[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Made it there three times. Over two years I made it there three times.

[Assistant] Was it anything like you expected?

[User] Oh, yes. St. Petersburg is a fabulous city. I'd read a lot about it. Very European. At the center of the city they've preserved all the historical stuff, so you can go to the Hermitage, which has been there for 300 years, or 200 years. I mean, the artwork is unbelievable, the palaces are incredible, the churches are something. You know, you have to see them to believe them. It's a fabulous city. I'd love to go back again; I'm sure I will.

[Assistant] And how did that differ from where you were living?

[User] In Moscow? Moscow is really like just any major city in the West now. I mean, it's got crime, it's got pollution--not graffiti, though. There's not really any graffiti. But it's a big city. It's high-rise apartment complexes everywhere. But there are still some historical places, obviously. You've got the Kremlin, St. Basil's, things like that, but most of those just tend to be in a few isolated areas, and the rest of it's all high-rise apartment buildings and ads and billboards and things like that, and traffic, non-stop traffic. You think Houston's got bad traffic problems. You should see Moscow.\n\n St. Petersburg, at least in the center, they've tried to preserve a little more of the older European heritage, so there's no apartment buildings in downtown St. Petersburg. It's just the more historical areas. There are some somewhat modern building, built in the 1800s, but there's no massive apartment complexes. Those are a little further out in the city. A lot more historical stuff is all centered in St. Petersburg. The palaces and the cathedrals all tend to be together. It's a little different.

[Assistant] The times that you spent in the TsUP, how were they different from the times you spent in mission control here?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The one I worked with the most would have been Victor Blagov. He was the deputy flight director of mission control. He's the one who I tended to interface with the most when we needed an agreement on something. He's a very sharp guy. He could easily have been a flight director here on our side, very smart guy, very sharp. He knows the space business very well, and hopefully we'll get to work with him on Phase Two. I haven't heard whether he's going to retire yet or not. I'm curious.

[Assistant] You had a very long and interesting stay with them since you started out in '95, and basically you worked on three flights over there.

[User] Three of our flights and trained during another. My cumulative time, all my trips together, is just about a year in Moscow, just under a year, I think.

[Assistant] Is there a highlight during that time?

[User] A specific highlight. Hmm.

[Assistant] You can say more than one. I was just wondering if something stands out more than others.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Three of our flights and trained during another. My cumulative time, all my trips together, is just about a year in Moscow, just under a year, I think.

[Assistant] Is there a highlight during that time?

[User] A specific highlight. Hmm.

[Assistant] You can say more than one. I was just wondering if something stands out more than others.

[User] Yes. I think I will always remember the first time you see Red Square and St. Basil's. I don't think I'll ever forget that sight. The last several decades that's just been the opposite of us. That was the evil empire, as [Ronald] Reagan said. It's just a very historical place. If you've read any history about it, you know it's 500 years old. Communism was nothing compared to how long this place has been here. Communism was just a short sidelight in the history of the city of Moscow, actually. I don't think I'll ever forget that first time we got to that area and you come up over a hill, and you see St. Basil's appearing behind Red Square. I don't think I'll ever forget that sight. It was something else.

[Assistant] What about the lowest part?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] A specific highlight. Hmm.

[Assistant] You can say more than one. I was just wondering if something stands out more than others.

[User] Yes. I think I will always remember the first time you see Red Square and St. Basil's. I don't think I'll ever forget that sight. The last several decades that's just been the opposite of us. That was the evil empire, as [Ronald] Reagan said. It's just a very historical place. If you've read any history about it, you know it's 500 years old. Communism was nothing compared to how long this place has been here. Communism was just a short sidelight in the history of the city of Moscow, actually. I don't think I'll ever forget that first time we got to that area and you come up over a hill, and you see St. Basil's appearing behind Red Square. I don't think I'll ever forget that sight. It was something else.

[Assistant] What about the lowest part?

[User] The lowest part had to have been right after the collision. There was a time there when we thought, "That's it. The crew's coming home. The program's over." We just weren't sure whether that hatch was going to hold, and until they did get that hatch in place--and it took about ten minutes--for that ten minutes, there was a strong possibility the crew was coming home and that was the end of it. That was kind of a low point.

[Assistant] When you were a groundhog, not a meatball, you still interfaced with some of those same--


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I think I will always remember the first time you see Red Square and St. Basil's. I don't think I'll ever forget that sight. The last several decades that's just been the opposite of us. That was the evil empire, as [Ronald] Reagan said. It's just a very historical place. If you've read any history about it, you know it's 500 years old. Communism was nothing compared to how long this place has been here. Communism was just a short sidelight in the history of the city of Moscow, actually. I don't think I'll ever forget that first time we got to that area and you come up over a hill, and you see St. Basil's appearing behind Red Square. I don't think I'll ever forget that sight. It was something else.

[Assistant] What about the lowest part?

[User] The lowest part had to have been right after the collision. There was a time there when we thought, "That's it. The crew's coming home. The program's over." We just weren't sure whether that hatch was going to hold, and until they did get that hatch in place--and it took about ten minutes--for that ten minutes, there was a strong possibility the crew was coming home and that was the end of it. That was kind of a low point.

[Assistant] When you were a groundhog, not a meatball, you still interfaced with some of those same--

[User] Some of those same Russians, because the guys who worked in their mission control were usually the ones they sent over here as the consultant groups--shift flight directors, senior engineers. It was usually the same group. So when they were over here, we would entertain them. There'd usually be a party after the mission. We'd show them around town, that sort of thing.

[Assistant] What were their reactions to being in America, or, better yet, Houston?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, the traffic, they said it's just like theirs, and we would joke, like weather forecasters were just as bad in their country as our country. Nobody seems to predict the weather right.\n\n It's a lot harder to get around here if you don't have a car, which none of the Russians would have. I mean, we don't have any good public transportation here, whereas in Moscow you don't need a car. You can live in Moscow without ever owning a car. They've got probably the best public transportation system in the world I've ever seen, especially the subways. It goes anywhere in the city for what is now, I think, thirty-three cents. It used to be a lot cheaper than that. It doesn't matter whether you're going a mile or fifty miles between the two points, thirty-three cents, that's it. And the trains are always running very frequently. There's a police station in every major station, so there's no crime in those, usually. Just a very efficient system. Over here without a car, the Russians were pretty much stuck in their hotel unless one of us took them out somewhere. So that was different. But they entertained a lot. Usually when they were here they'd have a lot of parties at their hotel. They've invite everybody over. So that was fun.

[Assistant] You'd get to see them on a different basis that way.

[User] You'd see them on a different basis, yes.

[Assistant] For three years you're been doing this?

[User] I'm still doing it.

[Assistant] Would you turn it down if somebody offered it again, knowing what you know, or would you jump at the chance to do it again?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You'd see them on a different basis, yes.

[Assistant] For three years you're been doing this?

[User] I'm still doing it.

[Assistant] Would you turn it down if somebody offered it again, knowing what you know, or would you jump at the chance to do it again?

[User] I'd still do it, and I actually have. They asked me to be to continue to be an Operations Lead in Phase Two and continue being a team leader there. I said, "Sure. Love to." I actually just got back two weeks ago from one trip, and I'm going out again in October, so I'll be there for the first launch of the new Space Station. I'll be there again.

[Assistant] Wow. That's great.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I'm still doing it.

[Assistant] Would you turn it down if somebody offered it again, knowing what you know, or would you jump at the chance to do it again?

[User] I'd still do it, and I actually have. They asked me to be to continue to be an Operations Lead in Phase Two and continue being a team leader there. I said, "Sure. Love to." I actually just got back two weeks ago from one trip, and I'm going out again in October, so I'll be there for the first launch of the new Space Station. I'll be there again.

[Assistant] Wow. That's great.

[User] So that'll be something else.

[Assistant] Do you believe the Shuttle-Mir Program was worth all--


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I'd still do it, and I actually have. They asked me to be to continue to be an Operations Lead in Phase Two and continue being a team leader there. I said, "Sure. Love to." I actually just got back two weeks ago from one trip, and I'm going out again in October, so I'll be there for the first launch of the new Space Station. I'll be there again.

[Assistant] Wow. That's great.

[User] So that'll be something else.

[Assistant] Do you believe the Shuttle-Mir Program was worth all--

[User] Absolutely. Absolutely. We learned so much about just how to run a space station. There are a lot of things different about a space station than about a Shuttle. One of them's just the time aspect. You've got to take a longer term aspect. There's no rush to get something done this minute. It can wait. We've learned a lot about just cooperation with the Russians. Obviously, with this space station, we're going to have to cooperate with more than just the Russians. There's all the Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, everybody else involved in the program. I think it's given us a lot of experience working with another major country as a partner. It's just taught us a lot in general about space stations, things you need to know to run a space station, things you should put in a space station. We've made some design changes to ours based on things we've learned working with the Russians. That'll make the Space Station a better place for the astronauts.

[Assistant] Do you remember what you did before you started doing this?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So that'll be something else.

