{"id":1034,"date":"2016-04-06T18:26:17","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T18:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2025-09-30T18:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T18:11:08","slug":"tracking-down-the-apollo-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/2016\/04\/06\/tracking-down-the-apollo-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"New York’s links to the epic Apollo story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Without a doubt, mankind’s finest moment began on May\u00a025, 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard’s historic flight, when President John F Kennedy told Congress, “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Eight\u00a0years and 58\u00a0days later \u2013 and with just 164 days to spare \u2013 his vision was realized when Apollo 11 touched down on the surface of the moon and\u00a0Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out.<\/p>\n

The Space Race had actually already begun by this point, but only just. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space taking with him\u00a0the Cold War into orbit and beyond.\u00a0Kennedy, in his infinite wisdom, used this post-WWII paranoia to skillfully position\u00a0public interest, so the population would accept and support his ambitious\u00a0lunar dream. And ambitious it was, but not impossible. The solo astronaut Mercury program had already started and next would come a new spacecraft and a series of\u00a0two-man missions\u00a0known as Gemini. (A quick, effective and thoroughly entertaining way to learn more about the legendary Mercury astronauts is to watch an epic movie called The Right Stuff<\/a><\/em>.) The next stage in the grand scheme of things was to design, build and fly the spacecraft that would eventually take astronauts to the moon, in what would become known as the Apollo missions.<\/p>\n

\"Lunar

The actual<\/em> unused LM13, originally designated for Apollo 18 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

This was no mean feat.\u00a0Companies all across America competed for the contracts\u00a0to construct every element\u00a0required, from the environment suits and life support\u00a0to the rocket engines and landing craft. At first,\u00a0all manner of\u00a0ideas were thrown around on how to actually get to the moon, until one bright spark by the name of Tom Dolan put forward the idea of what’s called “lunar orbit rendezvous<\/a>” based on an theory first proposed in 1916 by Ukrainian rocket theoretician Yuri Kondratyuk. Largely dismissed by scientists as impractical, unworkable and even unsafe, Dolan’s idea caught the attention of John C. Houbolt, who persisted, eventually winning\u00a0over NASA management and as history has shown, the idea\u00a0worked.<\/p>\n

Consequently, this method required a lunar landing\u00a0component; a spacecraft that could separate from the orbiting command module and actually touch down and take off from the surface of the moon. The tall task of designing, building, testing and delivering the Lunar Excursion\u00a0Module \u2013 which was later shortened to just Lunar Module, but remained\u00a0known as the LEM by many involved in its conception \u2013 was awarded to Long Island-based Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, which\u00a0had proved itself\u00a0in World War II by producing many of the fighter aircraft used in the Pacific theatre. By contrast, the Apollo Command Module was being developed as far away as it possibly could be, on the opposite side of the country, in Downey, Los Angeles, by\u00a0North American Aviation.<\/p>\n

\"click<\/a>

The old Grumman site, Bethpage, Long Island. About two hour’s drive from Manhattan<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s a little-known TV mini-series made in 1998,\u00a0shown\u00a0on HBO and produced by Tom Hanks, a self-confessed space buff, called From the Earth to the Moon<\/a><\/em> that shows different stages in the Apollo space program through 12 episodes and a variety of unique viewpoints, including the\u00a0tragic fire and finger-pointing that followed\u00a0the Apollo 1 accident,\u00a0Alan Shepherd’s return to the program with Apollo 14, the\u00a0missions\u00a0from the astronaut’s wives’ perspective and one episode, simply entitled Spider<\/em> that shows the story of the development of the Lunar Module from the Grumman facility\u00a0in Bethpage, Long Island, led by aerospace engineer\u00a0Tom Kelly<\/a>,\u00a0played convincingly by Matt Craven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Lunar Module proved its mettle of course when the crew of Apollo 13 were forced to rely on it as a lifeboat, when an oxygen tank explosion crippled their Service Module a little over two days into the mission and 203,980\u00a0miles from Earth. However, the single, most complex piece of machinery ever built was not without its development problems. The first test flight, a\u00a0low Earth orbit, was delayed by eight months and ultimately became part of the Apollo 5 mission and the first manned flight in orbit was also delayed four months and became part of the Apollo 9 mission. Despite these and other setbacks,\u00a0not one single system\u00a0on the Lunar Module ever failed at any time during the entire Apollo program, a claim that can’t be matched by any other element on any mission.<\/p>\n

