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The USA Moon Rover |
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NASA’s Moon Buggy
The Ultimate Electric Car Here’s a couple more photos of the same Moon Rover as te one that first went to the moon on the Apollo 15 Moon Mission in 1971. It was left there by the Astronauts after they used it to drive 23 miles while looking for interesting geological formations to sample and bring back to Earth.
Astronaut Gene Cernan about to board the buggy on the Moon The total cost for the four rovers that were built by Boeing and Delta (as a subcontractor) was 39 million dollars, and they are considered one of the true gems of the pioneering space engineers of that era. The four were sent on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17, plus one extra for the lab. The massive amount of engineering to create this reliable vehicle was all done in only 17 months! At the time they were designed the engineers were not even sure what the surface of the moon was like, soft or hard, rocky, with deep or shallow dust, etc, so they had to develop a vehicle that could traverse whatever terrain they encountered, including sloping and hilly terrain without easily tipping over.
Note the dust coming off the metal tires A complete Moon Rover only weighed about 450 pounds on Earth, but it weighed just 77 pounds on the surface of the Moon in its much weaker gravity. It ran on two 36 volt silver-zinc batteries, and since it was a single-use vehicle it included no solar panels for recharging them. It utilized four electric motors, one in each wheel which was an advanced concept for that time. It also had radios and some other electronic gear onboard. Its tires, although they look familiar, were actually made up of rings of shock-absorbing metal, with cleats on them for traction. Air-filled rubber tires were considered more likely to fail under the extreme conditions in space. With very limited air supplies, Astronauts stranded by a flat tire miles from their return vehicle on the surface of the Moon was the last thing that NASA wanted. The Moon Rover’s top speed was around ten miles per hour, although their video from the moon shows one of the Astronauts making the best of it with a sideways sliding manuever, kicking up some dust in the process. The vehicle had a joystick for steering. Thanks to NASA for this content
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