Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight)

by Kelly, Thomas J.

  With these innovations and refinements, the shuttle design converged into an attractive package. The revised orbiter was much smaller and safer than it previously had been, with no low-density, explosive cryogenic propellants stored inside the fuselage. The evolved alternate concept appeared practical to design, build, and operate. It was predicted to meet the cost targets and all the technical requirements except for full reusability. It nominally met the air force’s requirements for payload capability, cross-range maneuverability, and launch and landing sites, giving no cause for the air force to retract support of the program. As each new piece of the design puzzle fell into place, I felt the irrepressible excitement that accompanies the discovery of a winner.

  On 5 January 1972 the White House announced that NASA would develop a space shuttle based upon the alternate “stage and one half” design. I was euphoric, along with most of Grumman. Our hard-fought strategy had worked, and our competitors had to scramble to master the technical intricacies of the alternate concept. Their prior lavishly detailed studies and designs were largely scrapped. It seemed like a replay of the LM competition, except that this time Grumman had an unsurpassed track record of Apollo LM performance, a large, space-experienced engineering and manufacturing work force, and state-of-the-art space facilities.

  The space shuttle request for proposals was released in May 1972, starting a nonstop frenzy of strategizing, writing, and editing. It was a large proposal, restricted to four thousand pages for the technical and management volumes, but with unlimited pages for financial and cost estimating data, and was due in sixty days. The daily proposal team meetings, at which Mead, Raymes, and I presided, grew in attendance and intensity, as enthusiasm mounted and many specific short-range tasks had to be accomplished. Shortly before the RFP was released we moved the shuttle program from the third floor of Plant 25 in Bethpage to a large proposal center in a new leased office building in the Huntington Quadrangle in Melville. There we had spacious quarters on a brightly lit floor with large peripheral windows, recessed fluorescent lighting, tile flooring, office cubicles and furniture, and many conference rooms, all fresh, clean, and attractive.

  Without warning, our charismatic president Lew Evans died. He had a massive heart attack at home; it killed him instantly. Although Evans had suffered a heart attack a few months earlier and had been hospitalized briefly, he seemed to have fully recovered, so no one was expecting what happened. Grumman was plunged into unrelieved shock and gloom. Evans was widely liked and respected at the company, and Grummanites at all levels felt a profound sense of loss. Thousands paid their respects at his wake and funeral, with the Grumman security guards helping the Nassau County Police direct traffic. I felt absolutely terrible; I had lost a good friend, and a man whose uplifting, buoyant spirit had made work enjoyable. But for the need to complete our shuttle proposal, I could have lapsed into unproductive depression.

  Beyond my personal feeling of loss, I realized that Evans’s death was a severe blow to our shuttle proposal. Of all Grumman’s executives, Lew had established the closest personal rapport with the leaders of NASA, especially Low, Mueller, Gilruth, and Phillips. They trusted him and believed they could count on Grumman to do the right things while he was in charge. Joe Gavin, who took over for Evans, commanded NASA’s trust and respect also, but he was not as involved in political strategizing to promote the space shuttle program.

  NASA was doubtless concerned about the loss of Evans, and not just its effect upon Grumman’s ability to live up to its shuttle proposal but on its survival as an independent company. This was a result of serious problems on the F14 Tomcat supersonic fighter aircraft program. The F14 was one of the last “total package procurement” (TPP) programs, an ill-conceived Department of Defense management initiative that required contractors to sign up for the total package of a major weapons system development and production program, including production lots many years in the future, under a firm, fixed-price contract. Minor allowances were made for cost inflation, based upon the low (2 percent or less) inflation rates of the 1960s. However, the ink was barely dry on Grumman’s F14 contract with the navy when inflation began to surge, from 6 percent in 1969 (fueled by the intensifying war in Vietnam) to more than 22 percent in 1973 with Vietnam plus the Arab oil crisis. With mounting inflation, the DOD soon abandoned TPP for future procurements, but Grumman was stuck with a large fixed-price contract that had the potential to drive it into bankruptcy.

  The F14 contract was a featured topic at hearings of a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 1972 (shortly before release of the shuttle RFP by NASA) that produced a prolonged daily barrage of negative publicity for Grumman. The company was vilified as a greedy, bloated contractor seeking a government bailout to obtain excessive profits. Senator William Proxmire frequently charged Grumman with mismanagement, poor quality, and low performance. Although directed primarily at the F14 program, these allegations produced a broad negative image of Grumman. It was certainly not the environment we needed on the eve of a major government procurement decision. Because 1972 was a presidential election year, the DOD and the navy hung tough, and there was no financial relief in sight for Grumman as NASA approached the space shuttle contractor selection.3

  Despite these grievous blows of fate, we managed to produce what I considered an outstandingly good proposal. The quality of the writing, graphics, and illustrations was uniformly high. Our primary themes were echoed throughout in many specific variations, backed up with evidence drawn from all technical and management disciplines: Grumman was innovative and reliable and delivered high-quality products, as shown on Apollo, and as we played a primary role in helping NASA define the space shuttle system and missions, we were best prepared to design and build it. We emphasized our systems engineering and program management capabilities, proven on LM and on our major navy aircraft programs, and we proposed a carefully structured management plan for shuttle. Our technical approach was conservative, building upon our successful LM experience. We proposed a thorough plan for engineering analyses and tests, which was technically satisfying and logical but costly. As I flipped through the pages of the finished volumes the day before shipment, I felt that we had given this proposal our best effort and could be proud of the result. I was also exhausted and slipped away for a couple of days, relaxing at home before going back to face the next immediate challenge, our oral briefing to NASA’s Source Evaluation Board.

