What Matters: February 2001
Engineering When It Had To Be Perfect
By Joseph G. Gavin Jr. '41, SM '42
The lunar module for Apollo "worked" every mission. It was the "lifeboat" for Apollo 13 after the oxygen tank explosion disabled the service module aborting the mission. We veterans of that program have heard so many times, in the more than 30 years since, the phrase: "If we can put a man on the Moon and bring him back safely, why can't we _____?" But Apollo was special!
Perhaps we have forgotten the situation in the 1960s—the Cold War. There were some hard lessons learned in the Apollo program; we may have forgotten these too. In mid-1962 when the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous approach to the Moon was agreed upon, we had no desktop computers, no CADCAM, no digital data bus, and a very restricted availability of integrated circuits. We did not know the nature of the lunar surface; one eminent astrophysicist predicted that a vehicle landing on the Moon would sink into 10 meters of impalpable dust! And the aircraft electronic failure rates of that period caused one science advisor to the President to estimate that it would require 40 attempts to achieve one successful mission!
But we did have bold leadership; President Kennedy made a unique decade-long commitment—and I doubt that he had a favorable set of poll results to back him up. And we did do some things right. The nation, NASA, and the contractors assembled an extraordinarily talented team of people—it was THE place for engineers to be. We, at Grumman, did get our priorities right: adequate and reliable performance clearly came first, then schedule, and third cost. We also made a novel assumption: "There is no such thing as a random failure"! If something fails, it should be possible, by analysis and testing, to find and fix the problem. Inasmuch as we were designing a spacecraft that could not be flight-tested before its mission and could not be examined after its mission, we had to develop an elaborate and intensive ground test program that involved every level of vehicle integration.
There is more, but it all worked and Apollo was a success. "We'd been there, done that"; no further exploration of the lunar surface was undertaken.
Today's U.S. space program is really divided into two parts: first the manned International Space Station (ISS) supported by the Shuttle, and second, the unmanned, robotic exploration of the planets and of cosmic phenomena.
This second part has most recently been conducted under the policy of "smaller, cheaper, and faster." The position seems to be that a few failures can be tolerated if, in total, there are some successes. It seems to me that this approach entails real disadvantages. The cost of failure is more than the dollar loss. Failure wastes the time and effort of our most valuable asset, our talented people. Failure also delays the pace of the overall program. A further disadvantage is the pressure to embark on "shoestring" undertakings. While the team at the Jet Propulsion Lab that produced the stunningly successful Pathfinder mission deserves great credit, it seems to me that the basic concept may have been flawed. Can we really expect to explore the planet Mars with a very limited "skateboard" sized rover?
Now that I have raised the subject of Mars, I believe that there are some compelling reasons to explore that planet—in my view, the principal one is the search for traces of current or prior life. If robotic exploration produces enough information and if the costs of the International Space Station have abated enough, a manned mission to establish an outpost appears both possible and desirable. An Apollo style round-trip mission looks to be very complex and costly. This approach is too easily cancelled by the next administration—remember Apollo. Robert Zubrin, in his book The Case for Mars, has suggested a better concept, making use of Mars resources. I would go a large step further and propose a manned one-way mission to set up an outpost. Such an approach would have a higher probability of success but would, of course, entail continued long term support.
We have to ask ourselves: "Is this something we really want to do? Do we still have the pioneering spirit?" Could we face up to such a bold commitment—or should we be satisfied with the International Space Station? We could easily sit by and watch the Chinese go to the Moon and then to the RED planet.
About the Author
Joseph G. Gavin earned SB and SM degrees in aeronautical engineering from MIT in 1941 and 1942, respectively. After military service during the war, he joined Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. where he worked for 39 years, including ten years as Director of the Lunar Module Program for Apollo. He retired from Grumman in 1985 after nine years as President and COO. In 1971 he received the NASA Distinguished Public Medal and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1974. He is a life member of the MIT Corporation and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Dorothy.
What Matters is a guest opinion column written by a different MIT alumnus or alumna. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Alumni Association or MIT. Interested in writing a column? Email whatmatters@mit.edu.
