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[i]CONRAD: The roll program was on time. The pitch program was on time. I didn't notice the rate changes, because, at 36 seconds, I first noticed that something had happened outside the spacecraft. I was aware of a white light. I knew that we were in the clouds; and, although I was watching the gauges I was aware of a white light. The next thing I noted was that I heard the MASTER ALARM ringing in my ears and I glanced over to the caution and warning panel and it was a sight to behold. There's a little disagreement among us and I'll have to look at the tapes, but my recollection of what I called out was three FUEL CELL lights, both AC 1 BUS and AC 1 OVERLOAD, FUEL CELL DISCONNECT, MAIN A and B BUS OVERLOAD lights, and I was not aware of AC 2 lights. Dick thought they were on. I don't think they were because I remember thinking that the only lights that weren't on of the electrical system was AC 2 and maybe I ought to configure for an AC BUS 1 out. GORDON: Let me make a comment here. A considerable length of time elapsed between the time those lights came on and when Pete read them off to the ground. I can't swear positively that they were all on. To help Al, my usual habit was, when any light came on during the boost phase, to read it out so that he didn't have to be concerned with which light it was. My recollection is that when I first glanced up there I didn't read any of them to him, but I scanned all of them and the only thing I said to him was, "Al, all the lights are on." I am under the impression that at one time, or initially at least, they were all on. Pete read it out quite a bit later. We'd talked about it and you read them out a minute or so later. CONRAD: I went back to my gauges and ascertained that everything was running on my side. About this time, the platform tumbled. The next thing I noted was that the ISS light was on. This was obvious because my number 1 ball was doing 360's. I even took the time to peek under the card and we had a PROGRAM ALARM light, the GIMBAL light, and a NO ATT light. So we lit up just about everything in the spacecraft. Since that time, we found out that we were hit a second time and that's probably what did the platform in. When the platform went, Al was telling me that we had voltage on all buses and that we had all buses. I remember him telling me that the voltage was low -- 24 volts. BEAN: We got all the lights. I didn't have an idea in the world what happened. My first thought was that we might have aborted, but I didn't feel any g's, so I didn't think that was what had happened. My second thought was that somehow the electrical connection between the command module and the service module had separated, because all three fuel cells had plopped off and everything else had gone. I immediately started working the problem from the low end of the pole. I looked at both AC buses and they looked okay, so that was a little confusing. GORDON: You looked at the voltage meters, not the lights. BEAN: Yes, that's right. I looked at the volts -- the lights were on. I looked at the voltage and the voltage on all phases was good. That was a little confusing. Usually when you see an AC over-voltage light, either an inverter goes off or you have one of the AC phases reading zero and you have to take the inverter off. In this case, they all looked good and that was a bit confusing. I switched over and took a look at the main buses. There was power on both, although the voltage was down to about 24, which was a lot lower than normal. I looked at the fuel cells and they weren't putting out a thing. I looked at the battery buses and they were putting out the same 24 volts. They were hooked into the mains and it turned out that they were supplying the load. As I did this, I kept telling Pete we had power on all these buses. One of the rules of space flight is you don't make any switch-a-roos with that electrical system unless you've got a good idea why you're doing it. If you don't have power at all, you might change a couple of switches to see what will happen. When you have power and everything is working, you don't want to switch too much. I didn't have any idea what had happened. I wasn't aware anything had taken place outside the spacecraft. I was visualizing something down in the electrical systems. CONRAD: We had a crew rule to handle electrical emergencies. Al did not do any switching without first telling me what he was going to do. When he told me that we had power on all buses, I remember making the comment to him not to do anything until we got through staging. BEAN: Yes, that is right. I didn't have any ideas anyway. I knew we had power, so I didn't want to make any changes. I figured we could fly into orbit just like that and that's exactly what we did. The ground came up a little bit later and said to put the fuel cells back on the line. I was a little hesitant about doing that, because I didn't understand that we had been hit by lightning. I gave it a go, and sure enough, things started working very well after that. CONRAD: Because I could see outside, I made the comment to them several times. I told the ground that I thought we had been hit by lightning. I was the only one that had any outside indications. Dick didn't note anything over his little hole in his center window. I was the only one who noticed anything and that was only the first time. I was aware that something external to the spacecraft had happened. I had the decided impression that I not only saw it, but felt it and heard it. BEAN: I think the one thing I should have done was put battery C on both buses. I don't think you're going to hurt yourself doing this. I would not have tried to reset the fuel cells or anything else any faster than when the ground called up, because everything was working fairly well and we were in a critical flight phase. I didn't want to take a chance of taking out a bus with a bad switch. GORDON: I think it was a smart decision. We've all learned that by arbitrarily switching the electrical system around, you can get yourself into more trouble. BEAN: You could lose the whole ballgame and we had the whole ballgame. We were in pretty good shape. CONRAD: I never considered any kind of an abort. The only concern that passed my mind was winding up in orbit with that dead spacecraft. As far as I could see, as long as Al said he had power on the buses and the COMM was good, we'd press on. We had a long time to go before we could do a MODE II and so the thought never crossed my mind about aborting at any point. I wanted to make sure we had enough time to psych it out. The main concern I had was getting through staging where we got the g levels back down again and we had a little more time to sort out what was going on.[/i]
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