John Gavin
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John Gavin
I'm sorry to say that I'd not heard of John Gavin until I read his obituary in today's Times. But, what an Engineering career ! (This pasted from the New York Times online); didn't apparently deliver on budget, but I'm inclined to forgive him that for the rest.
G
G
November 4, 2010
John Gavin, Who Helped Put First Man on Moon, Dies at 90
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
John G. Gavin Jr., who rode herd over the immensely complex design,
construction and testing of the first vehicle to visit the moon - a task
that included anticipating 400 different landing surfaces, from ice to
boulders to dust to potholes - died on Saturday in Amherst, Mass. He was
90.
The cause was acute leukemia and pneumonia, his family said.
When President John F. Kennedy declared in 1961 that America would go to
the moon by the end of the decade, the task seemed almost unbelievably
daunting. But tens of thousands across America pitched in, and Mr. Gavin
had one of the most important roles, as part of the Apollo 11 mission.
An M.I.T.-trained engineer who had worked on early jet aircraft engines
during World War II, Mr. Gavin managed the 7,500-member team that made
the Eagle, the clunky lunar module that settled on the lunar surface, in
a spot called the Sea of Tranquillity, on July 20, 1969.
"Houston, Tranquillity Base here," Neil A. Armstrong, the Apollo 11
commander, announced to mission control as half a billion people watched
on television. "The Eagle has landed."
As director of the lunar module program for the Grumman Aircraft
Engineering Corporation, Mr. Gavin had to make sure that the craft - a
combination two-stage rocket and two-man spacecraft weighing 32,000
pounds - would land gently on the moon's surface, then take off again on
its own power to rejoin a larger spacecraft in lunar orbit.
The odd, bulbous module with spindly legs was called the world's first
true spacecraft because it could operate only in outer space.
The margins for error were so tiny that Commander Armstrong had only 20
seconds of fuel left after changing landing sites because of rocks. Mr.
Gavin was "literally" holding his breath, he recalled.
An even more tense moment followed. If the blastoff from the moon's
surface failed - a critical step that could not be simulated in
terrestrial tests - Commander Armstrong and Col. Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin
Jr., the lunar module pilot, would be stranded forever. (The third
member of the mission, Lt. Col. Michael Collins, was orbiting the moon
in the command module Columbia.)
Everything worked, a happy occurrence that would be repeated with
modules in six more missions. In all, Grumman built a dozen.
A memorable feat performed by the module came in April 1970, when it
acted as a lifeboat after an oxygen tank exploded aboard the Apollo 13
spacecraft. The mission's three astronauts returned to earth inside the
module. All the while, Mr. Gavin and others were at mission control in
Houston helping to guide the men to safety. NASA awarded Mr. Gavin its
distinguished public service medal for his role in the crisis.
Mr. Gavin would go on to be president, chief operating officer and
chairman of the executive committee of the Grumman Corporation. The
company merged into the Northrop Corporation in 1994, forming the
Northrop Grumman Corporation.
In his 39-year career with the company, Mr. Gavin oversaw enterprises as
diverse as city buses and wings for the space shuttle. But it was his
shepherding of the lunar module's development - considered by many to
have been the most challenging aspect of the moon voyage - that elevated
him to prominence.
Grumman had begun pondering the possibility of a lunar-landing project
in 1960 and assigned Mr. Gavin to a group doing preliminary work on a
module. When Grumman got the contract in 1962, he was put in charge of a
team that included Tom Kelly, the chief design engineer.
It was a tricky task. The module had to be light, to reduce energy
consumption and battery size. Because there is no air resistance on the
moon, reverse acceleration was needed to stop forward progress.
Everything had to be tested and tested again: some 14,000 imperfections
were corrected over almost a decade. And because there could no testing
in actual lunar conditions, an extensive array of backup systems had to
be installed while still minimizing weight.
Preparations for the moon landing were inherently uncertain. Imagined
possibilities included a layer of dust more than 30 feet thick, a
slippery surface like ice, and potholes.
"So we developed a computer program, based on tests of a quarter-scale
model of the lunar module, and we ran the program through some 400
different landing conditions," Mr. Gavin said in an interview with
Technology Review, published by M.I.T., in 1994.
From an original estimate of $350 million, the module's cost rose to
$1.5 billion.
"If a project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact
cost and exact schedule at the beginning," Mr. Gavin told Technology
Review. "And if you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule,
chances are that the technology is obsolete."
Joseph Gleason Gavin Jr. was born on Sept. 18, 1920, in Somerville,
Mass. As a boy, he was enthralled by the imaginary exploits of Buck
Rogers and the real ones of Charles A. Lindbergh. He once traveled for
hours to see "Lucky Lindy" land at a small airfield in Vermont.
He earned undergraduate and master's degrees in aeronautical engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was captain of
the varsity crew. During World War II, he was a lieutenant in the Navy
involved in the early work on jet aircraft propulsion. He joined Grumman
in 1946 as a design engineer working on Navy fighters.
After his retirement in 1985, Mr. Gavin advised the federal government
on energy policy and space matters and pursued charitable interests.
Mr. Gavin is survived by his wife of 67 years, the former Dorothy Grace
Dunklee; his sons, Joseph III and Donald; and four grandchildren. A
daughter, Tay Anne Gavin Erickscon, died in 1998.
