Lunar Module Spacecraft Assembly & Test

S/CAT Remembered

The "S/CAT Remembered" site is dedicated to the men and women that designed, built and tested the Lunar Module at Grumman Aerospace Corporation, Bethpage, New York.

I would like to thank the Grumman History Center for some of the material used on this Web page presentation.

This Web site is not finished. I welcome any contributions that are relevant to the subject matter of this presentation. Some obvious missing material, (due in part to my fading memory), are:

• Grumman patches for LM 1, LM2, LM 3, LTA 1, and LTA 8; Do they exist?
• Organization charts or list showing all the personnel of S/CAT .. 1964 - 1971
• Pictures of plant 5, 39, the trailers etc..
• Support departments that were attached to S/CAT... i.e. Ground Support, QC, NASA , ACE people , technicians, data analysis, cog. engineers, Pubs ..etc

Please send me anything that will be of help... even a hello to:  Frank A Pullo at, pullo@spec.net

About Frank Pullo

Frank Pullo worked as test director at Grumman.

In the late 1960s, when Frank Pullo helped design electronic circuitry on several Grumman Lunar Modules used in the Apollo space missions, he put in such heavy workweeks, he was instructed to visit the company physician. After clocking 70 hours a week, such visits were mandatory at Grumman. But Pullo, of Wantagh, didn't stop there. He routinely clocked 90-hour weeks. And, some nights he didn't bother going home, instead curling up inside a trailer used by some of the astronauts working on the $180-million modules. "Some of my time sheets were unbelievable," recalled Pullo, 68. "But working on the modules was like building the pyramids. We knew we were working on something that was going to be tremendously historic."

-- Samuel Bruchey, Lunar Module Meets Its Makers - Spacecraft Exhibited at Local Museum

Publications

• Soto; Jeffrey A. ; Pullo; Frank A., System for producing graphic displays and programs for generating same, United States Patent 4870397
  A system for producing device independent, graphic displays with dynamic update using a multilayered segmented graphics editor, device independent graphic data base, and a source code program generator.
• Pullo, Frank ; Salvarezza, Michael, ATTS - ATLAS template translation system, AUTOTESTCON '86; Proceedings of the International Automatic Testing Conference, San Antonio, TX; UNITED STATES; 8-11 Sept. 1986. pp. 211-216. 1986
• Pullo, Frank A.; Beardsley, Anthony C., COSM: A Space Station EVAS test challenge, IN: AUTOTESTCON '87; Proceedings of the International Automatic Testing Conference, San Francisco, CA, Nov. 3-5, 1987 (A88-36528 14-59). New York, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., 1987, p. 221-226.

Articles

• Samuel Bruchey, Lunar Module Meets Its Makers - Spacecraft Exhibited at Local Museum
• Zerah Lurie, APOLLO 11 ANNIVERSARY, One small step for a big celebration, Newsday - Long Island, N.Y., Jul 17, 2004, page A12 (Subscription required)
• "Among the volunteers is Frank Pullo, 67, of Wantagh, a retired Grumman engineer who for nearly two years has been donating one day a week to archive ... "
  Stewart Ain, Helpers, Unpaid but Highly Rewarded, New York Times, November 14, 1999, Late Edition - Final, Section 14LI, Page 17, Column 1 (Subscription required)

Editor's Note

By Eric Hartwell, www.ehartwell.com

Frank Pullo's original Lunar Module, SpaceCraft Assembly & Test web site is an essential reference for the Apollo Lunar Module. Unfortunately, the site's been off the net for a few years. I finally decided to resurrect it here.

I retrieved most of the web site from the Internet Archive, then reformatted it to remove the frames and reduce it to just a few pages. I haven't changed the original text much, other than correcting the odd typo and reformatting it. For purists, the original site is here (I tweaked the frames so they work with HTML 4).

Changes and additions:

• March 18, 2007: Recovered most of the original site; reformatted; uploaded to ehartwell.com.
• March 20, 2007: Added LM-13 information and LM-1, LM-3 patches to Mission Profiles page; added descent engine photo to Manufacturing page.

Links

• The Grumman LEM -  Lunar Excurson Module: Paper model and more
• Grumman Aerospace Corp. Lunar Module Cutaway Brochure
• Northrop Grumman Shares in Historic Anniversary
• ASME Landmarks: #218 Apollo Lunar Module LM-13 (1972)
• Apollo 11 Lunar Landing : A personal account by Vince Fleming, Former Grumman Flight Controller, LM Propulsion Group, LM Systems Branch
• Virtual AGC and AGS Links and Documents Page
• Apollo Lunar Module Descent Stage Quad III
• Quarterly reliability status report, February 1964 (pdf), February 1, 1964, NTRS Document ID: 19790077197, Report Number: LPR-550-4; NASA-CR-117245, Contract-Grant-Task Number: NAS9-1100