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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.
“Mission Control”9 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-93 MCDIVITT: Oh my God! That’s terrible. You know, he wrote a really great article about mothering the astronauts after their flights. I’ve got it around here someplace. I don’t even know what magazine it was in. But a great, great article. A good guy. I’m sorry. Well, go ahead. WARD: Well, Brian recalled going to a press conference, and it may’ve been the one that you were reflecting on, and he said that it was so beneficial in his view that the press had been in the Control Center when this happened, had been listening to the flight director’s loop, because he said it allowed one of the participants, and he couldn’t remember which one to begin his remarks by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, you know everything we know. The only thing you don’t know is what we’re going to do about it. And that’s what we’re here to tell you.” And it, in his view, had a tremendous amount to do with garnering public support at the time. MCDIVITT: Yeah, yeah. Well, it was an open program. And you know, sometimes the— you didn’t want to get the press involved in the decision-making process. You wanted them to know the decision but not the decision-making process, because everybody wasn’t always in agreement to start with on what should we do about what you should do. And so, you know, we had to coalesce this thing and then either—one of the flight directors had to make the decision or I had to make the decision, depending on whose bailiwick it fell into. But we had to do that. I remember one time I had made a decision. It had to do with a hatch. I don’t remember what it was. And Rocco [Petrone] said, “I just got a phone call from the White House; and the President wants a memo or something on that.” “Oh my God!” You know, it was like two or three in the morning. So, I called my secretary up and said, “Suzie,
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