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

[User] Everywhere.

[Assistant] There weren't any occasions where you received protests because you were representing the United States, as well, for whatever political reasons were going on. Obviously, [the] Vietnam [War] was still going on at that time.

[User] I don't think we did. I don't think there was any ugliness. If there was, it was kept—the crowds were kept a good distance away from the official ceremonies for the astronauts, but I don't recall any. I don't know if anything even came up, but that's something that Wade St. Clair might be able to shed some light on, or Bill Carpentier might know of some of that, too.

[Assistant] It must have been impressive going to these different countries in the President's plane, the Air Force One, or the backup, because it has the painting, the presidential seal and so forth. Did you get that response from others, too, just seeing that aircraft arrive?

[User] Yes. In fact, one of the embassy people told me that on one of our evening arrivals, he said when we approached the airport, you could see the plane visibly and the seal and the flag, the American flag on the tail. He said it just gave him goosebumps. It was an impressive plane. When the trip was over, we all gathered under the seal and had a group photograph made.

[Assistant] They would play the Star-Spangled Banner?


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

[User] Yes. In fact, one of the embassy people told me that on one of our evening arrivals, he said when we approached the airport, you could see the plane visibly and the seal and the flag, the American flag on the tail. He said it just gave him goosebumps. It was an impressive plane. When the trip was over, we all gathered under the seal and had a group photograph made.

[Assistant] They would play the Star-Spangled Banner?

[User] At one of the briefings at the State Department, we were told that whenever you're coming, we used the back of the plane to leave the plane, and the astronauts and their wives and a couple of the senior staff would use the front. In Berlin, we were coming, and I believe we had to switch planes in Berlin. I believe we couldn't land at Templehauf with the Vice President's plane, and I think we had to switch over to a smaller plane. But at any rate, it still had the American flag on the tail.\n\n But as we came down the back steps, and I was one of the people coming down the steps, and the band started playing the Star-Spangled Banner. We were told in the briefings that whenever you heard the Star-Spangled Banner, no matter where you were or what you were doing, you must stop what you were doing, face the flag and put your hand over your heart, and we did. The embassy guy said they picked that up on the television, on the live television arrival.

[Assistant] Just a response.

[User] It was a good patriotic feeling.

[Assistant] Were you allowed to take any essentials with you, or were those all provided pretty much on the plane? Were you allowed to take personal items, luggage and things like that?


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

[User] No. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Front-page news. [Laughter]

[User] No. [Laughter] I wasn't at my best. But I thought where in the world could you meet the Prime Minister of Australia under those—they were very casual people, the Australians. I enjoyed meeting those people. They were very nice.

[Assistant] So obviously the food and the water and the time change and everything, eventually would catch up. I mean, any people who have traveled, just knowing jet lag on a single trip, and having to get used to the food, and sometimes water, and whatever other things that they need. Eventually the illness kind of passed? Did they have medication that they could take? Did you have a doctor on board that could help?

[User] The flight surgeon—let's see. He was ministering to us as best he could with the supplies he had. I believe we had anti-diarrheal medicine and we had the usual things. But I lost twenty-five pounds.

[Assistant] Was that common with the other members, too?


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

[User] The flight surgeon—let's see. He was ministering to us as best he could with the supplies he had. I believe we had anti-diarrheal medicine and we had the usual things. But I lost twenty-five pounds.

[Assistant] Was that common with the other members, too?

[User] One of the astronaut wives had lost a lot of weight, too. The State Department and health people would say to us, "Don't eat anything that you can't peel," which is a standard they tell all the tourists. "Don't drink the water." You were always bound to slip up somewhere along the way and do something you shouldn't do. It sort of took its toll, you know. The metabolism, I guess, had gone haywire. We probably would have been a good study, a microcosm of all the things that can happen to you on jet lag, going from one time zone to another and not eating properly, not getting enough rest. The flight surgeon finally said to us, "Eat when you're hungry and sleep when you're sleepy," because we weren't used to a lot of the time changes and going to bed at the proper time and eating your meals at the proper time. It was sort of catch-as-catch-can by the time the trip was over.

[Assistant] Sounds like, in retrospect, looking at everything that went into making Apollo 11 happen, this was probably one of the most difficult things for the crew members to have to work with. They naturally were uncomfortable around the public, and now suddenly the world's population is being laid at their feet.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Did you get that feeling?


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

[User] That seemed to work. [Laughter] That was the only thing I recall. Probably other things would come to mind if I had a chance to think about it some more.

[Assistant] The astronaut wives, many times they would get overlooked in all of the celebrity events and so forth that were going on. Did you get any stories, reflections that you recall on this trip? It must have been hard for them also, because if the astronauts were reclusive, the astronaut wives in many cases were even more so. Did you find—

[User] No, not really. In addition to doing appearances, appearing with their husbands, they were also scheduled for separate events in themselves. They would work in press conferences by the wives where the local press would just ask them questions. They were very open and very—

[Assistant] Supportive?

[User] Supportive and responsive.

[Assistant] Did they have separate functions, too, that the wives of the heads of state, they participated in?


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

[User] No, not really. In addition to doing appearances, appearing with their husbands, they were also scheduled for separate events in themselves. They would work in press conferences by the wives where the local press would just ask them questions. They were very open and very—

[Assistant] Supportive?

[User] Supportive and responsive.

[Assistant] Did they have separate functions, too, that the wives of the heads of state, they participated in?

[User] I believe so. I know in Rio de Janeiro, the ambassador's wife hosted a yacht tour around the city with the astronaut wives and myself and the State Department secretary, just the women. Again, Wade St. Clair would probably be able to tell you more of the things that they were—on my notes, on my marginal notes that I kept in my briefing book, I don't recall a whole lot of separate events.

[Assistant] On the return, you mentioned earlier they arrived back and then gave a report to the President.


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

[User] Supportive and responsive.

[Assistant] Did they have separate functions, too, that the wives of the heads of state, they participated in?

[User] I believe so. I know in Rio de Janeiro, the ambassador's wife hosted a yacht tour around the city with the astronaut wives and myself and the State Department secretary, just the women. Again, Wade St. Clair would probably be able to tell you more of the things that they were—on my notes, on my marginal notes that I kept in my briefing book, I don't recall a whole lot of separate events.

[Assistant] On the return, you mentioned earlier they arrived back and then gave a report to the President.

[User] Yes, there was a report that was prepared, a notebook with highlights of the trip, I guess, that was put together by the local embassies, that we carried with us. But the astronauts themselves dictated a letter, prepared a letter, which they signed, transmitting this letter and this report to the President, and that was presented to him when the trip was over and we landed back at Andrews Air Force Base. The President had the families of all the staff people, had invited all of them to be at the White House. There was an official welcoming by the President, welcoming the astronauts back to the U.S. from this successful tour, where they shared all their information with other countries about space exploration.

[Assistant] Were there a lot of gifts that were presented to the astronauts as part of their tour?


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

[User] I believe so. I know in Rio de Janeiro, the ambassador's wife hosted a yacht tour around the city with the astronaut wives and myself and the State Department secretary, just the women. Again, Wade St. Clair would probably be able to tell you more of the things that they were—on my notes, on my marginal notes that I kept in my briefing book, I don't recall a whole lot of separate events.

[Assistant] On the return, you mentioned earlier they arrived back and then gave a report to the President.

[User] Yes, there was a report that was prepared, a notebook with highlights of the trip, I guess, that was put together by the local embassies, that we carried with us. But the astronauts themselves dictated a letter, prepared a letter, which they signed, transmitting this letter and this report to the President, and that was presented to him when the trip was over and we landed back at Andrews Air Force Base. The President had the families of all the staff people, had invited all of them to be at the White House. There was an official welcoming by the President, welcoming the astronauts back to the U.S. from this successful tour, where they shared all their information with other countries about space exploration.

[Assistant] Were there a lot of gifts that were presented to the astronauts as part of their tour?

[User] There was quite a number. When the trip was over, we had to ask for a special dispensation from Congress for them to keep the ones that they treasured the most and wanted to keep the most, because as a government employee, as you know, you're not allowed to keep anything. I've forgotten what the value is now, but you have a certain value that you can keep things, and over and above that, you have to ask for Congress to give you special dispensation.

[Assistant] Do you recall any unique items in particular that were presented that come to mind?


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

[User] Yes, there was a report that was prepared, a notebook with highlights of the trip, I guess, that was put together by the local embassies, that we carried with us. But the astronauts themselves dictated a letter, prepared a letter, which they signed, transmitting this letter and this report to the President, and that was presented to him when the trip was over and we landed back at Andrews Air Force Base. The President had the families of all the staff people, had invited all of them to be at the White House. There was an official welcoming by the President, welcoming the astronauts back to the U.S. from this successful tour, where they shared all their information with other countries about space exploration.

[Assistant] Were there a lot of gifts that were presented to the astronauts as part of their tour?

