Walk, Fly, or Drive?

Safety was always the primary concern when someone recommended the astro­nauts carry out an action. As new ideas were suggested, the astronauts were included as early as possible so they could offer their point of view. When the debates began on how to provide mobility on the lunar surface, they made their thoughts known decisively. The best lunar surface transportation mode would have to take into account not only their preferences but also the payload weight available on the lunar module, the tasks to be performed, and the equipment the vehicle would have to carry. Those looking through the narrow lens of the Field Geology Team wanted the astronauts to cover as much ground as possible at each landing site and carry a variety of tools for mapping and sample collec­tion. The geophysicists and other science disciplines, as we saw at the Falmouth and Santa Cruz conferences, had their own particular requirements for deploy­ing experiments and collecting data. For the Astronaut Safety Office, the pri­mary concern would be to keep the astronauts always within easy reach of the LM in case any of a wide variety of emergencies occurred.

An astronaut walking on the Moon would be, in effect, a small, self- contained spacecraft. His space suit and all the attached systems would have to let him function in the brutal lunar environment (high vacuum, low gravity, and extreme temperatures). It could be as cold as —260°F in shadow, while in full sunlight a short distance away it might be 270°F. He also had to see objects and the ground around him both in shadow and in the glare of the full sun. While moving about he would need a way to maintain voice communication with Earth and, ideally, automatically relay information on his physical condi­tion and the status of his life-support systems so those monitoring them could tell him if he had to return to the LM. Designing a space suit that would accommodate all these multiple functions was an enormous challenge for the Manned Spacecraft Center engineers and their contractors. My office and the scientific community followed their progress with great interest, for the more successfully these challenges were resolved the more scientifically productive the missions would be.1 The astronauts had to be mobile, and they had to maintain good eye-hand coordination; the closer space suit designs came to allowing “shirtsleeves” efficiency the better, though we knew that could not be achieved.2

The space suit solution for the Apollo missions was based on technology developed in the United States and Great Britain, first for pilots flying high – altitude fixed-wing aircraft and, more recently, for the Mercury and Gemini programs. The MSC Engineering and Development Directorate and the Crew Systems Division directed the efforts of many contractors, some retained from Gemini, to produce the Apollo extravehicular mobility unit (EMU), the com­bination of suit and attached support systems. Hamilton Standard and Inter­national Latex Corporation were chosen as the prime contractors for the EMU design and manufacture.

The major elements of the EMU were a liquid-cooled inner garment to re­move body heat; an eighteen-layer outer suit, topped by an integrated thermal – meteoroid cover lest a tiny meteorite punch a hole in the suit; a helmet with a clear inner visor and a sunshade (added after Apollo 14) and a movable, trans­parent gold-plated sun reflector visor; gloves; and boots. The portable life – support system (PLSS), attached to the back of the space suit, included bat­teries, fans, pumps, and the expendables (oxygen, water, and lithium hydroxide canisters to remove carbon dioxide) plus a separate oxygen purge system con­taining thirty to seventy-five minutes of oxygen in case of a failure in the PLSS.3 All together, the EMU weighed about 200 pounds (60 for the suit and 140 for the PLSS), varying with the mission and the additions or improvements it embodied. The EMU went through several upgrades from Apollo 11 to Apollo 17, each designed to improve the astronauts’ ability to perform their tasks on the lunar surface.

Perhaps most difficult to design were the gloves. I attended several design reviews over the years as improved glove designs, incorporating new materials, were demonstrated. At each review the technology improved, although some ideas were discarded as development proceeded. The gloves had to be tough enough to confine the suit’s internal gas pressure (3.7 psi) in the lunar vacuum and to withstand abrasion from handling rocks and equipment. At the same time, the gloves had to allow the astronauts some sense of touch. These two requirements worked against each other from a materials point of view: high wear strength and toughness resulted in poor feel through the gloves. Imagine trying to thread a needle wearing work gloves with the fingers blown up like balloons. Not an exact analogy, but pretty close.

The final design had an outer shell of tough fabric covered with thermal insulation and fingertips made of silicone rubber so the astronauts could feel what they were touching. Not a perfect solution, but the best the technology of the day would permit. In spite of the attention given to this part of the suit, the astronauts would often end their simulations, or return to the LM after a long stint of extravehicular activity on the Moon, with bloody fingertips, cracked fingernails, and their hands aching from trying to grasp and hold a wide variety of objects. However imperfect, the glove design did the job. No glove failures occurred during the missions, and all scheduled tasks were completed.

