James A. McDivitt oral history (Doug Ward)

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