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How Duct Tape Saved Apollo 17's Moon Buggy

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 22, @12:21PM
from the these-pictures-clearly-faked dept.
Ant points out a story spotted on Boing Boing in which NASA "shares a story that turns back the clock 36 years to reveal the "key roll of duct tape in the Apollo program." The quality of the photographs from the moon always grabs me, and the duct-taped fender here is no exception.

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Firehose:Duct tape saved Apollo 17 moonbuggy on the moon. by antdude (79039)

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  • Duct Tape (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maz2331 (1104901) on Tuesday April 22, @12:23PM (#23159718)
    It just proves the old adage that "If you can't fix it with duct tape, then it's broken."

    • Re:Duct Tape (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo (1000167) on Tuesday April 22, @12:27PM (#23159796)
      Actually that's not entirely true. A few years ago we were working in the field in the Arctic. I stumbled down a hill and broke my arm. The satellite phone wasn't working at the time, so our solution was to make an elaborate splint made entirely out of duct tape. It took 3 days to hike back to civilization but my arm didn't even need to be reset by the doctor.

    • Re:Duct Tape (Score:5, Funny)

      by CastrTroy (595695) on Tuesday April 22, @12:32PM (#23159860) Homepage
      Can we fix the broken CSS on the idle section with some duct tape?

    • Re:Duct Tape (Score:5, Funny)

      by Schwartzboy (653985) on Tuesday April 22, @12:38PM (#23159968)
      Actually, I thought that it went "If you can't duck it..." and then ends with a two-word suggestion that I'm very very glad they didn't have to do to the moon buggy. I would think that it'd be physically impossible to do and not at all fun unless the buggy was, in fact, really cute.

    • like the force (Score:4, Funny)

      by moderatorrater (1095745) on Tuesday April 22, @12:45PM (#23160070)
      light side, dark side, holds the universe together, blah blah blah. Unfortunately, George Lucas ruined this joke, since duct tape isn't made my symbiotic microorganisms living inside everything.

    • Re:Duct Tape (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 22, @12:59PM (#23160268)

      "If you can't fix it with duct tape, then it's broken."
      You forget about WD40.

      If it moves and is not supposed to, use Duct Tape.
      If it doesn't move and is supposed to, use WD40.

      If both of those fail, then I guess you can savely assume it's broken.

    • Re:Duct Tape (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sm62704 (957197) on Tuesday April 22, @01:21PM (#23160562) Homepage Journal
      Works on earth buggies, too. I can't count the number of times a coolant hose or a heater hose (coolant goes through the heater hose?) has gotten a hole and been patched with duct tape "to get to the auto parts store", and was still on the unreplaced hose when I sold or traded the car.

      It may be urban legend, but I heard the military calls it "hundred mile per hour tape" because once in some godforsaken jungle somewhere a helicopter broke a rotor (gunshot or something) and the mechanic duct taped it together, telling the pilot to "keep it under a hundred miles an hour".

      They used to seal ducts with the stuff.

      Has anyone ever taped ducks together with it?

      • Re:Duct Tape (Score:5, Interesting)

        by smellsofbikes (890263) on Tuesday April 22, @02:08PM (#23161242) Journal
        I have taped a duck with duct tape. It was a pet duck that had been attacked by a dog and had a huge oozing wound on its back. We were trying to get bandages on it so it wouldn't get (as much) dirt and debris in the wound while it was healing, and gauze and medical tape wasn't enough. We used a combination of duct tape and vet wrap and basically made a sort of suit for the duck that wrapped around its chest and under its wings, to hold the bandages in place. It worked.

        Your coolant system patches must've used different duct tape than mine: the hot water melted the adhesive and it was leaking like a sieve in a dozen km. I managed to get home, barely.

  • ObRedGreen Ref (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amccaf1 (813772) on Tuesday April 22, @12:25PM (#23159756)
    Remember, if the aliens don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

  • The voids... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dauthur (828910) <zyjeklon@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday April 22, @12:27PM (#23159784)
    You can't hear duct tape rip in the vacuum of space. That is a sad fact.

