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| The Toledo Blade December 30, 1961 Page 3 |
Transcript:
Engineers Design 'Moonmobile' For Lunar Travel
No Rubber Tires Allowed Due To Low Temperatures
DENVER, Dec 30 - Space engineers came up today with a design for a "moonmobile"- featuring "wagon-type steering." "space-suit integration," and "wishbone actuators," if you please.
Its two-man crew would sport real weirdies in the space-suit line. These would be attachable to the vehicle itself and would have an over-sized torso section. The latter would be designed, among other things, to enable the spacemen to scratch themselves in comfort as they traveled over - nay, "lunagated" - the moon's surface at 5 to 10 miles an hour.
The eight-foot long, five-foot wide lunar buggy would cruise on five-foot-diameter, fairly broad-rimmed wheels featuring bicycle-size spokes.
Rubber Would Crack
The wheels might have cleats but no rubber tires because rubber would crack in the 250-below-zero lunar nighttime which lasts more than 300 hours.
The vehicle would look like a cross between a small boy's homemade gig and a railroad handcar. The entire front axle would pivot in a vertical axis, just like a wagon.
Two engineers of Space General Corp., Glendale, Calif., produced preliminary blueprints in a report to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
They also offered a design for a larger, three-man vehicle - an enclosed-cabin type job in which the moon explorers would travel in "shirt sleeve comfort without space suits while they operated bulldozer and other attachments by remote control.
Possible Lunar Landings
Dr J. E. Froehlich and Allyn B Hazard said the Government should begin soon to finance development of actual models - to be ready for possible lunar landings "well before the end of the 1960's."
But they offered no estimates of prices of new models - nor of resale value at used car lots on the moon.
Both types of "moonmobiles" would use chemical fuels in an electrical generating system feeding motors attached to each of the four wheels.
The smaller vehicle - presumably the lunar version of the compact car - would weigh 2,400 earth pounds (F.O B. Cape Canaveral) - but would weigh only 400 pounds on the low-gravity moon.
It would be designed essentially for 10-day overland exploratory missions of up to 1,000 miles.
One man would ride forward, the other in the rear. Usually, they'd ride in a standing position, with their hardshell space suits attached to special rigs shaped like a wishbone. They also could push a button on their "wishbone actuators" and be automatically set on the ground.
Like Cement Mixer
To take a nap while under way, each spaceman could cause his actuator to suspend him horizontally making him look like a cement mixer in action. The space suits would each weigh 342 earth pounds but only 57 moon pounds.
While meandering away from their moon buggy, the space-men could get life-supporting oxygen and also electrical power for their built-in radios and other gadgets through 20-font "umbilical" cables linked with the moonmobile. But they could also disconnect the cable, and take longer jaunts of several hours duration, thanks to a small oxygen and power-supplying unit contained in the space suit itself.
The suit's oversized torso would allow the man to keep his hands inside most of the time - while he operated the moonmobile from a control panel built into the suit. He could also heat food inside and "perform all normal bodily functions such as eating, sleeping. scratching and elimination."
The suit has a picture window. but no windshield wiper is needed for it - nor for the moonmobile because there's no fog, wind or rain on the moon.
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