How Duct Tape Saved Apollo 17's Moon Buggy

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.

Re:Duct tape great for everything BUT ducts.

[jafiwam]

Sealing ammo cans with cloth tape. Though the origin of the name is a controversy, the term is originally "Duck Tape" because water is repelled by the outside surface, thus making it good for ammo cans. You can get the can wet, pull it out of the wet, and since the water rolled off, open the can right away without getting much water in the can. Or, so the story goes.

photos

[SuperBanana]

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.

Cameras

[maz2331]

Didn't NASA have a preference back then for Hasselblad medium-format cameras with really good Zeiss lenses?

Pro-level gear with big film can give some really incredibly detailed photos.

Played a bigger role in Apollo 13

[kraemate]

Duct tape saved the day during Apollo 13 too, when they were having CO2 problems. Those guys jury-rigged the Lithium Hydroxide canister of the command-module (which were square), into the LEM(which had round canisters).
Saved the day. Without it, the astronauts would have died of CO2 poisoning. Apparently, the design was so good, it became a standard emergency procedure in future missions.

There are probably full audio for this on the LSJ

[Jugalator]

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:Cameras

[smooth wombat]

Didn't NASA have a preference back then for Hasselblad medium-format cameras with really good Zeiss lenses?

Yup. Swedish engineered camera with German lenses. Pretty much the best of both worlds. For your information [nasa.gov].

Re:Ammo for the conspiracy theorists?

[JustinOpinion]

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.

Re:Duct tape great for everything BUT ducts.

[boyfaceddog]

I thought it was orginally called "Duck Tape" becasue the man who invented it used it to repair his boats. Back in those days it was made of duck cloth or "cotton duck", much sturdier than today's tape, and tar was used as the "glue" and waterproofer. When the modern manufactuer took over in world war two the tar was replaced with (then) moden glue and the waterproofing was a spray-on synthetic rubber, much like the macintosh raincoat. However the tape was used, as you said, for waterproofing ammo cans. It was soon used for much more.

Yes, I call BS on you, too.

It also played a huge role in Apollo 13.

[Anonymous Coward]

The astronauts had to build an air-scrubber canister adapter (the LM used round canisters, while the CSM used square canisters) so that CO2 would not build to toxic levels.

It was improvised from common materials found in the spacecraft, all held together by duct tape.

Without duct tape, the Apollo 13 astronauts probably would not have survived.

been done before by NASA?

[v1]

I seem to recall the "Huston, we have a PROBLEM" mission (Appolo 13?) that they used duct tape to make the other CO2 filters mechanically compatible when they had to spend more time in orbit than they could manage just on the service module's filters. (one set was round and the other set was square)

Gaffa's better.

[moosesocks]

Gaffer tape is vastly superior to duct tape.

Easier to tear, less residue, matte surface.

Need I go on?

Slightly off topic...

[owlnation]

Try searching for "Moon buggy" in Wikipedia.

And good luck with that. You'll turn up nothing but "articles" linked to commercial products. You have to use "Lunar Rover". (And it's an article ripped form a single source (albeit NASA))

I wonder if someone could fix Wikipedia's search engine with duct tape? Though I suspect that it's far beyond that kind of repair.

Re:Duct Tape

[AgentSmith]

Sorry Hoss. You forgot the sun still shines on the moon.
Without an atmosphere I would imagine it gets pretty toasty as well.

Should be enough to warm adhesive.