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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.
“Jet Propulsion Laboratory”1 page
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-87 $50 million.” I said, “Well, hang on a minute.” So, I put him on hold. And I got Rocco, and I said, “Rocco, I know we got $50 million.” He says, “I think that’ll do it.” I said, “Okay, we’ll transfer it over to you this afternoon.” We hung up. I called the other guy and I said, “Transfer it to Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] this afternoon.” We did. And we got things done. Now, you know, if you tried to do that today, Rocco would’ve been in jail. I would’ve been in jail. Our—my Controller would’ve been in jail. Dick Smith would’ve been in jail. And their—his Program Control guy would’ve been in jail, too, because we were moving money around. It wasn’t authorized exactly in the right way. WARD: But by doing that, you kept 300,000 people productively employed and moving on schedule. MCDIVITT: Oh yeah. And I think that we saved $500 million. I mean—but, see, this—they don’t do it like that today. And the relationship between the contractors and NASA was really quite good. I remember after the fire, people were really down in the mouth out at North American. I mean, they were really, really—they really took that to heart. I don’t think the people at NASA felt that way. I mean, thought that North American was going to have—but those people were really, really upset. So, we got involved in a baseball game. Dick [Richard F.] Gordon [Jr.], who was on my backup crew, got that damn thing started. But anyway, the Vice President of Manufacturing for Rockwell—for North American in those days and Dick were always challenging each other to sports. So, finally we decided we were going to have a baseball game. Well, we had nine guys. We had the prime crew, backup crew, and the support crew. I mean, that’s a baseball team. And then they had—I thought they could gen up a few guys. And I’d never played baseball in my life!
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