WEBVTT - The Lunar Rover: The Most Important Car off this Earth 0:00:15.316 --> 0:00:22.956 Pushkin. Hey Eddie here, before we get started, I wanted 0:00:22.996 --> 0:00:24.876 you to know that you can listen to Car Show 0:00:24.956 --> 0:00:29.276 ad free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. You'll also 0:00:29.316 --> 0:00:32.796 get access to detours, bonus episodes of Car Show, where 0:00:32.836 --> 0:00:37.676 we go for extended drives, play outtakes, and more fine 0:00:37.716 --> 0:00:40.636 Pushkin Plus on the Car Show page, in Apple Podcasts, 0:00:41.156 --> 0:00:48.996 or at pushkin dot Fm. What the hell were they 0:00:49.076 --> 0:00:53.076 doing with a car on the goddamn moon? You're on 0:00:53.316 --> 0:01:00.956 the Moon already. Isn't that far enough? There is no 0:01:01.036 --> 0:01:03.276 more male idea in the history of the universe than 0:01:03.316 --> 0:01:09.516 why don't we fly up to the Moon and drive around? Well, exactly, Jerry, 0:01:10.236 --> 0:01:13.316 why shouldn't we drive around on the moon. By sending 0:01:13.316 --> 0:01:17.676 those lunar rovers into space, NASA made it clear getting 0:01:17.676 --> 0:01:21.716 to the Moon wasn't far enough. Once up there, we 0:01:21.796 --> 0:01:27.836 had to keep going. There are three lunar rovers, three 0:01:27.836 --> 0:01:30.916 American cars up there on the Moon right now. They 0:01:30.956 --> 0:01:35.036 were disgorged from the bellies of Apollo fifteen, sixteen and 0:01:35.196 --> 0:01:39.156 seventeen's lunar modules, and we left them at Hadley, Apennine, 0:01:39.596 --> 0:01:43.916 the Descartes Highlands and Taurus lit Row, respectively. In the 0:01:44.036 --> 0:01:48.596 nineteen seventies, because we were litter bugs back then, also 0:01:48.836 --> 0:01:51.756 because getting them down would have been almost as impossible 0:01:51.996 --> 0:01:55.436 as getting them up there in the first place. The 0:01:55.516 --> 0:01:58.156 rovers purpose was to explore the surface of the Moon 0:01:58.436 --> 0:02:02.036 and collect geological samples. NASA wanted to see how the 0:02:02.036 --> 0:02:05.956 Moon was formed. The Rovers were like, yeah, getting to 0:02:05.996 --> 0:02:08.996 the Moon is cool and all, but here, hold my beer. 0:02:11.556 --> 0:02:14.596 Lunar exploration is an idea that hasn't really left us, 0:02:15.036 --> 0:02:17.636 even though we stopped going to the Moon fifty years ago, 0:02:18.356 --> 0:02:20.516 but NASA plans to go back by the year twenty 0:02:20.556 --> 0:02:24.716 twenty five as part of a project called Artemis. It's 0:02:24.756 --> 0:02:28.476 also on many billionaires to do lists like Ancient Rome. 0:02:28.796 --> 0:02:32.236 Our biggest ideas are now funded by ultra rich shopkeepers 0:02:32.276 --> 0:02:42.516 and stupid looking cowboy hats. Two one honestly human and 0:02:42.676 --> 0:02:47.396 amazing what we just saw for the team at Blue 0:02:47.396 --> 0:02:50.076 Origin and Jeff Bezos takes the first ride, so I 0:02:50.076 --> 0:02:52.716 think it's pretty exciting. I think it opens up or 0:02:52.756 --> 0:02:57.596 funded by his arch nemesis, evil genius spacebro Musk. You 0:02:57.716 --> 0:03:00.396 got a contract with the Defense Department to do a 0:03:00.476 --> 0:03:04.716 lunar lander if rom NASA from NASA, which is being 0:03:04.716 --> 0:03:08.436 disputed by Jeff Bezos. How do you feel about that? 0:03:08.716 --> 0:03:11.476 I think he should put more of his energy into 0:03:12.556 --> 0:03:18.276 getting to orbit. You cannot seat the moon. Okay, do 0:03:18.356 --> 0:03:22.396 you know how good your lawyers are? Yeah, boys will 0:03:22.436 --> 0:03:27.316 be boys. Meanwhile, NASA did it already and left proof 0:03:27.396 --> 0:03:33.116 up there in those three lonely rovers. The lunar rovers 0:03:33.116 --> 0:03:38.236 were compact miracles of research and engineering, imagination and blind faith. 0:03:39.196 --> 0:03:43.996 They were perilous things animated by the spirit of ceaseless exploration. 0:03:45.996 --> 0:03:51.396 They were exploration vehicles squared. They were the Moonshots Moonshot. 