On this date in 1971 Dave Scott became first person to drive a car on the Moon. 10 things you might not know about the Moon Buggy:
During the Apollo era of lunar exploration in the late 1960’s astronauts discovered that hiking around the Moon was more tiring and disorienting than they expected. Scientists on Earth wanted them to retrieve hundreds of pounds of moon rocks from geological sites that were very far from the Lunar Module. Fortunately, NASA engineers had a solution. They designed a lightweight, space-age dune buggy that could fold up inside the tight confines of the Lunar Module.
Werner Von Braun, former Nazi, and the guy behind most of the US’ rocket design programme, initially imagined a tractor trailer sized rover. That plan evolved into a pressurised cabin style vehicle that would be lifted to the Moon on its own payload-only Saturn V before budget and other considerations brought us to the design we now know.
The Moon-buggy was a one horse power vehicle. It had four .25-horsepower motors, one on each of the four wheels.
There were three moon-buggies that drove on the Moon during Apollo 15, 16 and 17. One extra was built for parts.
The moon-buggies and the test models were built by Boeing at a cost of $38,000,000. In today’s dollars that equates to roughly $285 million.
The total distance travelled by all three LRVs was about 56 miles.
The vital statistics of a moon buggy are as follows: Length 10 ft (3.0 m) Height 3.6 feet (1.1 m) weight 460 pounds (210 kg) on Earth 76 pounds (34 kg) on the Moon. It could carry 970 pounds (440 kg), including two astronauts, equipment, and cargo such as lunar samples.
It was designed for a top speed of 6 miles per hour (9.7 km/h), although it achieved a top speed of 11.2 miles per hour (18.0 km/h) during its last mission, Apollo 17.
The three Lunar rovers were left behind on the Moon, and so are still up there.
An operational constraint was that the astronauts had to be able to walk back to the Lunar Module if the LRV broke down. This was called the "Walkback Limit". Therefore, they would go to the farthest point they could and work their way back to minimise the amount of walking they’d have to do. This constraint was relaxed during Apollo 17, as the LRV and the space suits had proved reliable.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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