking of that bright one.

123:06:14 Irwin: That'll probably take a good 5 minutes to get up there.

123:06:16 Scott: Yeah, you're right. I guess we could...

123:06:21 Irwin: That'd be pushing it.

123:06:22 Scott: Yeah. Joe, I guess we'd take 5 minutes to get up there. What do you think?

123:06:27 Allen: Negative. Drive the core where else you think might be convenient.

123:06:34 Scott: Oh, we've got a good place here. We've got a fairly deep crater; it must be about 10 meters across, and a meter and a half or so deep, and we'll pick the rim of that. There's a fresh impact crater in the rim anyway, which looks like it pulled out some...Let me get it.

[Fendell gives us a view of Jim making his way up the very soft-slope to the crater rim, going slowly because the soil tends to slide downslope as he steps on it. As indicated in Figure 5-65 from the Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report, Dave has put the gnomon down about 20 meters south (upslope) and slightly east of the Rover.]

123:06:56 Irwin: Sure is, Dave.

123:06:58 Scott: Okay.

123:06:59 Irwin: I wouldn't want to go up much farther on this slope. It's too hard to get up.

123:07:02 Scott: It sure is, isn't it?

123:07:03 Irwin: (Garbled) kicking too much...(Pause)

123:07:13 Scott: Well. (Pause)

[Dave takes a stereopair, AS15-86- 11574 and 11575, of the core site from the south. Jim's down-Sun stereopair is AS15-85- 11443 and 11444. In 11443 we can see the Station 2 boulder and the rille beyond it and, in 11444, we see Dave at the left, taking his pictures.]

123:07:32 Irwin: Huh?

123:07:33 Scott: Oh, you...Here let me...Why don't you turn around this way?

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123:07:37 Irwin: I was just going to grab the cores. I was going to take a location shot.

[Dave gets out of the way to Jim's left so that Jim can take AS15-85- 11445. Note the position of Dave's shadow in the picture.]

123:07:45 Irwin: Hold that for me while I get the cores out.

123:07: Scott: Okay (Long Pause)

[Jim hands the extension handle to Dave and starts to get the cores out of the SCB on the left side of Dave's PLSS. Jim has to rise up on his toes as he gets the two sections out.]

123:08:06 Scott: Okay.

123:08:07 Irwin: ...the lower one while I get the upper one in (the extension handle).

123:08:08 Scott: Rog. (Pause) Extension handle. (Pause as Dave gives the handle to Jim) Hey, Joe, the boulder we just sampled is the only one of its size anywhere to be seen. There's a fairly fresh crater up a little ways, maybe another half a kilometer or so, but...

123:08:33 Irwin: Pull that ring off, will you, Dave? We've got to screw that off. (Pause) Save that part.

123:08:40 Scott: (Laughing) Yeah. They might want that, huh? (Long Pause)

[Jim is removing hardware from the top of the lower core that would prevent soil from moving into the upper section when Jim hammers the threaded sections into the ground. Photos S71-16527, 16526, and 16525 show a lower section, upper section, and a lower/upper combination, respectively. The bit on the lower section is made of hardened stainless steel.]

[Dave gets the hammer off the left side of Jim's PLSS.]

123:09:05 Irwin: Oh!

123:09:07 Scott: Get on the other side, yeah.

123:09:09 Irwin: Be easier to push it in from the uphill side.

123:09:11 Scott: Yeah.

[Jim is on the crater rim, facing the Rover, and Dave is north of him and a bit below his level. Photo 86- 11576 shows Jim just before he starts pushing the core in.]

123:09:15 Allen: And, Dave and Jim, as you're getting a double core for us there, we'll be wanting to leave the station in about 10 to 15 minutes. We'd like only the big (500-mm) camera photographs following this. I think we're in good shape on everything else.

[Jim has pushed the core partway into the ground.]

123:09:35 Irwin: That's as far as I can push it.

123:09:37 Scott: I got the picture; go ahead. (Pause)

[Dave's photo 86- 11577 shows that Jim pushed most of the lower section in by hand. He will now use the hammer to get the upper section in. Photo S71-22471 shows the type of hammer that was flown on Apollo 14 through 17.]

123:09:45 Allen: Roger.

