“Nevers”36 pages
- p. 1 …the Air Force—I’d
never been in an airplane. Never been off the ground. I…
- p. 3 …Having never been in
an airplane and no idea what it was all about, and I…
- p. 7 …was that the Dyna-
soar Program would never fly. The spacecraft was wrong. They were trying…
- p. 8 …You know, it was a lifting
body concept and the landing thing, but it never flew…
- p. 10 …I wanted you to know that I realize that I should never have threatened you like…
- p. 14 …As soon as we got selected, we were told that, “No more uniforms.” We were never…
- p. 19 …T-38s never had much fuel, and you
- p. 20 …And some—you
know, we didn’t have everything available in the spacecraft, so never was…
- p. 22 …It never existed then. So, there was always disagreement amongst the
astronauts about what the relationship…
- p. 28 …So, there’s
always the thought that, well, maybe he was never going to come around…
- p. 33 …We’d never had a flight longer than 30 hours, or
whatever it was, that Gordo…
- p. 38 …You know, he
never got sick flying airplanes and the crazy motions that we did. And…
- p. 39 …I mean, we would’ve never
gotten to the Moon when we did if we’d…
- p. 40 …He never got
involved in the mission, because the one in the Mission Control Center in…
- p. 43 …Fortunately, we never had to try that!
WARD: Do you think the nature of the ejection…
- p. 45 …And I never did see it again.
- p. 46 …I never did see it until years and years later, when I started getting all
these…
- p. 49 …So, you never see more than one light, or hardly ever see more than one light…
- p. 50 …were able to overcome these problems
and never get down to where we were on our…
- p. 54 …and backup crews did except they were never going to fly. So, they helped us test…
- p. 57 …And some of the North American people maintain to this
day that they were never told…
- p. 59 …And then I never
dealt with him again; and finally he got fired. So, I don…
- p. 64 …We never did find them. You know, we never knew exactly what caused the fire;
so…
- p. 65 …It’s just impossible!” We were never going to get the weight on the lunar module…
- p. 69 …Throttled the engine up
and down through regimes it probably was never throttled at when it…
- p. 74 …Well, that was never my attitude. That was never my attitude. As
a matter of fact…
- p. 83 …It never occurred except for the fire, but I
know I personally expected a lot of…
- p. 85 …I threw him out of my
office and I said, “You are never, ever to come…
- p. 86 …I ran
the Apollo Spacecraft Program I never had a problem with money. We were always…
- p. 87 …And I’d never played baseball in my life!
- p. 91 …I thought that we should never interfere in any way with
the flight crews on a…
- p. 94 …And I think that we would’ve never had an Apollo Program if Rocco hadn’t…
- p. 99 …I never did get my Major’s on my shoulders. He called
Ed up, promoted Ed…
- p. 105 …said who was recommending it but they never said who was
opposed to it. So, we…
- p. 108 …He never second-guessed me. He had a boss. The
Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight and…
- p. 109 …And fortunately, my bosses were
such that they never second-guessed what I did. They just…
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt
29 June 1999 12-29
test—where we actually oscillated the engine while we were firing it, and everything held
together. So, I knew then that it was okay; but it had to—we had to make sure that it was
steering. If the nozzle or the motion it went through was like—could be like this [gestures].
If it went from side-to-side like that, that meant it wasn’t doing any steering at all. But if it
went off of an angle over here and just oscillated a little bit about that angle and about this
angle and about this angle, it would steer the spacecraft. So, we had to determine that.
And we found after some test and very quick tests that, indeed, it would control even
though it was oscillating like that. But if we had found that it wouldn’t control, there was no
doubt in my mind what my decision would have been. The Mission Rules said “come
home,” and that’s exactly what we would have done, was to come home. And all the testing
I had the guys doing was to allow me to find out whether we were going to control or not
control. The decision after that was, well, at least the come home decision was easy. Staying
there was still a little difficult! But it—but that was how those Mission Rules worked.
WARD: Before we get out of Gemini, I want to ask you a trivia question.
MCDIVITT: Sure.
WARD: What did Jim McDivitt, Frank Borman, and Neil Armstrong all have in common?
MCDIVITT: I have no idea.
WARD: And if my research is correct, you were—in the history of NASA, you were the three
rookie commanders. You were given—your first flight assignment was a command
assignment.