Greeting Earthlings.
If you follow the channel, you know that we recently paid a visit to Steve Jurveston to
return the Soyuz clock, the Titan missile computer and the Apollo LVDC core memory that
he had loaned us for restoration and study.
We spent time to explain our findings, but of course we couldn’t wait to get a peek
at some of the displayed items in his amazing collection, and pick our next restoration
projection.
There are so many exceptional items in his little space that you literally get dizzy
the first time around.
But it’s hard not to notice this full MOCR console from the Apollo era.
And it has seas of the genuine Twist Lite buttons that Fran Blanche had first attracted
my attention to, and that I made a few videos about.
Which of course allowed me to flex a bit.
[Steve] See all these little buttons going?
[Marc] Yes, I managed to score a few of those buttons, because they were used in military
planes,so you can still find them on eBay.
So they're very special.
You don't need to pull them from the back, you pull them from the front.
And then you twist them, they are Twist-Lites.
[Steve] No way!
[Marc] Then you pick them out like this.
[Steve] No way!
Wow!
[Marc] It's interesting how they did the lettering.
The lettering is supposed to be embossed at the back of the button, but they didn't do
that.
They put an insert.
I suppose they used the H model, which would be the military grade.
Then you have to put them back in, and then you push them in.
And there you go!
[Steve] That's really cool!
[Marc] So I made an entire box out of those.
Actually I connected it to your clock, just for effect.
And unlike the stuff in the museums, you can actually open it up and study it - and, God
forbid, make it work again.
[Steve] That's why we need to disassemble more things!
You bet, count us in for that one.
It even looks like the original electronics were left intact inside.
It wasn’t very long until we had our arms reaching far into the beast.
This console was actually used on the set of Apollo 13, and Ken is already at work studying
it.
It appears to be a console retooled for the shuttle era, controlling communications of
some kind.
While we are looking at Apollo control consoles, here are some that appear to come from the
Firing Room at the cape.
You can see the nice Roto-Tellites that were a staple of the firing room consoles.
Even says Roto Tellite at the back.
And these are still fully connected with their beautiful wire harnesses.
Look at that.
Look at that hand wiring.
Beautiful!
And what huge rocket does have 5 giant engines, 4 of them gimballed?
Yes, this is the very panel for the Apollo Saturn V first stage, where you’d nervously
watch the steering of the engines during the first minutes of ascent.
Incredible.
And these giant things are not engines.
These are the Apollo fuel cells, that generated the power in the spacecraft from liquid hydrogen
and liquid oxygen.
That is, unless you have a slight problem in Apollo 13 and they all quit.
Do you want to look at it?
Hey Houston we've had a problem.
Okay, roger.
Stand by they got a problem.
We've had a main B bus undervolt.
It looks like we've blown the fuel cell three with the KOH in the oxygen side of it we believe
our telemetry.
Flight, I've got a feeling we've lost two fuel cells.
I hate to put it that way but, uh, I don't know why we've lost them.
It doesn't all tag up.
Uh, Flight, we're gonna hit 100 psi in an hour and 54 minutes.
That's the end right there.
We're proceeding with the shutdown, special subroutine, for fuel cell three.
That's affirmative.
EECOM Flight?
Go ahead Flight.
13 Houston, we going to have you go through the shutdown procedure in fuel cell one.
Our O2 pressure is going down as you note and the temperature confirms it.
Okay Jack, we're proceeding with the shutdown procedure for fuel cell one.
Okay, Jack, understand.
Close Reac valve circuit breakers in fuel cell 2.
Power down inverters.
Power down batt relay bus.
Batt ties off.
Power entry and both running circuit breakers A, B, and C. All off.
Just close the reac valves Flight.
Just close them.
Just close the reacs.
Houston Aquarius.
Go ahead Aquarius.
The Odyssey is completely powered off, accodring to the procedure that you read to Jack.
Copy capcom, thank you.
Of course as you know, the fuel cells themselves did not fail.
As you can obviously tell from this simplified schematic, it makes electricity and drinkable
water from oxygen and hydrogen, and the oxygen tank just exploded, depriving them from supply.
This fuel cell is actually serial number 1, used for development.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we tried to power it back up?
I floated the idea to Ben Krasnow, from the Applied Science channel, and we came back
to take a detailed look.
So Ben is here because we fancy that we might be able to power up the fuel cell, in our
dreams.
This is oxygen in, hydrogen and water out, and there is a big nitrogen sphere over here.
Oh, here's your other power connector!
