Documents / Document

James A. McDivitt oral history (Doug Ward)

NASA Johnson Space Center · 1999-06-29 · 110 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 4 …And I had an assignment to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Ohio into a Project Office…
  • p. 14 …I moved from a house—a really nice house at Edwards Air Force Base into the…
  • p. 96 …It went—and just as I was leaving Edwards Air Force Base and becoming a NASA…
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt
29 June 1999 12-110
we could replicate that. And then if we could, take a quick look; and when he came around
the lunar edge again, then we’d look for five minutes. Then we had 30 minutes or so to think
about it. And then once we made that decision, that was it. But we couldn’t keep doing
these tests. Now, if we’d had three days to do the test, I’m sure we could have figured it out
to a higher degree of confidence than what we had done. But at least we were lucky enough
to figure out the right answer.
WARD: Okay.
[End of Interview]

About this file

Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 110 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.