posted 08-22-2021 03:49 PM               

In 2001, Randall took part in a NASA oral history interview, when he described his role during Gemini and Apollo:

I worked, in general, in the area that would concern data flow, integration of the control center and the network, identifying capabilities, because there's things you could do from MILA [Merritt Island Launch Area, Florida] that you couldn't do from Tananarive or something like that. Or [Guaymas] Mexico was always a pretty limited station. None of the flight controllers liked to go to Mexico because they didn't have command capability. They liked that being in control thing. All you could was just talk.

You just identified those capabilities and things, and that's what we pretty much worked on...

...you had a term called "on the network" and "off the network." "On the network" means that during the orbital pass they're going to be in contact with the majority of your ground stations, and so you've got periods where you've got a whole bunch of contacts, and then you've got periods where you have to send a ship out there, and you can go a whole pass and that ship is your only contact, because you had a mission rule, you had to talk to them once a rev.

And so a lot of times, that's why Guaymas was so important, even though people didn't like to go down there, because they didn't have command. But Guaymas was important because that was an off-the-network site, so you'd put a ship out in the northern Pacific and you'd touch them up there, and then they'd come down across Mexico, and Guaymas would pick them up. Then you wouldn't pick them up again until they got up to the Pacific again.

So you wanted to be on the team that was on the network, which was almost always red team with Chris [Kraft]. So it was neat to be on the red team, or what we called the prime team.

GT-4, 5, 6, 7-6, 8, and 10, Apollo 1, then I had an unmanned LM [lunar module] mission with Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz. Apollo 7, 8, 9, I skipped 10. I was not prime on 11 because I wanted EVA [extravehicular activity], and I was prime on 12. Those were the missions that I [worked].