Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight)

by Kelly, Thomas J.

  The CARR Board was chaired by Bob Gilruth, director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. NASA members of the board included George Low, Apollo spacecraft program manager at Houston; Gen. Samuel C. Phillips, Apollo program director; Eberhard Rees, deputy director of the Marshall Spaceflight Center at Huntsville; Kurt Debus, director of Kennedy Space Center; and Chris Kraft, flight operations director at MSC. Grumman members included George Titterton; Joe Gavin, vice president of Space Programs; Ralph Tripp, LM program director; Bill Rathke, LM program manager; Edward Z. Gray, assistant to Grumman’s president; and me. The senior NASA people flew into the Grumman airport at Bethpage in the morning.

  We enjoyed a pleasant though crowded lunch, served on real china and flatware at the tables in the catering area. Shortly before one o’clock we took our places around the large U-shaped table on the stage. As we mounted the stage we were hit by a solid roar of sound rising from below. Above the drone of many conversations rose the clatter of china and clinking of table silver. Three times I tried to talk to Chris Kraft across the table but gave up, hoping that the din would subside when the microphones were activated.

  Gilruth called the meeting to order. Normally soft-spoken, he had to shout into the microphone before the hubbub subsided. Then the sound system broke into an ear-piercing feedback squeal. As the participants filed into the rows of seats the babble of conversation diminished, but on the stage the clanging of the tableware seemed louder and more distracting. Titterton motioned for a young engineer to quiet the caterers.

  We began the lengthy agenda. The list of “Unresolved” items to be presented to the board had been winnowed to about forty. A brief of each item was presented by the person who wrote the discrepancy report, then a senior member of the DR Review Board commented on the brief. The CARR Board discussed the item and Gilruth solicited opinions around the table. Although Gilruth rendered the final verdict, he sought to obtain consensus with Gavin.

  This logical but arduous process was hampered by the noise level and the hangar’s sound-swallowing acoustics. We could hardly hear one another across the table, even when we shouted into the microphone. Another loudspeaker was added on the front of the stage, not facing the audience like the others, but turned around to face the board table, but it did not solve the problem.

  Despite these difficulties the board soldiered onward. I was torn between suppressed glee at Titterton’s growing discomfort and concern that at some point the NASA board members might simply get up and leave. Gilruth, Low, and Phillips were patient, repeating questions two or three times. Finally, though, Gilruth had had enough. He shouted into the microphone sarcastically, “If it’s not asking too much, would you people in the audience please stay in your seats and be quiet, so the board can hear the speaker and each other?”

  Gilruth’s patience, good judgment, and common sense extended to the substance of the meeting also. As each unresolved DR was reviewed, he carefully considered the views of the concerned writer of the DR (the plaintiff) and of those who felt that the discrepancy could be explained away or was not really a problem (the defendants). He was quick to sense phony “cover your ass” DRs and disapprove them.

  “We’d have to open up a sealed reaction control system to verify that?” he asked after one presentation, peering quizzically over his glasses.

  The plaintiff nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “And it’s already installed and brazed into place?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I say the cure is worse than the disease—if there is a disease. Next item, please.”

  Whenever the problem in question seemed real, all of us on the board strove for a practical solution that would not unduly disrupt the spacecraft systems or the schedule. Some equipment could readily be removed and retested or replaced before shipment from Bethpage. Other equipment was planned for retest or replacement after delivery to KSC. In some cases we simply compromised on questionable items. We decided, for example, that one troublesome sensor, which had failed and been replaced three times, was not mandatory for flight. “This ascent engine oxidizer injector inlet pressure measurement is intended to provide data for comparison with ground tests if we encounter combustion instability in flight. It’s not required for operating the spacecraft,” I explained during the board’s discussion after a DR presentation.

  “I think it’s a highly desirable measurement, but I wouldn’t call it mandatory. It’s too bad you couldn’t make it work, but you’ve tried three times, and I think that’s enough,” was Gilruth’s judgment.2 In no case did the board consciously take a risk that could affect the success of the mission.

  The board had displayed remarkable patience and adaptability and was making steady progress down the agenda when an overwhelming, deep-throated roar engulfed the hangar. Titterton jumped up, angry and embarrassed. A flight line engine test crew had started testing a new Gulfstream II executive jet outside the hangar, the usual place for such tests.

  Using hand signals and shouting into the microphone, Gilruth declared a break in the meeting. Titterton first ordered the four ceiling-high hangar doors closed. That hardly affected the noise level, but the temperature soared. As Low and Gilruth started toward him, probably to ask that the meeting be adjourned, Titterton hurried outside to order the Gulfstream captain to halt his tests. I watched the NASA officials desultorily thumbing through some of the briefing handout material and looking at their watches every minute or two. Surely in another few minutes they would leave, the CARR Board would have to find a new date in their busy calendars, and we would lose a week or more of precious LM schedule.