The EMU restricted how the astronauts could perform various tasks, how far they could wander from the LM, and how long they could stay outside the LM on any EVA. The suit and backpack mass would have to be large, the equivalent of moving a heavy weight with every step. In addition, the astronauts would be continuously working against the internal suit pressure to bend the suit at its joints. Walking on the Moon would thus be difficult and tiring despite the low lunar gravity. If an astronaut fell it was feared he might not be able to get up, and the difficulty was accentuated because the PLSS, attached at shoulder height, raised his center of gravity. (This proved not to be a problem; in the Moon’s low gravity, the astronauts could easily bounce up from a fall.) But EVA planning required that they always be close enough together to help each other if one should have a problem. The PLSS provided for sharing oxygen and cooling water if one PLSS malfunctioned.

While suit development was under way, these restrictions raised the specter that the astronauts might not accomplish the demanding work being planned during the lunar EVAs. Metabolic tests had been made on many suited test subjects as well as on several astronauts simulating the tasks to be done on the Moon.4 Data from these tests showed that the EMU then available would limit EVAs to four hours of low level work. The PLSS could supply consumables (the oxygen, water, and lithium hydroxide mentioned above) for four hours if the astronauts averaged a metabolic rate of 1,200 BTU/hr, the equivalent of playing golf in shirtsleeves. If they exceeded this rate they would have to reduce their activity to reach the average use of consumables if the EVA was to last the full four hours. In reality this would mean almost standing still, since just moving slowly in the suit required over 1,000 BTU/hr; 600 BTU/hr was needed just to work against the suit’s internal pressure and overcome joint friction. In spite of improvements in the Apollo EMU during the next few years, the results of these analyses led, in part, to a decision to reduce the amount of EVA time on the first landing mission. EMU consumables were carefully monitored on all missions, especially when the astronauts undertook tasks not programmed in the mission timelines.

These considerations also led to continual upgrades of the Apollo suit and research on better space suits. In May 1968 Sam Phillips asked MSC to recom­mend a program for space suit development with an eye to improving the astronauts’ mobility on the lunar surface for the post-Apollo missions. (He wanted the improved suit to be ready by 1971.) An EVA working group, report­ing to Charles W. Mathews, Mueller’s deputy associate administrator, began meeting to look into all aspects of EVA, both in free space and on the lunar surface.5 Ames Research Center became involved, since it also had a team working on space suits; its favorite was the constant volume suit, a hard suit like a deep-sea diver’s suit. James Correale led the work at MSC’s Crew Systems Division and coordinated the MSC research with that going on at Ames. Many of the concepts combined properties of the soft and hard suits, including articulated bearings, bellows joints, and metal fabrics. Although it promised to reduce the astronauts’ workload, the hard suit never was adopted because of operational considerations, including the extra stowage space required. How­ever, the hard suit, or a hybrid suit, is still under consideration for Space Station EVAs because it reduces metabolic demands. Perhaps when materials science improves and spacecraft design permits its use, it will be adopted as the stan­dard EVA suit.

For Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 several suit improvements were made, including making it easier to bend at the waist and adding expendables (water, oxygen, lithium hydroxide, and a larger battery) to the PLSS to allow longer EVA time-all important improvements for these missions. Since EVAs for these missions might last as long as eight hours, the pressure suits also provided a few creature comforts, with an emphasis on ‘‘few.’’ Most important for such long EVAs, bags containing one quart of drinking water were attached to the helmet neck ring inside the suit. The astronaut could reach a straw by turning his head inside the helmet. A small snack bar also could be attached to the neck ring and eaten by turning the head.

At the other end of the human system, a urine bag was attached inside the pressure suit leg to collect urine, much like the earlier “motorman’s friend’’ for trolley car operators. Back in the LM the urine bags would be removed from the suits, and later they would be left on the Moon. Now you know the answer to one of the questions people most often asked the astronauts. The other adjust­ment made for the final three missions was that some of the tools could be attached to the pressure suit or PLSS so the astronauts did not have to return to the lunar roving vehicle (LRV) to retrieve them from the tool carrier during their sample collecting and geological studies.

