NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 3 of 3

The idea of using the LEM as a rescue lifeboat for the pre-landing part of the mission actually came up early in the preliminary design of the LEM. There was a mission planning task force was constituted by NASA with Grumman leading it and with all the contractors and NASA participating to examine the entire mission from start to finish and try to identify the weak spots and hazards and the possible workarounds to problems. This was done in 1963 and during those studies it came out that since the LEM had a big restartable rocket engine that could be used for midcourse trajectory corrections and

the LEM had a lot of oxygen and electrical power and water if you had some kind of a problem with the command and service module on the outbound leg, this only worked on the outbound leg of the mission. You could think of situations where the crew could pile into the LEM and live off the LEM's life support systems and consumables until they could get back. In fact the LEM engine could be used to make the trajectory corrections that would get it back. So that whole idea was documented and in fact we even made some of the water and oxygen tanks a little bigger than they otherwise would have needed to be so they could cover this contingency. However, it was never taken any farther than that.

It was a concept, the numbers were run, it looked like it could work but it was never made into a formal, alternate mission and more importantly there were never any detailed procedures or flight plans worked up and it was never practiced with the astronauts. So it was an idea in the file but a lot of us knew about it. I mean when we heard what happened, that was the first thing we thought of, we had J, we can use the LEM as a lifeboat. The moment when the 13 separated when they let Aquarius go and Jim level had that famous line about, hey Aquarius, goodbye, you were great, you did your job, how did you feel? I felt quite proud at that point. I thought it was amazing that we were able to save that crew. It was pretty close, you know, a little bit farther out towards the moon and it might

not have come out as well as it did but so I was very proud of all we did. Overall how was the LEM's record? Did it get better with each mission where there are always little anomalies? The LEM behaved beautifully in all of the flight missions. It had a lot of little anomalies and little funnies but it never did anything big that was wrong and it kept getting better and better as the missions progressed with the exception of Apollo 14 where we had a couple of fairly serious anomalies, one of which was we had trouble making the docking rings latch firmly together during the initial docking and we

had to work on that pretty hard before we got it to work. But the other problem was a loose solder ball in a very critical switch. It was in what was called the abort stage switch. This was the panic button. If you wanted to, on a moment's notice, stop the descent, separate from the descent stage, light up the assent stage and head back for the mothership. You could do it all by just pushing this one panic button. Well on Apollo 14 we were astonished to see from our instrumentation that various contacts on the switch. It was a complicated 13 contact switch.

Various contacts were ultimately making and breaking the circuit because apparently there was a solder ball floating around inside at 0G. So this was very bad news. Our guidance people and the MIT guidance people got together with NASA and we determined the best thing to do since it was unlikely that we were going to have to really use this panic button on this mission. We would change the instructions to the computer so that the computer would ignore any signals that came from the suspects switch. And in an amazing feat of daring do, a young programmer up at MIT came up with a new program, checked it out, sent it to us in Bethpage and to NASA and Houston and Kennedy where they

all checked it out independently on their own rigs all within 90 minutes and then we were able to transmit it up to the astronauts and save the mission. Amazing. Finally, do you think we ended too early? Do you think Apollo ended too early or do you think we were taking too many risks better to get out while you were ahead? The Apollo program had originally been planned to have one more mission that was going to be in Apollo 18 and in fact we built the limb for Apollo 18 but I for one was not unhappy when that 18th mission was canceled. I felt that we had taken enough risks as it was and it would be a very wise thing to quit while we were ahead. The other thing that I felt was that the astonishing effectiveness of exploration by the astronauts

which had been shown particularly on the last three missions where we had extended the stay time of the limb and added an electric powered roving automobile for them to drive around in instead of plotting around on the lunar surface that increased their ability to explore by just an amazing amount so I felt that we had gotten such a rich scientific harvest out of the six missions that had already been performed that I wasn't really upset in fact that was a little relieved when the seventh or the Apollo 18 mission was canceled. Got terrific.

Three I believe at the lunar module. What am I looking at? This is the flight station of the lunar module. This is the inside of the crew compartment. The pilot stood right here and the limb pilots stood right here. They flew the limb with these hand controllers. One hand controller controlled the attitude of the spacecraft by controlling the small thrusters that moved the spacecraft around its three axes. The other hand controller controlled the thrust of the engine during a decent. I don't see any seats here Tom. There weren't no seats in order to save weight. We had eliminated seats. This enabled us to put the pilot's eye very close to the window so we could minimize the size of the window and still have a very wide field of view outside the window.

To keep the crew from floating around at zero G or getting knocked off their feet. They had a window washer belt arrangement. That's what these are and they hooked them to a belt around their waist on their flight suits. No 11, where would Neil Armstrong have stood, where would he put it? Neil would have been standing here and let me get up and show you. If I'm looking out he can see from these marks on the window exactly what angles he's flying at and that helps him with guiding it. As Aldrin over here is watching the controls, he's watching the fuel quantity and he also has the keyboard entry into the computer over there and all these other instruments were

to tell them the status of various systems. These are the eight balls that give them the artificial horizon, just like you would have on an airplane of that generation. Come on back down here a second, back where you were, that's good. So it doesn't look like much of a flying machine, huh? It flew very well. It had more than adequate thrust on its control thrusters and they could whip that thing around the sky pretty rapidly, particularly when they were returning for rendezvous with the command module. Now the other feature here is that overhead window which was used when they were docking with the command module.

They could look up through that window and see the docking. What's that window up there, Tom? This small window over the commander's head is the docking window from there by looking up there. He could see the docking target on the command module. The docking tunnel and hatch was located up here while this hatch here is the way they got out to the surface of the moon. They had to back out with their backpacks on and their spacesuits in order to get out on the moon's surface. How did they like flying this thing? They loved it. They thought it was a real hot rod, particularly when they were coming back with just the essence stage alone. They could maneuver it very readily. One of the things they always did when they separated from the command module, the first

thing they did was to pirouette in front of the window on the command module. The command module pilot could look the lemma over carefully to make sure everything looked okay. When you look at this thing today, does it feel like you're looking at a Model T, maybe an antique machine, this is your baby? Well the thing that's different about today's technology is all these instruments. Today we would tend to have two or three video tubes and we could project anything we wanted on those tubes. So that's the one thing that makes it dated. Are you proud of it when you look at this thing? Oh yes. It evokes fond memories. Okay, it's back off for a big watch at Tom's Day right there, keep looking at it, we'll move the instrument back a little bit.

Just keep looking up around there, keep your face out that way, like you're looking at that window up there, the docking window. Would you like to clone this yourself, Tom? Oh, absolutely. Tell me that. You bet. I would have loved to clone this myself. Would you like to clone it yourself? I would have loved to have flown this baby to the moon. Okay, terrific, good, thanks, thank you Tom.