0:03:54.596 --> 0:03:57.876 I'm Eddie Alterman, and this is Car Show, my podcast 0:03:57.916 --> 0:04:01.556 about how cars reflect who we are. The lunar rovers 0:04:01.556 --> 0:04:07.276 count as cars definitely. They had four wheels, bidirectional steering, 0:04:07.676 --> 0:04:12.196 and lots of communications puipment. They were battery powered, making them, 0:04:12.236 --> 0:04:17.036 in a manner of speaking, the first ev off rods. Moreover, 0:04:17.356 --> 0:04:20.356 as we'll see in this episode, the winning rover design 0:04:20.476 --> 0:04:23.916 made it through the approvals process because it was so familiar, 0:04:24.396 --> 0:04:28.716 so carlike. It was a concrete and reassuring connection to 0:04:28.836 --> 0:04:31.796 what was already known, and when you're dealing with the 0:04:31.836 --> 0:04:35.476 many unknowns of a moon mission, a little familiarity is comforting. 0:04:37.836 --> 0:04:41.396 But beyond all that, there is this. If cars are 0:04:41.436 --> 0:04:46.196 about exploration, freedom and travel, then the Lunar rovers might 0:04:46.236 --> 0:05:08.756 be the carrious cars in the history of mankind. We 0:05:08.876 --> 0:05:11.236 loved to drive our subjects here on the show, but 0:05:11.396 --> 0:05:14.556 from time to time will encounter vehicles where a drive 0:05:14.756 --> 0:05:17.236 is out of the budget. So we'll do the next 0:05:17.276 --> 0:05:20.796 best thing. We'll talk with people close to the Rover project, 0:05:21.636 --> 0:05:25.156 people like Earl Swift, who wrote Across the Airless Wilds, 0:05:25.556 --> 0:05:28.316 which is, in my humble opinion, the definitive book on 0:05:28.356 --> 0:05:31.596 the Lunar rovers. Thank you so much for having me. Swifts. 0:05:31.596 --> 0:05:34.916 Across the Airless Wilds chronicles the unlikely origins of the 0:05:34.996 --> 0:05:38.476 Lunar Rover project, which was first streamed up by Werner 0:05:38.596 --> 0:05:42.916 von Braun. Von Braun was born into aristocracy. His father 0:05:43.036 --> 0:05:46.676 was part of the Weimar Republic. As a teenager, von 0:05:46.716 --> 0:05:51.116 Braun became obsessed with rockets, and the German government took notice. 0:05:51.916 --> 0:05:54.916 They paid for him to further his studies. Von Braun, 0:05:55.276 --> 0:05:58.596 a card carrying member of the SS, would go on 0:05:58.676 --> 0:06:03.476 to develop advanced weapons systems for the Nazis. America covertly 0:06:03.476 --> 0:06:06.476 patriated him after World War Two as part of Project 0:06:06.476 --> 0:06:10.076 paper Clip. In the States, he worked on rocket development, 0:06:10.396 --> 0:06:12.956 and he would eventually become director of the Marshall Space 0:06:12.956 --> 0:06:17.116 Flight Center in Alabama. There he developed a Saturn V 0:06:17.276 --> 0:06:20.156 rocket that got us to the Moon, but not before 0:06:20.236 --> 0:06:24.476 guest starring in promotional films about space flight for Disneyland. 0:06:25.076 --> 0:06:28.196 The training methods for future space flight and the special 0:06:28.236 --> 0:06:31.356 equipment needed for survival are much like those of present 0:06:31.396 --> 0:06:34.996 high altitude flying, and the experiments we are making today 0:06:35.236 --> 0:06:38.076 are helping us to solve the more complex problems to come. 0:06:39.196 --> 0:06:42.276 Take the present days. Von Bronze in the running with 0:06:42.436 --> 0:06:47.516 movie star codemaker and inventor Hetty Lamar for Craziest resume 0:06:47.796 --> 0:06:53.796 of the twentieth century. In the early fifties, he participated 0:06:53.796 --> 0:06:58.516 in a series of stories in Collier's magazine. The series 0:06:58.556 --> 0:07:03.036 explored the inevitability of the American entry into space. In 0:07:03.116 --> 0:07:06.316 the Collier series, von Braun laid out his vision for 0:07:06.396 --> 0:07:09.796 how we would get around on the Moon's surface. How 0:07:09.836 --> 0:07:12.596 wild is it that the idea of lunar mobility should 0:07:12.636 --> 0:07:15.436 spring from von Bron's mind and onto the pages of 0:07:15.436 --> 0:07:19.196 a magazine, and a general interest magazine at that, not 0:07:19.356 --> 0:07:25.036 popular science, not even popular mechanics Collier's Weekly. That's akin 0:07:25.116 --> 0:07:27.516 to laying out a vision for nuclear fission in a 0:07:27.556 --> 0:07:31.676 special section of people. Vron Brown was speculating about a 0:07:31.756 --> 0:07:35.796 visit to a place that people a lot more learned 0:07:35.836 --> 0:07:39.236 about the celestial bodies. They knew way more than he did, 0:07:40.476 --> 0:07:44.316 but that didn't stop him from dreaming. Dominating von Braun's 0:07:44.396 --> 0:07:49.396 vision were, as Swift calls them, these hulking, multitn caterpillar 0:07:49.436 --> 0:07:54.236 tractor sized moon cars. Von Braun imagined them traveling hundreds 0:07:54.236 --> 0:07:57.596 of miles across the lunar surface, carrying small squadrons of 0:07:57.636 --> 0:08:03.356 astronauts on exploratory missions. Of course, that's not how it 0:08:03.476 --> 0:08:06.916 ended up. There were several rover ideas floating around NASSA 0:08:06.956 --> 0:08:09.876 at that time, and they all contributed to what ultimately 0:08:09.916 --> 0:08:13.476 wound up tucked into the bellies of those three lunar modules. 0:08:13.596 --> 0:08:19.156 In fact, NASA's manned spacecraft vision for lunar exploration stayed 0:08:19.156 --> 0:08:22.956 true to that early vision. The first lunar rovers were 0:08:23.516 --> 0:08:28.156 expected to be pressurized and capable of traveling long distances, 0:08:28.276 --> 0:08:30.356 and we're going to kind of double as shelter as 0:08:30.396 --> 0:08:33.996 well as transportation. The astronauts wouldn't live in a lunar module. 0:08:34.556 --> 0:08:37.636 They'd get out of the module, step into this big 0:08:38.316 --> 0:08:40.756 lunar rover and they drive around and live in that 0:08:40.876 --> 0:08:44.516 thing for a couple of weeks and then fly home. Meanwhile, 0:08:44.676 --> 0:08:48.396 and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, another crew of 0:08:48.436 --> 0:08:50.796 engineers was working on a different vision for a mission 0:08:50.836 --> 0:08:54.036 to the Moon, and there you see a much more 0:08:54.076 --> 0:08:57.756 simplified concept of of what a rover would look like. 0:08:57.796 --> 0:08:59.956 Of course, they were they had to be simplified. They 0:08:59.956 --> 0:09:02.036 were very small, they were they were robotic, and they 0:09:02.076 --> 0:09:05.516 were going to land on unmanned probes and then explore 0:09:05.556 --> 0:09:08.556 the lunar's surface for good places for manned language to occur. 0:09:10.956 --> 0:09:14.676 Both of those concepts you see one group of engineers 0:09:14.716 --> 0:09:19.836 at General Motors. It's kind kind of working both concepts 0:09:19.876 --> 0:09:23.076 at the same time. What we wound up with was 0:09:23.076 --> 0:09:26.516 sort of a mashup of the enclosed Vombrounian idea of 0:09:26.516 --> 0:09:29.196 what the lunar rover would look like and the pared 0:09:29.236 --> 0:09:34.956 down Jet Propulsion Labs concept more like a beach buggy. Interestingly, 0:09:35.356 --> 0:09:37.356 although we think of the Moon as an extension of 0:09:37.396 --> 0:09:41.116 American manifest destiny, the guys leading the development of the 0:09:41.156 --> 0:09:45.396 lunar rover weren't born here. Von Braun, as we mentioned, 0:09:45.636 --> 0:09:49.316 was German, and while von Braun was working for NASA, 0:09:49.516 --> 0:09:53.036 two Europeans working for General Motors were also key to 0:09:53.076 --> 0:09:56.236 the rover story. They were there at the beginning working 0:09:56.236 --> 0:10:00.316 on everything from rough rover prototypes to the final vehicles 0:10:00.356 --> 0:10:03.236 still sitting on the moon. The two engineers at General 0:10:03.236 --> 0:10:07.156 Motors who had the single prints all over this project 0:10:07.236 --> 0:10:10.796 from the beginning guide named Qui Becker from Poland and 0:10:11.276 --> 0:10:19.476 his right hand man parents Frank Pablix, who was from Hungary. 