[Jim is holding the hammer very near the head and is hitting the top of the extension handle with the side surface. Because it is difficult to get precise motions while wearing the suit, the side surface gives the smallest chance of missing the extension handle. In all, Jim strikes 35 blows, with the penetration rate slowing dramatically after the first few blows. A core section is about 35-cm long. With the first dozen blows, he gets the section about halfway in or about 17 cm. With the next dozen, he gets about two-thirds of the remainder or about 12 cm; and, with the final eleven blows he gets the remaining 6 cm. Readers should note that these figures are very rough, eyeball estimates from the TV record.]

[Scott - "...there, it went in so easy. Relatively easy. You know we had new core tubes. They were thinner walled (than the core tubes used on the earlier flights). So, they went in easier. But, in practicing with them, they weren't always easy and, sometimes, you really had to hammer. But, the point is, they did go in easy."]

[Jones - "In this stuff up on the side of the mountain, that was about as easy a drive of a core tube as I think I've ever seen."]

[At several points in the Apollo 15 review, Dave talked about the various hard-suit designs that have been worked on in the post-Apollo era. Dave is skeptical of the value of hard suits and, in a 1996 letter, wrote, "Try this in a hard suit!"]

123:09:55 Allen: Jim, you're an Ironman.

123:09:57 Scott: Don't smash your finger.

123:10:00 Irwin: (Responding to Joe) No, the boss (Dave) is (the Ironman).

[Jim is referring to Dave's stamina.]

[Scott - "Yeah. Jim used to needle me a little bit about that. I kept him up late, doing geology."]

[Jones - "Any particular reason why Jim's wielding the hammer?"]

[Scott - "That was his job. When we partitioned out who did what, that was his chore. I mean, it wasn't something we decided when we go to the Moon. It was decided months before."]

[Jones - "Any particular reason for that?"]

[Scott - "It was most effective in terms of who did what. We went through these procedures, developing the procedures to minimize the time involved in doing them. That's why one of us would take down-Sun and one of us would take cross-Sun. So, the reason each of us does a task is because, prior to the mission, we have worked out the team work, the exchange of chores to minimize the time required, to optimize what's going on. And, of course, who has what tools and stuff and all that sort of thing. All of that was worked out in great detail."]

[Jones - "Now, on 17, Gene did most of the hammering because he had a bigger hand and could grip the hammer more easily than Jack. And I was wondering if something like that was going on here."]

[Scott - "No, I think we developed these procedures based on many things. And I can't think of one reason why Jim is hammering, but I can say that the big picture of procedures were developed with everything considered in a trade-off process so that we would optimize the use of time. And it will be different for any pair of guys, because of not only who did what but also where you're going and what you're trying to accomplish. I mean, a lot of times this looks relatively arbitrary as to who's doing what. It's not at all. It's all pre-planned to the smallest detail. Of course, every once in a while, somebody will do something else, because there are options. Later on, you'll see that with the ALSEP. But, at this point, Jim's chores were hammering the cores and doing the raking."]

[Jones - "And he was the scoop man, and you were the tongs man."]

[Scott - "I wanted him to do all the work!"]

[Jones - "And it was you who tended to look at the rocks."]

[Scott - "I think we both looked at the rocks. Maybe I was just more verbose."]

[Jones - "Like on 16. Charlie's a chatterbox in that sort of circumstance and John's his typical reserved self. Yet, when John does talk, it's clear that he knows at least as much about what's going on, geologically, as the guy who's doing all the talking."]

[This photo is AS15-86- 11578, with the core now driven completely into the crater rim.]

[The core comes out easily. Jim starts with his left hand and switches to both hands near the end.]

[Jim rotates the bottom end of the core up past horizontal.]

[Scott - "One of the worst things that can happen is that the core comes out and all the dirt comes out. And we had had that in field training. So it's always interesting to watch it come out to make sure you don't lose it."]

[Jones - "Although I gather that this stuff tended to be a lot more cohesive than you would expect, given how dry it is."]

[Scott - "And fine grained. And it's also in one-sixth g, so it isn't going to fall quite as fast. But you still have that in the back of your mind, that you don't want to pull it up and have everything spill out."]

