1 NASA OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS 303 E STREET, S.W., #P WASHINGTON, D.C. 20546 (202) 358-1600 "APOLLO LUNAR LANDER TEAM: LESSONS LEARNED SHARED WITH NASA" Speakers: STEVE ROCAMBOLI, Apollo Lunar Module Engineer SEYMOUR BERG, Apollo Lunar Module Engineer GERRY SANDLER, Apollo Lunar Module Engineer BOB SCHWARZ, Apollo Lunar Module Engineer JOE MULÉ, Apollo Lunar Module Engineer [Moderated by Beth Dickey, Headquarters, Public Affairs] Friday, July 20, 2007 [TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FROM A DIGITAL RECORDING.] MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 2 P R O C E E D I N G S MODERATOR: The astronauts first stepped foot on the Moon 38 years ago today, and all of that was made possible by the gentlemen you see here with me today. Now as NASA embarks on a new journey back to the Moon, this time we hope to stay. We look to the past and lessons learned from the Apollo program to help ensure success. Welcome, everyone. I am Beth Dickey of NASA Headquarters, Public Affairs, and I am joined today by retired members of the Grumman Corporation's Lunar Module Reliability and Maintainability Team, and I will introduce them now. First, we have Steve Rocamboli, Seymour Berg, Gerry Sandler, Bob Schwarz, and Joe Mulé. We also have one of our Deputy Associate Administrators from NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Doug Cooke, here in the front row with us. The Apollo Lunar Module was the first true spacecraft. It flew totally in a vacuum, no aerodynamic qualities whatsoever. It launched attached to the Apollo Lunar Command Service Module, separated once it was in MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 3 lunar orbit, and descended to the Moon with two astronauts inside. When their work was done, the ascent stage of the Lunar Module fired its own rocket to lift off the lunar surface and rejoin the Command Service Module in orbit. Let's look at the LEM, as it was called, in production those many years ago. [Video clip presentation begins.] VIDEO: Across the country in Bethpage, New York, the Grumman Aircraft Corporation is developing the third section of the spacecraft called Lunar Excursion Module, or LEM. The LEM will be used for the actual landing of two astronauts on the Moon. [Video clip presentation ends.] MODERATOR: Gerry Sandler, why don't you tell us a little bit about what role your team played in that historic landing on July 20th, 1969. MR. SANDLER: Well, Beth, before I do that, Lauri indicated from our Lessons Learned meeting that I ought to tell a little story I told. MODERATOR: Go ahead, then. MR. SANDLER: Well, there was a famous paleontologist who was going around giving a lot of MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 4 lectures, and each time he gave a lecture, he was making a lot of money, and he decided that because he was making so much money that he was going to get himself a nice big limousine and a chauffeur and he would go in style. After a few months of doing this, the chauffeur says to him, "You know, after this great talk I have been listening to, I think I can do the same job you do. Why is it you pay me so little and you make so much money in your talks?" And the professor said, "Well, if you think you can do the same job, let's change uniforms. I will stand in the back of the room, and you give the talk." The chauffeur got up and he gave the talk, and the talk went very well, until one little fellow in the back raised his hand and said, "You know, Professor, that was a fine talk. I have a very simple kind of question. You know those dinosaurs that you talked about that lived 65 million years ago and how they suddenly died out when a meteorite hit the Earth and how they got buried into the soil and then big trees grew and they died and got buried into the soil and then there was a lot of glaciation and icebergs grew and they retreated and then the plates moved the continents around? What I really don't understand is MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 5 how do you take all of those factors into account when you calculate the pH of the soil," and the chauffeur says, "You know, I am really embarrassed that after this fine talk I gave, you would ask such a simple trivial kind of question, and just to show you how trivial it is, I will have my chauffeur in the back of the room answer it." [Laughter.] MR. SANDLER: And that is how we did it today, and I have 14 chauffeurs with me. We spent most of the morning talking about lessons learned. I was the first speaker, speaking about the lessons we learned and sharing responsibility with NASA and how we got together to work as a team and to do all of the tradeoffs and the design missions that were necessary to make those tradeoffs and to build a vehicle or design a vehicle that had all of the reliability characteristics that we were looking for. We talked about how the program was going to be managed and the engineering management was going to be done and the kind of culture that was established at both operations, at both NASA and at Grumman, to make sure that we paid attention to detail, that we had an open MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 6 communication environment, and that we were able to challenge each other effectively, and that worked very well. So we were very proud of that because that made a big impact on reliability as well. Then finally, I talked about the technical aspects of the tradeoffs