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

[User] No. [Laughter] No, it wound up costing a lot more than we thought at that time.

[Assistant] It's not surprising, there was so little known at that time.

[User] Yes, and we didn't spend very much time on it, because we had to get an answer back out for congressional committee, so we just did it. But that was kind of one of the interesting things we did at that time. Looking back on it, it looks pretty darn foolish for two people to go try to do that.

[Assistant] It was a start.

[User] It was a start, and that was typical of the program office at that time, where everybody just pitched in and did whatever was needed to be done at that point in time.

[Assistant] That's great. What are some other things that you did?


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

[User] Yes, and we didn't spend very much time on it, because we had to get an answer back out for congressional committee, so we just did it. But that was kind of one of the interesting things we did at that time. Looking back on it, it looks pretty darn foolish for two people to go try to do that.

[Assistant] It was a start.

[User] It was a start, and that was typical of the program office at that time, where everybody just pitched in and did whatever was needed to be done at that point in time.

[Assistant] That's great. What are some other things that you did?

[User] We laid out a tentative flight program. We were using the direct ascent as the model at that point in time of the way to go to the Moon, and we laid out what we thought would be a flight program that would lead up to the lunar landing. Interestingly enough, at that point in time our program ended with one landing. We made one landing and came home and the program was over, as far as our flight program went. Of course, it turned out to be a lot more than that at the end of the day.\n\n In laying that program out, we were a lot more conservative than it turned out later on we really had to be, so we got a lot more flights to build up the experience to go to the Moon than we actually took in the real world later on.

[Assistant] If you were working on Apollo during this early period, were you confident that we'd be able to make it to the Moon by the end of the decade as the President had announced?


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

[User] It was a start, and that was typical of the program office at that time, where everybody just pitched in and did whatever was needed to be done at that point in time.

[Assistant] That's great. What are some other things that you did?

[User] We laid out a tentative flight program. We were using the direct ascent as the model at that point in time of the way to go to the Moon, and we laid out what we thought would be a flight program that would lead up to the lunar landing. Interestingly enough, at that point in time our program ended with one landing. We made one landing and came home and the program was over, as far as our flight program went. Of course, it turned out to be a lot more than that at the end of the day.\n\n In laying that program out, we were a lot more conservative than it turned out later on we really had to be, so we got a lot more flights to build up the experience to go to the Moon than we actually took in the real world later on.

[Assistant] If you were working on Apollo during this early period, were you confident that we'd be able to make it to the Moon by the end of the decade as the President had announced?

[User] Well, definitely in time. Of course, it was very early in the decade, so you know, ten years was a long time to me at that point in my life. [Laughter] Yes, I thought if it could be done, it could be done in ten years. The real question was, could it be done reasonably. As with a lot of research, you just don't know until you go try it and see, see how it turns out. So we were optimistic and we thought it was worth giving it a real try, but we weren't really confident. As in most research kinds of programs, you're not really confident of the outcome. If you knew what the outcome was going to be, it wouldn't be research.

[Assistant] That's true. Are there any other things? I know you eventually became Chief of Reliability and Quality Assurance. Were there any other things you did before that?


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

[User] Well, definitely in time. Of course, it was very early in the decade, so you know, ten years was a long time to me at that point in my life. [Laughter] Yes, I thought if it could be done, it could be done in ten years. The real question was, could it be done reasonably. As with a lot of research, you just don't know until you go try it and see, see how it turns out. So we were optimistic and we thought it was worth giving it a real try, but we weren't really confident. As in most research kinds of programs, you're not really confident of the outcome. If you knew what the outcome was going to be, it wouldn't be research.

[Assistant] That's true. Are there any other things? I know you eventually became Chief of Reliability and Quality Assurance. Were there any other things you did before that?

[User] Well, when we first moved down to Houston, one of the things that we decided for sure we wanted to do was to test the launch escape system and the parachute recovery system very carefully, and to do that, we needed another launch vehicle. So I was in, again, another small group of a couple of guys, three guys, I guess, at that time that put the Little Joe II launch vehicle under contract. Again, typical of the rapidity with which you could do things at that point in time, we wrote the specification, got bids, evaluated the bids, and made a contract award in less than a month for that. Now that would probably take two years to do.

[Assistant] Did you participate in the launches?

[User] Yes, I worked on both the Little Joe II launch vehicle and I was also head of operations for the Command Module part, the spacecraft part of that test program. I was mission director at White Sands [Proving Ground, New Mexico] for a couple of the early launches, before I became head of reliability.

[Assistant] Did you do all the things simultaneously or were they at different points?


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

[User] Well, when we first moved down to Houston, one of the things that we decided for sure we wanted to do was to test the launch escape system and the parachute recovery system very carefully, and to do that, we needed another launch vehicle. So I was in, again, another small group of a couple of guys, three guys, I guess, at that time that put the Little Joe II launch vehicle under contract. Again, typical of the rapidity with which you could do things at that point in time, we wrote the specification, got bids, evaluated the bids, and made a contract award in less than a month for that. Now that would probably take two years to do.

[Assistant] Did you participate in the launches?

[User] Yes, I worked on both the Little Joe II launch vehicle and I was also head of operations for the Command Module part, the spacecraft part of that test program. I was mission director at White Sands [Proving Ground, New Mexico] for a couple of the early launches, before I became head of reliability.

[Assistant] Did you do all the things simultaneously or were they at different points?

[User] They were more or less simultaneously. The Little Joe II, the Command Module [CM] that was going on top of it, and the operations force at White Sands that we had to build up. We had no people out there, so we had to start hiring people from scratch to get a work force out there. All that had to be done essentially simultaneously, yes.

[Assistant] Did you spend a lot of time at White Sands?


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

[User] Yes, I worked on both the Little Joe II launch vehicle and I was also head of operations for the Command Module part, the spacecraft part of that test program. I was mission director at White Sands [Proving Ground, New Mexico] for a couple of the early launches, before I became head of reliability.

[Assistant] Did you do all the things simultaneously or were they at different points?

[User] They were more or less simultaneously. The Little Joe II, the Command Module [CM] that was going on top of it, and the operations force at White Sands that we had to build up. We had no people out there, so we had to start hiring people from scratch to get a work force out there. All that had to be done essentially simultaneously, yes.

[Assistant] Did you spend a lot of time at White Sands?

[User] Yes, for a year I was there almost every week. At least three weeks out of every month I was there. I would be back in Houston either usually on a Friday or a Monday to tie things together here, and then back out to White Sands for the rest of the week.

[Assistant] Are there any of those test episodes or anything that stand out in your mind from that period?


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

[User] They were more or less simultaneously. The Little Joe II, the Command Module [CM] that was going on top of it, and the operations force at White Sands that we had to build up. We had no people out there, so we had to start hiring people from scratch to get a work force out there. All that had to be done essentially simultaneously, yes.

[Assistant] Did you spend a lot of time at White Sands?

[User] Yes, for a year I was there almost every week. At least three weeks out of every month I was there. I would be back in Houston either usually on a Friday or a Monday to tie things together here, and then back out to White Sands for the rest of the week.

[Assistant] Are there any of those test episodes or anything that stand out in your mind from that period?

[User] Well, the most famous one, I think, was the first guided flight of the Little Joe II launch vehicle. I was not there for that one. I had gone over to reliability at that time and I was actually at Grumman [Aircraft Engineering Corporation], designing and building the Lunar Module [LM]. We were patched in by telephone to the people at White Sands so we heard what was going on for that flight. That particular flight we had one of the control fans lock hard over just right after liftoff, and so the thing started spinning, and it finally spun up to the point that the big solid rocket motors came out of the side of the case. It made for a pretty exciting event. [Laughter] I can still remember the commentator that was on the telephone saying, "It's liftoff. The vehicle is rolling, it's rolling, it's rolling, it's rolling. It blew up!" [Laughter] That's all we heard at the other end of the line.

[Assistant] The Little Joe tests were successful in the long run?


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

[User] Yes, for a year I was there almost every week. At least three weeks out of every month I was there. I would be back in Houston either usually on a Friday or a Monday to tie things together here, and then back out to White Sands for the rest of the week.

[Assistant] Are there any of those test episodes or anything that stand out in your mind from that period?

[User] Well, the most famous one, I think, was the first guided flight of the Little Joe II launch vehicle. I was not there for that one. I had gone over to reliability at that time and I was actually at Grumman [Aircraft Engineering Corporation], designing and building the Lunar Module [LM]. We were patched in by telephone to the people at White Sands so we heard what was going on for that flight. That particular flight we had one of the control fans lock hard over just right after liftoff, and so the thing started spinning, and it finally spun up to the point that the big solid rocket motors came out of the side of the case. It made for a pretty exciting event. [Laughter] I can still remember the commentator that was on the telephone saying, "It's liftoff. The vehicle is rolling, it's rolling, it's rolling, it's rolling. It blew up!" [Laughter] That's all we heard at the other end of the line.

[Assistant] The Little Joe tests were successful in the long run?

[User] Yes, that was the only major anomaly we had in that whole program, actually. The people that did that, it was mostly other people, because I left to go to reliability fairly early. But the people that did that did a very, very good job.

[Assistant] You went to reliability at around 1964?