0:10:20.716 --> 0:10:24.476 They came over in Becker's case right after the war, 0:10:24.756 --> 0:10:28.836 and Pablix's case in the mid nineteen sixties after the 0:10:29.316 --> 0:10:34.236 unsuccessful Hungarian uprising, and became Americans and became the guiding 0:10:34.276 --> 0:10:38.916 spirits of the whole project. Becker and Pavlicks were not 0:10:38.996 --> 0:10:42.996 plugging away in the frozen hinterlands of Detroit, though. These 0:10:43.036 --> 0:10:47.236 guys got the plumb assignment go to California and dream 0:10:47.276 --> 0:10:52.156 stuff up. Santa Barbara was home to GM's defense research labs, 0:10:52.516 --> 0:10:57.036 which focused on winning military business. This tells you something 0:10:57.076 --> 0:11:01.316 important about General Motors at that time. They were so omnipotent, 0:11:01.796 --> 0:11:04.796 so vital to and in meshed with our country's success 0:11:05.396 --> 0:11:08.356 that they had their own experimental department full of these 0:11:08.436 --> 0:11:11.876 austral hung Arean engineers who were there to theorize about 0:11:11.876 --> 0:11:14.796 blowing things up. They weren't there to get their hands 0:11:14.836 --> 0:11:18.516 dirty and actually produce something. Another division would handle that. 0:11:22.916 --> 0:11:26.116 But when push came to shove, they did produce something. 0:11:26.996 --> 0:11:29.836 The idea that we went from imagining the basic notion 0:11:29.876 --> 0:11:32.156 of how to get to the Moon in nineteen sixty 0:11:32.156 --> 0:11:35.276 two to driving around on it just nine years later. 0:11:36.316 --> 0:11:39.316 That's nuts. It takes me nine years just to clean 0:11:39.356 --> 0:11:43.076 my basement. The first thing Becker did was trying to 0:11:43.076 --> 0:11:46.636 work out the soil composition on the Moon, not the terrain, 0:11:47.116 --> 0:11:50.276 but the lurine. You know, if you've ever done munting 0:11:50.276 --> 0:11:53.116 in a jeep, or you've raced motocross or just ridden 0:11:53.156 --> 0:11:55.796 a mountain bike, you owe something of the experience to 0:11:55.916 --> 0:11:59.356 Greg Becker because he invented the branch of engineering that 0:11:59.476 --> 0:12:04.036 studies the relationship of vehicles to the soils over which 0:12:04.036 --> 0:12:07.796 they travel. So that takes some tread design vehicle weight 0:12:08.076 --> 0:12:12.636 versus type of ground uron Every factor that comes into 0:12:12.636 --> 0:12:15.396 plays to whether you can gain traction and go somewhere 0:12:15.436 --> 0:12:19.596 off road goes back to Greg Becker. Thus was born 0:12:19.676 --> 0:12:23.156 the science of terra mechanics, the study of wheeled or 0:12:23.196 --> 0:12:27.916 track vehicles across terrain. But Becker wasn't designing a vehicle 0:12:27.996 --> 0:12:31.116 for just any dirt. It's hard to get more off 0:12:31.196 --> 0:12:35.756 road than the Moon. How did Greg Becker know what 0:12:36.036 --> 0:12:39.956 was up there? Well, that's that is. Of course, no 0:12:39.996 --> 0:12:42.916 one knew what was up there. The only thing that 0:12:42.956 --> 0:12:45.316 was known about the Moon's surface was what could be 0:12:45.316 --> 0:12:48.636 seen through telescopes, and given the telescopes of the day, 0:12:48.676 --> 0:12:51.356 that wasn't a lot. But they made a number of assumptions. 0:12:51.436 --> 0:12:53.596 Number one thing, you know, there wasn't believed to be 0:12:53.636 --> 0:12:57.236 any water on the Moon. Therefore you're dealing with a dry, 0:12:57.236 --> 0:13:01.876 granular soil. And wasn't there a fear that the surface 0:13:01.996 --> 0:13:08.476 was so soft, like a talc softness, that anything would 0:13:08.516 --> 0:13:11.836 sort of sink into it. Well, there was a There 0:13:11.876 --> 0:13:15.356 was a scientist named Thomas Gold who was really his 0:13:15.436 --> 0:13:18.316 comments on it were taking out of context. He in 0:13:18.356 --> 0:13:23.076 a nineteen fifty five or fifty six paper, had postulated 0:13:23.116 --> 0:13:28.596 that what we saw as seas on the lunar's surface 0:13:28.636 --> 0:13:32.276 were actually settled dust in places that could be thousands 0:13:32.316 --> 0:13:37.036 of feet thick, and really was reporters of the day 0:13:37.196 --> 0:13:41.196 who then kind of took that in extrapolated from it 0:13:41.756 --> 0:13:44.116 this notion that if a spacecraft came down on the 0:13:44.196 --> 0:13:46.156 lunar surface, it might finish out of side, it might 0:13:46.436 --> 0:13:49.996 sink into this dry lunar quicksand never to be seen again. 