123:10:30 Scott: Okay. Come on over this way a little. Cap for it. Oh, it looks like we have some dings on the cap. Okay. (Long Pause)

[They have turned so that Jim is facing east, holding the core in a north-south line, while Dave is standing at the north end putting a cap on. The lighting on Dave's SCB is such that there is a noticeable brightness contrast between the bottom quarter of the bag, which is full of samples, and the upper three-quarters, which is still empty.]

123:10:52 Scott: Okay. Good idea. (Pause) Okay. Break it and I got the oth(er cap)...Oh, we got to ram it first. Rog. (Pause) Let me put your hammer away. (Pause) Get the old rammer out.

[Dave stows the hammer on the left side of Jim's PLSS and gets the rammer. With the cap on the bottom of the lower section, the double core is sealed. Now, Dave will insert the rammer, a thin, wire rod into the top of the upper section and push the "keeper" down onto the top of the soil column. Friction between the keeper and the core wall will keep it in place and prevent the soil column from moving. After the keeper is in place, Jim will separate the sections, they will put a cap on the bottom of the upper section, Jim will screw the top onto the lower section and, finally, Dave will ram the lower section.]

123:11:32 Irwin: Yeah.

123:11:35 Scott: Okay. Rammer went in about 6 inches. (Pause) Okay.

[Dave removes the rammer and restows it on Jim's PLSS.]

123:11:43 Scott: Right.

123:11:45 Irwin: I'll try to break it. (Pause)

[Jim takes the mated core tubes, one in each hand and unscrews them, mostly hidden from our view by Dave.]

Video Clip   2 min 27 sec ( 0.6 Mb RealVideo or 22 Mb MPG )

MP3 Audio Clip ( 14 min 37 sec )

123:12:01 Allen: And, Dave, we're standing by for a number on the core.

123:12:06 Scott: Yeah; the top one is 03, Joe.

123:12:14 Allen: Roger.

123:12:15 Scott: Oh!

[Dave tries to put a cap on the bottom of the top section but drops it. Note that, once Jim gets the tubes separated, he holds them with the capped bottom of the lower section down and the sealed top of the upper section also down, in his left and right hands respectively. This appears to be an intentional - and, undoubtedly, well-practiced - procedure.]

123:12:18 Irwin: Lose the core.

123:12:19 Scott: Huh?

[Jim may have been telling Dave to let go of the core, that he had it under control.]

123:12:21 Scott: Yeah, I'll get another one. Don't sweat the caps; we got beaucoup caps.

123:12:27 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

[Dave gets another cap off the side of Jim's PLSS.]

[Dave has dropped the second cap.]

123:12:49 Scott: They're new caps. You know, they're a lot harder to get on. (Never) seen those before...

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "It was the first time we'd ever seen the core-tube caps and they were a little different (from the ones used in training). I got the impression they were a little harder to put on but, once they were on, they stayed on better. I would recommend that the future crews get to see the flight hardware some time before they arrive on the lunar surface. But they worked alright."]

[Scott, from a 1996 letter - "I wonder it we ever tried these caps in a vacuum chamber? Probably not; but we probably should have - except that there was so much new stuff (for Apollo 15)."]

[Jim is actually putting on the threaded top and keeper on the bottom core section. He holds the core in his right hand and screws the top on with his left.]

123:13:01 Scott: Yeah. I gave him the top one. I can't see the...The bottom's too dirty. (Pause) Rub it off when you get going there.

123:13:09 Allen: No problem on the bottom one, Dave. We know that. (Pause)

123:13:18 Scott: Okay...

123:13:19 Irwin: Dave...

123:13:21 Scott: ...let me give you this (upper section, which Jim takes in his left hand)...

123:13:22 Irwin: Okay. I'll put this (lower section, which Jim has in his right hand) in your pack.

123:13:25 Scott: I've got to ram it. (Pause as Dave takes the lower section) Hold on to that (extension handle). (Pause)

[Dave takes the lower section and then gives Jim the extension handle.]

[Here, Dave takes the upper section from Jim's left hand and gives him the lower section. The movements are quick and partly obscured.]

[Dave turns to his right and faces west so that Jim can get to his SCB.]

123:13:53 Allen: Yes, Jim. If you could with the tongs, we'd like it back.

123:13:59 Irwin: Yeah. I'll try.

123:14:01 Scott: Hey, those new caps, Joe, with the metal band on them will sure stay on a lot better.

123:14:05 Irwin: Okay; that one's...I'll hold the core.

123:14:09 Scott: Okay. Can't even see them (the caps) (garbled).

123:14:12 Allen: Roger. Understand.

123:14:14 Irwin: They're right here, Dave.

123:14:16 Scott: Don't see 'em.

123:14:17 Irwin: (Moving to the right and pointing) Right under here. I can see the edge of it.(Pause) Better use tongs?

123:14:22 Scott: Yeah, I'll go get them. Just a minute. (Pause)

Video Clip   2 min 36 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 23 Mb MPG )

[Dave bounds downhill, using a skipping stride.]

123:14:32 Scott: Ooh! I dig in pretty deep!

[While Joe is talking, Dave grabs the tongs off of his Rover seat and heads back up hill, still using the skipping stride and getting enough push to float between steps. Although Fendell isn't looking at Dave when he gets back to Jim, both the downhill and uphill trips take about 14 seconds - give or take a second - and, over the 20-meter distance, Dave's speed is a respectable 5.1 km/hr. The highest Apollo running speed completely recorded over a distance of tens of meters is 5.4 km/hr, a speed twice achieved by Jack Schmitt during Apollo 17 - once at 120:27:11 and the second time at 121:36:36.]

123:14:47 Scott: Okay. Look at his hands (which are probably very dirty), Joe. (Laughing) You figure he could take a picture? (Now back with Jim) Okay, partner. Where are they?

123:14:57 Irwin: Right in here.

123:15:01 Scott: Oh, yeah.

123:15:04 Irwin: You hold this (extension handle, and) I'll put it (the cap) on (the upper section).

123:15:07 Scott: Okay.

[Jim gives Dave the extension handle and takes the cap.]

[Dave uses the tongs to get the second dropped cap and, once Jim gets his cap on the upper core, Dave turns to his right to present his SCB and plants his tongs in the ground.]

123:15:29 Irwin: This is 3.

123:15:30 Scott: Okay.

123:15:31 Allen: Roger.

123:15:32 Scott: (I don't) know what the other one was?

123:15:33 Irwin: I can call Joe when we unload that.

123:15:36 Scott: Okay.

123:15:37 Irwin: I can look ...

123:15:38 Allen: We can take it later, Jim. That's good.

123:15:40 Irwin: It's the middle one in Dave's sample bag.

123:15:45 Allen: Roger. That's good enough.

123:15:47 Scott: Okay. (Turning to Jim) Hold this (extension handle) and let me put the (second) core-tube cap back (on Jim's PLSS). (Long Pause) Okay. Why don't you get your stereo pan, and I'll get the big camera out. (Pause)

[Dave grabs his tongs and goes for the gnomon. He reaches down to get it but misses and starts to tip over forward. He churns his legs and gets them under his center of gravity, turn, and goes back for the gnomon.]

123:16:17 Irwin: Boy, I just hope there's not any dust on the lens (of Jim's own Hasselblad).

123:16:20 Scott: Didn't look bad, Jim. I just looked at it.

123:16:21 Irwin: Okay.

123:16:25 Scott: Don't forget the rake and that other sample on the boulder.

123:16:28 Irwin: Yeah.

[Dave is carrying the gnomon in one hand and the scoop in the other. The trip back to the Rover takes about 14 seconds. During Joe's next transmission, Dave reaches the Rover and drops the gnomon on the ground at his right foot.]

[Dave leans down to put the tongs on his seat or on the floor.]

Video Clip   2 min 54 sec ( 0.8 Mb RealVideo or 26 Mb MPG )

123:16:59 Allen: Roger. (Long Pause)

[Among other functions, the gnomon has a color chart useful in guiding development of the color film back in Houston. We get a good view of Dave folding the gnomon legs and putting it in the stowage pouch behind his seat. At the rim of the crater, Jim is facing away from us, taking an uphill shot, probably 85- 11460 or 11461.]

Jim's Second Station 2 Pan ( frames AS15-85- 11446 to 11465 )

123:17:15 Allen: Roger, Jim...

[Jim is trying to stay in the same spot but, because of the slope, we see him move backwards as he turns. [Scott - "It probably didn't make a lot of difference for a deep-field pan."]

