“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 12-48
Mylar balloon up there, I forget what they called it, Echo, I think it was. They wanted to
know if we wanted to see Echo. It was out at, like, 800 or 900 miles. And we said, “Oh
yeah, let’s look at that.” So, we got the spacecraft oriented around in a certain direction, and
I had a six-power telescope in the left-hand window of the spacecraft. And Dave [David R.]
Scott went down in the lower equipment bay. He had to use a 28-power telescope down
there. And so, they finally said, “Okay, it’s coming up in the sight now.” And Dave said,
“Oh yeah, I’ve got it.” He had the telescope tracking it with the computer. And so, I looked
out there and, “Oh yeah,” I said, “I can see it.” And Rusty was sitting over in the other
window and he didn’t have anything, and he said, “Oh yeah, I can see it, too!” So, we were
looking at this thing probably near 1,000 miles.
And later on in the flight, they wanted to know if we could—if we wanted to see the
ascent stage, which we put in this huge orbit around the Earth. And it was coming down, and
it was some thousands of miles away. They wanted to know if we wanted to see it. “Oh
yeah, let’s see if we can find it.” So, we put the orbit into our computer and had our
telescope track it. And we could see it. Now, we were using a 28-powered telescope, but we
could see it out at some number of thousand of miles.
WARD: This was your Apollo booster?
MCDIVITT: Yeah. It actually was the ascent stage of the lunar module.
WARD: Oh, okay.
MCDIVITT: Which was not very large.
WARD: When you were on your Gemini flight, one of the other objectives was to rendezvous