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How Duct Tape Saved Apollo 17's Moon Buggy
Ant points out a story
spotted on Boing Boing in which NASA "shares a story that turns back the clock 36 years to reveal the "key roll of duct tape in the Apollo program." The quality of the photographs from the moon always grabs me, and the duct-taped fender here is no exception.
It just proves the old adage that "If you can't fix it with duct tape, then it's broken."
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"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
You can't hear duct tape rip in the vacuum of space. That is a sad fact.
Key Roll of Duct Tape or Key Role?
I guess both are valid...
Sealing ammo cans with cloth tape. Though the origin of the name is a controversy, the term is originally "Duck Tape" because water is repelled by the outside surface, thus making it good for ammo cans. You can get the can wet, pull it out of the wet, and since the water rolled off, open the can right away without getting much water in the can. Or, so the story goes.
The quality of the photographs from the moon always grabs me, and the duct-taped fender here is no exception.
Medium-format sized negatives. Shitloads of light (large depth of field and high shutter speeds.) No atmosphere to bend light between subject and camera.
Also, you've got really hard shadows because the light isn't diffused at all by an atmosphere.
Please help metamoderate.
I would say that the roll of tape used on the Apollo 13 was much more important.
It is interesting to think about dust in a vacuum, where if it is kicked up with a large forward velocity, it will fall back down on you or even ahead of you, whereas on Earth it would get pushed behind you by friction...
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One day he found a roll of duct tape lying around somewhere on a sub that was in for repair. It didn't appear as if anyone was using it.
However, one was not permitted to just remove stuff left lying around - someone might still be needing it.
So dad went through the proper channels, which involved filing a form in which he requested the removal of the duct tape. This had to be signed by his manager. I don't remember clearly, but maybe it had to be signed by his manager's manager.
Once the paperwork was all squared away, someone was sent in to the sub to remove the roll of duct tape - only to find that it wasn't there anymore!
Your tax dollars at work!
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Didn't NASA have a preference back then for Hasselblad medium-format cameras with really good Zeiss lenses?
Pro-level gear with big film can give some really incredibly detailed photos.
light side, dark side, holds the universe together, blah blah blah. Unfortunately, George Lucas ruined this joke, since duct tape isn't made my symbiotic microorganisms living inside everything.
They also used duct tape to fix the stereo, so they could keep driving their moon buggies through our neighborhoods at all hours of the night playing that theme from "2001" real loud.
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I think we should go back a bit to that kind of space exploration. Boot-strap, Cowboy style. There are so many regs and safety issues with today's space program that with all the bureaucracy it's a wonder we get anything off the ground at all. Lets just start with some quantity, launch anything with a higher than 50% survival rate.
How many people do you know that would jump on an opportunity for a manned mission to mars? Just to be the first to do it. Even if you don't make it, you'd still provide useful information and go down in history as a great pioneer. Hell there is a certain religion or two down here that have people clamoring all over their selves to die for some glorious amorphous cause. Put them to work. Launch those space monkeys up there so they can be closer to their [Deity].
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
The Lunar Surface Journal over here: (more specifically on the Apollo 17 page of course)
:)
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/frame.html
Craploads of imagery from all surface missions, full transcripts, and audio.
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Good observation.
This is what I see in the photo: if you look at the front right wheel, you'll see an S-shaped trench leading away from it, going off-camera in the bottom-right of the image. You'll also notice that at the bottom-right of the image a footprint appears which seems to have significantly altered the trench. Actually it looks like it filled it in.
The moondust is very light and prone to redistribution (that's the whole point of TFA, in fact), so perhaps just stepping near a tire-track is enough to fill in the trench (after the dust settles)? If so, then when you look at the back-right wheel, you'll see that there are footprints there which may have disturbed the ground and filled in the trench from the wheel (especially since he would have had to walk all over the place near that wheel while performing the repair). Actually there are some faint indications of where a track may have once been.
I'm certainly no expert in these kinds of things, but it seems to me that working near the vehicle would quickly disturb any tracks, because of how light the rocks and dust are on the moon.