[Jones - "Yeah. If you're pasting things together, the near-field isn't going to work, but the horizon is."]

[Fendell has started a clockwise pan and, this time, gets past the cable without problem.]

123:17:17 Allen: ...no problem.

123:17:19 Scott: You know, a blurred picture isn't much good. (Long Pause) Okay! (Pause) (To himself as he gets out the 500-mm camera) Take off the lens cap!

123:17:47 Allen: Good show.

[Scott - "It does have a lens cap, 'cause it's a telephoto lens. And it's always a joke, of course, for anybody taking pictures, to make sure the lens cap's off."]

[Jones - "Especially when you don't have a viewfinder. In fact, on 17 the lens cap was attached to the front with a little strap, so you didn't have to hold it."]

[Scott - "I don't think we had that. Good idea."]

[Jones - "I presume that a lens cap got left on during training."]

[Scott - "Nah. It's just a classical problem. And, on the Moon, you only have one chance. It's a joke."]

123:18:20 Allen: Sounds good, Dave. And we'd like about 2 minutes worth of pictures and then think about leaving.

[Scott - "With a telephoto, you take a vertical swath and a horizontal swath, with overlapping pictures."]

[Jones - "And when you get to Station 6 and take pictures of Mt. Hadley, you did the top of the mountain and then a swath down the middle. I sort of discovered that when I was pasting things together. You would have had to take an enormous number of pictures to cover the whole thing."]

[Scott - "This is a way to give you an organized series of telephotos that give you more than just one snapshot. It's a telephoto pan."]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The 500-mm worked fine. I used my helmet shield (that is, the visor) as a base to steady it. I noticed it made some light scratches in the gold (electroplated) material, but it really didn't bother it."]

123:18:38 Allen: Sounds good.

123:18:43 Scott: Okay. (Long Pause)

[During this Long Pause in the comm, Fendell reaches the up-Sun direction and, rather suddenly, the camera droops, giving us an out-of-focus view of the near surface. Without comment, Dave raises the camera to its normal level and moves up-Sun to start his 500s. Fendell then begins panning counter-clockwise.]

Video Clip   2 min 28 sec ( 0.6 Mb RealVideo or 22 Mb MPG )

123:19:50 Allen: Roger. (Long Pause)

[Jones - "I presume that, in the pre-mission photos, folks thought they could see layers in the rille wall?"]

[Scott - "Yeah. I think that's what they are."]

[Fendell zooms in on the rille floor and the east wall. After a few seconds, he resumes the counter-clockwise pan, but without pulling back on the zoom.]

[Dave's first horizontal strip is AS15-84- 11254 to 11268, which covers the far rille wall south of Trophy Point, the promontory opposite Elbow Crater. He gets excellent overlap between frames.]

[Dave's second horizontal strip consists of frames AS15-84- 11269 to 11275. Assembly by Dave Byrne.]

[In frame 11269, which is very similar to 11259, the rock with the vertical jointing and the horizontal bedding on top is near the fiducial mark one below and one left of center.]

[Dave's vertical strip consists of frames AS15-84- 11276 to 11283. Assembly by Dave Byrne.]

[Frame 11276 is similar to 11272. A detail from 11276 shows the 'very interesting outcrop over there, which looks like vertical jointing in a big block with a horizontal layer on the top'.]

[Dave Byrne has combined both horizontal strips and ther vertical strip in a single portrait of the rille wall opposite Station 2.

123:21:01 Scott: (Matter-of-factly) Okay. (Long Pause)

[Fendell pulls back on the zoom and picks up Jim's shadow. Jim is now at the Rover and, as indicated in his next transmission, gives Houston a frame count on Dave's camera, which Dave probably left on his seat while using the 500.]

[Meanwhile, Dave is finishing his 500-mm work with photos AS15-84- 11284, 11285, 11286, 11287, and 11288, which show the bottom of the rille. Low-resolution pan assembled by Dave Byrne.]

[These photographs do not overlap with the other 500-mm photos Dave just took, nor do they form a continuous series. Jim's second Station 2 pan can be used to place the 500-mm images. The first three 500-mm images cover a portion of wall below Trophy Point while the last two images show a part of the bottom of the rille a bit farther east. Assembled by David Harland.]

