20 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JULY 2019
PRESS BUSINESS
RECALLING LI’S LEADING ROLE IN MOON LANDING
continued from page 19
Those LM days are now taking
focus again in the minds of
Grummies, as they called themselves,
as the anniversary of the
first Moon landing in 1969 approaches.
Throughout July, celebrations
are scheduled across
the country to commemorate
one of the most memorable days
in world history. Several events
are to be held at the Cradle of
Aviation Museum in Garden
City, which on July 20 will hold
an “Apollo at 50 Countdown Celebration,”
including a screening
of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on
the Moon.
Grummies are delighted to recall
those days.
“Everybody was enthusiastic,”
says Mike Lisa, now 76, of
Hicksville, who was an LM environmental
test engineer. “Our
job was to put guys on the Moon,
and that’s what we did.”
Apollo 11 Mission Image - View of Moon limb and Lunar Module during ascent,
Mare Smythii, Earth on horizon
The work became all consuming
at a company accustomed to work
and pressure. Grumman signed a $2
billion contract — enormous at the
time — with NASA in 1962.
“We didn’t know anything about a
clock,” says Sam Koepel, now 90, of
Floral Park, who wrote and edited
LM specifications. “We did everything
exactly when the company
needed it done.”
Dick Dunne of West Islip, now in his
late 70s, had spent most of his professional
career with Grumman, beginning
in the early 1960s. He worked on
some technical issues with the LM
before being assigned to the public
relations department, in Bethpage
and at Cape Canaveral.
Dunne and others were confident
Grumman could do the job, but could
it succeed in sending a man to the
Moon by the end of the decade?
Grumman was the last of the big
aerospace companies to officially
sign on to the project, concentrating
on engineering studies to make sure
the LM could work.
“We were going through project
managers like you wouldn’t believe,”
Dunne recalls. “At the beginning, the
project was so big you couldn’t get
your hands around it.”
One of the biggest problems was
weight: The LM had to be both as
light as possible and yet strong to
withstand the rigors of space. The
issue was so crucial that NASA paid
Grumman $10,000 for every pound
the company
managed to take off the LM, says
author and space historian Andrew
Chaikin. The LM wound up weighing
about 37,000 pounds.
“The result was that the LM didn’t
look like a spaceship. but a mechanical
insect,” Chaikin says.
Six of the modules took 12 astronauts
to the Moon between 1969 and 1972.
During the manufacturing years,
Grumman’s workforce swelled to
about 30,000 employees, the most
since World War II. Then, the company
employed about 40,000, building
Navy Hellcat and Wildcat combat
planes, on three shifts.
In the Apollo days, astronauts were a
common sight in Bethpage, checking
out LM systems and working with
engineers. One of the most frequent
visitors was Fred Haise, who was
one of three astronauts aboard
the ill-fated Apollo 13, in 1970. An
explosion in an oxygen tank in the
service module caused a dramatic
loss of oxygen. Apollo 13 was forced
to end its attempt to reach the Moon.
The astronauts яrawled into the LM,
which served as a lifeboat to take
them headed back to Earth safely.
Haise later became an executive in
Grumman’s space program.
The LM was the most challenging
vehicle Grumman ever
built. It was designed solely
for space flight and could not
be tested before it was put into
service 250,000 miles from
Earth. It could not operate on
this planet and could never
return to Earth. And, it may
be the only manmade vehicle
with a perfect performance
record.
The most famous of the LM
flights was Apollo 11, which
took two astronauts, Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,
to the Moon, on July 20, 1969.
In space, with two astronauts
aboard, the LM was jettisoned
from an orbiting command
and service module, about 60
miles from the Moon.
The command and service
module, flown by Michael
Collins, the third astronaut,
remained in orbit around the
Moon until the LM’s ascent
stage blasted off from the lunar
surface and rejoined the orbiting
command and service module.
The descent stage remained on the
lunar surface.
The world was glued to TV sets the
night of the first Moon landing. Bill
Schwanker of Lynbrook, also now
in his late ’70s, and an electronics
design engineer, was home when
Armstrong took that first step.
“Watching it sent chills up your
spine,” says Schwanker.
Decades after his flight, I interviewed
Armstrong. He was not an
easy interview, finding the publicity
distasteful. He was at heart
a country boy and a man of few
words.
I asked him whether he ever looked
up at the Moon and said to himself,
“I was there.”
He reflected on the question, smiled
for the first time in the interview
and, characteristically, offered a
one-word response: “Frequently,”
he said.
“Our job was to put guys on the moon, and
that’s what we did,” says Mike Lisa.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
