Apollo 16 Lunar Rover “Grand Prix”
An evening pause: This seems especially appropriate with the arrival of another rover on Mars last week.
On their first day of three on the lunar surface, John Young and Charles Duke deployed their rover and took it for a test drive before heading out to nearby Plum Crater for two hours of sample gathering and exploration.
This footage shows Young driving with Duke filming and reporting what he sees. The goal was to gather engineering data on how the rover’s wheels functioned in the very dusty lunar soil.
This short clip nicely illustrates the ambitious achievement of the American Apollo missions that should give pause to any arrogant modern young engineer. This was before home computers and CAD-CAM. It was designed by hand and slide-rule, using inches, pounds, and feet. And it worked, and worked magnificently. Oh if we today could only do as well.
Hat tip Björn “Local Fluff” Larsson.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
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That was Charlie Duke on the surface with John Young; Ken Mattingly was up in the command module.
Call Me Ishmael: You are right of course. I misread my own encyclopedia on the mission. Dumb. Error fixed.
here we go…..
“Spacecraft with Wheels: The Lunar Roving Vehicle”
Marshall Space Flight Center
https://youtu.be/26oQ3m5EHrg
15:08
and this one….
(unfortunately no audio, but in color)
–shows the 1-G training version of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) at the “rockpile” at the Manned Space Center in Houston, Texas.
“Lunar Roving Vehicle 1-G Earthbound Trainer”
https://archive.org/details/19554nasalunarrovingvwr
(8:48)
When I was a young child, we’d go on field trips to Marshall, as well as the Space and Rocket Center…between the Saturns and Shuttle. I was amazed at how it was packed. Then, they would allow us kids inside an old capsule where we could flip switches!
Jeff–
Great Stuff!
So worth watching! Back when I was a kid and this was ‘live’, we watched it on a B&W TV, with its non-HD resolution (LD?). Gray, fuzzy and shaky. Great to see it more or less as Charlie Duke saw it. Thanks!
Just for the Heck!
SD
Standard definition
AKA olde broadcast standard last version