At the same time this was going on, test facilities were being built at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center). They weren't sure how big those facilities needed to be because the designs weren't finalized. And they couldn't wait for that answer or they'd be behind schedule in building them. While the overall stack got smaller for launch, the LEM kept growing. Consequently, the Space Environment Simulation Lab ended up being both larger and smaller than needed.
In that suite, the giant vacuum chamber to test the Command and Service Modules (Chamber A) could have handled a larger spacecraft. The more moderate vacuum chamber (Chamber B) was almost too small to hold the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). In fact, its 25 ft radius meant the LEM landing legs could not be fully extended. Luckily, that wasn't important to the test program.
At the same time this was going on, test facilities were being built at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center). They weren't sure how big those facilities needed to be because the designs weren't finalized. And they couldn't wait for that answer or they'd be behind schedule in building them. While the overall stack got smaller for launch, the LEM kept growing. Consequently, the Space Environment Simulation Lab ended up being both larger and smaller than needed.
In that suite, the giant vacuum chamber to test the Command and Service Modules (Chamber A) could have handled a larger spacecraft. The more moderate vacuum chamber (Chamber B) was almost too small to hold the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). In fact, its 25 ft radius meant the LEM landing legs could not be fully extended. Luckily, that wasn't important to the test program.
Episode 5, "Spider", of HBO's 1998 'From the Earth to the Moon' is all about the engineering of the lunar module.
The Saturn V weighed about 6 ½ million pounds at liftoff, and these guys were trying to shave every ounce they could off of the lander.
For some reason, that made 'Spider' my favorite episode of the series.