That Time NASA Over-Analzyed The Value Of LEGOs
“Have you ever seen LEGO bricks float? Now is your chance! Watch former NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino unbox and build LEGO sets in zero gravity! Get inspired to join the greatest adventure ever as we work together to put an astronaut on Mars! Let’s Go!”
Mike Suffredini Objects to Legos in Space, earlier post (2012)
“Suff inquired about the relevance of performing the Lego experiment onboard from an ISS research priorities perspective. Ms. Robinson explained that Lego is Leland Melvin’s top priority – for education given that Legos are something that children are very familiar with and that can reach tens of thousands of students. Suff asked if the folks at HQ had considered the negative aspects of showcasing Legos in that it may seem we are not utilizing 1SS resources to their fullest capacity. Ms. Robinson explained that she was not aware that people had considered that perspective and would pass this on.”
People under a certain age may wonder why we pronounce the LM as “lem” when referring to the Apollo Lunar Module. When I was growing up it was spelled LEM which stood for Lunar Excursion Module, but apparently some of the higher ups in NASA were concerned that excursion sounded too much like a joy ride or something.
I was unaware that such a concern factored into the reduction of the abbreviation. Do you recall where you may have seen that?
I thought it just fell out naturally from folks tiring of writing out ‘excursion’. Also, LM looks more neat with CM & SM. Abbreviations naturally shrink down to the essentials over time in common usage.
That’s how it’s described in Wikipedia: “According to George Low, Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, this was because NASA was afraid that the word “excursion” might lend a frivolous note to Apollo.” They give an official NASA history, Cortright, Edgar M. (1975). Apollo expeditions to the moon, as a source.
I’d always thought it was rebranding by Grumman, wanting to put their name on it once they got the contract, rather than using the pre-selection name. But I guess I was wrong. I do expect the Artemis lander to change names, now that the people managing it aren’t the people who came up with the architecture. Maybe a Lunar Orbit To Surface (LOTS) system, with an Orbital Transfer Vehicle, a landing stage (not descent vehicle) and a ascent vehicle (JSC can keep their name, since they got that part of the system.)
With a little thought, they could have saved the acronym. Maybe the Lunar Exploration Module. We ended up doing something similar within the Cassini project, but for opposite reasons. We added semi-regular series of distant images, to observe clouds on Titan, but were told very firmly we couldn’t call it the “Titan Monitoring Campaign” or TMC (which had been the working name), since “monitoring” would sound dull and incremental to an extended mission review panel. “Titan Meteorology Campaign” or TMC. Although I’m not sure what this has to do with Lego…
The reference was to Suffredini’s concern that if people saw astronauts playing with Legos in space, “it may seem we are not utilizing ISS resources to their fullest capacity” which I think was probably his magniloquent way of saying that people will think the astronauts are up there goofing around. I assume that was the concern about using the word excursion which might sound to some people like the astronauts were on some type of package tour.
Actually I think NASA did get a certain amount of grief from the barely one minute that Alan Shepard spent hitting a couple of golf balls at the end of his final EVA, and even from the use of lunar rovers on later missions, both of which for some reason have been used by critics to paint a picture of astronauts vacationing on the Moon. Whether Suffredini had that in the back of his mind when he voiced his concern about the Legos is hard to say.
What a curious life these excellent civil servants must lead. In addition to the actual work product they must shepherd to completion, there’s a constant looking over the shoulder, exacerbated by the requirement to extrapolate popular sensibility into an uncertain future.
Some folks need to lighten up.