In 1961, only a few weeks after Alan Shepherd completed the first
American suborbital flight, President John F. Kennedy announced
that the U.S. would put a man on the moon before the end of the
decade. The next year, NASA awarded the right to meet the
extraordinary challenge of building a lunar excursion module to a
small airplane company called Grumman from Long Island, New York.
Chief engineer Thomas J. Kelly gives a firsthand account of
designing, building, testing, and flying the Apollo lunar module.
It was, he writes, "an aerospace engineer's dream job of the
century". Kelly's account begins with the imaginative process of
sketching solutions to a host of technical challenges with an
emphasis on safety, reliability, and maintainability. He catalogs
numerous test failures, including propulsion-system leaks,
ascent-engine instability, stress corrosion of the aluminum alloy
parts, and battery problems, as well as their fixes under the
ever-present constraints of budget and schedule. He also recaptures
the anticipation of the first unmanned lunar module flight with
Apollo 5 in 1968, the exhilaration of hearing Apollo 11's Neil
Armstrong report that "The Eagle has landed", and the pride of
having inadvertently provided a vital "lifeboat" for the crew of
the disabled Apollo 13.
From researching and writing the contract-winning proposal
through six successful moon landings and returns, Kelly provides a
compelling look at the protean efforts of the nearly 7,000 Grumman
workers who together created the most important component of the
first manned spaceflights.
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