The first SUV was driven on the moon

23.11.2014 Views
ong>wasong> familiar with the response, he stepped on the gas and attempted to “drive as fast as possible.” You could compare the lunar surface with the deserts in California. “It is extremely uneven and covered with fine, slippery dust,” explains Scott. “I tried to negotiate the constantly changing formations as well as I could.” Still today, Scott is extremely impressed by the engineering feat: “ong>Theong> LRV ong>wasong> a superb vehicle with an excellent design.” He can’t tip his hat enough to the people who designed and built it. He also considers every penny of the astronomical price well spent: “Measured against the benefits, the LRV ong>wasong> pretty cheap.” In terms of mechanics, the lunar rover ong>wasong> far ahead of its time: battery- powered wheel hub motors attached via a harmonic drive reduction unit, independent wheel suspension on torsion springs and fluid-free finned radiators. ong>Theong> wheels were made of spun aluminum wire and covered with titanium chevrons. ong>Theong> maneuverability ong>wasong> just as impressive: step climbing capability 25 centimeters, crevasse crossing 50 centimeters, 25-degree gradability, 80-degree overhang angle (front and rear), 35-centimeter ground clearance, rollover-resistant to 45 degrees on all sides. But the top speed ong>wasong> nothing to write home about: ong>Theong> relatively light vehicle, weighing 210 kilograms, achieved only 14 kilometers per hour. Fast enough for Scott. If you go too fast, you can’t tell where the bumps are. ong>Theong> LRV bounces over scattered boulders; each crater is a surprise. “I ong>wasong> really impressed by the performance,” says Scott, who sat in the lunar rover back then with the pilot of the Lunar Module, James Benson Irwin. He tells of a hill they drove to the top of: “It had about a 13 percent grade.” ong>Theong> surface ong>wasong> like powder snow. On that terrain, you could hardly walk a single step. “It ong>wasong>n’t until we got out at the top and looked around that we realized how high up we were,” Scott recalls today. ong>Theong> Apollo astronauts had a continuous view of their home planet some 400,000 kilometers away. 43

David Randolph Scott, astronaut ong>Theong> Air Force Colonel ong>wasong> Commander of the Apollo 15 mission. On July 31, 1971, the American ong>wasong> the ong>firstong> person to drive a vehicle on the lunar surface. In the dusty gray of the lunar surface, navigation is a problem. Especially at a time when there ong>wasong> no GPS, and the computers on the Apollo spaceship were less powerful than an MP3 player today. So how did they do it? Scott says: “We had maps, but they weren’t very good ones. And we had a navigation system that consisted of an odometer and a directional gyro unit.” It ong>wasong> switched on at the landing site. ong>Theong> astronauts were thus able to determine their distance from the landing module and their angle with respect to it. And because on the moon, the sun always shines from the same direction, a sun PHOTOS | KARL RONSTROM; WORLD PERSPECTIVES/GETTY IMAGES GRAPHIC |PICTURE- ALLIANCE/ BILDAGENTUR- ONLINE/SAUER 44

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