[Assistant] Do you believe the Shuttle-Mir Program was worth all--

[User] Absolutely. Absolutely. We learned so much about just how to run a space station. There are a lot of things different about a space station than about a Shuttle. One of them's just the time aspect. You've got to take a longer term aspect. There's no rush to get something done this minute. It can wait. We've learned a lot about just cooperation with the Russians. Obviously, with this space station, we're going to have to cooperate with more than just the Russians. There's all the Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, everybody else involved in the program. I think it's given us a lot of experience working with another major country as a partner. It's just taught us a lot in general about space stations, things you need to know to run a space station, things you should put in a space station. We've made some design changes to ours based on things we've learned working with the Russians. That'll make the Space Station a better place for the astronauts.

[Assistant] Do you remember what you did before you started doing this?

[User] You mean before Phase One? Sure. I started as a co-op at NASA in 1987, and the first three years I was here, I worked in the pointing office in the Shuttle Program. That was the office that dealt with determining the rotational orientation and pointing instruments at targets, things like that.\n\n In 1990, I went over to the Space Station Freedom Program at that time, and I worked in essentially the lead pointing engineer for Space Station. I was the only pointing engineer. And I also did planning, operations planning. I did that for about five years until this came up, until Phase One started.

[Assistant] Had you ever worked with international partners before?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Absolutely. Absolutely. We learned so much about just how to run a space station. There are a lot of things different about a space station than about a Shuttle. One of them's just the time aspect. You've got to take a longer term aspect. There's no rush to get something done this minute. It can wait. We've learned a lot about just cooperation with the Russians. Obviously, with this space station, we're going to have to cooperate with more than just the Russians. There's all the Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, everybody else involved in the program. I think it's given us a lot of experience working with another major country as a partner. It's just taught us a lot in general about space stations, things you need to know to run a space station, things you should put in a space station. We've made some design changes to ours based on things we've learned working with the Russians. That'll make the Space Station a better place for the astronauts.

[Assistant] Do you remember what you did before you started doing this?

[User] You mean before Phase One? Sure. I started as a co-op at NASA in 1987, and the first three years I was here, I worked in the pointing office in the Shuttle Program. That was the office that dealt with determining the rotational orientation and pointing instruments at targets, things like that.\n\n In 1990, I went over to the Space Station Freedom Program at that time, and I worked in essentially the lead pointing engineer for Space Station. I was the only pointing engineer. And I also did planning, operations planning. I did that for about five years until this came up, until Phase One started.

[Assistant] Had you ever worked with international partners before?

[User] A little bit in the Space Station Freedom days. We worked some with the Japanese and a little bit with the Europeans, but it was like one two-week meeting every three or four months and that was it, not regular day-to-day stuff like with the Russians. So it was quite an experience.

[Assistant] It was on-the-job training.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You mean before Phase One? Sure. I started as a co-op at NASA in 1987, and the first three years I was here, I worked in the pointing office in the Shuttle Program. That was the office that dealt with determining the rotational orientation and pointing instruments at targets, things like that.\n\n In 1990, I went over to the Space Station Freedom Program at that time, and I worked in essentially the lead pointing engineer for Space Station. I was the only pointing engineer. And I also did planning, operations planning. I did that for about five years until this came up, until Phase One started.

[Assistant] Had you ever worked with international partners before?

[User] A little bit in the Space Station Freedom days. We worked some with the Japanese and a little bit with the Europeans, but it was like one two-week meeting every three or four months and that was it, not regular day-to-day stuff like with the Russians. So it was quite an experience.

[Assistant] It was on-the-job training.

[User] On-the-job training. I had a great time, did manage to get a lot of fun things in on those few days off that we did get or nights that we had off. It was something else.

[Assistant] I have to assume you were there all times of the year, you were there winter and summer as well?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] A little bit in the Space Station Freedom days. We worked some with the Japanese and a little bit with the Europeans, but it was like one two-week meeting every three or four months and that was it, not regular day-to-day stuff like with the Russians. So it was quite an experience.

[Assistant] It was on-the-job training.

[User] On-the-job training. I had a great time, did manage to get a lot of fun things in on those few days off that we did get or nights that we had off. It was something else.

[Assistant] I have to assume you were there all times of the year, you were there winter and summer as well?

[User] The only time of the year I haven't been there, I haven't been there in mid-November, and I haven't been there in late January. Those are about the only two times of the year I've not been in Moscow. I've seen it at its hottest, and I've seen it at its coldest, at minus 30, and that's cold. Although I prefer Moscow at minus 30 over Houston when it's 105. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, at least you have a variety of clothing you can take back with you.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] On-the-job training. I had a great time, did manage to get a lot of fun things in on those few days off that we did get or nights that we had off. It was something else.

[Assistant] I have to assume you were there all times of the year, you were there winter and summer as well?

[User] The only time of the year I haven't been there, I haven't been there in mid-November, and I haven't been there in late January. Those are about the only two times of the year I've not been in Moscow. I've seen it at its hottest, and I've seen it at its coldest, at minus 30, and that's cold. Although I prefer Moscow at minus 30 over Houston when it's 105. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, at least you have a variety of clothing you can take back with you.

[User] When it's minus 30, you can always pull on another jacket. What do you do when it's 105? You can only take off so much, and you can only turn the air-conditioner down so far.

[Assistant] And when you would got back, did you always go back to the same place, or did you have to change rooms?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
The first two trips, we stayed in a hotel. Since then, since we've started doing much longer trips, NASA's gotten us an apartment over there. Actually, there's a whole complex of apartments NASA's got, probably twenty or thirty apartments in this one building for all the people who are either living out there, like as an embassy employee, who were out there for a couple of years at a time, or people like myself, those in our group who go out for two or three months or five months at a time. There's some very nice apartments that we have out there that are actually cheaper than a hotel room. They're very expensive by Western standards, something like $5,000 a month or more, but the hotel room costs you $6,000 a month. So it's cheaper. NASA's actually saving money, and it gives us a much better place, because after about three or four weeks, that hotel room started to feel more like a prison cell.

You're stuck in the room. You can't go anywhere. Now we have a nice apartment. It's got a washer and dryer. It's great. You don't have to do it in the bathtub in Woolite anymore. We've got a washer and dryer, even if it is a very slow one. And you've got a kitchen so you don't have to go out every single meal. Going out to dinner's fun, but after doing it for every day for six straight weeks, it's getting to be a hassle. Those are real nice apartments.

[Assistant] So did you cook food from here, or did you learn how to cook dishes from there?

[User] Some of both. I would do some of both, and I'd make my favorites, but I also learned some Russian dishes or would buy Russian dishes and make them, like pelmeni, which is sort of like a dumpling, things like that.

[Assistant] Have you made them for your friends here now that you're back?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Not ready to--


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Some of both. I would do some of both, and I'd make my favorites, but I also learned some Russian dishes or would buy Russian dishes and make them, like pelmeni, which is sort of like a dumpling, things like that.

[Assistant] Have you made them for your friends here now that you're back?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Not ready to--

[User] Can't buy them over here. You'd have to roll out and do all the dough by hand and shape them. It would take a lot of work. So I haven't done that.

[Assistant] When you were there for so long, did you miss anything from this area?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No.

[Assistant] Not ready to--

[User] Can't buy them over here. You'd have to roll out and do all the dough by hand and shape them. It would take a lot of work. So I haven't done that.

[Assistant] When you were there for so long, did you miss anything from this area?

[User] Let's see, what did I miss? I missed--you can't get any good barbecue out in Moscow, and you miss iced tea. [Laughter] They just don't have that over there. You kind of miss being able to just take a day off and go out and relax and do something over there. You couldn't really do that. When I was on the big trip, like the five month, I was given a week off in the middle to take vacation, and that was great. You miss some--you can't really go to the movies. There's one or two Russian theaters that have English movies, but they might only have one and it's the one that came out here six months ago, so you've already seen it. You miss that. There wasn't too much that I missed.\n\n Any particular foods I missed, I tried to have the family send some out, you know, "Send out a jar of barbecue sauce," and we made some barbecue ourselves. If you missed Cajun food, "Well, send out some spice mixes and we'll go pay the twenty dollars a pound for a pound of shrimp and make some crawfish or make some gumbo or something."

[Assistant] You got CARE packages, too.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Can't buy them over here. You'd have to roll out and do all the dough by hand and shape them. It would take a lot of work. So I haven't done that.

[Assistant] When you were there for so long, did you miss anything from this area?

[User] Let's see, what did I miss? I missed--you can't get any good barbecue out in Moscow, and you miss iced tea. [Laughter] They just don't have that over there. You kind of miss being able to just take a day off and go out and relax and do something over there. You couldn't really do that. When I was on the big trip, like the five month, I was given a week off in the middle to take vacation, and that was great. You miss some--you can't really go to the movies. There's one or two Russian theaters that have English movies, but they might only have one and it's the one that came out here six months ago, so you've already seen it. You miss that. There wasn't too much that I missed.\n\n Any particular foods I missed, I tried to have the family send some out, you know, "Send out a jar of barbecue sauce," and we made some barbecue ourselves. If you missed Cajun food, "Well, send out some spice mixes and we'll go pay the twenty dollars a pound for a pound of shrimp and make some crawfish or make some gumbo or something."

[Assistant] You got CARE packages, too.