EMUs used on the lunar surface EVAs differed from those worn by the command module pilots; beginning with Apollo 15, they had to make an EVA to retrieve film and tapes from the experiments bay of the service module during the return trip from the Moon. The CM pilot’s EMU did not include the PLSS; it was attached to the CM by an umbilical cord that supplied life-support consumables and voice communication links. The EMU did include a small emergency backpack containing the oxygen purge system, similar to that at­tached to the lunar surface EMU.

With the Apollo suit being developed, studies described in chapter 3 were already under way at Marshall Space Flight Center on two alternative types of vehicles: flying machines and motorized wheeled vehicles. The wheeled vehicles were championed by most members of the science community, led by the Field Geology Team at Flagstaff, and were supported by my office at NASA headquar­ters, while the flying machines were favored by some of the staff at MSC and a few astronauts. Our simulations at Flagstaff had used many types of wheeled vehicles, and procedures and operations that took advantage of a vehicle were far advanced. Based on this work, the choice seemed obvious; the astronauts should be equipped with some sort of wheeled vehicle.

Lunar flying vehicle (LFV) proponents at MSC were basing their support on the work that Textron-Bell Aerospace Company had completed at MSFC, also described in chapter 3. The LFV engendered visions of astronauts zooming above the lunar surface like Buck Rogers, free to go wherever they wanted, and quickly. Clearly the LFV would be able to reach places a wheeled vehicle could not go. But would the astronauts be permitted to use such a device, considering safety concerns and the possible need to walk back to the LM from dangerous locations if the LFV failed? Discussions during the Falmouth conference were not supportive of it as an exploration tool. Mission simulations using a flying vehicle were never carried out in the field owing to the difficulty and expense of providing a good simulation. Only Textron-Bell pilots were qualified to use the LFVs, so based on a few demonstrations by the manufacturer, one had to imagine how such a vehicle could be used on the Moon.

This debate came to a head at the Santa Cruz summer conference in August 1967, with heated discussions between the two factions. As is often the case in government matters, when opposing positions are strongly held there are no clear winners, and this was true at Santa Cruz. The final report endorsed both wheeled vehicles and flight concepts. Since we were focusing on post-Apollo missions (in 1967, planning for the first Apollo landing missions envisioned only the astronauts’ walking), we were not constrained from advocating robust vehicles, going so far as to recommend using both types to jointly support the surface exploration. In spite of this accommodation at Santa Cruz, momentum was building in favor of a wheeled vehicle for the later Apollo flights. The recommendations coming out of the several working groups called for contin­uous traverses, manned and unmanned, to sample and deploy various types of equipment and experiments, operations that did not lend themselves to a flying machine.

In April 1969 Frank Press, who had chaired both the Falmouth and Santa Cruz geophysics working groups and was now a member of the Lunar and Plan­etary Mission Board (LPMB), submitted a paper representing the board’s lean­ings and recommending a ‘‘lunar exploration program.’’6 Only three months short of the first lunar landing and still anticipating ten lunar landings, Press’s paper emphasized the need for enhancing mobility: first, with a better space suit to improve the astronauts’ walking and overall EVA capabilities, and second, with some type of wheeled vehicle operating in both manned and unmanned modes to ‘‘interpolate between type locations.’’ In Press’s words, with increased mobility, the strategy outlined in the paper ‘‘provides optimal scientific return and fully exploits the Apollo capability.” The LPMB unanimously approved this recommendation at its next meeting in May and passed it on to Homer Newell.

With concerns about the astronauts’ ability to move about on the Moon plaguing Office of Manned Space Flight management, George Mueller stepped in and made a decision. The argument of ‘‘fliers’’ versus wheeled vehicles was finally put to rest, and the wheeled vehicle won. Safety was probably the critical factor in the decision. If a lunar ‘‘jeep’’ broke down, the worst result would be a long walk back to the LM. If a flying vehicle had a problem it might crash in an inaccessible area. Other considerations were also important, such as stowage and the overall weight of a fully fueled flier (more than three times as heavy as a projected lunar ‘‘jeep’’) that could carry two astronauts many miles. As envi­sioned by the Santa Cruz attendees, the LFV would complement a surface vehicle; but as a stand-alone or only means of transportation, the LFV was too limited to support the planned science, especially for the final missions, when multiple EVAs were planned that would include many geophysical measure­ments at many points along the traverses. Because the LMs had limited payload capacity, a choice had to be made, and the LRV won.

