Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (51 page)

6.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 245–46.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Ibid., 171–72, 211.

9.
Apollo 18 was canceled and never flown. The program ended with Apollo 17.

10.
Kelly, LM Meeting Notebook, bk. 8, 5 October 1968, 55; 8 October 1968, 57; 12 October-8 November 1968, 59–69; 21 March 1969, 93–94.

Chapter 10. Schedule and Cost Pressures

1.
Years later, NASA Administrator James Webb revealed that he had arrived at this amount by tripling the $8 billion estimate given to him by the Apollo program management and other NASA experts. He was sure no one knew how to price a program of manned lunar exploration. (James Webb, after-dinner speech, Washington, D.C., c. 1972).

2.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 167, 177, 189.

3.
Thruelsen,
Grumman Story
, 323–24.

4.
Jack Buxton told me that he and Gavin were summoned to a meeting after Evans heard the review team’s summary briefing. They were told to bring the latest LM program organization chart. Evans spread the chart on the desk before him, and starting with the top box, “J. Gavin-VP, LM Program Director,” he checked off those to be retained and crossed out those to be eliminated, adding new position boxes and changing reporting lines as he went.

5.
The critical path was that path through the program evaluation and review technique schedule network that showed the greatest schedule slippage. It was often called “the long pole in the tent.”

6.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 201.

Chapter 11. Tragedy Strikes Apollo

1.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 114–18.

2.
Astronauts Elliot See, Charles Bassett, and Theodore Freeman were killed in T-38 crashes, the former two as they approached the McDonnell Douglas plant at the St. Louis Airport in bad weather, on their way to attend a Gemini Project meeting.

3.
The mission had been designated Apollo-Saturn (AS)-204, but a revised designation system was in the works to number the Apollo missions sequentially, with AS-204 becoming Apollo 1. After the fire, this nomenclature was adopted by NASA. Due to program changes, there were no Apollo 2 and 3 missions; the next mission flown was Apollo 4.

4.
Absolute pressure is referenced to zero, whereas differential pressure is referenced to the local atmospheric pressure, which is 14.7 psia at standard sea-level conditions. Thus a tank rated at 2000 psi differential pressure could contain oxygen at 2000 psia in space (zero atmospheric pressure), or 2014.7 psia at sea level.

5.
At the crew’s suggestion, Shea had planned to witness the “plugs out” simulated launch test inside the command module, curled up at the foot of the astronauts’ couches. He dropped this idea when the test team was unable, on short notice, to rig up a temporary fourth communication channel and headset for his use.

6.
Murray and Cox,
Apollo
, 209–12, 215–20.

7.
Brig. Gen. Carroll H. “Rip” Bolender of the U.S. Air Force became ASPO’s lunar module manager early in 1968. Kenneth S. “Ken” Kleinknecht, formerly NASA’s Mercury Project manager, was his ASPO counterpart as command and service module manager.

8.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 224.

Chapter 12. Building What I Designed

1.
Kelly, LM Meeting Notebook, bk. 6, 17 February 1967, 82.

2.
Apollo 18 was ultimately canceled, leaving Apollo 17 the last lunar landing mission in December 1972.

3.
Kelly, LM Meeting Notebook, bk. 7, 19 February 1968, 6/67–3/68, 132.

Chapter 13. First LM in Space: Apollo 5

1.
This was the standard mission command hand-off rule for all the Apollo flights.

2.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 241–44.

Chapter 14. The Dress Rehearsals: Apollos 9 and 10

1.
It was, as Pete Conrad told me, the difference between commitment and involvement. With regard to a bacon-and-egg breakfast, the pig is committed, whereas the chicken is involved.

2.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 290–91.

3.
Ibid., 256–60.

4.
The Moon was found to be nonhomogeneous, with several internal mass concentrations (“mascons”) that resulted in a very complicated gravitational field close to the surface.

5.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 244–46, 286–87.

6.
CapCom and the astronauts had a secure, guarded channel to which they switched whenever they needed privacy, which always included cases of crew sickness or other problems.

7.
Edgar M. Cortright, ed.,
Apollo Expeditions to the Moon
, NASA SP-350 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975), 190.

8.
In one of the more outlandish examples of space jargon, the backpack was called the portable life-support system, or PLSS, pronounced “pliss.”

9.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 299

10.
Ibid., 299–300.

11.
Ibid., 303–12.

Chapter 15. One Giant Leap for Mankind: Apollo 11

1.
Pellegrino and Stoff,
Chariots for Apollo
, 168–69.

2.
The “a” was not audible in the transmission to Earth, although Armstrong claimed he spoke it. Andrew Chaikin,
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
(New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 209.

3.
This description of the “feel” of ascent was given to me by astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin, in conversation following their Apollo 15 mission, Houston, Texas, c. September 1971.