  Our shuttle orals were thoroughly rehearsed and well choreographed to retain the listener’s interest and engage his intellect as well as deliver our sales themes and messages. Gavin and I gave most of the briefing, using high-quality visuals (thirty-five-millimeter slides) prepared in our proposal center. By the time we left for Houston I had most of my pitch memorized.

  I felt confident and comfortable, and my briefing went very well, as did Gavin’s. It seemed to me that I had the audience enraptured; their attention never wavered, and you could see their knowing smiles and glances as for point after point I offered solid engineering data supporting my claims. I wound up in a breathless crescendo of earnest entreaty as the clock struck the hour, prompting applause from the normally deadpan board. After we were ushered out, Dave Lang and I danced a jig of joy and relief on the front steps of Building 1, while singing “Hello, Dolly.” The warm reception made me and many others think we had a winner, and that our orals briefing had hit a home run.

  In our best and final offer (BAFO) to NASA we reduced our estimated cost from $4 billion to $3.2 billion by cutting back on our development test program. After BAFO the atmosphere in Washington was not encouraging. The F14 stalemate continued, with the navy adamant and Proxmire continuing well-publicized attacks on Grumman. I was nervous but hopeful, convinced that we had won the technical contest and would narrowly prevail in the management and financial areas. Basically I believed that our Apollo record was too outstanding to go unrewarded. I recalled a late-night discussion with two of the German engineers from Dorni
er Systems during the proposal. Finishing our work for the night, we began to philosophize a bit. One of the Germans asked me, “What will Grumman get on shuttle if you lose this competition?”

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “Surely, with all this talent and expertise, your government would not allow it to go to waste if you lose. What then would you get? What is your loser’s portion?”

  “Nothing,” I said again. “This competition is totally winner takes all.”

  They both stared at me unbelieving. Then one shook his head slowly and said, “Then America is indeed a very rich country. But can even a rich country afford such waste?”

  Shortly before President Nixon’s reelection, the space shuttle contract was awarded to North American Aviation for $2.6 billion cost plus incentive fee. I was stunned and dejected, and for a while fell into pointless recriminations and what-ifs: we should have been more aggressive in simplifying our proposed program and cutting its cost; maybe our management structure was too complex; we should have been more persistent in trying to strike a deal with North American Aviation, and so forth.

  I never learned how NASA’s decision was made. The official debriefing said that North American won because it offered a superior design and lower cost. Persistent rumors said the Source Evaluation Board had rated Grumman highest, but the source selection authority (SSA), NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher, had selected North American Aviation. The official SEB record showed that NAA was rated highest, Grumman a fairly close second, and McDonnell Douglas third. All the competitors were close enough in their SEB scores that the SSA had a free hand to choose the winner.4 The SSA would have had much explaining to do with Congress and the American public if he had selected Grumman, given its F14-tarnished image. NASA management was doubtless concerned that with Evans gone and the company facing huge financial losses, Grumman would not survive, making its ability to live up to its shuttle proposal questionable. President Nixon was thought to favor North American Aviation because it would create jobs in California, and because Col. Willard Rockwell, the chief executive officer of North American Rockwell, was a longtime, outspoken political supporter and contributor ever since Nixon’s early, controversial days in the House of Representatives.

  Some in the NASA hierarchy may have remembered the dark side of their relationship with Grumman on Apollo, in which Grumman appeared arrogant, holier-than-thou, a loose cannon. These executives felt that Grumman had succeeded on Apollo only due to NASA’s constant close direction, without which we would have gone off on unpredictable tangents. For shuttle, NASA needed a contractor that would play ball, keeping the program alive in a hostile Congress, and it did not trust Grumman management, without Lew Evans, to do that.

  North American Aviation’s comeback recovery from the Apollo fire had built personal rapport with NASA management as both the agency and contractor worked closely together to save the program. In that sense a tragic failure sowed the seeds of North American’s later success. I had long observed at meetings that NASA’s Apollo management seemed more comfortable at North American than at Bethpage, showing closer sharing of viewpoints and preferences and never having to worry about being surprised by its contractor. I believed they considered us to be standoffish and erratic by comparison. For example, the chaotic LM-1 CARR would never have occurred at North American, which was far more aware of NASA’s preferences in meeting accommodations. NAA’s Apollo conference facilities in Downey remained far more comfortable and accommodating to NASA than Grumman’s until well after LM-1’s delivery. It was possible that our hubris and customer neglect were major factors in losing the space shuttle competition. NASA’s decision left me disillusioned with the agency and with the government’s procurement process. Past quality and performance seemed to count for little, even on a high-stakes, world-renowned program like Apollo. “What have you done for me lately?” was the only thing that counted.

