Three exacting reproductions of the Lunar Excursion Module that was used on that mission were created by Cartier and gifted in-person to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
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Delays in the completion of the lunar lander, also known as the Lunar Excursion Module, meant that Apollo 8 would be the first crewed lunar mission to fly the command module only, from which 1968's famed "Earthrise" photo was taken.
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In 1963, after leading in negotiating the contract with NASA to build the Lunar Excursion Module, he became Senior Vice President – Operations with responsibilities varying in time and breadth for all aircraft, spacecraft, and marine programs.Grumman Plane News, December 23, 1968 As a member of the "Top Management Review Board" for the Apollo Lunar Module project,Grumman Corporation's Apollo Extension Systems Management Plan Volume VII Mr. Titterton was influential in its engineering design decisions.Inside the Iron Works: How Grumman's Glory Days Faded pp.85-94 When the first delivery of the lunar module did not meet NASA quality standards, George replaced Tom Kelly as overall project manager for Grumman Corporation's Lunar Excursion Module contract with NASA.
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This design experience was taken into consideration by NASA in their November 1962 decision to choose Grumman over other companies like General Dynamics-Convair (the F-111 had computerized avionics capabilities comparable to the A-6, but did not fly until 1964) to build the Lunar Excursion Module, which was a small-sized spacecraft with two onboard computers.
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Jenkins 2002, p. 7. YA2F-1 showing the original tilting tailpipes Grumman's design team was led by Robert Nafis and Lawrence Mead, Jr. Mead later played a lead role in the design of the Lunar Excursion Module and the Grumman F-14 Tomcat."Lawrence Mead Jr., Aerospace Engineer, Dies at 94." The New York Times, 30 August 2012.
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During his time with the Jets, McKinstry worked full-time on the off season for Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage on the project management team. He coordinated activities for the Lunar Excursion Module (L.E.M.) and was the Night Director for F-14 Tomcat production. McKinstry worked on the proposal plan for the X-29, which was placed in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
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It specialized in complex flexible circuit assemblies and specialized printed wiring boards for both the U.S. military and space programs including the Saturn V and Lunar Excursion Module. Sanders also produced flexible circuity for most other commercial applications including medical equipment. Sanders Flexprint division was involved with producing printed wiring boards and flex circuitry for all branches of the military and for all platforms. The Flexprint division was sold in the late seventies or early eighties.
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Grumman Aircraft went on to stellar heights with some of the best aircraft in US Navy history. Grumman also designed and built the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) that landed US astronauts on the moon. In 1932 the Army Air Corps issued a Circular design proposal for an advanced new heavy bomber which Ford, Martin, Boeing, Fokker, Douglas and Keystone submitted designs. The Keystone entry was for an all metal low winged monoplane bomber with retractable landing gear.
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Kelly was promoted to lead the design team for the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). He was in charge of more than 7,000 employees in design and building the Lunar Module. Kelly's group came up with the idea of a two-stage spacecraft (ascent & descent stage), that would take two astronauts to the Moon's surface while a third member would stay in lunar orbit. Kelly had just turned 40 when Neil Armstrong took his first historic step on the Moon July 20, 1969.
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On May 12, 1966, NASA announced the vehicle would be called the "uprated Saturn I", at the same time the "lunar excursion module" was renamed the lunar module. However, the "uprated Saturn I" terminology was reverted to Saturn IB on December 2, 1967. By the time it was developed, the Saturn IB payload capability had increased to . By 1973, when it was used to launch three Skylab missions, the first-stage engine had been upgraded further, raising the payload capability to .
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Visitors can operate flight simulators for landing the space shuttle as well as for docking a Gemini capsule and performing a moon landing of the Lunar Excursion Module. The building also exhibits overflow holdings from the aviation center, usually the higher-performance jet aircraft. Two of the main attractions of the space flight center are a Titan II missile and a SR-71 Blackbird. The Titan II sits upright in a specially constructed display extending two stories below the floor, silo fashion.
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Grumman was also prominent in the US space program, being the producer of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module. In their early decades, aerospace-related companies were concentrated on Long Island, especially in eastern Nassau County in the Bethpage area. Over the years, the industry also diversified to other locations. The Sperry Gyroscope company did very well during WW-II as military demand skyrocketed; it specialized in high technology devices such as gyrocompasses, analog computer-controlled bombsights, airborne radar systems, and automated take-off and landing systems.
