Apollo 17: What if the Lunar Roving Vehicle had broken down?

[standingwave]

@Iggy

I had a lunch with Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot (he stayed in lunar orbit while is fellow astronauts landed) Al Worden

I love this Apollo 15 image. The LEM just looks so lonely.

[Molesworth_2]

Reading the article OP posted I was struck by this:

Those techniques gathered more than 110kgs of samples - cores, material from a trench and soil – that were returned to earth. As the mission landed near steep cliffs, the samples offered insights into many ages of the moon’s life.

Are there sedimentary rocks or much erosion on the Moon? Why would rocks at the bottom of a cliff be any older than those at the top?

[JKellyMap]

@Molesworth_2

Reading the article OP posted I was struck by this:

Are there sedimentary rocks or much erosion on the Moon? Why would rocks at the bottom of a cliff be any older than those at the top?

I am not a selenologist, but I think that in many areas there is gradual buildup of dust (regolith) from splashback at the moment a crater is made – which happened more frequently several billion years ago. So, rocks further down tend to be older – and that means that these same rocks can be exposed and ejected when a crater hits, and they land, say, at the top of the new crater rim.

[Alka_Seltzer]

@Francis_Vaughan

Although you have 1/6th the weight, you still have all the inertial mass, and that includes the mass of the suit and backpack - so this still requires the same effort to accelerate and decelerate and control the balance of, as on Earth. The whole kaboodle was nearly 100kg. The big problem with the suits was however the pressure. They ran them at about 4psi and pure oxygen, but even this low pressure was enough to make moving the joints take a lot of effort. The suits used designs like a bellows constant volume joint to try to manage the problem, but this wasn’t a perfect solution. The lunar walkers got tired pretty quickly. The worst problem wad the effort needed to grasp things, something that fortunately doesn’t impact upon the effort needed to walk home.

True, but by this stage NASA had plenty of data on moonwalking, and could make good estimates of the time and effort required to cover a distance. The suits had plenty of oxygen, I believe the longest EVA was about 7 1/2 hours. I think the real danger would have been if there had been some kind of double failure. For example if the rover had broken down, and the astronaut experienced some sort of cooling problem with their suit. How far could the they walk without experiencing heat stroke? Counter-intuitively, when working in a vacuum, the problem is preventing the astronaut from overheating, not keeping them warm. It’s likely that NASA considered issues like this, the mission planning was nothing if not meticulous.

Oh, and btw, the astronauts had to make a minor repair to the rover at the start of the second EVA. They used duct tape.

[Alka_Seltzer]

And here’s a picture of the repair.

[MrDibble]

@Molesworth_2

Reading the article OP posted I was struck by this:

Are there sedimentary rocks or much erosion on the Moon? Why would rocks at the bottom of a cliff be any older than those at the top?

Because they were extruded at different times. Or because they settled at different rates. Or because they were overlaid by multiple episodes of impact ejecta.