Apollo Guidance Computer History Project

Second conference

September 14, 2001

Interaction with Astronauts

ALEX KOSMALA: I think there was an element to this program that is missing in a lot of current programs. The 60, 70 hour week that we just spoke about, I'm sure that people do that today too. But, you felt an immediacy with the overall program, probably heightened by one's familiarity with the astronauts. I'm talking about people at MIT. But it's probably true in other parts of the Apollo program. That you felt a certain personal responsibility to-- Either you made promises or you had conversations with these people or you were doing it because you wanted to make sure that there were absolutely zero errors in this program because you knew that their lives were at stake. There was some sort of connection to the astronauts that we felt, and I think other people at MIT felt perhaps because they came there for training. I know there were occasions we went to dinner with Doc Draper at Lockober's with some of the astronauts after a flight. I think that connection kept morale up and kept people's attention and feeling of dedication to the job.

You weren't working for necessarily some big bureaucracy. In my case, it was a feeling that one had some sort of connection with Chris Kraft that you were satisfying his leadership, you might say, plus this feeling for the astronauts, I would say, that certainly affected me in the job.

DAN LICKLY: Absolutely. They were here. Which Apollo flight had Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott and Rusty Schweikart? Was that Apollo 7 or 8? But they seemed to be around frequently before that. And you just seemed to see them doing this stuff and get to know what they were doing all the time. You felt very close. In fact, we used to laugh at them picking on Dave Scott. He wasn't quite as fast as picking up the stuff when you showed them that. But they were there frequently.

But even before that, I can remember the first time we went to Houston and gave a presentation to a lot of them. That was earlier, still, in the engineering mode. These guys came out. They didn't just sit there and nod off. They were excited. I remember Neil Armstrong being overwhelming, the questions he asked and how well prepared and how thoughtful. And I said, geez, these guys. There's no fooling them. They know what they're looking for and we'd better be really careful of what's going on here and make sure we're prepared. When they ask questions like that, you can't wing it. 

Hugh Blair-Smith adds:

Dan Lickly’s reference to McDivitt, Scott, and Schweikart being interested in the software reminds me of a funny time trying to respond to this interest. A meeting of perhaps one hour, maybe two, was set up in which I would show them how to read the program and understand everything in it. When I lugged the 2000-page program listing into the meeting room, I could feel a sudden shift of expectations taking place. What I was able to do in the available time was to show them how to find their way around the program, using the sort of chapter headings called "log cards," and following all the references to a particular symbolic name from the alphabetized table in the back to the front. They were most appreciative, but I don’t think they ever made much use of that lesson.

SLAVA GEROVITCH: Were they actually interested in software as such?

DAN LICKLY: They wanted to know how this worked and what was going to happen and what it meant to them.

ALEX KOSMALA: They worked through the controls. But a lot of the controls were driven by the software. So what they said or didn't say had an immediate impact on us who were making those displays and controls in front of them perform through the software itself. I remember Steve Copps was one of the guys -- I forgot what that thing that he first put together was called, the astronaut document that gave the whole DSKY sequences --

DAN LICKLY: Right. They worked for John Dahlen.

MARGARET HAMILTON: The Guidance System Operations Plan?

ALEX KOSMALA: That was it, the GSOP, the Guidance System Operations Plan.

DAN LICKLY: Steve and Malcolm and Jack Shillingford all cranked out all that stuff that went on and on and on.

ALEX KOSMALA: This is the first time I had ever seen a specification for anything. Today, you are supposed to design the spec first and the software falls out the bottom. Those GSOPs, I remember John Dahlen was the guy, remember him? The man with the eight kids, I think, who lived on the South Shore somewhere and came into work everyday from there.

DAN LICKLY: That was a thankless task turning out all that stuff. And you had to get it all.

ALEX KOSMALA: Because he was the astronaut for NASA.

DAN LICKLY: They had to run down and catch us every time they had a questions. They said, can I talk to you a minute?

FRED MARTIN: I still have something like 280,000 Eastern Airlines miles that are now part of the Continental system that never expire. These were on these multiple trips to Houston. But, one of them I want to just bring up in a conversation here. I don't know how many trips we all made to Houston. I can just see myself having this heated discussion for an hour and a half between Boston and Atlanta with Margaret on some programming issue or something that we were doing. But we attended innumerable meetings down at NASA. We had a very live wire at NASA who we went to see all the time. There was this guy Jack Garman who really was-- If there was anybody at NASA who sort of understood what we were trying to do, it was this guy, Jack Garman. 

DAN LICKLY: I always felt like Dr. Frankenstein and that I created a monster. He got assigned to me. And for six months, an hour a day I'd give telling him the stuff. He was persistent. Phone calls, phone calls.

FRED MARTIN: I remember this particular day that I had finished a meeting at NASA and was coming home. We were standing, I guess walking between the parking lot and the terminal. It was sort of like a driveway that headed up toward the terminal in Houston. I can't remember whether this was Hobby or International. I can't remember. But anyway, everybody said, "Wait a minute. There's the President." So we watched. And this open car came from a terminal past us. There weren't very many people standing around, maybe one deep, a long road that might have been a half a mile long. He rode by in an open car with his wife at maybe, I thought, it was around 15 miles an hour. But nothing faster than that. Maybe 20.

I remember standing there. I don't know who was with me. I said something like, if anybody wanted to kill this guy, this would pretty easy. Because he is just rolling by in an open car. That was November 21, 1963. And I think it was a Thursday, I think, and I was coming home. I was in my office the next day. And he was no longer in Houston. He had gone that night and then he went to Dallas the next day.

DAN LICKLY: I was there that same Thursday. I think it was a different meeting. He went right down-- They hadn't built the MSC yet. We were in Houston. The Office Park, whatever it was called. And he went right down the main highway there. Although we didn't go out and see him. But I stayed over until Friday and then Friday I was heading to go home. And at the airport, we got all this news.

ALEX KOSMALA: Do you think it was a Friday?

DAN LICKLY: Yeah. But Thursday, he was in Houston and went up and down whatever the name of that, Gulf Freeway or whatever it is. There was a parade or something. And then Friday-- I stayed over Thursday night. Some more meetings Friday morning. And was heading home Friday afternoon. And then at the Hobby Airport we heard the first news that all of this had happened.

Alarm on the lunar landing

site last updated 12-08-2002 by Alexander Brown