[User] There was quite a number. When the trip was over, we had to ask for a special dispensation from Congress for them to keep the ones that they treasured the most and wanted to keep the most, because as a government employee, as you know, you're not allowed to keep anything. I've forgotten what the value is now, but you have a certain value that you can keep things, and over and above that, you have to ask for Congress to give you special dispensation.

[Assistant] Do you recall any unique items in particular that were presented that come to mind?

[User] I believe that the Shah of Iran gave them a Persian rug which had the Apollo 11 insignia woven into it, into the center of it, and they were each presented with one of those. That's the only thing that comes to mind. Of course, Congress gave their approval for them to—because it wouldn't mean anything to anybody but them.

[Assistant] Well, after all this is done, did the astronauts then have an opportunity to take a real vacation? [Laughter]


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

[User] There was quite a number. When the trip was over, we had to ask for a special dispensation from Congress for them to keep the ones that they treasured the most and wanted to keep the most, because as a government employee, as you know, you're not allowed to keep anything. I've forgotten what the value is now, but you have a certain value that you can keep things, and over and above that, you have to ask for Congress to give you special dispensation.

[Assistant] Do you recall any unique items in particular that were presented that come to mind?

[User] I believe that the Shah of Iran gave them a Persian rug which had the Apollo 11 insignia woven into it, into the center of it, and they were each presented with one of those. That's the only thing that comes to mind. Of course, Congress gave their approval for them to—because it wouldn't mean anything to anybody but them.

[Assistant] Well, after all this is done, did the astronauts then have an opportunity to take a real vacation? [Laughter]

[User] I'm sure they did. [Laughter] But a month after that, they went to Montreal [Quebec, Canada] and Ottawa, [Ontario,] Canada. Apparently that could not be logistically fitted into either the beginning of the trip or the end of the world trip. So a month after that trip, the world trip was over, they went to Montreal and Ottawa and were received by the Prime Minister [Pierre Elliott Trudeau] and did appearances there.

[Assistant] That's all very interesting. I'd heard of the tour that the astronauts presented, but, until now, really never knew how massive an effort, a project that was. Buzz Aldrin, I think, mentions it in a book that he wrote shortly after. It was called Return to Earth.


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

[User] I believe that the Shah of Iran gave them a Persian rug which had the Apollo 11 insignia woven into it, into the center of it, and they were each presented with one of those. That's the only thing that comes to mind. Of course, Congress gave their approval for them to—because it wouldn't mean anything to anybody but them.

[Assistant] Well, after all this is done, did the astronauts then have an opportunity to take a real vacation? [Laughter]

[User] I'm sure they did. [Laughter] But a month after that, they went to Montreal [Quebec, Canada] and Ottawa, [Ontario,] Canada. Apparently that could not be logistically fitted into either the beginning of the trip or the end of the world trip. So a month after that trip, the world trip was over, they went to Montreal and Ottawa and were received by the Prime Minister [Pierre Elliott Trudeau] and did appearances there.

[Assistant] That's all very interesting. I'd heard of the tour that the astronauts presented, but, until now, really never knew how massive an effort, a project that was. Buzz Aldrin, I think, mentions it in a book that he wrote shortly after. It was called Return to Earth.

[User] Yes, I have a copy of that.

[Assistant] In fact, he had some problems afterwards. I wonder how much this affected him, if there was any sign at the time of what was to later happen.


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

[User] I'm sure they did. [Laughter] But a month after that, they went to Montreal [Quebec, Canada] and Ottawa, [Ontario,] Canada. Apparently that could not be logistically fitted into either the beginning of the trip or the end of the world trip. So a month after that trip, the world trip was over, they went to Montreal and Ottawa and were received by the Prime Minister [Pierre Elliott Trudeau] and did appearances there.

[Assistant] That's all very interesting. I'd heard of the tour that the astronauts presented, but, until now, really never knew how massive an effort, a project that was. Buzz Aldrin, I think, mentions it in a book that he wrote shortly after. It was called Return to Earth.

[User] Yes, I have a copy of that.

[Assistant] In fact, he had some problems afterwards. I wonder how much this affected him, if there was any sign at the time of what was to later happen.

[User] Well, from my own personal viewpoint, I know when that trip was over, I had three children, I had a three-year-old, an eleven-year-old, and a thirteen-year-old, and was glad to get back home to them. I know when we left the White House grounds, my husband and the children met me there on the White House grounds, and when we left to go get the car from the parking garage, all of a sudden it dawned on me, there's nobody bringing me a car. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You got spoiled. [Laughter]


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

[User] Yes, I have a copy of that.

[Assistant] In fact, he had some problems afterwards. I wonder how much this affected him, if there was any sign at the time of what was to later happen.

[User] Well, from my own personal viewpoint, I know when that trip was over, I had three children, I had a three-year-old, an eleven-year-old, and a thirteen-year-old, and was glad to get back home to them. I know when we left the White House grounds, my husband and the children met me there on the White House grounds, and when we left to go get the car from the parking garage, all of a sudden it dawned on me, there's nobody bringing me a car. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You got spoiled. [Laughter]

[User] I was just worn out. And when we got home, I didn't even unpack my bags. I just sat down in a reclining chair and sat there all night long, because your adrenalin, you know, the whole time you're traveling, you're pumped up. You really can't sleep well, because you're afraid you're going to miss your wake-up call, afraid you'll miss the plane. And all of a sudden, everything is down. You don't have to wake up at a certain time the next morning, you don't have to pack a bag to put out in the hall.

[Assistant] And risk encountering the Prime Minister of Australia. [Laughter]


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

[User] Well, from my own personal viewpoint, I know when that trip was over, I had three children, I had a three-year-old, an eleven-year-old, and a thirteen-year-old, and was glad to get back home to them. I know when we left the White House grounds, my husband and the children met me there on the White House grounds, and when we left to go get the car from the parking garage, all of a sudden it dawned on me, there's nobody bringing me a car. [Laughter]

[Assistant] You got spoiled. [Laughter]

[User] I was just worn out. And when we got home, I didn't even unpack my bags. I just sat down in a reclining chair and sat there all night long, because your adrenalin, you know, the whole time you're traveling, you're pumped up. You really can't sleep well, because you're afraid you're going to miss your wake-up call, afraid you'll miss the plane. And all of a sudden, everything is down. You don't have to wake up at a certain time the next morning, you don't have to pack a bag to put out in the hall.

[Assistant] And risk encountering the Prime Minister of Australia. [Laughter]

[User] Right. [Laughter] It was like you'd really come down, and it took a couple of days to get yourself back to the functioning level.

[Assistant] To return to Earth. [Laughter]


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

[User] I was just worn out. And when we got home, I didn't even unpack my bags. I just sat down in a reclining chair and sat there all night long, because your adrenalin, you know, the whole time you're traveling, you're pumped up. You really can't sleep well, because you're afraid you're going to miss your wake-up call, afraid you'll miss the plane. And all of a sudden, everything is down. You don't have to wake up at a certain time the next morning, you don't have to pack a bag to put out in the hall.

[Assistant] And risk encountering the Prime Minister of Australia. [Laughter]

[User] Right. [Laughter] It was like you'd really come down, and it took a couple of days to get yourself back to the functioning level.

[Assistant] To return to Earth. [Laughter]

[User] To return to Earth, as Buzz Aldrin would say. I believe that he did speak of some problems that he had after the lunar mission, where it was a letdown, and I can see why if you were training all those months for such an undertaking as that and it's over. What do you do after you go to the moon? But on a smaller scale, speaking for myself, I could see that I did have a down time, a couple of days there where it was hard to really get back in the real world.

[Assistant] Was there an assessment of the tour afterwards inside of NASA to see if this was something that they wanted to do again? I know you mentioned that the Apollo 12 crew took a similar trip, not as extensive, but they also took a trip, too. Did they use kind of a lessons-learned from this?


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

[User] Right. [Laughter] It was like you'd really come down, and it took a couple of days to get yourself back to the functioning level.

[Assistant] To return to Earth. [Laughter]

[User] To return to Earth, as Buzz Aldrin would say. I believe that he did speak of some problems that he had after the lunar mission, where it was a letdown, and I can see why if you were training all those months for such an undertaking as that and it's over. What do you do after you go to the moon? But on a smaller scale, speaking for myself, I could see that I did have a down time, a couple of days there where it was hard to really get back in the real world.

[Assistant] Was there an assessment of the tour afterwards inside of NASA to see if this was something that they wanted to do again? I know you mentioned that the Apollo 12 crew took a similar trip, not as extensive, but they also took a trip, too. Did they use kind of a lessons-learned from this?

[User] I'm sure they did. I know that there was a feeling after our trip was over, that the United States had gained a lot of benefits by having them go meet public people, as well as the heads of state, and that we had gained support for the space program. After the Apollo 12 flight, there was a similar world tour for them. I believe those were the only two that were done.

[Assistant] Were you involved on the 12 tour?


