Tue, Nov 09, 2010
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.
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