Mueller convened his Senior Management Council in May 1969. At the meeting, attended by George Low, at that time MSC’s Apollo spacecraft pro­gram manager, and Wernher von Braun as well as other senior OMSF man­agers, Mueller asked Low and von Braun to examine the problem and arrive at a solution. A small LRV was the final choice, and Mueller told Sam Phillips to go ahead with it. At the end of May Phillips sent a memo to MSFC, the center with the most experience in lunar vehicle research, asking it to manage the procure­ment. Von Braun wanted an experienced senior manager to lead the effort, and he tapped Saverio ‘‘Sonny’’ Morea to be the program manager. Morea had not been in on any of the earlier MSFC lunar roving vehicle studies, but he had been program manager for the Saturn У F-1 engine development, a critical and difficult job that he had successfully completed. He had been given a ‘‘heads – up’’ for his new assignment and had attended the Senior Management Council meeting.7

With Morea’s appointment, the procurement was put on a fast track. Ben Milwitzky, who had just finished his role as headquarters’ manager of the Surveyor program, was transferred to our office to oversee this new program. Ben was a good choice because at the beginning of the Surveyor program a small wheeled vehicle was a candidate payload (though never flown), and Ben had several companies under contract working on their concepts. He had some hands-on experience to guide him in developing the larger vehicle for the Apollo missions.

In July MSFC released the request for proposal (RFP), and three companies responded—Bendix, Grumman, and a Boeing-General Motors team. We all thought Bendix had the inside track to win the contract because of its involve­ment in all the post-Apollo vehicle studies, plus it was the only one of the three bidders that had a working model of its concept at the time the RFP was released. Boeing also had a good background because of its work in post-Apollo studies, having teamed with General Motors (Delco Electronics Division) for the mobile laboratory competition. Grumman believed it would have an ad­vantage because it had done some earlier work on a one-man vehicle. The design of this new vehicle would be intimately tied to the LM and its stowage constraints, and of course no one knew the LM better than Grumman.

After the Source Selection Board (SSB) reviewed the proposals, it deter­mined that Bendix and Boeing had the superior proposals and passed its find­ings to NASA headquarters. Because of the short schedule-seventeen months from projected contract start to delivery of the flight vehicle-headquarters told MSFC to negotiate contracts with both companies, not knowing which one would be chosen by the source selection official, Thomas O. Paine, the new NASA administrator. With negotiated contracts in hand, we would be able to jump-start the contract and save valuable time. Of the two bids, Boeing had submitted the lower price, $19.7 million, and since all the other SSB findings were essentially equal, Paine awarded the contract to the Boeing team.

MSFC then signed a performance-based contract (a wise decision, as it turned out) that went into effect in November 1969. Included on the Boeing- GM team were Eagle-Pitcher Industries, which supplied the LRV batteries, and United Shoe Machinery Corporation, which provided the electric harmonic drive units that powered each individual wheel. It would be a true four-wheel – drive vehicle. The contract called for the delivery of four vehicles (later reduced to three) and six test units, one of which was eventually converted into a one-g trainer for astronaut simulations on Earth.

Soon after the contract went into effect, MSFC and headquarters had some misgivings about the specifications contained in the contract. Morea’s team thought they were too complex and opened the door for possible change orders that would boost the price and perhaps jeopardize the schedule. For example, the original RFP called for a gyroscopically controlled navigation system. After careful review, the high accuracy this type of system would deliver was thought to be unnecessary, and it would add to the overall cost. On January 15, 1970, Ben chaired a meeting of engineers from MSFC, MSC, and Kennedy Space Center to rectify this situation and develop a less restrictive set of specifications.

The design requirements coming out of that meeting, and then translated into the final specifications for the Boeing team, called for an LRV that would carry one or two astronauts plus experiments, communications, a TV camera, and crew equipment and would provide stowage for lunar samples collected during the traverses—a total payload capacity of 970 pounds.8 In place of the gyroscopic navigation system, it would have a rudimentary system that would give the astronauts a continuous vector back to the LM in case it was out of sight and they needed to make a rapid return. Other specifications called for the LRV to travel a maximum of ten miles an hour on level mare surfaces with an overall range of seventy-two miles.

