We're coming up fast on the 42nd anniversary of Apollo 15 (26 July-7 August 1971), the first advanced J-class Apollo mission and the first to include a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). I've been looking for an opportunity to use the two panels above, which display the LRV deployment sequence in colorful detail. I had thought to include them in the post I am writing now, which is about an alternative to the LRV that (literally) never took off, but these panels are just too detailed and well-wrought for that; they pull attention away from the real focus of the post. So, I decided to give them a post of their own.
Boeing built the LRV on contract to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, starting in mid-1969, though the company (and several others, such as Bendix) had studied lunar rovers since the early 1960s. Three LRVs now rest on the moon where their Apollo astronaut drivers parked them. In a program chock-full of remarkable machines, the LRVs stand out from the rest. Had they not extended the exploration range of the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 astronauts, we would know a lot less about the moon than we do today.
In the images above, a pair of astronauts release the tightly folded LRV from a compartment built into the side of the Apollo Lunar Module. They do this mainly by pulling lanyards in sequence; then, after the LRV sits on four wheels on the dusty lunar surface, they unfold seats and other appendages by hand. Fully deployed, the LRV measured 10 feet long and 7.5 feet wide. Although its mass was just 463 pounds, it could carry a payload mass (including two space-suited astronauts at about 370 pounds each) of about 1080 pounds on the moon.