Von Braun’s Spaceship

The L.E.M. (lunar excursion module) was built by separate contractors for the Grumman Co. on Long Island I was told by a manager so no one could get the "big picture" of the design. Even the Navy at the time was "suspect" as it demanded full access to the company's books, and it owned Calverton airbase used by Grumman where two F-101 Voodoo jets were Grumman was trying to improve on (led to F-14 Tomcat?) My grandfather used to tell us the last time he saw his Master Mariner brother, was in a bar in Yorkville in Manhattan ("Germantown") arguing over whether mankind would get to the Moon. He was at the helm of the "City of Atlanta" sunk by U123 in early 1943 having left NYC. At the time, it was also part of the German cinema and involved that technological prediction, like that of Jules Verne, who once described in his novel based on the developments of the "West Point Foundry" a casting of a "supergun" shot from Florida at the Moon. Ironically one was later tested on a floating barge there, which fired a wooden block 2.5 miles up the Hudson River using dynamite rather than "gun-cotton". It was later "reinvented" in Vermont, it's builder assassinated in Holland (said "Time") and a large one found more recently being assembled in Iraq.  - Comment on "Von Braun’s Spaceship" NY Times