OT: UM grad and former astronaut James McDivitt dies

and also honored with the naming of the McDivitt-White plaza at the corner of South U/East U.  RIP

A legend in space, but a disaster on the golf course

Two quick, related, points - if I may.

First - before North Campus existed, what today is known as "East Hall" in Ann Arbor - used to be known as East Engineering.  And, coincidentally, West Hall was West Engineering.   East U wasn't a pedestrian walkway - it was a street with vehicles driving on it.

Second, a quote from one of the astronauts when a reporter asked "What goes through your mind and you're in a spacecraft, the countdown is underway, and you're getting ready to lift-off?"   His answer, "I'm sitting on top of the most complex piece of machinery ever built by man.  Each part, built by the lowest bidder."

All those involved with the space program and NASA, exhibited immense courage and determination.

McDivitt was part of the first all UM space crew:  Gemini 4.

He had retired to Tuscan and was part of a group of pilots that had breakfast every Friday morning.   Eventually they wrote a book of their stories titled Friday Pilots.  If you are interested in aviation you should look for a copy.   I am fortunate enough to own a copy autographed by James McDivitt.

McDivitt was a member of the greatest astronaut class, the 2nd one sometimes called the New Nine.  With his passing only 3 are left:  James Lovell, Tom Stafford, Frank Borman.  

I think that T shirt actually has astronauts David Scott, Alfred Worden, and James Irwin, also all Michigan grads who piloted Apollo 15.
 

McDivitt flew earlier missions.

Several years ago, McDivitt came and gave a keynote at the company where I work.  He told a really interesting story about the door latch breaking when they brought Ed White in after the first EVA.  If they couldn't get the door latched, they would've died in space or on reentry, but fortunately he'd seen the problem in training and had taken the time to study it a bit and had some idea of how to fix it.  This idea that you rarely have to fix things when it's convenient is one of those nuggets that has wormed it's way into my brain, and I hope made me a better engineer.

Many thanks to James McDivitt for showing us the way.

McDivitt: It was very heavy on the ground, so then we had some additional things that helped us get it open. Got it open, did some—oh, whatever. I don’t know. Went through some routine. Then we brought the hatch back down. And we went to lock it, and it wouldn’t lock. And we were towards the end of the test. We’d been in it, like, probably 10 or 12 hours by then; 14 hours. I don’t know what; it was a long, long time. And we were at—near the end of the whole test; and we just said, “Oh, we’ll just go through and do the rest of it in our suits,” pressurized in our suits. So, we did. And so, 30 or 40 minutes, the test was over; and we went in and they re-pressurized the chamber. We went on in and took a shower and did our debriefing; and then I went out to see the technician who was working on the hatch because it was a little concerning that you—when you moved the handle nothing happened to the latches.

Ward: Well, if you can’t get the hatch closed, you have a hard time reentering.

McDivitt: You’re dead. You’re dead.

Ward: Yeah.

McDivitt: Yeah. You’ll either burn up—well, you’ll burn up on the way down for sure. And the spacecraft would sink as soon as it hit, too, because the hatch would be open. So anyway, I went down there and fiddled around with him while we were trying to figure out what was wrong it. And there was a handle and a bunch of little gears about yea big [gestures] around and teeth on them. And then they had to engage some of the little gears. And there were some other little gears. And so, it was a fairly complex mechanism. And it had to be set up so that you could disengage the handle so you wouldn’t inadvertently do something with it in flight. And those gears weren’t really going together properly. So, he did something to them and, you know, it worked. But fortunately, I saw what they look like.

And then when we got around to doing the EVA, when we—when Ed went to open up the hatch, it wouldn’t open. I said, “Oh my God,” you know, “it’s not opening!” And so, we chatted about that for a minute or two. And I said, “Well, I think I can get it closed if it won’t close.” But I wasn’t too sure about it. I thought I could. But remember, then I would be pressurized. I wouldn’t be in my sports clothes, leaning over the top of the thing with a screwdriver. I’d be there pressurized. In the dark. So anyway, we elected to go ahead and open it up.

And we didn’t bother telling the ground about that. I mean, there was nothing they could do. They would’ve said, “No,” I’m sure. Anyway, we went ahead and opened it up; and Ed went out and did his thing. And that was one of the reasons I was kind of anxious to have him get back inside the spacecraft, because I’d like to do this in the daylight, not in the dark. But by the time he got back in, it was dark. So, when we went to close the hatch, it wouldn’t close. It wouldn’t lock. And so, in the dark I was trying to fiddle around over on the side where I couldn’t see anything, trying to get my glove down in this little slot to push the gears together. And finally, we got that done and got it latched.

And the next part of the plan was to get Ed to re-pressurize the spacecraft and get all this junk off Ed, open up the hatch, and throw all this out. And there was no way I was going to do that! So, we carried all that stuff through the rest of the flight.

Ward: Well, even messing around with a pressurized glove in a gear frame would’ve given flight controllers a heart attack, I think, if they had known about it.

McDivitt: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, this was one of those things where we didn’t have a Mission Rule for this. And you just had to make it up as you went along. And it wasn’t anything that if I talked to the guys on the ground they wouldn’t have had a clue what I was talking about. I knew more about that hatch than probably anybody in the world, other than the technicians who’d built it.

https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McDivittJA/McDivittJA_6-29-99.htm

Now I have to go back and rewatch the "Spider" episode from From the Earth to the Moon in his memory.  That's no hardship; it was the best episode (barring the first) anyway.

Sad to hear of his passing. He gave the commencement speech at my graduation. BSEME 1993 at Crisler Arena.

Thank you Mr. McDivitt. I always pay tribute when I walk past your plaque at what will always be known as West Engineering.

must have had a premonition or something...wore this exact tshirt yesterday....RIP