0:13:50.956 --> 0:13:55.036 But Becker and Pavlix were undeterred. They experimented with all 0:13:55.076 --> 0:13:59.436 sorts of prototypes, and it was Becker's belief that by 0:13:59.516 --> 0:14:03.556 grinding up volcanic rock and similar materials he could fake it, 0:14:04.076 --> 0:14:07.076 and so he and Pablix did just that. They used 0:14:07.116 --> 0:14:12.996 a number of substitutes, these flour white flour, and wound 0:14:13.036 --> 0:14:15.036 open a bit of a rat problem in Santa Barbara 0:14:15.076 --> 0:14:18.036 because of that. But Pavlex and Becker came up with 0:14:18.036 --> 0:14:21.716 one design for a rober bit was composed of screws 0:14:21.716 --> 0:14:24.996 basically that would just burrow through a really soft, light, 0:14:25.116 --> 0:14:30.036 fluffy surface. But it became clear that over a couple 0:14:30.036 --> 0:14:34.236 of years of experimentation that the mode of travel that 0:14:34.356 --> 0:14:36.876 made the most sense when you looked at complexity and 0:14:36.996 --> 0:14:39.996 weight versus what you were likely to find on the 0:14:40.076 --> 0:14:47.316 learner's surface was the wheel, the rover's wheel. It's engineering 0:14:47.316 --> 0:14:50.476 and materials would be key to this whole project and 0:14:50.516 --> 0:14:54.236 would ultimately land Boeing in GM the final NASA contract. 0:14:55.036 --> 0:14:57.556 That wheel would take time to work out using the 0:14:57.636 --> 0:15:01.476 new science of Tera mechanics, but the number of wheels 0:15:02.356 --> 0:15:05.316 that was something Becker and Pablox thought they knew from 0:15:05.316 --> 0:15:09.436 the start. The earliest GM proposals by Becker and Ablets 0:15:09.756 --> 0:15:13.076 were six wheels, all wheel drive, which they found was 0:15:13.116 --> 0:15:17.396 the perfect setup to get over practically anything. Wasn't there 0:15:17.876 --> 0:15:22.476 a variety of articulation types of the body, Well, it 0:15:22.716 --> 0:15:27.156 absolutely essential to the six wheel prototype that they developed 0:15:27.236 --> 0:15:30.356 was the fact that it had a completely flexible frame. 0:15:30.436 --> 0:15:32.996 You know, if it came to a block ahead, it 0:15:33.076 --> 0:15:35.876 could climb it first with the front wheels kind of 0:15:36.116 --> 0:15:39.356 you know, pulling their way up as the back two 0:15:39.396 --> 0:15:42.076 sets pushed. And then once the front wheels got to 0:15:42.116 --> 0:15:45.276 the top of the obstacle, you'd have the front wheels 0:15:45.276 --> 0:15:48.196 pulling while the back wheels pushed and the middle wheels 0:15:48.236 --> 0:15:51.756 clawed their way up. And then finally you'd have two 0:15:51.796 --> 0:15:54.316 sets of wheels up front pulling while that last set 0:15:54.316 --> 0:15:56.636 of wheels went over. So why did they go to 0:15:56.716 --> 0:15:59.276 four wheels. They went to four wheels because they didn't 0:15:59.276 --> 0:16:02.156 have a choice. They were still pushing a six wheeled 0:16:02.596 --> 0:16:05.996 rover as late as nineteen the fall of nineteen sixty seven, 0:16:06.556 --> 0:16:13.556 at which point NASA's budget was slap and the agency 0:16:13.636 --> 0:16:16.156 basically threw up at sands and said, we're not going 0:16:16.196 --> 0:16:17.876 to be able to afford to the cinder or rover 0:16:18.036 --> 0:16:21.876 to the Moon. Becker and Pavlik's original rover concepts relied 0:16:21.916 --> 0:16:24.076 on two rockets to reach the surface of the Moon, 0:16:24.956 --> 0:16:29.236 one carrying astronauts and another carrying the hulking six wheeled rover. 0:16:29.716 --> 0:16:32.436 And with the budget cut that flew out the window. 0:16:32.596 --> 0:16:34.796 No Apollo mission was going to get two rockets. But 0:16:35.676 --> 0:16:37.956 at this point they've been They spent seventy eight years 0:16:38.036 --> 0:16:40.916 working on this NonStop, and they weren't content to let 0:16:40.956 --> 0:16:43.236 all that work go to waste. They would need to 0:16:43.276 --> 0:16:47.316 find some space in the tiny lunar module itself, and 0:16:47.436 --> 0:16:50.116 Becker and Pavox weren't the only engineers whose work was 0:16:50.196 --> 0:16:54.956 upended by the budget cuts. As they began working frantically 0:16:54.956 --> 0:16:59.196 to downsize the original rover design. Three other companies Vibe 0:16:59.196 --> 0:17:02.636 to deliver the winning design to Werner von Braun at NASA. 0:17:02.916 --> 0:17:07.356 The three were Chrysler, Grummin and Fendix. Bendix came up 0:17:07.356 --> 0:17:12.356 with a minimum number of moving parts approach. Forget sophistication, 0:17:12.996 --> 0:17:16.716 forget elegance. We just don't want anything to go wrong, 0:17:16.956 --> 0:17:20.076 so we're going to cut anything that can. Bendix put 0:17:20.116 --> 0:17:22.996 the bulk of their energy into the all important wheels. 