A lunar roving vehicle. Apollo XV

I can see the entire Earth now out of the center window. I can see Florida... (unknown astronot)

The Apollo XV mission had a new flavor to it. NASA had slightly redesigned the Lunar Module (LM) so that more weight could be transported to the moon. NASA also got Boeing to design and build a lightweight vehicle that they could bring to the moon. NASA initially planned on investing $19 million into the Lunar Vehicle project. It cost them about twice as much. This was seen as a major waste of taxpayers money by a congress that was starting to tire of NASA’s big budget. They couldn’t see spending $40 million for a golf cart for the moon.

Apollo XV was the first mission that was supplied with the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV).

The Command/Service Module (CSM) was named “Endeavor” and the Lunar Module (LM) was named the “Falcon”

For the Apollo XV mission the space suits had been improved to allow the crew to more easily get in and out of them. While they were one the moon they no longer needed to sleep in there moon suits.

The same day that David R, Scott and Alfred M. Worden arrived on the moon, they assembled the LRV. It took them just under two hours to build and load every thing onto the LRV. It quickly became apparent that the LRV was the a vast improvement over trying to get to places in the inflexible suits. They could ride in relative comfort and not be tired out by the trip.

Both Scott and Worden had extensive geological traning and this helped them to obtain some of the best samples from the moon that had ever been achieved. They also got one of the deepest lunar core samples ever taken. Apollo XV defiantly showed that the LRV improved efficiency and longer duration lunar landings were possible with the new removable suites. There major problem seemed to be from the moon dust that got into everything.

Overall Scott and Worden stayed on the moon for 66.0 hours accumulating a total of 18 hours, 30 minues of EVA time during their three separate moon walks. They also collected the largest collection of moon rocks up to that date 169 pounds (76.3kgs). They also traversed a total of 17 miles (27.9km) across the surface of the moon, exploring more of the moons surface then had been done before.

The Apollo XV was the most ambitious flight that NASA had done up to that point. It is considered a success because it achieved almost all of its objectives.