Darth writes 'Hey Paul, That Spacex Grumman LRV was a cool find. Didn't know they'd done that. I'm guessing by the golden astronaut that it is only a couple of inches long, like the other Spacex stuff. The Paya version is more than a foot long! It's to scale with a GI Joe. The link is also interesting although the part about Bendix is a bit misleading. The large Bendix wheels (pictured with Von Braun) are actually that size because that was the Bendix chassis for a full size MOLAB. Bendix used the exact same wheel design but scaled down to just about every size all the way to a bicycle wheel. Each vehicle had a different function. The SLRV was a basic probe to investigate possible landing areas for humans and the wheels would have been quite small but still using the same "coiled spring" design. Bendix also had that same wheel design on "pack mule" rovers which were a little larger. They then scaled them up again and again for one and two seat LSSMs "Local Science Survey Modules" (pictured above). There was also a Bendix version where they would put a modified Lunar Module ascent stage onto a chassis just like the one on that website. It was to have been called the MOLEM. This is the nearest thing I've seen to a toy based on the Bendix wheel. There was also a small Spacex/Golden Astronaut version of this but smaller. Grumman had two different wheel designs, both by a guy called Edward Markow. One is the elastic conoid (seen on the Paya toy) and the other was the "resilient spring" seen on the Grumman Mobile Base Simulator (the thing that looks like a big white bullet on wheels.) Markow's basic resilient spring design ended up being used for the Mars rovers.' Nice one Darth!
Friday, 10 October 2008
GRUMMAN, BENDIX, MOLEM, MOLAB by DARTH
Darth writes 'Hey Paul, That Spacex Grumman LRV was a cool find. Didn't know they'd done that. I'm guessing by the golden astronaut that it is only a couple of inches long, like the other Spacex stuff. The Paya version is more than a foot long! It's to scale with a GI Joe. The link is also interesting although the part about Bendix is a bit misleading. The large Bendix wheels (pictured with Von Braun) are actually that size because that was the Bendix chassis for a full size MOLAB. Bendix used the exact same wheel design but scaled down to just about every size all the way to a bicycle wheel. Each vehicle had a different function. The SLRV was a basic probe to investigate possible landing areas for humans and the wheels would have been quite small but still using the same "coiled spring" design. Bendix also had that same wheel design on "pack mule" rovers which were a little larger. They then scaled them up again and again for one and two seat LSSMs "Local Science Survey Modules" (pictured above). There was also a Bendix version where they would put a modified Lunar Module ascent stage onto a chassis just like the one on that website. It was to have been called the MOLEM. This is the nearest thing I've seen to a toy based on the Bendix wheel. There was also a small Spacex/Golden Astronaut version of this but smaller. Grumman had two different wheel designs, both by a guy called Edward Markow. One is the elastic conoid (seen on the Paya toy) and the other was the "resilient spring" seen on the Grumman Mobile Base Simulator (the thing that looks like a big white bullet on wheels.) Markow's basic resilient spring design ended up being used for the Mars rovers.' Nice one Darth!
Actually, the Bendix SLRV did not have the hoop-spring wheels--it had four small articulated caterpillar tracks. Bendix introduced the hoop-spring on its Molab and LSSM designs.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that earl1.
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