that were done and how we achieved the various target weights and control weights and how we balanced reliability with the various weight objectives and how that succeeded and the kinds of things that happened during each mission that made the difference between success and failure. Seymour, I will take a little of your thunder. You spoke about the System Failure Mode and Effect Analysis. MR. BERG: Well, I compared it with the estimating reliability, then calculating the reliability, and then pointed out that no matter what that calculation is, whether it be good or bad or better, we still are left with the requirements of needing single-point failures not to impede the mission success or harm the crew and told about the FMEAs that we performed and the modifications that we made to make sure that at least most of the MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 7 single-point failures were eliminated by our studies. MR. SANDLER: Bob, you spoke about testing. MR. SCHWARZ: Yes. I told a little story that back in the days of the Lunar Module Program, we were always accused of having tested too much. Of course, one of the questions that came up, did we test enough, too much, too little, too late, too early, and the bottom line is when you asked the people why we tested too much -- and this was in Aviation Week -- the answer came back, because you didn't have any serious failures, and that sort of befuddled me, didn't turn around and say that, hey, the test program was perfect, you eliminated all the problems on the ground before you launched and before you landed on the Moon. So testing is the typical no-win situation. If you don't test enough, you are going to have failures and be criticized. If you have no failures, then you obviously tested too much because you didn't have any. Our goal was to design a test program in the blind. Remember, nobody had been to the moon. We didn't know the environment. We didn't know the profile. So we started from scratch and tried to grow a program, change it MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 8 as we went along, and I think one of the key topics or events during our test program was what we called our Steps Stress to Failure Testing where we took most of our equipment beyond their qualification levels and forced them to fail, so that we knew what kind of safety margin and design margins we had in the event there were changes downstream, this all being done, once again, as Gerry said, as a team, NASA and Grumman and our subcontractors. MR. SANDLER: Joe, you talked about subsystems and analysis. MR. MULÉ: Well, we kind of went on both ends of the test. We were very, very much involved in subsystem reliability. In the development of models and also performing Failure Mode and Effect Analyses, each Failure Mode and Effect Analyses were very instrumental in finding many single-point failures and correcting them during the design phase of the program. We used our experience in the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis to participate in the Measurement Review Board where this is where we defined those minimal number of measurements that would go on board that would determine MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 9 whether we aborted the mission or whether we had to take immediate crew safety action. These are called Caution and Warning Measurements. Then on the other end of tests, we did Failure Analysis and Corrective Action. This was a very, very intensive program. It was very long-lasting, but this is where we absolutely tried to determine what the causes of the failures were, and we left no stone unturned. We wanted to determine what the corrective action was, whether that corrective action was actually effective, and I have to say that, you know, we started out with some young engineers from all over the country, and these guys were blended into a fantastic team of people who knew how to work hard, who had good humor, and I think that is the secret. We needed to have guys that could work hard, but at the same time knew how to have a good time if and when we had the time to do it. [Laughter.] MR. SANDLER: Well, Steve, you talked about End Item Engineering. MR. ROCAMBOLI: Yeah. End Item Engineering was, I guess, a culmination of everything else that was going MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622 10 on. Everybody talked about FMEAs, failure closeout, and now I had the chance to go on a vehicle itself, the first Lunar Lander, and work with the people on the program who were actually doing the manufacturing tests and then use what I had learned over in the engineering and analysis portion to do things like closing out phase, to help our test discrepancies, pick up the slack where sometimes the test team ran into a hurdle and said we can do that, we can close this out, we can make it right, and let's go forward. It was an exciting experience. I then transferred to the Cape. I saw a couple Saturn V launches, and it was very exciting, a very exciting part of my life. MODERATOR: I want to take a minute to introduce the other chauffeurs who are with you. [Laughter.] MODERATOR: We are honored to have them here, some other members of the Lunar Module Team, Joe Fragola, Tony Coretti, Tony Califra, Dominic Levaccari, Matt Macchio, John Purcell, Lou Nardo, Ray Capiello, and Joe Whittenberg. Now we are going to take some questions from the MALLOY TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (202) 362-6622