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

[User] Well, the most famous one, I think, was the first guided flight of the Little Joe II launch vehicle. I was not there for that one. I had gone over to reliability at that time and I was actually at Grumman [Aircraft Engineering Corporation], designing and building the Lunar Module [LM]. We were patched in by telephone to the people at White Sands so we heard what was going on for that flight. That particular flight we had one of the control fans lock hard over just right after liftoff, and so the thing started spinning, and it finally spun up to the point that the big solid rocket motors came out of the side of the case. It made for a pretty exciting event. [Laughter] I can still remember the commentator that was on the telephone saying, "It's liftoff. The vehicle is rolling, it's rolling, it's rolling, it's rolling. It blew up!" [Laughter] That's all we heard at the other end of the line.

[Assistant] The Little Joe tests were successful in the long run?

[User] Yes, that was the only major anomaly we had in that whole program, actually. The people that did that, it was mostly other people, because I left to go to reliability fairly early. But the people that did that did a very, very good job.

[Assistant] You went to reliability at around 1964?

[User] Sometime around there, yes. I've forgotten exactly when.

[Assistant] In the Apollo Program, what was the roles and responsibilities of reliability and quality assurance?


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

[User] Yes, that was the only major anomaly we had in that whole program, actually. The people that did that, it was mostly other people, because I left to go to reliability fairly early. But the people that did that did a very, very good job.

[Assistant] You went to reliability at around 1964?

[User] Sometime around there, yes. I've forgotten exactly when.

[Assistant] In the Apollo Program, what was the roles and responsibilities of reliability and quality assurance?

[User] Well, at that time the Center did not have a reliability organization. There was no formal reliability program, and the program manager, Dr. [Joseph F.] Shea, felt that we really needed one. Since the Center did not have a resource we could draw on in that field, we created it within the Apollo office. Another fellow, Bill [William M.] Bland [Jr.], started the reliability effort within the program office and then he moved over to head of Test Operations, I think, anyway, another job, and I stepped in and took the reliability program and built it up for the whole Apollo Program. Later, that whole organization was transferred over to the Center and it became a Center resource rather than just one program office.

[Assistant] So as chief of this organization within the Apollo Program, what were your objectives as far as assuring reliability and quality assurance?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Would you share with us your memories of that event and how it affected you and the people?

[User] We were all devastated, obviously. When it occurred, I was having dinner out at a restaurant with another fellow from the program office who was a duty officer at that time. In the middle of the dinner, he got a call, as the duty officer, and was told that there had been an accident down there. He didn't have all the details at that time. We had both driven separately, and so our wives took one car and went home, and we went into the Center. I guess we were there all night long, as a matter of fact, trying to understand what had happened and how it could have happened, why and how this could have happened to us.\n\n I was not really a part of the long-term effort to determine the cause of the fire. I'd left reliability and I was working on the Lunar Module. I kept fairly close tabs on it, because everything they found in the Command Module and then we would go look at the Lunar Module and could we have that same kind of a problem in the Lunar Module, and in most cases, yes, we could. The problem could have occurred in the Lunar Module had it been a little bit further along in the development cycle at that point in time. So we had a lot of redesign in the Lunar Module, just like the Command Module and the service module had.\n\n We were devastated by the loss of the crew, by the setback in the program. There was a change, I think, in the attitude of the people as a result of that, to give much, much more emphasis on crew safety and mission reliability than we had given in the past, and that went all the way down through the subcontractors. It wasn't just the prime contractors; it was all the way down through the subs [subcontractors].

[Assistant] So by this time you were chief of the Lunar Module Project Engineering Division.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Where was the Lunar Module in development when you came in?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Where was the Lunar Module in development when you came in?

[User] Well, I was very fortunate. On the Lunar Module Program I was able to see the whole program. I helped write the specification for the Lunar Module and worked on it off and on, well, all the way through its development, and helped close the contract out after Apollo was over. So I got to see that whole program from beginning to end. I was very fortunate in that regard.

[Assistant] Did you have any involvement in the decision of what method would be used to get to the Moon in deciding on Lunar Orbit Rendezvous [LOR]?

[User] Yes. Another one of the jobs I had during the time—as I said before, we all just kind of pitched in and did whatever was needed. One of the jobs I had was being head of an organization called Mission Engineering. Mission Engineering was set up to basically look at the different ways to get to the Moon and decide which way should we conduct the mission, what was the most likely way, the best way, the optimum way, of conducting the mission.\n\n I worked with and had a group of probably 15 civil servants and 300 or so contract people, both Grumman and Rockwell , Rockwell primarily at that point in time. We looked at all the different methods. It wasn't just us doing it; it was being done at Marshall, it was being done at [NASA] headquarters [Washington, DC]. Bell Labs, that was supporting headquarters, had a lot to do with that at that point in time. But we were contributing out of our organization. Of course, it finally wound up the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was the best way to go.

[Assistant] What did you think when you first heard about the concept of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous?


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

[User] Probably seven out of the nine. Actually, the final Lunar Module contained many of the ideas that were in some of the other proposals. Another thing I think that denotes the spirit of the Apollo Program, a couple of the proposers, when they submitted their proposals, said, "If we are not selected, we hope the government will find things in our proposal that will help the final design of whoever is selected, and you're free to use it any way you want." That was just unheard of. That just did not happen that way. But, again, it's kind of typical of the support all across the country to the Apollo Program. It made our job very, very much easier with that kind of support.

[Assistant] That's great. So Grumman was finally chosen.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that a unanimous decision?

[User] Well, in the selection process, that's hard to find out. You start out working with a bunch of committees down at a low level looking at the nine proposals in one small specific area and you rate them. Then another group comes in and looks at all of the committee actions and puts it together and they then say, "We think this one is superior in this regard, this one is superior in that regard." Then it goes to a selection committee, and the selection committee takes those recommendations and comes up and ranks then not all the proposals, but usually the top three or four. I think it was three on the Lunar Module, if I remember right.\n\n They rank them and send them over then to the selection official, who was the NASA administrator, and he makes the final decision. So how much better Grumman was than any other proposer, again, if you ask ten different people that worked on different parts of that selection process, you'd probably get ten different answers, because it depends on what part they were looking at. But as I said, I think from what I saw of them, at least seven out of the nine could have been picked and it then would have worked.

[Assistant] The Lunar Module was so different from anything that had really been developed at this time. What were some of the challenges from that perspective of making it successful?


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

[User] They were successful. It worked. But the idea of going up there without having the Lunar Module propulsion system available for at least part of the time to give you backup did not appear to me to be a very attractive thing to do. It turns out they didn't need it, so then it was fine.

[Assistant] Was that part of the specifications, I guess, the Lunar Module, that it would serve as somewhat of a backup in case of a problem?

[User] No. No, we knew it would and we designed to give it that kind of a capability, but it was not a part of the original spec. It was something that we came out fortuitously as a result of the way the vehicles were designed.

[Assistant] Fortunately so.

[User] Fortunately during Apollo 13, very, very much fortunately.

[Assistant] Before we go into some of the later missions, I'd like to talk about Apollo 9. That was such an important mission as far as testing the Lunar Modules. Could you just share with us your experiences, your memories of Apollo 9 and the impact it had?


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

[User] It was, yes. It really was.

[Assistant] We found in our research the towing bill that Grumman sent to North American.

[User] That was pretty cute. That was pretty cute. I was there when they handed that to the program manager from North American, and he really got disturbed about that. [Laughter] To him that was no joke. So we kind of had our hand slapped about that. It was no time to get levity involved, but we thought it was a pretty good thing.

[Assistant] It's just fortunate that it worked out that the Lunar Module was able to fill in in that capacity.

[User] Yes, if the explosion had occurred quite a bit closer to the Moon than it did, the Lunar Module just would not have had enough energy to get back to a free-return trajectory. We just couldn't have done it. So we were extremely fortunate as to when it occurred. We were extremely fortunate the way it occurred, as far as giving enough time to transfer the crew back into the Lunar Module and transfer the guidance information from the Command Module computer to a Lunar Module computer, which was probably not absolutely mandatory that that get done, but it would have been very, very difficult to reconstruct that in time to make the Lunar Module burn if we hadn't been able to have that transfer.\n\n The guys had just enough time to do it before the—well, actually the service module power did go down. They had to shift over to the Command Module power to finish that transfer, so we used a little bit of the Command Module battery. We tried to recharge that through the LM. I don't guess we ever really knew whether that was successful or not, but we tried to recharge that Command Module battery from the Lunar Module.

[Assistant] It was a great engineering accomplishment bringing them back alive.


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

[User] That was pretty cute. That was pretty cute. I was there when they handed that to the program manager from North American, and he really got disturbed about that. [Laughter] To him that was no joke. So we kind of had our hand slapped about that. It was no time to get levity involved, but we thought it was a pretty good thing.

[Assistant] It's just fortunate that it worked out that the Lunar Module was able to fill in in that capacity.

