National Geographic : 1972 Feb
Rover carries men 17 miles O LANDIGS across the rocky crater-pocked lunar surface. Lanyards are pulled, and from a storage bay in the LM, the folded-up Rover uncoils and flops out with the jerky motions of an insect emerging from its chrysalis. Scott and Irwin are ready for their first traverse. The Apollo 15 Rover looks like a stripped down jeep, but the appearance is deceiving, as I found when I examined it at the Boeing factory near Seattle, Washington, and when I drove a training model at Cape Kennedy. Stripped down the Rover may be, but there's nothing simple about it. Tires of wov en piano wire, faced with titanium chevrons to ride on top of the dust; sealed electric motors in each wheel hub, about the size of a handyman's electric drill; two 36-volt bat teries; and a gyroscopic navigation system. To all this is added a suitcase-size radio unit so the astronauts can talk directly with earth. And the Rover is crafted like a Stradivarius violin. At the Boeing plant I watched an engi neer assembling the lunar vehicle for Apollo 16. With mallet and punch he was removing a misplaced rivet, working as slowly and carefully as a cabinetmaker repairing a fine 240 antique. Yet the Rover is sturdy. Weighing 455 pounds on earth but only 76 on the moon, this vehicle is designed to carry 21/2 times its weight across the lunar surface. The Rover is not, to be sure, the first wheeled vehicle on the moon. The Apollo 14 crew, in February 1971, pulled a handcart loaded with tools.* And even as Rover sets out, a tubby, eight-wheeled robot, Lunokhod 1, sits dormant in the lunar night on the other side of Mare Imbrium. As soon as the sun strikes its solar panels, it will again lumber over craters and ridges, sending pictures back to earth as it has done since landing in No vember 1970. Explorers Drive Off Across the Moon "OK, Dave, and buckle up for safety!" It is the CapCom speaking, the capsule communi cator in Houston, the man in Mission Control who handles communications with the astro nauts. During EVA's on the lunar surface the CapCom is Dr. Joseph Allen, a scientist astronaut who has worked closely with the *See "The Climb Up Cone Crater," by Alice J. Hall, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, July 1971.