High stakes at Bell Aerosystems: 'If it didn’t work, they’d still be on the moon'

An article in The Buffalo News about the 50th anniversary of putting a man on the moon and the role that Buffalo scientists and engineers played in getting them back to Earth interviews William Swenson, assistant dean emeritus in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who worked as a test engineer at Bell Aerosystems at the time, and Joseph Mollendorf, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who spent an unforgettable summer working with Swenson. 

"It was impossible to predict what might happen once Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the moon," Swenson said, adding that “Everything they did was for the first time.”

"I think we all knew how terrible it would be if we got them onto the moon, and then had no way to get them off and had to leave them there," Mollendorf said. 

Read the story here.