[User] CARE packages, yes. One of the things--we all try to help each other out. I mean, we've all traveled out there. We all know there's going to be things we forgot or want or need brought out, so everyone is usually willing to carry something for somebody else, because they know that next time they're going to be the ones asking. I think one of the CARE packages they even sent me one time was a case of beer from Shiner Boch the brewery.

[Assistant] That managed to get through Customs okay?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Let's see, what did I miss? I missed--you can't get any good barbecue out in Moscow, and you miss iced tea. [Laughter] They just don't have that over there. You kind of miss being able to just take a day off and go out and relax and do something over there. You couldn't really do that. When I was on the big trip, like the five month, I was given a week off in the middle to take vacation, and that was great. You miss some--you can't really go to the movies. There's one or two Russian theaters that have English movies, but they might only have one and it's the one that came out here six months ago, so you've already seen it. You miss that. There wasn't too much that I missed.\n\n Any particular foods I missed, I tried to have the family send some out, you know, "Send out a jar of barbecue sauce," and we made some barbecue ourselves. If you missed Cajun food, "Well, send out some spice mixes and we'll go pay the twenty dollars a pound for a pound of shrimp and make some crawfish or make some gumbo or something."

[Assistant] You got CARE packages, too.

[User] CARE packages, yes. One of the things--we all try to help each other out. I mean, we've all traveled out there. We all know there's going to be things we forgot or want or need brought out, so everyone is usually willing to carry something for somebody else, because they know that next time they're going to be the ones asking. I think one of the CARE packages they even sent me one time was a case of beer from Shiner Boch the brewery.

[Assistant] That managed to get through Customs okay?

[User] Yes. They put it in a footlocker, essentially. Well, you're allowed to bring in alcohol, just certain amounts, so they just brought in a case of beer for me. Although you can get plenty of European beers there, this was just something from Texas. Beer from home.

[Assistant] Did you notice lots of changes from the first time that you went to the last time?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. They put it in a footlocker, essentially. Well, you're allowed to bring in alcohol, just certain amounts, so they just brought in a case of beer for me. Although you can get plenty of European beers there, this was just something from Texas. Beer from home.

[Assistant] Did you notice lots of changes from the first time that you went to the last time?

[User] Oh, absolutely. Prices have gone way up. It used to be we could go out and you got a nice dinner--well, the average dinner, if you had some drinks, you might pay twenty-five, thirty dollars a person. Now it's forty-five, fifty dollars a person for the same meals. That's like Mexican food. Go get Mexican food and a margarita, fifty bucks. But it's pretty much average. It doesn't matter what you eat, it's always going to fall into that forty- to fifty-dollar range.\n\n Traffic's about the same. There's a lot more stores and restaurants that cater to foreigners. When we first went there on Norm Thagard's mission, there were maybe three or four restaurants outside the hotel that we knew about that were considered safe to eat at. I don't think I've been there in a year, because there's a hundred to choose from now. I haven't even gone back to those old ones anymore because we ate there so often.\n\n They've really fixed up the city. Last year was Moscow's 850th birthday, so they spent pretty much a year or more cleaning up the city, repainting buildings, widening streets, putting up new artwork, opening up a new museum, building a new cathedral, all this kind of stuff. So there's been a lot of changes in the way the city looks, too.

[Assistant] It'll be interesting to see in the next few years how much more it changes while you're there.

[User] Yes. I'll be very curious. And, of course, the whole political thing's changed, too, over the last few years. That's been interesting to watch.

[Assistant] Yes, because you're right there in the middle of it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I'll be very curious. And, of course, the whole political thing's changed, too, over the last few years. That's been interesting to watch.

[Assistant] Yes, because you're right there in the middle of it.

[User] You're in the middle of it. You pay a little more attention to it when you're in that country. You kind of want to know whether [Boris] Yeltsin's going to be staying in power a little longer. I've talked to some guys here who were actually at the embassy, the NASA office, back when the last coup occurred. They said, yeah, they were looking out the windows of the NASA office, and they could see the tanks going down the street. So they've got some great shots of it, but I'm sure that's not what they were thinking at the time. So you pay attention to that kind of stuff out there.

[Assistant] Do you ever feel threatened or not safe when you're there?

[User] No, I haven't, but you just take general precautions. You're not going to go walking down Montrose at night by yourself here in Houston, so why are you going to go to some strange part of Moscow and walk alone at night if you don't speak the language, even? So we tend to go out in groups. Since I do speak a reasonable amount of Russian, I have gone out on my own, but I usually do it during the day, or if I go at night, I go to a specific, very well-populated area like the Bolshoi Theater, something that's obviously not a crime zone, there's always going to be a lot of people there. And I haven't had any problems.

[Assistant] Do you normally go to the ballet?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You're in the middle of it. You pay a little more attention to it when you're in that country. You kind of want to know whether [Boris] Yeltsin's going to be staying in power a little longer. I've talked to some guys here who were actually at the embassy, the NASA office, back when the last coup occurred. They said, yeah, they were looking out the windows of the NASA office, and they could see the tanks going down the street. So they've got some great shots of it, but I'm sure that's not what they were thinking at the time. So you pay attention to that kind of stuff out there.

[Assistant] Do you ever feel threatened or not safe when you're there?

[User] No, I haven't, but you just take general precautions. You're not going to go walking down Montrose at night by yourself here in Houston, so why are you going to go to some strange part of Moscow and walk alone at night if you don't speak the language, even? So we tend to go out in groups. Since I do speak a reasonable amount of Russian, I have gone out on my own, but I usually do it during the day, or if I go at night, I go to a specific, very well-populated area like the Bolshoi Theater, something that's obviously not a crime zone, there's always going to be a lot of people there. And I haven't had any problems.

[Assistant] Do you normally go to the ballet?

[User] That was the first time I've ever seen the ballet, was in Russia.

[Assistant] What a place to see it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I haven't, but you just take general precautions. You're not going to go walking down Montrose at night by yourself here in Houston, so why are you going to go to some strange part of Moscow and walk alone at night if you don't speak the language, even? So we tend to go out in groups. Since I do speak a reasonable amount of Russian, I have gone out on my own, but I usually do it during the day, or if I go at night, I go to a specific, very well-populated area like the Bolshoi Theater, something that's obviously not a crime zone, there's always going to be a lot of people there. And I haven't had any problems.

[Assistant] Do you normally go to the ballet?

[User] That was the first time I've ever seen the ballet, was in Russia.

[Assistant] What a place to see it.

[User] Yes, what a place to see it. I go to symphonies a lot. I've always enjoyed that, and they've got some fabulous ones out there, like the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Actually, this last trip, I walked out, they were having the Tchaikovsky Festival. It's kind of like the Olympics of amateur music, and it happened to be there last months when I was out there. So I got to see some of the finalists. That was pretty impressive.

[Assistant] That's great. I'm glad there's at least a little more time to do things now that it's not so busy.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That was the first time I've ever seen the ballet, was in Russia.

[Assistant] What a place to see it.

[User] Yes, what a place to see it. I go to symphonies a lot. I've always enjoyed that, and they've got some fabulous ones out there, like the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Actually, this last trip, I walked out, they were having the Tchaikovsky Festival. It's kind of like the Olympics of amateur music, and it happened to be there last months when I was out there. So I got to see some of the finalists. That was pretty impressive.

[Assistant] That's great. I'm glad there's at least a little more time to do things now that it's not so busy.

[User] Well, actually, one of the things we've learned is we can't keep working that kind of schedule that we had on previous flights. We're trying to get the hours down a little bit more to work nine-hour shifts, give everybody a weekend off at least every other week. So we'll see. We'll see how we do.

[Assistant]
Do you have any questions, Carol?

What was your biggest cultural shock when you first went to Russia?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, actually, one of the things we've learned is we can't keep working that kind of schedule that we had on previous flights. We're trying to get the hours down a little bit more to work nine-hour shifts, give everybody a weekend off at least every other week. So we'll see. We'll see how we do.

[Assistant]
Do you have any questions, Carol?

What was your biggest cultural shock when you first went to Russia?

[User] Biggest cultural shock. It's really got to be the language. I mean, if you've ever traveled to Europe, even if you don't speak French or German or Italian, at least the letters look the same. You might be able to kind of guess, just by looking at the word, what it might be. In Russia, you can't do that. It's an entirely different alphabet. So, trying to navigate around the city is just much, much more difficult if you don't know the alphabet. Luckily I did know it, so I did okay, but just that general thing, there's almost no one who speaks English out there. In the major hotels, the expensive restaurants, yes. They speak English because they're trying to cater to the foreigners. But in general, wherever you go in Moscow, nobody speaks English, whereas in Europe there's always somebody you can find who knows a little. So that's probably the biggest cultural thing. You are really on your own out there. You've got to be smart and pay attention to what you're doing to get around. That probably was the biggest shock.

[Assistant] Thank you. We enjoyed hearing about your adventures, and I guess that's one way of casting it.

[User] That's one way of putting it.

[Assistant] I'm sure there'll be many more.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. No.

[Assistant] They don't?

[User] No.

[Assistant] Huh. I wonder why. That would just keep them abreast of things that are going on or share best practices or stories or . . .