[User] Yes, if the explosion had occurred quite a bit closer to the Moon than it did, the Lunar Module just would not have had enough energy to get back to a free-return trajectory. We just couldn't have done it. So we were extremely fortunate as to when it occurred. We were extremely fortunate the way it occurred, as far as giving enough time to transfer the crew back into the Lunar Module and transfer the guidance information from the Command Module computer to a Lunar Module computer, which was probably not absolutely mandatory that that get done, but it would have been very, very difficult to reconstruct that in time to make the Lunar Module burn if we hadn't been able to have that transfer.\n\n The guys had just enough time to do it before the—well, actually the service module power did go down. They had to shift over to the Command Module power to finish that transfer, so we used a little bit of the Command Module battery. We tried to recharge that through the LM. I don't guess we ever really knew whether that was successful or not, but we tried to recharge that Command Module battery from the Lunar Module.

[Assistant] It was a great engineering accomplishment bringing them back alive.

[User] It was. It was. Again, as you said, it was a tremendous team effort to do that.

[Assistant] At some point in the Apollo Program, you switched from being the Lunar Module chief to being the manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office.


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

[User] Yes, if the explosion had occurred quite a bit closer to the Moon than it did, the Lunar Module just would not have had enough energy to get back to a free-return trajectory. We just couldn't have done it. So we were extremely fortunate as to when it occurred. We were extremely fortunate the way it occurred, as far as giving enough time to transfer the crew back into the Lunar Module and transfer the guidance information from the Command Module computer to a Lunar Module computer, which was probably not absolutely mandatory that that get done, but it would have been very, very difficult to reconstruct that in time to make the Lunar Module burn if we hadn't been able to have that transfer.\n\n The guys had just enough time to do it before the—well, actually the service module power did go down. They had to shift over to the Command Module power to finish that transfer, so we used a little bit of the Command Module battery. We tried to recharge that through the LM. I don't guess we ever really knew whether that was successful or not, but we tried to recharge that Command Module battery from the Lunar Module.

[Assistant] It was a great engineering accomplishment bringing them back alive.

[User] It was. It was. Again, as you said, it was a tremendous team effort to do that.

[Assistant] At some point in the Apollo Program, you switched from being the Lunar Module chief to being the manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office.

[User] Yes. Well, up until Apollo 11, I was chief engineer on the Lunar Module, and then after Apollo 11 through 16, I was manager of the Lunar Module, not just the engineering part, but the whole program. Then after 16, I was the spacecraft program manager, having both the Command Module and the CSM for Apollo 17.

[Assistant] How did your responsibilities change as you switched from just focusing on the Lunar Module to the whole Apollo Program?


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

[User] It was. It was. Again, as you said, it was a tremendous team effort to do that.

[Assistant] At some point in the Apollo Program, you switched from being the Lunar Module chief to being the manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office.

[User] Yes. Well, up until Apollo 11, I was chief engineer on the Lunar Module, and then after Apollo 11 through 16, I was manager of the Lunar Module, not just the engineering part, but the whole program. Then after 16, I was the spacecraft program manager, having both the Command Module and the CSM for Apollo 17.

[Assistant] How did your responsibilities change as you switched from just focusing on the Lunar Module to the whole Apollo Program?

[User] Well, the responsibility, I was all of a sudden now responsible for the Rockwell. I think it was Rockwell by that time. North American name had been changed. So I was responsible for the Rockwell contract as well as all the subcontractors, as well as the Lunar Module. But I had very good people within the program office working on the CSM, and I don't think we missed a lick, because those people, most of them had been there through almost the entire program, as a matter of fact. They were doing their thing and it was going along quite smoothly. So it really was not a big perturbation in program management at all.

[Assistant] Apollo 17 was the last mission. Can you share with us your memories of Apollo 17?


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

[User] Well, since I was program manager at the time, I'd have to say it was the longest mission we ever flew, the longest stay time on the Moon, the longest time out of the Lunar Module on the surface of any mission. More return mass of lunar soil, rocks than any other mission. So it was quite successful. I think, remarkably, by just the period from Apollo 11 to 17, the number of anomalies that we had, the number of problems that we were working during the mission were very, very, very few. We just did not have any significant problem the whole mission. As the program manager, you always worry about what's going to happen next, but the other shoe never dropped, it was just a very smooth mission, had a good crew.\n\n I think the biggest thing, probably, was the emotional letdown after the mission was over, realizing that we were through, no more flights. Several of us were quite unhappy about that, because we had three more Saturn V launch vehicles, we had two more LMs that were basically built. They had been stopped earlier when the decision was made not to fly past 17, but they could have easily made the schedule to fly.\n\n We had Command Service Modules that could have been there easily. We had the crew in place, not just the flight crew, but we had all the ground people that it takes to build checkout and operate the equipment in place. We felt there was plenty to be gained with two or three more flights from a scientific point of view. It was a big emotional letdown after 17 was over, but the mission itself was by far the least notable mission as far as trouble of the whole program.

[Assistant] Yet the most successful in terms of scientific.

[User] Yes, by far.

[Assistant] And notable because it had the first astronaut scientist on it.

[User] That's another story, yes. [Laughter] I won't get into that one.

[Assistant] Okay. Anything else that you would like to talk about in reference to Apollo that maybe we didn't give enough time or didn't bring up yet?


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

[User] Yes, by far.

[Assistant] And notable because it had the first astronaut scientist on it.

[User] That's another story, yes. [Laughter] I won't get into that one.

[Assistant] Okay. Anything else that you would like to talk about in reference to Apollo that maybe we didn't give enough time or didn't bring up yet?

[User] I don't think so. You know, you could talk for days, but I think your questions have covered quite well, really, the major points as we went through. We didn't spend very much time talking about the activity between Apollo 13 and 14.

[Assistant] We can go over that if you'd like.


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

[User] Well, yes, I thought we would. At that time we had—NASA, the big "we," NASA—largely under the direction of Dr. [George E.] Mueller had laid out a program which had the Space Station, the Shuttle, an orbiter transfer vehicle, all aimed at and being able to make quite routine trips to the Moon. Initially, they were going to do the Space Station, and, of course, they did Skylab, which was our first cut at a space station, but it was not permanent. Then during that time period they decided it would probably be better to build the Shuttle, the Space Transportation System, and use it then to help get the permanent station in place. The time scale they had laid out for this was, I think, to have the station in place by the late seventies, early eighties. Of course, we're just now starting to put the thing up, so it stretched out a lot.\n\n Yes, I think we'll go back. I think there are things on the Moon, there's a lot more science to be obtained. But I think operationally as we go further out than the Moon, the idea of having the Moon as a way point when we really get serious about it, I think that's going to be a very big advantage.

[Assistant] I think this is probably a good ending point.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] We've been talking for about two hours.

[User] Okay. Good enough.

[Assistant] Thank you for talking with us.


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And you didn't have up-link necessarily?

[User] We could do commands.

[Assistant] But you couldn't talk?

[User] We could talk.

[Assistant] You could or could not?


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

[User] We could do commands.

[Assistant] But you couldn't talk?

[User] We could talk.

[Assistant] You could or could not?

[User] We could. That's what the Capcom did.

[Assistant] But you could not communicate among the sites except by teletype?


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

[User] We could talk.

[Assistant] You could or could not?

[User] We could. That's what the Capcom did.

[Assistant] But you could not communicate among the sites except by teletype?

[User] Except by a teletype. But you could hear the other guys talk. We did that. A lot of times we would make damn sure that we were hearing the other guys talk. In fact, that was one thing that kind of give Kraft the idea of doing something different. He could actually hear on the old conference loop. We'd put the air-to-ground on the conference loop and nobody better get on it when we was doing a pass. I don't care what they did. If you wanted to get to the site, you went autowire. Nobody else ever did that. No other person. Right today, if you look at what's going on the Mir, the Mir doesn't have but very small voice. We've always done it. We've always had communication with the ground. That, I think, is a really positive thing, it really is, because we always looked at it and we always were part of it. The people who were actually flying a mission were part of what the crew was doing. We knew exactly all the things and we had a system. When you think about it, we did that. It was pretty tough to do in those days with the Communists and the blocs. We also had a Landing and Recovery Division that would go in any country to go get them, too, no matter where they went. So from that standpoint, we had a really good thing to work from. I was very proud of it, trying to make it work. When I was at Zanzibar, the Ac Aid didn't work. We used to call it an Ac Aid because it never worked.

[Assistant] What is that?


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

[User] Ten thousand will be like hog heaven.

[Assistant] Yes. You were about the same age.

[User] After I did my Army tour, the branch chief was now a guy named Jim [James C.] McPherson. He hired me back, and he gave me a GS-9. I went to work, and this was 1967. I came back, and I bought a house on the GI Bill in Clear Lake City, Camino South, the same house I’m still in. It was the third house built in Camino South. You can sit in our front yard, and you could see the Clear Lake Movie Theater, which is now a Chinese restaurant behind a Valero.

[Assistant] Is that the 888 Bistro?

[User] No, it’s no longer a Chinese restaurant, it’s vacant now. But there’s a two-story building right across from the Firestone store.

[Assistant] Oh yes, the Oriental Gourmet I think is what it used to be.