In remarks to an M.I.T. alumni publication, Mr. Gavin, a downhill skier
until the age of 86, described the appeal of his work: "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."
John Gavin, Who Helped Put First Man on Moon, Dies at 90
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
John G. Gavin Jr., who rode herd over the immensely complex design,
construction and testing of the first vehicle to visit the moon - a task
that included anticipating 400 different landing surfaces, from ice to
boulders to dust to potholes - died on Saturday in Amherst, Mass. He was
90.
The cause was acute leukemia and pneumonia, his family said.
When President John F. Kennedy declared in 1961 that America would go to
the moon by the end of the decade, the task seemed almost unbelievably
daunting. But tens of thousands across America pitched in, and Mr. Gavin
had one of the most important roles, as part of the Apollo 11 mission.
An M.I.T.-trained engineer who had worked on early jet aircraft engines
during World War II, Mr. Gavin managed the 7,500-member team that made
the Eagle, the clunky lunar module that settled on the lunar surface, in
a spot called the Sea of Tranquillity, on July 20, 1969.
"Houston, Tranquillity Base here," Neil A. Armstrong, the Apollo 11
commander, announced to mission control as half a billion people watched
on television. "The Eagle has landed."
As director of the lunar module program for the Grumman Aircraft
Engineering Corporation, Mr. Gavin had to make sure that the craft - a
combination two-stage rocket and two-man spacecraft weighing 32,000
pounds - would land gently on the moon's surface, then take off again on
its own power to rejoin a larger spacecraft in lunar orbit.
The odd, bulbous module with spindly legs was called the world's first
true spacecraft because it could operate only in outer space.
The margins for error were so tiny that Commander Armstrong had only 20
seconds of fuel left after changing landing sites because of rocks. Mr.
Gavin was "literally" holding his breath, he recalled.
An even more tense moment followed. If the blastoff from the moon's
surface failed - a critical step that could not be simulated in
terrestrial tests - Commander Armstrong and Col. Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin
Jr., the lunar module pilot, would be stranded forever. (The third
member of the mission, Lt. Col. Michael Collins, was orbiting the moon
in the command module Columbia.)
Everything worked, a happy occurrence that would be repeated with
modules in six more missions. In all, Grumman built a dozen.
A memorable feat performed by the module came in April 1970, when it
acted as a lifeboat after an oxygen tank exploded aboard the Apollo 13
spacecraft. The mission's three astronauts returned to earth inside the
module. All the while, Mr. Gavin and others were at mission control in
Houston helping to guide the men to safety. NASA awarded Mr. Gavin its
distinguished public service medal for his role in the crisis.
Mr. Gavin would go on to be president, chief operating officer and
chairman of the executive committee of the Grumman Corporation. The
company merged into the Northrop Corporation in 1994, forming the
Northrop Grumman Corporation.
In his 39-year career with the company, Mr. Gavin oversaw enterprises as
diverse as city buses and wings for the space shuttle. But it was his
shepherding of the lunar module's development - considered by many to
have been the most challenging aspect of the moon voyage - that elevated
him to prominence.
Grumman had begun pondering the possibility of a lunar-landing project
in 1960 and assigned Mr. Gavin to a group doing preliminary work on a
module. When Grumman got the contract in 1962, he was put in charge of a
team that included Tom Kelly, the chief design engineer.
It was a tricky task. The module had to be light, to reduce energy
consumption and battery size. Because there is no air resistance on the
moon, reverse acceleration was needed to stop forward progress.
Everything had to be tested and tested again: some 14,000 imperfections
were corrected over almost a decade. And because there could no testing
in actual lunar conditions, an extensive array of backup systems had to
be installed while still minimizing weight.
Preparations for the moon landing were inherently uncertain. Imagined
possibilities included a layer of dust more than 30 feet thick, a
slippery surface like ice, and potholes.
"So we developed a computer program, based on tests of a quarter-scale
model of the lunar module, and we ran the program through some 400
different landing conditions," Mr. Gavin said in an interview with
Technology Review, published by M.I.T., in 1994.
From an original estimate of $350 million, the module's cost rose to
$1.5 billion.
"If a project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact
cost and exact schedule at the beginning," Mr. Gavin told Technology
Review. "And if you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule,
chances are that the technology is obsolete."
Joseph Gleason Gavin Jr. was born on Sept. 18, 1920, in Somerville,
Mass. As a boy, he was enthralled by the imaginary exploits of Buck
Rogers and the real ones of Charles A. Lindbergh. He once traveled for
hours to see "Lucky Lindy" land at a small airfield in Vermont.
He earned undergraduate and master's degrees in aeronautical engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was captain of
the varsity crew. During World War II, he was a lieutenant in the Navy
involved in the early work on jet aircraft propulsion. He joined Grumman
in 1946 as a design engineer working on Navy fighters.
After his retirement in 1985, Mr. Gavin advised the federal government
on energy policy and space matters and pursued charitable interests.
Mr. Gavin is survived by his wife of 67 years, the former Dorothy Grace
Dunklee; his sons, Joseph III and Donald; and four grandchildren. A
daughter, Tay Anne Gavin Erickscon, died in 1998.
In remarks to an M.I.T. alumni publication, Mr. Gavin, a downhill skier
until the age of 86, described the appeal of his work: "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."
