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Oct 13, 2023

NASA’s historic gantry remains connected to storied past

For some, it’s part of the scenery on their commute over Wythe Creek Road. To those who know its story, it’s an important part of American history. It’s a source of awe for summer interns and visiting

For some, it’s part of the scenery on their commute over Wythe Creek Road.

To those who know its story, it’s an important part of American history.

It’s a source of awe for summer interns and visiting kids on field trips. And it’s still a functioning, critical piece of equipment for NASA, unique in its capabilities for impact tests.

For Lisa Jones, it’s been her office for more than 30 years, but there’s also a symbolic significance to the towering gantry at NASA Langley Research Center.

“It’s a reminder of what humans can achieve,” said Jones, the facility manager.

The gantry, who’s current official name is the Landing and Impact Research Facility, is famous for its role in preparation for the moon landing 50 years ago.

Then called the Lunar Landing Research Facility, the gantry — rigged with suspension cables, a hydraulic bridge and a hoist system — simulated the moon’s gravity for Apollo 11 astronauts to practice their landing.

The gantry stands 240 feet tall and 400 feet long, providing the space to to fly a rocket-powered test vehicle up to 17 mph and with a fair amount of space to move around.

Langley engineers also simulated walking on the moon using a series of cables and straps and a backboard that enabled astronauts to walk at an angle at a fraction of Earth’s gravity.

Center lore has it that the contraption was dreamed up by an engineer while lying on his couch watching a college football game.

“He was pushing his feet against the arm of the couch and he goes, ‘You know, if that was at the correct angle, I’d have one-sixth G on my spine,'” said Jones. “And that’s how they came up with that backboard.”

Knowing how minimal gravity would act on a human body leaping on the lunar surface was vital.

“It’s not like landing on a trampoline,” Jones said. “You know you’re coming back down on a trampoline. …They were afraid they were going to jump and just leave the moon behind and keep going.”

For training purposes, Langley engineers also recreated a portion of the lunar surface beneath the gantry. They built craters out of concrete — patches of worn concrete are still visible — and had astronauts train at night.

They did such a realistic job simulating a lunar landing that Armstrong said later that actually landing on the moon was “like Langley.” And real videos of Apollo astronauts training at the gantry have appeared on hoax websites as “proof” the lunar landings were staged.

To this day, conspiracy theorists look to footage of the gantry in use to justify their belief the moon landing was faked.

Decades after Apollo 11 and decades into her work at the gantry, the connection to the past is still palpable and still special for Jones, enough to bring on waves of emotion every now and then when she stops and thinks about getting to work in the same place as a few “crazy and brave” astronauts she watched on television when she was 6 years old.

While a testament to NASA’s past accomplishments, the gantry is far from a museum or memorial, although Jones does welcome many guests and tour groups to the facility.

It has had a robust second life as a place for scientists and engineers to perform various tests, often involving crashes or impacts.

As Jones put it, they get to break a lot of things.

That’s not as simple as it may sound.

The tests are the work of a dedicated team, and they often have only one chance to do a test properly, which can lead to some sleepless nights, Jones said. Even though something is planned to break, it needs to break in a way that offers meaningful data for the people or agencies conducting the test. There are highly-coordinated mechanisms at work to ensure tests go smoothly.

That happened at a recent plane drop, which sent an out-of-use commercial airliner plummeting into the dirt.

The crowd that gathered included friends and family of NASA employees, among them many children, all maneuvering to get the best view of the plane through the chain-link fence and the best video on their phones. Some brought camp chairs in anticipation of a long wait, which ended up a prudent move.

Martin Annett, head of the Structural Dynamics Branch at Langley, said he was in no hurry to do the drop, saying making sure everything was set up for a successful test was the most important thing. But despite the delay and the smothering heat of June in Virginia, the crowd didn’t falter or retreat back to the indoors.

They waited to see the gantry in action, even if only for a few seconds.

Plenty of people ask to go up to the top of the gantry, Jones said, but she can’t grant all the requests. But she understands the desire. There are few structures with a comparable legacy.

Plus, the view from up top is breathtaking, among the best on the Peninsula. On a crisp, clear fall day, she said you can see the eastern edge of Virginia Beach.

And once you know some of gantry’s legacy, you can pause to imagine the scenes from 50 years ago.

Staff writer Tamara Dietrich and Daily Press archives contributed to this story.

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