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

[User] To return to Earth, as Buzz Aldrin would say. I believe that he did speak of some problems that he had after the lunar mission, where it was a letdown, and I can see why if you were training all those months for such an undertaking as that and it's over. What do you do after you go to the moon? But on a smaller scale, speaking for myself, I could see that I did have a down time, a couple of days there where it was hard to really get back in the real world.

[Assistant] Was there an assessment of the tour afterwards inside of NASA to see if this was something that they wanted to do again? I know you mentioned that the Apollo 12 crew took a similar trip, not as extensive, but they also took a trip, too. Did they use kind of a lessons-learned from this?

[User] I'm sure they did. I know that there was a feeling after our trip was over, that the United States had gained a lot of benefits by having them go meet public people, as well as the heads of state, and that we had gained support for the space program. After the Apollo 12 flight, there was a similar world tour for them. I believe those were the only two that were done.

[Assistant] Were you involved on the 12 tour?

[User] The staff people were from my office, the same office that went to support that. My boss' deputy was a NASA representative and his secretary was the NASA secretary that went.

[Assistant] But you didn't have to pull another tour of duty as far as actively going to these different countries on that tour?


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

[User] I'm sure they did. I know that there was a feeling after our trip was over, that the United States had gained a lot of benefits by having them go meet public people, as well as the heads of state, and that we had gained support for the space program. After the Apollo 12 flight, there was a similar world tour for them. I believe those were the only two that were done.

[Assistant] Were you involved on the 12 tour?

[User] The staff people were from my office, the same office that went to support that. My boss' deputy was a NASA representative and his secretary was the NASA secretary that went.

[Assistant] But you didn't have to pull another tour of duty as far as actively going to these different countries on that tour?

[User] Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. I couldn't stand to do it again. It was really quite unique and a wonderful experience and one that I never would have had, had I not worked for NASA. I mean, I never would have dreamed of going to all these places. I'm glad I did it, but I wouldn't want to do it again.

[Assistant] You mentioned that you handled some of the correspondence with the astronauts at that time. Did you actually look at some of the letters and review the letters that would come in from the outside, or were you handling basically correspondence, just follow-up correspondence?


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

[User] The staff people were from my office, the same office that went to support that. My boss' deputy was a NASA representative and his secretary was the NASA secretary that went.

[Assistant] But you didn't have to pull another tour of duty as far as actively going to these different countries on that tour?

[User] Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. I couldn't stand to do it again. It was really quite unique and a wonderful experience and one that I never would have had, had I not worked for NASA. I mean, I never would have dreamed of going to all these places. I'm glad I did it, but I wouldn't want to do it again.

[Assistant] You mentioned that you handled some of the correspondence with the astronauts at that time. Did you actually look at some of the letters and review the letters that would come in from the outside, or were you handling basically correspondence, just follow-up correspondence?

[User] On that mission, on that trip, I was just handling follow-up correspondence, thank-you letters and helping the State Department with some of their clerical things after the trip was over. But after the trip was over and Neil Armstrong was assigned to headquarters as the deputy associate administrator for aeronautics, I went to work for him as a public affairs assistant and answered all of his public mail in his role as an astronaut. He had a secretary who supported him in his job as the deputy associate administrator and handled any invitations he got for public appearances. My job was to prepare responses to his public mail.

[Assistant] Since you worked with Neil after this, as you mentioned, can you share anything? He's always been somewhat of an elusive character with the Apollo 11 crew, very quiet, very to himself. Can you share any moments or interesting anecdotal stories about working with Neil Armstrong?


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

[User] The State Department and NASA and the Reader's Digest sponsored a science competition in various countries, and the winners of those science competitions were brought as a group to this country for a tour of the scientific facilities.

[Assistant] What was the subject? It was an experiment that they had to perform? Was it a space-related theme?

[User] You know, I don't know. I don't recall. That was in 1972. I don't really recall how they did it in each country. Well, frankly, this probably should be off the record, but they say in some of these countries, the teenager—the age group was fifteen to eighteen. The rumor was—well, it wasn't exactly a rumor, but some of the representatives were close relatives of the reigning monarch of these countries, so it may not have been a real competition at all in some of the places. I probably shouldn't—

[Assistant] Okay, we'll scratch that.

[User] Yes, scratch that.

[Assistant] We'll expunge that from the record.


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

[User] You know, I don't know. I don't recall. That was in 1972. I don't really recall how they did it in each country. Well, frankly, this probably should be off the record, but they say in some of these countries, the teenager—the age group was fifteen to eighteen. The rumor was—well, it wasn't exactly a rumor, but some of the representatives were close relatives of the reigning monarch of these countries, so it may not have been a real competition at all in some of the places. I probably shouldn't—

[Assistant] Okay, we'll scratch that.

[User] Yes, scratch that.

[Assistant] We'll expunge that from the record.

[User] But I don't know how they conducted the scientific experiments that won these competitions for these kids. My group, we had about eighty in the group, and I was one of the chaperons. We had a group of two chaperons for a group of twenty people. We were gone like two weeks.

[Assistant] So NASA basically hosted them?


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

[User] Yes, scratch that.

[Assistant] We'll expunge that from the record.

[User] But I don't know how they conducted the scientific experiments that won these competitions for these kids. My group, we had about eighty in the group, and I was one of the chaperons. We had a group of two chaperons for a group of twenty people. We were gone like two weeks.

[Assistant] So NASA basically hosted them?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And they visited the different centers?


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

[User] But I don't know how they conducted the scientific experiments that won these competitions for these kids. My group, we had about eighty in the group, and I was one of the chaperons. We had a group of two chaperons for a group of twenty people. We were gone like two weeks.

[Assistant] So NASA basically hosted them?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And they visited the different centers?

[User] We went to Marshall Space Flight Center [Huntsville, Alabama], the Johnson Space Center, and another facility in Boulder, Colorado, at Lawrence Livermore in Los Angeles, [California], the Lawrence Livermore Labs, and Oakridge, Tennessee. I can't remember some of the other places.

[Assistant] You mentioned later in your career with NASA that you basically from around 1980 on, it looks like, until your retirement in '94, that you worked with the astronaut appearances. Tell us a little bit about that capacity. I know from the public's perspective, there's always requests that come in from people in different states that want an astronaut to appear at some function. How, typically, did that work and some interesting stories that you had during the rather long portion of your career working in that capacity?


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

[User] No, I didn't, because there was an awful lot of requests that were coming in for the Shuttle crews. We really couldn't do them all. We were very popular, still. Now, I guess I read stories, you know, and some of the questions that the astronauts would get on the road were sort of like, "Why are we spending all this money to go into space?" They always had good answers, but I guess during the Shuttle days you saw more of those kind of questions than you did, for instance, on the world tour with the Apollo 11 astronauts. I guess people's priorities had started to change.\n\n But I was very sad when we decided not to continue to send flights to the moon, because it seemed like all of my NASA career I'd heard stories of how we were planning to colonize the moon and use it for a stop-off to other planets. I never could really get it straight in my mind why we weren't looking that far into the future that we would not continue. It never dawned on me that we should not continue on with it.

[Assistant] You being much more closely associated with it, it seemed all the more crazy, I guess, why we had all this technology and we just kind of let it go.

[User] Let it go, yes. It's sad. I think it's sad. I know one of the speech writers years ago, in response to a similar kind of question, made the analogy of what if Queen [Isabela] had told Christopher Columbus, "Well, we need this money for public housing"? You know, there's always going to be problems with the welfare system and people that don't have money, and you have to set your priorities, I think. I think that at that time, NASA was only getting like two cents out of the tax dollar, so I don't think that's too much to ask.

[Assistant] Especially with the Apollo Program, the response that you got overwhelmingly from the world.

[User] Oh, yes, from the world.

[Assistant] It's like it would be the farthest things from our minds at all.


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

[User] Let it go, yes. It's sad. I think it's sad. I know one of the speech writers years ago, in response to a similar kind of question, made the analogy of what if Queen [Isabela] had told Christopher Columbus, "Well, we need this money for public housing"? You know, there's always going to be problems with the welfare system and people that don't have money, and you have to set your priorities, I think. I think that at that time, NASA was only getting like two cents out of the tax dollar, so I don't think that's too much to ask.

[Assistant] Especially with the Apollo Program, the response that you got overwhelmingly from the world.

[User] Oh, yes, from the world.

[Assistant] It's like it would be the farthest things from our minds at all.

[User] And the spinoffs that we've gotten from later missions just boggles the mind.

[Assistant] Well, I think we'll come to a close, unless you have anything else that you would be interested in sharing, Gennie, to this interview. I see that our time is up, so thank you very much.


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

[User] Yes. I was in the Flight Support Division, which was a part of—I can’t even remember what the directorate name was, but Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft was the director of the organization. The Division Chief was an Air Force major who later become a NASA employee at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, D.C.]. So I started out in the Network Operations Branch, who my first supervisor in California was the Branch Chief, as the engineer from an operational standpoint for the command system in the control center.

[Assistant] What were your basic duties?

[User] Oversight of the operation of the command system, from the standpoint of its performance, getting it ready for each one of the flights, etc.

