/sci/ - Science & Math

>In May 1968, Bellcomm planners described a unique post-Apollo mission to the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille region of the Moon. Had it flown, the mission would have seen a melding of manned and automated lunar exploration, potentially yielding results greater than either astronauts or exploring machines could achieve on their own.
>They invoked an Extended Lunar Module (ELM) capable of bearing 750 pounds of payload to the Moon's surface. During the crew's first venture outside the ELM, they would rendezvous with a waiting Unmanned Lunar Roving Vehicle (ULRV).
>The wheeled ULRV, with a mass of between 1,500 and 3,000 pounds, would have landed some 500 kilometers from the Apennine Front-Hadley Rille ELM site some time earlier. Under guidance from controllers on Earth, it would then have made its way to meet the astronauts, all the while beaming TV images of its surroundings to Earth, charting the Moon's gravity and magnetic fields, leaving behind Remote Geophysical Monitor instrument packages, and collecting rock samples. The ELM astronauts would retrieve the ULRV rock samples for return to Earth.
>NASA and its contractors had studied the LFU, a small, rocket-powered hopper, for several years by the time Hinners, El-Baz, and Goetz made it a critical part of their Apennine Front-Hadley Rille mission. If all went as planned, the ELM would land with close to 1,000 pounds of propellants remaining in its descent stage tanks.
>At the start of the first EVA of day 2 the astronauts would spend 30 minutes pumping into each LFU 300 pounds of propellants from the ELM.
>Astronaut #1 would then fly LFU #1 3.3 kilometers to his first stop, the Apennine Front-mare contact, where he would spend one hour collecting up to 25 pounds of samples, including cores drilled to a depth of 10 feet. He would then fly two kilometers to the top of the Apennine ridge, about 500 meters above the ELM.
http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2017/01/robot-rendezvous-at-hadley-rille-1968.html