dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk) (10/17/86)
The lander had gained even more weight during the early months of the year [1965] than the command and service modules. In May, Shea pursuaded Mueller to approve an increase in lander weight to 14,850 kilograms, including crew and equipment. In June, Harry L. Reynolds warned Owen Maynard that it would be difficult to keep the spacecraft below even that figure. ... Really worried now, Grumman launched a two-pronged attack known as "Scrape" and "SWIP". Scrape meant just what the word implies, searching the structure for every chance to shave bulk off structural members. But SWIP (Super Weight Improvement Program) was Grumman's real war against weight. ... By the end of 1965, Scrape and SWIP had pruned away 1100 kilograms, providing a comfortable margin below the control weight limit. One of the more striking changes to come from this drive for a lighter spacecraft was the substitution of aluminum-mylar foil thermal blankets for rigid heatshields. The gold wrapping characteristic of the lander's exterior saved 50 kilograms. Many of these weight-reducing changes made the lander so difficult to fabricate, so fragile and vulnerable to damage, that it demanded great care and skill by assembly and checkout technicians. Structural compo- nents took on strange and complex shapes, requiring careful machining to remove any excess metal - a costly and time-comsuming process even after vendors had been found who would make these odd looking parts.* * Arnold Whittaker described how the fabrication group was caught in the squeeze between manufacturing requirements and schedule pressures. At a program management meeting he said that "one of the fellows in manufacturing came in [with] a light cardboard box. . . He said `I'll show you why everything's late.` And he dumped out a whole box of machined parts . . , very complex fittings [too thin to be even] reasonably heavy sheet metal - but it wasn't any sheet metal, it was a complex machined fitting. And he said `Man, we never built parts like this before in any quantity like this and every fitting on the LEM looks like this.`" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From "Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft", NASA SP-4205, available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, stock number 033-000-00768-0. -- Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn