posted 02-04-2017 04:19 PM            

As a military man who had commanded two very successful space flights I can understand his position. Remember Gene Cernan was willing to miss his chance to walk on the moon as he wanted command. His gamble paid off.

Also Frank Borman, Mike Collins and Tom Stafford could easily have put themselves forward to command a moon landing but chose not too, the first two as they wanted to retire and the latter to take Shepard's place as chief of the astronaut office

I have a huge respect for these men, along with McDivitt, even though they never walked on the moon because each contributed greatly to some of the most exciting and difficult space missions ever.

It is also worth noting that Dave Scott says in his joint book with Alexei Leonov "Two Sides of the Moon," on page 237, that McDivitt told him the night before re-entry on Apollo 9 that it would be his last mission as he was "really, really tired." Perfectly understandable.

posted 02-04-2017 05:15 PM               

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Originally posted by carmelo:
Or Commander of nothing!

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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.

posted 02-08-2017 01:04 PM            

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Originally posted by carmelo:
Is true that the USAF offered to McDivitt to fly on MOL?

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Moving into Apollo management had not been the only post-mission option for Jim McDivitt. The Air Force was interested in him running a component of their proposed manned space program, called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). After talking to some trusted colleagues, however, he was convinced that the Air Force would never follow through on its manned spaceflight plans and would abandon them as they had done with the earlier Dyna-Soar program. He was later proved correct; the MOL program was abruptly canceled.

posted 02-08-2017 08:06 PM               

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Originally posted by Rick Mulheirn:
Most likely Andrew "Pat" Patnesky.

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posted 02-15-2017 03:02 PM               

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Originally posted by Mike Dixon:
...no way would I have played second fiddle as a LM pilot.

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posted 02-16-2017 03:13 PM               

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Originally posted by ColinBurgess:
...the long-defunct "Space Flight News" many years ago.

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