Lunar Grand Prix
Artwork Description
“Apollo 16 Commander John Young is putting the lunar rover through a full test,” says artist Alan Bean about “Lunar Grand Prix.” “This was the second Apollo mission with the rover onboard and the goal was to allow Young to evaluate the performance of the Rover in the light gravity on the dusty, cratered and rock surface of the Moon.”
John Young later said, “The tendency was to drive wide open or very close to that and take what you got. The best reference to speed control was the speedometer as I really didn’t have a feel for the difference between 7 and 10 kilometers per hour.” Later in the test, Young demonstrated a sharp turn at max speed, about 10 kilometers-per-hour. “I made the Rover end break out to show the engineers how it looked. It was no problem as all I had to do was cut back like I do when driving in snow . . . I didn’t get up to any great speed, maybe 10 clicks at the most, but the terrain around there was too rough and rocky for that kind of foolishness . . . .”
His companion, Astronaut Charlie Duke, filmed the scene with the 16mm data acquisition camera normally mounted on the Rover, but hand-held temporarily to document this drive. He told Houston at the time, “. . . man, Indy has never seen a driver like this.”