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

[User] I computed the state vector to the Sun and Moon, which wasn’t used. My star charts weren’t used, they were used for ductwork. But the crew survived. We got them back.\n\n I guess the flights 14, 15, and 16 were fairly uneventful for me. Everything worked fine. We had no problems. I remember watching John [W.] Young kick a million-dollar experiment’s wires loose. They set up this box on the Moon. He’s walking around. He pulls out a bunch of little wires and destroyed it. I remember him saying, “Oops.”\n\n There’s another story I guess I can tell. If you want to edit it out later you can.

[Assistant] That’s your call.

[User] I’ll say it. We can decide.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] John Young and Charlie [Charles M.] Duke were in the LM, and they did about three different EVAs, extravehicular walks, on the Moon. They went out and did a walk, came back, got in, repressurized, then they had a sleep cycle.\n\n One night they were in the LM. They had repressurized and taken their suits off. The normal downlink that’s supposed to be suppressed got out to the press. I have a copy of it at home. John Young is talking to Charlie Duke and he says, “Charlie, I got the farts again. It’s that goddamn Gatorade.” They were worried about the crew getting low on potassium, so in the suits they had a little tube from the backpack, and they had Gatorade. If they got thirsty they would reach over and suck on this tube and get Gatorade. Young was convinced that that was causing his gas problems. Charlie didn’t say much. He said, “Yes, okay.” That’s my Apollo 16 story that I remember. I wasn’t much involved with [it]. I don’t know if you want the Internet to have the word fart on it or not.

[Assistant] Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine, if you’re fine with it, I think it’s okay.


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

[User] I’ll say it. We can decide.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] John Young and Charlie [Charles M.] Duke were in the LM, and they did about three different EVAs, extravehicular walks, on the Moon. They went out and did a walk, came back, got in, repressurized, then they had a sleep cycle.\n\n One night they were in the LM. They had repressurized and taken their suits off. The normal downlink that’s supposed to be suppressed got out to the press. I have a copy of it at home. John Young is talking to Charlie Duke and he says, “Charlie, I got the farts again. It’s that goddamn Gatorade.” They were worried about the crew getting low on potassium, so in the suits they had a little tube from the backpack, and they had Gatorade. If they got thirsty they would reach over and suck on this tube and get Gatorade. Young was convinced that that was causing his gas problems. Charlie didn’t say much. He said, “Yes, okay.” That’s my Apollo 16 story that I remember. I wasn’t much involved with [it]. I don’t know if you want the Internet to have the word fart on it or not.

[Assistant] Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine, if you’re fine with it, I think it’s okay.

[User] A lot of people know that story, so it won’t be disputed. There’s a teletype downlink that people have.

[Assistant] Yes, I was going to say that sounded familiar.


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

[User] John Young and Charlie [Charles M.] Duke were in the LM, and they did about three different EVAs, extravehicular walks, on the Moon. They went out and did a walk, came back, got in, repressurized, then they had a sleep cycle.\n\n One night they were in the LM. They had repressurized and taken their suits off. The normal downlink that’s supposed to be suppressed got out to the press. I have a copy of it at home. John Young is talking to Charlie Duke and he says, “Charlie, I got the farts again. It’s that goddamn Gatorade.” They were worried about the crew getting low on potassium, so in the suits they had a little tube from the backpack, and they had Gatorade. If they got thirsty they would reach over and suck on this tube and get Gatorade. Young was convinced that that was causing his gas problems. Charlie didn’t say much. He said, “Yes, okay.” That’s my Apollo 16 story that I remember. I wasn’t much involved with [it]. I don’t know if you want the Internet to have the word fart on it or not.

[Assistant] Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine, if you’re fine with it, I think it’s okay.

[User] A lot of people know that story, so it won’t be disputed. There’s a teletype downlink that people have.

[Assistant] Yes, I was going to say that sounded familiar.

[User] You’ve probably heard that before.

[Assistant] I have. I think somebody told me it was orange juice, some other people.


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

[User] A lot of people know that story, so it won’t be disputed. There’s a teletype downlink that people have.

[Assistant] Yes, I was going to say that sounded familiar.

[User] You’ve probably heard that before.

[Assistant] I have. I think somebody told me it was orange juice, some other people.

[User] It could have been. He may not have said Gatorade. It was something. It was a mixture. It was like that. It was pumped up with potassium, a fruit drink. Apollo went fine. I don’t remember anything happening after we got to going. I do remember Bill [Howard W.] Tindall who was in charge of the software. We used to have these software control boards, and every mission we would go, “We got to change this, we got to change that.”\n\n The computers were hardwired. They were called ropes. They actually hired women who had small fingers. They worked at Raytheon, and they were former seamstresses. They sewed for a living, and they got the job. They called it weaving. They would take a wire and connect it at two points in this battery of network. To change the software you had to move those wires around. Like on Apollo 11—another story I didn’t tell about 12.\n\n After Apollo 11, we thought we had a better knowledge of the lunar gravity model, so we put together a change to go change the gravity model in the Command and Lunar Module. I remember that was between July and November we did it.

[Assistant] Yes. Short time.


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

[User] There was a woman named Sissy Phillips. Her name was Laura Phillips. There was a woman named Sue Shafer. She could beat me in tennis. I thought I was a good tennis player and she just beat me. She was good. Sandra Yates. This was 1963. Cathy Osgood was not in the Math Physics Branch. She was down the hall in the Mission Planning Division. She was an engineer.

[Assistant] Her name I’ve heard quite a bit, and we’ve interviewed her.

[User] She’s still alive. You could probably interview her. She’s from Langley. She started at Langley.

[Assistant] She’s actually working on a book. She’s working on a book, she told me.

[User] She’s working on a book.

[Assistant] She’s working on a book, yes.


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

[User] She’s working on a book.

[Assistant] She’s working on a book, yes.

[User] I had a lot of respect for a lot of the women I know that—when I was able to hire, the times that I was able to hire, we could only hire co-ops, and you could only hire straight A co-ops. There were so few positions. I hired a woman from Virginia Tech. … [Her name was Michelle Monk. One of my best engineers. She is still with NASA at Langley. She went home to be near her parents.]\n\n I had 25 people, and 4 of them were female. Some of the old guys never got it. I remember one time. We had a meeting that was held before every Shuttle flight called the aerodynamics panel. All the aero guys—those are the guys that do the wind tunnel testing and they worry about the Shuttle when it’s in the atmosphere, when it’s flying. During launch there’s a concern about you can’t go too fast too soon because you’ll break things.\n\n If you’ve ever heard Shuttle launch tapes, they have a thing called throttle up. Challenger [STS-51L] was right after throttle up that they blew up. They throttled back automatically to get through the thick atmosphere. When they get to the thin atmosphere they throttle back up. These guys do all that, they know when to do that.\n\n This old guy hadn’t gone to an aerodynamics panel in months and years, he was a manager then. He decided one day to go back, and he gets in there. His engineer told me this story. He gets in there and he says, “Why are there so many secretaries here?”

[Assistant] Oh, ouch.

[User] They were women engineers.

[Assistant] Right, things had changed.


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

[User] I had a lot of respect for a lot of the women I know that—when I was able to hire, the times that I was able to hire, we could only hire co-ops, and you could only hire straight A co-ops. There were so few positions. I hired a woman from Virginia Tech. … [Her name was Michelle Monk. One of my best engineers. She is still with NASA at Langley. She went home to be near her parents.]\n\n I had 25 people, and 4 of them were female. Some of the old guys never got it. I remember one time. We had a meeting that was held before every Shuttle flight called the aerodynamics panel. All the aero guys—those are the guys that do the wind tunnel testing and they worry about the Shuttle when it’s in the atmosphere, when it’s flying. During launch there’s a concern about you can’t go too fast too soon because you’ll break things.\n\n If you’ve ever heard Shuttle launch tapes, they have a thing called throttle up. Challenger [STS-51L] was right after throttle up that they blew up. They throttled back automatically to get through the thick atmosphere. When they get to the thin atmosphere they throttle back up. These guys do all that, they know when to do that.\n\n This old guy hadn’t gone to an aerodynamics panel in months and years, he was a manager then. He decided one day to go back, and he gets in there. His engineer told me this story. He gets in there and he says, “Why are there so many secretaries here?”

[Assistant] Oh, ouch.

[User] They were women engineers.

[Assistant] Right, things had changed.

[User] Who were doing aerodynamic work. He thought there’s a lot of secretaries here.

[Assistant] Oops. I think this might be a good place for us to stop. There’s more Apollo questions that I have for you. But as long as you have time to come by and do some more sessions.


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

[User] I sure did, it was executive payroll job. It was a little odd in that in just a few years I went from an MTS-5 to a program manager.

[Assistant] When you were working for Mr. Glaysher, part of his work was the logistics for the spares. Could you talk more about the importance of NASA having those spares available for the orbiter?

[User] With four vehicles, it was obvious we were going to need a logistics support system. The ideal way to do it is when the prime contractor is building parts for the vehicle, make one more and you get a good price. But if you miss the closedown of the production line by six months, you will pay for that startup cost and the time lost. So ideally when the vehicle is being designed, logistics will have an opportunity and the money to order those spare items that they believe they will need. Not everything is needed for spares, because some companies make products that are very similar and you just could qualify the similar part.\n\n For NASA and for the contractor it was all a new game. We got a really good program director of logistics, came from Autonetics [division of North American Aviation]. Jack Cassidy was his name. In fact Jack knows a lot about logistics and how to run a logistics program, so he hired in the right guys and the logistics department went from one or two people to hundreds. Later on, the responsibility for that work was transferred from Downey to Kennedy Space Center, which is the right place for it.