[Assistant] During the flights, you actually served as a support control coordinator. Can you tell us what that position entailed?

[User] That position was instituted from the standpoint of—the Division I was in provided all the systems within the control center to support the flight control operation. And as such, if requirements came up during a flight where they needed something other than what had been planned, the support control coordinator position was created to be the focal point to where that person or individual had the responsibility of going out and doing whatever was necessary to make the service available to the flight control team.

[Assistant] According to our research and the Mission Control manning lists, you actually did serve on a few flights. Did you serve in one of the support rooms, or did you actually serve in the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room]?


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

[User] Oversight of the operation of the command system, from the standpoint of its performance, getting it ready for each one of the flights, etc.

[Assistant] During the flights, you actually served as a support control coordinator. Can you tell us what that position entailed?

[User] That position was instituted from the standpoint of—the Division I was in provided all the systems within the control center to support the flight control operation. And as such, if requirements came up during a flight where they needed something other than what had been planned, the support control coordinator position was created to be the focal point to where that person or individual had the responsibility of going out and doing whatever was necessary to make the service available to the flight control team.

[Assistant] According to our research and the Mission Control manning lists, you actually did serve on a few flights. Did you serve in one of the support rooms, or did you actually serve in the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room]?

[User] From a support coordinator function standpoint, we basically operated out of the VIP [Very Important Person] room behind the MOCR. We had a com [communications] position [in] a room that we set in and monitored the mission [so that] the flight director or the mission director [could] get [a hold] of us, to address new [or] any additional requirements they might have. [In addition,] if there were problems, system problems, then we would go get involved in the system problems from the standpoint of ensuring that the right people were involved in getting the problem resolved, etc.

[Assistant] Do you remember any serious network problems that occurred while you were working as support control coordinator?


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

[User] The main challenges was schedules and getting everything done that we need to get done to make sure that the system was capable of providing the support that it was intended to provide. One of the things that our Branch did is we took the requirements that had been defined for the various systems, and sat down and scripted out very detailed test procedures that would check—we started out first doing it internal to the building to make sure that if we put this input into this system, that we got the expected result. And then after we completed the control center, we extended that type and level of testing all the way out to every end instrument on the network to verify that the system, end-to-end, would meet the requirements that had been levied on the system by the operations team. We did the end-to-end stuff every flight as a part of the preparation in saying we were ready to support the flight.

[Assistant] Sounds like a lot of work.

[User] Oh, it was fun.

[Assistant] In ’68 you actually headed the Telemetry Command Group. Do you remember what your duties were in that position?

[User] Well, we had a data systems operations section—I can’t remember what the exact name was at the time—which included people who had expertise in telemetry systems, command systems, tracking systems, air-to-ground communications systems, and then we had the network controller. In my group was—and I can’t remember how many people was involved—was specifically just the telemetry and command part of that total section responsibility.

[Assistant] Then a few years later, you actually headed the Mission Operation Section.


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

[User] Oh, it was fun.

[Assistant] In ’68 you actually headed the Telemetry Command Group. Do you remember what your duties were in that position?

[User] Well, we had a data systems operations section—I can’t remember what the exact name was at the time—which included people who had expertise in telemetry systems, command systems, tracking systems, air-to-ground communications systems, and then we had the network controller. In my group was—and I can’t remember how many people was involved—was specifically just the telemetry and command part of that total section responsibility.

[Assistant] Then a few years later, you actually headed the Mission Operation Section.

[User] And that was that whole group. It had the network controllers. The network controller was a person that sat in the MOCR, and he interfaced with the flight control team. If they needed something done or if there was network problems, he interfaced that to the flight control team, and then if they had specific requirements, they’d feed them to him, and then he would send it to the right person in our ops [operations] team, which was in a support area downstairs.

[Assistant] During the missions, did you stay in the MOCR or the support rooms?


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

[User] And that was that whole group. It had the network controllers. The network controller was a person that sat in the MOCR, and he interfaced with the flight control team. If they needed something done or if there was network problems, he interfaced that to the flight control team, and then if they had specific requirements, they’d feed them to him, and then he would send it to the right person in our ops [operations] team, which was in a support area downstairs.

[Assistant] During the missions, did you stay in the MOCR or the support rooms?

[User] There was a time, I guess it was probably when I was in the Telemetry Command Group, I supported the mission from the command console, but that was downstairs. By the time I took over the section, I basically—I would fill in occasionally, but most of the time I was free, I was roaming the building, I would talk to individual flight controllers. If we had problems, I’d interface with them, etc.\n\n I sort of established a work habit that I was in by 3:00 a.m. every morning, and I left exactly at 4:30, because I had a philosophy. I had four kids at the time, and my philosophy was from 4:30 till the time my wife and the kids went to bed was their time. From that point on, it was my time. So I’d get by with three or four hours of sleep.\n\n During the flights, I was out there continuously. I’d grab fifteen-minute power naps. Sometimes that was on my table in my office. Of course, at that time we also had a dormitory in the control center with bunks, shower facilities, etc., and [occasionally] I used those. I basically, when we was in flight, lived out there.

[Assistant] Sounds like a long schedule.

[User] Do you know John [H.] Beall?

[Assistant] No, I don’t recognize that name.


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

[User] There was a time, I guess it was probably when I was in the Telemetry Command Group, I supported the mission from the command console, but that was downstairs. By the time I took over the section, I basically—I would fill in occasionally, but most of the time I was free, I was roaming the building, I would talk to individual flight controllers. If we had problems, I’d interface with them, etc.\n\n I sort of established a work habit that I was in by 3:00 a.m. every morning, and I left exactly at 4:30, because I had a philosophy. I had four kids at the time, and my philosophy was from 4:30 till the time my wife and the kids went to bed was their time. From that point on, it was my time. So I’d get by with three or four hours of sleep.\n\n During the flights, I was out there continuously. I’d grab fifteen-minute power naps. Sometimes that was on my table in my office. Of course, at that time we also had a dormitory in the control center with bunks, shower facilities, etc., and [occasionally] I used those. I basically, when we was in flight, lived out there.

[Assistant] Sounds like a long schedule.

[User] Do you know John [H.] Beall?

[Assistant] No, I don’t recognize that name.

[User] He’s the CFO [Chief Financial Officer] at JSC now, and he’s tainted my customers’ knowledge of me out here by telling them that I lived in the control center. But that was just my way.

[Assistant] You also had a big schedule.


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

[User] Do you know John [H.] Beall?

[Assistant] No, I don’t recognize that name.

[User] He’s the CFO [Chief Financial Officer] at JSC now, and he’s tainted my customers’ knowledge of me out here by telling them that I lived in the control center. But that was just my way.

[Assistant] You also had a big schedule.

[User] Yes, but by getting in by 3:00 a.m. every morning, from a paperwork standpoint, everything was done before anyone else got in, so I could spend most of the day walking and talking, which keeps you in contact with what’s going on and the people.

[Assistant] You mentioned, when we were talking about Gemini, that the Mission Control Center had to be reconfigured for each flight. Was that the case also for the Apollo Program?


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

[User] He’s the CFO [Chief Financial Officer] at JSC now, and he’s tainted my customers’ knowledge of me out here by telling them that I lived in the control center. But that was just my way.

[Assistant] You also had a big schedule.

[User] Yes, but by getting in by 3:00 a.m. every morning, from a paperwork standpoint, everything was done before anyone else got in, so I could spend most of the day walking and talking, which keeps you in contact with what’s going on and the people.

[Assistant] You mentioned, when we were talking about Gemini, that the Mission Control Center had to be reconfigured for each flight. Was that the case also for the Apollo Program?

[User] Oh yes, in spades. And it’s in spades more when you get into the Shuttle Program. Because as I said, as manned spaceflight changed from program to program, one of the things that happened was—what you tried to do with each one of those vehicles was expand it. You were trying to expand your envelop relative to knowledge about manned spaceflight experiments, etc. So each one of those drove a greater data need, greater capacity on board the vehicle, and you had to be able to, on the ground, process that data by the fact—if you had a flight that had experiments on it, that in itself is different from the previous flight, so you had to do something to get the system on the ground ready to receive that information and present the information in a form or the data in a form that meant something to either the flight controller or the PI [principal investigator] or whatever.\n\n So, mission-to-mission configuration, I cannot recall anytime that you didn’t have to change the configuration, whether the next flight was identically the same as the previous flight.

[Assistant] Why don’t you tell us about the Apollo 11 mission and your memories of that event.


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

[User] Yes, but by getting in by 3:00 a.m. every morning, from a paperwork standpoint, everything was done before anyone else got in, so I could spend most of the day walking and talking, which keeps you in contact with what’s going on and the people.

[Assistant] You mentioned, when we were talking about Gemini, that the Mission Control Center had to be reconfigured for each flight. Was that the case also for the Apollo Program?

