|
Author
|
Topic: JSC Oral History Project
|
capoetc
Member Posts: 2169
From: McKinney TX (USA)
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted 05-20-2006 08:18 AM
   
Many of you may be aware of this, but some may not ... Johnson Space Center has been conducting Oral History interviews with many pioneer astronauts AND members of the entire space flight team for several years now, and the transcripts from the interviews are posted online here. So far, each one I have read has contained at least a few anecdotes that I had not heard before. They are well worth a look! |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-20-2006 09:57 AM
The JSC Oral History project is, in my opinion, just about the best thing since sliced bread. About eighty of the oral histories are now residing on my hard drive, where I can easily search them and use them as reference sources. Personally I can't recommend it too highly... (Although I hope they'll do an oral history with Steve Bales sometime soon.)Which oral histories are your favourites? Perhaps we can trade recommendations. |
capoetc
Member Posts: 2169
From: McKinney TX (USA)
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted 05-20-2006 11:05 AM
Interesting... I was just checking for Steve Bales on the site today (before your post)!It seems that each time I read one, I have discovered a new favorite. Unlike a book, where the author polishes the final result (sometimes on his own, but more often through a ghost writer who was not present for the events described), the oral histories are simply a telling of what happened and with whom. In addition, they tell stories that really show the human side of the endeavor. Like in Bill Anders' history, he talks about how he applied for NASA through two routes: the Air Force and directly with NASA. The Air Force was screening all of its applications through the Aerospace Research Pilots' School at Edwards, and Chuck Yeager made his recommendations to the Air Force on which packages should be forwarded. Anders did not make the cut for the Air Force NASA list because he was not a test pilot. But Anders' application directly to NASA was accepted (he had a Masters in Nuclear Engineering), and he made the cut ... and Yeager was furious! He tried to get Anders out of the program, to no avail. I had not heard that story elsewhere (although it may have been related somewhere I suppose). |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-20-2006 11:49 AM
quote:
Originally posted by capoetc:
Interesting... I was just checking for Steve Bales on the site today (before your post)!
It does seem odd that they haven't talked to him yet, but I imagine they'll do so in due course. In the mean time there's always Jack Garman... quote:
Unlike a book, where the author polishes the final result (sometimes on his own, but more often through a ghost writer who was not present for the events described), the oral histories are simply a telling of what happened and with whom.
Yes, I agree. Guenter Wendt's oral history tells most of the stories that are told in his book, but (in my opinion) in a much fresher and more immediate way. I was laughing out loud when reading that one!One of my favourites is the one with Jay Greene, who was FIDO during the Apollo 11 landing and Flight Director during the Challenger accident, among other things. He can be a bit terse at times, but he has a wonderfully dry wit that is refreshing to read. He is very honest about a lot of things, such as how he felt during Apollo 13: "It was pretty grim. I don't think there was anyone who expected that crew to live. A lot of them, in retrospect, will tell you how macho and cool, but it was pretty grim." He also manages to badmouth a few well-known names, like Bill Nelson and Sean O'Keefe. Greene is an interesting guy. |
MCroft04
Member Posts: 1634
From: Smithfield, Me, USA
Registered: Mar 2005
|
posted 05-20-2006 12:04 PM
Wow, this is great stuff that I was not aware existed. This will keep me busy for a while. I noted some obvious names not in this list (e.g. Dave Scott, Gene Cernan, John Young, Story Musgrave). I assume this is just due to logisitcal problems? |
Sy Liebergot
Member Posts: 501
From: Pearland, Texas USA
Registered: May 2003
|
posted 05-20-2006 02:47 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Naraht:
He is very honest about a lot of things, such as how he felt during Apollo 13: "It was pretty grim. I don't think there was anyone who expected that crew to live."
