In 1961, only a few weeks after Alan Shepherd completed the first American suborbital flight, President John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. The next year, NASA awarded the right to meet the extraordinary challenge of building a lunar excursion module to a small airplane company called Grumman from Long Island, New York. Chief engineer Thomas J. Kelly gives a first-hand account of designing, building, testing, and flying the Apollo lunar module. It was, he writes, "and aerospace engineer's dream job of the century." Kelly's account begins with the imaginative process of sketching solutions to a host of technical challenges with an emphasis on safety, reliability, and maintainability. He catalogs numerous test failures, including propulsion-system leaks, ascent-engine instability, stress corrosion of the aluminum allow parts, and battery problems, as well as their fixes under the ever-present constraints of budget and schedule. He also recaptures the anticipation of the first unmanned lunar module flight with Apollo 5 in 1968, the exhilaration of hearing Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong report that "The Eagle has Landed," and the pride of having inadvertently provided a vital "lifeboat" for the crew of the disabled Apollo 13.