[User] Well, I think today, I don't—so I'm two years away from NARA. I don't know whether the ICN [Internal Communications Network] is still there, but there are so many new social media- based or computer-based ways to communicate. Back in the day, I mean, just think about it. There was no email. I mean, there was no email. So the only communication was to pick up the phone, which you're not going to do lightly with senior leaders—you know, a Director might talk to the Archivist, but the Archivist is not going to talk to lots of those reporting to him frequently—I mean, he just doesn't have the bandwidth to do that—or send out memos, you know, paper communications and all the limitations of that. So the Manager’s Monthly was useful in its day. And, I think, newsletters are still valuable, but it would be a different form today.

[Assistant] Right. Yeah, we do have a lot of different newsletter-type communications that go out. You're right. But yeah, just that format has changed over time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So I just don't think we had the capability within our office to do the kind of public relations/public education work on behalf of the Electoral College process—you've got to realize there are only a very few people involved in that. And it's not a heavy lift, but it's not like 400 people are available to go on Meet the Press or design a media strategy. [LAUGHS]

[Assistant] Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. I was wondering if it was more about changing or better communicating what the role was and—yeah, not that it's going to change your mission or your policy per se. It's just communicating.

[User] And also, we can't take a position on whether the Electoral College should or [should] not exist. Right? We're agnostic. We are just saying, right now, it's a part of the Constitution. It's part of the law. And so we have to implement it. Because a lot of people were proposing to eliminate the Electoral College, we had to be careful that we didn't step into that policy debate and tried not to.

[Assistant] Okay. Yeah. Trying to stay nonpolitical, nonpartisan, non-everything, right?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. Hey, I'm seeing I have one more minute left on the interview, but I was wondering if you would have just a quick chance to talk about . . . You kind of mentioned the classified records earlier . . . if you wanted to add anything about that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It might be useful to spend some more time later.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] And I need to really be careful how I speak about that, because it has classified aspects to it. So . . .

[Assistant] Sure. Okay.

[User] I want to be careful.

[Assistant] Okay. Do you want me to set up another time for us to talk?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And I need to really be careful how I speak about that, because it has classified aspects to it. So . . .

[Assistant] Sure. Okay.

[User] I want to be careful.

[Assistant] Okay. Do you want me to set up another time for us to talk?

[User] That'd be fine, unless it's too much.

[Assistant] Unless it's too much? What do you mean?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I want to be careful.

[Assistant] Okay. Do you want me to set up another time for us to talk?

[User] That'd be fine, unless it's too much.

[Assistant] Unless it's too much? What do you mean?

[User] Well, you were expecting an hour and a half, and if it turns into three hours, it may be more than you want [LAUGHS]. I'm not sure that what I have to share is all that significant, you know.

[Assistant] No. [LAUGHS] It's more about trying not to take up too much of your time. But if you're willing to set up another time, then I'm more than willing to do that. And so, how about I go ahead and stop the recording now, and then I can send you some possible dates and times that might work to continue the conversation?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] —just going on and on, but, it’s a pretty wide-ranging set of responsibilities. And of course you have your standard personnel stuff that you have got to learn. You’ve got to learn all the stupid personnel rules and performance evaluations and all that sort of stuff.

[Assistant] Well, before we move on to that section, I wanted to ask you about the relationships with the Smithsonian. From your perspective and your experience, what has been the relationship with the Smithsonian Institution? Is it a competitive nature or not?

[User] The only time we really had this sort of competitive nature was with that Air Force collection that was over there. And that was really the Air Force’s problem. I mean, they were responsible for the problem. But it was also I’d laid some of the responsibility at the door of the appraisal people. I mean, whoever was responsible for the Air Force, it’s like all of a sudden we wake up and find out, oh, by the way, the Air Force has transferred all their stuff over to the Air and Space Museum because they’re going to create a video disk. Well, why didn’t somebody tell us about this beforehand? That’s their job. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to keep their ear to the ground. So we never found out about it until it was after the fact. And, you don’t solve problems after the fact. So that’s the only real time we had had any kind of issues. And the same thing with the LC. I mean, we each have our sphere of responsibility. And, at least as long as I’ve been working here, there really hasn’t been any attempts by the LC or the Smithsonian to try to grab archival federal agency records. They understand that that’s our responsibility.

[Assistant] And now are they pretty good customers to NARA? Do the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian for the Museums, do they come to NARA for materials?

[User] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] Okay. I mean, they were copies not necessarily originals.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] Okay. I mean, they were copies not necessarily originals.

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] You know, the Smithsonian is a sprawling place. So a lot of the museums come to us when they have photo exhibits because we have things that nobody else has. All of the Brady material, all of the Western Survey material. I mean, we have the greatest collection of that material here, World War II, World War I. You know, we have things that nobody else has. So when parts of the Smithsonian are doing exhibits, like we’re in a discussion right now with the National Portrait Gallery over Alexander Gardner prints that they want to use for an exhibit in 2015. So that happens quite frequently. Not so much with the L.C. I mean, they’re not really into exhibition. We refer each other back and forth. And about five years ago, myself and the person over at the LC set up sort of a—we go over there and get kind of a half-day preview of what they have. And they come over here and they get kind of a half-day preview of what we have and what we do, which is kind of so the reference staffs on both sides had some kind of an idea about what they do, what they have, and what we do and what we have, which was very beneficial, because somebody could say over there, oh, well, if you want that, you really need to go over to NARA. And if people come here and they’re looking for the, you know, the FSA collection, the Farm Security Administration photos, which were very famous during the thirties, we know we don’t have them. They’re at the LC. We just refer them over to the LC.

[Assistant] Cool. All right. Can you explain the process with preparing Deeds of Gift?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So, that’s kind of what happened to the roadmap, the pool. And now we have the freeze board, which is just as bad. They’re not going to listen to any of this, are they?

[Assistant] No. Never. All right. Going to jump around a little bit.

[User] Yeah, I’m all rambling.

[Assistant] You’ve mentioned LICON before.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Can you explain what that is? It’s not an acronym, it’s a—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Can you explain what that is? It’s not an acronym, it’s a—

[User] [Interposing] Yeah, actually it is.

[Assistant] —abbreviation. Yeah.

[User] Yes, I guess. I guess, yes. Well, what it stands for is lifecycle control unit, and they just shortened it to LICON. And, essentially, it kind of replaced the branch structure, because they weren’t talking about branches anymore. They were LICONs. And we were the still picture LICON. And there was a motion picture LICON. And there was a cartographic LICON. And there was textual records LICON. So that, you know, that came in, I’m trying to remember. I think that came in when Jim Hastings was head of the textual division. And he always had a very close relationship with Mike Kurtz. So, like the design review you were talking about, I think Jim was heavily involved in that. And Kurtz, of course, was heavily involved in that. And then, this concept of the LICON came in, which, as best as I could tell, was basically just they didn’t want to call us branches, so they called us LICONs. And, at one point, they were calling us units, the Still Picture unit. Well, okay. So now we’re back to where it probably ought to be.

[Assistant] Now, do you still provide tours of your section, of your unit? Do you still conduct those? I’ve heard that you do those yourself.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Thank you for inviting me, Rebecca and Carol [Butler]. It's a privilege, really, to be here, and I'm thrilled to attend this launch [STS-93] that's going to happen tonight, my first one, and I've looked forward to a launch since the original program started, the Mercury Program.

[Assistant] And you've been here for a couple of days, visiting?

[User] Yes, we came in Sunday, rented a car in Orlando, and we're over here on the beach. Yesterday we were at the complex, the [Kennedy] Space Center, and enjoyed the tours and the way people treated us. Absolutely amazed at the complexity of this operation.

[Assistant] Did you have a chance to visit with anyone yesterday?

[User] We had a briefing, and at the briefing we met very interesting people, including a representative who talked about the Chandra X-ray imaging telescope and the fact it's the only object really in the launch [STS-93], in the Shuttle, and they're carrying up at such a weight.

[Assistant] Did you come yesterday as a WASP or as a visitor?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We had a briefing, and at the briefing we met very interesting people, including a representative who talked about the Chandra X-ray imaging telescope and the fact it's the only object really in the launch [STS-93], in the Shuttle, and they're carrying up at such a weight.

[Assistant] Did you come yesterday as a WASP or as a visitor?

[User] No, I come as a WASP.

[Assistant] Good.

[User] Yes, because my invitation from [STS-93 Commander] Eileen [Collins], which I was delighted to receive. And it was completely unexpected, it has "Dawn Seymour, WASP" on it, and that's how I registered on the database. I feel it's a personal honor to have this invitation.\n\n I’ve corresponded with Eileen through the years, and she is a nearby neighbor, actually, because she came from Elmira, and we live on Canandaigua Lake in western New York. It's called the Finger Lakes, and it's only about maybe forty minutes away. So I've invited her to be a speaker at various events, which she was unable to do because of her heavy workload. But I've talked to her mother through the years.\n\n Interestingly enough, on the third of February 1995, my daughter had a baby girl, the same moment, perhaps, that she [Eileen] launched into space. And the daughter's named Emma Louise Seymour Morse, and she's four years old. So when the anniversary comes around, this year I wrote her, because I'm thinking of her then, about this long delayed flight.

