The TM-1 mockup review ended optimistically. Many crew compartment design details had been resolved and others placed on a path to resolution, often using TM-1 as the evaluation test article. Over the next two months, White and Conrad worked on TM-1 and the Peter Pan rig, and with Grumman’s Crew Systems, Structural Design, and Mechanical Design engineers came up with a much better concept for egress to the lunar surface. They enlarged and added handrails to the front porch platform and fitted a ladder to the forward landing-gear strut. The astronaut descended to the surface by crawling backward out of the forward hatch, then across the platform and down the ladder while facing it. Returning from the surface he faced the ladder again, climbed up it onto the platform, and crawled forward through the hatch. He could carry a full rock sample container with one hand (at one-sixth G), place it on the front porch ahead of him, and push it in through the hatch. The whole surface egress procedure was made easier, safer, and more intuitive. This design was approved at the interim TM-1 review in May 1964, as were improved cabin lighting provisions and electroluminescent panels, the latter being enthusiastically endorsed by Pete Conrad. The Houston studies of overhead docking also were positive, and the requirement for docking with the forward LM hatch was deleted. Further work by LM Engineering and Manufacturing resulted in the selection of a hybrid manufacturing approach to the front face structure, a combination of welding and riveted construction. With these key decisions we were ready to firm up the LM design configuration and basic operational details with the last planned LM mockup.
M-5
Rathke and I decided to make M-5 an accurate engineering and manufacturing aid that we could use for fit checks, configuration and operations studies, and development of manufacturing techniques. Most of it was metal, with parts made from accurately dimensioned engineering drawings, not just sketches. M-5 was a shakedown for the LM project’s drawing release and configuration control systems and provided the newly formed LM Manufacturing Department’s first challenge. From our subcontractors and suppliers we obtained accurate mockups of equipment and components, including the rocket engines, reaction control thrusters, environmental control assemblies, tanks, antennas, and flight displays and controls. In some places we were able to install prototype flight hardware, as with the crew station controls, supports, and restraints. We installed flight-type electrical wiring harnesses, connectors, and fluid system plumbing and components. These installations closely simulated the form and fit of flight hardware but were nonfunctional. The external surfaces of the ascent and descent stages were covered with thin, shiny aluminum sheets, simulating the micrometeorite shields that would cover the flight LMs. In its gleaming metallic shell, M-5 looked like an exotic space creature. Did we create this strange apparition or was it built on the Moon by little green men? This LM seemed like it would be at home on the Moon.
More than four hundred Grumman engineering drawings were required to define M-5, plus many more from our subcontractors. In mid-1964 LM Engineering had its first struggle to meet a schedule of drawing releases to Manufacturing; a foretaste of what would soon become our major preoccupation. Bob Carbee personally led the engineering work on M-5, pushing and coordinating the drawing outputs from the LM design groups. The last two weeks before the review Engineering and Manufacturing worked around the clock in two shifts, seven days a week to finish M-5 on time.
There was an embarrassing glitch about a week before the review. When M-5 was moved into position on the mockup room floor, it was evident that we would not be able to demonstrate the deployment of the forward landing-gear strut from stowed to extended position because of lack of ground clearance. During deployment the landing gear extended below the floor if M-5 was supported on the floor by its own landing-gear legs. Raising M-5 up on pedestals under its feet would provide the necessary clearance for the deployment demonstration but would leave M-5 two and a half feet above the mockup room floor, which was not acceptable for conducting lunar egress exercises. We shamefacedly accepted the solution of breaking up the concrete floor and digging a trench through which the front landing gear could sweep during deployment. Engineering took a lot of flak for not foreseeing that problem earlier.
The review commenced on 6 October 1964, with more than one hundred NASA astronauts and engineers in attendance, and continued through 8 October, when the reviewers were augmented by MSC director Bob Gilruth and MSFC director Wernher von Braun and virtually all the Apollo program leadership from Houston. NASA was pleased with the quality of M-5 and its extensive detail, and they closely examined and evaluated each area. Von Braun was very enthusiastic. He climbed up the ladder and through the front hatch into the cabin and inspected the interior. Upon exiting, he called excitedly to a Marshall colleague from M-5’s front porch, “You’ve got to go up there. Go in there; it’s great!”1
Astronaut Roger Chaffee donned a spacesuit and mockup backpack and practiced entering and exiting M-5 from the surface. He had difficulty squeezing through the front hatch due to repeated hangups with the bulky backpack. He insisted that I watch the maneuver, together with Carbee, Rigsby, and Harms, and afterward declared that the circular shape of the front hatch was wrong. What was needed was a rectangular hatch, somewhat higher than wide, to match the squarish form factor of the backpack. We were convinced by his demonstration and approved the chit he wrote when it came before the review board. Because the front hatch no longer was required to perform docking, the circular shape was not necessary.
