for 16 this is the OLM, the launch team wishes you good luck and God speed.

Well we appreciate that.
Well we can't do it without you.

T-minus one minute, T-minus one minute, T-minus one minute and counting. Now moving into the final minute of the count. We'll be standing by to for the switch over to internal power. Switch over taking place at this time going on internal power. T-minus 45 seconds and counting.

Guidance align just announced by John Young that will be the last action taken by the crew aboard the spacecraft. T-minus 35 and counting. Count down continuing to go well T-minus 30.
T-minus 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, guidance released, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, We have ignition sequence start. 5, 4, The engine's now building up to 7.7 million pounds of thrust. We have a launch commit and we have a liftoff. The swing arm is moving back. We've cleared the tower.
Roger, cleared the tower.
Houston is now controlling.
All you have good thrust in all five. Roger.
Pitch and roll program started, Deke.
Roger.
16 now maneuvering to its proper flight path attitude. Mark 27 seconds.
Stand by for our one bravo.
Roger, Mark. One bravo.

There are feet wet now 16.
Roger.
That call up from CapCom Gordon Fullerton says Apollo 16 now capable of water landing, mark 1 minute 12 seconds coming up on point of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle.
Mark 1 minute 41 seconds.
Pass through Max Q, still looking good. through Max Q and everything looks good.

Mission control center Houston, a flight director Gene Kranz now going around the room for a go-no-go for TLI. We'll stand by.

Houston, your go for TLI.
Roger, go for TLI.

16 Houston, we're about LOS to North, we're handing over to our right. We'll watch the booster for you. Spacecraft all yours.
Too much.
Booster systems engineer reports ignition on the third stage. The thrust looks good he says.

16, we're showing good thrust on the S4B.
Roger.
Through Orion 3 now, burn time is as predicted, 5:43. Everything looks good.

It looks like Orion has hanging in there pretty well. She looks great.
The same to us.
But what happened, Houston?
Roger, looks like a real smooth joint.

Okay, we're in capture there Houston.
Roger.
Deke, Houston, we're hard docked.
Roger, John, we're looking to command.

1670 pictures started going to the burn attitude now.
Your goal for LOI.
Roger, go for LOI.

This is Apollo control, less than a minute away from acquisition of signal for 16, and it appears at least from the timing that we have indeed had a successful lunar orbit insertion burn. We'll stand by here for the first words from the crew and the burn report, so leave the lineup now.

Well Houston, sleep 16 has arrived.
Roger, 16, got you line clear.
Okay, uh, beat uh, super double fantastic burn.

flying at Houston clearance.
Roger, 59 gem and we're sailing free.

Okay Jim, it was a rough ride but we got it done. Uh, the only thing that's bad is I got a handful of orange juice.
Okay Jim, we have you now on uh, this terrible, how do you read over?
Oh I read you loud and clear you sound beautiful.
Yeah Jim, uh, going to great bags uh, playing it's pretty hard to see things when you got a helmet full of orange juice, and zero gravity, something like that orange juice.
You gotta drink fast.
You really do.

Apollo control 98 hours 5 minutes ground elapsed time into the mission of Apollo 16, 3 minutes and 50 seconds to acquisition of signal, as the two spacecraft come around the moon on the 13th lunar revolution, some 29 minutes 24 seconds until ignition for the landing phase, 19 seconds away from predicted acquisition, as Orion and Casper come around the moon and Casper meanwhile, we'll have circularized.
Some 5 minutes 47 seconds from ignition. Should have acquisition now, we're standing by for that. Switch on to airground. Houston, I'm ready for you. We want you to stay with the Omni.

Ryan, this is Houston, how do you read?
Roger, I hear you loud and clear over.
Ryan, this is Houston, I read you rather weak, how do you read us?
Alright, your 55, the command modules are docking, sir, and uh, we're standing by uh, for y'all's decision with them over.
Roger, and we're ready for high bit right now.
Copy, no sir.
We copied no sir.
Hey, you have high bit rate.
Okay, anticipate a wave off for uh this one, set you up for the next one.
Okay.
And Kim's right up from about uh 600 feet, but we have a visual on it.
Okay, we copy.
Take right where you are, John you come. Come some fairly good.
Okay.
Ryan will you confirm forward Omni?
That's what you have for Omni.

Lunar module Orion has been advised of the possibility of a wave off for landing on this revolution. It seems that the circularization burn on the command module Casper was unsuccessful.

