GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 1 of 3

Part of To the Moon Interviews.

1998

Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, is interviewed about the science of getting to the moon. Kelly describes direct descent, Earth Orbit Rendezvous, and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, and explains why each did or did not work (Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was selected as the best method). When building the Lunar Module, Kelly modeled it to have two parts, one for reaching the moon, and the other for orbit, and walks through some of the practicalities of designing the module for a low-gravity environment. As the first spacecraft that would operate solely in space, the Lunar Module was required to be lightweight, and describes the extreme measures of building the craft. Time and money were big pressures on the engineers, with both NASA and the competing Russian program pushing the engineers to build as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and Kelly speculates that higher-ups at NASA might have known about the Russian attempts to reach the moon. Kelly describes working long hours, but calls it "a labor of love", and describes early, rejected models of the Lunar Module, and talks about the astronauts' roles in the tests of the modules. Apollo 8 was originally planned to test the Lunar Module, but because the module was not ready, it was pushed to Apollo 9, which Kelly explains, and Apollo 8 instead sent the Command and Service Module (CSM) to the moon without the Lunar Module.

Series

NOVA

Program

To the Moon

Program Number

2610

Title

Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 1 of 3

Series Description

NOVA is a general-interest documentary series that addresses a single science issue each week. Billed as "science adventures for curious grown-ups" when it first aired in March, 1974, NOVA continues to offer an informative and entertaining approach to a challenging subject. It is also one of television's most acclaimed series, having won every major television award, most of them many times over.

Program Description

Alan Binder, former Principal Investigator of NASA's Lunar Prospector mission, is interviewed about the Lunar Prospector. Binder says that if moon travel became viable again, he would want to go to the moon, but says that in order to get financial and public support for space exploration, scientists need to sell the science of the moon. Another option, according to Binder, is to make travel to the moon commercially viable, and lists many benefits of going to the moon, including using it as a fuel source, or colonizing the surface for human habitation (audio cuts out from 00:07:30 - 00:09:00). Binder explains the work of the Lunar Prospector and talks about the necessity of having computers to do a lot of the work. On Apollo, Binder calls the program the most significant event of the 21st century, and talks about the roles of the Apollo program, the Clementine spacecraft, and hte Lunar Prospector. The interview ends with Binder's views on his relationship with NASA, which he characterizes as being needlessly bound up in beaurocracy and red tape.

Duration

0:22:47

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

Space

Astronaut

Moon

Gemini

Apollo

American history

Creators

WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)

Contributors

Kelly, Thomas Joseph, 1929-2002 (Interviewee)

Rights Summary

Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation

Citation

Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 1 of 3,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed April 16, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_77FB11D3E8C6479589847F9BD0B36165.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 1 of 3.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. April 16, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_77FB11D3E8C6479589847F9BD0B36165>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 1 of 3. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_77FB11D3E8C6479589847F9BD0B36165