as15-88-11901 -- Another Rover Pic, No Tire Tracks

[earthorbit]

[JayUtah]

Where do you think the tracks should appear, and why?

[Count Zero]

Oh fer cryin' out loud!
You can clearly see that the astronauts have kicked dust all over the place as they walked around (they always did - you can see it in the video). You can clearly see that dirt's been kicked under the rover.

Which part of large quantities of kicked dirt can obscure tire tracks do you not understand?!

Oh, and for the record, you can see the chevron-shaped track behind the rear wheel, where no dust was kicked.

[Bob B.]

countzero said:

Oh, and for the record, you can see the chevron-shaped track behind the rear wheel, where no dust was kicked.

I can definitely see rear wheel tracks in the high resolution scan from ALSJ.

history.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/as15-88-11901HR.jpg

[JayUtah]

Lacking context, we ought to presume the rover was driven to that point in the forward direction and then stopped. Therefore we expect no tracks in front of the rover. We would expect a track between the front and rear tires, but the astronaut footprints have obliterated it. We also expect a track behind the rear wheel; and there's one to be found. I fail to see why this photo is anomalous in any way.

[ajv]

Welcome to this version of the board, earthorbit. And thank you for splitting your queries into several well-named threads. In my opinion it makes it much easier to track the individual issues.

You should check out Evan Burton's responses to White's Aulis sequence in the thread on The Education Forum.

[ajv]

AS15-88-11901 is part of Scott's VIP site pan and you can see the LRV tracks in the other pan images too.

There seem to be tracks all around his pan location. My thought is that Scott circled around the area before he selected the final orientation for the LRV. According to the ALSJ, Scott did not reset the navigation system correctly when he left the LM so there was some initial confusion about precisely where he was going to stop.

[Kiwi]

I wonder if any of our hoax-believers are knowledgeable enough to point out the bible in this picture (AS15-88-11901) and tell us how it got there.

[bughead]

The answer to this post's question is "because you can't see them in that frame. AS15-88-11902 and '903 show the tire tracks in the background very clearly." But it got me to thinking....

I play with little robots. Dead-reackoning nav by compass and tire-click is terribly inaccurate over time. What is a minor inconvenience to a hobbyist was a life and death matter for the men who had to find their way back to camp in a pretty homogenous landscape.

So my question is for the more knowledgable here, who maybe have already read thru the Lunar Surface Journal (still working on it!). Did they ever pick up the LRV and carry it out of a hole or turn it around to save time/batteries/accuracy?

[PeterB]

Well, there were a couple of times when the astronauts picked up the rover to turn it around. IIRC it was because it was quicker to do that than sit down, buckle up and drive. I don't think it was ever done to save batteries or for accuracy.

The astronauts were constantly advised what their heading should be, and they had a sun compass to help with that. They also had some sort of inertial system which gave them distance and direction back to the LM, but I don't know the details of that.

If all else failed, they could always follow their tracks back to the LM, given that there weren't too many other wheeled vehicles in the vicinity, and Houston would also have been able to work out a rough heading based on previous travels, which would be good enough to get them into visual range of the LM.

[bughead]

Thanks, I'll into it further.