[User] Oh yes, in spades. And it’s in spades more when you get into the Shuttle Program. Because as I said, as manned spaceflight changed from program to program, one of the things that happened was—what you tried to do with each one of those vehicles was expand it. You were trying to expand your envelop relative to knowledge about manned spaceflight experiments, etc. So each one of those drove a greater data need, greater capacity on board the vehicle, and you had to be able to, on the ground, process that data by the fact—if you had a flight that had experiments on it, that in itself is different from the previous flight, so you had to do something to get the system on the ground ready to receive that information and present the information in a form or the data in a form that meant something to either the flight controller or the PI [principal investigator] or whatever.\n\n So, mission-to-mission configuration, I cannot recall anytime that you didn’t have to change the configuration, whether the next flight was identically the same as the previous flight.

[Assistant] Why don’t you tell us about the Apollo 11 mission and your memories of that event.

[User] I wasn’t on the console, but I was in the control center, as usual: I was just like everyone else; I was glued to the data and the information that we had coming in, and excited relative to the—were we going to encounter any problems in the actual landing, and was the LM [Lunar Module] going to perform right, etc. And I got just as excited as anybody else when you heard the words, “The\n\n Eagle\n\n has landed.”

[Assistant] That’s a nice memory.


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

[User] Oh yes, in spades. And it’s in spades more when you get into the Shuttle Program. Because as I said, as manned spaceflight changed from program to program, one of the things that happened was—what you tried to do with each one of those vehicles was expand it. You were trying to expand your envelop relative to knowledge about manned spaceflight experiments, etc. So each one of those drove a greater data need, greater capacity on board the vehicle, and you had to be able to, on the ground, process that data by the fact—if you had a flight that had experiments on it, that in itself is different from the previous flight, so you had to do something to get the system on the ground ready to receive that information and present the information in a form or the data in a form that meant something to either the flight controller or the PI [principal investigator] or whatever.\n\n So, mission-to-mission configuration, I cannot recall anytime that you didn’t have to change the configuration, whether the next flight was identically the same as the previous flight.

[Assistant] Why don’t you tell us about the Apollo 11 mission and your memories of that event.

[User] I wasn’t on the console, but I was in the control center, as usual: I was just like everyone else; I was glued to the data and the information that we had coming in, and excited relative to the—were we going to encounter any problems in the actual landing, and was the LM [Lunar Module] going to perform right, etc. And I got just as excited as anybody else when you heard the words, “The\n\n Eagle\n\n has landed.”

[Assistant] That’s a nice memory.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What about the Apollo 13 mission? We know that you received a Superior Achievement Award for your role.


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

[User] I wasn’t on the console, but I was in the control center, as usual: I was just like everyone else; I was glued to the data and the information that we had coming in, and excited relative to the—were we going to encounter any problems in the actual landing, and was the LM [Lunar Module] going to perform right, etc. And I got just as excited as anybody else when you heard the words, “The\n\n Eagle\n\n has landed.”

[Assistant] That’s a nice memory.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What about the Apollo 13 mission? We know that you received a Superior Achievement Award for your role.

[User] Let me clear up one thing. It’s like a lot of awards, that award was because of the performance of my people. I contributed, but the award itself was the product of the effort of the section I had at that time.\n\n From a data systems standpoint in providing information to the flight control team, what the Apollo 13 explosion did to us, it basically disrupted communications, because it damaged a high-gain antenna, etc. So we spent a lot of time reconfiguring the system to come up with a configuration that would allow us to continuously communicate with the Apollo 13, and they ended up migrating to the LM. So we had to reconfigure the whole system from a communications standpoint and the S-band system at the remote sites to reestablish that communication. So that really was my team’s primary [action], was to reestablish that communication so that the mission could go on and the crew could communicate to the ground, the ground could communicate to the crew, and the ground could monitor the LM systems, etc.

[Assistant] Were there any problems making that change?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What about the Apollo 13 mission? We know that you received a Superior Achievement Award for your role.

[User] Let me clear up one thing. It’s like a lot of awards, that award was because of the performance of my people. I contributed, but the award itself was the product of the effort of the section I had at that time.\n\n From a data systems standpoint in providing information to the flight control team, what the Apollo 13 explosion did to us, it basically disrupted communications, because it damaged a high-gain antenna, etc. So we spent a lot of time reconfiguring the system to come up with a configuration that would allow us to continuously communicate with the Apollo 13, and they ended up migrating to the LM. So we had to reconfigure the whole system from a communications standpoint and the S-band system at the remote sites to reestablish that communication. So that really was my team’s primary [action], was to reestablish that communication so that the mission could go on and the crew could communicate to the ground, the ground could communicate to the crew, and the ground could monitor the LM systems, etc.

[Assistant] Were there any problems making that change?

[User] No, it just took time. Yes. Some of the people I had had excellent knowledge of the unified S-band systems, etc. So it took that knowledge. I’m sure they tried some things that didn’t exactly work the way they thought it was going to work, so they had to follow another—can I take a break for a minute?

[Assistant] Certainly.\n\n [Tape recorder turned off.]


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

[User] Let me clear up one thing. It’s like a lot of awards, that award was because of the performance of my people. I contributed, but the award itself was the product of the effort of the section I had at that time.\n\n From a data systems standpoint in providing information to the flight control team, what the Apollo 13 explosion did to us, it basically disrupted communications, because it damaged a high-gain antenna, etc. So we spent a lot of time reconfiguring the system to come up with a configuration that would allow us to continuously communicate with the Apollo 13, and they ended up migrating to the LM. So we had to reconfigure the whole system from a communications standpoint and the S-band system at the remote sites to reestablish that communication. So that really was my team’s primary [action], was to reestablish that communication so that the mission could go on and the crew could communicate to the ground, the ground could communicate to the crew, and the ground could monitor the LM systems, etc.

[Assistant] Were there any problems making that change?

[User] No, it just took time. Yes. Some of the people I had had excellent knowledge of the unified S-band systems, etc. So it took that knowledge. I’m sure they tried some things that didn’t exactly work the way they thought it was going to work, so they had to follow another—can I take a break for a minute?

[Assistant] Certainly.\n\n [Tape recorder turned off.]

[User] As I said, the main contribution of myself and my team was mainly just to provide capability of the people in the Mission Control Center to communicate with the spacecraft with its problems.

[Assistant] Do you have any other memories of any Apollo missions that you’d like to talk about?


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

[User] No, it just took time. Yes. Some of the people I had had excellent knowledge of the unified S-band systems, etc. So it took that knowledge. I’m sure they tried some things that didn’t exactly work the way they thought it was going to work, so they had to follow another—can I take a break for a minute?

[Assistant] Certainly.\n\n [Tape recorder turned off.]

[User] As I said, the main contribution of myself and my team was mainly just to provide capability of the people in the Mission Control Center to communicate with the spacecraft with its problems.

[Assistant] Do you have any other memories of any Apollo missions that you’d like to talk about?

[User] I guess my feeling was, every flight sort of had something new. It’s like—and I can’t remember which flight it was on, is when we established the capability to transmit video from the ground. I think one of the first things we did, we provided video from the Moon’s lunar surface of the LM taking off as it was going back to rendezvous with the CSM [Command and Service Module]. That was a new capability. You didn’t know what it was going to look like. You were hoping everything was going to work the way you built the system, etc. Then watching every launch, there’s always that excitement of the launch, seeing it go, hoping, crossing your fingers that nothing goes wrong, etc.\n\n And as I said, for the entire Apollo Program, I spent the entire—every day I was there. I didn’t go home. Usually those flights were short enough that my physical body kept up with it. But I generally, when it was over, I’d crash. It’d take me at least twenty-four hours to recover. I couldn’t do it today.

[Assistant] Pretty fast recovery.


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

[User] As I said, the main contribution of myself and my team was mainly just to provide capability of the people in the Mission Control Center to communicate with the spacecraft with its problems.

[Assistant] Do you have any other memories of any Apollo missions that you’d like to talk about?

[User] I guess my feeling was, every flight sort of had something new. It’s like—and I can’t remember which flight it was on, is when we established the capability to transmit video from the ground. I think one of the first things we did, we provided video from the Moon’s lunar surface of the LM taking off as it was going back to rendezvous with the CSM [Command and Service Module]. That was a new capability. You didn’t know what it was going to look like. You were hoping everything was going to work the way you built the system, etc. Then watching every launch, there’s always that excitement of the launch, seeing it go, hoping, crossing your fingers that nothing goes wrong, etc.\n\n And as I said, for the entire Apollo Program, I spent the entire—every day I was there. I didn’t go home. Usually those flights were short enough that my physical body kept up with it. But I generally, when it was over, I’d crash. It’d take me at least twenty-four hours to recover. I couldn’t do it today.

[Assistant] Pretty fast recovery.

[User] I couldn’t do it today. But it was just me. I wanted to be there.

[Assistant] It was an exciting time. In ’72, you became the technical assistant for the Ground Data Systems Division.