0:17:23.996 --> 0:17:27.476 They devised a spoked aluminum hub with titanium hoops at 0:17:27.516 --> 0:17:31.996 its crown, surrounded by a titanium band. The idea was 0:17:32.076 --> 0:17:35.396 that if the Bendix rover hid an obstacle, the titanium 0:17:35.396 --> 0:17:39.316 hoops would compress, observing the shock of the impact. Then 0:17:39.476 --> 0:17:42.836 once the rover was past the obstacle, the titanium would 0:17:42.836 --> 0:17:47.316 pop back into shape. Wheel and suspension in one wasn't 0:17:47.356 --> 0:17:50.556 good looking. It looked like it had been fashioned in 0:17:50.636 --> 0:17:55.316 an old West blacksmith shop, but it worked pretty well. Meanwhile, 0:17:55.596 --> 0:17:58.636 over at Chrysler, the design team there was working on 0:17:58.676 --> 0:18:02.356 a rover with a much smaller footprint. The two astronauts 0:18:02.396 --> 0:18:05.196 would sit back to back on a much narrower platform, 0:18:05.836 --> 0:18:08.516 but there was a cost to the Chrysler's slim profile 0:18:09.156 --> 0:18:12.156 didn't leave much cargo space for collecting lunar rock samples 0:18:12.636 --> 0:18:15.596 and collecting samples was the whole point of the rover. 0:18:16.796 --> 0:18:20.036 And finally there was the team over at Grumman working 0:18:20.116 --> 0:18:24.276 up their own idea for the rover, a crouching spidery looking. 0:18:25.476 --> 0:18:29.396 It really looked like a spacecraft on wheels. Grumman's design 0:18:29.436 --> 0:18:31.956 had wheel shaped like flower pots turned on their sides. 0:18:32.756 --> 0:18:37.396 They compressed over the Lorraine. They were sort of comically floppy. Also, 0:18:37.516 --> 0:18:40.796 the Grumman design didn't have traditional steering, just a joystick 0:18:40.836 --> 0:18:44.316 at the front. When an astronaut moved the joystick, the 0:18:44.476 --> 0:18:48.916 entire craft would contort itself and pivot, and it was fast. 0:18:49.636 --> 0:18:53.436 It's crouching attitude gave it almost the sports per field. 0:18:55.036 --> 0:18:57.236 But in the end Werner von Braunze said no to 0:18:57.276 --> 0:19:06.316 all three. Grumman's space spider was just too weird for NASA. 0:19:06.436 --> 0:19:10.516 The Chrysler didn't have enough cargo capacity to elect geological samples, 0:19:11.036 --> 0:19:16.116 and Bendix's design seemed rudimentary. And then, in the spring 0:19:16.156 --> 0:19:19.636 of nineteen sixty eight, just four months after the budget cuts, 0:19:20.276 --> 0:19:23.916 who should walk into von Braun's office our Man Fern's 0:19:23.956 --> 0:19:27.636 pavlis carrying a one six scale model of an ingeniously 0:19:27.716 --> 0:19:34.236 redesigned GM rover. Pavlis proposed a four wheeled rover that 0:19:34.276 --> 0:19:36.956 can fold into thirds, like how you'd fold a letter 0:19:36.956 --> 0:19:39.876 to fit in an envelope. The reduction in the number 0:19:39.876 --> 0:19:43.916 of wheels plus the associated origami meant that this rover 0:19:44.156 --> 0:19:47.396 could be stowed in the lunar module. NASA wouldn't need 0:19:47.396 --> 0:19:51.196 two rockets after all, the seats folded flat and both 0:19:51.236 --> 0:19:55.076 axles folded back over the center section. And while Pavlicks 0:19:55.116 --> 0:19:57.396 had to pare down his wheel count from six to four, 0:19:58.276 --> 0:20:01.516 the wheels themselves were a feat of Terra mechanical genius 0:20:02.036 --> 0:20:06.436 mesh donuts woven from stainless steel piano wire reinforced with 0:20:06.516 --> 0:20:11.076 titanium hoops inside and compile at Chevron's for traction laid 0:20:11.116 --> 0:20:15.316 over the wire, eight hundred threads of it woven into 0:20:15.396 --> 0:20:19.436 a tight mesh. Each space between the threads was about 0:20:19.436 --> 0:20:22.476 three sixteenth of an inch wide. That was the outer balloon, 0:20:22.636 --> 0:20:25.916 the tire, if you will, of the wheel mounted onto 0:20:25.956 --> 0:20:28.916 a