In a salute to Apollo 15s 43rd anniversary, heres a photo of the original Lunar Rover. This 1/6 scale model was built by Ferenc Pavlics, then of General Motors Defense Research Labs in California, to show NASA the concept. This was made by hand with off-the-shelf materials such as hardware store screening for the wheels. Thats a Hasbro GI Joe, Mercury Astronaut version, which theoretically still belongs to Pavlics son, but which continues to serve NASA on permanent assignment. (GI Joe is 1/6 scale too. By the way, Hasbro is said to have based the face of the toy on Gary Lockwood from 2001: A Space Odyssey but by Lockwoods account, they never paid him.) This model is an operable electric one with a hand control. It actually folds like the real Rovers. Pavlics and his boss at GM pitched the idea to NASA at the 11th hour after NASA had all but given up on the idea of a vehicle like this. All the proposals from the contractors had been for heavy MOLAB-type vehicles, and nothing that big could have been taken along. Pavlics introduced this to Wernher von Braun by driving it across Von Braun’s office carpet. The model still drives—that Plexiglas panel behind it is the ramp that folds down on the box where Pavlics keeps it. The full story is at https://academia.edu/6529973/Quest_the_History_of_Spaceflight_Quarterly_Designing_the_Lunar_Rover.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 13:05:37 +0000
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