  Suddenly the din ceased. Silence was like a release from pain. Titterton strode briskly in from the runway apron, sweating, his face a rosy pink, his glasses fogging. The hangar doors were reopened, and air circulated. A cathedral silence settled over the crowded hall as we held our breath. Gilruth leaned into the microphone and, from newly formed habit, shouted in his reedy voice, “I guess that’s over.” Then, realizing he was shouting into silence, he dropped into a normal tone to finish: “George assures me it won’t happen again.”

  Four hundred pairs of eyes turned to Titterton, who excelled in having the last word. This time he could only muster a wan smile and nod assent.

  The CARR Board resumed its deliberations. Our working conditions steadily improved as the DRs for each LM-1 system were dispositioned and the panel members and others concerned with those items left. The crowd thinned, the background noise lessened, and the temperature dropped. After several hours of watching the board, the panel members gained a sense of the probable outcomes of the DRs. Plaintiffs and defendants began to negotiate “out of court” settlements. Our pace accelerated, and the impossible agenda was completed shortly after 8:00 P.M.

  Then came the grand moment: Gilruth declared that the CARR Board had found LM-1 ready for formal acceptance and delivery to KSC, subject to the satisfactory completion of the assigned action items. (Before and after delivery Grumman was still responsible for LM-1.) My notebook entry for that day, after several pages covering the agreements for resolving DRs, concludes triumphantly in large block letters: OKAY TO SHIP.3

  Grumman and NASA people worked all night and into the next day completing action items required before shipment and updating inspection records and delivery papers. The last form to be signed was the DD-250, the document by which the government accepts the product from the contractor and takes ownership. There were smiles all around when John Johanson, NASA manager at Bethpage, signed on behalf of the space agency.

  In the afternoon the LM-1’s ascent and descent stages were carefully secured within their specially designed shipping containers and loaded inside the oversized belly of a modified Stratocruiser NASA used to transport spacecraft for the Apollo Project. With pride and a great sense of relief, I watched the huge aircraft make a lumbering takeoff, using most of the mile-long Beth-page runway. The first LM was on its way to fly in space!

  We had com
e a long way since first learning of NASA’s early studies in 1960 of the possibility of landing men on the Moon. Ahead lay the unmanned LM-1 flight and the manned flights in Earth orbit and lunar orbit preceding the first manned lunar landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in Apollo 11. Even as we delivered LM-1, my colleagues and I were preparing several other LMs in the Assembly and Test area, including LM-5, which would become Armstrong’s trusty lander Eagle. I certainly had not foreseen the massive effort involved and the relentless striving for perfection, which was our way of assuring that we had done our very best to make Grumman’s part of the mission a success. It had been an exhilarating and totally absorbing effort. The outcome was still uncertain, but those first LM stages winging south were a major milestone, promising more achievements to come.

  1

  Winning

  2

  We Could Go to the Moon

  Grumman’s Plant 5 in Bethpage was a red-brick building so long that it seemed less than its three stories, and the narrow stripe of windows on the third floor only accentuated its horizontal appearance. It was separated from the parking lot by a neat strip of putting-green grass. The U.S. Navy built Plant 5 for Grumman during World War II. At that time it housed the experimental airplane shops and the engineers busy devising more powerful and deadly versions of the Wildcat and Hellcat fighters and the Avenger torpedo bomber, the navy’s great workhorses in the Pacific air war against Japan. Since then it had been modified and expanded many times until it was a labyrinth of corridors, alcoves, hidden shops, and laboratories. Visitors and new hires often became lost in it, but to the initiated like me, its weblike convolutions added to the sense of belonging to a secret society. I found it a pleasant place to work.

  Seven Years Earlier

  I worked in an inner sanctum, the Preliminary Design mezzanine, also called the “Hanging Gardens,” a strange architectural afterthought of cinder-block suspended above the workbenches and drill presses of the experimental shops. Within this fluorescent-lighted, windowless compound, time stood still and total concentration was possible.

  I had joined Grumman’s Propulsion Section in 1951 after graduating from Cornell in mechanical engineering. For five years I analyzed and designed inlet and exhaust systems for the supersonic ramjet-powered Rigel missile and for Grumman’s jet aircraft, including the advanced F11F-1F supersonic fighter. In 1956 I was called into active duty with the U.S. Air Force, at the Aircraft Laboratory at Wright Air Development Center, where I worked on the jet propulsion systems for the air force’s many new aircraft under development, including the F104 Starfire, the F106, and the B-58 Hustler supersonic bomber.

  During my air force tour of duty, the Russians launched Sputnik, ushering in the space age. I became fascinated with the idea of engineering vehicles for space, and as the end of my air force time drew near I interviewed aerospace companies for opportunities in space engineering. In 1958 I joined Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California, to work on space propulsion systems and rockets. My former colleagues lured me back to Grumman a year later with the promise that they were about to mount a major effort to get into space technology.

  To investigate opportunities in space, Grumman formed the Space Steering Group in the Preliminary Design Department under Al Munier. A thin man of medium height with a ready smile but quick temper, Munier delighted in challenging his young engineering charges to think big and do the impossible. The group was expanded to about half a dozen engineers and made part of the Advanced Space Systems Department of PD when Grumman found that numerous space-system development opportunities were unfolding within NASA. Grumman management was cautious about venturing into the relative unknown of space systems, but there was much promising business and our competitors’ credentials did not seem any better than ours. Gradually the Grumman drive for space-system development became more aggressive.

