{"id":4804,"date":"2011-07-31T15:30:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T14:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=4804"},"modified":"2011-07-31T15:30:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-31T14:30:11","slug":"forty-years-ago-man-drives-a-car-across-the-moons-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/forty-years-ago-man-drives-a-car-across-the-moons-surface\/","title":{"rendered":"Forty years ago: man drives a car across the Moon’s surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Forty<\/p>\n

It seems remarkable that the first drive across the surface of the Moon happened 40 years ago,<\/em> when the\u00a0Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV, was taken for a spin across the the Moon’s surface in July 1971.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Forty<\/p>\n

Developed by NASA in only 17 months and costing $38 million, the Rover was light and compact, weighing only 460 pounds, and could travel at 8mph on the lunar soil.<\/p>\n

Here’s the technical description from Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Lunar Roving Vehicle had a mass of 463 lbs (210\u00a0kg) and was designed to hold a payload of an additional 1,080\u00a0lbs (490\u00a0kg) on the lunar surface. The frame was 10 feet (3 m) long with a wheelbase of 7.5 feet (2.3 m). The height of the vehicle was 3.6\u00a0ft (1.1 m).<\/p>\n

The frame was made of aluminum alloy 2219 tubing welded assemblies and consisted of a three-part chassis which was hinged in the center so it could be folded up and hung in the Lunar Module quad 1 bay. It had two side-by-side foldable seats made of tubular aluminum with nylon webbing and aluminum floor panels. An armrest was mounted between the seats, and each seat had adjustable footrests and a Velcro seat belt. A large mesh dish antenna was mounted on a mast on the front center of the rover.<\/p>\n

The suspension consisted of a double horizontal wishbone with upper and lower torsion bars and a damper unit between the chassis and upper wishbone. Fully loaded the LRV had a ground clearance of 14\u00a0inches (35\u00a0cm).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Forty<\/p>\n

The\u00a0battery\u00a0powered vehicle was carried into space by Apollo 15 and ended up covering 17 miles on the Moon’s surface.<\/p>\n

Rovers were also employed\u00a0for two more American Apollo missions (16 and 17) before the space exploration program ended.<\/p>\n

No human has set foot on the Moon since 11th<\/sup>\u00a0December 1972.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Driving on the Moon: The 40-Year Legacy of NASA’s First Lunar Car<\/a><\/p>\n

History of the Rover<\/a> [PDF]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems remarkable that the first drive across the surface of the Moon happened 40 years ago, when the\u00a0Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV, was taken for a spin across the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[193,1],"tags":[408,407,406,242],"class_list":["post-4804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-places","category-stuff","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/nasa-moon-rover.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-1fu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4804"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4806,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4804\/revisions\/4806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}