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Concept
Lunar Roving Vehicle
Summary
The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) is a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program (15, 16, and 17) during 1971 and 1972. It is popularly called the Moon buggy, a play on the term "dune buggy".
Built by Boeing, each LRV has a mass of without payload. It could carry a maximum payload of , including two astronauts, equipment, and cargo such as lunar samples, and was designed for a top speed of , although it achieved a top speed of on its last mission, Apollo 17.
Each LRV was carried to the Moon folded up in the Lunar Module's Quadrant 1 Bay. After being unpacked, each was driven an average of 30 km, without major incident. These three LRVs remain on the Moon.
The concept of a lunar rover predated Apollo, with a 1952–1954 series in Collier's Weekly magazine by Wernher von Braun and others, "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" In this, von Braun described a six-week stay on the Moon, featuring 10-ton tractor trailers for moving supplies.
In 1956, Mieczysław G. Bekker published two books on land locomotion. At the time, Bekker was a University of Michigan professor and a consultant to the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command's Land Locomotion Laboratory. The books provided much of the theoretical basis for future lunar vehicle development.
In the February 1964 issue of Popular Science, von Braun, then director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), discussed the need for a lunar surface vehicle, and revealed that studies had been underway at Marshall in conjunction with Lockheed, Bendix, Boeing, General Motors, Brown Engineering, Grumman, and Bell Aerospace.
Beginning in the early 1960s, a series of studies centering on lunar mobility were conducted under Marshall. This began with the lunar logistics system (LLS), followed by the mobility laboratory (MOLAB), then the lunar scientific survey module (LSSM), and finally the mobility test article (MTA).
Official source
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