[Assistant] She has such a historic moment tonight, but yet your history goes back a few years. Tell us how you became interested in aviation as a young girl.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I also flew—I had had thirty hours in the B-26, pulling the sleeve, just as co-pilot now. Yes, sometimes I'd see tracers in the B-17 going toward the plane, the B-26, and you'd put on the mike and say, "The sleeve, guys!" [Laughter] "Aim at the sleeve!" But, no, I don't think I had any fear.\n\n I'm thinking of fear now after going through Cape Canaveral yesterday, or the Kennedy Space Center, I call it, and seeing that huge, huge complex, the Shuttle arrangement that's going off tonight, and I wonder about fear. You have to cross the river and let the river drain your fear. I think Eileen Collins perhaps feels that way. We didn't have—why should that be fearful, what we did? I don't think so. But she's an unusual woman. I think it's her quiet confidence that affects me today. It permeates this whole mission.

[Assistant] Was that a necessary ingredient for you and the rest of the WASP as you went through your journey, working on these bases? There were such few women surrounded by these men. I'm sure you got mixed attitudes and mixed perceptions and possibly mixed comments from different people that worked on the bases.

[User] Oh, I think so. Oh, I think so. I think so. It's part of this change. When men accept women as partners, this is all going to change. We're partners in life.

[Assistant] Did you feel that when you were on the bases?

[User] I felt perfectly belonging. I had no sense of being an outsider. I think anyone who had a feeling I was an outsider, it's their problem.

[Assistant] You were able to spend many months doing your service to your country, and at some point—in fact, it was in December of 1944 they disbanded the WASP. Tell us how you felt when you heard that there was going to be a program.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think so, yes, and the qualifications were tough in a sense. When I joined, you had to be twenty-one and you had to have at least fifty hours of flying time. It gradually lowered—age and amount of time. The college degree was once used, or maybe some years of college. She [J.C.] liked to have—she thought education was important, because she had not had [formal] education in her lifetime.

[Assistant] Was there a lot of competition among the women that were in Sweetwater, or did they all build together and help each other as a team?

[User] I think we built. I think so. The competition was with yourself, because you wanted to succeed and you didn't want to wash out. [Laughter] Some people were washed out, I'm sure, who were very capable pilots, but it was just the timing, that particular timing. I think probably the program yesterday talked about our check rides. We had civilian check rides and we had military check rides. The military check rides were the tough ones to overcome if you had a pink slip.

[Assistant] And a different type of person checking you out, I guess, on that military check ride.

[User] And many of the military pilots wanted to be overseas. There was that point, too.

[Assistant] Let's visit again some of the times that you were still a WASP, and I'm sure you had many, many nice memories. Can you share one or two memorable moments with us that seem to be so significant even today?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And many of the military pilots wanted to be overseas. There was that point, too.

[Assistant] Let's visit again some of the times that you were still a WASP, and I'm sure you had many, many nice memories. Can you share one or two memorable moments with us that seem to be so significant even today?

[User] Well, perhaps—yes. One in Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell, New Mexico, is desert, high desert country, and you have tumbleweed every so often that will come rolling down the runway, and sometimes it can be a huge mass and you cannot get out of the way of the tumbleweed, and you go right through it, which is fun.\n\n But perhaps the best landing I ever made was at Roswell. It had rained and the field was damp, so the runways were still damp. I came around and I remember coming in and getting the tail down just right and the wheels just right, and there was no squeak. [Laughter] No bounce. I kept saying to myself, "This is wonderful!" And it turned out to be my very last landing. So it's a wonderful memory to have. But because the field was wet and the wheels, you see, didn't stick and they came down. It was just one of those lucky landings.\n\n Landings were important, because maybe you only made one or two a day, and if they were not a good landing, what you'd consider a good landing, I'd feel I had failed somehow. I wanted to get them and have a good landing. And you prided yourself on this. I think most pilots do.

[Assistant] You had many continual hours sitting in that left seat.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] While you were piloting.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, perhaps—yes. One in Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell, New Mexico, is desert, high desert country, and you have tumbleweed every so often that will come rolling down the runway, and sometimes it can be a huge mass and you cannot get out of the way of the tumbleweed, and you go right through it, which is fun.\n\n But perhaps the best landing I ever made was at Roswell. It had rained and the field was damp, so the runways were still damp. I came around and I remember coming in and getting the tail down just right and the wheels just right, and there was no squeak. [Laughter] No bounce. I kept saying to myself, "This is wonderful!" And it turned out to be my very last landing. So it's a wonderful memory to have. But because the field was wet and the wheels, you see, didn't stick and they came down. It was just one of those lucky landings.\n\n Landings were important, because maybe you only made one or two a day, and if they were not a good landing, what you'd consider a good landing, I'd feel I had failed somehow. I wanted to get them and have a good landing. And you prided yourself on this. I think most pilots do.

[Assistant] You had many continual hours sitting in that left seat.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] While you were piloting.

[User] Yes, yes, yes.

[Assistant] And trying to focus.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] While you were piloting.

[User] Yes, yes, yes.

[Assistant] And trying to focus.

[User] You see, I was in the Training Command. I was not in the Ferrying Command. So that makes a big difference.

[Assistant] Although those days of you being an active WASP stopped, you have continued working as a WASP, hoping to let other people know about the participation and the contributions that the WASP have given. Tell us about some of those activities.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, absolutely. Oh, today? Yes. Tonight? Yes. It took some time. Just like we talked about the Bill of Sentiments was 1848. Now here we are 151 years later and we have a woman going into space as commander of a space flight. So we're talking about—when I say the word "continuum," I mean years, decades, hundreds of years. I'm even thinking of a millennium of how women have been treated. American women have more opportunities today than they've ever had in history, that I can see. So we've always known we belonged in the world, but now we have the legal reasons to belong.\n\n Now, I don't think that when you think about it, the right to vote was not as important as Title IX was. [Of course, I realize that legal progress for women is step by step, but Title IX affected me personally.] Title IX opened athletics to women. [Interruption]

[Assistant] Title IX.

[User] Title IX, which opened athletics to women, with the same amount of training, equipment, so forth, was more powerful than anything that's happened in…[my lifetime]. [Recently,] you saw that with the soccer game, the World Cup game, with American women. It [Title IX] affected my daughters' lives. My daughters were going out for cheerleading, and suddenly Title IX came along and they were playing soccer with the best coach and the best equipment. And they are powerful women. They're much different perhaps than I am. I mean, I have all the constraints of my mother, of my mother's generation. [Laughter]\n\n But I also want to say there's quite a difference in the WASP story and Eileen's, because we did not fly under the glare of media cameras and press.

[Assistant] No, you didn't.

[User] We didn't. We might have had people make comments to us and stare at us, but I didn't have any discrimination of that sort.

[Assistant] And yet it's a different pressure in a sense that you had a job to do.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Thank you.

[Assistant] And we move on into another historic moment for women in aviation as we move into tomorrow and Commander Collins takes her place in history as well [launch of STS-93].

[User] Takes her place and we all move up.

[Assistant] We thank you for visiting with us today and sharing your memories with us.

[User] I'm pleased to. I'm pleased to. I'm thrilled to be here.

[Assistant] We'll just let the excitement of today and the event carry us on, and you'll have one more memory to add as you go and visit others.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Takes her place and we all move up.

[Assistant] We thank you for visiting with us today and sharing your memories with us.

[User] I'm pleased to. I'm pleased to. I'm thrilled to be here.

[Assistant] We'll just let the excitement of today and the event carry us on, and you'll have one more memory to add as you go and visit others.

[User] I salute—all the WASPs salute Eileen Collins.

[Assistant] Thank you so much.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I'm pleased to. I'm pleased to. I'm thrilled to be here.

[Assistant] We'll just let the excitement of today and the event carry us on, and you'll have one more memory to add as you go and visit others.

[User] I salute—all the WASPs salute Eileen Collins.

[Assistant] Thank you so much.

[User] I bring that message.

[Assistant] Hopefully she'll get that before she goes, but we'll definitely make sure she gets it when she returns.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I don’t think I was on console for the spacewalk. I was a CapCom for that mission. I know they had a little bit of a problem with one of the suits and so on. I must have been on the planning team or something for that one.

[Assistant] You mentioned some of the humor. Who decides the wakeup calls for the astronauts? Is that something that’s a CapCom’s duty?

[User] Yes, the CapComs do that. The support crew concept went away after a while and the CapComs kind of took over that role, but in the early days, the support crews had what we thought of as morale jobs. One of the aspects of that was creating a notebook of pictures and funny sayings and mementos from the families and things like that, that the crew would find when they got up on orbit and they opened up their flight data file. There was a book in there of cartoons, jokes about the crew, pictures of them in their training, things that made them look silly and stuff like that, and that was kind of fun. I got involved with that on STS-5, with Vance’s crew.\n\n Then on STS-9 I was involved with it with John Young’s crew. I remember we created a picture of him; we cut his head out of one picture and pasted it over a picture of Lou Gehrig [baseball player for the New York Yankees]. So you had John Young there in Lou Gehrig’s uniform. We thought of him as the Lou Gehrig of the astronaut corps. I don’t remember why. But that kind of stuff we would do, and it was good for the crew. On the first day, they normally don’t feel too well, and to pull that thing out and have a chuckle or two, that’s good.