I must take strong umbrage to that negative thought. During Apollo 13, most of us Flight Controllers never entertained the thought that the Apollo 13 crew would not survive. If Jay felt that way, he was very much alone. He had a tendency to be acerbic and at times very negative. Still, he was a very smart guy that deserved to be admired. |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-20-2006 05:35 PM
Thanks for your thoughts, Sy. I certainly didn't mean to imply that most flight controllers felt that way during Apollo 13, or even that anyone other than Jay Greene felt that way. But it was interesting to know that he did. (The acerbic aspect to his personality certainly comes through in the oral history.)Bob Heselmeyer offered a very different, and it sounds like more typical, take on the situation in his oral history: "Me, personally, I was always of the firm opinion that those guys were going to get back. Maybe I never allowed myself to think that they wouldn't, but I just knew they were going to make it." He also, incidentally, gives a vivid account of what it was like sitting next to the EECOM console when the explosion happened: "I had a bird's-eye view of Sy's console lighting up like a Christmas tree. The consoles have all these indicators, and there's reds and greens and yellows. His console just glows, and it happened very rapidly. A lot of things not right very quickly, and Sy's trying to deal with that, and I'm sitting there looking at that, thinking, 'Sy really has a problem.'" Of course, the problem also became Bob's problem in not very long... |
Dwayne Day
Member Posts: 532
From:
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 05-20-2006 08:18 PM
This oral history project is the kind of thing that I wish NASA did more of. I also wish the Air Force would do this for their space program as well.However, I do know some of the story behind the project itself, and it is rather disappointing. It started as a pet project of the JSC Director George Abbey. Unfortunately, because it was a pet project, it wasn't run in the most efficient manner possible, and you would not believe how much money they spent on each interview. The sad fact is that for the large amount of money that NASA was willing to spend on this, they could have interviewed far more people. |
cspg
Member Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006
|
posted 05-21-2006 02:20 AM
I agree. It seems pretty interesting, indeed.However, the process which you have access to the files is a bit awkward: first you have a small pdf file which you need to open to find the link to the actual "oral history(ies)" file (s). There's probably a simpler way to deal with this. |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-21-2006 04:59 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Dwayne Day:
The sad fact is that for the large amount of money that NASA was willing to spend on this, they could have interviewed far more people.
That's really too bad. I read in the NASA History Office newsletter about the OHP's road trip to the NACA reunion -- it was a great idea to go, but a shame that due to budgetary constraints they weren't able to do more than thirteen oral histories over the weekend. Those people won't be around forever.Still, as I understand it the project is ongoing. Hopefully they can make up for lost time. |
Dwayne Day
Member Posts: 532
From:
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 05-21-2006 01:39 PM
They produced on average about 30 transcripts a year. If you knew the annual cost of the project, you could easily divide one number into the other and find out how much they spent for each interview. It was ridiculous. |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-22-2006 06:01 AM
Do you have any idea what the money was being spent on? It seems to me that the major cost would be the salaries of the historians. They would presumably have been doing a fair amount of background research in addition to the actual interviews. Other than that, though, I can't think what the money would go towards... |
FFrench
Member Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002
|
posted 05-22-2006 10:37 AM
Based on the ones I witnessed, travel would be another factor, as the team traveled to wherever the interviewee was based. At least one was also filmed, requiring a film crew. |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-22-2006 11:23 AM
Ah, of course, travel expenses and film crews. Should have remembered that. Thanks.I have one more question that you or Sy Liebergot might be able to answer. From what I've read of the interviews, it sounds as if another function of the oral histories has been to gather information about who happens to hold manuals, memos, logbooks and other historical documents that might be worth preserving. I was wondering whether the oral historians have been following up on the information that they've gathered, either by simply making a list recording who has custody of these things, or perhaps by making efforts to ensure that they are placed in suitable archives. It would be really reassuring to know that the documents now held by ex-NASA employees will find a suitable home someday, and will not just be dispersed. |
Dwayne Day
Member Posts: 532
From:
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 05-22-2006 03:46 PM