[Assistant] Were you involved under the operations as well?

[User] Bob Glaysher told me, “I really want to spend my time on the operations side, but the logistics contract takes too much of my time to really keep abreast of everything on ops [operations], so I want you to become ‘Mr. Logistics.’ You spend 80 percent of your time on logistics and 20 percent of the time on the Shuttle.” It worked out fine.

[Assistant] What challenges did you have in that position?


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

[User] With four vehicles, it was obvious we were going to need a logistics support system. The ideal way to do it is when the prime contractor is building parts for the vehicle, make one more and you get a good price. But if you miss the closedown of the production line by six months, you will pay for that startup cost and the time lost. So ideally when the vehicle is being designed, logistics will have an opportunity and the money to order those spare items that they believe they will need. Not everything is needed for spares, because some companies make products that are very similar and you just could qualify the similar part.\n\n For NASA and for the contractor it was all a new game. We got a really good program director of logistics, came from Autonetics [division of North American Aviation]. Jack Cassidy was his name. In fact Jack knows a lot about logistics and how to run a logistics program, so he hired in the right guys and the logistics department went from one or two people to hundreds. Later on, the responsibility for that work was transferred from Downey to Kennedy Space Center, which is the right place for it.

[Assistant] Were you involved under the operations as well?

[User] Bob Glaysher told me, “I really want to spend my time on the operations side, but the logistics contract takes too much of my time to really keep abreast of everything on ops [operations], so I want you to become ‘Mr. Logistics.’ You spend 80 percent of your time on logistics and 20 percent of the time on the Shuttle.” It worked out fine.

[Assistant] What challenges did you have in that position?

[User] The logistics—mostly spares, spare units, and repair capability, repair depots—they all become an integral part of the program because they support each other. You can see the logic of being involved when the production line is still running, because you get a good price and a good delivery schedule. Like many other things, NASA doesn’t have enough money for everything it wants. The thing that seemed to suffer a lot was the logistics program.

[Assistant] As a contractor, did you make suggestions to NASA for what parts they needed?


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

[User] Bob Glaysher told me, “I really want to spend my time on the operations side, but the logistics contract takes too much of my time to really keep abreast of everything on ops [operations], so I want you to become ‘Mr. Logistics.’ You spend 80 percent of your time on logistics and 20 percent of the time on the Shuttle.” It worked out fine.

[Assistant] What challenges did you have in that position?

[User] The logistics—mostly spares, spare units, and repair capability, repair depots—they all become an integral part of the program because they support each other. You can see the logic of being involved when the production line is still running, because you get a good price and a good delivery schedule. Like many other things, NASA doesn’t have enough money for everything it wants. The thing that seemed to suffer a lot was the logistics program.

[Assistant] As a contractor, did you make suggestions to NASA for what parts they needed?

[User] They had a logistics board, and we had to convince them or their underlings when we needed to buy “five of those widgets.” “What do you mean? These things are very reliable, they’re not going to fail.” They’d get into discussions like that. There was always pressure on to keep the cost down, and you could do that if you could look ahead far enough and make some orders of equipment where the production line was going to be shutting down in the foreseeable future, and that saved money.

[Assistant] You were promoted to the position of orbiter chief engineer. How did your job change and what were your responsibilities?


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

[User] This was published in ’93, and I retired in ’94. Ken [Kenneth E.] Lengner [coauthor] was a project engineer in the project office, and he had these ideas about different ways to process the elements.

[Assistant] It talked about utilizing the database hazard reports to come up with different ways to do processing, about accepted risk and how to reduce operations cost.

[User] Before the vehicle actually got to the Cape the first time, they had their flow planned for the way they were going to fix all the problems on the vehicle. They’re going to use spares, take something off and repair it, [or] they’re going to take something off another vehicle and “cannibalize.” He had some thoughts on that and he wanted to have a technical publication. The AIAA accepted that, and he went to the conference and presented the paper.

[Assistant] It also said that you participated in the Columbia [STS-107] accident investigation.

[User]
There was a Columbia Accident Investigation Board. They had a dozen top level engineers and scientists from around the country. They were the official group. Of course each one of those men or women needed some support, so that’s the part of the committee I was on.\n\n SECHRIST: You were called into the MSR [Mission Support Room] within hours of the incident, and then other things led to this position.

Yes. As chief engineer you just had to be prepared to do anything anytime.

[Assistant] Were you also involved with the follow-up after the Challenger [STS 51-L accident] in ’86?


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

[User] Before the vehicle actually got to the Cape the first time, they had their flow planned for the way they were going to fix all the problems on the vehicle. They’re going to use spares, take something off and repair it, [or] they’re going to take something off another vehicle and “cannibalize.” He had some thoughts on that and he wanted to have a technical publication. The AIAA accepted that, and he went to the conference and presented the paper.

[Assistant] It also said that you participated in the Columbia [STS-107] accident investigation.

[User]
There was a Columbia Accident Investigation Board. They had a dozen top level engineers and scientists from around the country. They were the official group. Of course each one of those men or women needed some support, so that’s the part of the committee I was on.\n\n SECHRIST: You were called into the MSR [Mission Support Room] within hours of the incident, and then other things led to this position.

Yes. As chief engineer you just had to be prepared to do anything anytime.

[Assistant] Were you also involved with the follow-up after the Challenger [STS 51-L accident] in ’86?

[User] For any major changes I was, but I can’t remember if there were any.

[Assistant] Briefly you mentioned that you had worked on the external tank integration before they pulled you over to do the TPS.


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

[User]
There was a Columbia Accident Investigation Board. They had a dozen top level engineers and scientists from around the country. They were the official group. Of course each one of those men or women needed some support, so that’s the part of the committee I was on.\n\n SECHRIST: You were called into the MSR [Mission Support Room] within hours of the incident, and then other things led to this position.

Yes. As chief engineer you just had to be prepared to do anything anytime.

[Assistant] Were you also involved with the follow-up after the Challenger [STS 51-L accident] in ’86?

[User] For any major changes I was, but I can’t remember if there were any.

[Assistant] Briefly you mentioned that you had worked on the external tank integration before they pulled you over to do the TPS.

[User] That was a contract with Rockwell to build this vehicle to go into space. It had two pieces coming from Thiokol in Utah, the boosters. The external tank came from [NASA] Michoud [Assembly Facility], [New Orleans] Louisiana. They have electrical interfaces and several joints. You think, “Well, just put a bolt in there.” But you get some close tolerance design problems in those joints. You have to have a specification to define where this major interface will be, how is it going to be cinched up, and for how long will it be locked together.\n\n All those things are handled by an integration contract. These vehicle elements are going to be integrated into the total Shuttle system. That was done at Rockwell here at Downey. They had the specifications in the form of drawings that would define what this interface looks like. Most of them required special bolts that could be sheared off when you no longer want to keep the vehicles together. I worked for a couple months maybe on the integration contract for the external tank. That wasn’t bad, because I got to go to New Orleans [Louisiana] on my trips.

[Assistant] Did your work bring you to Houston to the Johnson Space Center as well?


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

[User] Minnesota. We lived in Minneapolis for the most part, but I spent a lot of time on my grandparents farm however in the summers.

[Assistant] Really? Whereabouts?

[User] In southern Minnesota, just outside a little town called Elysian, which is not too far from Mankato.

[Assistant] Did you go to school in Minnesota?

[User] Yeah, University ofMinnesota.

[Assistant] How did you end up in Washington?


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

[User] In southern Minnesota, just outside a little town called Elysian, which is not too far from Mankato.

[Assistant] Did you go to school in Minnesota?

[User] Yeah, University ofMinnesota.

[Assistant] How did you end up in Washington?

[User] I took the Civil Service Exam. (Laughs) Looking for something to do before I got drafted and I was offered the job here. I had no idea what an archivist was at the time, but the job made use of my history degree.

[Assistant] Was it in U.S. istory?


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

[User] Yeah, University ofMinnesota.

[Assistant] How did you end up in Washington?

[User] I took the Civil Service Exam. (Laughs) Looking for something to do before I got drafted and I was offered the job here. I had no idea what an archivist was at the time, but the job made use of my history degree.

[Assistant] Was it in U.S. istory?

[User] Yes. I wasn't particularly keen on teaching but that was probably what I would have gone into. This was a stop gap job. I came to DC in October of'57 and then was drafted in April of '58. I left during a horrible snow storm on a bus that was probably the last one to get through the Pennsylvania turnpike before they shut it down. The snow was just terrible. I don't know ifyou were here at the time but we had a few years there in the late 50's and early 60's that we really had bad weather and that was one ofthem. We had had severaJ-big snow falls that winter while I was here.

[Assistant] Where were you headed on the bus?


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

[User] I took the Civil Service Exam. (Laughs) Looking for something to do before I got drafted and I was offered the job here. I had no idea what an archivist was at the time, but the job made use of my history degree.

[Assistant] Was it in U.S. istory?

