Fifty years ago, NASA took its first drive on the moon

Neil Armstrong is well known as the first man to step foot on the moon, but who was the first man to drive on the lunar surface? And why is it important now?

Well, this week marks the 50th anniversary since Dave Scott jumped aboard the Lunar Roving Vehicle at Hadley Rille as part of the Apollo 15 mission.

Commander Scott, along with Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin, then spent three days exploring the lunar surface, driving a total of 27.6km.

This was well short of the rover’s limit of 90km of driving plus the power needed to operate communications systems that included a live colour TV camera back to Mission Control in Houston.

Driving was relatively straight forward, down to the part that Scott and co-driver Irwin could always find their way back to their moon base. All they had to do was drive back along the wheel tracks.

Control was a simple T-bar that was forward, back, left and right. Mission rules meant that they could not venture further than life support systems could sustain should they need to walk back to base.

That meant that on each trip they visited three sites, with the farthest being stop #1, then a couple more stops getting closer back to the Lunar Module.

It had always been intended that the Apollo program would feature driving on the moon. The issue was that until Armstrong actually took that “One Small Step for Man. One Giant Leap for Mankind”, it was not known if the surface was hard or more like a sandy desert.

So, a whole range of vehicle options were being considered in the early 1960s, including one that used conical wheels to corkscrew across the surface.

Armstrong reported the surface was covered with very fine grain material, but underneath it was firm. That meant a rover much resembling a car would work on the moon.

The final option developed and designed not by a car company, but Boeing, was an all-aluminium chassis that would never win an award for its beauty, but certainly for its function and practicality.

That included the transportation of the rover aboard a stowage bay on the Lunar Lander.

Packed like a tight suitcase with the underside facing out, Scott and Irwin pulled the rover out with no less than nylon ropes. As the top side came down, the folded-in wheels sprung out and locked into position.

The one-sixth moon gravity made it a simple lift down of the 210kg vehicle (34kg lunar weight). The seats were folded out, the camera and communications dish were set up, and they were off.

General Motors’ Defense Research Laboratories designed and manufactured the wheels, motors and suspension. Driving the rover was four 0.25hp independent series-wound direct current (DC) electric motors on each wheel.

The steering mechanism allowed for front-wheel, rear-wheel or all-wheel steering, meaning it could turn on a dime.

Power was stored aboard two silver-oxide 121Ah batteries. The biggest issue was ensuring the batteries stayed cool with packaging that included reflective, upward-facing radiators, and gold mylar sheeting that required the astronauts to brush off the heavy dust after each excursion.

All vehicles need tyres, right? With a vacuum atmosphere, pneumatic tyres were not an option.

Developed in conjunction with Goodyear, the rover was shod with a lunar tyre made of a woven mesh of zinc-coated piano wire to which titanium treads were riveted in a chevron pattern.

This provided a smooth ride on the sometimes bumpy lunar surface. Goodyear had to manufacture a more regular rubber tyre for training purposes back on earth.

Like any all-new vehicle, research and development runs into the many millions of dollars. This is recouped in sales with legendary makes and models earning tens of millions of dollars.

Boeing won the lunar rover contract in October 1969 for $US19 million. That blew out to $US38 million, which ironically was NASA’s original estimate.

That was a small part of the total Apollo budget of $US25.4 billion.

Three rovers went to the moon. All three performed well including the last man on the moon, Gene Cernan, who set the lunar land speed record of 18km/h.

They were even used as the TV camera platform to capture the lunar module’s lift-off from the moon’s surface.

There was one other complete vehicle built but torn down for spares plus many prototypes and training mules. So that’s $US9.5 million each in real use!

It is said that it’s not the value of the metal, but what it represents. So, if you are in the market for a genuine lunar rover, you will need to get onto the likes of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos to get to Hadley-Apennine, Descartes Highlands or Taurus-Littrow Valley.

You can then say you have a vehicle that is out of this world.