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Lunar rover11/27/2023 ![]() ![]() Tim was around 11 years old at the time his father was working on the project, a prime age for looking up at the stars and dreaming big. “We’d watch the launches and landings with the backdrop of the Vietnam War.” While some men headed to the moon, Romano said, other “young kids” were at war. Romano’s son, Tim Romano, remembers the fervor and energy of the Apollo program during the late ’60s and early ’70s. ![]() ![]() The American effort was headed by GM engineers Sam Romano and Ferenc Pavlics, whose contributions changed the direction of the lunar missions, allowing astronauts to explore the moon’s surface and collect samples in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before the rovers. The Apollo program was front and center of the era’s Space Race and the focus of the world’s attention. Three of them made trips to the moon, while one was kept on Earth for spare parts. The 17-month project cost nearly $38 million, and in that short time, the team of engineers designed, tested, and built four 460-pound, battery-powered, foldable Lunar Roving Vehicles. But the rover’s 238,900-mile journey began ever further back, years before, and in our own backyard at Delco, a former General Motors defense research laboratory in Goleta. July 31 marked the 50th anniversary of the Lunar Rover’s first deployment on the moon, manned by Commander David Scott and lunar-module pilot Jim Irwin on the historic Apollo 15 mission. Today’s billionaires are spending fortunes breaking Earth’s atmosphere, and though Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster made it to space, even his vehicle never touched rubber to the moon’s dusty surface. The phrase is used often, but very few people have actually tried it. ![]()
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