The most demanding requirements were that the vehicle be transported to the Moon in the wedge-shaped LM descent stage Quadrant I and that the total weight of the vehicle, including its stowage and deployment mechanisms, could not exceed four hundred pounds. This meant the LRV would have to be folded or collapsed and that the chassis and wheels would be flimsy indeed.

After all the vehicle studies we had performed for the post-Apollo missions, I was skeptical that the overall specifications could be met within the weight and stowage constraints. This would be smaller and lighter than anything we had studied for post-Apollo, yet it was being designed to accomplish many of the jobs we had envisioned for our larger vehicles. I shared my concerns with Ben, but he was convinced the specifications were valid. Events proved that such a vehicle could be built with these tight constraints. I credit his management skills, along with the dedication and engineering know-how of Sonny Morea’s team plus the hard work and cooperation of Boeing, GM, and their suppliers, for the on-time delivery of the LRVs—the payload stars of the last three Apollo missions.

The LRV team encountered many complications as it struggled to meet the tight schedule. Early in the contract, MSFC concluded that the Boeing program manager did not have the skills to manage such a critical program and asked that he be replaced. Boeing agreed and brought in a new manager, Edward House, who took control and saw the project through to its successful conclu­sion. The next problem was the escalating cost. Congress got wind of this and asked the Government Accounting Office to review the contract. Here the performance-based contract proved valuable, because MSFC could demon­strate that the contractor’s rising costs were justified, based on the LRV’s design complexity, and that the contractor fee (profits) would be adjusted accordingly to arrive at the best price for the government. At a hearing at which Milwitzky and Rocco Petrone, who had recently replaced Sam Phillips as Apollo program director, testified, they explained the way the contract worked. They were able to satisfy the House Oversight Committee that the costs were realistic for such an unusual vehicle. The matter was dropped, and the final cost, with modifica­tions to the original contract for the LRV flight and test units, was just under $37 million—a bargain in the opinion of all who were involved in the missions.

While the LRV was in development, two new data points were thrust into the discussions on astronaut mobility. The first was the comments of the Apollo 11 astronauts after their return. Although their EVAs had been reduced in number and length so that their total time on the surface was just a little over two hours and thirty minutes, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin came back with the im­pression that walking on the Moon would be easy. They had discovered that a loping, rolling gait was the most efficient way to move and helped overcome some of the space suits’ deficiencies—in particular the difficulty of bending at the joints. Armstrong said he thought an LRV would not be needed to get around and to conduct the tasks the scientists had planned. When Morea asked at one of the debriefings what size wheels he would recommend to ensure that the LRV could handle surface irregularities, Armstrong replied, ‘‘about twenty feet.’’9 His opinions carried some weight, but in the end they did not slow the development of the LRV, and a much smaller wheel (sixty-four inches), did the job.

The second, more positive data point was the experience of the Apollo 14 astronauts. For Apollo 14 we had built a small two-wheeled cart called the modularized equipment transporter (MET) that the astronauts would pull along loaded with whatever equipment they needed during their traverses and that would also store the collected samples. By this time the array of geological tools and sampling devices we wanted the astronauts to carry had grown con­siderably, including three cameras. As Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell strug­gled to reach the rim of Cone Crater, the primary sampling objective of the mission, the MET became a bigger and bigger hindrance. In the end, as they tried to climb the slope to the crater rim pulling the MET behind them, they decided it was easier to carry it. Walking and pulling even a small cart created such a high workload that the astronauts often had to stop and rest before continuing their exploration. Because of the extra effort expended attempting to reach the rim, and with time running out, they were forced to return to the

LM, and they never quite reached their objective, though they came close. There seemed to be no question that with the much more ambitious missions next on the schedule, we were right to insist on having a motorized vehicle to carry the astronauts and their equipment.

By the time the first LRV was delivered to KSC on March 15, 1971, two weeks ahead of schedule, some of the original specifications had changed. Overall weight had been allowed to grow to 460 pounds, and its allowable payload had also grown, to 1,080 pounds. Its total range had decreased from seventy-two miles to forty. The reduction in range was acceptable as new mission rules developed for the LRV traverses dictated that the astronauts stay within six miles of the LM so they could walk back if the LRV failed.