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

[User] I guess my feeling was, every flight sort of had something new. It’s like—and I can’t remember which flight it was on, is when we established the capability to transmit video from the ground. I think one of the first things we did, we provided video from the Moon’s lunar surface of the LM taking off as it was going back to rendezvous with the CSM [Command and Service Module]. That was a new capability. You didn’t know what it was going to look like. You were hoping everything was going to work the way you built the system, etc. Then watching every launch, there’s always that excitement of the launch, seeing it go, hoping, crossing your fingers that nothing goes wrong, etc.\n\n And as I said, for the entire Apollo Program, I spent the entire—every day I was there. I didn’t go home. Usually those flights were short enough that my physical body kept up with it. But I generally, when it was over, I’d crash. It’d take me at least twenty-four hours to recover. I couldn’t do it today.

[Assistant] Pretty fast recovery.

[User] I couldn’t do it today. But it was just me. I wanted to be there.

[Assistant] It was an exciting time. In ’72, you became the technical assistant for the Ground Data Systems Division.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What were your basic duties in that position?


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

[User] I couldn’t do it today. But it was just me. I wanted to be there.

[Assistant] It was an exciting time. In ’72, you became the technical assistant for the Ground Data Systems Division.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What were your basic duties in that position?

[User] Seventy-two, we were in the time period where we were starting to get ready and change things in the control center for Skylab. If my memory is good, we had to go through an ops readiness review, to say that the control center, all of its procedures and everything was in place to support that program. And one of my jobs was to manage getting everything we had to have, get together to go through that ops readiness review, and I think it was with Headquarters personnel that we had to conduct a review. We had to provide certification, proof of certification that everything had been done and checked out, okay, and that was my primary role. If I remember right, I was only in that position for a short period of time, because I think on January 1st of ’73, I became the Branch Chief for the Ops Support Branch.

[Assistant] How did the extended missions for Skylab affect Mission Control?


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

[User] Yes, they had problems with the radiator.

[Assistant] Did that cause any problems for the network?

[User] My recollection is no. As usual, when you get an event like that, it’s going to change requirements, and with requirements changes, that will require you to do something to the network, but I don’t recall any extensive problems with our ability to get data, etc., other than that caused, I think, caused Skylab cooling problems and that kind of stuff, which might have impacted their onboard systems, etc. But from a ground standpoint, it was doing routine.

[Assistant] Do you remember what you did the first few weeks after launch of Skylab 1?

[User] No. It was about the time we were getting in trying to figure out why we were having data problems, and I’m losing a little bit relative to going back that far and remembering specifics. I’m not sure what the cooling and the changes they had to make to basically restore capabilities from a systems viewpoint, I’m not sure that that initial event didn’t curtail the initial plans relative to run the instruments and that kind of stuff with experiments, because I’m sure the crew was doing a lot of other things, trying to—but I can’t remember anything specifically about that.

[Assistant] What was happening in the Mission Control Center with the Skylab missions going and then the preparations for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project?


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

[User] I found, generally in my group, there was, generally one to two people on the Russian side that interfaced with—they were very competent. That was my assessment. We established good working relationships, etc. The nice thing about going to Russia at that time was when we were over there, they basically treated us like royalty. They wined and dined us, took us places. We got together after hours, on weekends. I spent a total of four weeks over there, and it was a very enjoyable four weeks. Had a lot of work, but got around and toured Moscow [U.S.S.R.] and some of the countryside, because on the weekend they’d take us out of town to some historical aspect of Russia.

[Assistant] What difficulties were there for you and your group in linking these two control centers to provide constant communication with the spacecrafts?

[User] One we agreed to protocols, etc., it was a matter of then sitting down and agreeing to what kind of support was going to be provided, what communications requirements were required. Of course, that required interfaces back to our side to see what they wanted to be able to do. And then once you understood that, it was a matter of submitting the requirements to the communications companies to meet, okay. We had to agree on operational procedures, and who had what responsibilities for what and all that kind of stuff, but that’s standard stuff that you have in any mission, manned spaceflight mission. There’s a lot of effort spent in just working out the details of procedures. Everything is written out in detail, specifically who’s going to do what, what you’re going to do next, etc. Discipline is very strong relative to making sure you follow what you agree to do and documenting your procedures step-by-step.

[Assistant] Our research also indicates that you were Chief of the Operations Integration Branch.

[User] I became Branch Chief at the start of Skylab, January of ’73. I think the Branch then was Ops Support Branch. Then if your records say there was a different name, it was just a reorganization.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you, your biographical sheet says you were responsible for the Goddard Spaceflight Center tracking network support requirements.


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

[User] One we agreed to protocols, etc., it was a matter of then sitting down and agreeing to what kind of support was going to be provided, what communications requirements were required. Of course, that required interfaces back to our side to see what they wanted to be able to do. And then once you understood that, it was a matter of submitting the requirements to the communications companies to meet, okay. We had to agree on operational procedures, and who had what responsibilities for what and all that kind of stuff, but that’s standard stuff that you have in any mission, manned spaceflight mission. There’s a lot of effort spent in just working out the details of procedures. Everything is written out in detail, specifically who’s going to do what, what you’re going to do next, etc. Discipline is very strong relative to making sure you follow what you agree to do and documenting your procedures step-by-step.

[Assistant] Our research also indicates that you were Chief of the Operations Integration Branch.

[User] I became Branch Chief at the start of Skylab, January of ’73. I think the Branch then was Ops Support Branch. Then if your records say there was a different name, it was just a reorganization.

[Assistant] I wanted to ask you, your biographical sheet says you were responsible for the Goddard Spaceflight Center tracking network support requirements.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What was Goddard’s role at the time in relation—?


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

[User] It was responsible for the development and sustaining of all of the systems in the control center. It was also responsible for the maintenance and operations of the control center, the flight-to-flight reconfiguration, and the control of the data systems when they were supporting a mission to get the data that was required by the mission to execute to plan. So the Ground Data Systems Division had total responsibility for the Mission Control Center, other than the actual flight control function.

[Assistant] Actually, right before you left NASA, you started working for the Systems Development Division. How did that change come about?

[User] That came about as a result of a NASA reorganization to align JSC organization to the STSOC contract. That’s Space Transportation System Operations Contract. And in that, what happened was in the Mission Support Directorate we had—GDSD [Ground Data Systems Division] had Mission Control Center. We had a Flight Simulations Division. They had the same responsibilities for the flight simulators. In the reorganization, Mission Support Directorate was going to retain the development responsibility for all those facilities, and Mission Ops Directorate was going to pick up all of the operations [and] sustaining. So what happened was, my equivalent over in the Flight Simulations Division decided he wanted to stay on the ops side, and by the fact that my leaning was probably more towards development by that time, decided I was going to keep the development. So he took my Mission Control Center stuff, okay, the ops and sustaining engineering part of it, and I took his simulation system development responsibilities. So that’s what SDD became, Systems Development Division, for flight simulations and control center.

[Assistant] When did you actually begin working for the United Space Alliance [USA]?

[User] That’s one correction. I’ve never worked for USA. I went to work for STSOC.

[Assistant] When did you officially leave NASA?


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

[User] That came about as a result of a NASA reorganization to align JSC organization to the STSOC contract. That’s Space Transportation System Operations Contract. And in that, what happened was in the Mission Support Directorate we had—GDSD [Ground Data Systems Division] had Mission Control Center. We had a Flight Simulations Division. They had the same responsibilities for the flight simulators. In the reorganization, Mission Support Directorate was going to retain the development responsibility for all those facilities, and Mission Ops Directorate was going to pick up all of the operations [and] sustaining. So what happened was, my equivalent over in the Flight Simulations Division decided he wanted to stay on the ops side, and by the fact that my leaning was probably more towards development by that time, decided I was going to keep the development. So he took my Mission Control Center stuff, okay, the ops and sustaining engineering part of it, and I took his simulation system development responsibilities. So that’s what SDD became, Systems Development Division, for flight simulations and control center.

[Assistant] When did you actually begin working for the United Space Alliance [USA]?

[User] That’s one correction. I’ve never worked for USA. I went to work for STSOC.

[Assistant] When did you officially leave NASA?

[User] February of 1987, the 16th, in fact, a government holiday that year. I got questioned about my mental capacity.

[Assistant] What did you start doing as a contractor?


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

[User] As I said, we had to learn a lot of things. One, we wanted to go to a fiber optic system from a copper network configuration because of the amount of bandwidth you can get across the fiber optics. And there’s a lot of things you’ve got to understand when you splice fiber optics. There’s a definite technique to make it work so that you don’t—you get the communications path you need. We had to address the issues of configuration management, because you spread the configuration management from one organization to basically every flight control position. So you had to learn how to control the configuration of the system through there.\n\n And the second thing is—not the second thing—is that you had to understand the languages. The software languages that were using for the workstation are different than a host computer, etc.

[Assistant] You had mentioned that the software maintenance for the Mission Control Center was upwards of 100 million dollars a year.

[User] No. The total budget.

[Assistant] Oh, okay.

