I’m a huge geek when it comes to the Apollo space program. I’ve got an autographed photo from the Apollo 11 crew hanging in my office alongside a piece of the parachute line from that mission. My grandmother worked with the NASA team in Huntsville, Alabama, in the 1960s so every time I see her I try to get another story of that era out of her.
Recently I’ve been reading “Chariots for Apollo” from Charles Pellegrino and Joashua Stoff. It’s one of my favorite books on the race to the moon.
One section tells the story of Tommy Attridge, a Grumman test pilot assigned to the lunar module (LM) program. The Grumman Corporation received the contract to build the craft that would carry astronauts down to the lunar surface. However, the LM team kept second guessing themselves with their designs and decisions. Their line of thinking was, “This craft would put a man on the moon so it had to be perfect!”
When he arrived at the Grumman plant in 1967, Attridge focused on one question – “Must we build it better?” And he learned very quickly that better is the enemy of best.
Enter LM-3 (lunar module-3). An engineer finished installing the landing radar on it only to tell Attridge, “We have the best radar in the world today. But tomorrow, I can make it better because just yesterday they invented this new transistor. And if I can put the new transistor in here and add this integrated circuit. You know, now we that we have integrated circuits, we can build it better.”
Tommy answered, “Sure. Why not? We can keep putting a better one in every day. Let’s see if we can’t stretch this thing out till 1990.”
Every new day brings new gadgets and gizmos. Whatever project or product you’re working on, there’s probably something that will make it just a tad bit better tomorrow. And a little bit better the day after that. And a smidge better the following day. But for every thing that makes it better, it means one more day of not shipping.
That engineer ended up going over Attridge’s head to get the landing radar replaced. With the “better” choice came new problems as it kept locking up on itself, which made the new tech worthless. That choice ended up delaying LM-3 so that Apollo 8 launched without it. The Apollo teams found themselves even farther behind in the space race.
Aaron
on 04 Sep 13didnt I read somewhere that the spacestation used Windows 3.1 for many many years because of its stability
John Topley
on 04 Sep 13Whilst I completely agree with the sentiment in this post, the ongoing LM delays combined with the fear that a Soviet Moon landing was imminent completely changed the Apollo 8 mission profile, resulting in a number of firsts:
- First manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit - First manned spacecraft to reach the Moon - FIrst manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon
This daring and risky* leap ahead pushed Apollo ahead of the USSR and the rest is history as they say.
* Imagine an Apollo 13 scenario but without a LM “lifeboat”.
John Topley
on 04 Sep 13Those were supposed to be bullet points. They previewed OK. I guess your comments system needs a little love.
tommy
on 04 Sep 13Ah, the Apollo fairytale. Still fooling people decades later:
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo1.html
Thanks for the laugh!
Doug
on 04 Sep 13I’m in the market for a new iPhone.
I guess I should buy the one available today, even though I know a new one will be available next week.
Jamie
on 04 Sep 13http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html @tommy, check out real science instead of that garbage.
Ayyash
on 05 Sep 13where’s your share link?! How am going to remember this piece if I don’t dig it up my twitter timeline?
Mig Reyes
on 05 Sep 13Sorry, Ayyash. You can blame me for digging in your Twitter timeline. I was just sweeping the sleaze.
GeeIWonder
on 05 Sep 13Better, Faster (Sooner?), Cheaper—pick two.
Space was a race, so Faster often won. ’ Cheaper’ and ‘Better’ alternatively went by the wayside because of the one not yet mentioned which becomes much more important when you have to throw the thing into space—Lighter.
Anonymous Coward
on 05 Sep 13Seems to me the phrase we used to use was “Better is the enemy of good enough.”
Having the distinction of playing perhaps the smallest part of any human entity in the pre-lunar-landing Apollo project (pushing paper for IBM at the Goddard Space Flight Center in 1967-8) I have since then been a huge archeo-NASA groupie.
David Smith
on 05 Sep 13Oops, didn’t mean to be an Anonymous Coward – just had a hard time parsing just what was an input field with the beautiful design that makes input fields not look like input fields. Just another old fart, I guess.
This discussion is closed.