[As indicated on the EVA-1/2, Part B map, Dave and Jim had planned to drive east about 1 kilometer and do Station 3 near Flow crater. The drive was expected to take 9 minutes and the stop 14 minutes, for a total of 23 minutes. They had planned to leave Station 2 at 2:59 into the EVA but, because of the various difficulties they experienced at the LM, they are currently at 3:42 into the EVA and need to make up some time. Because they will be returning to the flank of Hadley Delta on EVA-2, they are not likely to lose a significant amount of information about the mountain by eliminating Station 3. During mission planning, they thought there might be a debris flow near Flow Crater (see CDR-13 and CDR-14) and had built the Station 3 activities around that possibility. However, the observations that Dave and Jim made on the outbound drive and at Station 2 suggested that they wouldn't find any evidence of the supposed flow near Flow Crater and, therefore, that the stop would have no special significance. See the discussion at 123:31:53.]

[Scott - "We spent hours and hours and hours planning those traverses, in the crew quarters (at the Cape) in the evenings. Jim used to bug me a little bit, 'cause we didn't go to bed. We had Jim Head and Gordon Swann and Lee Silver and all those guys in there, and we were planning these traverses. It was the first time there were really big traverses; and we also had to do the walking traverses - 'cause we weren't sure of the Rover - and a great variety of things with a lot of variety of geology."]

["A lot of effort went into these traverses. So, having done them, it would have been interesting to me to go back, just for my own personal curiosity, find out how we did. Did we do what we said we were going to do, what we had planned to do? In many cases, no, we ran out of time. But it will also be interesting to see how well we allocated the time. Did we fall short because of some hardware problem, or did we fall short because we didn't properly anticipate how long it would take to do the work - even though we did hours and hours of training? I think that would not only be an interesting exercise, but also fruitful for people in the future, if they do something like this. I don't know if they did an analysis after 15 for the planning for 16 and 17. Certainly, Jack had the benefit of being on the 15 backup crew as they planned for 17, so he had that continuity."]

[Jones - "The impression I have is that the overhead at the LM cost more than you had planned."]

[Scott - "And I can tell you where it comes, because we talked about it. A, Jim had trouble with his backpack; B, the front-wheel steering didn't work; C, Jim couldn't get in the LM; D, the seatbelts. So, I would guess our pre-planning was pretty good, based on the training, except that you run into the unanticipated problems. As I recall, we had allocated time for unanticipated problems and, also, time for taking your time when you're more careful. But you still fall behind. But, from the geology point of view, too, it would be interesting to see how we did and if we accomplished what we set out to do. And, on the other hand, they wanted to give us time just to explore and look around and gather samples. And the question would be, how many samples did we plan to gather, based on our field trips, and how many did we gather? And, did it take us longer on the Moon - because they're totally new and different - than it did at Coso Hills (which they visited 29-30 April 1970)? Maybe that's just curiosity. But maybe it's useful in the future when somebody goes to a foreign planet and tries to do geology. How do they plan for that? And that's a basic purpose of the Journal, I think. Not only 'what did we do?', but 'how did we get ready to do it'?"]

[Jones - "The Station 2 tasks in the procedures document, which is dated July 9, are allocated 45 minutes, which is pretty much what you spent there. I think they shortened Elbow up a little bit and they eliminated Station 3, but they kept the full time at 2. And the tasks listed here, in order of priority, are radial sampling of St. George Crater, slope permitting (see CDR-12). Now you weren't up at St. George at this stop, and you didn't do a radial sample."]

[Scott - "Yeah, we did. Outward from George, but we didn't go far because it was steep."]

[Jones - "Right. Comprehensive sample, which is the rake. That got done. The double core tube got done. 500-mm photography of blocks on the St. George rim and Hadley Rille. You weren't up at the rim but you did the rille stuff, beautifully. 70mm stereo which Jim did. SESC sample from a trench, which you didn't do. And penetrometer measurements, which didn't get done. But those are the two lowest priority items on the list and, given the fact that there was only the one boulder, you got done what need to be done."]

[Scott - "I think that's right. The penetrometer took a lot of time."]

[Jones - "Station 3 was to have been some more Apennine Front sampling. Basically just some sampling and a pan. And I think the lack of variation that you saw on the second EVA suggests that the elimination of Station 3 was a good call."]

