The Bendix Lunar Roving
Vehicle (LRV)
The LRV was a project
that my Dad worked on in 196?, when he worked for Bendix Aerospace in Ann
Arbor. It was a prototype that would
have been scaled down to fold up and fit into the lunar landing module on
Apollo ??. Unfortunately, the Bendix
design was not chosen for the voyage to the moon.
The LRV being tested at
Marshall Spaceflight Center
Full sized
version of this picture 20MB
The LRV is being driven
by ??.
My Uncle Ed found this
picture on a French website. They must be
trying to steal our secrets. This appears to be a smaller version of the LRV –
this is the one I remember Dad sitting on in pictures. Ed says that the guy in the picture looks
like Dad from behind. I agree – look at
the ears.
Okay, now this I know is
Dad (in front with his side facing camera).
And, I think comparison between this and the above picture supports Ed’s
theory that it is Dad in that picture as well.
I got this and the picture of the model from my brother Stephen. Not sure where he got them – these are scans
of real pictures, so he probably got them from Mom and Dad’s house.
The guy driving the LRV
is ?? and the guy in the back is ??.
When we were growing up,
Dad brought home a model of the LRV. We
had it in our house in Ann Arbor until we moved in 1982. It was great to have; we spent hours staring
at it under its protective plexi-glass dome.
Then in 5th or 6th grade, I got to use it for my
science fair project. I took it apart
and drew pictures of all the parts, identified them with a paragraph or so, and
put it back together again. My teacher
was less than impressed, and I think I got a C.
I think we ended up giving it to the moving guy when we moved to
MD.
I don’t know if the above
picture is the same model. If so, we had
a later iteration of it with more equipment mounted on it, and a couple of
Astronauts.
My little rant about the
space program:
For anyone who may think that nothing good
came out of the space program, and that there is no reason to fund future
research and exploration, have a look at what’s “new” in the tire industry.
The Michelin Tweel
Interesting (maybe) side
note: When Bendix moved out of Ann
Arbor, the building Dad worked in was occupied by ERIM. A group at ERIM developed scanning technology
that facilitated a startup company called Synthetic Vision Systems, or
SVS. The SVS scanner is the main product
I support at GSI Group.
This isn’t really
important, but I figure since you read all the way to the end of the page, you
deserve to know.
Thanks for looking.
And – an EXTRA SPECIAL
feature.
A space probe designed by
NASA’s next great engineer – the K-man