“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 12-77
other meetings. I said, “Well, you can sit in there under one set of rules; and that is, you
don’t ask any questions. You don’t make a peep! You sit there. This is a meeting of the
workers; and if you’re going to start talking, you’re going to interrupt it.” So, he said, “That
sounds fair enough.” And so, I’d go over there and I’d sit and listen. And we got in there
one day and one of the Air Force Generals started asking a question, and then another NASA
Center Director started asking questions. I got up and I went over and got this guy from
Lewis. We went outside, and I said, “Get your damn team out of there! I told you what the
rules were. You’re interrupting it.” “You can’t tell me what to do.” I said, “Like hell I
can’t! Now you get them out of there!”
So, anyway, he went and got his team out. And I said, “You’re welcome to come to
my management team meeting and ask all the questions you want.” But in crucial times like
that, you can’t have a bunch of interlopers interrupting what the hell’s really going on. So,
anyway, that was this—we had a different management style. George [Low] was not quite
so bad!
WARD: More diplomatic.
MCDIVITT: He was more diplomatic, I guess. Well, we had a lot to do and we needed to get
it done.
WARD: Getting back to the Apollo science program: At least my own perception is that
Apollo didn’t begin as a scientific program the way [President John F.] Kennedy outlined it,
sold it to the public, to the Congress. It was not perceived as a science program. And yet
after Apollo 11, that really became the strong thrust of it.