The M-5 mockup review board convened with Owen Maynard as chairman and Carbee and I representing Grumman. We sat at a large conference table on the mockup room floor in front of M-5, facing the audience. Microphones on the table and speakers amplified our voices, and we and the chit presenters used a lectern and slides projected onto a large portable screen to address each item under discussion. More than 250 people were present, filling every row of chairs and spilling over into standing room along the walls. Gilruth, von Braun, several astronauts, and other high-ranking NASA officials attended and followed the proceedings with interest, despite the difficulty seeing and hearing the presentations in the crowded hall. A total of 148 changes were proposed, and the board approved 120 of them. Most of the changes were minor and none forced major redesign; even the change in forward hatch shape was readily accommodated.2 Max Faget was very impressed with our mockup, declaring it was what an engineering mockup should be like. He said North American’s mockup was mainly a marketing prop while Grumman’s was an engineering design tool.
The final lunar module design. (Courtesy Northrop/Grumman Corporation) (Illustration credit 6.1)
The M-5 review provided Grumman management a great opportunity to exchange ideas with our NASA counterparts and to gain insight into their concerns and opinions. Gavin, Mullaney, Rathke, and I all benefited from discussions with Max Faget, Chris Kraft, and astronauts Chaffee, White, and Conrad. Faget was a gifted, intuitive aerospace designer. He made numerous informal suggestions for further improvement or simplifications of designs that were represented on M-5. He was very pleased with the ladder and front porch for lunar egress but, along with Chaffee, recommended we make the hatch bigger and rectangular.
Kraft brought the mission and flight operations perspective to the review. He questioned what the crew would have to do to perform different functions in LM and how the Mission Operations people on the ground could support these events. He challenged us to reexamine various design and operational features for further simplification, making us aware that the crew’s time and energy was the most precious commodity on the mission, more than any other expendable, such as propellant, water, power, or oxygen. Our design must conserve this precious resource. The astronauts were very helpful in evaluating and improving anything they would operate or use. Their detailed suggestions for improving the cockpit, instrument panel, flight controls, equipment stowage, docking techniques and aids, and ingress-egress provisions, among other things, contributed greatly to LM’s success. Nothing was too minor
to escape their scrutiny; their suggestions were practical, simple, and readily implemented.
The M-5 review ended with NASA approval of the LM design configuration. The preliminary design phase of the LM project was over. It was now up to Grumman to bring this full-scale model to life as a functioning, dependable lunar landing spacecraft. My colleagues and I were very proud that we had passed muster by NASA’s experts at this comprehensive review. We were also relieved that the required design changes were modest in scope, although we faulted ourselves for not catching the obvious ones sooner.
I packed up my notebook and papers when the M-5 Mockup Board adjourned, and as the crowd dispersed I went up into M-5’s cabin for one more look. Then I descended the ladder and walked slowly around the spacecraft, my eyes catching the thousands of details that had to be converted from dummy mockups to reality. The mockup room was almost empty and someone began turning out most of the overhead lights. In the half-darkness I took one more look at the spectral shape of M-5, standing there as LM would one day stand on the Moon, strange, gaunt, otherworldly. We had so much work to do to make it all happen. I hastened to get on with it.
7
Pushing Out the Drawings
With the preliminary design completed the focus in LM Engineering shifted to getting out the drawings, specifications, and other technical-definition documents that would enable Manufacturing to build the LM. The weekly LM program meeting became increasingly devoted to evaluating progress against the drawing-release schedules and recovering from the many slippages that occurred. Program Manager Bob Mullaney bore down hard on Engineering at these meetings and plainly registered his displeasure whenever Engineering failed to meet drawing schedule release promises. This happened repeatedly, to the point where Engineering was losing its credibility with program management. Rathke and I had to correct this chronic problem.
At our weekly project Engineering meeting Bob Carbee and his design group leaders worked over the schedules and reviewed the problems that required solution. In this early stage of detailed design the estimated number of drawings required was very rough, mainly based on aircraft estimating factors considering weight and complexity. The estimated number of drawings required kept increasing, often by hundreds per week, as more details of the design became available. The list of deliverable end items that Grumman would design and build under the contract kept changing as some test articles and rigs were added and others deleted, depending upon changing evaluations of what tests were required to qualify each subsystem. The biggest unknown was the ground-support equipment, for which the requirements could not be defined until the flight hardware that it supported was designed and the basic mission operations and ground test procedures were established. To me the GSE looked like a bottomless pit in which we were becoming hopelessly mired. We needed to do something drastic to clarify this poorly defined area.
The total engineering drawing workload climbed relentlessly. During 1965 and 1966 our estimated total grew from a few thousand to more than fifty thousand drawings, of which more than ten thousand were for GSE. There were also about one thousand specifications and procurement packages required and several hundred test and checkout plans and procedures. The whole program faced a moving target of workload, to the near despair of program management and Manufacturing, who were at the mercy of Engineering to define the deliverable end products before they could prepare reliable manufacturing plans, schedules, and cost estimates.