spun aluminum hub, and then inside you had a 0:20:29.036 --> 0:20:32.396 treis of titanium hoops that served as a bump stop. 0:20:32.436 --> 0:20:35.956 So if you hit something really hard and you deformed 0:20:36.036 --> 0:20:39.796 that outside mesh tire and the titanium hoop would keep 0:20:39.836 --> 0:20:43.476 the deformity from going into deeper Legend has it when 0:20:43.596 --> 0:20:47.116 von Braun saw Pablock's redesign, he slammed his fist on 0:20:47.116 --> 0:20:51.596 the desktop and shouted, V must do this. There are 0:20:51.596 --> 0:20:55.676 many brilliant elements of Pablock's vision, but perhaps most crucial 0:20:55.996 --> 0:21:00.156 was that his GM rover felt familiar somehow. It wasn't 0:21:00.156 --> 0:21:05.156 a spartan medieval hauler or a futuristic spider. It was, 0:21:05.636 --> 0:21:11.436 in essence a car. It followed the precepts of, you know, 0:21:11.436 --> 0:21:14.036 an American Earth car GM product of the late nineteen 0:21:14.116 --> 0:21:18.316 sixty The power plant, mainly two thirty six bolt batteries, 0:21:19.396 --> 0:21:23.516 was up front, the astronauts sat side by side of midships, 0:21:23.556 --> 0:21:26.196 and then the trunk was in the back. It was 0:21:26.316 --> 0:21:30.516 really the first ev that General motors produced correct at 0:21:30.556 --> 0:21:35.396 least yes since the very early twentieth century. Has originally 0:21:35.396 --> 0:21:38.836 proposed it was going to be rechargeable. You'd be able 0:21:38.876 --> 0:21:40.796 to put up a solar array and recharge the thing 0:21:40.836 --> 0:21:46.076 in NASA killed that as an unnecessary complication. Von Braun 0:21:46.156 --> 0:21:49.716 spent the next year navigating NASA's bureaucracy and Production of 0:21:49.796 --> 0:21:53.156 Pavlick's Rover began in the fall of nineteen sixty nine. 0:21:53.876 --> 0:21:57.156 GM partner with Boeing for the build, and NASA gave 0:21:57.196 --> 0:22:00.556 them a due date of March nineteen seventy one, a 0:22:00.636 --> 0:22:03.676 little less than a year and a half. NASA usually 0:22:03.716 --> 0:22:06.116 took three or four years to develop a piece of hardware. 0:22:06.196 --> 0:22:11.196 This was crazily fast, and the breakneck production calendar wasn't 0:22:11.196 --> 0:22:16.596 the only complication, you know, it's it's funny. In the book, 0:22:16.676 --> 0:22:21.236 one of my favorite passages is the frustration that NASA 0:22:21.356 --> 0:22:25.276 is having with Boeing and General Motors, sort of in 0:22:25.316 --> 0:22:31.316 that order. NASA is working to this crazy set of 0:22:31.356 --> 0:22:34.396 standards where absolutely nothing can go wrong. And it was 0:22:34.996 --> 0:22:38.836 you know, everything was on the science, you know, everything 0:22:38.916 --> 0:22:43.196 was instrumented flight. But General motors they're making sixty nine 0:22:43.276 --> 0:22:49.036 Vista cruisers. They're making Camaros. In fairness to General Motors. 0:22:49.916 --> 0:22:52.356 Now fair in mind, this has nothing to do with 0:22:52.596 --> 0:22:55.356 Camber motors in Detroit. So these are not the same 0:22:55.356 --> 0:22:58.036 people that are building the Vega think you know, the 0:22:58.356 --> 0:23:02.156 Santa Barbara operation. This was an idea factory. These guys 0:23:02.196 --> 0:23:05.196 were never planning to actually build any of the stuff. 0:23:05.196 --> 0:23:07.396 They came up with. So what you have here a 0:23:07.596 --> 0:23:12.916 bunch of serrists, fantastic engineers, great at building prototypes, but 0:23:12.956 --> 0:23:16.396 not at all schools and actually building a production vehicle. 0:23:17.156 --> 0:23:20.916 And suddenly they're thrust into a situation where not only 0:23:20.956 --> 0:23:24.836 do they have to build the most carefully constructed vehicle 0:23:24.996 --> 0:23:27.396 in human history, but they have to do it in 0:23:27.436 --> 0:23:35.276 seventeen months. All they have is kind of a bag design. 