Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (2 page)

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A Difficult Delivery

Bone weary, I shuffled across the Grumman parking lot after midnight under a full Moon, its light throwing my shadow ahead on the asphalt. I looked up, hesitated, stopped, and stared. The Moon looked close enough to touch, but it seemed impossibly far away. Almost a quarter of a million miles.

Galileo named the shadows on the Moon Maria because he thought they were oceans. The Egyptians plotted its phases. The Druid builders of Stonehenge calculated its rise and fall. Down through the ages, people have stared at the Moon’s mysterious surface and wondered what was there. And now I—an obscure young engineer working for a small Long Island airplane company—I was going to provide the answers? It seemed absurd to me.

But the next morning I was back in the shop supervising a team preparing the lunar module spacecraft for its first test in space, a vital step in putting men on the Moon. Whenever I thought we had passed a crisis and the pressure of readying the craft would ease, we would find yet another broken wire in the spacecraft and have to stuff yet another two hours of splicing and retesting into our twenty-four-hour work schedule.

We were scrambling to complete the required tests, equipment installations, and inspections on LM-1, which was specially equipped to be flown unmanned in Earth orbit to verify the operation of the craft’s major systems in space. It would be launched alone atop a Saturn 1B booster rocket, a smaller, two-stage precursor to the mighty three-stage Saturn 5, which would launch the combined Apollo spacecraft (command module [CM], service module [SM], and lunar module [LM; pronounced “lem”]) to the Moon.

The lunar module was my baby; I had led the technical studies and proposals that over a period of two and a half years resulted in Grumman’s winning a NASA competition to design, develop, and build it. (After the first Moon landing, I was called “the Father of the LM.”) It began in early 1960,
when I was assigned to the Space Group in Grumman’s Preliminary Design (PD) Department and told to find out about NASA’s plans to put men on the Moon. We put company-funded effort into both studying the missions NASA was investigating and designing conceptual spacecraft to accomplish them. When President Kennedy announced in May 1961 that America would indeed put men on the Moon, Grumman had in place a knowledgeable technical study group that could prepare a competitive proposal.

Nevertheless, our company fathers decided that Project Apollo was too big for our small aircraft company. They directed that we work as subcontractor to a larger prime contractor, General Electric (GE). We gained a place on GE’s Apollo proposal team as the command module crew compartment subcontractor. Joe Gavin headed Grumman’s effort as vice president and program director, and I led the technical work as project engineer. As it turned out, the Apollo spacecraft competition was won by North American Aviation, but Grumman gained a great deal of knowledge and insight into the program as a result of the GE proposal effort.

We bounced back by helping NASA resolve how to perform the lunar landing and exploration mission, developing the rationale behind favoring the lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) approach. My group worked out many variations on both the mission and the design of the lunar module, the unique spacecraft that LOR required. When NASA decided upon LOR for Apollo, Grumman was well prepared. I led the technical proposal effort in the fall of 1962 that won the job for us over seven competitors.

After contract award, as project engineer and then engineering manager, I was the chief engineer for LM at Grumman. I directed the LM engineering team, which grew from an initial few dozen people to about three thousand at its peak, as LM progressed from preliminary to detailed design and, finally, to manufacturing assembly and testing. In February 1967, as the critical activities shifted from engineering to assembly and testing, I was put in charge of LM Spacecraft Assembly and Test (S/CAT).

As S/CAT transformed the LM from lines on paper into functional hardware, I strengthened the dedicated but undermanned crew by adding engineers and providing additional training and supervision. The work was slow and frustrating because we were developing many new things at once: the LM spacecraft itself, the critical manufacturing processes needed to build it, the ground-support equipment and acceptance-checkout equipment that tested it, and the detailed written procedures that controlled and documented every action we performed on it.

We were under pressure to solve problems quickly and to complete the preparations for LM-1’s delivery to the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The Apollo Project’s goal, set by President Kennedy, was to land men on the Moon before the end of the decade, less than three years away. Although we still could not keep to promised schedules, we had completed
most of the tests and installations required for LM-1’s delivery. The LM-1 Customer Acceptance Readiness Review (CARR) was scheduled for 21 June 1967 at Grumman’s main facility in Bethpage, Long Island, New York.

The CARR was a formal review lasting one week, attended by more than two hundred NASA engineers and their Grumman counterparts. Its purpose was to establish LM-1’s compliance with all NASA and Grumman requirements by reviewing the documentation accumulated on the spacecraft as it was built and tested in S/CAT and at our suppliers. The LM-1 itself would be physically inspected by the review team.

The review team was organized into panels according to technical disciplines and systems. As the panels waded through the assembled documentation, they generated discrepancy reports, called DRs or “chits,” for any apparent deviation from requirements, which were reviewed each night by the panel co-chairmen (NASA and Grumman) and “dispositioned” by categories.
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Only chits in the “Unresolved” category were presented to the CARR Board for decision on the final day of the review.

The CARR was semiorganized chaos. Finding adequate work space and meeting rooms for more than four hundred members of forty panels was a challenge, as was the effort required to gather, reproduce, and index the thousands of documents that had to be scrutinized. A review center was established in three large conference rooms on the first floor of Plant 25, the primary LM engineering building. Many of the reviewers physically inspected items on LM-1, which remained in the Assembly and Test clean room for final outfitting. I made sure that S/CAT completed all remaining LM-1 items required before delivery.

Grumman’s senior vice president, George Titterton, handled the meeting arrangements. A five-foot-two blustery man who was determined to prove he could take on any challenge, he decided to pattern the CARR on the annual Grumman stockholders’ meeting. The day before the meeting, airplanes were moved out of the Plant 4 flight operations hangar onto the adjacent apron and a wooden dais was assembled at one end of the cavernous space. The hangar had a vaulted elliptical roof, and its end walls nested ceiling-high sliding doors that could be fully opened to allow the crowd to assemble and disperse easily. Several hundred folding wooden chairs were set up in rows facing the dais, and a portable sound system and several large trumpet-shaped loudspeakers on collapsible metal stands were provided to penetrate the acoustically dead environment. Behind the last row of folding chairs there was a food catering area, complete with serving counters and dining tables and chairs. A large projection screen was positioned catty-cornered on the stage, where it could be viewed by both the CARR Board and the audience, and lecterns and microphones were provided for the board chairman and the briefer.

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.
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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.