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Calhoun Community college and

U.s. Space and Rocket Center

Team up to refurbish a Lunar Rover Vehicle Replica

Trying to get the Lunar Rover off the ground

In the summer of 2018, the students of the Drafting and Design Program at Calhoun Community College were approached by United States Space and Rocket Center to revamp an existing Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV) Replica. The existing LRV was originally created with some historical inaccuracies and even some components created during the Apollo era.

 

The overall objective for this LRV was to make it historically accurate to the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 flight models and be one of only a few LRV replicas to allow the public to sit on. The main design requirements for the LRV would include being able to hold two 250lb.

persons, look historically accurate from a distance of five feet, configure a shipping container to hold the LRV and components associated with it efficiently. The students involved would include Mark Gordon as the overall team leader, Elizabeth Morris as the Flight Deck and Secondary Systems leader, Stephanie Mendoza as Chassis and Suspension leader, and I was the leader of Historical Accuracy and Materials.

 

From the very moment we were handed the task of revamping the LRV we quickly started doing research, coming up with questions that needed to be answered and consulting Calhoun instructors

on best practices. The original idea brought to Calhoun Community College by the U.S Space and Rocket Center was they wanted either to revamp an existing LRV replica or completely fabricate a new vehicle.

 

After considering all the factors involved, the team and Calhoun faculty decided the best course of action would be to revamp the existing LRV. After this decision was made, the team began consulting former Apollo era engineers and team members on how to best represent this LRV to the public. The decision made for the LRV to look accurate to the Apollo 16 and 17 flight ready models. 

Objective Tree for the LRV Replica outlining overall aspects for people, aesthetics, and usage.

Over the course of the summer semester, we continued doing research on how to tackle problems like fitting two 250lbs persons on the LRV and how the chassis could with stand the weight.

 

The team consulted with other departments at Calhoun Community College including welding and aerospace, on how to go about designing the different  components  

for the vehicle. 

 

We also made trips to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center to not only view the LRV they had on display, but measure some of major components that were missing on the LRV replica Calhoun was refurbishing.

 

The team had monthly meetings with Calhoun staff and faculty, but also former Apollo era engineers and U.S. 

Space and Rocket Center staff to discuss what direction we were prepared to take with this replica. 

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By the end of the summer semester we finalized report and presentation to give to all parties involved with revamping the LRV. This was the finalization of the Phase 1, and Phase 2 would move into the 2018 Fall semester, with Phase 3 being Spring 2019.

Looking forward into the fall semester and beyond, the team reached out to Calhoun faculty members to involve other students in this project. 

The faculty incorporated the project into the Intermediate 3D Modeling class with all team leaders assisting in the design of the LRV Replica. 

Each team leader now had a team working under them in order to start getting the many components modeled.  

GETTING THE Lunar Rover Replica "Flight Ready"

With the final decision made that the team would be revamping an existing LRV replica, we began to see, not only aesthetically inaccurate components, but also problems with overall design. After receiving the LRV replica from Marshall Space Flight Center, we noticed that there were some components that were broken or missing. 

Forward section

FRONT ROVER.png

Image Source: batsinthebelfry.com/rover

The forward section of the LRV replica was one of the worse sections as far as not being historically accurate. The 

high gain antenna and forward mount

TV camera were nothing like the flight ready models, the Lunar Communications Relay Unit (LCRU) was missing, and the battery storage 

area was exposed instead of covered by cloth like the flight ready model.

Center section

CENTER ROVER.png

Image Source: batsinthebelfry.com/rover

The center section of the LRV replica would be a main feature of the rover, with the public being able to mount the vehicle and sit where the astronauts would have been while traveling on the moon.

 

The key component that needed to be addressed for this section, would be the control panel with a gold

face plate not being accurate, where the "flight ready" model had a black face plate. 

 

The seats would be another key feature with webbing on both the bottom and top seats. The "flight ready" model had a cloth bottom and green and white webbing on the back supports.

Both the low gain antenna and 16mm camera were in acceptable condition and fairly flight like, but these two would need to be redesigned. 

 

The updated LRV has the corrected black face control panel and updated seats with correct cloth. 

Aft section

AFT ROVER.png

Image Source: batsinthebelfry.com/rover

The aft pallet would be a particularly challenging task as the LRV replica had an enlarged tool pallet with an addition of a folding tray that was not

accurate to the flight ready models of any Apollo LRV. This section was completely redesigned and constructed to create a more 

historically accurate representation of the Apollo 17 LRV. This included several tools, the swing arm, gravimeter, and others. 

USSRC CLASS TRIP

USSRC CLASS TRIP

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LUNAR ROVER VEHICLE REPLICA

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