\"click<\/a>

A map of the entire Bethpage Grumman facility\u00a0posted on a forum on collectspace.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Since those long-gone days of daring deeds, a lot\u00a0has changed and Grumman has\u00a0moved, merged and remodeled itself\u00a0and much of the area that made up the “Ironworks” as it was affectionately referred\u00a0to by locals and employees, has been redeveloped. However, a drive all the way to Bethpage and close inspection of the grounds can still reveal some interesting things. The drive itself takes roughly between two and three hours, depending very much on traffic. Taking the Brooklyn Bridge across the East River does mean you won’t have to pay a toll, but also means you’ll hit congestion between the bridge and the 495. Then it’s just all the way along the\u00a0Long Island Expressway.<\/p>\n

\"click<\/a>

The Bethpage site from Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n

A reasonably thorough\u00a0search online will turn up\u00a0one or two discussion forums<\/a> and blogs about the old Grumman site and even provide a few good pics. And when you take those and overlay them with images from Google Earth, you get an\u00a0idea of how much has changed and exactly where some things still are.<\/p>\n

\"click<\/a>

And a composite of the last two images overlaid<\/p><\/div>\n

A composition of the old site map and the Google Earth image shows clearly how many of the original buildings still remain, but the two runways have now been built upon and from first hand experience of driving round and round this site, I can safely say it’s a fairly full industrial complex now.<\/p>\n

However, building 5, visible towards the bottom of the image, is where the Lunar Modules were actually constructed. It\u00a0was big enough to contain the construction of\u00a0three separate modules at a time. Today, it\u00a0makes up what’s called the Grumman Studios, a huge indoor film and television studio that takes full advantage of the enormous building size. According to the website<\/a>, The Amazing Spiderman<\/em>, The Avengers<\/em> and The Bourne Legacy<\/em> are among the movies that have been filmed there. Something very similar has happened at the\u00a0former Rockwell International plant, where the Apollo Command Module was built and was\u00a0later turned into\u00a0Downey Studios<\/a>, although that’s now being knocked down to make way for a shopping centre.<\/p>\n

\"building5\"

Building 5 as it looks today<\/p><\/div>\n

As long as\u00a0there isn’t a movie being shot or even a presidential candidate campaign\u00a0rally (can you believe Donald Trump was holding a rally the day after my visit) and providing you explain exactly what you’re doing to the roving security cars, then you should be able to drive right up to the building. Altogether,\u00a0there’s seven studios, or at least seven giant studio doors marked with numbers, starting with one, where the arrow is pointing in the picture above, all the way anti-clockwise around\u00a0the building until you get to studio 7, which is the one in front in the picture above.<\/p>\n

\"Grumman

An old pic of building 5, or plant 5, from the collectspace.com\u00a0site<\/p><\/div>\n

Incidentally, there’s a brief\u00a0explanation\u00a0of Grumman’s link to the space program on its official site here<\/a>. And lest we forget this is also where the F-14 Tomcat came from. Without a doubt, the single coolest<\/em> fighter jet ever created.<\/p>\n

The other absolute\u00a0must-see while you’re here is the commemorative plaque. \u00a0It’s not very big and none of the blogs or discussion forums actually tell you where it is…and I drove past it at least three times before I saw it, so I’ll save you the trouble I went through. On the south-east corner of South Oyster Bay Road and Grumman Road West, opposite Hazel Street is this…<\/p>\n

\"Grumman<\/p>\n

There’s another plaque, in a totally different location, that says, “Grumman: 1930-94 On December 7th 1941, while Pearl Harbor was under attack, this assembly bldg#2 was dedicated to build the TBF Avengers and F6F Hellcats” and it’s\u00a0around the back of the site on a road simply called Grumman Airport, on the east\u00a0side, inbetween\u00a0Eglevsky Ballet Company and\u00a0USPS Logistical and Distribution Center. But this<\/em> is the one I came to see.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Most of the area that surrounds the old Grumman Ironworks is industrial in one form or another. One big business park seems to blend into the next, each one full of low-rise warehouses and retail outlets.\u00a0During the 60s, Grumman was the single biggest employer of locals and engineers, MIT graduates and even Navy pilots\u00a0from all over the east coast\u00a0could apply their skills here. So it goes without saying there’s still significant\u00a0pride in Bethpage from those who know what was pioneered here. And to that end, just 25 minutes drive or so from the Grumman facility is the Cradle of Aviation Museum<\/a>, or CAM. As the site says, “Dedicated to preserving Long Island’s rich aerospace heritage of discovery and to inspiring future generations through science and technology” and there’s a very good page that explains in more detail<\/a>\u00a0the association of Long Island and America’s aviation history.<\/p>\n

Housed in a few hangars of what was once Mitchel Field, a busy Air Force Base, it’s located on\u00a0Charles Lindbergh Blvd, Garden City. You more or less\u00a0just follow the 107 (Hicksvillle Road) from the Grumman site, swing a right onto the 24 (Hempstead Turnpike) and you’re there in no time at all.<\/p>\n

