Andy Saunders sent me a really cool teaser from his forthcoming book, 𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰 𝘙𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥, full of modern digital scans from the NASA original negatives. It’s looks like the HDR-merge shot I’d want to take on the moon!
50 years ago, today, the first rover on the moon went for a 7-hour expedition. In this first photo, you can see one of the quadrants unloaded like a 5’ x 5’ drawbridge (in this case for other equipment; the car fits in a symmetric quadrant to the right of the ladder). It’s a triangular wedge in the square-shaped descent stage, and that’s all they had to work with. It had always been a goal of Apollo to extend the reach of exploration from the short distance that the astronauts could cover on foot. GM, Bendix and Grumman were working on lunar transport vehicles that would have required a separate Saturn V flight to the moon, but budget cuts scuttled all that.
To make it fit, the rover chassis had to fold back on itself and then each wheel folded inward to a 45° angle, perfectly fitting in the triangular wedge on the lander, with the wheels all pressed together.
I collect flown space hardware. In that pantheon, can’t think of anything more remarkable than mission tools that have been driven around the moon in an electric car! And then brought back to Earth as precious treasure from the mission. Here are three I picked from our FV collection.
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