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This video made by him and the Neistat Brothers captures the event. While the Apollo program was source of precedent, much of Sachs' Space Program is historically inaccurate, often humorously. The Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) was built full scale, but had many modifications that were probably not on any Apollo mission, including a fully stocked Vodka bar and a library (with titles such as Woman's Almanac). After the astronauts' first step, they used Sachs' handmade shotguns to "patrol the surface", before planting a flag and taking rock samples—by drilling into the gallery floor.
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The S-I first stage would also be upgraded to the S-IB by improving the thrust of its engines and removing some weight. The new Saturn IB, with a payload capability of at least , would replace the Saturn I for Earth orbit testing, allowing the command and service module to be flown with a partial fuel load. It would also allow launching the lunar excursion module separately for uncrewed and crewed Earth orbital testing, before the Saturn V was ready to be flown. It would also give early development to the third stage.
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Joseph Shea, the key engineer behind the adoption of lunar orbit rendezvous mission logistics. The Lunar Module (originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module, known by the acronym LEM) was designed after NASA chose to reach the Moon via Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) instead of the direct ascent or Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) methods. Both direct ascent and EOR would have involved landing a much heavier, complete Apollo spacecraft on the Moon. Once the decision had been made to proceed using LOR, it became necessary to produce a separate craft capable of reaching the lunar surface and ascending back to lunar orbit.
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Doundoulakis was employed at Grumman Aerospace Corporation for over thirty five years and group leader on many USAF and NASA projects. These included the Apollo Space Missions and the Lunar Excursion Module, the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, and the Space Shuttle. His design of the oxygen tanks on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was instrumental in the return of the Apollo 13 crew, for which Doundoulakis was given a plaque by Captain James Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert.Doundoulakis, H, Gafni, G: Trained to be an OSS Spy, Ch. 33 "Cloudy, With a Chance of Sunshine," p.
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After leaving RCA, Bussgang worked as a consultant and was involved with the Apollo program. He was a consultant to Grumman Aircraft in the selection, simulation, and evaluation of Rendezvous Radar and Landing Radar for LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) for man's first trip to the moon. In 1984, he sold Signatron to the aerospace firm Sundstrand Corporation but was asked to stay with the company for three more years, so he retired in 1987. He also served as a consultant to Honeywell, Hughes Aircraft, Philco-Ford, IBM, Arthur D. Little, Raytheon Company, RCA, and Sperry Univac among others.
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On the Apollo missions, the transfer was done using an internal passage. Block D was to slow the LOK and LK into lunar orbit, while with Apollo this phase was undertaken by firing the engine on the service module to slow the complex and enter lunar orbit since the Apollo complex traveled with the Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) facing back towards the Earth. Once in orbit, the LK with Block D would separate from the LOK and descend toward the surface of the Moon using the Block D engine. After Block D exhausted its fuel, the LK was to separate and complete landing using its own engine.
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This would possibly include a separately launched Earth departure stage, or require on-orbit refueling of the empty departure stage. Tom Dolan proposed the alternative of lunar orbit rendezvous, which had been studied and promoted by Jim Chamberlin and Owen Maynard at the Space Task Group in 1960 early Apollo feasibility studies. This mode allowed a single Saturn V to launch the CSM to the Moon with a smaller Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). When the combined spacecraft reaches lunar orbit, one of the three astronauts remains with the CSM, while the other two enter the LEM, undock and descend to the surface of the Moon.
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Comparison of distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of the Moon and Mars With pressure from Congress to hold down Apollo costs, Saturn V production was reduced, allowing only a single launch per mission. Any roving vehicle would have to fit on the same lunar module as the astronauts. In November 1964, two-rocket models were put on indefinite hold, but Bendix and Boeing were given study contracts for small rovers. The name of the lunar excursion module was changed to simply the lunar module, indicating that the capability for powered "excursions" away from a lunar-lander base did not yet exist.
