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Thomas P. Stafford Interviewed by William Vantine Houston, Texas – 15 October 1997

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Thomas P. Stafford Interviewed by William Vantine Houston, Texas – 15 October 1997 ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT THOMAS P. STAFFORD INTERVIEWED BY WILLIAM VANTINE HOUSTON, TEXAS – 15 OCTOBER 1997 [This oral history with Tom Stafford was conducted in Houston, Texas on October 15, 1997. This oral history was conducted by William Vantine and Michelle Kelly for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project.] STAFFORD: I was, in a way, interested in it when the Mercury Program got started, but I was ineligible because I was just a student in school. But I always liked to fly things, to go higher and faster and fly the latest things. Then, particularly after [President John F.] Kennedy made the challenge to go to the Moon, I said that's got to be a great challenge, and I wanted to do that. We didn't know when we'd have another selection of astronauts. So the first group was selected in '59, when I was in school. I was in school class at Edwards, class '58 Charlie, which graduated in the summer of '59, after the first group was on board. So when there came calls for the second group of astronauts, I applied for it and then went through Air Force screening and then through NASA screening. In the interim, I wanted also to continue my Air Force career, and I always said the Air Force had good technical ability, but their big problem was management. So instead of complaining about it, I wanted to do something positive, and I applied and got one of the three slots that the Air Force had at Harvard Business School. 15 October 1997 12-1 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Thomas P. Stafford VANTINE: So you were at Harvard when you got the call? STAFFORD: Yes. I hadn't been there very long. I stopped in my home in Oklahoma, saw my first wife's parents, and I drove down to Houston for a final interview, went back, and meanwhile I had all my things shipped to Boston. I'd gone up there already and rented a house near Harvard, a duplex, and got there. I told the dean of the business school that I was in a selection process, he understood that, and if I was selected, I would resign from the B School. I'd been there for three days and seven case histories when Deke [Donald K.] Slayton called me and said, "Are you still interested?" I said, "Absolutely." And I told him I'd be resigning tomorrow. So I had the notoriety of being the first dropout of the class of '64 at Harvard B School. VANTINE: [Laughter] No hesitation there. STAFFORD: In fact, when the packers came, I says, "Don't unpack yet." I was kind of optimistic I'd make it. I says, "Don't unpack all the furniture, just some of the basics, because you may be packing up." VANTINE: Had you applied for the first class, or were you in the first class running? STAFFORD: No. In the first group? No. The first group, you had to be a graduate of test pilot school, and I was just a student in the test pilot school. I wasn't a graduate. 15 October 1997 12-2 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Thomas P. Stafford VANTINE: Interesting. When you went on after on to Gemini VI—I was taking a look at that— Gemini VI has a couple of notorieties involved in it. One of them was how fast they turned around when they launched VI and VII. STAFFORD: Well, there's more to it on Gemini VI, yes. It was decided that the approach to landing on the Moon would be a lunar orbit rendezvous. That was the basis of how we'd go to the Moon instead of going to the Moon direct and back, because it would save you a lot of weight. So we were sizing the lunar module, sizing the command module, sizing the giant Saturn V booster, but nobody had ever done a rendezvous. So it came out to Wally and I to prove that. But in the training—and also we had a computer, we had a platform, we had a radar, and we said, "What's going to happen if we lose the radar? Can we still do the rendezvous? What happens if we lose the platform? What if we lose the computer?" Or, you know, different combinations. So from that we developed an on-board—really a rudimentary-type thing. It was made out of cardboard and plywood that had a couple of displays and some software in the basement of McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, and from that we worked out backup charts and worked out procedures to do it. In fact, many of the techniques we worked out are still used today on the concentric phase of rendezvous. So we got all squared away and ready to go and got in the spacecraft and the Atlas Agena, we could hear it thunder off down the pad, Pad 14, but it never got to Ascension Island. It turned out that the Atlas did all right, but when the Agena lit off, they had made some changes to have an oxidizer fuel lead-in change, and it did it wrong, and the thing lit off and blew up and blew all over the Atlantic Ocean. 15 October 1997 12-3 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Thomas P. Stafford So it was decided to put a transponder on Gemini VII and launch us in a fast turnaround. So we couldn't dock, but at least we could do a rendezvous, and we briefed—to get the maximum thing on the crew I explained to [James A.] Lovell [Jr.] and [Frank] Borman, as we were coming in the terminal phase, I'd call every five degrees that we were pitching up above the horizon, I wanted them, as they were going backwards, to pitch down so they would get maximum return on the radar. VANTINE: From an operations standpoint, what enabled them to ready the launch pad so quickly and turn that around so fast? How did they do that? STAFFORD: Well, they started this whole procedure, and they pulled Gemini VI off the pad, had it already on trailers and everything and to turn around and go. But they'd never done it before, but they'd worked out the procedures and the techniques. See, the Air Force was responsible for launching it; not NASA, the Air Force. It's a Titan booster on an Air Force pad. That and the Aerospace Corporation and Martin and also McDonnell. So they worked it out, and I think they had it worked out where maybe the Gemini was still attached to the second stage—I'm not sure—versus bringing it up separately and attaching it. But anyway, that same day that Gemini VII launched, that afternoon, the first stage was moved from the second stage and moved right down to the pad and started to be stacked. VANTINE: Were they prepared beforehand? Had they talked about the idea of having two spacecraft in orbit at the same time? Because you had VII and VI at the same time, and they were monitoring both. 15 October 1997 12-4 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Thomas P. Stafford STAFFORD: No. VANTINE: Was that a real-time "get ready to do it"? STAFFORD: Well, in other words, we'd never done that before, had two spacecraft go, and how do you look at the telemetry signals and all this, how does it feed into the control center? So that was a real chore, how they we that. VANTINE: That's tremendous, tremendous. Was it VI when you were supposed to launch and you didn't launch, it didn't go off, and you weren't sure what was going to happen there? STAFFORD: Well, anyway, we got through all the procedures and everything, and we got all set to go, and at T-minus-three seconds, the engine shut off, and exactly at T-zero they shut down. We still have the all-time record. The shuttle shut down a couple of times, but nothing like we did. And we had the liftoff signal. But we knew in the seat of our pants and all the training we had, we hadn't lifted off. Furthermore, the only one who can call liftoff is a fellow astronaut looking at the base of a booster, you know, on a TV screen, and when he sees first motion, he's the only one that can call liftoff. It was Al [Alan L.] Bean, and he didn't say a thing, and that's exactly what he should have done, is not say a thing. He didn't see anything. VANTINE: How come y'all didn't eject? 15 October 1997 12-5 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Thomas P. Stafford STAFFORD: Well, we knew Bean hadn't called liftoff, we could tell in the seat of our pants we hadn't lifted off at all, but also we had a dead man's curve of at least a second, because by the time you pull the D-rings and fire the pyro-trains [phonetic], reaction time—they had us calibrated and—I think my reaction time was point-three-eighths of a second from the time I'd see something and start doing it. But then the pyro-trains have to start firing and start working. So it turns out what we would have seen, had we had to do that, would have been two Roman candles going out, because we were 15 or 16 psi, pure oxygen, soaking in that for an hour and a half.
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