[X] My Assistant

[Phil Stooke]

Many possible mission scenarios were considered as Apollo developed. The idea of meeting up with a remote-controlled LRV was explored in detail at the Santa Cruz conference in 1967. A rover would collect samples during a traverse hundreds of km long. At Santa Cruz various groups suggested lots of possible routes. But all this had been abandoned before the actual landings were being planned. So by the time the site selection process had reduced the early mission candidates to 5 sites in the "Apollo Zone" near the equator, the idea of meeting a rover was long dead.

All this stuff is illustrated profusely in a certain forthcoming book.

Phil

PS here's the map we have been discussing privately... it was briefly considered for landing 2 or 3 but dropped in favor of Surveyor 3.

[gndonald]

Thanks Phil, for answering my queries, and I thought I'd do something for anyone who's interested in seeing whats inside that little circle labeled 'New Site'.

Here is the proposed EVA plan.



(Finally figured out how to do thumbnails )

[edstrick]

There was a long and somewhat acrimonious arguement about the nature and origin of wrinkle ridges that was still going on during at least the early phases of the Apollo program. Some people thought the ridges were the result of lava intrusions, probably along dikes, into older lava flows. In some models, the ridges were eruptive masses on the surfave that spread out a bit form the dike, in others, it intruded under pre-existing lava flows and domed them up, forming the ridge structure.

The other model, now the generally accepted version, is that they are compressive buckling structures on mechanically "stiff", rigid lava flows lying on a "decoupling zone"... in the moon's case, a sub-flow regolith layer. The latter model explained their appearence in compressive environments, where dike intrusions are suppressed, their relative absence in extensional terrains where graben are present, and their total lack of any sign of different lavas erupting onto the surface (spectral, colorimetric, etc) compared with the surrounding mare flows.

A wrinkle-ridge dedicated mission would have been a decided disappointment, unlike a mission to a region of undoubted lava domes, like the Marius hills or the Gruithisen <sp?> dome.

[monitorlizard]

Many possible mission scenarios were considered as Apollo developed. The idea of meeting up with a remote-controlled LRV was explored in detail at the Santa Cruz conference in 1967. A rover would collect samples during a traverse hundreds of km long. At Santa Cruz various groups suggested lots of possible routes. But all this had been abandoned before the actual landings were being planned. So by the time the site selection process had reduced the early mission candidates to 5 sites in the "Apollo Zone" near the equator, the idea of meeting a rover was long dead.

All this stuff is illustrated profusely in a certain forthcoming book.

Phil

PS here's the map we have been discussing privately... it was briefly considered for landing 2 or 3 but dropped in favor of Surveyor 3.

I remember that NASA seriously considered (up to about six months before launch) modifying the Apollo 17 LRV to operate in an unmanned mode after the astronauts left the moon. But it would have had no experiments on board, only the TV camera. Obviously, science return would have been minimal, and Apollo was so hurting for money by then that the idea was abandoned. Still, the idea of poking around Shorty Crater, possibly scuffing up more orange soil, is intriguing. (There may have been some consideration of adding a soil/rock analysis experiment early in the unmanned LRV study.)

I think the original idea was to show that manned lunar missions could do their thing, then the LRV could do the Lunakhod thing, and NASA could claim the best of both worlds.

[gndonald]

I remember that NASA seriously considered (up to about six months before launch) modifying the Apollo 17 LRV to operate in an unmanned mode after the astronauts left the moon. But it would have had no experiments on board, only the TV camera. Obviously, science return would have been minimal, and Apollo was so hurting for money by then that the idea was abandoned. Still, the idea of poking around Shorty Crater, possibly scuffing up more orange soil, is intriguing. (There may have been some consideration of adding a soil/rock analysis experiment early in the unmanned LRV study.)

I think the original idea was to show that manned lunar missions could do their thing, then the LRV could do the Lunakhod thing, and NASA could claim the best of both worlds.

The ideas being considered in 1967, at least from my reading of the ULRV Hadley-Appennines plan (Download, 14mb) seem to have been much more ambitious than anything the Soviets attempted. Travel distance was 800km (500 miles), it was to lay geophysical sensors (seismographs?) along the route, take soil samples (to be taken back to Earth aboard an Apollo mission) and finally act as a landing beacon for the Apollo sent to pick up the samples.

It seems to have evolved from a plan(1963)(Download, 3mb) to use Saturn 1bs to send site surveying rovers to the locations chosen for the manned landings to check out the situation 'on-the-ground' before committing humans to the actual mission.

[monitorlizard]

For those of you who can't wait for Phil Stooke's book to come out, I suggest trying to find:

David J. Shayler--Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions (2002/reprinted 2006)

This is a wide-ranging book covering everything from the early 1960's Apollo Applications Program planning to the last attempt to add to the manned lunar program, the lunar polar mapping mission, a 28-day Apollo mission proposed for the 1973-1974 time frame. Of interest to readers of this thread, there are maps of proposed EVA routes for an Apollo 17 at the Marius Hills, Apollo 18 at Copernicus, Apollo 19 at Hadley Rille (different from Apollo 15's site), and Apollo 20 at the rim of Tycho (to retrieve Surveyor 7 parts, among other things). But this book just touches on these missions. I'm sure it has nowhere near the depth that Phil Stookes' book will ( I plan to buy both ). There are fascinating things in Shayler's book, though, such as a photo of a lunar motorcycle considered in early mobility studies. Lots of other cool drawings and photos, too.

Despite the 2006 reprint, this is a somewhat difficult book for buyers to find, at least in the U.S. If you have problems, I suggest bookfinder services, such as www.abebooks.com.