Being a total space nut, I’ve\u00a0seen several air & space museums across America…and in all honesty, I think this one is the best yet. It might not be the biggest, I think that honour\u00a0goes to Seattle, but they’ve crammed so much in. Full-size aircraft hang from the ceiling, left and right and one or two squeezed inbetween. There are\u00a0stunning recreations of early aircraft workshops, a planetarium, interactive and educational displays and there’s even a little section where you can watch on monitors and listen in to New York air traffic control (Terminal Radar Approach Control or TRACON<\/a>) in real time. If you’ve ever seen Pushing Tin<\/a><\/em>, then you know the airspace over New York is the most crowded in the world, with over 7,000 passengers planes\u00a0landing and leaving every day from three international airports, JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, which are all within 20 miles of each other. An interesting note is that the New York TRACON is actually located<\/a> between the old Grumman site and the museum.<\/p>\n

Naturally,\u00a0there’s a big Grumman presence at the CAM, and rightly\u00a0so. Not only is\u00a0there a\u00a0TBM-3E Avenger,\u00a0F6F-5 Hellcat and\u00a0F4F-3 Wildcat, all beautifully restored and displayed in recreated scenes from their WWII history, but there are two\u00a0complete F-14 Tomcats and a standalone cockpit positioned at floor level, so you can see just how little legroom Navy pilots had.<\/p>\n

\"Grumman

Arguably the most stylish fighter aircraft ever flown, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat<\/p><\/div>\n

However, the highlight of my visit was the\u00a0actual, built-but-unused LM13, originally designated for Apollo 18, which takes pride of place in the museum’s section marked ‘Space Exploration’. The first picture on this blog entry, on the previous page, shows that. Next door, there’s a mockup of a Lunar Module being built in a clean room that would have been in building 5 of the Grumman site.<\/p>\n

There’s even a restored A-10 Thunderbolt on display and I’ve never seen one of those in a museum before.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The\u00a0last part of my Apollo extravaganza was a bit special. The night before I embarked on my Long Island expedition to find the birthplace of the legendary Lunar Module, I had sat in the front row of the little presentation…er, theatre of the Soho Apple store and listened to Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin give a talk as part of the publicity behind the release of a new book,\u00a0No Dream Is Too High<\/em>. We arrived two hours early and it was almost half full already. Thankfully, there were still seats in the front row, less than 10 feet away from Mr Aldrin would be sitting. A quick check on the ‘events’ section of his website<\/a>\u00a0revealed that he would only be giving a talk and that there would be no copies of his book available to buy and he wouldn’t be autographing anything. However, the following day, in Huntington, Long Island, he would be doing a book signing. Thus this\u00a0whole adventure began.<\/p>\n

\"Buzz

Mr Aldrin and his manager-of-sorts Christina Rasch-Korp take questions at the Soho Apple store<\/p><\/div>\n

There was an awful lot to get through, as you can imagine, in just 60 minutes, but with the assistance of his manager\/personal assistant\/carer, or just plain “mission controller” as she said she likes to call herself, he shared a few stories of growing up in New Jersey and of that historic day in July 1969. As the talk ended\u00a0and the standing ovation died down,\u00a0the front area was swamped by people who had all manner of items they were hoping to have signed, but as stated, Mr Aldrin\u00a0wasn’t having any of it, instead throwing a smile and a wave to the crowd and disappearing with his entourage back stage.<\/p>\n

The signing was being held at a store in a beautiful part of New York\u00a0called Huntington, on the\u00a0north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County. The store, called Book Revue<\/a>, apparently has a reputation for organising popular\u00a0book signings and thus attracts many\u00a0big-names and equally big crowds. The impressive list<\/a> includes\u00a0authors like Ray Bradbury and Michael Crichton, US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Mercury 7\u00a0astronauts\u00a0Alan Shepard and Scott Carpenter. I was told this wasn’t\u00a0even the first time Mr\u00a0Aldrin had done a signing here.<\/p>\n

There was a very specific set of guidelines on Mr Aldrin’s site that explained with little ambiguity exactly how the evening was going to go down…<\/p>\n

\u2022 Buzz will only autograph the new book No Dream is Too High<\/em>
\n\u2022 He will NOT sign any memorabilia, photos, space related items, other books authored or not authored by him
\n\u2022 He will not personalize and will sign his name only
\n\u2022 We allow photos as\u00a0he’s signing, but we won’t pose for photos\u00a0or allow anyone behind the table to take a photo
\n\u2022 Each venue will decide if there is a limit to how many books you may purchase
\n\u2022 Buzz will continue to sign until the last person in line having purchased a book is taken care of
\n\u2022 Once all books are sold we will consider the signing over<\/h6>\n