0:23:35.316 --> 0:23:38.436 When they go into it, they know nothing about. NASA's 0:23:38.436 --> 0:23:45.476 weregorous testing procedures, which take months and are just numbingly repetitive, 0:23:45.996 --> 0:23:48.516 you know. They were unfamiliar with a culture in which 0:23:48.556 --> 0:23:50.916 if a piece broke you had to write reports in 0:23:50.996 --> 0:23:54.636 triplicate detailing every test that you then put that broken 0:23:54.676 --> 0:23:56.796 piece to to find out why it had broken. And 0:23:56.836 --> 0:24:01.316 so it was a clash of cultures to bureaucratic obstacles, however, 0:24:01.716 --> 0:24:05.116 pale next to the scientific challenges. There was no way 0:24:05.116 --> 0:24:09.076 to simulate actually drive in accurately anyway. In one subscriber, 0:24:09.756 --> 0:24:12.596 equipment from the previous Apollo missions had been tested in 0:24:12.676 --> 0:24:16.356 space before liftoff. The lunar module and the command module 0:24:16.436 --> 0:24:18.676 had been flown into low Earth orbit as sort of 0:24:18.756 --> 0:24:22.276 dry runs, but there was simply no way to test 0:24:22.316 --> 0:24:24.836 the rover in the environment for which it was intended. 0:24:25.996 --> 0:24:29.316 For one thing, putting earthweight astronauts in a one sex 0:24:29.716 --> 0:24:33.556 or moon mass rover would destroy the thing. They could 0:24:33.556 --> 0:24:36.436 test the wheels out in the sands of California, but 0:24:36.516 --> 0:24:39.316 not the rover itself. There was no way to predict 0:24:40.196 --> 0:24:44.276 exactly how it would behave in those conditions. Yeah, a 0:24:44.276 --> 0:24:48.836 lot of it was pure mass and good engineering, really 0:24:48.876 --> 0:24:53.596 pretty visionary stuff. We're so jaded to the conveniences of 0:24:53.836 --> 0:24:56.876 twenty first century life. We're talking Stone Age stuff here. 0:24:56.956 --> 0:25:00.036 When we talked about Apollo, you know, stuff that was 0:25:00.076 --> 0:25:04.396 worked out on blackboards and was five rules. We'll hear 0:25:04.476 --> 0:25:19.356 how it all worked out after the break. As much 0:25:19.356 --> 0:25:23.076 of a success story as the rover eventually became, some 0:25:23.116 --> 0:25:26.796 stuff did go wrong. On a Pole fifteen, the first 0:25:26.876 --> 0:25:30.836 lunar rover mission, astronaut Dave Scott climbed into the driver's 0:25:30.836 --> 0:25:34.316 seat shortly after touchdown on the Moon, only to discover 0:25:34.436 --> 0:25:38.476 that the front steering wasn't working. Thankfully, it was just 0:25:38.516 --> 0:25:42.236 a brief electrical glitch, but steering issues cropped up again 0:25:42.316 --> 0:25:46.316 on a Polo sixteen and then later in that second 0:25:46.396 --> 0:25:51.076 rover mission, things got really gnarly. John Young, the mission commander, 0:25:51.196 --> 0:25:53.836 as he was walking past the erber, snagged beat the 0:25:53.996 --> 0:25:57.396 right wear fender extension with a hammer that was jutting 0:25:57.396 --> 0:26:01.076 out of a pocket on her shin and ripped it off. 0:26:01.876 --> 0:26:05.716 Without that fender extension, the werber picked up a rooster 0:26:05.836 --> 0:26:08.756 tail of dust wherever it went, and you did not 0:26:08.876 --> 0:26:11.756 need high speeds to achieve that rooster tail. I mean, 0:26:11.756 --> 0:26:14.196 these guys were going six miles an hour most of 0:26:14.276 --> 0:26:16.716 the time. They topped out at like eight, and that 0:26:16.796 --> 0:26:19.916 was an uncomfortably fast drive. But the result was that 0:26:19.996 --> 0:26:23.956 this dust got propelled onto the astronauts, onto the electronics. 0:26:24.916 --> 0:26:27.716 A cloud of fine moon dust might not sound like 0:26:27.756 --> 0:26:32.636 a big deal, but it's highly abrasive. Scientists have described 0:26:32.676 --> 0:26:36.556 it as fine as flour and rough as sandpaper that 0:26:36.596 --> 0:26:39.596 gets into any moving part and you're screwed over two 0:26:39.716 --> 0:26:43.396 hundred thousand miles from home. On top of all of that, 0:26:43.876 --> 0:26:46.796 if that dust got into the rover's electrical system, it 0:26:46.836 --> 0:26:49.476 would absorb the blazing heat from the sun and fry 0:26:49.516 --> 0:26:54.876 the circuits and so working overnight. John Young put together 0:26:54.916 --> 0:26:58.836 a solution, and they picked the fender with maps duct 0:26:58.876 --> 0:27:02.876 tape and two clamps, good old duct tape. Can you 0:27:02.916 --> 0:27:05.916 imagine how cool headed these guys are? Well, yeah, I 0:27:05.916 --> 0:27:10.276