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The Apollo Lunar Module, or simply Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lander spacecraft that was flown from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface during the U.S. Apollo program. It was the first crewed spacecraft to operate exclusively in the airless vacuum of space, and remains the only crewed vehicle to land anywhere beyond Earth. Structurally and aerodynamically incapable of flight through Earth's atmosphere, the two-stage lunar module was ferried to lunar orbit attached to the Apollo command and service module (CSM), about twice its mass. Its crew of two flew the complete lunar module from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface.
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In 1959, the R-7 rocket was used to launch the first escape from Earth's gravity into a solar orbit, the first crash impact onto the surface of the Moon, and the first photography of the never-before-seen far side of the Moon. These were the Luna 1, Luna 2, and Luna 3 spacecraft. Apollo Lunar Excursion Module The U.S. response to these Soviet achievements was to greatly accelerate previously existing military space and missile projects and to create a civilian space agency, NASA. Military efforts were initiated to develop and produce mass quantities of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would bridge the so-called missile gap and enable a policy of deterrence to nuclear war with the Soviets known as mutual assured destruction or MAD.
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Hansen, James R. (1999). Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept. The SVP forced NASA to defend its decision to develop the Saturn V launch vehicle and a Lunar Excursion Module, delaying its announcement news conference to July 11, and causing NASA Administrator James E. Webb to hedge by calling the decision tentative, keeping the Earth-orbit rendezvous and direct-ascent methods as possible backups, but still maintaining, "We find that by adding one vehicle to those already under development, namely, the lunar excursion vehicle, we have an excellent opportunity to accomplish this mission with a shorter time span, with a saving of money, and with equal safety to any other modes."Brooks, Grimwood, and Swenson (1979).
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The Lunar Landing Research Facility was an area at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia that was used to simulate Apollo Moon landings with a mock Lunar Module powered by a small rocket motor suspended from a crane over a simulated lunar landscape. Completed in 1965 at a cost of $3.5 million, the facility was used by 24 astronauts, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to practice solving piloting problems they would encounter in the last 150 feet of descent to the surface of the Moon.NASA Impact Dynamics Research Facility The structure was used to facilitate "flying" a full-scale Lunar Excursion Module Simulator (LEMS). The LEMS was suspended from a -tall, -long A-frame gantry by an overhead bridge crane.
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Draper was one of the pioneers of inertial navigation, a technology used in aircraft, space vehicles, and submarines that enables such vehicles to navigate by sensing changes in direction and speed, using gyroscopes, and accelerometers. A pioneering figure in aerospace engineering, he contributed to the Apollo space program with his knowledge of guidance systems. In 1961 Draper and the Instrumentation Lab were awarded the first contract given out for the Apollo program to send humans to the Moon, which was announced by President John F. Kennedy on 25 May of that year. This led to the creation of the Apollo Guidance Computer, a one-cubic-foot computer that controlled the navigation and guidance of the Lunar Excursion Module to the Moon on nine launches, six of which landed on the Moon's surface.
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The hypergolic propellant service propulsion engine was sized at to lift the CSM off the lunar surface and send it back to Earth. This required a single-launch vehicle much larger than the Saturn V, or else multiple Saturn V launches to assemble it in Earth orbit before sending it to the Moon. Early on, it was decided to use the lunar orbit rendezvous method, using a smaller Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) to ferry two of the men between lunar orbit and the surface. The reduction in mass allowed the lunar mission to be launched with a single Saturn V. Since significant development work had started on the design, it was decided to continue with the existing design as Block I, while a Block II version capable of rendezvous with the LEM would be developed in parallel.
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Space Park, as it appeared in December 1963 before its official opening A United States Space Park was sponsored by NASA, the Department of Defense and the fair. Exhibits included a full-scale model of the aft skirt and five F-1 engines of the first stage of a Saturn V, a Titan II booster with a Gemini capsule, an Atlas with a Mercury capsule and a Thor- Delta rocket. On display at ground level were Aurora 7, the Mercury capsule flown on the second US manned orbital flight; full-scale models of an X-15 aircraft, an Agena upper stage; a Gemini spacecraft; an Apollo command/service module, and a Lunar Excursion Module. Replicas of unmanned spacecraft included lunar probe Ranger VII; Mariner II and Mariner IV; Syncom, Telstar I, and Echo II communications satellites; Explorer I and Explorer XVI; and Tiros and Nimbus weather satellites.
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