Excellent Example of Value Added Analysis - Apollo 11 Lunar Module Design

I was watching a documentary "Apollo 11 - The Eagle Has Landed" on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Back, way before 1969, almost 40 years ago, they seem to have had the basics of Value Added Analysis down very well and used it in the design of the Lunar Module Design without knowing that in those terms! Fascinating and very instructive application of how Value Added Analysis and lessons learned could be used elsewhere, specifically in Process Optimization!

As you may have guessed, 40 years ago, space technology was much less developed and the documentary outlined the enormous risks astronauts and NASA were taking at that time compared to Space Missions now. Given that nobody had done it before, NASA and its primary contractor for the Lunar Module, Grumman Aerospace were doing a lot of guesswork and were hoping and praying that things would work well in the mission itself!

Their original design of the Lunar Module was so bulky and heavy with all necessary instrumentation and with weight comes the task of stuffing enough fuel to take them to the moon and back. The following are some good examples of how they applied Value Added Analysis (although they did not call it that) to conquer these problems:

a. Instead of five legs to the Original Lunar Module design they thought of cutting it back to three legs. Experiments proved that three legs were unstable on the surface of the moon, which they were not sure was as flat and useful for landing in a stable way as they guessed from photos. They decided on four legs and was a good compromise between extreme risk and extreme weight.

b. They realized that the gravity on the lunar surface was 1/6th the gravity on earth and so they decided that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, the astronauts that would land on the moon, did not need seats! They threw the seats out. They just were standing and while landing, upside down!

c. The Lunar Module needed a powerful set of engines to slow down the descent towards the moon’s surface. They did not need as powerful an engine to take off and join the orbiter to come back to earth. They had only enough fuel for exactly the planned landing, no more, no less. If they wasted any more time while landing, they would run out of fuel, crash land and the two astronauts would not return back to earth! It appears that Armstrong was upside down peering through a port hole watching the lunar surface approach rapidly, they had lost their initial planned landing spot on the moon and were racing towards the first easy enough surface for a reasonably smooth landing. Seems like it’s only the skill of Armstrong that made the landing possible with 17 seconds of fuel left! This is as close to extreme Value Added Design as it can get!

d. The Ascent engine of the Lunar Module that helps the lunar module take off from the moon, and had only enough fuel to join the orbiter that was circling the moon, was only a fourth of the complexity of the Descent Module. Grumman claims in the documentary that they made this engine as simple and stupid as they could. Their primary concern was reliability. If the Module does not take off, the astronauts had a few hours to live on the moon given their oxygen supplies with their space suits! So value-added analysis here helps reliability also incidentally, in many ways. Keeping it simple and stupid makes systems reliable!

e. In order to make the Lunar Module extremely light so that they can carry only the barest minimum fuel possible, they had made the walls and doors out of thin aluminum sheets. After they landed on the moon, they had depressurized the cabin inside after donning the space suits. They tried opening the door but it got stuck. They had to apply just the right pressure to pry it open, all the while praying that it would open. If they pulled any harder they could tear the door apart and no coming back from the moon!

Process Design need not be as much as on the edge as the Lunar Module design but teaches a very simple way to cut down to the basics of what is needed! Many times asking questions like, do we absolutely need something, what is the minimum we need, helps eliminate many uncessary non-value adding activities! These kinds of challenges are not as far away as we think they are! My last credit card application was approved online with no human involvement, completely automated and online! I am sure there are many companies looking at their Credit Card application process and trying to match this Zero Turn Around Time! Extreme Value Added Analysis may be needed in those cases just as the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Design.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense. - Thomas Alva Edison