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[i]I had an opportunity to fly command Apollo 13. And then George Low called me up and said, "Jim, I'd like to talk to you." So, I went over to talk to him. And he said, "I'm only going to be the Program Manager for one more flight. And after that—" or the lunar landing. "As soon as the lunar landing takes place," he says, "I'm going to leave here." He said, "I've been offered a job as the [NASA] Deputy Administrator. And we can't talk about that now, because it's a political appointee job" and all that junk. "But," he said, "I'd like to have you replace me as the Program Manager." Hmm. I said, "Well, let me think about that. That's more interesting than some of these other things." And so, I went home and talked to my wife about it. She suggested I fly the Apollo 13 flight. And anyway, I thought about it for a long time. And finally I decided that that's what I wanted to do. So, I went and told him, "Yeah, I'd do that." And so ... I'd be the Program Manager. But we couldn't — but we had to disguise it in a way that it wasn't obvious. And so, I took a job which we created called the Deputy Program Manager for Lunar Exploration, or something like that. So, in that job then I led the team that sort of redesigned the command module and lunar module to do the lunar exploration stuff that we did on 15, 16, and 17. And then as soon as we landed on Apollo 11, we were going to make the transition. And then because of the political appointee stuff, it took — it dragged on and on and on; and finally George and I decided that, "Look, you know, if I'm going to do this job, I've got to do it now! I'm not going to do it — I'm not going to start it last." So, he said, "Yeah," so he went and did something else on a temp — on an interim basis and I took over the Program for 12 through 16.[/i]
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