  For two hectic months I had been the Propulsion Section’s PD representative on the proposal to NASA for the orbiting astronomical observatory (OAO), a large telescope in Earth orbit, the forerunner of the later, even larger Hubble Space Telescope. The OAO operated successfully for more than eight years, yielding much new astronomical data. The Propulsion Section’s contribution covered the reaction control system, which controlled the satellite’s attitude and position in space using small rocket thrusters, and the thermal control system, which maintained stable internal temperatures by means of insulation and surface finishes. The OAO’s mission required pointing and stabilizing the spacecraft to 0.1 seconds of arc, equivalent to sighting telescopic cross-hairs on the Washington Monument from the Empire State Building. Grumman had demonstrated such accuracy in the laboratory. If successful in space, it would be a major technical achievement. To support its proposal, Grumman committed to a major investment in space facilities, including a high-bay, clean-room spacecraft assembly area and a large space-simulating thermal-vacuum chamber.

  After the proposal was submitted I returned to engineering activities in Propulsion, thinking I might be offered a job on OAO if we won, even though I had not been named to any of the key positions in the proposal. One day Al Munier brought me into his office and told me the company did not want me tied up with OAO. They felt I would be more valuable exploring other space opportunities.

  I was disappointed because I had become fascinated with the technical challenges posed by the OAO, but I was also flattered that Munier considered me a key person in Grumman’s space future and was trying to use me effectively. A few days later Munier again summoned me into his office.

  “Well, Tommy,” he teased, “I think we’ve found just the job for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “How would you like to design a spaceship to take men to the Moon?”

  “Are you kidding? Look, Al, I didn’t come back to Grumman from Lockheed to chase pipedreams. You guys said you were serious about getting into space.”

  Murder’s face darkened. I had overstepped the unspoken bounds with my flippant response.

  “Well, Mister Kelly,” he snapped, “that just shows how little you know about the space business. NASA is planning a major project to send men to the Moon. It’s called Apollo, and they’re going to spend billions of dollars on it. I don’t see why Grumman couldn’t be a part of it, if I can get certain pigheaded engineers to work with me.”

  Munier said he would introduce me to Tom Sanial, who had been studying NASA’s plans for Apollo. He wanted me to work with Sanial to figure out what Grumman’s part should be in the Moon program. I left Grumman that night in a state of anticipation. Was it hope or intuition? The old tune “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” was ringing in my head.

  Tom Sanial was destined for big things at Grumman. Although only twenty-seven, he had been tapped for the elite Preliminary Design Group as structural design engineer for the Mercury proposal. He became the assistant project engineer, due to his ability to visualize the entire design and integrate it into engineering drawings and three-dimensional illustrations as well as the brilliant design work he had done for Joe Gavin as a structural designer on the F9F Panther and Cougar.

  Grumman’s Mercury proposal to NASA won the eleven-company competition, a nose ahead of the runner-up, McDonnell Aircraft. The elegantly simple design—the blunt-faced, one-man reentry capsule protected from aerodynamic heating by a base heat shield of thermoplastic resin material and side shingles of beryllium—was confirmation of the ingenuity of Grumman engineering. None of the competitors had ever tried to design a manned space capsule before, and the youthful Grumman team won this contest of imagination and practical design.

  Before final selection of its contractor, however, NASA consulted with the U.S. Navy, the primary customer of the two top-ranked competitors. The navy said that Grumman was heavily loaded with work on recently awarded contracts for the A6 Intruder attack bomber and the E2 Hawkeye early warning aircraft. Influenced by this advice, NASA awarded the Project Mercury contract to McDonnell.1

  After the loss,
Sanial expected to join one of the new aircraft projects and was exploring the possibilities with his friends in A6 engineering. He was surprised when Al Munier urged him to remain in Preliminary Design as a member of the newly formed Space Sciences Group.

  “Space is where the future is, Tom,” Munier told him. “We’re going to keep trying until Grumman is really in the space business. It’s a great opportunity for a young fellow like you.”

  Munier was persuasive, and Sanial was fascinated with the idea of designing spacecraft. Everything about it was new: the environment, the missions, the systems requirements. A young engineer with imagination and talent had as good a chance of success as a seasoned aircraft designer.

  After four months chasing an elusive will-o’-the-wisp called Apollo through the halls of NASA, Sanial was not sure he had made the right choice. Project Apollo was gaining momentum, he was sure of that, but except for Al Munier, who seemed, he thought, to go overboard on any new and different idea, no one else in the company appeared to pay much attention. He had begun to lose his own sense of urgency, working normal hours and sometimes taking a day off to take his wife and two young daughters to the beach or for a sail. Maybe he should relax and enjoy life more, instead of always striving to achieve bigger and better things. But then Al Munier brought him an unexpected new partner.