Monday, January 19, 2009

A Sweet Inaugural Ride

I was just surfing the web and found out that, in addition to several astronauts, the inaugural parade will include NASA's new Lunar Electric Rover (LER...you all know that NASA stands for National Association of Silly Acronyms I assume). The LER is not exactly your father's lunar rover. The original little rovers could cover a few miles. This rover is about the size of a pickup trick and is designed to support two astronauts on 14 day treks across the lunar surface. The cabin is pressurized so astronauts can wear normal clothes inside or suit up to go out and explore on foot.
Now I know that there are those who question the utility of the space program. Looking up the specs of this guy, they are developing new high capacity batteries for it. These batteries could power a sedan for about 500 miles without recharging. The research being done on this vehicle has a direct, short term practical application here on Earth.

I sure look forward to seeing this guy driving down the street for the inaugural parade tomorrow!

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.

7 comments:

kkdither said...

Cute little bugger. Does this mean that Obama is a big supporter of the space program?

Beejay said...

I want one of those.....

Huck Finn said...

Just think Teflon, and carbon fiber.

hale-bopp said...

Well, tough to say kk. On the campaign trail, he sounded all the right notes about NASA (of course, McCain did also when he campaigned in Florida). Obama is generally seen as friendly to science and technology. You can look at his cabinet picks and he has pledged to name a cabinet level Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. to see he is into science and tech.

However, his transition team had a bit of a dust up with NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. It's still not clear is this is a sign of trouble of just an administrator not happy about the prospect of losing his job on the way out. Griffin does have a reputation of being a little abrasive at times, so it is hard to say at this point, but it got my attention enough to watch Obama's action a little closer on this topic.

MinnesotaChick said...

Doesn't sound so little to me. That will be cool to see.

kkdither said...

Did they ever show it? I watched some of the footage of the parade, but didn't catch it.

hale-bopp said...

I didn't watch the parade, but I got lots of "tweets" and friend updates on Facebook from people who were geeking out about it.

I just found the Video of CNN's coverage of the LER on Youtube. Don't know how long it will stay up before someone sends a takedown notice!