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

flight of dark blue painted metal stairs leading up from the polished wood blocks of the shop floor or by a flight of metal stairs and a catwalk down from an unlabeled door on the second floor Engineering Department office. Both stairways led to a blue metal door in a whitewashed cinder-block wall to which a doorbell and buzzer provided access. Inside, the low-ceilinged compound bathed in fluorescent light and humming with air conditioning seemed like a time tunnel, remote from worldly existence.
    Our office area was cinder-block painted a faded light yellow and crammed with as many wooden desks and chairs as would fit. A single small office at the front of the room, framed by a large window partition, belonged to Al Murder, one of the few permanent members of Preliminary Design. Al was an experienced aircraft designer who had helped fashion Grumman’s Wildcats and Hellcats during World War II and a firm proponent of advancing the company into the space age.
    The group secretary’s voice crackled over the intercom, summoning me to a meeting in Joe Gavin’s office. I put aside the study report I was reviewing and bounded up the stairs to the second floor. It was a welcome change to be on the Engineering floor. The interior vistas were broader and the ceilings higher and neatly finished with white acoustic tiles and frosted glass panes concealing fluorescent light bulbs. Joe Gavin’s office was spacious by Grumman standards. The walls were tastefully covered in rich dark paneling, and it was furnished with dark mahogany furniture with brass hardware and trim.
    Joe and Al Munier were already seated at the conference table, and I joined them there, followed by my deputy Erick Stern. “The LM RFP has been released,” said Joe in his crisp voice with a hint of New England twang. “Saul Ferdman just picked it up in Houston and we’ll have it here in the morning. The proposal is limited to one hundred pages and it’s due in sixty days. Al and I thought we should get together and make sure you have everything you’ll need.”
    Joe Gavin, in his early forties, was a rising star at Grumman. Joining the company in 1946, with an aeronautical engineering degree from MIT and wartime service in the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, he soon established a reputation as a talented aircraft designer with leadership capability. As project engineer on the swept-wing F9F-6 Cougar, he directed the design of an improved stabilizer control actuator driven by a high-speed, irreversible, ballbearing screw jack. This novel design allowed the Cougar to safely fly through the Mach 1.0 speed-of-sound barrier in a dive. The Cougar and its straight-wing predecessor, the F9F-5 Panther, both served in the Korean War. Joe became project engineer on the F11F Tiger, the first Grumman-produced fighter that was supersonic in level flight. The Tiger reached limited production and contained many technological innovations.
    Joe Gavin grew up in eastern Massachusetts near Boston. His father was a tinkerer and tool collector, and young Joe developed a keen curiosity about how things work. A visit as an eight year old to a local dirt airstrip where he saw the transatlantic hero Charles Lindbergh impressed him early with the romance of aviation, and his studies at MIT informed him of its technical elegance. By nature reserved and understated, he thought problems through and stuck with his conclusions. Tall, muscular, and with craggy good looks, he was an accomplished oarsman at MIT and an expert skier from his youth. He was a natural leader who, in the face of crises and confusion, remained calm and steadfast of purpose, inspiring others to rally around him.
    Gavin was chief Missiles and Space engineer, in charge of the LM project, and my boss. Al Munier provided the proposal team with support and guidance from the resident Preliminary Design Group. We went over a list of additional engineers we would need and added office space and equipment. High on our equipment