#1
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Intersting article about Grumman and LEM design
I got a link to an interesting article about Grumman and LEM development . Lot of stuff I never new, like the legs were designed to be compressed on landing. But since they had such good pilots, the legs never were fully compressed so they had to jump to the lunar surface.
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Tim Barr NAR 51403 SR |
#2
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Yes, instead of developing some type of (probably) heavier shock absorbing system, they placed a honeycomb compressable struture material inside each leg 'shaft' that would compress some amount upon touchdown and absorb any landing shock loads.
Turns out (as you mention) that landings (in general) were fairly calm events (though one or two astros mention in their autobiographies that it felt like they hit with a pretty decent thump at touchdown). In turn, the compressible material did not compress quite as much as they thought and therefore it left a bit longer of a 'drop' from the last rung of the ladder down to the footpad at the base of the landing leg. Conrad on Apollo 12 even famously quipped "Man, that may have been a short one for Neil, but it was a long one for me!" (Conrad was one of the shorter of the Apollo astronauts and word was he even had a bet that he'd say something fairly less dignified than Neil did with his first step). His first step comments were somewhat comical but also true due to the long step between that last rung and the footpad. Earl
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Earl L. Cagle, Jr. NAR# 29523 TRA# 962 SAM# 73 Owner/Producer Point 39 Productions Rocket-Brained Since 1970 |
#3
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Quote:
In the mini-series, "From the Earth to the Moon"by Tom Hanks, there was a great episode about the design and building of the LM. The engineers has to invent the tools to build it. This is a great series to watch. |
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