Lunar Module Meets Its Makers - The Cradle of Aviation Museum

Lunar Module Meets Its Makers - Spacecraft Exhibited at Local Museum
By Samuel Bruchey, Newsday, December 20, 2000

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Grumman Lunar Explorer Module, exhibited at Cradle of Aviation Museum

In the late 1960s, when Frank Pullo helped design electronic circuitry on several Grumman Lunar Modules used in the Apollo space missions, he put in such heavy workweeks, he was instructed to visit the company physician.

After clocking 70 hours a week, such visits were mandatory at Grumman. But Pullo, of Wantagh, didn't stop there.

He routinely clocked 90-hour weeks. And, some nights he didn't bother going home, instead curling up inside a trailer used by some of the astronauts working on the $180-million modules.

"Some of my time sheets were unbelievable," recalled Pullo, 68. "But working on the modules was like building the pyramids. We knew we were working on something that was going to be tremendously historic."

The Apollo missions led to Neal Armstrong's first steps taken on the moon and a U.S. victory in the race against the Russians to get there. The lunar missions also produced hundreds of rock and sediment samples for study and the first photographs taken of the Earth from outer space.

Today, one of the few remaining modules is on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Mitchell Field, which makes the thousands of local residents - who welded the metal, tightened the bolts and had a hand in assembling the first 15 spacecraft ever built - burst with hometown pride.

"Sometimes we wondered if we were going to pull this off," said another former Grumman engineer, Frank Verano, 67, of Westbury. "you have to remember, nothing like this had ever been done before, It was only natural to have some doubts. But you fell in love with the work and never wanted to stop."

So when plans got under way earlier this year to display the module - called LM13 - at the museum, Pullo, Verano and many others were quick to volunteer their time.

Until now, only two modules intended for lunar exploration have been on public display in the United States: one at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the other at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"When you look at our aircraft and spacecraft heritage, so much of it took place here on Long Island, it's only fitting we should have one too," said Tom Gwynne, the museum's senior planning manager.

Inside the museum's hangar yesterday morning, a crane slowly lifted the upper portion of the module, known as the ascent stage, and placed it atop the lower descent stage. Once fitted, the 22-foot aluminum and steel craft was positioned at a tilt identical to the lunar module used on the storied Apollo 11 mission, which landed gingerly on the side of a lunar hill in the summer of 1969.

Had the U.S. government not terminated the Apollo program in 1972 for political and economic reasons, LM13 would have been the next to go, scheduled for a 1973 mission exploring one of the largest lunar craters.

"Once they go up there, they don't come back," said museum curator Josh Stoff, referring to the decent stage, which is left behind on the moon and the ascent stage, which delivers the astronauts back to command base, then detonates against the moon.

"There are six others up there now; it [LM13] would have been number seven," added Stoff. "We're lucky we have it here today."