Friday, June 15, 2007

AstroVan

Another issue with that painting of Neil Armstrong on the Moon is the so-called moon buggy. According to information I found on the internet, the flight Apollo 15 was the first to bring the lunar rover and that was 3 flights after Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong also didn't have those red stripes on his spacesuit. Those were added later to identify the commander of the lunar lander. None of the photos in the linked article about Neil Armstrong show the red stripes on his spacesuit.

It is especially curious to consider that I was always thinking of adding similar stripes to my wetsuit so I could pick myself out of the Ironman triathlons photos that were not idenitified. I never did do that, but I was going to definitely do it for the Ironman 2005 triathlon, but I didn't get to do that one. I hadn't figured out what I was going to use for the stripes on the sleeves of my wetsuit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_buggy

The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) or Lunar rover was a model of land vehicle used on the Moon. It is known by its popular nickname of "moon buggy". Several of the Apollo Lunar Module spacecraft delivered lunar rovers to the moon.

The original cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to Boeing (with Delco as a major sub-contractor) was for US$19 million and called for delivery of the first LRV by April 1, 1971, but cost overruns led to a final cost of US$38 million. Four lunar rovers were built, one each for Apollos 15, 16, and 17, and one that was used for spare parts after the cancellation of further Apollo missions. There were other LRV models built: a static model to assist with human factors design, an engineering model to design and integrate the subsystems, two 1/6 gravity models for testing the deployment mechanism, a 1-gravity trainer to give the astronauts instruction in the operation of the rover and allow them to practice driving it, a mass model to test the effect of the rover on the LM structure, balance and handling, a vibration test unit to study the LRV's durability and handling of launch stresses, and a qualification test unit to study integration of all LRV subsystems.


LRVs were used for greater surface mobility during the Apollo program J-class missions: (Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17). The rover was first used on July 31, 1971 during the Apollo 15 mission. This greatly expanded the range of the lunar explorers. Previous teams of astronauts were restricted to short walking distances around the landing site due to the bulky space suit equipment required to sustain life in the lunar environment. The rovers have a top speed of about 8 mph.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_14

Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the Apollo program and the third mission to land on the Moon.

Shepard's moonwalking suit was the first to incorporate red bands on the arms and legs and a red stripe on the top of the lunar EVA sunshade "hood", so as to allow easy identification of the commander while on the surface; on the Apollo 12 pictures, it had been almost impossible to distinguish between the two crewmen, causing a great deal of confusion. This feature was on Jim Lovell's Apollo 13 suit, but because of the accident, this was not used. It was used on the remaining three Apollo flights and is used on both the U.S. and Russian spacesuits on both the Space Shuttle and International Space Station.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstroVan

The AstroVan is a NASA owned modified Airstream Excella motorhome to transport astronauts to the launch pad before a launch mission. It has been used since the beginning of the space program and is still used in Space Shuttle launches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:STS-116_Boarding_%28NASA_STS116-S-006%29_2006-Dec-09.jpg