[User] The total budget for control center, and that was when it was—it was the GDSD Division, it was roughly 100 million. That included dollars for development. It included dollars for sustaining engineering on the systems, and the maintenance and operations of the control center. But a significant part of that, because there’s universal algorithms that says that if you’re providing sustaining engineering on a piece of software, depending on the language that the software’s coded in, one programmer can sustain X-thousand lines of code. Well, the control center, the Mission Control Center’s host computer had millions of lines of code, and most of the code was machine code. We used a standard number, 45,000 lines of code per [programmer], and our staff was built on that algorithm. So that led to not an insignificant staff just to support the software, and their role primarily was to, if you got a discrepancy, an error in the software, to go fix it. And the move to distributive—the software-sustaining costs didn’t go down.

[Assistant] Okay. That was my question.


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

[User] The total budget for control center, and that was when it was—it was the GDSD Division, it was roughly 100 million. That included dollars for development. It included dollars for sustaining engineering on the systems, and the maintenance and operations of the control center. But a significant part of that, because there’s universal algorithms that says that if you’re providing sustaining engineering on a piece of software, depending on the language that the software’s coded in, one programmer can sustain X-thousand lines of code. Well, the control center, the Mission Control Center’s host computer had millions of lines of code, and most of the code was machine code. We used a standard number, 45,000 lines of code per [programmer], and our staff was built on that algorithm. So that led to not an insignificant staff just to support the software, and their role primarily was to, if you got a discrepancy, an error in the software, to go fix it. And the move to distributive—the software-sustaining costs didn’t go down.

[Assistant] Okay. That was my question.

[User] You just made it appear from the standpoint of Code B, who’s the comptroller at Headquarters. He couldn’t see a big number of people just to support the mission computer software. He’d have to look deeper down to see a little bit of software support sustaining for this workstation, this, you know. So it was a sleight of hand or whatever you want to call it.

[Assistant] I understand.

[User] Gaming the system a little bit.

[Assistant] I’d like ask you two general questions.


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

[User] You just made it appear from the standpoint of Code B, who’s the comptroller at Headquarters. He couldn’t see a big number of people just to support the mission computer software. He’d have to look deeper down to see a little bit of software support sustaining for this workstation, this, you know. So it was a sleight of hand or whatever you want to call it.

[Assistant] I understand.

[User] Gaming the system a little bit.

[Assistant] I’d like ask you two general questions.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] What do you think has been your most challenging milestone in working for NASA or the space agency?


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

[User] We’re into our second contract out here. The initial contract I was officially on the contract as Deputy Program Manager. As a part of our proposal strategy, we decided we wanted to eliminate the [Deputy] Program Manager, so I become the Business Manager. Officially, I am the Business Manager, but I still do the Deputy function. I’m the senior old man, you know. Been around the circle several times. But basically as Business Manager. And it’s basic focusing on the contract, the financials and all that kind of stuff. And I love numbers.

[Assistant] Quite a bit of a change, moving from working with Mission Control to moving into being a Business Manager.

[User] Well, but it’s a lot of the same things. I miss the ops environment, but one of my—probably the things I got known for was my ability to troubleshoot things, and it’s just the approach I took. I thoroughly understand the system. I know what each component of the system contribute to the whole. So if you’ve got problems, you look for the changes in patterns, and you can do the same thing with finance and numbers.\n\n We got huge amounts of financial data, and just looking at the data with the knowledge of what the system is, can allow you to pick up problems. There’s always hidden information in all the data you get. To me, it’s a mental challenge to go find that information. Sort of turns me on.

[Assistant] I’m glad you enjoy it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask Sandra if she has any questions for you.

[User] No.

[Assistant] I just have a couple. I want to go back to more the Apollo time. You mentioned simulations a couple of times, and I was just wondering if you could tell me what your role of you and your group were during the mission simulations, and specifically with Apollo 13, had you simulated the problems that you had to overcome after the explosion?


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

[User] Well, but it’s a lot of the same things. I miss the ops environment, but one of my—probably the things I got known for was my ability to troubleshoot things, and it’s just the approach I took. I thoroughly understand the system. I know what each component of the system contribute to the whole. So if you’ve got problems, you look for the changes in patterns, and you can do the same thing with finance and numbers.\n\n We got huge amounts of financial data, and just looking at the data with the knowledge of what the system is, can allow you to pick up problems. There’s always hidden information in all the data you get. To me, it’s a mental challenge to go find that information. Sort of turns me on.

[Assistant] I’m glad you enjoy it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask Sandra if she has any questions for you.

[User] No.

[Assistant] I just have a couple. I want to go back to more the Apollo time. You mentioned simulations a couple of times, and I was just wondering if you could tell me what your role of you and your group were during the mission simulations, and specifically with Apollo 13, had you simulated the problems that you had to overcome after the explosion?

[User] In that case, no. But the simulations, I don’t know what they do today, but back when I was still there, we probably supported at least a minimum of 150 hours of simulations for every mission. In general, during those simulations, they insert problems, but I don’t recall us ever inserting a problem where you had an explosion and you had to do a transfer from one vehicle to the other vehicle, etc. I’d [have] to say no, we didn’t.

[Assistant] Did you ever get a chance to travel to any of the remote communication sites?


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

[User] I mentioned technically I found them to be pretty danged knowledgeable. Now, if you looked at their systems—one of the things we were able to do, they have an exposé or exposition complex—I think it’s out on the north side of Moscow—where they have buildings where they have on display all the products they produced, and one of those buildings had the actual Soyuz vehicle. So one afternoon, me and my Russian counterpart went out there. My perception from that was—when I was out there, I went and looked at their computers and went and looked at their test equipment. It looked like the test equipment—like Hewlett Packard [Company], another example, that they just carbon-copied us. The computer they had on display, it looked like a Univac 1218 that we used in the early 1960s at the remote site. You know, it’s one of the naval data—I can’t remember. It was one of the computers that Univac developed for the Navy.\n\n And then looking at the Soyuz, their approach to things, whereas we tend to go to micronization of component systems, etc., you know, brute force. A lot of metal, heavy, big, thick, whereas we tend to—but the people I worked with I found to be very competent, from an engineering discipline standpoint, etc. I don’t think there was—from a technology standpoint, I may be wrong, but I don’t believe they was anywhere close to us from a technology standpoint. But a good engineer, if you give him the technology, it ain’t going to take him long.

[Assistant] Thank you.

[User] Okay.

[Assistant] Before we close, do you have any last words or anything else you want to touch on that we didn’t touch on?

[User] Well, I had a—you don’t have to record this. I had an interesting incident while I was in Moscow.

[Assistant] Do you want me to stop it?


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

[User] For pathogens.

[Assistant] For pathogens, I’m sorry. And you said that the date on that was July of ’63?

[User] The date on the Apollo document is ’63. The date on the Gemini specs was ’63. So they do coincide. July of ’63.

[Assistant] Could you tell me how this—

[User] No, wait. I take that back. The critical control point of the reliability document was July ’63. The NASA documents on foods, the one I wrote for Gemini, which was used for Apollo, was 1964, 14th of August. It was the one that carried—there were several of them with different dates. I don’t know how they archived it, if they archived it at all, but the code on it was CSD, meaning Crew Systems Division, dash G, meaning Gemini, dash 079 was the major food descriptions. There were several documents, ten of them, I think, dealing with different aspects of the whole delivery system. Those were used with Gemini, and then they were used as the foundation document for the Apollo contract, the Request for Proposal, the RFP.

[Assistant] I wonder if you could tell me how this quality control program differed from those that were used by industry prior to this time.


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

[User] Well, in Building 4 we were in the same building. I mean, I’d run into them in the hallway and different places and different things. I wasn’t the type that pestered anybody. I mean, if I needed to know something, I would ask.\n\n It was easier to solve problems then, because you didn’t have the complexity that automatically comes with any new agency. I mean, when I was with NASA, I had my own travel vouchers. I could go anywhere in the world on my signature. Find a civil service who can do that today. You won’t find very many. They have to go through the travel office to get their tickets or their e-ticket or whatever it is.\n\n People misused it, misused the privileges, and because we wanted to roll, the average age was thirty-five. We came from everywhere, every agency you can think of. We were assigned rent-a-cars. When we got into airports, we had a Hertz or whatever car. Sometimes, once in a while, we had government cars. Didn’t make any difference. But somebody goes parading around with them after hours, it’s against the rules. So the rules start getting written, and I’m sure there’s a manual over there that’s thicker than can be that tells you what you can’t do.

[Assistant] We need to take a break for just a second to change our tape.

[User] Oh, sure.

[Assistant]
Then I just had a couple more questions for you. You have such an interesting career. I wish that we had more time to talk with you about your other experiments and so many of these other items that you were working on.\n\n [Tape change]

Let’s see. You were assigned to the Biomedical Research Office at MSC, according to your biosheet.

[User] Not originally. Originally I don’t think it was called that. I was just part of Crew Systems Division.

[Assistant] Okay. How did that office change from the time you arrived at MSC until the time you left?


