CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Apollo pioneer Thomas J. Kelly, the "father of the lunar module," died Saturday.
Kelly was the chief engineer for the lunar module, the spindly spacecraft that carried pairs of astronauts to the surface of the moon and back to the orbiting spacecraft.
"He knew more about the lunar module than any man alive," said Lynn Radcliffe, Kelly's friend and Grumman's deputy manager of spacecraft assembly and test organization.
Kelly, 72, died at his Long Island, N.Y., home, Northrop Grumman spokesman John Vosilla said.
The race to get to the moon in the 1960s put space workers on a grueling schedule. The lunar module was one of the last parts of the mission to be designed. Engineers first had to figure out how to get from Earth to the moon.
Grumman workers came to the office seven days a week to meet contract deadlines.
"Most of us on the program had children who didn't know who Daddy was," Radcliffe said, adding Kelly seemed to find the right balance between work and home.
Kelly and his wife, Joan, had five boys and a girl.
Many of the workers, Radcliffe said, occasionally wondered whether the lunar module would work.
Not Kelly. "He always said before, during and after that he was supremely confident it would work," Radcliffe said.
Later, Kelly served as president of the Grumman Space Station Integration Division.
His memoir, "Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module," was published in May 2001.
He won the Grumman Engineering Scholarship out of high school and then worked for Grumman for more than 40 years.
"He was the boy wonder," Radcliffe said. "He didn't have any of this 'how important I am' complex. He was always one of the boys, if you will."
He retired in 1992.
Five years ago, he was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease.
"He just had such tremendous courage," Radcliffe said. "It's a tragedy that a man like that had to be taken in such a way."
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2002 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.
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