[User] Yes. I wasn't particularly keen on teaching but that was probably what I would have gone into. This was a stop gap job. I came to DC in October of'57 and then was drafted in April of '58. I left during a horrible snow storm on a bus that was probably the last one to get through the Pennsylvania turnpike before they shut it down. The snow was just terrible. I don't know ifyou were here at the time but we had a few years there in the late 50's and early 60's that we really had bad weather and that was one ofthem. We had had severaJ-big snow falls that winter while I was here.

[Assistant] Where were you headed on the bus?

[User] Back to Minneapolis were I was inducted into the army. I was in the army for two years, and I was discharged in '61. Since I had an easy assignment I extended for a third year to get rid ofthe active reserve obligation. Then I came back here in '61.

[Assistant] And what was the first thing you did when you got here? Or, I didn't ask you what they had you doing before you got in the Army.


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

[User] Yes. I wasn't particularly keen on teaching but that was probably what I would have gone into. This was a stop gap job. I came to DC in October of'57 and then was drafted in April of '58. I left during a horrible snow storm on a bus that was probably the last one to get through the Pennsylvania turnpike before they shut it down. The snow was just terrible. I don't know ifyou were here at the time but we had a few years there in the late 50's and early 60's that we really had bad weather and that was one ofthem. We had had severaJ-big snow falls that winter while I was here.

[Assistant] Where were you headed on the bus?

[User] Back to Minneapolis were I was inducted into the army. I was in the army for two years, and I was discharged in '61. Since I had an easy assignment I extended for a third year to get rid ofthe active reserve obligation. Then I came back here in '61.

[Assistant] And what was the first thing you did when you got here? Or, I didn't ask you what they had you doing before you got in the Army.

[User] When I came to the National Archives in '57 I was assigned to the natural resources branch. The branch chief was Jane Smith. My first job was supervising the boxing ofrecords from the Bureau ofMines, making box lists, and things like that. Evidently I made enough of an impression that they did want me to return after I got out of the army. Of course they were obligated to take me back but Richard Maxwell, the assistant branch chief, let me know they really wanted me back. I might have stayed in Minneapolis ifl had found a job there, but since I had a pretty good job waiting for me in DC I decided to return even though the salary wasn't much. It was under $4000 a year at that time.

[Assistant] And that what grade was that?


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

[User] Back to Minneapolis were I was inducted into the army. I was in the army for two years, and I was discharged in '61. Since I had an easy assignment I extended for a third year to get rid ofthe active reserve obligation. Then I came back here in '61.

[Assistant] And what was the first thing you did when you got here? Or, I didn't ask you what they had you doing before you got in the Army.

[User] When I came to the National Archives in '57 I was assigned to the natural resources branch. The branch chief was Jane Smith. My first job was supervising the boxing ofrecords from the Bureau ofMines, making box lists, and things like that. Evidently I made enough of an impression that they did want me to return after I got out of the army. Of course they were obligated to take me back but Richard Maxwell, the assistant branch chief, let me know they really wanted me back. I might have stayed in Minneapolis ifl had found a job there, but since I had a pretty good job waiting for me in DC I decided to return even though the salary wasn't much. It was under $4000 a year at that time.

[Assistant] And that what grade was that?

[User] I came in as an entry level archivist, either grade three or four, I can't remember which. I do remember that getting grade 5 a big deal and I had to do a draft inventory ofthe Bureau of Mines records to qualify for it. I think grade 7 was the journeyman grade and if you got a nine you pretty much had it made. Later there was a major shift in the grade levels and eleven became the journeyman grade.

[Assistant] I wondered about that. So when you came back up you went back to the same unit?


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

[User] When I came to the National Archives in '57 I was assigned to the natural resources branch. The branch chief was Jane Smith. My first job was supervising the boxing ofrecords from the Bureau ofMines, making box lists, and things like that. Evidently I made enough of an impression that they did want me to return after I got out of the army. Of course they were obligated to take me back but Richard Maxwell, the assistant branch chief, let me know they really wanted me back. I might have stayed in Minneapolis ifl had found a job there, but since I had a pretty good job waiting for me in DC I decided to return even though the salary wasn't much. It was under $4000 a year at that time.

[Assistant] And that what grade was that?

[User] I came in as an entry level archivist, either grade three or four, I can't remember which. I do remember that getting grade 5 a big deal and I had to do a draft inventory ofthe Bureau of Mines records to qualify for it. I think grade 7 was the journeyman grade and if you got a nine you pretty much had it made. Later there was a major shift in the grade levels and eleven became the journeyman grade.

[Assistant] I wondered about that. So when you came back up you went back to the same unit?

[User] Yes. Until I went to the editorial office on a temporary detail in late 1987 or early 1988 (I can't remember exactly when), I had worked with the same group ofrecords, doing reference and project work with the Interior Department and New Deal records.

[Assistant] What-were your initial impressions ofthe archives were when you first got here?


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

[User] I came in as an entry level archivist, either grade three or four, I can't remember which. I do remember that getting grade 5 a big deal and I had to do a draft inventory ofthe Bureau of Mines records to qualify for it. I think grade 7 was the journeyman grade and if you got a nine you pretty much had it made. Later there was a major shift in the grade levels and eleven became the journeyman grade.

[Assistant] I wondered about that. So when you came back up you went back to the same unit?

[User] Yes. Until I went to the editorial office on a temporary detail in late 1987 or early 1988 (I can't remember exactly when), I had worked with the same group ofrecords, doing reference and project work with the Interior Department and New Deal records.

[Assistant] What-were your initial impressions ofthe archives were when you first got here?

[User] They were fine.

[Assistant] I was going to say to you, I was looking at your Trans-Mississippi West Guide and that is just amazing to me. You've compiled volumes describing records ofthe Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice departments. How long did it take you to do that?


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[User] Well, when I worked in reference I had the reputation, such as it is, of being an expert on the records oflndian Affairs. While I enjoyed working with those records I really liked working with the records ofthe Work Projects Administration. Have you ever worked with them?

[Assistant] A little bit.

[User] The WP A did so many things that no matter how outlandish a researcher's request sounded, you could never dismiss it because chances are the WP A did it. The WP A microfilm records were awful to work with, but I really had fun working with paper records. While I'm on the subject ofthe WPA records I might has well mention a very troubling matter. In recent years staff members have frequently been assigned to perform holdings maintenance or other project records they don't know. The reference staff had no supervisory control over these people and were not consulted about the work they were doing. The WP A cultural project records were well covered by good finding aids, but an individual from the Still Pictures unit began working on the records, rearranging and reboxing them with no regard to the existing finding aids and without consulting with the reference staff. This caused no end oftrouble for the reference people who had to retrieve them for reference requests. A similar problem occurred with the townsite records ofthe Bureau of Land Management. The agency had used a complicate filing system but a finding aid giving the box number for each file existed. Holdings maintenance people repacked and reboxed nearly 100 boxes with no regard for the finding aid, leaving halfthe finding aid virtually worthless and creating a major retrieval problem for an already overworked reference staff. As a result, when I dexcribed the records for the GLO guide I had to annotate the finding aid with the revised box numbers for the contents ofthose boxes. In many such instances the lack of staff communication and supervision has been a real problem.

[Assistant] I was going to ask you a similar question. What were some of the challenges that you faced in your work?

[User] How many ofthese interviews have you conducted?

[Assistant] About a halfa dozen


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

[User] The WP A did so many things that no matter how outlandish a researcher's request sounded, you could never dismiss it because chances are the WP A did it. The WP A microfilm records were awful to work with, but I really had fun working with paper records. While I'm on the subject ofthe WPA records I might has well mention a very troubling matter. In recent years staff members have frequently been assigned to perform holdings maintenance or other project records they don't know. The reference staff had no supervisory control over these people and were not consulted about the work they were doing. The WP A cultural project records were well covered by good finding aids, but an individual from the Still Pictures unit began working on the records, rearranging and reboxing them with no regard to the existing finding aids and without consulting with the reference staff. This caused no end oftrouble for the reference people who had to retrieve them for reference requests. A similar problem occurred with the townsite records ofthe Bureau of Land Management. The agency had used a complicate filing system but a finding aid giving the box number for each file existed. Holdings maintenance people repacked and reboxed nearly 100 boxes with no regard for the finding aid, leaving halfthe finding aid virtually worthless and creating a major retrieval problem for an already overworked reference staff. As a result, when I dexcribed the records for the GLO guide I had to annotate the finding aid with the revised box numbers for the contents ofthose boxes. In many such instances the lack of staff communication and supervision has been a real problem.

[Assistant] I was going to ask you a similar question. What were some of the challenges that you faced in your work?

[User] How many ofthese interviews have you conducted?

[Assistant] About a halfa dozen

[User] Has anyone complained about NARS Al?

[Assistant] Not that I recall.


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[User] I never heard that but, he worked in a completely different area and with sensitive records. We got a lot ofstudents and historians writing on Indian matters. And the one thing about the Indian researchers is when they finish working on one topic they went on to another one in the same field. The New Deal researchers were different. Usually they researched one topic and when they finished that they wouldn't be back again. They wouldn't pursue anything else in that area. But I got to know some ofthe Indian researchers quite well because they were all repeats.

