JUNE 2019. DISCOVER 39
JAMES MCDIVITT
APOLLO 9, MARCH 1969
APOLLO MANAGER, 1969-1972
INTERVIEWED IN SEPTEMBER 2018; NOW AGE 88
ON MAKING IT HAPPEN
“Apollo had the backing of the American
people. So it was fully funded. And during
the time that I ran the program, I didn’t
have any need for extra money. The
money that was allocated was sufficient
to do the program, unlike later programs
where NASA asked for less than it took
to run a program, and consequently they
were always stretched for dough.
“The NASA administrator during the
time of the Apollo stuff asked the engi-
neers how much they thought it would
cost, and they came back with a figure
around $20 billion. He went to Congress
and said it was going to cost $40 billion.
Congress approved it, and we had enough
money to do it right. Now, later on, being
on the outside, it looks like they go in and
ask for what they think they can get, not
what they think they need.”
ON KEEPING HIS HEAD
“My way of dealing with
susceptibility to motion sickness
on Apollo 9 was to say, OK, I’m the
lunar module pilot. I don’t have to
move around in the first couple of
days of the mission; that’s up to
Jim [McDivitt] and Dave [Scott]. I’m
going to sit here, and I’m not going
to move my head a lot, and I’m
going to adapt without getting sick.
“That was a great scheme
except that after I got sick, we
learned that you don’t adapt
without moving your head. All I
did was delay my adaptation to
the worst possible time. It was
absolutely perverse. But I thought
I was doing the right thing, and
nobody knew enough to tell me
not to. The doctors didn’t know
diddly squat, and the motion
sickness pills don’t work worth
a damn.”RUSSELL “RUSTY” SCHWEICKART
APOLLO 9, MARCH 1969
INTERVIEWED IN OCTOBER 2018; NOW AGE 83ON LUNCH BREAKS
“You begin doing some of the final testing on the vehicle itself stacked
on the launchpad. Now, you’re no longer in the Rockwell factory or the
Grumman factory. But you’re now
on the launchpad, on top of that big
Saturn V, 360-some feet in the air,
and the gantry all around.
“You take a break for lunch and
all of the guys in the control room
have taken a break for lunch, and
you’ve got a brown bag there with
your sandwiches and your drink.
Regularly, I — and everybody else,
I’m sure, that was on a crew — would
walk out along the steel structure of
the gantry up at that 360-foot level,
and you would sit out dangling your
legs over the ocean, looking out
over the ocean, the highest thing
in Florida — in more ways than
one, probably. But those kinds of
moments are the things that are so
personal and stay with you. They’re
just wonderful moments.”ON UPGRADES
“The Gemini [capsule, below] was very, very tight.
You couldn’t stretch all the way out. You were in
the seat, and that’s where you stayed. In Apollo,
we’d get up and float around, so it was much more
comfortable. Yeah, it was a much bigger spacecraft.”