Thomas Kelly, director of the engineering team that designed and built the lunar module that ferried astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. to and from the lunar surface during their historic 1969 flight to the moon, has died.
He was 72.
Kelly, dubbed "the father of the lunar module" by NASA, died Saturday of pulmonary fibrosis at his home in Cutchogue, N.Y.
On July 20, 1969, the lunar module carrying Armstrong and Aldrin touched down on the powdery surface of the moon. "Houston, Tranquillity Base here," Armstrong radioed. "The Eagle has landed."
In the Spacecraft Analysis Room next to Mission Control at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Center in Houston, Kelly had been troubleshooting problems throughout the flight.
But his thrill at the lunar module's successful landing quickly turned to concern as control monitors signaled a significant problem: Ice had formed in a fuel line and become stuck; residual heat from the engine was moving up toward the frozen fuel.
If the fuel got hot enough, it could detonate.
"We were on the verge of taking action when the problem corrected itself," Kelly said. "So after that I was able to relax and say, 'Wow, we did it!'"
For Kelly, "we" meant the 3,000 engineers and 4,000 technicians and mechanics at Grumman Aerospace Corp. in Bethpage, N.Y., who spent seven years designing and building the lunar module under Kelly's leadership.
"Tom Kelly was a major force in our nation's space race," said Joshua Stoff, curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, N.Y., home to one of three remaining lunar modules.
"He designed one of the most historic vehicles ever built," Stoff said Monday. "It's the only vehicle that ever took human beings from one world to another, and nothing else before or since has ever been like [it]."
Resembling a bizarre insect, the lunar module had four spindly legs and a lumpy body.
It was covered with a thin skin of gold-aluminized Mylar. It weighed 12,000 pounds empty and about 30,000 pounds with fuel. And it measured 29 feet across from footpad to footpad and was about as tall.
"Since it was only working in space it didn't need to have any aerodynamic qualities whatsoever, so its shape and form are perfectly functional," Stoff said.
"That's why it's a very oddly shaped vehicle with things sticking out all over it: legs and antennas, fuel tanks--all sorts of things."
