Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas J. Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

most of the electronics and for some of the systems engineering. Their team was headed by Frank Gardiner, a darkly handsome, smooth-talking senior electronics engineer. About thirty RCA engineers moved into the PD mezzanine with us.
    Gardiner was able to tap experts from different RCA divisions to bring the talent we needed to the team, including communications engineers from Camden, radar specialists from Burlington and Moorestown, and guidance and control experts from Burlington. They bolstered our effort with in-depth technical expertise and marketing savvy.
    In January 1962 we competed for a NASA-funded study of LOR and the LM. Although we thought our proposal was a good one, Convair won the award: fifty thousand dollars for a four-month study. We proceeded with our company-funded study anyway, and in June we submitted our study report to NASA. Shortly thereafter we were invited to brief our findings to Joseph F. Shea at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
    Shea had recently been recruited to NASA by Brainerd Holmes, NASA’s associate administrator for Manned Space Flight, and had been assigned to settle the “mission mode” issue. An experienced systems engineer from the Titan ballistic missile guidance program, Shea projected intelligence, engineering talent, self-confidence, and leadership. He was the right man to make a momentous decision.
    In my first meeting with him in Washington, Shea continually interrupted my briefing with difficult but logical questions and meaningful comments: What makes you so sure the rendezvous can be accomplished? It’s a long way from home, and there won’t be much help from the ground. Have you calculated the allowable guidance errors for each rocket firing during rendezvous? How good are your LM weight estimates? If LM is overweight, it gets multiplied all the way down the launch stack.
    Our study results on the relative advantages of LOR were by then quite mature, and I was on solid ground with our data, able to parry Shea’s thrusts. Our LM design studies had also progressed to the point where they seemed credible, and each major design feature was supported by technically satisfyingarguments. John Houboult joined enthusiastically in the interrogation; it was like defending a doctoral dissertation.
    After two hours of grilling, Shea smiled and said that we had done a useful study on our own initiative and promised to consider our input in reaching his decision. He complimented me on my presentation and in-depth knowledge. I left the room elated that I had survived a baptism by fire.
    Two weeks later NASA announced that they had selected LOR as the Apollo mission mode and would proceed with an industry competition for the design, development, and construction of the lunar module. The LM request for proposal was issued in late July, with responses due in early September. We were ready. After more than three years of preparation, Grumman was in the right place at the right time. And I was hungry for a win.

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    The LM Proposal
    From the praise and comments of our Grumman supervisors, we knew that we were an elite within the company, chosen from among the brightest in a demanding profession in which brainpower ruled, counted upon to create the systems that would become the mainstays of the company’s business. We had been assigned to Preliminary Design, the nest from which new airplanes were hatched to fly “higher, faster, and farther.” Now this quest had reached its ultimate conclusion: escape from Earth itself and flight to our nearest celestial neighbor. At thirty-two years of age, I was leading Grumman’s technical proposal to NASA to design and build a spacecraft to carry men to the Moon and back.
    To the uninformed observer, however, we looked like outcasts confined to a hidden backwater where we could do no harm to the company’s ongoing business. We worked in a segregated area suspended from the ceiling over a portion of the Experimental Shop, reached by a nondescript