Roving the Moon

Roving the Moon The flight of Apollo 15 will be man's most ambitious adventure in space. After its scheduled lift-off from Cape Kennedy next Monday, July 26 (at 9:34 a.m., E.D.T.), the 6.4 million-lb. rocket will hurl U.S. astronauts toward a perilous landing at the foot of the moon's towering, 12,000-ft.-high Apennine Mountains. During their 67-hour visit, twice as long as any previous stay, they will crisscross more than 22 miles of lunar terrain, traveling to the very edge of a winding, quarter-mile-deep gorge called Had ley Rille in the forbidding lunar highlands. Before their return to earth with an expected haul of 250 Ibs. of moon rocks, they will put a tiny scientific satellite into lunar orbit.

Big Payoff. NASA expects such an enormous payoff from Apollo 15 that it is already calling the flight the first truly scientific expedition to the moon. The lunar module Falcon has been packed with 2,500 Ibs. of added scientific and life-support equipment. The two moon walkers, Flight Commander David R. Scott, 39, a veteran of the earth-orbiting flights of Gemini 8 and Apollo 9, and LM Pilot James B. Irwin, 41, a rookie, have had such a heavy dose of geology training that NASA's usually critical scientists say that the astronauts are ready to go for their Ph.D.s. Even the third member of the all-Air Force crew, Alfred M. Worden, 39, who also will be making his first space venture, has been given an extra dose of scientific indoctrination. While waiting for his buddies to rejoin him aboard the orbiting command ship Endeavour, he will conduct a host of experiments, including closeup photography of the moon with a specially designed stereo camera. He will also take a daring space walk on the trip home.

As an example of sheer technological innovation, however, nothing aboard Apollo 15 quite beats NASA's new I.RV (for Lunar Roving Vehicle), more commonly known as the "moon rover." Tucked away in the side of Falcon, the collapsible, 10-ft.-long jumble of aluminum tubing, wire and rods might easily be mistaken for a Rube Goldbergian version of an old-fashioned foldaway Murphy bed. Actually, it is one of the most unusual and expensive cars ever built (cost of the moon buggy program: $37.8 million).

Capable of carrying two astronauts and their full baggage, a payload more than twice the vehicle's own earth weight (460 Ibs.), the buggy is a model of efficiency, if not Daytona-like speed (maximum: 10 m.p.h.). The battery-powered car should be able to cross crevasses as wide as 28 in., clamber up and down slopes of 25DEG and travel up to 40 miles. Each of its four wide-track, wire-mesh wheels is driven by its own gears and a i-h.p. electric motor. In case one motor fails, it can be cut out of the power system and the vehicle can push on--if necessary on the power of only two motors.

Though it will not range more than five miles from the lunar lander, the rover includes enough navigational gear (a gyroscope, an odometer and a computer) that the astronauts should always know their location in relation to the lunar module. Scott and Irwin may find the equipment extremely helpful: last February, the Apollo 14 astronauts became so confused by the moon's baffling, undulating terrain that they briefly lost their bearings.

Handling the moon buggy is relatively simple. To begin moving and accelerate, the driver presses forward a short, airplane-like joy stick. For turns, he simply shoves the stick sideways in the appropriate direction. The movement of the wheels themselves is not so simple; pushing the stick to the left, for instance, swings the front wheels left and the rear wheels right, thereby enabling the rover to make a much sharper left turn than an ordinary car. To stop, the astronaut pulls all the way back.

Bump Car. Though the astronauts have spent hours practicing with an earthly prototype, Scott insists that the vehicle can easily be mastered after a trial run of only four or five minutes. Perhaps, but because of power limitations in the motor-driven steering mechanism, it can take as long as six seconds to send steering commands to the wheels. As a result, the vehicle responds as slowly as a carnival bump car. "That can make driving the rover hairy," reports TIME Correspondent John Wilhelm, who recently took a short spin in a terrestrial version at Cape Kennedy. "Cutting some figure eights between NASA's simulated sand craters, we nearly ran down a television camera crew."

No TV men will be in the way on the moon. But there will be a special RCA color video camera perched on the rover's front. The camera's movements will be controlled from earth, thus allowing officials in Houston and TV viewers everywhere to follow the astronauts' activities on the moon. The camera will also be positioned to send back the first live pictures of a lift-off from the moon. One thing that will not be sent back is the rover itself. It will be left behind, along with the other expensive technological debris already scattered by man on the moon.

While all eyes were on the impending U.S. moon mission, the Soviets last week gave their first official explanation of Soyuz ll's tragic end. Confirming the speculation of U.S. space officials, they said that the deaths of the three cosmonauts were caused by a sudden drop in cabin pressure--and not by the aftereffects of prolonged weightlessness. The cosmonauts were not wearing pressure suits for the re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Thus the loss of oxygen quickly rendered them unconscious and brought a rapid, painless death. The Russians attributed the depressurization to a "loss of the ship's sealing," but indicated that they still had not determined whether this was the result of an oversight by the cosmonauts when they closed the spacecraft's hatch or a more basic flaw in the machine.

In the light of the Russian tragedy,

U.S. space officials have decided to take at least one extra precaution during the forthcoming lunar mission. The Apollo 15 crew have now been ordered to keep their suits on for a longer period through one phase of the mission: from the docking operation with the command module right through the jettisoning of the lunar module. NASA also is considering whether to reinstitute the practice of having crews wear their suits during re-entry to earth. The practice was dropped after the voyage of Apollo 7 in 1968; it was considered a needless precaution.

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