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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 12-35 hopeless to try to maneuver around much with just it. But we didn’t have much gas in it and the tether wasn’t too long, and we couldn’t get in a lot of trouble. But the things that were important were getting the hatch open, getting the hatch closed, getting out, getting back in, the equipment that you needed, what the thermal protection was going to be, what the micrometeorite protection was going to be. Just the fact that we could go out and do that stuff was very important. And then probably the hairiest thing that happened to me in space was on that—on the EVA with our hatch. We’d had a problem with the hatch in the altitude chamber at McDonnell. We’d done this chamber test and, because we were going to open and close the hatch in vacuum, well, we thought, we’ll put that into the chamber test. So, right at the end of the test, we depressurized the spacecraft. You know, the altitude chamber’s just a big metal box; you can suck all the air out of it. So, we were in this vacuum, and we depressurized the spacecraft. The suits—we went through all the suit checks and stuff like that. Then we opened up the hatch. It was very heavy on the ground, so then we had some additional things that helped us get it open. Got it open, did some—oh, whatever. I don’t know. Went through some routine. Then we brought the hatch back down. And we went to lock it, and it wouldn’t lock. And we were towards the end of the test. We’d been in it, like, probably 10 or 12 hours by then; 14 hours. I don’t know what; it was a long, long time. And we were at—near the end of the whole test; and we just said, “Oh, we’ll just go through and do the rest of it in our suits,” pressurized in our suits. So, we did. And so, 30 or 40 minutes, the test was over; and we went in and they re-pressurized the chamber. We went on in and took a shower and did our debriefing; and then I went out to see the technician who was working on the hatch because it was a little concerning that you—when you moved the handle nothing happened to
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