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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 12-79 landed there, I saw him one day and I said, “Hey, kind of missed that one, didn’t you?” “No, no, no! I was right! I was right!” I said, “Right, like hell!” I said, “The dust was only about like that.” “Yeah, but there was dust there,” he said. “I just missed it by a little bit!” He had the dust—he had the lunar module disappearing in the dust! 200 ft of it! WARD: Was there any concern he might have been right when [Edwin E. “Buzz”] Aldrin [Jr.] I think it was, called out, as they were about 10 or 20 ft above the Moon, that they were kicking up some dust before landing? MCDIVITT: Well, everybody—I mean, you know, we weren’t exactly in the dark about what the Moon looked like because we had, I think it was the Surveyor spacecraft that took pretty good photos of it. And we had this other spacecraft that flew right straight into the Moon. I remember being out at JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Pasadena, California] the first crash that they had on the Moon, where the [Ranger] spacecraft flew right straight in the Moon. It took a picture, transmitted it; took another picture, transmitted it; took another picture and transmitted it. And the last picture, you know, was only half a picture because it hit the Moon. And you could—I mean, you could guess that it wasn’t really deep. And then we had this other one that actually landed on the Moon that had a scoop on it [Surveyor]. So, we knew that there wasn’t a lot of dust. WARD: You were pretty confident the lunar module wasn’t going to get buried in it. MCDIVITT: Yeah. That was not one of my big concerns. WARD: Do you think people today remember or appreciate just how difficult and dangerous Apollo really was?
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