This is Apollo control 101 hours 50 minutes ground elapsed time and the Manned Spacecraft Center Director Dr. Christopher C. Kraft Jr. just came back into the control center after having attended a meeting by management people in one of the back rooms and the situation is go for landing. To reaffirm we do have a go for landing, revolution number 16. That decision will be passed up to the crew at acquisition of signal some 7 minutes from now as they come around the front side of the moon.

The new maneuver timelines will be read up to the crew for circularization by the command module and power descent and landing by Lunar Module Orion. Repeat again we are go for landing.

64, it's 8200 pro over.
Switch over.
And here it is, Gater, Lone Star. Over.
Aha, I mean the thing Charlie. Okay, 40 degree 38 degrees, helmet on dot, North Ray.
Okay.
Looks like we going to be able to make it John, there's not too many blocks up there.
Ryan your go for landing.
Hey, uh 4000 feet forward you go for landing.
42 LPD.
Okay 3900 feet, Okay to the south Charlie.
Okay.
It's in.
Okay 42 41 LPD, 3000 feet on profile. Okay there is uh we're coming right down uh, going to be a little past uh.
41 LPD.
Okay.
4000 feet 60 on profile.
Okay.
42 LPD, couple of more in. 1400 feet, 44 down, looking good.
Out of 1000 feet, right on profile. 54 LPD, dropping out the bottom now. 800 feet, 30 down.
Hey Houston, we're going to be just a little long.
Roger.
But we're just now beam uh double spot.
Copy.
23 22 down at 500 feet.
Big blocks over here to the left, guys.
300 feet, 15 down.
Okay.
Hey go over turning.
Okay.
Fuel is good 10%, that comes as shadow. 200 feet, 11 down, give me a couple switch ups.
Five down at 130 feet.
Two forward.
Slow off, drifting, looking good.
Perfect flight over here John, a couple of big boulders. Not too bad.
Okay 80 feet, down at 3. Looking super. There's dust.
Okay down at 3. 50 feet down at 4, give me one quick up.
You're backing up slightly.
A2 down, standby for contact.
Come a little down, you level off.
Center on down.
76%, plenty fat.
Contact, soft.
Oh, Engine are.
Wow, call that.
Look at that.
Engine are, PCV is command over.
Okay 413, yeah. Check the app.
And we don't have to walk far to pick up rocks, because we are right on.
Open. Hold, open. Close. Oh Orion is finally here Houston and. 50 and I can look right out to the left and see Go aft Omni Orion. Double spot we're about uh.
Okay you got it.
Okay, we are forward to the north of forward and to the north of double spot, I would guess about 200 meters to the north and maybe 150 meters to the west. I'm afraid but not flatlands though Houston.
Roger, I copy 200 meters north of the double spot and about 150 meters west.
Yeah and I can see the I could see all the way to the ground, just like flying the LTV, piece of cake.

Fantastic! Percy Precision is playing it one on the plains of Descartes.
Well, rumors talk, I better go easy on this landing radar service breaker huh.
Yeah, don't, okay that's the right one.
The camera is off.
Aha.
Man, it sure ain't flat John.
Oh, there's that ridge to the north.
Yep, sure is.
All we got to do is jump out the hatch and we got plenty of rocks.
Houston, uh boy, it sure looks like you can make uh, I see uh, ground crater from here, I can see uh Ray crater from here.
Can it boy.
Almost had apoplexy at program alarm, but that's your radar breaker.
Charlie's Charlie's about that. Charlie's got nothing but a ridge to look at.
Sound is beautiful John, wish I were there.
Is there a ridge out There's one is the ridge out in front of us too John.
Yeah, there's a ridge in front of us, one to the side of us. My guess is that we're in a subdued old crater that's got a lot more craters.
Roger we copy. A neat place.
Hey DM this ridge in front of us uh does look like a subdued crater and it maybe is a raised rim about 50 meters in front of us, about uh oh uh 4 5 meters tall. That's about 30 or 40% of the surface is covered with boulders uh that are uh maybe a half a meter in size, uh on out in front of us and to the right, where we landed there were Hey man Charlie. We got to stay Houston.
Stand by.
Everything's looking okay up to this point John, we'll give you a final word here shortly.

Are you taking an ALSEP?
Yeah, yeah, Houston, I'm standing out on the ALSEP. Just started looking around here. My golly, what a view. Can you see that big boulder Charlie was talking about? My far back is it is to take the whole ETV and put a new step here, Charlie. Okay. 
Got the whole point. Yeehaw! Hurry up. I'm arriving.

Hey, you are mysterious and unknown decay on the plains. Apollo 16 is going to change your image.
Okay. Recorder's off. 5-7 station on. Utility force are off. Side panels are off. Yeah, I'll come back. That's fantastic. Oh, that's first breath on the lunar surface. It's super, Tony.
Oh, get this every night. No. You get this day. 
Good lord, look at that hole we almost landed in. Well, here's the here we are. Sleepy little they guard.

Okay, there goes the front wheel. And the back end there. Jess is released too, I think. Hey, the rover is within two feet of being on the ground. Auto machine. I believe we are a little up slope here. I got the feeling if I let go of it, it will roll under the vehicle. Yeah, I did, too. Okay, there we go, John. It's on the ground, Houston. Outstanding. There you go. Let's fix this baby up and turn it around. Okay. Nice and proud to be an American, Tony. Experience like this.

And who? John, this is so good. You can't believe it. I believe it, Charlie. It's ringing, John. Look at it, John. He got all your steering. It's great. Oh, this is going to be some kind of different ride. The rover is running, Houston. He tried through a few of these little creators here. It's tough, Charlie. You know it's hard to get It's hard to get to where you go from here. No, you shoot to the left row. Hell, there's no leader getting, Charlie. Yeah, your steering's off. Turn. Turn left your steering.
I think that the best place here for the ALSEP is to the left 11:00 position, and I'll let John give you the range. But it's up on the top of a dome, and it's fairly flat, and I think John can drive about 290 maybe 28 down over a ridge for the for the bumper. That sounds good, Charlie, and John, it's 266. Hey, run your rear steer in, John. That's where you want to put the ALSEP? This is the level as spot I could find. But hey, Houston, there is no place that's not got craig and things around it. Okay, we'll start drilling right here, then. Okay, and we need about 30 ft between that heat flow hole and the ALSEP. 
Understand.
While Duke is getting ready to drill these holes, uh John Young is setting up the central station and the passive seismic experiment.
Okay, you guys, ready? Here we go. Mark. 
Hey, that beauty is going right in. Outstanding.
John, do you remember where the bubble was on the top of the PSC? 
In the middle.
Very good.
Should have known. 
They said it we couldn't come back unless we put the bubble in the middle. Well, I was afraid of this. What's wrong? 
Think force so hard that pulled a sample space. Yeah. Can't you realign it later? Yeah, that's the part. That's that was my problem with the RTG package. I Charlie, what? Something happened here. What happened? I don't know. 
A line is pulled off. Oh. What is that? What line is it? Is that the the heat flow? Pull it off. I don't know how that happened. So we understand that the cable came off the connector and we got just a free end of the cable, is that right? That's right. The KTLSM is on the surface and the more to pull a separate station. Okay. Central station is erected. Okay. Hey, Charlie, take it easy. Let's rest for a minute. Okay, how's your heartbeat? I'm up to about 140. This is the world's greatest place to put poor out set. I'll tell you that. Uh-huh, uh Charlie levels? And yeah. On that hole there, instead of putting the rammer jammer down, I guess we'd like to put the second heat flow probe down the hole and then measure it with the rammer jammer how far it went and just leave the heat flow probe in the hole. Tony, I need to know the way we can fix that heat flow. That looks pretty bad there, Charlie. Uh we suggest that you just not worry about it there. You've got a good ALSEP, and uh the other experiments are working fine.
At this point, the crew has switched off the television. Uh, they're prepared now to uh drive across to uh a flagged crater, the first stop on their geology traverse on this uh extravehicular activity. Uh, that crater is about uh uh 1.3 kilometers distant from the uh ALSEP site. Uh, it'll take them about 11 minutes to get there.

Okay, Tony, looking off to the northwest there, you can see uh uh see South Ray Crater with just tremendous amount of blocks on it with some black streaks. And here we go, in 274, John. And it's going to be a piece of cake taking pictures from here, Tony. The big crater, there's about a 10 meter off to your left there, John. I see it, but a Hey, DP went over here. Four clicks an hour, Tony, and uh I hit my arm. Excuse me. Coming up at the big craters. Oh man. Okay, at 043 at 210, it's just beyond the ALSEP. The two uh twin craters, the biggest one's to the uh north, got blocks in it uh up to 6 50 cm. and it's about 5 m deep. It's driving, John, pretty easy. 
That's good. Man, we can just go, babe. I'm really cinched into this moose. How about that? I don't know with these holes that we are to do there. This seatbelt is great. And we are yikes. That's spooked. How big is spooked, 300 m? There it is. There's the buster. I mean there's flag. We're here. You you did it. It sure is. We are here. Wow, congratulations. 1.0 is uh and we stop uh John uh about uh 40 m from plumb. 
As plumb.
Yeah.
Okay, we're going up to where it's more cobbly uh Tony's to get the rake sample. It's pretty smooth right here. Okay, the rake sample should be one uh crater diameter away from plumb. And it doesn't have to be uh Right. Doesn't have to be too cobbly there. And here comes the Bopsi twins. John, look look at that footprint. Look underneath that regolith when you kick that up a meter a centimeter or so under. It's white. Absolutely white right here. I'll take your old thing and do a exploratory there for a while. Oh, here he comes folks. He's got the hammer out and you couldn't resist. 
I don't know if this will work or not, but it couldn't pick a better spot. 
There we go. He's going to do it. There's a piece 
Hey, hold you down a little bit. Hot dog, you get it. It's a very friable rock, apparently, Houston. Okay, outstanding.

