NASA Testing Lunar Rovers In Moses Lake, WA

deadaluspark writes "I work at a local news station, and found out NASA was testing their lunar rovers in a nearby city. I pulled some strings and got our news director to send out one of our reporters. I would link to the original video on the KVEW website, but the video is screwing up on the badly designed, WMP only website. So I uploaded the package to youtube for everyone on Slashdot to enjoy. Very cool video of NASA toys in action." Don't believe anyone who says it always rains in Washington.

Color scheme

[Xzzy]

What amuses me is how closely the NASA's color scheme matches the LEGO mars mission color scheme. ;)

http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=7690 [lego.com]

Which came first I wonder?

Re:Video

[deadaluspark]

Are they shooting in HD or imax. ?

Nah, they are using old DVCPro cams. They digest the video from DVCPro tapes to Apple G5's and from there the video is edited in FCP. everything around here is kind of held together by duct tape.

While your in Eastern WA

[Bananatree3]

Go visit the LIGO Hanford Observatory [caltech.edu]. It is one of a handful of places that can detect gravity waves, the kind of waves made by colliding black holes and the like. LIGO is south of Moses lake, and just make sure to check out their public tour times [caltech.edu].

Re:While your in Eastern WA

[deadaluspark]

Yeah, Eastern WA has lots of interesting science installations (and one NSA installation!), yet since most of the populace is farming community there is very little local interest in these things. Honestly, it was me and a friend in the production crew who called NASA and set it up for one of our reporters to go. We just handed it off to the news director once we had gotten in contact with the NASA reps. The news reporters at our station KNEW that this was going on in Moses Lake but didn't think A) that it was in our coverage area, and B) that it just wasn't an interesting story. Fools.

Velocity

[je ne sais quoi]

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the original lunar rover did about 8 mph. I don't think they mentioned in the video how fast the chariot goes, but it looked pretty slow compared to the rate people were walking next to it. Wouldn't that kind of limit the range they could cover in some practical amount of time? Unless they're planning on outfitting that thing as the lunar equivalent of an RV. Or maybe this is just because it's the prototype and the real one will be faster.

Re:How can they test them ?

[deadaluspark]

Actually, while trying to find more out about this before I was able to contact the NASA reps, I ran across and article that said Moses Lake had been considered before in the 90s (I think 97, but don't quote me on that.). So, its been in the running to get used as a testing ground for quite a while.

Re:How can they test them ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also a lot of volcanic ash from St. Helens.

Re:Rain in WA

[mark_hill97]

Sorry, but if it's east of the Cascades, then it's "Eastern Washington" (at least to those of us on the wet side of the state). ;-)

except eastern washington, the areas around spokeane and such are all green, central washington is fucking barren and hilly, its no wonder NASA is out there, its the closest thing we have on earth to the moon.

Re:Velocity

[deadaluspark]

Those are good questions. I only wish the reporter our station had sent out was smart enough to ask questions like that. Unfortunately, he is clueless on almost entirely everything in reality, and refuses to listen to anyone about anything. Everyone I work with had wanted a longer story with better questions. It seemed really half-ass to us, because we knew it would blow up on Slashdot. So, I guess our opinion about how it should have been handled was different because we're nerds.

Copyright?

[KGIII]

I say this not tongue-in-cheek, I'm really curious if you got permission to post this? The reason I ask is not to enable a debate about the merits of copyright but to ensure that you're not going to lose your job over something like this which, really, is very cool. Either way, I thank you very much for the video share and hope that you're not going to get into any trouble at work for any of this.

Re:Moses Lake

[DerekLyons]

But some people get "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (SAD) from the months of bleak darkness.

Or, as a friend of mine puts it "there is a reason why the Puget Sound area is a petri dish for serial killers".