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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 12-82 I think that NASA top management just ran out of adrenaline, and they—you know, NASA’s been accused of this a lot, and I think it’s true, is that they want to get on with the next program. But I think that there were certain people who got the manned space program going who were afraid we were going to kill somebody and it would jeopardize the rest of the program. Killing somebody on that—in that program was something that was so very highly likely that we, you know—you had to sort of accept that at the beginning. And to start worrying about it at the end, I think, was a abdication of your responsibility. And they did cut it from, you know, it went up to 20. And they cut 19 and 20 out I think it was, at one time. And then we had an 18 programmed. Then we cut the 18 out. I think a lot of people would have liked to cut— [Recorder turned off.] MCDIVITT: The contracted spacecraft on the lunar module went out to 25. The—one of the conceptual spacecraft went out to 25. The contracted for went out through Apollo 20. And when we started cutting the programs back, they didn’t cut from 20 back to 17. They cut either 20 to 19 out at one time, and then later 18. Or we cut 20 out and then 18 and 19. I don’t remember the order. But we cut two out at one time, and one out at another time to get us back to where we were. And quite frankly, I think that a lot of people would have just as soon seen us end the program in the 12, 13, 14 area and not do any of the other ones, because it was very dangerous. They didn’t want to lose a spacecraft. They didn’t want lose a crew. And they were afraid that it would jeopardize the future of the whole space program. But I don’t—I personally don’t think it would have. I think that a lot of people were—most of the people in
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