  • photos (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Tuesday April 22, @12:33PM (#23159890)

    The quality of the photographs from the moon always grabs me, and the duct-taped fender here is no exception.

    Medium-format sized negatives. Shitloads of light (large depth of field and high shutter speeds.) No atmosphere to bend light between subject and camera.

    Also, you've got really hard shadows because the light isn't diffused at all by an atmosphere.

  • KEY roll of duct tape? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by corsec67 (627446) on Tuesday April 22, @12:35PM (#23159906) Homepage Journal
    I would say that the roll of tape [wikipedia.org] used on the Apollo 13 [wikipedia.org] was much more important.

    It is interesting to think about dust in a vacuum, where if it is kicked up with a large forward velocity, it will fall back down on you or even ahead of you, whereas on Earth it would get pushed behind you by friction...
  • My father [geometricvisions.com] was a civil service engineer at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, where he worked on the electrical systems of submarines.

    One day he found a roll of duct tape lying around somewhere on a sub that was in for repair. It didn't appear as if anyone was using it.

    However, one was not permitted to just remove stuff left lying around - someone might still be needing it.

    So dad went through the proper channels, which involved filing a form in which he requested the removal of the duct tape. This had to be signed by his manager. I don't remember clearly, but maybe it had to be signed by his manager's manager.

    Once the paperwork was all squared away, someone was sent in to the sub to remove the roll of duct tape - only to find that it wasn't there anymore!

    Your tax dollars at work!

  • Filthy astronauts. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Tuesday April 22, @12:46PM (#23160092) Homepage Journal
    They also used duct tape to fix the stereo, so they could keep driving their moon buggies through our neighborhoods at all hours of the night playing that theme from "2001" real loud.

  • Back when we really had a Pioneer program (Score:4, Interesting)

    by arakon (97351) on Tuesday April 22, @12:48PM (#23160134) Homepage
    I think we should go back a bit to that kind of space exploration. Boot-strap, Cowboy style. There are so many regs and safety issues with today's space program that with all the bureaucracy it's a wonder we get anything off the ground at all. Lets just start with some quantity, launch anything with a higher than 50% survival rate.

    How many people do you know that would jump on an opportunity for a manned mission to mars? Just to be the first to do it. Even if you don't make it, you'd still provide useful information and go down in history as a great pioneer. Hell there is a certain religion or two down here that have people clamoring all over their selves to die for some glorious amorphous cause. Put them to work. Launch those space monkeys up there so they can be closer to their [Deity].

  • Three things you need to fix anything (Score:5, Funny)

    by cwills (200262) on Tuesday April 22, @12:53PM (#23160180)
    The three things you need to fix anything in the universe.
    1. Duct Tape
    2. WD-40
    3. A Hammer

    • If it moves and it shouldn't - use Duct Tape
    • If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40
    • If neither of those work, use the hammer
  • The Lunar Surface Journal over here: (more specifically on the Apollo 17 page of course)
    http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/frame.html [nasa.gov]

    Craploads of imagery from all surface missions, full transcripts, and audio. :)

    • Re:Ammo for the conspiracy theorists? (Score:4, Informative)

      by JustinOpinion (1246824) on Tuesday April 22, @01:27PM (#23160662)
      Good observation.

      This is what I see in the photo [nasa.gov]: if you look at the front right wheel, you'll see an S-shaped trench leading away from it, going off-camera in the bottom-right of the image. You'll also notice that at the bottom-right of the image a footprint appears which seems to have significantly altered the trench. Actually it looks like it filled it in.

      The moondust is very light and prone to redistribution (that's the whole point of TFA, in fact), so perhaps just stepping near a tire-track is enough to fill in the trench (after the dust settles)? If so, then when you look at the back-right wheel, you'll see that there are footprints there which may have disturbed the ground and filled in the trench from the wheel (especially since he would have had to walk all over the place near that wheel while performing the repair). Actually there are some faint indications of where a track may have once been.

      I'm certainly no expert in these kinds of things, but it seems to me that working near the vehicle would quickly disturb any tracks, because of how light the rocks and dust are on the moon.

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