4.
Brooks et al.,
Chariots for Apollo
, 353.

5.
Ibid., 340.

6.
Collins,
Carrying the Fire
, 412.

Chapter 16. Great Balls of Fire! Apollo 12

1.
The command module had switched to battery power, which was a small source intended only for reentry.

2.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 235–39.

3.
After Apollo 11’s successful mission, astronaut Jim McDivitt became Apollo spacecraft program director, succeeding George Low, who moved up to assistant director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

4.
Murray and Cox,
Apollo
, 372–82.

5.
Doppler shift is the apparent shift in frequency of light, sound, or radio waves emanating from a moving object as viewed by a stationary observer. Thus the whistle of a moving train sounds progressively higher pitched as it approaches and lower pitched as it recedes.

6.
This confirmed the design requirement that we and NASA had included from the outset that the lunar module must be capable of landing from one hundred feet under instrument flight rules in anticipation of a lunar-dust visibility problem.

7.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 250–60.

8.
Ibid. 279–80.

Chapter 17. Rescue in Space: Apollo 13

1.
This was a significant result of the Apollo Mission Planning Task Force (AMPTF) study led by Grumman for NASA in early 1964.

2.
Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger,
Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 250–57. Reissued in paperback as
Apollo 13
by Pocket Books division of Simon & Schuster, 1995.

3.
Lovell and Kluger,
Lost Moon
, 282–85.

Chapter 18. The Undaunted Warrior Triumphs: Apollo 14

1.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 337–41.

2.
Slayton’s medical problem was intermittent heart fibrillation.

3.
Under Slayton’s unofficial system, a backup crew became the prime crew two missions later.

4.
In this endeavor, the astronauts were following a rich tradition of previous great explorers. I am struck by the similarities of the astronauts’ lunar geology studies with the private tutoring as a field naturalist, biologist, botanist, and navigator that Meriwether Lewis obtained in 1803 before embarking upon his expedition to the northwest Louisiana Territory. (See chapter 7 of Stephen Ambrose’s
Undaunted Courage
[New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996].)

5.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 347–52.

6.
Ibid., 352–54.

7.
Solder balls inside the case were a not infrequent problem with hermetically sealed switches and instruments. A small tube in the case was used to evacuate the air and refill with inert nitrogen; this tube was then pinched off and sealed with solder. If the pressure inside the case during sealing was negative, solder could be sucked inside. It would usually be detected at the factory by vibrating or shaking the switch.

8.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 357–60.

9.
Ibid., 374–75.

10.
Thomas J. Kelly, annotations on personal copy of Apollo 14 Flight Plan, February 1971. In possession of author.

Chapter 19. Great Explorations: Apollos 15, 16, and 17

1.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 412–15.

2.
The Moon as we see it consists primarily of the dark maria, known from earlier missions to be created by vast lava flows about 3.85 million years ago, and the bright highlands, origins unknown. Both areas are pocked with impact craters of widely varying sizes, and littered with impact ejecta (rocks and boulders). See also Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 452–56.

3.
The gimbal control system controlled electric motor-driven actuators which pointed the large SPS rocket engine. For stable flight when thrusting, the engine was pointed at the spacecraft’s center of gravity.

4.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 456–62.

5.
Ibid., 463–75.

6.
Skurla gave the guilty parties a few days off until Petrone’s wrath subsided.

7.
Scientists dated the glass beads as 3.5 billion years old, not far removed in geologic time from the extensive lava flows 3.85 billion years ago that created the vast lunar maria.

8.
Scientists studied these boulders for years, and from them derived a reconstruction of the violent events that occurred when the huge Serenetatis asteroid slammed into the Moon 3.8 billion years ago, thrusting up the Taurus Mountains and the Massifs and showering debris thousands of miles across the surface.

9.
The message on the plaque was “Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972
AD
. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.”

10.
Chaikin,
Man on the Moon
, 516–30, 535–45.

Chapter 20. Our Future Slips Away

1.
This capability was known as “cross-range” because it permitted moving the reentry trajectory in the direction perpendicular to (across) the downrange direction of the spacecraft’s original orbit.

2.
The phase B design studies would be followed by phase C, in which NASA would select and define a design approach for the spacecraft competition, followed by the industry competition (phase D).

3.
Thruelsen,
Grumman Story
, 362–71.

4.
In NASA’s source selection process, the SEB does not recommend a winner but evaluates the relative strengths and weaknesses of the proposals and rank orders them using a weighted scoring system for the technical and management proposals. It also evaluates the relative validity and realism of the cost proposals. The SSA considers the SEB’s report as a major input to his deliberations but makes the selection based upon the overall best interests of the government.

5.
Thruelsen,
Grumman Story
, 372.