Mars Rover WI: What if rovers were sent to the Moon?

Stephen

Banned
We would have more photographs of Earth over a foreground of white rocks. Maybe some rover designs would be more reliable after being trialed on the moon.
 
Do Lunakhods count as rovers?

There isn't much need for a rover once a dozen men have walked and driven over several parts on the moons surface.
 
Do Lunakhods count as rovers?

There isn't much need for a rover once a dozen men have walked and driven over several parts on the moons surface.

In addition to the Lunokhod program, the Chinese are also planning rovers, and some private US companies have discussed rovers. Not exactly a huge POD here, if it's one at all. ;)

But to get 1960's rovers at the level of sophistication of Spirit and Opportunity (or even Sojourner) computer technology and reliability has to be decades ahead of where it was in the 1960's in OTL. Even given that the Moon is close enough for tele-operation, the scientific capabilities afforded by better electronics can't be ignored. You'd need a POD at least in the 1930's or 1940's to jumpstart computer development. In OTL the field was dominated by the US and British until Japan's rise in the 1970's. Perhaps Germany devotes more effort to electronics than in OTL--where the field was largely neglected by the Nazis--and Operation Paperclip lands a few gifted electrical engineers along with the aerospace guys after WWII?
 
I'd imagine the US could whip up their own Lunakhod (a very successful machine incidently) by the later 60s, but what would be the point? They'd already done hard and soft robotic landings and were on the verge of manned landings.
 
I'd imagine the US could whip up their own Lunakhod (a very successful machine incidently) by the later 60s, but what would be the point? They'd already done hard and soft robotic landings and were on the verge of manned landings.

I guess that what you'd need would be for the US to abandon the manned program and shift to robotic landings to continue exploring the moon.

So, POD: Apollo XII without a Steely-eyed Missile Man.

36 seconds after lift-off, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning. The power surge caused instruments to malfunction and telemetry to become nonsensical. The flight director thought that he would have to abort the mission, but in OTL, John Aaron realised the he had seen something like this before and could tell the crew which switch to flick in order to return the instruments to correct functioning, thus saving the mission. For this, he received NASA's highest non-official accolade of being called a "Steely-Eyed Missile Man".

So WI Aaron doesn't remember this fix. The Apollo 12 mission is abandoned. By this time, Apollo 13 was already under construction, complete with faults, so was likely to have the same explosion as in OTL. However butterflies mean that conditions are slightly worse than in OTL and the crew die.

So, of three missions, we have one success and two failures (one fatal). There will be plenty of people (including some Senetors) who will say that Apollo has achieved it's aim of landing a man on the moon and there is no need to continue such risky operations. At this time, NASA doesn't have much in the way of plans for what to do after Apollo, and those plans it does have assumed that Apollo would be followed by further manned missions. Instead, NASA will have to switch to more non-manned space exploration, including more robotic landings on the moon.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
I guess that what you'd need would be for the US to abandon the manned program and shift to robotic landings to continue exploring the moon.

So, POD: Apollo XII without a Steely-eyed Missile Man.

Was that supposed to be a link?
 
The most pointless waste of masses of money ever.


What do we get substitute evidence that at least there was once life on mars FOR A FEW NEAT PHOTOGRAPHS !!!
 
The most pointless waste of masses of money ever.


What do we get substitute evidence that at least there was once life on mars FOR A FEW NEAT PHOTOGRAPHS !!!

[rant]I'd rather spend $700 billion on any number of space missions (or just about anything else, emphatically including infrastructure repair and healthcare reform) than bailing out loan companies and investment firms who were overcome by their own greed and manipulation of the rules any day...but that's just me. ;) Yes, the economy had to be saved, but dammit some people need to go to jail over this! [/end rant]
 
Top