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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.
“Cooper”3 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-33 that your Gemini IV mission also had the first U.S. spacewalk. At what point did that get added to the flight plan for that mission? MCDIVITT: It was quite late. The flight was originally set up to be a—pretty much of a medical experiment. Long-duration flight. We’d never had a flight longer than 30 hours, or whatever it was, that Gordo [Cooper] flew. And there weren’t any Russian flights up till that time that were very long either. So, it was—there was a lot of medical experimentation on it. Tests and other assorted junk. And then a few scientific experiments. But mostly it was the four days, whether we were going to make it or not. And then there was—then there started being more and more talk about going outside the spacecraft. So probably, maybe two months or so before the flight we finally made a decision—well, we did a little fiddling around first to see if we could fit things in and what was it that we needed. And so, finally about two months or maybe even less, we decided we’d actually do it. And so, we started working on all the things we needed. I’m out of a very tall sitting height, 99 percentile or something. So, when we all of a sudden had to close the hatch in a pressurized condition, we had to redesign the seats. As a matter of fact, they had to redesign the seat in the Gemini so I could fit in it on the ground prior to launch. They had a big seat pan that we sat on. And it was okay for little guys like Gus, but it wasn’t any good for tall people! And so, we had already redesigned the seat pack once. And then when we were going to have to close the hatch in an inflated condition, then we had to redesign it again. Because we weren’t sure who was going to go out and a few things like that. Then we started working on the air table down in a locked-up room in the—I think on the first floor of the astronaut building, Building 4. And we worked out the little handgun and how we’d use that and stuff. And unfortunately, we were beaten by the Russians by,
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