[Jones - "Hadley Delta was obviously a very high priority for this mission. You made two trips down there."]

[Scott - "Yeah. That was the massif that was supposed to give us the plagioclase. And did (most spectacularly at Spur Crater on EVA-2). I would say it was more important than the North Complex, but not that much more. Because the North Complex could be a volcanic structure. Which would have been totally different. (Interest in possible volcanic structures) faded after Apollo 16. But, before our flight, it was very important. In fact, I think I can remember discussions of which one you go to. Clearly, Hadley Delta won. But there were still discussions."]

123:21:21 Allen: Thank you, Jim. Good call.

123:21:27 Scott: And the camera count on the 500 is 61.

123:21:31 Allen: Roger.

123:21:35 Irwin: Maybe you can see mine, Dave.

123:21:37 Scott: Yeah, I'll look.

[The TV picks up Dave's shadow as he returns to the Rover.]

123:21:41 Scott: Yes.

123:21:42 Irwin: ...maybe you can put these...

123:21:43 Scott: I'll check.

123:21:44 Irwin: ...put these samples in...

123:21:45 Scott: I will.

123:21:46 Irwin: ...my bag.

123:21:48 Scott: I'll do that. (Pause) Okay. (Pause) (To himself) Tidy the Rover up. Ready for another little drive. (Pause) (To Jim) Did you get your rake?

Video Clip   2 min 01 sec ( 0.5 Mb RealVideo or 18 Mb MPG )

123:22:16 Irwin: Yeah.

[Fendell is looking at the raised-rim crater southwest of the Rover and, beyond it, the Station 2 boulder, allowing Houston to confirm that Jim remembered to get the rake and scoop.]

[The TV picture jumps around as Jim gets seated. Fendell zooms in on the far rim of the raised-rim crater, where there are a number of fist-size rocks visible.]

123:22:57 Allen: And, Jim, while you're climbing in there, what's your heading?

123:23:03 Irwin: Heading 270...280, Joe.

123:23:08 Allen: Roger. It's rock steady.

123:23:13 Scott: Okay; (the frame count is) 115 on Jim's camera.

123:23:22 Allen: Roger, Dave. Thank you.

123:23:23 Scott: Glad we got to roll that boulder...

123:23:24 Allen: And we suggest you just follow your navigation system home.

123:23:31 Scott: That's a good idea. I was going to say we might try that just to see how she works.

123:23:35 Allen: That's exactly our thinking.

123:23:36 Scott: Don't think we'll have any problem finding home. (Pause) Oh, I caught that seatbelt...There's a Cannon plug right down there on the floor.

[Fendell has been panning counter-clockwise, moving the camera toward its stowed position for the drive. Dave has forgotten to turn the TV off and we see his legs and lower torso in the seat as he discovers that the seat belt is snagged. In getting off, he swings his outboard (left) leg out, follows it with his right and then hops out, presumably using his arms to push himself upright.]

123:23:54 Scott: No, you can't do a thing. I have to get off and unhook it from this Cannon plug down here.

[Scott - "This is the second time I said I got hooked. So I would assume they changed that for Apollo 16."]

123:24:03 Scott: (Handing the belt to Jim) Okay. ......

123:24:04 Allen: And, Dave, you're turning our TV off now, I guess.

123:24:05 Scott: (Garbled under Joe)

123:24:14 Allen: Dave, this is Houston...

123:24:15 Scott: Okay, now if you hold it there...

123:24:16 Irwin: Yeah.

123:24:17 Allen: ...We assume you're going to turn our TV off shortly.

123:24:19 Scott: Yes, sir. Yes, sir! Ha! Thank you, Joe. (Long Pause) Okay, Joe; you're going PM1/WB

123:24:51 Allen: Roger.

[Jones - "I like Joe's very gentle reminder here that you hadn't turned the TV off. Always a diplomat."]

[Scott - "Always."]

123:24:57 Scott: Yeah. (Long Pause) Okay, buddy; give me that seatbelt. (Long Pause) Okay; (I'm) strapped in. (Pause) Primary. Steering to Bus Delta on the rear, and nothing on the front, Drive Power is On. Drive Enables are both squared away. Sun shadow device is stowed. And we're ready to go. Are you all strapped in?

123:25:58 Irwin: All strapped in. You did it.