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The Surveyor Lunar Roving Vehicle, Plans for a rover to accompany Surveyor
ljk4-1
post Aug 18 2005, 04:05 PM
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Surveyor Lunar Roving Vehicle, phase I. Volume V - System evaluation Final technical report

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1966004162.pdf


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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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Bob Shaw
post Aug 18 2005, 10:28 PM
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And here's a grab from the .PDF:
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Bob Shaw
post Aug 18 2005, 10:40 PM
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And a couple of photos of the Engineering Test Model:
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lyford
post Aug 19 2005, 02:32 AM
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"Bendix" biggrin.gif

I love it! (NASA needs to do more with that ElectroLux font again....)


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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!" Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test
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paxdan
post Aug 19 2005, 03:11 PM
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bizzare choice of mobility system
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ljk4-1
post Aug 21 2005, 04:30 PM
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Designer of Surveyor scoop dies

Professor who designed lunar scoop dies

PASADENA -- Ronald Scott, who designed a scoop that collected lunar soil during an unmanned moon mission, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer, the California Institute of Technology said in a statement. He was 76.

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/Stories/0,...3019995,00.html


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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ljk4-1
post Aug 24 2005, 02:57 PM
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Surveyor Lunar Roving Vehicle, phase I. Volume III - Preliminary design and system description. Book I - System description and performance characteristics Final technical report

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1966004186.pdf


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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Phil Stooke
post Aug 25 2005, 01:52 AM
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I wonder if there are any discussions among these reports (I mean among other volumes not linked here) of possible landing targets? But perhaps they didn't get that far, just planning that they would characterize Apollo sites when they were eventually selected from Orbiter images.

Phil


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... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.

Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke
NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain)
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Aug 25 2005, 05:30 AM
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Guests






While I strongly doubt that Phil doesn't know this, the two definitive acccounts of the process by which scientifically interesting landing sites were selected over the course of the early Apollo program seem to be Don Wilhelms' "To A Rocky Moon" and William Compton's "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (which can be found at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/...4/contents.html ).
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Phil Stooke
post Aug 25 2005, 12:25 PM
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Thanks, Bruce - yes, I do know those, of course. I was thinking specifically about the Surveyor Rovers, and whether their purpose was only to give ground truth to Apollo sites AFTER they were chosen, or if other science targets might also be chosen specifically for Surveyor.

The two references you mention are interesting. Compton gives summaries of various stages in the site selection process, but when I looked at the minutes I found a few cases where Compton's dates seem to be mistaken - a decision would be related to a different meeting than the one at which it was made. This might be because they had the habit of including a package of presentation materials for the last meeting with the minutes for the current meeting, inviting misunderstanding later.

Wilhelms, of course, wrote a fabulous book about all this. But he intended more, preparing many illustrations. The publisher rejected the idea and left him with the book we see. So he packaged up his illustrations and lots of other material from the site selection and put it in binders which he deposited in the Branch History Collection at Flagstaff. I was able to get hold of most of it and make copies, and luckily my Atlas will be able to contain it all. The only things I couldn't get were a couple of binders from the last two missions. Jack Schmitt had borrowed them and has been hanging on to them.

Phil


--------------------
... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.

Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke
NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain)
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Toma B
post Aug 25 2005, 02:33 PM
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Hi !
Does anybody knows where I can find something about future Lunar Lander/Rover (2009)??? or whatever they are calling it... huh.gif


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The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
Jules H. Poincare

My "Astrophotos" gallery on flickr...
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ToSeek
post Aug 25 2005, 05:59 PM
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QUOTE (lyford @ Aug 19 2005, 02:32 AM)
"Bendix" biggrin.gif

I love it!  (NASA needs to do more with that ElectroLux font again....)
*


I think that was the logo of the Bendix Corporation at the time, which had a contract with NASA to develop the vehicle. (Bendix later merged with AlliedSignal and is now part of Honeywell.)
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Bob Shaw
post Aug 25 2005, 08:32 PM
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Phil:

The Surveyor Rovers appear to have been intended to specifically check out the *exact* landing site for a future LM flight - in other words, the LM would land beside the Surveyor. I don't remember seeing any specific landing targets for the Surveyors in the report, but the Surveyors themselves would have become the Apollo targets. Much of the report was about the statistical design of a 'semi-drunkard's walk' ground surveying process.

Bob Shaw


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Phil Stooke
post Aug 25 2005, 09:35 PM
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Yes, I saw that... It's interesting that both the Soviets and the US initially thought they would need robotic rovers to survey landing areas and deploy landing beacons. In the end orbital images were all they really needed.

I was secretely hoping that the Surveyor Rovers, in addition to the Apollo certification mission goal, would have been considered for separate science missions. But 'twere not to be, apparently. People complain about science being pushed aside by the human space flight program today, but it was almost worse during Apollo.

Phil


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... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.

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tasp
post Dec 16 2005, 06:07 PM
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Another minor mystery is what happened to Surveyor 4.

It was launched 7/14/67 and during landing on 7/17, contact was lost just a couple of minutes before touchdown.

Is it possible the radio failed and the craft landed successfully?

Has any subsequent probe imaged the site for a new crater?

I'm not sure of the landing sequence, but if contact was lost ~2 minutes, wouldn't NASA have a good idea of the precise spot to look at?
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