GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 2 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 engineering behind the Apollo program. Kelly talks about his role in the Apollo program and talks about the computer overload during Apollo 11 that triggered issues on the moon and the ground, and forced Neil Armstrong to manually steer the spacecraft with only seconds of fuel remaining. However, there were also issues with the heat exchange on the Apollo 11 spacecraft, which Kelly explains as being caused by a lump of fuel. To fix the issue, Kelly says they "burped the engine" by having the astronauts flick the switch on and off. Kelly talks about the LM and the "spider" and how the astronauts treated it gently, as well as the concerns of the machine, due to its construction. When he first heard that Apollo 13 was having an issue, Kelly was in Boston and was flown down to the Grummon factory, since Kelly's LM was the astronauts' only hope of survival. Kelly had to determine how long the LM could last in terms of oxygen, food, and consumables, and reached out to suppliers all around the country to test the LM's ability to conserve energy.

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 2 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

0:23:38

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

American history

Space

Gemini

Astronaut

Apollo

Moon

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 2 of 3,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed December 26, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_9CEF7280B8C643C29FC794E02F82CAAF.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 2 of 3.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. December 26, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_9CEF7280B8C643C29FC794E02F82CAAF>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas Joseph Kelly, aerospace engineer responsible for working on the Apollo Lunar Module, part 2 of 3. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_9CEF7280B8C643C29FC794E02F82CAAF