Scrapped LEMs

According to "Chariots for Apollo", at least one unused/partially
fabricated LEM was to be sent to New Zealand, but instead, was buried in
a trash landfill in Oceanside, Queens, New York. I have yet to uncover
any confirmation of this, or any documentation that affirms that this
order was given by anyone in authority. Is this confirmable, and why
has nobody attempted to salvage this spacecraft or parts? At least one
LEM was nearly completed for a mission that never flew. Were there
others? Are the remains of the incomplete LEMs in existence? Does
anyone have reliable or first-hand information regarding the fates of
uncompleted Lunar Modules?

On 15 Nov 2003 18:32:00 GMT, rk
wrote:

By the way, I bought my first car (Trans Am) around there, it was
from a junkyard, composed of n different vehicles pieced together,
with years ranging from '71 to '75. Some of the earlier pieces
might have been from a late model LEM, come to think about it. ;-)

....Johnny Cash wrote a song about that one, IIRC :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

rk wrote:

OM wrote:

p.s. worthless trivia. Through high-school I worked at the rink in
Bethpage Park right next to Grumman. They'd come over during lunch
for a skate; nice people.

Hardly worthless! Our school bus would occassionally go by the Bethpage
plant with the blue dome atop it. A LEM mockup sat outside by the
gate. Whether it was used for designing or testing, I never knew. I'm
wondering if it is the original one at Cradle today.
In 1969-70, I attended Nassau Community College. My first girlfriend's
old man was a thermal engineer who had worked on the LEM, and was
promptly fired after the building program was halted. Other engineers
who put humans on the moon were selling hot dogs behind a street cart on
New York City street corners.
What a great machine that little spacecraft was. And still is! Nothing
else like it in the galaxy.
"Snoopy" should be recovered and returned home.

On 15 Nov 2003 21:15:00 GMT, rk
wrote:

Back when the days when cars were cars. 400 cubic inches (6.6
litres for you metric fans), 4 speed transmission, and a nice 4
barrel carb, Rochester Quadrajet, that made a nice healthy roar when
the secondaries opened up.

....Oh yes. During my suicidal years, I provided ballast for a '76
Camaro that routinely blew people away rat racing down RR2222 here in
Austopolis. The gag we'd do is have three people in the car - driver,
shotgun, and me on the back to swap seats to sit on the inside of the
turn. Once we were ready to pass our opponents, shotgun and I would
lean out the side of the window and pretend to be rowing furiously as
if we were in a canoe race. This would usually break the concentration
of the other driver, and then we'd floor it.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On 15 Nov 2003 21:15:00 GMT, rk
wrote:

p.s. worthless trivia. Through high-school I worked at the rink in
Bethpage Park right next to Grumman. They'd come over during lunch
for a skate; nice people.

....Until the day they conned you into going on top of that roof and
retrieve all of Tom Kelly's balls. Once you got up there, they took
down the ladder and left you up there for a week!

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

rk ) writes:

[...]
Oh yeah, it was a Nooo Yawk car, lots of rust and dents, but still
the fastest hunk of junk in the Galaxy.

p.s. worthless trivia. Through high-school I worked at the rink in
Bethpage Park right next to Grumman. They'd come over during lunch
for a skate; nice people.

Well, in '93-'94, she-who-was-to-become-my-ex was living in a
house owned by a Grumman tech guy, working on A-6 stuff.

He took pride in buy used stuff for real cheap, and his two
VCRs cost him parhaps $100 between them.

One night I asked him to use a tape of mine to record a program.
When I saw him program the machine, I noted that it was blinking
" 12:00, 12:00, 12:00... ".

And, he got the tape speed wrong, so it was six months, until the
program was re-run, before I sw the whole of it.

Andre

--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
The Man Prayer, Red Green.

RDG wrote in message ...
According to "Chariots for Apollo", at least one unused/partially
fabricated LEM was to be sent to New Zealand, but instead, was buried in
a trash landfill in Oceanside, Queens, New York. I have yet to uncover
any confirmation of this, or any documentation that affirms that this
order was given by anyone in authority. Is this confirmable, and why
has nobody attempted to salvage this spacecraft or parts? At least one
LEM was nearly completed for a mission that never flew. Were there
others? Are the remains of the incomplete LEMs in existence? Does
anyone have reliable or first-hand information regarding the fates of
uncompleted Lunar Modules?


This link may help...

http://www.fi.edu/pieces/schutte/LMintro2.html

This link may help...

http://www.fi.edu/pieces/schutte/LMintro2.html

I'm a little dubious that the LM at Franklin institute is actually LM-14.
Has any regular gone and seen it? It seems to me that the LM is sufficiently
fragile that it wouldn't have managed to survive outdoors for very long.

I'm also a little dubious about the disposition of the un-numbered LMs cited
in "Chariots for Apollo", there seem to be a few too many, and again, I
don't understand how they could stand the weather outside.

LEM expert, Frank O'Brien, tells me that the piece at Franklin Institute is
probably a training article. The reason is that it lacks the in depth plumbing
that is apparent on other units. For awhile, the piece stood out in the open of
Philidelphia, and was heavily vandalized. It was eventually moved to it's
present location. Chicago's LEM is a mockup as well.
For those familiar with the movie "Fly Away Home", about the girl and the gesse,
you might be interested to know that the father in the film is a real person.
He's an artist in Canada, and built his own LEM from sheet metal simply because
he liked the geometry. It was later sold to finance his interest in ultralight
aircraft. I'm told the buyers were from Japan.

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:56:23 -0500, RDG wrote:

LEM expert, Frank O'Brien, tells me that the piece at Franklin Institute is
probably a training article. The reason is that it lacks the in depth plumbing
that is apparent on other units. For awhile, the piece stood out in the open of
Philidelphia, and was heavily vandalized. It was eventually moved to it's
present location. Chicago's LEM is a mockup as well.

What about the LM that used to be in the JSC Visitor's Center (bldg 2) and is
now in Space Center Houston? It's not on that list, is it another training
article?

And why did LM-4 (Apollo 10) go into heliocentric orbit rather than crash into
the moon?

--
Michael R. Grabois # http://chili.cjb.net # http://wizardimps.blogspot.com
"People say losing builds character. That's the stupidest thing I ever
heard. All losing does is suck. " -- Charles Barkley, 9/29/96