March 1, 2008
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NASA
NASA unveils lunar concept vehicle
HOUSTON (UPI) — The U.S. space agency unveiled its latest lunar concept vehicle that has six-wheel drive, but no doors, windows or seats — and only comes in the color gold.
Built at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the vehicle provides an idea of what the transportation possibilities might be when astronauts start exploring the moon by 2020. Other than a few basic requirements, the primary instruction given to the designers was to throw away assumptions made on NASA’s previous rovers and come up with new ideas.
The vehicle includes six wheels that can pivot individually in any direction, researchers said. That feature, called crab steering, is designed to allow astronauts to drive into a lunar crater sideways if the crater’s slope is too great.
The vehicle is designed to have the driver stand at the steering mechanism, since sitting in a spacesuit is not comfortable or practical, NASA said. The astronaut’s perch — steering mechanism, driver and all — can pivot 360 degrees.
Comments (9)
interesting!
Hope you are having a good day!
Hope you are having a great weekend.
Good Morning, Randy.
Sitting in pantyhose isn’t comfortable or practical either. You’d think NASA would have solved that issue by now.
Cool article!
cool
and Good Morning..
All that money to explore a big rock when we have millions are dying too soon here on Earth. Money well spent NASA!!
Yes…I have a new site. My last attempt at keeping my life 100% drama free. my MIL apparently reads my old site…enough said. lol! Arianna has my eyes, and my dads. my sister amber also has the big eyes, but hers are brown, not bright blue like ours.
<3Ashley
well, alot of good really does come out into the public from these adventures in space and soon we will also benefit from them in everyday life(medical field aways does.