[Assistant] On STS-9 they had the first payload specialists.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] How were they received by the astronaut corps, and that relationship, not just those two specifically, but the whole payload specialists group.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. That's the way Chris usually is about things like that, all things, I guess.

[Assistant] I guess he'd seen enough of your work up until then to know that if it was something that you wanted to do, then you were going to be able to be good at it and do it.

[User] Well, I would like to think that. It was a good move, in retrospect. It was a good move.\n\n About that time we were bringing the control center in Houston along also. It had been under construction for at least a couple of years, I guess. After a lot of testing, it was decided that we would use it for the first time on the Gemini IV flight, but because of the little bit of remaining uncertainty, it was decided that we would activate the control center at the Cape also, and have a skeleton crew down there for the launch phase, which was the most critical. So Glynn Lunney went down as flight director and I went down as a combination retrofire officer, flight dynamics officer, and guidance officer.

[Assistant] Oh, my.

[User] Literally had a chair with wheels on it that would slide back and forth between the three consoles. Arnie [Arnold D.] Aldrich did a similar thing for the systems. He was a combined guidance, navigation and control officer [GNC] and the EECOM, the electrical, environmental [and communications officer]. So he also covered two or three consoles. Al [Alan B.] Shepard [Jr.] was the capcom [capsule communicator]. So we went down for a couple of weeks of simulations and then for the real launch.\n\n As luck would have it, John [D.] Hodge was the flight director back in Houston and Cliff Charlesworth was the flight dynamics officer. They actually lost power in the control center, went down for a few seconds, and we kept saying, "Switch over. Switch over. We've got it." They wouldn't do it. [Laughter]

[Assistant] They were determined.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I would like to think that. It was a good move, in retrospect. It was a good move.\n\n About that time we were bringing the control center in Houston along also. It had been under construction for at least a couple of years, I guess. After a lot of testing, it was decided that we would use it for the first time on the Gemini IV flight, but because of the little bit of remaining uncertainty, it was decided that we would activate the control center at the Cape also, and have a skeleton crew down there for the launch phase, which was the most critical. So Glynn Lunney went down as flight director and I went down as a combination retrofire officer, flight dynamics officer, and guidance officer.

[Assistant] Oh, my.

[User] Literally had a chair with wheels on it that would slide back and forth between the three consoles. Arnie [Arnold D.] Aldrich did a similar thing for the systems. He was a combined guidance, navigation and control officer [GNC] and the EECOM, the electrical, environmental [and communications officer]. So he also covered two or three consoles. Al [Alan B.] Shepard [Jr.] was the capcom [capsule communicator]. So we went down for a couple of weeks of simulations and then for the real launch.\n\n As luck would have it, John [D.] Hodge was the flight director back in Houston and Cliff Charlesworth was the flight dynamics officer. They actually lost power in the control center, went down for a few seconds, and we kept saying, "Switch over. Switch over. We've got it." They wouldn't do it. [Laughter]

[Assistant] They were determined.

[User] Yes, but it worked out all right.

[Assistant] You've mentioned a couple times now the simulations and that you were a little bit involved with that in Mercury and then again here in Gemini. If maybe you could talk about some of what that involved and how that changed from the two different programs.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, and it was in some respects rewarding, because if you did the right thing, you felt good about it. Or if you did the wrong thing, you'd say, "Well, at least I learned something. I did what I thought was the right thing, but it turned out maybe we need to look at that a little bit more." So the simulations were very valuable.\n\n In fact, I've always thought that the simulation people were kind of unsung heroes in the manned spaceflight program, because they didn't get any credit for anything. They weren't in the limelight. Once the mission started, they kind of went away and started working on the next mission. But they knew their jobs, they knew the jobs of the people in the control center as well as the people who sat at the consoles, and they had to.

[Assistant] I bet they knew the spacecraft pretty well, too.

[User] Oh, yes. Oh, yes, obviously they had to know the spacecraft. We occasionally had what we called the integrated sims, which included the flight crew. Those were especially beneficial. Usually we would start out with what we called standalone sims with just the flight controllers. We'd go through the exercises. Then, of course, the flight crew was doing the same thing in their simulators. But then we would do integrated sims where we would both come together. Those were especially rewarding. It showed that we could work together as a team and that we agreed with their actions and they agreed with ours. In addition to training the people and exercising the mission rules, it was a team-building exercise.

[Assistant] Very important, especially in this business.

[User] Very important. Very important. In fact, in later years I've—you know, it seems like every two or three years there's a new management trend in total quality or teamwork, or all these courses that people [started coming up with]. I've been to a number of those, and after a while I thought, "Hey, this is what we used to do back in the sixties at the Manned Spacecraft Center. We just didn't call it this." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Just didn't have a fancy name.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Very important. Very important. In fact, in later years I've—you know, it seems like every two or three years there's a new management trend in total quality or teamwork, or all these courses that people [started coming up with]. I've been to a number of those, and after a while I thought, "Hey, this is what we used to do back in the sixties at the Manned Spacecraft Center. We just didn't call it this." [Laughter]

[Assistant] Just didn't have a fancy name.

[User] Yes. We were doing teamwork. We did all of this.

[Assistant] Certainly did.

[User] Somebody's making a fortune off of putting it in books and selling it to other people.

[Assistant] People buy a lot of different things nowadays.\n\n Talking about the team-building and the teamwork, you had the flight control team and you had the support people that were in the back rooms, and you had the flight crews, and then you had the engineers working on the spacecraft and the managers. How were relations among everyone? Any reflections on that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You bet.

[Assistant] It really is.

[User] In fact, I have discovered in my later years that I measure my life by pre-1969 and post-1969.

[Assistant] That's interesting.

[User] If somebody says, well, in 1975 I did this, or something happened, or I read something, the first thing that comes to my mind, for some reason, is, well, that was before we first landed on the Moon, or it was after that. So I've kind of divided up my life into what happened before 1969 and what happened after 1969. I don't mean it was bad after '69. A lot of good things, a lot of good things happened after 1969. But it was such a pivotal milestone in my life, that that's usually the first thing I think about when a date comes up.

[Assistant] That's certainly a very critical milestone for the whole world it changed.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I'd like to think so. I mean, it's really kind of sad to think here we are, what, thirty-one years now after we first did that in 1969, and what, twenty-eight years since the last time we did it. That's unbelievable. In fact, people frequently ask, when they find out I worked on the manned space program, "Well, how did you guys do that in such a short time period?" And I don't have a real good answer for that.\n\n John [W.] Aaron, a friend of mine who was EECOM flight controller, and one of the best there ever was in the control center, said one time there was just an unusual way that the dominoes lined up at the time, I guess, or something like that. He said it much better than that. He's much more eloquent than that. But it was an unusual set of dominoes that lined up at the time.\n\n We obviously had a challenge from the President [John F. Kennedy], and that was important. I mean, if you live in the United States, who's more important than the President? Especially back in those days. You think, hey, the President has established this challenge, the country, by and large, is behind it, it's the most exciting thing that's ever happened, and the money was available. So we just went and did it. And I'm not sure you could do anything like that again in that short a time period.

[Assistant] Certainly takes all of the right pieces coming together, everything from the President and Congress, down to having the right people in the right places.

[User] The right people. You know, again, if there hadn't been people like Bob Gilruth and Chris Kraft, Sig [Sigurd A.] Sjoberg, and a whole bunch of others, it wouldn't have happened.

[Assistant] They certainly made a lot that didn't initially seem possible become possible.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] You started with minimum technology and so many things had to be created along the way.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The right people. You know, again, if there hadn't been people like Bob Gilruth and Chris Kraft, Sig [Sigurd A.] Sjoberg, and a whole bunch of others, it wouldn't have happened.

[Assistant] They certainly made a lot that didn't initially seem possible become possible.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] You started with minimum technology and so many things had to be created along the way.

[User] Yes. I guess we didn't understand that it wasn't possible. There were no textbooks. There were even no degrees then in aerospace engineering, especially not space studies. But I don't know, [it was] sometime at least in the mid-sixties or later before any colleges I ever heard of starting offering degrees in aerospace and there were textbooks. What we had to learn from in the trajectory area about orbital mechanics were a few NASA technical notes that people had written. Even the physics books didn't have anything about orbital mechanics. We had what today would have to be the crudest computers that you can imagine, you know, but we thought they were pretty good and we would just keep running trials and errors until we figured it out.

[Assistant] Well, they were certainly good in comparison to what else you had.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] You started with minimum technology and so many things had to be created along the way.

[User] Yes. I guess we didn't understand that it wasn't possible. There were no textbooks. There were even no degrees then in aerospace engineering, especially not space studies. But I don't know, [it was] sometime at least in the mid-sixties or later before any colleges I ever heard of starting offering degrees in aerospace and there were textbooks. What we had to learn from in the trajectory area about orbital mechanics were a few NASA technical notes that people had written. Even the physics books didn't have anything about orbital mechanics. We had what today would have to be the crudest computers that you can imagine, you know, but we thought they were pretty good and we would just keep running trials and errors until we figured it out.