What were they spending the money on? Overhead for the contractor that they hired to do this, plus wasteage. Any contracting company will charge at least 50% overhead, possibly up to 60%, and for this kind of operation you don't need a contractor; you just hire the interviewers (i.e. academics with knowledge of the subject) directly.Seriously, it doesn't cost that much to do an oral history. Travel expenses per trip can be kept to $1000 or less (figure $300 for airfare and the rest for hotels and car for a few days). Producing a transcript of the recording is only a few hundred dollars. After that, you're only paying the historian for his/her time and expertise. Assuming that the person could do several interviews per trip (the subjects are going to tend to retire in the same area that they worked, and you can reasonably do two a day), the cost per interview subject can easily be kept to about $1500. Trust me, I've done this kind of work, and on several occasions I've flown from the East Coast to California, rented a car, and interviewed 4-5 people on a trip that cost me about $1200 out of my own pocket. Admittedly, if I was charging for this, I'd sleep in a better hotel, get paid for my time, and hire a transcriber. But total costs would still be less than $5000 for 4-5 interviews. You would not believe what they were spending per interview. Take my numbers above and multiply them several times. |
kyra
Member Posts: 583
From: Louisville CO US
Registered: Aug 2003
|
posted 05-23-2006 06:46 PM
GWS Abbey did do something nice here, pet project or not! Very Surprising!On costs, there would be plenty of good ways to keep numbers down. Have college students that have an strong interest in spaceflight record the session locally, volunteers could type the transcript. Everyone wants a good interview, so the students questions would likely be detailed. On one of the unusual interviews was with John Blaha. He even starts interviewing the interviewer! He mentions some candid thoughts about time compression during the STS-29 landing, Challenger and Shannon Lucid. The interview really brought out JB's personality! He's definitely not your typical military pilot type. Overall a great resource for getting multiple viewpoints of a program or mission. |
MCroft04
Member Posts: 1634
From: Smithfield, Me, USA
Registered: Mar 2005
|
posted 05-23-2006 07:14 PM
I've been reading these interviews with passion. So much great info. I noted in the interview with Neil Armstrong that the description of the Gemini 8 tumbling incident is a bit different from what I've read in other writings. On page 54, Neil is quoted "When the rates became quite violent, I concluded that we couldn't continue, that we had to (separate from the Agena)". I recall reading that the tumbling did not become violent until after separation from the Agena. Am I incorrect, or is this perhaps just a slight slip of the memory on Neil's part? |
Naraht
Member Posts: 232
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: Mar 2006
|
posted 05-24-2006 05:11 AM
As I recall, the tumbling became much more violent after they separated from the Agena, but it was already bad enough before that for Armstrong to conclude that undocking was a good idea. (Wrongly, as it turned out!) |
Dwayne Day
Member Posts: 532
From:
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 05-24-2006 03:53 PM
quote:
Originally posted by kyra:
On costs, there would be plenty of good ways to keep numbers down. Have college students that have an strong interest in spaceflight record the session locally, volunteers could type the transcript. Everyone wants a good interview, so the students questions would likely be detailed.
No, I wouldn't go that far. It's not that expensive to hire an associate professor to do the interviewing, and they can bring their own tape recorder. The transcription pretty much has to be done by a professional service (trust me--I've seen it done badly and it's HoRribl) and although they are not cheap, they are also not obscenely expensive. I think they often charge about $70-$100 per hour of audiotape transcribed. I've done my own transcribing and it can take me 2-3 hours to transcribe a single hour of tape, so this price is not that bad when you think about it. Even when they are done with the transcription, the interviewer has to edit it, because things like acronyms get all scrambled by a transcriber who does not know what the speaker is referring to. I always laugh when I hear some actor in a movie try to use some technical term without knowing how it is really pronounced. I think I once heard some dialogue in Stargate SG-1 where someone referred to the "tee dee are ess" that was beaming down the communications. Of course, they meant "TDRS" which is pronounced "teedriss." Similarly, "SBIRS" is pronounced "sibirs" and so on. |
Dwayne Day
Member Posts: 532
From:
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 05-24-2006 03:55 PM
This works best when the interviewer's own research interests coincide with the people to be interviewed. The interviewer will work cheaper if they think that the interviews will contribute to their own project. |
Dwayne Day
Member Posts: 532
From:
Registered: Feb 2004
|
posted 05-24-2006 03:57 PM
I just need to add that I'm not against the JSC project. My point is that they spent a lot more money than they needed to. I wish more agencies would fund history projects like this. |
mjanovec
Member Posts: 3811
From: Midwest, USA
Registered: Jul 2005
|
posted 05-30-2006 07:18 PM
Funny that this was an Abbey project... because (in typical fashion, perhaps) he's one of the people we don't have an oral history for.It's too bad they didn't get around to recording an oral history with Pete Conrad before he passed away. I'd be curious to know if any lengthy interviews with Conrad exist out there that run down the highlights of his career (or the highlights of his NASA career). |
advertisement