posted 07-18-2007 06:32 PM               

I found a map of the Bethpage facility on page 2-2 (page 25 in the PDF) of manufacturing plan for the Project Apollo lunar excursion module; there's a good deal of discussion of which parts of the LM were to be manufactured and assembled in the various buildings. Note that South Oyster Bay Road (in the upper left of the map) actually points north/south.

If you page through it some more, you'll also find individual building floor plans.

In addition to the buildings described on page 2-2 and the surrounding pages, I skimmed through Tom Kelly's "Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module," looking for any other references to building numbers. I found out that Building 25 was used for engineering drawings and Building 4 hosted LM-1's acceptance review. Plant 30 housed the offices for LM Engineering. They built a new building in 1965, Plant 35, for additional engineer drawing space.

A building "across the street" from Plant 5 was used for Space/Craft Assembly and Test (S/CAT), although I never determined which building that was (I called the Northrop Grumman History Center a couple of days before I left on the vacation, but that wasn't enough time for them to get me the information).

I found a page on the Northrop Grumman website that listed the Bethpage facility's address as "600 Grumman Road West," so a quick trip out to Google Maps yielded some imagery which was easy to cross-reference with the map.

posted 07-19-2007 07:30 PM               

Recently (as of 2007), Nassau County built a new power generation facility very near to the site. A large part of the site has been sold and developed over the years making way to light industry, malls, homes, etc. Northrup Grumman still maintains a small presence at the site.

I've passed the site a few time over the years and have wondered what it must be like inside. One of the main roads passes fairly close to the assembly building so a can get a good sense of the size of these places.

posted 11-22-2007 12:56 AM               

The main Grumman building with its distinctive ball with the Grumman logo on the roof. I do not believe this building was used for LM activities, however, you can see Plant 5 to the right (the brown building with blue doors) where the LM work was done.

The remaining photos are of Plant 5 where the LM work was done. According to "Images of America: Building Moonships The Grumman Lunar Module," this building contained the clean room where three LMs could be built at one time. The white facility behind it is where the ACE (Automatic Checkout Equipment) room was located. According to the book this is where LM testing was done. Comparing my photos to photos from the late 60's the building appears to have been significantly modified over time.

posted 07-20-2009 10:55 PM            

Frank Pullo remembers many things about the era from 1962 to 1972 when teams of Grumman engineers and technicians in Bethpage on Long Island built all of NASA's lunar modules, including the 23-foot-tall spacecraft that landed on the moon's Sea of Tranquillity 40 years ago today.

Mr. Pullo, an electrical engineer in charge of testing and retesting the various systems on the modules, remembers the intricacies of verification protocols and the endless workweek like the wrap-up of building Lunar Module 6, when he did not go home for a week and slept in the astronauts' trailers. But mostly he remembers the intoxicating feeling of being part of history.

"I used this analogy even then," said Mr. Pullo, now 76, who, like many of the former Grumman engineers, works part time as a docent at the Cradle of Aviation Museum here in Garden City, where two of the four remaining modules not still on the moon reside.

"I told everyone, this is like building the pyramids, something that's been around for 5,000 years," he said. "It's a first, and it isn't a small first going to another world something that will be around for a long, long time."

posted 09-10-2010 09:38 AM            

Hard to look at the photos of the empty building they have on the website.

For that Salt movie, there was a large structure built outside the building. Not sure what part of the movie it was for. They also had a few black SUVs, limos and an Army tank. Quite a lot went on there.

The local Bethpage historical society (the Central Park Historical Society, Bethpage's former name) had a tour of the studio & sets for some of its officers. They reported about it in their newsletter. Some of the interior scenes of the White House were made there.

posted 09-10-2010 10:55 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by gac14:
Hard to look at the photos of the empty building they have on the website.

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posted 09-24-2010 08:44 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Hart Sastrowardoyo:
Grumman also had a smaller building near Great River...

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posted 06-06-2012 05:48 AM            

Seeing the current state of external buildings, it follows exactly what Grumman Aerospace decided around 1987, that Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Northrop were beating us too often by having lower cost operations off Long Island, so Grumman divisions were relocated to Florida, Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and other places far — just to find lower operating expenses.