Led The LEM Design Team For The Apollo Program

The man who led the team which designed the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) for the Apollo moon missions passed away Saturday in Amherst, MA. Joseph G. Gavin Jr. was 90.

NASA Image Lunar Module Test Platform

Gavin was the manager of the 7,500 member team which designed and built the Eagle, the LEM which landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. The team had to anticipate as many as 400 different landing conditions and design and build a vehicle which would safely land on and then depart from the lunar surface.

Gavin was an MIT trained engineer when he was handed the reins of the project at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. The task was to design a spacecraft weighing no more than 32,000 pounds which would carry two astronauts and a two-stage rocket. It worked successfully in all six moon landings, and served as a lifeboat for the Apollo 13 mission after an oxygen tank exploded on board the command module.

NASA Image Apollo 11 Lunar Module

The New York Times reports that Gavin was named the leader of the project when it received the contract for the LEM in 1962. The team developed its own computer simulations to test different landing parameters, and designed lightweight backup systems for an unknown environment. The cost of the program went from $350 million to $1.5 billion in 1960's dollars. Gavin said in an article for Technology Review that an accurate estimate at the beginning of the program would have been impossible because of the new technology that had to be designed. 

Mr. Gavin was later named as president and CEO of Grumman Corporations Executive committee. He retired from the company in 1985, but continued as an advisor to the federal government on space matters and other policy.

FMI: www.nasa.gov