[Assistant] Yes, Taylor was working with intelligence records.

[User] That may be why he had few American researchers. They probably knew the problems involved whereas the foreigners didn't. A lot ofEuropeans are interested in Indians and we corresponded with them. We had this one fellow who wrote all the time, asking for a few documents each time. We were essentially doing his research for him.

[Assistant] We still have people like that, a German in particular.

[User] Yes, it's the same one. At one point we had cut him off. A year or so later, he started writing again. By then we had a different branch chief; I told him that the guy was nothing by a nuisance and he would be driving us crazy again with his incessant requests, but he insisted we had to do the research and reply. I pointed out that ifwe refused the fellow couldn't go to his congressman and complain, but to no avail. We wouldn't even do such long term research for a tax payer, but because he was European we had to comply. Ifwe had just held the line .. .it's all well and good to do it for a few things, but you can't do it indefinitely. Even taxpayers would have eventually been told to come in and do the research themselves. I guess we're still answering him.

[Assistant] This researcher also said he thought the Archives intentionally withheld information about the records.


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

[User]
Well that is interesting. I know that the reference people are oftwo minds about the dissemination of a lot ofinformation about the records because there never has been a large enough staff to handle all the requests that result. Any time you publicize something that people are interested in you're going to get requests. I was doing reference when the first revision ofthe guide to genealogical records was done and we were not too happy because we already had all the genie requests we could handle. Tape Side 2

Now I've been on both sides of the issue. When the latest revision of the genie guide was made I was one ofthe people requesting information from the reference staff. I was doing the same thing that no one was happy about it in the first phase. In fact I rewrote the section on the American Indians. Mary Francis Ronan who handles the reference on Indian records was happy to have me do it even though I made it much more detailed that it was before. Of course, the Master Location Register which we now have makes it much easier to locate the various series so the impact on the reference staff is not as great as it once was. At any rate, Mary Frances seems to be happy with the end result. The staff generally is happy to have the holdings publicized but at the same time when the public makes inquires we frequently have to tell them the material is here, but you have to come and do the research.

[Assistant] Yes, we can't even copy it for them without payment.

[User] Yes, the National Archives is less of a service organization now than it used to be.

[Assistant] I was wondering about the appraisal function. When did that kick in?

[User] I was never really involved with that much although as assistant branch chief! did review some draft appraisal schedules. I remember one that came through that covered the education records of the Bureau oflndian Affairs. All the records listed as permanent were procedural issuances and similar items. Not one correspondence series was deemed worthy ofpreservation yet the correspondence provided the information about how programs were working. I suggested that the appraisers take another look.

[Assistant] Did you do much with the agencies?


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

[User] Yes, the National Archives is less of a service organization now than it used to be.

[Assistant] I was wondering about the appraisal function. When did that kick in?

[User] I was never really involved with that much although as assistant branch chief! did review some draft appraisal schedules. I remember one that came through that covered the education records of the Bureau oflndian Affairs. All the records listed as permanent were procedural issuances and similar items. Not one correspondence series was deemed worthy ofpreservation yet the correspondence provided the information about how programs were working. I suggested that the appraisers take another look.

[Assistant] Did you do much with the agencies?

[User] When we first came we had a lot interaction with both the Bureau Land Management and the Bureau oflndian Affairs. We loaned records to them on a regular basis. We had one technician who did nothing but handle loans to the BLM. Eventually the Archives put an end to the practice and the bureau employees had to come to the archives an do their own research. Law clerks from the Department of Justice were regulars doing research for Indian law suits. No matter how often they came they always put off the research until the last minute and they always had to have copies made immediately because they were going to court within a matter of days. That was pretty maddening. They had one researcher who always used microfilm inour Indian research room and he never did learn how to load the microfilm-reader. Someone always had to assist him.

[Assistant] I know what you mean. I could add some stories myself. Do you remember any organization issues that were prominent or has it always been the same pretty much ... we are always behind?


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

[User] My pleasure.

[Assistant] I was given your name by someone in Knowledge Management. They said you were the historian of the LRL [Lunar Receiving Laboratory], so I thought we had to interview you and get some of that history.

[User] I was curious where you came up with my name.

[Assistant] They said you were retiring so I said, “We should interview her.” You graduated from college in 1969. Did you follow the space program at all?

[User] Not really, I was in chemistry. I did give some thought as to how I got interested in that. I was at the [University of Texas at Austin] Marine Science [Institute] Lab in Port Aransas on July 20, 1969. We students were out on the deck at the professor’s beach house looking at the full Moon and waiting for the fuzzy television images of astronauts stepping onto the Moon’s surface. Most people my age remember exactly where they were when that happened.

[Assistant] It was certainly a momentous occasion that had never happened before, so I can imagine it was a big deal.


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

[User] I was curious where you came up with my name.

[Assistant] They said you were retiring so I said, “We should interview her.” You graduated from college in 1969. Did you follow the space program at all?

[User] Not really, I was in chemistry. I did give some thought as to how I got interested in that. I was at the [University of Texas at Austin] Marine Science [Institute] Lab in Port Aransas on July 20, 1969. We students were out on the deck at the professor’s beach house looking at the full Moon and waiting for the fuzzy television images of astronauts stepping onto the Moon’s surface. Most people my age remember exactly where they were when that happened.

[Assistant] It was certainly a momentous occasion that had never happened before, so I can imagine it was a big deal.

[User] I got more interested in the space program when I applied for a job here at JSC back in 1974. I was working for the Texas Water Quality Board in the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] Lab. We sampled and analyzed water in the Houston Ship Channel and other places. One of the NASA contractors advertised a job opening for a chemist, so I just went home and poured a glass of wine and typed out something that said I was terrific. I got an interview, and I got hired.

[Assistant] Where did you see the advertisement? In the [Houston] Chronicle?


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

[User] Not really, I was in chemistry. I did give some thought as to how I got interested in that. I was at the [University of Texas at Austin] Marine Science [Institute] Lab in Port Aransas on July 20, 1969. We students were out on the deck at the professor’s beach house looking at the full Moon and waiting for the fuzzy television images of astronauts stepping onto the Moon’s surface. Most people my age remember exactly where they were when that happened.

[Assistant] It was certainly a momentous occasion that had never happened before, so I can imagine it was a big deal.

[User] I got more interested in the space program when I applied for a job here at JSC back in 1974. I was working for the Texas Water Quality Board in the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] Lab. We sampled and analyzed water in the Houston Ship Channel and other places. One of the NASA contractors advertised a job opening for a chemist, so I just went home and poured a glass of wine and typed out something that said I was terrific. I got an interview, and I got hired.

[Assistant] Where did you see the advertisement? In the [Houston] Chronicle?

[User] It must have been in the Houston paper. I didn’t live on this side of town at the time, so that would have been the only place.

[Assistant] Oh yes, kind of a drive if you’re on the north side. What was your understanding of what you would be doing based on that newspaper advertisement?


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

[User] Mostly I’m a curious person. But I probably had the right background in that I was an analytical chemist, and my master’s project was age-dating rocks, which is what many scientists measure for Apollo rocks. They determine how old rocks are. Isotopers in general tend to be pretty picky about contamination, and I had that background.\n\n The other thing that’s played into my career here more recently is I did a little bit of marine science—it was marine geology—and that’s helpful in planetary protection issues. The Planetary Protection Office now convenes meetings of experts related to planetary protection issues. Participants in these meetings include people who analyze deep-sea cores or extremophiles in rocks way below the surface of the Earth. So my marine science experience has helped.

[Assistant] It wasn’t unusual for you to come in and know how to handle these type of things, and what you had to do to handle a sample?

[User] No, it was kind of natural. I knew some of the “customers” for curated Apollo samples. The same people that returned lunar samples were well-known in isotope geology, and I was familiar with their work.

[Assistant] Did you know many of the people who were working out here when you accepted the position?

[User] No, I came in as a lower-level, hands-on sample processing person.

[Assistant] Were there many other women working in the lab at that point or people of color?


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

[User] No, it was kind of natural. I knew some of the “customers” for curated Apollo samples. The same people that returned lunar samples were well-known in isotope geology, and I was familiar with their work.

[Assistant] Did you know many of the people who were working out here when you accepted the position?

[User] No, I came in as a lower-level, hands-on sample processing person.

[Assistant] Were there many other women working in the lab at that point or people of color?

[User] There was a fair number of women. People of color worked in the lab. I personally didn’t detect any discrimination, but, in recent years colleagues have confided a few examples from those early days, the 1970s, of discrimination regarding raises and task assignments. I can think of one example of sexual harassment, but back then, most women just went out of their way to avoid this person.

[Assistant] I’m just curious because we don’t have a lot of stats on how many people worked in what groups and how many people of color there were. You can’t really tell by someone’s name. How many women there were, you can normally tell that by name. It’s interesting to me how NASA has changed over the years. Always curious if there were a lot of women or minorities in groups, especially in the early ’70s.


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

[User] No, I came in as a lower-level, hands-on sample processing person.

[Assistant] Were there many other women working in the lab at that point or people of color?

[User] There was a fair number of women. People of color worked in the lab. I personally didn’t detect any discrimination, but, in recent years colleagues have confided a few examples from those early days, the 1970s, of discrimination regarding raises and task assignments. I can think of one example of sexual harassment, but back then, most women just went out of their way to avoid this person.

