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Apollo 15 Commander Talks About Developing and Driving Lunar Buggy
szczys writes: Greg Charvat recently sat in on an MIT course called "Engineering Apollo". For this set of sessions, David Scott recounted his experience as an astronaut. David was the commander of the Apollo 15 mission, flew several others, and took part in the development of much of the equipment used in the moon missions. The class is basically him hanging around with a bunch of engineers talking in a level of detail rarely heard. From the Hackaday article: "As if you had any doubts, but David confirms the lunar rover was really fun to drive. The vehicle had a wide wheel base, a low center of gravity, and each wheel had its own motor. But there was one occasion that caused a stir when the rover nearly slid down a mountain."
it's not video, it's film. And the camera had no audio input which many movie cameras back in days had no audio. Oh, there's no air to propagate sound waves. What's amazing is showing the Moon as a place where people actually were decades before most of you were born.
mfwright@batnet.com
It's kind of funny that they once envisioned this:
http://public.media.smithsonia...
But instead we got this:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...
To be frank, it looks like a 2nd grade science project using cardboard, aluminum foil, and brass-colored duct-tape.
If somebody brought a model of that to school in the 50's as a lunar lander project, it would be laughed at, smashed, and given an "F", not necessarily in that order.
I remember seeing some aerospace contractor sketches of the early 60's. It started out a bit cleaner, but over time became more and more skeletal. No politically-conscious manager would approve a contract with something that ugly, so they dressed it up a bit.
I would note that Von Braun sketched up spindly looking designs in the early 50's: http://www.astronautix.com/cra...
Ahead of his time.
Table-ized A.I.