Engineer who took control when Houston had a problem
By Phil Davison
Published: November 26 2010 23:33 | Last updated: November 26 2010 23:33
‘It was like doing things blindfolded’: Gavin with a model of the Eagle |
Nine years after President John F. Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon, American aeronautical scientists were certain that they could send a spacecraft a quarter-of-a-million miles for an up-close and personal look at the lunar surface. What they were much less confident about was whether men could land there without crashing and then lift off again for the long trip back to earth.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Obituary: Theodore Sorensen - Nov-06
Obituary: Philippa Foot - Oct-16
Obituary: Godfrey Binaisa - Oct-09
Obituary: Herman Leonard - Aug-20
Obituary: Robin Gibson (1944-2010) - Aug-15
Joe Gavin Jnr played a crucial role in enabling Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 to become the first men to land on the moon and come home safely. Gavin led the team that spent a decade designing, testing and building the spider-legged lunar landing craft called the Eagle. In July 1969 Mr Armstrong was able to tell mission control and television viewers around the world: “The Eagle has landed.” Then came his historic line: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He had planned to say “one small step for a man” but who could blame him for dropping a single letter at such a moment?
It was Joe Gavin and his people who had made it all possible. Gavin was in charge of the 7,500-man team from the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation on New York’s Long Island that had won the contract to build lunar landing modules for the Apollo flights. From the original estimate of $350m, the cost would eventually soar to $1.5bn.
In the 1960s, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi SS officer who had developed the infamous V-2 rocket during the second world war, was working for Nasa, the US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Von Braun had been pushing for a giant rocket called Nova to be propelled to the moon from the earth’s orbit. It was Gavin who persuaded Nasa and von Braun to adopt a “lunar rendezvous” technique, allowing a small landing module to leave the main ship and descend to the moon’s surface.
The problem was that nobody knew what this surface was really like. There might be a layer of dust perhaps 30ft deep that could engulf the module. Or there could be solid ice that would jeopardise both a landing and lift-off. “It was like doing things blindfolded,” Gavin recalled.
The team’s solution was that the Eagle would rely on one engine to land softly, while another would fire it back into lunar orbit to link up with the command module where the third astronaut, Michael Collins, remained. Failure of the first engine could have caused a fatal impact on the surface. Failure of the second would have left Armstrong and Aldrin stranded.
In the event, Nasa detected a potentially catastrophic rise in temperature and pressure in Eagle’s descent-stage fuel lines within a minute of the Apollo 11 touchdown. Gavin and leading designer Tom Kelly feared a grenade-like explosion but the problem almost miraculously solved itself, allowing Armstrong to take his famous step. “I’ve often wondered how we could be so lucky that it all worked,” Gavin once said.
If that first successful moon mission was one of high drama, it was not the most dramatic Gavin would work on. Less than a year later the command module of Apollo 13 did explode. It is a moment known to many of us from the film Apollo 13 when Tom Hanks, playing the astronaut James Lovell, tells mission control: “Houston, we have a problem” (another slight misquote, with the tense changed from the original for dramatic effect). Back on earth, Gavin and Kelly were able to reprogramme the landing craft to tow the crippled command module 300,000 miles round the moon and earthwards. The three astronauts survived in the landing module for four days before using the command module to splash down safely in the Pacific.
“That was the tensest episode of my career,” Gavin said later. “The team at Grumman developed a personal relationship with every one of the astronauts in the Apollo era. We were building machines that our friends would operate – not some faceless individuals unknown to us.” In 1971, Nasa awarded him its Distinguished Public Service Medal for his part in saving the astronauts’ lives.
Joseph Gleason Gavin was born in 1920, in Massachusetts. As a schoolboy, he followed the comic book adventures of spaceman Buck Rogers as well as the real-life exploits of flying pioneer Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh.
He gained a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was captain of the rowing team in 1941, making him something of a hero on campus. During the second world war he joined the US Navy Reserve, where he used his aeronautical skills to develop and improve the early jet fighter aircraft. Hired by Grumman in a similar capacity after the war, he remained for 39 years, as chief missile and space engineer and later as president, until his retirement in 1985. Thereafter, he enjoyed “geriatric tennis” and continued to ski on serious slopes until he was 86.
He is survived by Dorothy, his wife of 67 years, two sons and four grandchildren. A daughter, Tay Anne, died in 1998.
Speaking of his lifetime’s work, he once said: “There’s a certain exuberance that comes from being out there on the edge of technology, where things are not certain, where there is some risk, and where you make something work.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Comments