As Systems Test Chief for LEM Test Article 8 (LTA-8), Bill played an important role in the Apollo Program. He joined Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation in Bethpage in 1963 to work on the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) and relocated to El Lago, Texas (near Houston) from 1966 to 1969 for lunar module testing.

In his files were two articles from the Grumman Engineering Library that provided project orientation and memorialized the objectives. A March 1963 article by Bernard Kovit Associate Editor of SPACE/AERONAUTICS Magazine gave an overview of the LEM mission, technical approach and subcontracting arrangement. This article begins by noting that an “excursion” is a pleasure trip, and may have instigated the renaming to Lunar Module. As the design was frozen, Missiles and Rockets printed Michael Getler‘s article “Critical Design Phase Ending on Lunar Excursion Module,” which appeared on July 15, 1963.

He kept these NASA photos from 1963 of physical models of the test facilities in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory (SESL) to be built at the Manned (now Johnson) Spacecraft Center.

The schedule was always a challenge, as shown below.

I still recall my father’s sickened look at dinner when the news came over the TV that our astronauts Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee had died in the Apollo I launchpad fire. And I recall how subdued we were when our classmate Ed White Jr. first boarded the schoolbus after his father’s funeral. The special report in Technology Week, and especially the findings, make for somber reading. They are still pertinent.

Program delays from the fire allowed Grumman to catch up and LTA-8 was transported from Bethpage to Ellington Air Force Base via the Super Guppy on Sept 18, 1967. Here are some interior and exterior views

LTA-8 was the first man-rated production vehicle and was intended to validate the environmental control system of the LEM in a simulated space environment. Two manned environmental tests were undertaken — first under extreme cold, and then under extreme heat, inside the thermal/vacuum Chamber B. Bill was in charge of a large organization of Grummanites and contractors, as shown in the Systems Test Organization Chart below.

The testing was completed safely, winning the second “Silver Snoopy” award on 9 June 1968 for NASA astronauts Joe Gagliano and Jim Irwin, and Grumman Test Pilot Gerald Gibbons and Glennon Kingsley. The outstanding work by Grumman’s Houston team was acknowledged in the ‘attaboy’ letter below from Apollo Program Manager George Low, later NASA Administrator and President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

After the tests were complete, LTA-8 was shipped to a boneyard. Fortunately, it was rescued and is now on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Bill discussed the LEM program in this video from May 30, 2002.

Here are some other documents he kept that showed how the organization changed throughout the project. A telephone directory from 1967 shows many names that became familiar from his dinner table conversations (Jack Buxton, Marshall Conover, Bob Edgerly, Randy Rando, Stan Sawicki, Bill Stead) or who were fathers of schoolmates (Frank Edelin, Don Oehl)