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This is a NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of astronaut James A. McDivitt, interviewed by Doug Ward at Elk Lake, Michigan, on 29 June 1999. McDivitt talks about flying F-86s in Korea, test pilot work at Edwards, and his first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He also covers turning down Dyna-soar, joining NASA in 1962 and learning to be an Apollo Program Manager. He describes the Change Board and says decisions were not second-guessed.
“Nevers”36 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-100 WARD: I think all your best answers have come to questions I didn’t ask. I’ll ask you if you have any more good answers then. MCDIVITT: Well, let’s see. There was one other thing I wanted to talk to you a little bit about. What the heck was it now? Well, let’s see. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I thought was the best thing and the most fun thing and probably the best decisions that we made— WARD: Yeah. MCDIVITT: —when I worked for NASA, that were NASA-related decisions. Probably opening up the hatch on Gemini IV was a damn good decision. Because if we hadn’t done that, we would have delayed all the EVA stuff and we might not have found out what we needed to find out early enough to affect us on the later missions. When we were flying Apollo 9 and Rusty got sick, he was supposed to do the EVA. And it was obvious that he couldn’t even lie still, let alone do an EVA in the first early days. And so, I had called down and told them that we were going to scrub the EVA, with Rusty at least. And that I—if I thought he was well enough to get in a pressure suit and just stay stationary, that I’d do the EVA. An abbreviated part of it. And so, we just sort of decided that’s what we’d do. And then the next day, when we got around to doing it and I was watching him getting dressed and getting ready, he looked better. And I kept watching him. He looked like he was getting a little bit better. And so, finally I asked him how he felt. He said, “I—”he didn’t feel perfect, but he felt a lot better than he had been feeling. And so, I watched him for another while and finally said, “You think you can do that EVA?” And he said, “Yeah, I think I can.” I said, “Okay. It’s back on. We’ll do it.” So, I called down and said, “We’re going to do the EVA with Rusty.” And
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