  North American Aviation held competitions for major space shuttle subcontracts, and Grumman won the subcontract to design and build the wing. This substantial job kept us closely involved with the shuttle program and maintained our engineering know-how on the latest spacecraft design and manufacturing techniques.

  I had matured and broadened in outlook in the ten years from our winning LM proposal to our losing bid for shuttle. On LM I believed that if we had the best, most ingenious, and logical technical design and proposal we would win—simple as that. On shuttle I saw a far more complex array of factors, involving personalities, images, finances, management capability, and politics—technical performance was just one issue among many. My loss of innocence emphasized events beyond my control or influence as affecting winning or losing. It is a good thing I was not so worldly when it counted, on the LM proposal.

  In April 1973, after useful discussions between Grumman president Jack Bierwirth and Secretary of the Navy John Warner, the F14 problem was resolved in a way that allowed Grumman to survive.5 I became Grumman’s director of Space Programs and took on the challenge of keeping Grumman in the space business. This was destined to be a long, difficult, and largely unrewarding struggle, although we succeeded in obtaining a low level of involvement with NASA and air force space programs. At first I fought to overcome feelings of cynicism and disappointment, but that soon faded and I adopted a more realistic attitude of building upon our existing talents and assets and forgetting the past except where it could contribute directly to our current ventures. The glory days of Apollo receded into Grumman’s history, but I was involved in her present and future.

  Epilogue

  The Legacy of Apollo

  What did we get from putting men on the Moon? Skeptics may say that all we got was a few hundred pounds of moon rocks and closeup looks at a lifeless discard pile, the target of eons of bombardment by random meteors. Plus a hard-fought victory for prestige in the cold war with the Soviet Union and an unforgettable picture of a lustrous blue-and-white Earth rising over the Moon’s parched grayness. Yes, we got all of these, but I say we got much more—nothing less than a revolution in our world view. Apollo raised our vision and aspirations outward and upward, toward the far reaches of the universe and of human achievements.

  The Apollo crucible also taught us things about ourselves, as a nation and a people. We saw the power of teamwork and focused goals applied to achievable peacetime ends. We developed advanced techniques to manage and coordinate huge efforts and to unleash the power of workers’ productivity and ingenuity, which produced long-term improvement in America’s global competitiveness. Bold enough to risk failure in full public view, the Apollo program reflected the confident, expansive mood of our free, prospering post-World War II society before the tragedy of Vietnam.

  The legacy of Apollo has played a major role in raising America to leadership in a global economy. I saw this on a personal level and watched it diffuse through the general practice of management. Apollo showed the value of (1) quality in all endeavors; (2) meticulous attention to details; (3) rigorous, well-documented systems and procedures; and (4) the astonishing power of teamwork. I applied these precepts directly to Grumman’s aircraft programs when I was vice president of Engineering. They have since become the main thrust of modern management practices, developing into widely used techniques, such as total quality management, computer-aided design and manufacturing, employee empowerment, and design and product teams, to name but a few.

  The Apollo program set NASA on a course of sustained space exploration and exploitation during the last three decades of the twentieth century. The intensity and focus of Apollo helped establish the level and pace of NASA’s space exploration activities. Its cumulative effect has changed how we see ourselves and our place in the universe.

  Space technology has made possible instant worldwide communications and has spawned huge new industries using space-based or -derived technologies. Global communications and TV reception routinely take place via satellite, linking all peoples with an intimacy unimaginable to past gen
erations. Cellular telephones have revolutionized the way the world does business and enabled undeveloped nations to leap-frog the installation of expensive ground-based infrastructure. A satellite-based Global Positioning System provides accurate knowledge of geographical position anywhere on Earth, greatly enhancing the safety of all modes of travel and the accessibility of every spot on the globe. These advances in space technology have resulted in the concept of the “global village,” an enhanced recognition of mankind’s interdependence and need for peace and brotherhood.

  Observations from orbit have greatly expanded our knowledge of Earth and its environment. Our understanding of weather, climate, the oceans, the atmosphere, geology, nature, and endangered species has been multiplied and quantified by manned and unmanned measurements and observations from space. Many practical benefits have flowed from this information. Improved weather forecasting, for example, has saved lives and reduced property losses in natural disasters. Global climate modeling has helped us understand long-term natural trends and the extent to which human activities can affect them, thus making possible strategies to reduce problems such as atmospheric ozone depletion and global warming—problems not even recognizable prior to the availability of data from space. High-resolution imaging of the Earth at different wavelengths provides accurate information on land-use patterns, crop health and yields, erosion and fire damage. This valuable information is now being obtained and marketed commercially by private companies.

  The geologic exploration of the Moon during Apollo was extensive, considering its pioneering aspect. Apollo excursions, samples, and surface and orbital measurements provided in-depth knowledge about the origins and composition of the Moon and its relation to Earth. The Moon was formed at the same time as Earth, about 4.5 billion years ago, soon after the formation of the Sun. Apollo provided a time line of major events in the Moon’s geological history and showed both similarities and differences with Earth.