Dating to the mid-to-late 1960s, this silent film shows various equipment mock-ups for the Apollo program, including motion range studies for spacesuits and a mock-up of the Lunar Roving Vehicle or LVR. It was probably shot at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The film is one of many made to demonstrate astronaut mobility. The film begins with shots of subjects getting into spacesuits which appear similar in design to those worn in the Mercury era. Most likely these are A4-H designs, made by Hamilton Standard for ILC Industries. ILC produced these suits specifically for training in the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) prototypes in 1965. The A4-H is also known as a “mobility” suit because it allowed the astronaut to sit, unlike previous suit designs. NASA accepted delivery of twelve of these suits for use in the LRV program, but they didn’t go any further than that, as the broad, conical shoulder joints in these suits would not fit into the Apollo Command Module. At 2:43, a small Lunar Rover mobility test article created by Brown Engineering (now Teledyne Brown Engineering Company) is shown. This golf-cart-style, two-man vehicle was built at Werner von Braun’s direction and famously test driven by Von Braun in 1966). After a demonstration of how a man in a space suit could access the mock-ups controls, the astronaut attempts to demonstrate how a scientific apparatus would be assembled at 5:30. He initially fails — he drops the instrument — but then recovers and utilizes it. The device appears to be a 3-D camera on a surveyor-type measuring post. At 9:30 another instrument is retrieved from the “rover”. At 9:34, the astronaut falls over and drops the measuring device again. A flight surgeon who is monitoring the astronaut’s vital signs cringes. The astronaut is able to return to his work, and sets up and stows a series of instrument packages before returning to the rover.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