[Assistant] Well, they were certainly good in comparison to what else you had.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Made it all work.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I guess we didn't understand that it wasn't possible. There were no textbooks. There were even no degrees then in aerospace engineering, especially not space studies. But I don't know, [it was] sometime at least in the mid-sixties or later before any colleges I ever heard of starting offering degrees in aerospace and there were textbooks. What we had to learn from in the trajectory area about orbital mechanics were a few NASA technical notes that people had written. Even the physics books didn't have anything about orbital mechanics. We had what today would have to be the crudest computers that you can imagine, you know, but we thought they were pretty good and we would just keep running trials and errors until we figured it out.

[Assistant] Well, they were certainly good in comparison to what else you had.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Made it all work.

[User] Beats slide rules, anyway.

[Assistant] You mentioned, we had talked up to about Gemini IV, and getting the control center in Houston, coming on line, and that you were down at the Cape for Gemini IV. Then the Gemini missions began to really get up to speed and really working to accomplish some of the critical goals of rendezvous, docking, space walking. What did you do in between missions, actually, I guess would be my first question, to help prepare for all of this and to help get ready for the missions, besides the training that you talked about earlier? Were there other daily activities?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And, you know, to be in the air for fourteen days and not be able to stand up or really move at all with another person is not something that I would look forward to myself. [Laughter] But I mean, we proved that under harsh conditions, much harsher than what they would experience in Apollo, because it would be [more] roomy and without a lot of the conveniences that they would have on Apollo, I assumed were going to be developed, like better food and better toilet provisions and all that kind of stuff, they survived. I'm sure—I never talked to either [Frank] Borman or [James A.] Lovell [Jr.] about that, I guess, but it has to be the most miserable two weeks of their lives.

[Assistant] I can imagine.

[User] But that was a big thing. I mean, it sounds kind of silly now, but there were still people who questioned could people live as long as ten days in zero G [gravity]. Well, they lived for a couple of weeks, and it wasn't a big problem. They were a little awkward when they got back to land, but within a day or so they seemed to be, physically they seemed to be back to normal.

[Assistant] I'm sure mentally they were just ready to have a little bit of space for a while. [Laughter]

[User] I would think so. I should ask Jim Lovell that. I never have.

[Assistant] Certainly very unique experience for them, but did, as you say, pave the way for the future flights. Critical step.\n\n Now, had you worked, going back a step, had you worked on Gemini V also?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So that was a pretty exciting mission, too.

[Assistant] Certainly a lot that could be learned off of that one. Luckily, I guess, all the experience and training both of the flight controllers and of the flight crew was able to pay off to make that able to come together.

[User] Yes, it was a good test of what we had trained for, and once the decision was made, and it was made by the book and by the rules, and once it was made, it was just, "Let's go do it." The system worked, and as you said, it did point out the benefit of the training that we'd had and all the simulations that we had run. So we tried to look on the positive side of all of that. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Always a good thing to do.

[User] Time to go work on the next flight.

[Assistant] That's right, work on the next one and make sure that what happened before doesn't happen again.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, it was a good test of what we had trained for, and once the decision was made, and it was made by the book and by the rules, and once it was made, it was just, "Let's go do it." The system worked, and as you said, it did point out the benefit of the training that we'd had and all the simulations that we had run. So we tried to look on the positive side of all of that. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Always a good thing to do.

[User] Time to go work on the next flight.

[Assistant] That's right, work on the next one and make sure that what happened before doesn't happen again.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, the next one was Gemini IX. Were you involved with that mission?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Well, the next one was Gemini IX. Were you involved with that mission?

[User] Yes. I was on some shift in the control center, either as a Retro [or as a FDO]—I guess for all of the Gemini and Apollo missions and as we discussed in Mercury, in a back room staff support room thing. But I don't remember—I didn't do the launch phase and the rendezvous on [Gemini] IX. That's when we had what became known as the "angry alligator," I guess. We lost a target vehicle called the ATDA, augmented target docking adapter, I think, or apparatus. Adapter, I guess it was. ATDA, anyway. We launched it a couple days ahead of the IX mission, and it had a shroud, a two-piece nose cone over the docking mechanism, and it failed to release completely, so once again we weren't able to actually dock. But we did do a very successful rendezvous.\n\n Because I'm a trajectory guy, I always thought that the rendezvous is the complicated part. If you get them up there within twenty feet, if they can't dock, that's like navigating somebody across the whole United States. If you get them within a block and they can't find a parking space, that's their problem. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Sounds reasonable.

[User] So I mean, I don't mean to belittle the importance of docking and the development of the hardware that had to go into that, but that wasn't my area anyway. I thought, well, at least we did the rendezvous part, we'll get this docking [thing] figured out here one of these days. We just kept having a problem with the target vehicle.

[Assistant] Well, a lot of these later Gemini missions, like IX, X, XI, and XII, were testing various different rendezvous methods. Can you talk about some of those and how they were important for Apollo especially? Some of them were they would go up and dock within one orbit basically, and others where they'd have different approaches. Were you involved much in that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I feel very fortunate to have worked for him. One of the best things that ever happened to me.

[Assistant] Absolutely. It certainly does seem to have worked out well for you. I'm going to go ahead and pause right now and change out our tape.

[User] Sure. Okay.

[Assistant] Okay. We've talked pretty well about Gemini and covered most of the big details about it. Is there anything that you can think of that we didn't cover, that we might have needed to on any of the missions or any of the events going on during the Gemini program?

[User] No, I think we pretty much covered it. At least I can't think of anything else right now.

[Assistant] We can always come back to it later if we do.\n\n At the end of Gemini, you were promoted and became the head of the flight dynamics officer section. Did this have a lot of changes in what you were doing, or did this just add a couple extra responsibilities?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Sure. Okay.

[Assistant] Okay. We've talked pretty well about Gemini and covered most of the big details about it. Is there anything that you can think of that we didn't cover, that we might have needed to on any of the missions or any of the events going on during the Gemini program?

[User] No, I think we pretty much covered it. At least I can't think of anything else right now.

[Assistant] We can always come back to it later if we do.\n\n At the end of Gemini, you were promoted and became the head of the flight dynamics officer section. Did this have a lot of changes in what you were doing, or did this just add a couple extra responsibilities?

[User] It didn't really make that much of a change. It made me the boss of all of the FDOs, but we still worked as a team. Yes, it gave me a few more administrative duties, but it really didn't—I mean, I liked it. It was a title and probably a grade increase or something, but as far as the work that went on in the control center in supporting the missions, it didn't make that much of a difference.

[Assistant] With the change from Gemini to Apollo, you mentioned that sometimes during the Gemini program you'd be running simulations for the Apollo missions and, of course, doing various planning along the way. What major changes were there, though, to the control room itself, or to even the training process, from one program to the next?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It didn't really change a lot. We already knew what kind of launch vehicle we were going to have. We had the specifications. It couldn't have been completely built yet.\n\n We knew, for example, that we had a launch escape tower once again, like we had had in Mercury. So that gave us the capability to look at the possible regions of failure in the launch phase; engines out, guidance systems failures that would carry [you] into unsafe regimes, and to design abort modes which would involve either using the escape tower or separating from the booster and landing the command module by itself in different parts of the Atlantic Ocean.\n\n Then, of course, as the hardware was actually built and tested and we had to refine that a little bit, the exact parameters, but the basic abort modes stayed essentially the same all throughout the program.

[Assistant] It's interesting that you mentioned that you'd already been planning for the escape tower when you were first working on this, but yet then for Gemini they ended up using the ejection seats. Do you recall, even though it wasn't your direct area of focus, any of the discussion on that and how that came about?

[User] Not specifically. As I recall, it was basically as simple as nobody really liked the escape tower; it added more weight. Astronauts were test pilots in those days and they were used to ejection seats, so I kind of think that in Gemini they just decided they would try the ejection seats and very quickly decided that was not a very good solution either, and then for Apollo went back to the escape tower. But, as you said, I really wasn't involved in any of that decision-making.

[Assistant] Well, it worked out for both programs all right.

[User] Yes, and fortunately we never had to use any of them.

[Assistant] I think that's probably a very good thing all around.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not specifically. As I recall, it was basically as simple as nobody really liked the escape tower; it added more weight. Astronauts were test pilots in those days and they were used to ejection seats, so I kind of think that in Gemini they just decided they would try the ejection seats and very quickly decided that was not a very good solution either, and then for Apollo went back to the escape tower. But, as you said, I really wasn't involved in any of that decision-making.

[Assistant] Well, it worked out for both programs all right.

[User] Yes, and fortunately we never had to use any of them.

[Assistant] I think that's probably a very good thing all around.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Apollo 6 was your first flight as FDO for the Apollo program, is that correct, or was there one before that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, and fortunately we never had to use any of them.

[Assistant] I think that's probably a very good thing all around.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Apollo 6 was your first flight as FDO for the Apollo program, is that correct, or was there one before that?

