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Reaching the Moon is only half
the problem. The other is how you get around once the engines
get switched off. Sure, you could walk, but that gets a bit
samey after a while. If you really want to cover ground, you
want to use some sort of motorised transport-- a rover, if you will.
Rovers seems a logical
progression-- especially at a time when arctic exploration was
becoming mechanical. Indeed, Captain Scott took some of the
first snow tractors to Antarctica and the British Commonwealth
Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955 was no dog sled affair, but relied
on tractors and Sno-Cats with the dogs kept in reserve in case of a
break down. With this sort of a precedent, it was small wonder
that the men who planned the conquest of space were designing rovers
as well as rockets.
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Mind you, they were a tad
different from the reality of the first lunar rover deployed during
the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, as can be seen from the illustrations
above. The top artwork are the rovers envisioned by Chesley
Bonestell for the first lunar expedition, which he saw as a caravan of
three sets electric tractors on caterpillar treads towing all manner
of supplies and gear to supply weeks of exploration. And if Bonestell's lunar Rover was the SUV of Future Past, the Apollo version
was the East German subcompact-- and a fold-up one at that.
True, the Apollo version was actually deployed and it was a marvel of
engineering, but it was something of a let down to be promised tanks
and have a gold cart delivered.
Especially when some of the
other designs were a bit more... Well, you'll see.
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