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

[User] Have you interviewed her?

[Assistant] No. Unfortunately, she passed away.

[User] She did.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Well, there’s a couple of other people that passed away. Come to think of it, I was told that some years ago, and I’d forgotten.

[Assistant] Yes, and we also tried to interview Malcolm Smith and learned that he passed away last summer.


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

[User] Well, there’s a couple of other people that passed away. Come to think of it, I was told that some years ago, and I’d forgotten.

[Assistant] Yes, and we also tried to interview Malcolm Smith and learned that he passed away last summer.

[User] He did?

[Assistant] He did.

[User] Oh, my. Because he went off and became an independent consultant. I don’t know if he came back to NASA or not. Malcolm was very interesting. I mean, he was more a veterinarian. He got a master’s degree. He was a veterinarian who had chosen to get a master’s degree in food technology, because veterinarians are in charge of all the military sanitation of all its agencies. So he was trained from that point of view, so he was helpful. But he knew more about foods than he knew anything about experiments and nutrition or anything like that. Even though you’d think a veterinarian would, but he didn’t.

[Assistant] Well, I just had a couple more questions for you. Earlier you had talked about botulism and some cases that had occurred in the 1970s. As a result of this breakout of botulism in the early 1970s, the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] actually began to use HACCP in low-acid canning food regulations. I was wondering, were you ever contacted by the FDA to talk about your own experience at NASA with these concepts?


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

[User] Thirty-three months.

[Assistant] In the meantime though were you still working on your Hubble missions?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Before that gap you only had 5 months [before launch] and now you have 33 plus months.

[User] NASA put that time to good use on the Hubble. Since Hubble was going to be on the ground for another three or four years basically in a clean room in California, NASA did invest a little bit more in making the Hubble more serviceable, doing labeling, and making sure that the right kind of electrical connectors that could be manipulated by a gloved hands, all the serviceability features were added to the Hubble design in the interim. NASA made good use of that time. Hubble was basically done in January of 1986. It was about to be shipped to the Cape when the accident happened.

[Assistant] Where were you during the [STS-31] mission? Were you able to work during the deployment? Or were you off at school or part of the whole deployment effort?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Before that gap you only had 5 months [before launch] and now you have 33 plus months.

[User] NASA put that time to good use on the Hubble. Since Hubble was going to be on the ground for another three or four years basically in a clean room in California, NASA did invest a little bit more in making the Hubble more serviceable, doing labeling, and making sure that the right kind of electrical connectors that could be manipulated by a gloved hands, all the serviceability features were added to the Hubble design in the interim. NASA made good use of that time. Hubble was basically done in January of 1986. It was about to be shipped to the Cape when the accident happened.

[Assistant] Where were you during the [STS-31] mission? Were you able to work during the deployment? Or were you off at school or part of the whole deployment effort?

[User] I was a payload officer in Mission Control during the mission.

[Assistant] So you were able to stay during the whole mission and not just parts.


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

[User] NASA put that time to good use on the Hubble. Since Hubble was going to be on the ground for another three or four years basically in a clean room in California, NASA did invest a little bit more in making the Hubble more serviceable, doing labeling, and making sure that the right kind of electrical connectors that could be manipulated by a gloved hands, all the serviceability features were added to the Hubble design in the interim. NASA made good use of that time. Hubble was basically done in January of 1986. It was about to be shipped to the Cape when the accident happened.

[Assistant] Where were you during the [STS-31] mission? Were you able to work during the deployment? Or were you off at school or part of the whole deployment effort?

[User] I was a payload officer in Mission Control during the mission.

[Assistant] So you were able to stay during the whole mission and not just parts.

[User] I worked the whole mission, yes. When there were missions or sims [simulations] to do, if it interfered with classes, I just didn’t go to class. By the deploy mission I had my degree, because they wouldn’t let me be payload officer if I was a contractor.

[Assistant] Talk about the whole feeling of being able to be there and see your work actually move into history. It had other aspects of this is the farthest the Shuttle had ever gone. You worked problems through.


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

[User] I was number six.

[Assistant] You were definitely there at the beginning.

[User] I was there at the beginning.

[Assistant] What were your duties, as you understood them, when you started in your position?

[User] I was responsible for Procurement and NASA Property. There were two other individuals in the office.

[Assistant] What sorts of activities were going on at that time, or had anything started up here, or were you just trying to get things sorted out and get things started?


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

[User] Hired Al Duran to head the procurement function. He was with me all through the years, and later hired a secretary. It turns out both of them were Spanish and later on when we had to hire a percentage of minorities in our workforce, I almost met the requirement for the whole site. But that was a continuous problem over the next couple of years, to hire qualified people to meet our requirements.

[Assistant] So the numbers just gradually grew all the way through Apollo?

[User] The numbers grew. Yes, I had the authority to hire all I needed, and my supervisor didn’t question when I told him what I needed. At the peak, we had twenty-one in my office, and when I left, it was back down to seven or nine, which was actually a little bit less than minimum, in my opinion.

[Assistant] You mentioned that Las Cruces had some dirt roads and the vendors weren’t used to having to deal with providing things quite as quickly as you needed them. What sort of other effects do you think White Sands Test Facility had on Las Cruces itself? Obviously, it is a larger town now, but do you thank they had something to do with that?

[User] Oh yes, no question. The main industry in town at that time was the university [NMSU] and Stahmann’s Pecan Farm. They had approximately 5,000 employees. It was the largest pecan farm in the world. Other than that, we didn’t really have any heavy industry. I don’t remember, but it was several millions of dollars that we added, particularly in the housing industry.

[Assistant] What type of relationship did White Sands have with Johnson Space Center at the beginning, or Manned Spacecraft Center, obviously, then?


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

[User] We were working in the state of the art and in many instances beyond the state of the art, as you were at JSC. We had to work with current knowledge, and design and build our facilities, which we did, based upon known requirements at the time. When I say “we,” I include JSC and NASA Headquarters. But it turns out, as the schedules developed and as we got into the testing phase, our facilities were undersigned, particularly in the capacities to hold the liquids, the propellants that were required.\n\n If all tests had gone as scheduled with the propellants that we had ordered, we didn’t have the capacity to unload them or to hold them without paying excess demurrage charges. Thank goodness, we had anomalies in the testing, which delayed the testing schedule, and gave us time to unload the propellants.

[Assistant] There were a number of contractors and subcontractors working on site. What was the relationship between the civil servants and the contract personnel, as you remember it?

[User] I think the relationship was good. I don’t know what the contractors might have thought. We had a team that was just phenomenal. No one there was concerned about hours of work, what time you got to work, or when you went home. They didn’t ask for overtime, although a few people got it. I think that we were respected and accepted. We got along exceptionally well. I am sure we had small problems that anyone in testing operations would have, but overall it was very good.

[Assistant] One of your responsibilities was to evaluate the prime contractors and subcontractors while you were there. Can you describe that process?

[User] Prior to the award fee type contracts, the office chiefs were responsible for the evaluation of the contractor work in their respective areas. These duties were delegated to the engineers and personnel who were assigned to monitor the work in their areas of responsibility. After award fee type contracts were issued, the evaluation process remained basically the same except the criteria for evaluation was established and issued as part of the contract. The evaluation consisted of both objective and subjective criteria and was evaluated in a daily basis with weekly scheduled meetings with the contractors.

[Assistant] At what point were the regulations in place?


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

[User] I think the relationship was good. I don’t know what the contractors might have thought. We had a team that was just phenomenal. No one there was concerned about hours of work, what time you got to work, or when you went home. They didn’t ask for overtime, although a few people got it. I think that we were respected and accepted. We got along exceptionally well. I am sure we had small problems that anyone in testing operations would have, but overall it was very good.

[Assistant] One of your responsibilities was to evaluate the prime contractors and subcontractors while you were there. Can you describe that process?

[User] Prior to the award fee type contracts, the office chiefs were responsible for the evaluation of the contractor work in their respective areas. These duties were delegated to the engineers and personnel who were assigned to monitor the work in their areas of responsibility. After award fee type contracts were issued, the evaluation process remained basically the same except the criteria for evaluation was established and issued as part of the contract. The evaluation consisted of both objective and subjective criteria and was evaluated in a daily basis with weekly scheduled meetings with the contractors.

[Assistant] At what point were the regulations in place?

[User] It was an evolving type thing. They weren’t just sent to us, the came to us as they were formulated. WSTF had a Procedures Board, which was made up of the office chiefs and the manager. We wrote internal procedures called WSTFIs [White Sands Test Facility Internal Procedures] and as it became necessary or there were problems, we would write a new procedure. The board met on a weekly basis to write new regulations. JSCIs [Johnson Space Center Internal Procedures] were the implementing instructions of the Headquarters, and, of course, we complied with those as well.

[Assistant] Of course, Grumman and North American, being the prime contractors, and you mentioned that the people that were there sometimes may have felt like they weren’t sure about NASA having complete control, but what type of relationship did your office have with them?