Condenser, centrifugal separator, pressure transducer.
So glycol comes over here.
[Ben] It's a lot of amps, and the thickness of the cable here is quite good too.
[Marc] There you go, and you have your 28 volts, whatever 50 amps 60 amps coming out
of this.
Okay, it looks a little bit less intimidating now that we've spent some time on it.
What do you think?
[Ben] Oh I think there's a bit of work left to do!
[Marc] Yes!
This would be a long-term project, but that would be exciting.
And here is another show-stopping piece.
The row of seats from the Apollo command module.
What?
And I can touch it?
Someone pinches me quick to make sure I am not dreaming.
[Steve] Yeah, I think Block I, Block II.
But this one is fun.
So it's got the, you know, as you're moving for docking I believe?
So Michael Collins would have switched seats and used this for docking.
But on takeoff, you know, cool hand Neil had this here, and if he does this [Marc] Abort!
[Steve] Eject!
Yeah, exactly.
Never used on Apollo with people on board.
[Marc] I have to try the click.
[Steve] And actually it goes both ways, I have to see what the other way does.
[Marc] These military switches have this satisfactory feel to it.
Locked!
[Steve] The other thing that became more apparent only recently to me, seeing the whole couch,
is how it all folds up, right?
Pivot point, pivot point.
This can all tuck away, pivot point.
So when you're post launch you can tuck your command couch away and have room for all the
other stuff you're doing in the community in the command module.
[Marc] Oh it pivots here too.
[Steve] Yeah, I hadn't noticed that until recently.
[Marc] Oh you pull the pin.
[Steve] So this whole thing can tuck kind of away.
[Marc] And this moves also?
[Steve] Yeah this totally moves.
[Marc] Can you demonstrate it?
[Steve] So you go unlock...
[Marc] Another satisfying [Steve] And then you can lock it.
[Marc] - It's just the mechanicals, they are so satisfying.
[Steve] You can lock into different places right or put it completely out of the way.
Let's see, gotta find the place.
[Marc] Great space stuff.
[Steve] And I love the reminder: "squeeze trigger then position", just in case you forgot
how it works, right, they are like little reminders.
Oh, interesting, I didn't notice this before.
There's very different instructions.
[Marc] TV monitor attach.
[Steve] Interesting.
[Marc] Oh and then you can adjust - what's that lever on the headrest?
[Steve] Yes this is how you do it, it's infinitely...
[Carl] That makes sense because people would switch positions.
[Steve] The helmet, yeah.
Different heights.
This is the height range of the astronaut that they would tolerate.
Must be this high to ride.
[Marc] They should have those in cars, just get your buddy Elon to add that to his Tesla.
[Steve] In the original roadster, must be this short to enjoy it, yeah.
And it keeps coming.
Here are sections of the command module control panel.
This is the panel for the star alignment optics from the lower bay.
Here is a LM lower left panel, signed by astronauts.
Beware, if you put the radar in the slew position you’ll get 1202’s.
After a while, you become a bit jaded.
Oh, look, the forward hatch from the Apollo command module.
Make sure it’s nice and tight before you jettison the LM!
Talking about the LM, here is a LM landing leg strut, obviously a test article.
It’s only when you can get that close to it, that you realize how large the LM actually
was.
It’s gigantic.
Steve handed us some of the smaller LM strut portions.
Unlike the electronics, that are far, far heavier than you would possibly imagine, these
things were feather light.
Well you know I have the LEGO version.
[Steve] Exactly!
And unlike other things these are remarkably light.
Let me give you an example.
This is what I expected things to weigh.
So, like, oh my gosh, like you could all do it with two fingers.
[Carl] Wow.
[Mike] Oh wow!
[Steve] Right, like that's what I said about the computers, is like why aren't they that
light?
[Ken] Wow!
[Steve] It's insane!
[Carl] It really is lighter than you think.
[Marc] Oh wow!
It just weighs absolutely nothing.
And that, in the corner, is the coolest exercise bike you’ll ever see.
This is the bike they used aboard Skylab.
And you know, since you have unused Apollo switchgear laying around from you recently
cancelled program, you might as well re-use it.
So the exercise bike has a LM inspired control panel.
How cool is that.
Watch the hydrogen level on that rear wheel, Buzz, while you are pedaling.
[Steve] Every time I show this I keep talking about Shimano and I need to do my research
to know when did Shimano first come up with and who was the first clipless pedal?
I think it was after Skylab actually.
So instead of saying, gosh, how could they have recapitulated, they reinvented everything,
like clips and you know...
