Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (3 page)

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 come 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.

I followed Munier into Sanial’s small cubicle deep inside the Preliminary Design mezzanine. We were greeted by a tall, trim fellow with a long, freckled face. His hair was more gray than black, a contrast to his boyish, youthful face. He was neatly dressed in a blue blazer jacket and tie, even hidden away in this obscure den.

“Tom Sanial, meet Tom Kelly,” Munier said breezily. “He’s here to work with you on Apollo.”

Munier left us alone together in awkward silence as we sized each other up. Were we to be partners or rivals? Sanial’s innately generous nature took over. Soon he was showing me his files and describing what he had learned of the Apollo Project. He was persuasive and persistent as he related the steady growth of the program shown by NASA’s statements, budgets, and planning documents. He had become convinced that NASA was seriously planning a manned exploration of the Moon.

I moved into the desk next to his in the cinder-block cubicle, which had six desks in all, and pored over the documents he had collected, along with his technical notes and trip reports. In the spring of 1960 we visited NASA Headquarters and the Langley and Lewis Research Centers, where I met DeMarquis “Dee” Wyatt at Headquarters and George Low at Lewis. They spoke in guarded terms, making clear that the manned lunar mission was in an early phase of internal review and was not part of NASA’s firm plans. Their intense interest, however, indicated that the program was a serious possibility. I concluded
there was at least an even chance that Apollo might happen, and that Grumman had better get prepared.

Suddenly our company was a full-fledged player in space: Grumman won the OAO competition. Eight aerospace companies had fought for this major NASA program, with its possibility of discovering new worlds in astronomy, and Grumman, known mainly for its World War II Wildcats and Avengers, had been a long shot. At the OAO victory party, some of my colleagues asked if I would be joining them on the project.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Gavin and Murder want me to work on Apollo.”

“What’s that?” they chorused.

“It’s a program of manned exploration of the Moon.”

“Send men to the Moon? Are you crazy?” one engineer scoffed.

“NASA seems serious about it. They’re planning to spend billions of dollars to make it happen.”

“Come on, Tom, that’s Buck Rogers stuff. Towl and Titterton aren’t going to stick Grumman’s neck out for something like that. Face it—it’s amazing that we were even allowed to bid on OAO. We wouldn’t know where to begin a trip to the Moon.” When he walked away shaking his head and laughing, I wondered if my career was headed for oblivion.