When the cumulative number of drawings to be released was plotted as a graph against time in weeks or months for 1965 and 1966, it looked like we had a mountain of work to climb. On the plot were layers showing the numbers of drawings required for each category of end item, including the flight LMs, LM test articles and mockups, test rigs, special test equipment, and GSE. The drawing-release schedule graph was displayed on large sliding wallboards in the Plant 25 conference room, where Joe Gavin and Bob Mullaney held the weekly program management meeting. Plotted against the current release schedule were the actual releases, lagging below the scheduled lines, and the latest revisions to the schedule including new promised dates to recover from past slippages and to accommodate further growth in the estimated number of drawings. Revising the drawing-release schedule and tracking our actual performance against it occupied much of the time of Subsystem Project Engineer Bob Carbee and his design section heads.
Late one afternoon a slim, blond, freckle-faced fellow stopped into my office and introduced himself. He was Bill Craft, an assistant project engineer with the E2C program and a former structural designer. Although he had a good job, he was intrigued by the space program and wondered if there was any chance of joining LM and working for me. We talked well into the evening, and our personalities seemed to click. I was impressed with his knowledge and experience with engineering drawing production and working with Manufacturing to resolve problems on the shop floor. I also liked his helpful, frank attitude. “Look,” he said, cocking his head to one side and squinting through eyes that were mere slits, “I know what you’re thinking—here’s another hotshot who’s after my job. Well let me assure you that’s not the case. There’s no way I could even think about doing your job. But I’ve had experience in getting drawings out and helping the shops build from them, and I think that’s where you could use help right now.”
After checking with Rathke, Mullaney, and Gavin, all of whom had worked with Craft and thought highly of him, I offered him a job as assistant project engineer. Craft’s initial concentration would be on accelerating drawing releases and working with Manufacturing in drawing scheduling and interpretation. He tackled a difficult job with enthusiasm, persistence, and diplomacy and made a major contribution to our ability to schedule and deliver the drawings on time.
Ground-Support Equipment
GSE began holding weekly meetings with GSE Engineering and Manufacturing because of the variety and complexity of their end items and their differences from flight hardware. GSE was a relatively new specialty area in aerospace projects, growing rapidly in importance. Within Grumman, GSE was designed by the Materials and Processes Group of Manufacturing Engineering, which was originally formed to provide tooling and special process equipment and procedures to the Manufacturing Department. It was built either in Manufacturing’s tool shop or by the Equipment and Processes (E&P) shop, which handled mechanical and fluid devices. These were small, relatively underfunded groups offset from the mainstream Manufacturing and Manufacturing Engineering activities devoted to flight airplanes.
For the LM project GSE Engineering was assigned to me and Rathke and formed a triad reporting to us, along with Systems Engineering and Subsystems Engineering. Coming from Manufacturing Engineering instead of Aircraft (or Vehicle) Engineering, their heritage and loyalties were very different. The same was true of E&P Manufacturing, which had been integrated into LM Manufacturing. I had almost no prior contact with either of these GSE groups, so I had much to learn and a new cast of characters with whom to establish working relationships.
Several hundred GSE items had been identified, and the list was continually growing. They came in great variety, the most complex being the deliverable GSE end items. These were identified by a five-digit number series and name: for example, “61033 oxidizer servicing cart.” After use in LM final assembly and test at Bethpage, these end items were delivered to NASA with the LMs they supported and were installed and operated at Kennedy Space Center or White Sands. (Grumman operated an altitude rocket test facility at NASA’s White Sands, New Mexico, complex, where the LM ascent and descent propulsion systems and the reaction control systems were test fired.) Factory support and test equipment was not deliverable but normally stayed within Grumman for use in assembly and test operations. Items in both categories carried four-digit identification numbers: for example, “3022 ascent-stage workstand.” There were many miscellaneous items, such as adapters, cable sets, installation kits, and so on, that were often designed or revised at the last minute based upon ne
ed. The GSE Publications Group prepared installation and operations manuals for this equipment.
Joe Shea, recognizing that North American Aviation and Grumman were not coping adequately with the challenge of GSE, assigned one of his strongest managers, Rolf W. Lanzkron, to be GSE “czar” for the Apollo spacecraft. Hard driving, dedicated, and knowledgeable, Lanzkron attacked Apollo’s GSE problems like a man possessed. With his slicked-back hair, black horn-rimmed glasses, and dark suit, Lanzkron looked more like a lawyer than an aerospace manager. With dynamic leadership, he quickly commanded the respect of the LM GSE people. He was a tough taskmaster, but he was as hard on himself as anyone else. His searching, pointed questions and comments seldom gave personal offense but shone a relentless spotlight on our failings and shortcomings.
Lanzkron transmitted a sense of urgency to all of us. His message was simple: the LM GSE mess must be quickly cleaned up and properly managed or the whole Apollo program would be held up by Grumman’s ineptness, with dire consequences for all involved. He held weekly GSE meetings in Bethpage, having just come on the “red-eye” flight from Los Angeles after a similar meeting at NAA the day before. His meeting started promptly at 7:00 A.M.; the normal Grumman starting time of 8:00 was too late for him. With all Grumman’s GSE leadership assembled in the straight-backed chairs in the Plant 25 main conference room, Lanzkron sat at the conference table facing them and methodically went through the status, problems, and corrective actions of every end item in the GSE program. A large set of sliding wall boards were prepared and statused, listing the end items and showing their schedule position.
Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight) Page 14