Absolute great suspension system. You can see some of the things we've run through and this baby just mounts it right out and keeps right on going. We have his 196 at uh .5. We ought to see the old beauty when we topped the rise here. John just run over a basketball size rock with the right wheel and just There she is, John. Oh, that's good news. We about on top of a ridge, maybe 30 meter maybe 30 m above and that nav system has us pointed right at the lunar module. Look at that. I can't believe that big hole there. I just can't believe it right behind. That might be just due to the down slope, though. Don't run into our hole. 
Okay, I'm heading home again. 50 m. 
Want to park this thing used to 50 m now. To the northeast. 
To the northwest. Rog. and up over this little ridge here. Right by that big rock. Okay, Tony, we're stopped. We're just about directly north of the ALSEP. Man Tony, you don't know how much fun this has been. Okay, Charlie. Okay, I'm going to retrieve the cosmic ray now. Okay.
Cosmic ray detector is backed. And as near as I can tell, there's no thumbprints on it. Okay. 
Did you get the big rock out of the footpad? 
Yeah. Get old Muly out of there. Okay, I'm going to park the rover, Houston. I think we got everything out of there there is to get. Okay. It sounds good. We think so, too. Boy, Houston, the beauty of this place is absolutely incredible. Hello, Ryan. This is Houston. 
Hi, there, we lost you for a while. Yeah, we sure did. We're getting kind of back on the timeline. We'd like to hustle you on in there. All right, Charlie's coming through the door right now, Houston. Okay and you've got the UV to get, yeah? That's right. That's the last of the old orange juice, John. Just finished. 
Okay, we copy that. 
Hey, fellas, you have uh 245 lb of rocks.

Director Gene Kranz, now taking a status check with his team, go no go for ascent standing by. Ryan, you're a go for lift off. Houston, that therm is coming off. Roger. Two light.
Roger.
Wait one minute 30 seconds till ignition.
Mark minus 1 minute, 30 seconds.
In confirms a good ignition start on Orion. 
Pitch over is on time.
Pitch over 53 degrees on time. 
Whatever, whatever ride, whatever ride. 3 seconds, elevation rise rate coming up as predicted, 1,563 feet above the lunar surface. 
Ryan, you're good at one.
Roger, looking good here.
Standing by as uh Orion and Casper go through their final paces uh before docking.
Hey, I'm approaching.
Your attitude looks good.
Tell you when we have capture.
There we go.
Leave we're there.
Casper captured Orion. He got everything all locked on. 
So Paulo control Houston. Uh we read docking at the 177 hours 53 minutes uh ground elapsed time.

Oh, we just gotten the call of acquisition of signal, right on time. Now we should be getting the first words from the crew.
The team needs some calling.
Roger. Just by coming up live standard that our work is coming up. Just going to wait from it, might. Nothing worked in the static and the burn was completely nominal.
How was John Young reporting the burn was completely nominal? 
That we're uh doing it just like old 97, really moving down the track. Almost as fast as John was driving that rover yesterday. It's like you can't get these new guys to wait for the winners. 
The view is just beautiful. 
During the control center, the flight dynamics officer has just confirmed uh John Young's report from on board the spacecraft uh that that burn was almost precisely as planned. uh with a very small midcourse correction requirement showing up this time.

16, computer's yours. And I've got your recovered information. The yours is good. 2000 ft scattered, 10 miles, out the east at 10 knots, 3 feet wave height. Your recovery ship is Ticonderoga and the aircraft is recovery. We understand, thank you much. Last you beginning to build up now. Quite rapidly, now reading 19,024 ft per second.

Apollo 16.

Apollo 16, this is Houston. Welcome back.

Apollo Control, Houston. An observer on the Ticonderoga estimates the distance from the ship at about 1 mile.

Splashdown, splash.

The Command Module is stable 2, stable 2.

All 3 main parachutes are in the water.

This is Apollo Control, Houston. We copy time of splashdown as 290 hours 37 minutes 6 seconds ground elapsed time.