And talk about a beefy assemblage, right, I think you could have gone standard off the
shelf bicycle components or something.
But my favorite is the shoe.
So, first off, feel how heavy this thing is.
Yeah, so again, weight being a premium, and you look at it like that's just like the look,
slash, you know, road bike cleats.
[Ken] There's all these big bolts in the bottom.
[Steve] And so I thought, silly them, what a waste of weight, right?
Could it use something maybe a little lighter?
But, and you might know this, every floor in Skylab was a triangular mesh, where you
can lock in at any of 60 degree angles.
So this is basically not just for exercise.
And I think that's just pretty cool.
And I was ignorant about that.
But ‘nough of that western stuff.
Soviet hardware is well represented.
too.
Here is an entire Soyuz control panel, which I’m told has been flown.
You can see the Soyuz clock in its element, at the top left.
It’s the same model of the digital clock that Ken completely reverse engineered and
that we brought back to life in a previous episode.
And on the right it has this incredible Globus instrument that is essentially an analog mechanical
calculator, and that they kept flying until the 80’s.
I think it is driven in the same way that the analog Soyuz clock is driven, so maybe
my driver will be able to make this one work too.
Modern space exploration is also part of the collection.
Here is a spring from the SpaceX Dragon capsule.
Since Steve’s pays for a large part of the bills at SpaceX, he gets a few choice pieces
from them, particularly when things don’t quite go as planned and a little consolation
price could help, when a large chunk of your investment money just went up in flames.
Steve explains how this double titanium spring is located behind the parachute door on the
Crew Dragon capsule.
To his right is the actual panel from the DM2 Dragon Capsule, which got ejected before
splashdown.
Steve bought it back from a fisherman that recovered it in the gulf of Mexico.
I guess that was the fisherman’s best catch of the day.
It then got sent back to SpaceX for studying how well it did in re-entry.
You can still see two of the big springs at the back.
And these are souvenir pieces from Starship SN8, the first high altitude hop test for
the Starship, that came in a little hot and had rapid unscheduled disassembly on landing.
You can see them pick up the pieces the next day, and voila, here they are.
The collection also include an assortment of relatively large samples of rare meteorites,
including this huge piece of the moon.
[Steve] This is Mars, this is a nice nice sizeable piece of Mars.
And this is chromite.
[Marc] I need to touch.
[Steve] Yeah you got to touch it!
That ablates slower than the rest of the matrix.
[Carl] The few non earth bodies I've touched!
[Steve] And then this is far and away the oldest volcanic rock in our solar system.
Some think we'll never find one older.
It was formed before earth.
But what's amazing about it, it's full of crystals: green, brown.
And when I looked with a magnifying lens inside these vesicles, they're crystals all the way
down.
It's crystals upon crystals.
It's mostly quartz and variants which is very rare, and it was like a magma-like chamber
deep in something big enough to have a molten core, a mantle, a crust.
Alright alright, but we also came here to, ahem, work.
Steve asked if we could identify this mystery piece of Apollo electronics.
Which took Mike all about 10 minutes.
Mike’s ability to recognize obscure Apollo parts and find documentation for it never
ceases to amaze us.
Right you have a screw, and you give him five minutes, and among the 10 billion drawings
he'll find a drawing that has a screw on it.
[Carl] And he'll tell you the history of the screws evolution, engineering history.
[Marc] I don't know how you do that.
[Steve] Uh, is there a resemblance?
Could be!
The label is the same.
Look at that even these.
So for those who are burning to know, this is a piece of signal conditioning equipment
that was used in the telemetry system.
But eventually, among all the treasures, we were introduced to a pair of rather nondescript
boxes.
Oh, what is?
This is a transmitter.
Is this this is ground or this is flight [Steve] Flight.
[Marc] Oh that must be full of tubes inside.
[Steve] Yes!
Supposedly the guy who sold it to me said it is the most gorgeous of all the artifacts
he sold me.
[Marc] That has to be the the traveling wave amplifier!
[Steve] Yes, exactly.
He said that's inside there.
[Marc] Okay.
[Steve] Serial number six, you gotta love that!
[Marc] That's from the command module?
[Steve] I believe so.
[Mike] Yeah.
Folks, this is the Apollo command module main microwave radio link, part of the so-called
Unified S-Band communication system, the incredibly complex radio system that gave ranging, velocity,
two way voice and two way data, and even television from lunar distances.
Alright, bye, see you in the next episode, I sense the beginning of another long Apollo
restoration series.