Read Online Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas J. Kelly - Free Book Online
Book: Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas J. Kelly
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Authors: Thomas J. Kelly
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rollers, white caps, and paint-spattered coveralls, worked on the walls and ceilings. All this sent debris showering down on the desks and floors of our area. It was comical, considering all the work we had to do and our need to concentrate on imagining the design of a unique spacecraft. We survived by packing up our papers and drawings when they appeared, spreading drop cloths over our clean desks, and borrowing desks in an undisturbed area on the far side of the mezzanine. In the brief moments I had time to think, I wondered whether the company understood the importance of winning this contract.
Two days before the submittal deadline, we turned the proposal over to the document production process. Erick and I gave the galley proofs and graphics a final end-to-end read-through and handed it all to the proposal editor, who took it to the nearby outside print shop for final makeup and printing. Then we joined the rest of the proposal team for a celebratory lunch. I had reluctantly agreed to the team’s request to schedule the lunch before the proposal was actually delivered to NASA because the Labor Day weekendwas approaching and many of our people wanted to stretch it by taking off the preceding Friday. After all the long hours they had put in, I did not want to appear ungrateful. But when I walked into the restaurant and saw our people enjoying cocktails, my stomach knotted up. What if we all suddenly had to go back to work? I never liked having alcohol anywhere near the job.
I had been in the restaurant about twenty minutes when a waiter told me I had a phone call. It was Saul at the printers. There were two problems: first, when the final page layouts were completed, the book was almost a whole page too long. Something had to be cut. And second, as Saul was reading through the proofs, he discovered an inconsistency between our answers to two of the questions. Which one was correct?
I thought Saul and I could fix the problems ourselves, and so I quickly headed for the door, but Erick saw me leaving and followed. The printer was in a squat gray building just outside the fence from our area of the Grumman complex. We found Saul with our editor and the printer’s project leader poring over page layouts. Erick and I joined them, and after about an hour we had marked up enough snippets for deletion to bring the proposal within one hundred pages. We were unable to resolve the inconsistency, however, and were forced to call back three experts from the luncheon. We discovered several other statements in our rereading that seemed questionable and had to be verified with the people who wrote them. Before long we had about ten people in the printers, trying mightily to focus on minute details of the proposal after coming from what had developed into a roaring party. To their credit, they were soon able to satisfy me and Erick about their sections or make minor modifications for added clarity, but it was a frantic couple of hours before all the loose ends were secured and the proposal was again declared finished.
The next evening I was finishing dinner with Joan and the kids when a call came in from Saul. He had safely delivered our proposal two hours before the deadline. Hallelujah! At last it was over. I looked forward to taking the next two weeks off, using some long-deferred vacation time. After a few days at home, Joan and I would get away by ourselves for a week in Williamsburg, Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains while her parents stayed in our house with the children. Sleeping late and seeing the outside world again after being sealed in the time tunnel. I could hardly wait.
4
The Fat Lady Sings
Three weeks after the LM proposal was submitted I flew to Houston on the luxurious Grumman Gulfstream with the LM program team and some of the company’s senior executives to brief NASA on the “salient features” of our proposal and to answer their questions. The briefing, “orals” before an invisible audience in a
Two days before the submittal deadline, we turned the proposal over to the document production process. Erick and I gave the galley proofs and graphics a final end-to-end read-through and handed it all to the proposal editor, who took it to the nearby outside print shop for final makeup and printing. Then we joined the rest of the proposal team for a celebratory lunch. I had reluctantly agreed to the team’s request to schedule the lunch before the proposal was actually delivered to NASA because the Labor Day weekendwas approaching and many of our people wanted to stretch it by taking off the preceding Friday. After all the long hours they had put in, I did not want to appear ungrateful. But when I walked into the restaurant and saw our people enjoying cocktails, my stomach knotted up. What if we all suddenly had to go back to work? I never liked having alcohol anywhere near the job.
I had been in the restaurant about twenty minutes when a waiter told me I had a phone call. It was Saul at the printers. There were two problems: first, when the final page layouts were completed, the book was almost a whole page too long. Something had to be cut. And second, as Saul was reading through the proofs, he discovered an inconsistency between our answers to two of the questions. Which one was correct?
I thought Saul and I could fix the problems ourselves, and so I quickly headed for the door, but Erick saw me leaving and followed. The printer was in a squat gray building just outside the fence from our area of the Grumman complex. We found Saul with our editor and the printer’s project leader poring over page layouts. Erick and I joined them, and after about an hour we had marked up enough snippets for deletion to bring the proposal within one hundred pages. We were unable to resolve the inconsistency, however, and were forced to call back three experts from the luncheon. We discovered several other statements in our rereading that seemed questionable and had to be verified with the people who wrote them. Before long we had about ten people in the printers, trying mightily to focus on minute details of the proposal after coming from what had developed into a roaring party. To their credit, they were soon able to satisfy me and Erick about their sections or make minor modifications for added clarity, but it was a frantic couple of hours before all the loose ends were secured and the proposal was again declared finished.
The next evening I was finishing dinner with Joan and the kids when a call came in from Saul. He had safely delivered our proposal two hours before the deadline. Hallelujah! At last it was over. I looked forward to taking the next two weeks off, using some long-deferred vacation time. After a few days at home, Joan and I would get away by ourselves for a week in Williamsburg, Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains while her parents stayed in our house with the children. Sleeping late and seeing the outside world again after being sealed in the time tunnel. I could hardly wait.
4
The Fat Lady Sings
Three weeks after the LM proposal was submitted I flew to Houston on the luxurious Grumman Gulfstream with the LM program team and some of the company’s senior executives to brief NASA on the “salient features” of our proposal and to answer their questions. The briefing, “orals” before an invisible audience in a
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