Television pictures and voice communication would be possible from the LRV at the limits of the traverses, out of sight of the LM. A self-contained lunar communications relay unit would be carried on the LRV or could be hand carried. The LCRU would provide a direct link to Houston by two antennas mounted on the front of the LRV. The low gain antenna would permit voice relay with only coarse pointing toward Earth, but the high gain antenna, re­quired for TV transmission, had to be pointed rather accurately by the astro­nauts. This meant that voice communication would probably be available throughout an EVA, but TV pictures normally could be transmitted only when the LRV was stopped or when driving if the antenna happened to be pointing toward Earth. The LCRU would also permit a operator at Mission Control to point and focus the TV camera when the astronauts were working away from the LRV. The first LRV would be available starting with Apollo 15, and we were waiting with great anticipation for the TV pictures from the new LCRU. It promised the flexibility to monitor and communicate with the astronauts that we had tested in our post-Apollo simulations at Flagstaff.

Edward Fendell, who got the nickname ‘‘Captain Video,’’ trained for many hours to operate the TV camera from his station in the Mission Operations Control Room during our Apollo simulations and had become adept at manip­ulating it to get the best coverage. This skill was invaluable to the ‘‘back­room’’ Field Geology Team, and Ed cooperated to the fullest with their re­quests for views of the local topography at each stop. The media, especially the TV networks, were also excited about closely observing the astronauts at work and broadcasting live the promised spectacular scenery of the last three landing sites.

As a bonus, the LCRU would let us witness an LM takeoff from the Moon. At the end of the last EVA, the astronauts would drive the LRV about three hun­dred feet from the LM and park it with the LCRU on board and the TV camera pointed toward the LM. If Fendell could coordinate elevating the camera with the liftoff, we would be able to watch the LM disappear into the black lunar sky. Despite the difficulty of slewing the camera fast enough to follow the rapidly accelerating LM, Fendell accomplished this feat. At the end of the Apollo 15 mission, the world saw for the first time a slightly blurry view of a spacecraft taking off from another body in our solar system. We were also able to see the effects the LM’s ascent engine exhaust plume had on the lunar surface and the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. It was a little frightening for the ALSEP engineers to see debris flying in all directions, but the ALSEP survived. If the LCRU still had enough battery power after the Apollo 15 astronauts left, we hoped to take pictures of the lunar eclipse that would occur a week later (assuming the launch stayed on schedule, which it did), as well as other views of the lunar surface and astronomical targets. These observations were success­fully carried out.

A few final words will describe the LRVs, the remarkable machines that made Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 so successful. The wheels were con­structed of an open wire mesh, to reduce weight, make it easy to stow in the small LM bay (the wire mesh was compressible), and damp the ride by flexing and acting as shock absorbers as the LRV bounced across the lunar surface in the low gravity. The open mesh had some drawbacks, however; as was correctly predicted, the wheels picked up soil and sprayed it over the LRV and the astronauts, so each wheel was covered by a small fender to direct the spray downward. (On Apollo 17 one of the fenders came loose during the first EVA traverse, and the soil spray coated the LRV and the astronauts’ space suits and equipment with a thick layer of dust. The next day Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt made a new fender by taping together stiff sheets from their landing site maps and attached them over the wheel. Even so, when riding on the LRV or just walking around, the astronauts would return covered with lunar soil that they had to brush off before reentering the LM.

The LRV’s front and back wheels could be steered together, in tandem, or each pair independently, allowing it to make tight turns. It was steered with a small T-shaped hand-grip controller, which also regulated speed and braking. A knob below the T-handle controlled forward and reverse, much as in a golf cart.

Mounted above and just forward of the T-handle was the control and display panel, which contained a speedometer, LRV system switches (e. g., for power and steering), temperature gauges, and the onboard navigation system. This last system provided a continuous bearing and range back to the LM and also showed the total distance traveled to help the astronauts find their predeter­mined science stops.

All in all, the LRV was a dandy little machine that performed flawlessly. Full – scale models can be seen at several NASA centers as well as at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which also displays a lunar module mock-up and other examples of equipment the astronauts used. If—or when—we go back to the Moon, it would surprise me if small vehicles similar in appearance and per­formance to the Apollo LRV are not part of the equipment included in the payloads. Why pay to redesign such a successful system? I hope Boeing or NASA has kept the drawings.