[Assistant] I’m just curious because we don’t have a lot of stats on how many people worked in what groups and how many people of color there were. You can’t really tell by someone’s name. How many women there were, you can normally tell that by name. It’s interesting to me how NASA has changed over the years. Always curious if there were a lot of women or minorities in groups, especially in the early ’70s.

[User] If you were asking how many women were lunar sample investigators, that’s a different story. There were not very many. I can think of three from the early days. One was a petrologist named Odette [B.] James. I think she worked for the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey]. I’m aware of her because she served on some of the oversight committees. She’d be the only woman, except the secretary of the group, in the 1972 Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team (LSAPT) picture. Carle [M.] Pieters has been doing remote sensing for a very long time from Brown [University, Providence, Rhode Island] and was active back then and well known. Ursula [B.] Marvin was active in meteorites. I’m not real sure she had lunar samples at the time, but the studies were similar and the science groups were intermingled. Composition of lunar sample investigators and resulting NASA advisory committees has changed a lot.

[Assistant] I’m sure it has.


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

[User] If you were asking how many women were lunar sample investigators, that’s a different story. There were not very many. I can think of three from the early days. One was a petrologist named Odette [B.] James. I think she worked for the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey]. I’m aware of her because she served on some of the oversight committees. She’d be the only woman, except the secretary of the group, in the 1972 Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team (LSAPT) picture. Carle [M.] Pieters has been doing remote sensing for a very long time from Brown [University, Providence, Rhode Island] and was active back then and well known. Ursula [B.] Marvin was active in meteorites. I’m not real sure she had lunar samples at the time, but the studies were similar and the science groups were intermingled. Composition of lunar sample investigators and resulting NASA advisory committees has changed a lot.

[Assistant] I’m sure it has.

[User] I can remember being at a meeting—I couldn’t tell you when exactly, I think it was in New Mexico, maybe late ’90s, early 2000s—in the ladies’ room, and they were having a spirited discussion over some planetary science debate. I thought, “It wouldn’t have been this way 20 years earlier.” That was a milestone, having a discussion in the ladies’ room.

[Assistant] I can imagine it was kind of lonely in there. Very few of you.

[User] But that’s not the onsite NASA folks. That’s really the people we interact with at mostly academic institutions.

[Assistant] When you came here you started working in Building 31. The samples had already been moved over to Building 31, you weren’t working out at the LRL at the time?


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

[User] I can remember being at a meeting—I couldn’t tell you when exactly, I think it was in New Mexico, maybe late ’90s, early 2000s—in the ladies’ room, and they were having a spirited discussion over some planetary science debate. I thought, “It wouldn’t have been this way 20 years earlier.” That was a milestone, having a discussion in the ladies’ room.

[Assistant] I can imagine it was kind of lonely in there. Very few of you.

[User] But that’s not the onsite NASA folks. That’s really the people we interact with at mostly academic institutions.

[Assistant] When you came here you started working in Building 31. The samples had already been moved over to Building 31, you weren’t working out at the LRL at the time?

[User] That’s correct, I did not work in the LRL. Lunar samples were moved from Building 37 to Building 31 in 1973. All samples had been moved in by the time I got here in 1974, so the stories about the LRL were still alive. As you may know, there was quite a bit of tension between the biology groups and geology groups.

[Assistant] Can you talk about that?


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

[User] Final test runs were conducted inside of a nitrogen glovebox used for testing. The extrusion and dissection hardware was thoroughly cleaned before being placed into a lunar sample glovebox. The extrusions required three people in the gloves and a reader for each step of the procedure. We needed to work well together to assemble the intricate pieces because helpers would be required to hold hardware in position with tweezers while fasteners were attached, etc. Our goal was to be as coordinated as a pit crew in the Indianapolis 500.

[Assistant] I was reading your article about the Apollo 11 core. I thought it was interesting how they had opened part of the cores from 11, but then you went back and did some more work on it. Why was that the case? What did you learn that was different from when they looked at it in ’69 when you did it later?

[User] The Apollo 11 drives tube samples were the first cores that I dissected, in 1978. They had previously been opened in the Biological Preparations Laboratory as a requirement for biohazard testing. This was done in a temporary facility to acquire preliminary images and remove half of the core material under nitrogen. The remaining half cores, still in their original inner half tube, were stored until I dissected the remaining portions. I have forgotten what I wrote!

[Assistant] It’s very specific, I know. I just thought it was fascinating. Your article was really interesting, about the mix-up of where these were, which one it was, and the boxes that they got put in. It was just a really interesting article. How they used aluminum foil to keep it in the core, and how it reshaped the core a little bit. I just read this, so that’s why I have a little bit more detail.

[User] Send me back to research it.

[Assistant] No, it’s fine, I just wondered if that was something that stuck out in your memory. Were there differences between the cores that you looked at, between 11, 15, 16, and 17? Or were they all fairly similar in terms of what you were looking for?


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

[User] Send me back to research it.

[Assistant] No, it’s fine, I just wondered if that was something that stuck out in your memory. Were there differences between the cores that you looked at, between 11, 15, 16, and 17? Or were they all fairly similar in terms of what you were looking for?

[User] They cores are expected to be different in composition and texture because they were taken in unique locations. The biggest difference from a dissection viewpoint is that the Apollo 11 cores were in two-cm diameter drive tubes that had already been opened and half the soil removed without detailed documentation. In one core, the soil was not confined and slid around a little inside the tube. In contrast, the remaining cores that I opened were in four-cm drive tubes, carefully extruded and documented in detail. The Apollo 15 core that I did was a double, samples 15010/15011. It was on the edge of Hadley Rille, which was a rocky basalt surface. Consequently the lower tube had a rock that big in the bottom [demonstrates], which pretty much would have had to rotate to get slipped in this way because it wouldn’t have gotten in crosswise.\n\n The reason I could spend three months digging through something at a very slow pace is that it was always a possibility there would be something new and exciting in the next scoopful. To sieve the particles and take a look at them in the microscope was a delight. For example there were beautiful glass beads of different colors, mostly green on 15. I did not do any 17, but that’s where the orange glass beads were.

[Assistant] I was curious about that one, too.

[User] The Apollo 16 core I dissected had more visible layering, the abundant white plagioclase contributed to greater color differences.

[Assistant] As you are working through these cores, how are you keeping track of what it is you’re finding? You’re in the glove box so you’re obviously not taking out your hands every time to document and write. How did you keep track of what you found?


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

[User] They cores are expected to be different in composition and texture because they were taken in unique locations. The biggest difference from a dissection viewpoint is that the Apollo 11 cores were in two-cm diameter drive tubes that had already been opened and half the soil removed without detailed documentation. In one core, the soil was not confined and slid around a little inside the tube. In contrast, the remaining cores that I opened were in four-cm drive tubes, carefully extruded and documented in detail. The Apollo 15 core that I did was a double, samples 15010/15011. It was on the edge of Hadley Rille, which was a rocky basalt surface. Consequently the lower tube had a rock that big in the bottom [demonstrates], which pretty much would have had to rotate to get slipped in this way because it wouldn’t have gotten in crosswise.\n\n The reason I could spend three months digging through something at a very slow pace is that it was always a possibility there would be something new and exciting in the next scoopful. To sieve the particles and take a look at them in the microscope was a delight. For example there were beautiful glass beads of different colors, mostly green on 15. I did not do any 17, but that’s where the orange glass beads were.

[Assistant] I was curious about that one, too.

[User] The Apollo 16 core I dissected had more visible layering, the abundant white plagioclase contributed to greater color differences.

[Assistant] As you are working through these cores, how are you keeping track of what it is you’re finding? You’re in the glove box so you’re obviously not taking out your hands every time to document and write. How did you keep track of what you found?

[User] No, we took our hands out and wrote.

[Assistant] Did you? Oh, okay.


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

[User] The Apollo 16 core I dissected had more visible layering, the abundant white plagioclase contributed to greater color differences.

[Assistant] As you are working through these cores, how are you keeping track of what it is you’re finding? You’re in the glove box so you’re obviously not taking out your hands every time to document and write. How did you keep track of what you found?

[User] No, we took our hands out and wrote.

[Assistant] Did you? Oh, okay.

[User] I think they’re a little better at it these days. We have an upgraded experimental cabinet. We can take pictures, and of course it’s all electronic now. I don’t favor electronic note-taking because it’s like filling out the form. What you want to say never fits that form exactly. We did a lot of drawing of features we observed.

[Assistant] That definitely added to the amount of time it took to go through the core.


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

[User] No, we took our hands out and wrote.

[Assistant] Did you? Oh, okay.

[User] I think they’re a little better at it these days. We have an upgraded experimental cabinet. We can take pictures, and of course it’s all electronic now. I don’t favor electronic note-taking because it’s like filling out the form. What you want to say never fits that form exactly. We did a lot of drawing of features we observed.

[Assistant] That definitely added to the amount of time it took to go through the core.

[User] Yes. Besides, I liked looking at it.

[Assistant] Were there other people that were working with you on those cores as you were going through? Or that was your project for those months?