[User] Well, by this time I was chief of the flight dynamics branch and therefore over all the Retros, FDOs and GUIDOs, and, yes, I had worked most of the unmanned flights, or at least a couple of them as either the prime FDO or as a backup, usually in a backup role. Apollo 6, as I recall, Jay [H.] Greene was the prime FDO on that flight and I backed him up, but that's where we had a problem with the cross-wiring of the engines. I'm not sure that I ever—I was there, but I don't think I ever took the console in a prime position on Apollo 6. That's my recollection, anyway.

[Assistant] Well, that works. You probably remember better than what I have anyway. It was certainly an interesting mission. There were, as you mentioned, a couple interesting glitches that eventually did get worked out.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Apollo 6 was your first flight as FDO for the Apollo program, is that correct, or was there one before that?

[User] Well, by this time I was chief of the flight dynamics branch and therefore over all the Retros, FDOs and GUIDOs, and, yes, I had worked most of the unmanned flights, or at least a couple of them as either the prime FDO or as a backup, usually in a backup role. Apollo 6, as I recall, Jay [H.] Greene was the prime FDO on that flight and I backed him up, but that's where we had a problem with the cross-wiring of the engines. I'm not sure that I ever—I was there, but I don't think I ever took the console in a prime position on Apollo 6. That's my recollection, anyway.

[Assistant] Well, that works. You probably remember better than what I have anyway. It was certainly an interesting mission. There were, as you mentioned, a couple interesting glitches that eventually did get worked out.

[User] Yes. Well, the Saturn V was a pretty enormous vehicle. Of course, with the FDO being concerned about the launch phase, the proper functioning of all of the engines and the various abort modes and all of that, it was a lot more complicated than it was back with the Atlas. But overall, it worked pretty well. We had a few problems with it. It had some pogo effect in the early flights, where it was kind of bouncing up and down, and a few development problems, but by and large, when we needed it, it worked.

[Assistant] It certainly did. It had an excellent record, especially in comparison with the Atlas.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, by this time I was chief of the flight dynamics branch and therefore over all the Retros, FDOs and GUIDOs, and, yes, I had worked most of the unmanned flights, or at least a couple of them as either the prime FDO or as a backup, usually in a backup role. Apollo 6, as I recall, Jay [H.] Greene was the prime FDO on that flight and I backed him up, but that's where we had a problem with the cross-wiring of the engines. I'm not sure that I ever—I was there, but I don't think I ever took the console in a prime position on Apollo 6. That's my recollection, anyway.

[Assistant] Well, that works. You probably remember better than what I have anyway. It was certainly an interesting mission. There were, as you mentioned, a couple interesting glitches that eventually did get worked out.

[User] Yes. Well, the Saturn V was a pretty enormous vehicle. Of course, with the FDO being concerned about the launch phase, the proper functioning of all of the engines and the various abort modes and all of that, it was a lot more complicated than it was back with the Atlas. But overall, it worked pretty well. We had a few problems with it. It had some pogo effect in the early flights, where it was kind of bouncing up and down, and a few development problems, but by and large, when we needed it, it worked.

[Assistant] It certainly did. It had an excellent record, especially in comparison with the Atlas.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Saturns came through all the time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Well, the Saturn V was a pretty enormous vehicle. Of course, with the FDO being concerned about the launch phase, the proper functioning of all of the engines and the various abort modes and all of that, it was a lot more complicated than it was back with the Atlas. But overall, it worked pretty well. We had a few problems with it. It had some pogo effect in the early flights, where it was kind of bouncing up and down, and a few development problems, but by and large, when we needed it, it worked.

[Assistant] It certainly did. It had an excellent record, especially in comparison with the Atlas.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Saturns came through all the time.

[User] The Germans from Huntsville [Marshall Space Flight Center] came through. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Absolutely. Did you then work on Apollo 7? Were you working on console at all for that one, do you recall?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But Apollo 8, certainly with me, and I think with a large percentage of the flight controllers, is a standout mission in our memories. I've told people, on Apollo 8 we baked the cake; on 11 we just put the icing on.

[Assistant] Many people agree with you on that. We've heard very similar—

[User] The interesting thing is, again, unfortunately, most of us didn't realize that until much later. I mean, again, we were so busy, we didn't have time. [It was one of] those frivolous questions, like "which mission stands out in your mind." You say, "What? I'm busy. Don't bug me now." [Laughter]

[Assistant] "I've got a job to do."\n\n Well, and you did still have the goal in front of you to actually land on the Moon.

[User] Oh, yes, but, boy, what a motivation. By this time we knew we were well ahead of the Russians. I mean, we, or at least me personally, I rightfully, as it turned out, suspected that we were ahead, because we were much more visible in what we were doing. Of all of these thousands of things that had to be done to get from here to the Moon, we were clicking them off. The lunar module would be a snap. We'd figured that out. Just go land that little thing. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, Apollo 8 certainly was a bold step and a great success, as you've said. Made a big difference for the program ahead, and the lunar module did come along and get up to speed and the next couple of missions tested it out.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The interesting thing is, again, unfortunately, most of us didn't realize that until much later. I mean, again, we were so busy, we didn't have time. [It was one of] those frivolous questions, like "which mission stands out in your mind." You say, "What? I'm busy. Don't bug me now." [Laughter]

[Assistant] "I've got a job to do."\n\n Well, and you did still have the goal in front of you to actually land on the Moon.

[User] Oh, yes, but, boy, what a motivation. By this time we knew we were well ahead of the Russians. I mean, we, or at least me personally, I rightfully, as it turned out, suspected that we were ahead, because we were much more visible in what we were doing. Of all of these thousands of things that had to be done to get from here to the Moon, we were clicking them off. The lunar module would be a snap. We'd figured that out. Just go land that little thing. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, Apollo 8 certainly was a bold step and a great success, as you've said. Made a big difference for the program ahead, and the lunar module did come along and get up to speed and the next couple of missions tested it out.

[User] Worked wonderful, yes, obviously.

[Assistant] Were there any particular thoughts that you had or reflections on Apollo 9 and 10 and their goals in both testing out both ships in Earth orbit and then with the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think John [W.] Young probably had the most fun of anybody driving around on the Moon and even running around. In fact, he scared us sometimes. He didn't worry about falling off the rover or turning it over or even falling down on the Moon by himself. I don't know, that would be a good question to ask all of the astronauts, who do you think really had the most fun [on the Moon]?

[Assistant] That is a good question.

[User] I think it would be John. John is a very serious and sober person, but, boy, I tell you, a lot of it is facade. I mean, he tries to project this image of a dumb Oklahoma guy that doesn't know anything. He's one of the smartest people you ever met, to start with. But, boy, he plays that, "I'm from the farm and I don't know nothing," thing, he really plays that to the hilt. He's gotten a lot of mileage out of that. But he's very serious, but also he is one of the funniest guys you've ever met, as opposed to Conrad, who was always joking. He never was serious. And that's good. But John could be extremely serious and then, boy, the next minute he's a laugh a minute.

[Assistant] Quite a personality.

[User] Quite a personality.

[Assistant] Toward the end of the Apollo missions, you also took on duties as a range safety coordinator, is that correct?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think it would be John. John is a very serious and sober person, but, boy, I tell you, a lot of it is facade. I mean, he tries to project this image of a dumb Oklahoma guy that doesn't know anything. He's one of the smartest people you ever met, to start with. But, boy, he plays that, "I'm from the farm and I don't know nothing," thing, he really plays that to the hilt. He's gotten a lot of mileage out of that. But he's very serious, but also he is one of the funniest guys you've ever met, as opposed to Conrad, who was always joking. He never was serious. And that's good. But John could be extremely serious and then, boy, the next minute he's a laugh a minute.

[Assistant] Quite a personality.

[User] Quite a personality.

[Assistant] Toward the end of the Apollo missions, you also took on duties as a range safety coordinator, is that correct?

[User] Yes, that started back about at the end of the Gemini program.

[Assistant] Oh, okay, that far back.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. Yes. But I was surrounded by competence, and that's a luxury that you don't find, unfortunately.

[Assistant] Certainly pretty unique to be able to have that experience, that situation.

[User] Yes. I think that probably the only way to create it again is, like I said, if we get another great challenge, is to get a bunch of guys in their twenties and tell them to go do it, and they'll figure out a way to do it.

[Assistant] Well, maybe we'll see that happen.

[User] I hope so. I hope so. I'm not nearly as optimistic as I used to be. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, Columbus certainly had his share of difficulties along the way, so maybe we're just in one of those dry spells, and there's hope yet.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. I think that probably the only way to create it again is, like I said, if we get another great challenge, is to get a bunch of guys in their twenties and tell them to go do it, and they'll figure out a way to do it.

[Assistant] Well, maybe we'll see that happen.

[User] I hope so. I hope so. I'm not nearly as optimistic as I used to be. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, Columbus certainly had his share of difficulties along the way, so maybe we're just in one of those dry spells, and there's hope yet.

[User] Yes. It just seems a shame that, of course, this is a sign I'm getting old, but it's incredible for me to now meet people who weren't even born at the time we landed on the Moon. It's like a historical event rather than an ongoing thing. In fact, there are even people, "Oh, did you all really do that, or is that something you made up?" [Laughter] It's kind of sad.

[Assistant] It's very sad.