Apollo Moon Landing Vehicle Construction?

Joeann Hoyt: The best three answers are:weight;weight;weight.The entire vehicle had to be lifted to earth orbit, sent into lunar transfer orbit, decelerated into lunar orbit, landed, and then the top half blasted back to lunar orbit. That took tons of fuel for every pound of weight of the upper section of that lander. The upper body panels were just thin sheets of aluminum alloy, almost playing card thickness. Aldrin said he had to be careful not to put his foot through a cabin wall when the two men were not in pressurized suits and helmets.Alternative reason is lowest bid on a government contract....Show more

Cliff Tyre: Good, good answers from all. Thanks A&S members. As always, the question was the easy part. Choosing a best answer is the hard part.

Adan Stribble: The panels certainly look like they have been warped. I would concur with the other answers though. It looks like they are cover panels and not meant to be airtight. It's a great picture tho! ugh.

Boyce Gilhooly: Yep. That's what I was missing in my understanding. WEIGHT! They had to be thin, lightweight and therefore would be susceptible to warping due to the stresses.

Caryl Mclaen: The panels you're referring to are merely covering panels, they are not structural panels. In the interests of weight, they are paper thin. That will allow them to warp due to heat stresses from the sun or other forces such as the impact on the lunar surface. Very thin flat metal panels can warp very easily. Even the flat sections of modern aircraft tend to display slight warpage, and they are many times thicker than those on the LEM.

Vickie Sterbenz: Thanks quizzard!

Raymon Fiene: The craft had tobe al light as possible and since there is mo atmosphere on the moon strength wasn't the first consideration. And yes NASA took many chances getting to the moon. For example there was little radiation protection because NASA gambled that there would be no ! solar flairs during the time they would be outside earth's pro! tective envelope. In terms of space flight apollo was about advanced as the Wright brothers were in aviation. But then it has always been the chance takers who made the great steps ahead....Show more

Myriam Hetjonk: those white panels were only slightly thicker than foil. it didn't take much to warp them.parts of the lm were chemically milled to precisely tune the thickness of the metal.in the final analysis, the nasa and grumman engineers didn't care what their spacecraft looked like. they cared about how it worked....Show more