khaosworks | Mar. 26th, 2002

They called him the "Father of the Lunar Module". The name was not undeserved. While he was not the man who came up with the idea of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous as a means to get from the Earth to the Moon, nor was he the man who pushed the idea through to the higher ups at NASA, he was the man whose drive and vision headed the team of Grumman Engineers that made that concept a reality (the story of how LOR came to be the way to go can be found here).

The Lunar Module was, and still is, mankind's only manned spacecraft design - that is to say, a craft built solely to navigate out of Earth's atmosphere. Every other component of the Apollo craft was meant to be used at least briefly in atmosphere, but not the LM - she was a pure creature of space, with no aerodynamics to guide her design, just weight and functionality. As a result, the vaguely arachnid like shape of the LM held to no known aesthetic, and yet looking at it and understanding why it was shaped that way, one begins to get a true appreciation of the underlying principles of its design - and that understanding provides the LM with an unconventional beauty of its own. It may look like a toaster with legs, but it was a beauty nonetheless.

Kelly was there at Mission Control when LM-3, the first LM to make it into space, flew on its maiden voyage in Earth orbit on Apollo 9. The crew nicknamed her "Spider". Kelly was also one of the first people to be called in when Apollo 13's near disaster nearly killed its crew. Kelly had to figure out a way, along with the rest of Mission Control, to use the LM in ways it had never truly been designed for. Knowing the years of sheer hard work and mis-steps that had taken place during the LM's testing, Kelly was understandably nervous. But he trusted in his creation, and in the end, the good ship "Aquarius" performed beyond all expectations, sacrificing herself to keep the crew alive, and get them home.

In the HBO mini-series, "From the Earth to the Moon", the episode "Spider" tells the story of the LM. In it, the Tom Kelly character says at one point that a machine has a soul - the soul of all of the people who have worked on her. Next time you look at a picture of an Apollo Lunar Module, just remember that Tom Kelly's soul is forever a part of that magnificent machine, and probably the most significant part of it all. And in that respect, he will be equally forever with us. For his story in his own words, go read his book "Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module".

Thomas J. Kelly died, after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis, on 23 March 2002.

The dream of spaceflight lives on in us.