We\u00a0arrived in Huntington at about 4:30pm, the signing was scheduled to begin at 7pm. Although the official Buzz Aldrin website said there would also be a talk and Q&A session, the nice man in the book store said that was extremely unlikely. Upon purchasing the book, we\u00a0were given a ticket with a letter on, “D”, based on how many copies of the book had been sold before ours. Each letter assignment equated to between 50 and 100 people since you could purchase two books on any one letter ticket.\u00a0So there were between 150 and 300 people in front of us before they’d call for D ticket holders to start queuing.<\/p>\n

Having\u00a0been to book signings before, albeit not on this scale,\u00a0I had a\u00a0slight\u00a0idea of what to expect. I knew I’d only have seconds with this living legend. How on earth he manages to maintain these kinds of grueling schedules, like promotional tours, books signings and public appearances, I honestly\u00a0don’t know. All I really<\/em> wanted to do, was shake his hand, but\u00a0I suspected that wouldn’t be an option, given he was also signing hundreds and hundreds<\/em> of books.<\/p>\n

Following a positively scrummy burger at the delightful Mundays diner<\/a>, we headed back to the bookshop. By now it was nearly 7pm and the place was heaving<\/em>.\u00a0People filled the bookshop, knocking over books, accidentally kicking them under tables. Everybody was shuffling their feet, sharing\u00a0their opinion on how the queuing system should be better organized, there was even one guy who came dressed as an astronaut. His outfit was actually pretty cool.<\/p>\n

\"Buzz<\/p>\n

For hours we stood, slowly stumbling\u00a0forward, sweating in the heat, until our letter was called and then the\u00a0stampede began. The poor woman from the bookstore who was corralling the crowd tried to keep control, but we could all see\u00a0her slowly unraveling. We even witnessed\u00a0a ridiculously\u00a0heated discussion\u00a0on\u00a0how to best proceed with manned space flight break\u00a0out in the isles between Social Science and Personal Growth.<\/p>\n

Since this lovely, family-owned bookstore had so many big book signings, it must be safe to assume then that everyone in Huntington has a really impressive library.\u00a0The nice bookstore girl, who was slowly losing her sanity explained\u00a0it was like going to a music concert, the gathered horde were mostly local, but some would make the effort to travel here from further afield.\u00a0People of all ages were here, parents with their unruly offspring, war vets of all ages, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, even teenagers \u2013 an age-group I’d genuinely thought wouldn’t appreciate the enormity of this event. Perhaps I’m wrong, or perhaps their copy will just end up eBay.<\/p>\n

\"Buzz<\/p>\n

Then my turn came. And as the production line inched\u00a0forward, my book was suddenly\u00a0snatched\u00a0from me and opened to the correct page, at which point I asked if he could actually sign the first page since there was much more clean, white space. “He’s only signing this page,” came the short, sharp\u00a0reply as\u00a0it was placed into position. Then I found myself\u00a0in front of Mr Aldrin…and wondered what to say.<\/p>\n

I knew I only had seconds, so I simply said, “We thoroughly enjoyed\u00a0your talk at the Apple store last night…” at which point\u00a0Ms\u00a0Rasch-Korp remarked, “I thought<\/em> I recognised you…” Then the National Geographic lady sitting at the other end of the the table remarked on how much she liked my (National Geographic) bag. The clock was ticking and time was running out. A little confused and not wanting to be rude to anyone, I smiled at her and turned back to Mr Aldrin who, through all the confusion had\u00a0extended his hand, which I held\u00a0gently and shook a little. “It’s an honour to meet you sir,” I said, adding, “Thank you ever so much,” as he signed my book.<\/p>\n

All too quickly it was over, but I\u00a0glanced back at the people behind me, now having their books all signed, and…he wasn’t shaking everyone’s\u00a0hand.\u00a0I thought\u00a0back to the London Star Trek convention in 2012 where I asked to shake the hand of Sir Patrick Stewart and he refused, saying he’d had too many “bone-crushers” that day, this man, Buzz Aldrin was 86 years old and this evening he was repetitively signing a total of 1,800 copies of his new book, as he later tweeted. What a guy.<\/p>\n

\"Buzz<\/p>\n

A cursory glance at his website shows that he was off to Connecticut the next day,\u00a0Philadelphia after that and Los Angeles the day after that, Followed by Florida, Washington DC and Texas. What a guy.<\/p>\n

You can follow me on Twitter here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without a doubt, mankind’s finest moment began on May\u00a025, 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard’s historic flight, when President John F Kennedy told Congress, “This nation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":73,"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2093,"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/2093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsnowden.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}