INCOSE Midwest Gateway: Spacecraft on Wheels: Boeing's Lunar Roving Vehicle

Oct 27, 2022 5:00 PM - Oct 27, 2022 7:00 PM Central Standard Time

St. Louis
6300 James S. McDonnell Blvd

Enter the Building 100 parking lot from Airport Rd.

Resources

Presentation (without media): 2022-10-27_lrv_4-3.pdf

Presentation (with notes pages): 2022-10-27_lrv_4-3_notes.pdf

References used for the presentation: 

• Apollo 17
  • Apollo 17 In Real Time
  • Apollo 17 Lunar Surface Journal
  • Apollo 17 Analyst's Notebook
  • Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, Apollo 17
• Books
  • Earl Swift, Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings (2021)
  • Anthony Young, Lunar and Planetary Rovers: The Wheels of Apollo and the Quest for Mars (2006)
  • Christopher Riley, David Woods, and Philip Dolling, Lunar Rover: 1971-1972 [Hayne's Owners' Workshop Manual] (2012)
• Videos:
  • Apollo 16 - Apollo Flight Journal, The Apollo 16 LRV Grand Prix
  • Apollo 15 Rover Deployment
  • Smithsonian Channel, The Design of the Lunar Rover Was Mostly Guesswork
  • NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Spacecraft with Wheels: The Lunar Roving Vehicle
  • Computer History Archives Project, NASA 1966 Near Zero Gravity Tests in the KC-135 Vomit Comet
  • USGS, Grover Geologic Rover
• Thorough overviews
  • Lunar Rover Operations Handbook (1971)
  • Lunar Roving Vehicles, Washington Heritage Register
  • ADAMS, W., and C. ARNETT. "America's Lunar Roving Vehicle." Weightlessness and Artificial Gravity Meeting. 1971. 
  • Clow, David, and Roving Vehicles LRV. "Ferenc Pavlics and the Lunar Rover." QUEST 18.1 (2011): 7. 
  • Morea, Saverio F. "The lunar roving vehicle: Historical perspective." NASA. Johnson Space Center, The Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, Volume 2. 1992. 
  • Burkhalter, Bettye, and Michael Sharpe, Lunar Roving Vehicle: Historical Origins, Development and Deployment, History of Rocketry and Aeronautics, AAS History Series, 22, 227-261, 1998. 
• More technical
  • Costes, Nicholas C., John E. Farmer, and Edwin B. George. Mobility Performance of the Lunar Roving Vehicle: Terrestrial Studies, Apollo 15 Results. Vol. 401. NASA, 1972. 
  • Smith, Earnest C., and William C. Mastin. Lunar roving vehicle navigation system performance review. No. NASA-TN-D-7469. 1973. 
  • Asnani, Vivake, Damon Delap, and Colin Creager. "The development of wheels for the Lunar Roving Vehicle." Journal of Terramechanics 46.3 (2009): 89-103. 
  • Hunter, Alex B., and Bryan W. Spacey. "Lunar roving vehicle deployment mechanism." NASA. Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center The 7th Aerospace Mech. Symp.. 1972. 
  • Freitag, Dean R., Andrew J. Green, and K-J. Melzer. Performance evaluation of wheels for lunar vehicles summary report. No. AD-705570. 1970. 
• A final pile of references:
  • Marilyn McMahon, Sir Putty Mills of Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara News-Press (2020-08-05)
  • Michael McAuliffe, Test-Driving the Lunar Rover, Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine (June 2017)
  • Lunar Roving Vehicle, Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum
  • David Clow, The Difference It Made: Building a Car for the Moon, RocketSTEM (2015-07-06)
  • Rebecca Boyle, 50 Years Ago, NASA Put a Car on the Moon, The New York Times (2021-07-27)
  • Anthony Young, Lunar rovers past and future, The Space Review (2004-04-05)
  • Ryan Cruz, The Lunar Rover’s 50th Anniversary and Its Goleta Roots, Santa Barbara Independent (2021-08-05)
  • Bob Barrett, Apollo 15: 'The Lunar Rover Changed Everything', WUMF (2021-07-31)
  • Kristin Shaw, Unsung Heroes of Apollo-Era Moon Missions: the GM-Designed Lunar Rovers, The Drive (2021-08-01)
• Music
  • Section transitions: The Presidents of the United States of America, "Dune Buggy", The Presidents of the United States of America (1995)
  • 4x Grand Prix: Minutemen, "Corona", Double Nickels on the Dime (1984)
  • EVA 2: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, "Another Rather Lovely Thing", The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford soundtrack (2007)

Parking

Please park in the visitor parking spots at Building 100. Once you turn into Building 100, turn right/east for the parking lot.

Registration

Note (Oct 25): the registration page is still open. If you're not a Boeing employee, there is a chance we can't get you a visitor badge for the Oct 27 event. Go ahead and register, but also send us an email at incose.midwest.gateway@gmail.com so we can check it out. Sorry for the trouble, but there is some security screening involved.

Please register for the event at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/spacecraft-on-wheels-boeings-lunar-roving-vehicle-tickets-432252578097. Registration is free and open to all (not limited to INCOSE members), but we need you to register so that we can provide you a required Boeing visitor badge at the door. (Boeing employees, you can use your work badge.)

About the event

The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) was developed by Boeing for Apollo missions 15, 16, and 17. Each LRV mission allowed astronauts to travel farther, bring more scientific equipment, and return more samples to Earth than the walking missions. The LRV looks simple, but the "spacecraft on wheels" enabled the major scientific discoveries of Apollo. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17 (December 1972), learn how the LRV was engineered, how it was folded into the Lunar Module like origami, and how to operate the vehicle like an astronaut. 1972 model year vehicles are hard to find, but Artemis editions are coming soon.

Speaker

Kirk Kittell is a systems engineer at Boeing, working on aircraft health management systems. Before working on aircraft, he worked on the Orion Launch Abort System at Orbital Sciences and in the Mission Evaluation Room at NASA Johnson Space Center on Space Shuttle missions STS-124 and STS-126. He has a BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering from University of Illinois and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Directions

The event will be held in the auditorium of Boeing Building 100 at 6300 James S. McDonnell Blvd. in St. Louis.