Prospector: Digging Deeper

 Collectors of Sword and Spacex toys will be familiar with the unusual Prospector model, with its distinctive balloon tyres and circular shape. As I have long been interested in the real plans for exploring space and have been looking at vintage space books and information from the sixties space race, I have seen that the origin of the Prospector toy began many years before it appeared on the shelves.

All of the toy and model versions, Project Sword, Spacex and Apollo Moon Exploring; follow the same general shape - a circular body, with large tyres and fore and aft outriggers for stability.

It was only recently that I realised the Prospector was part of a larger grand plan for lunar exploration and would have been the third stage in the programme to map the surface of the moon, prior to the actual landings in the late sixties. The Ranger project was the first step, sending an orbiting probe to map the surface and then crash landing and small capsule on the surface.

Given the success of Ranger, the second stage of the programme was initiated, with Surveyor, a soft landing probe with provision to take lunar samples. Once more, Surveyor proved very successful and there were additional plans for a Surveyor II, which would have carried a small electric rover. 

The next step in the programme would have brought about the Prospector missions, which would soft land a large roving vehicle with a planned range of approximately 50 miles and a duration of several weeks. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency proposed a design for the rover, which was based around a single axle with massive balloon tyres - as current thinking suggested that the moon may have large seas of dust and possibly crevasses, as well as irregular terrain. The Saturn rocket would have been the proposed launch vehicle, and the rover would have an electrically powered turbomotor, gathering energy from an overhead solar panel.

The boxy, Heath Robinson like affair found favour and once NASA was convinced to come on board, the design was developed into the circular vehicle, we are more familiar with.

The NASA archives show images of proposed models of various designs from the mid-sixties, based on this format and it is these and other publications such as Newsweek magazine, which would have been used as the basis of the toy.

Unfortunately for Prospector, the massively successful russian Luna programme was busily overtaking the American efforts to map the surface and Kennedy's decision to skip ahead slightly and go directly to a manned landing - possibly hastened by the soviet plans for a manned excursion - meant the Prospector probe was dropped, both for reasons of economy and practicality. The more achievable  Lunar Orbiter series would replace the Prospector programme, successfully photographing the lunar surface from orbit and helping to select a suitable landing site for the Apollo mission some two years later.

Fittingly, the Spacex series also carried a Lunar Orbiter toy in the second wave, as well as the quirky Prospector vehicle.