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What It's Like to Drive the Apollo 15 Lunar Rover: Awesome GT6 Mission Gameplay

The first car driven anywhere other than the surface of planet Earth - that has to be one of humanity’s greatest achievements to date. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to pilot the Lunar Rover on the surface of the moon? Well, you can do just that as part of three missions that are integrated into the Gran Turismo 6 racing game.
GT6 1 photo
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
The Apollo 15 landed on the surface of the moon in July 1971. Because NASA wanted to explore much more than the space surrounding the rover, they also took along the Lunar Roving Vehicle LRV-001. Powered by batteries and equipped with airless wheels, it had the job of going where no car had gone before.

Earth’s satellite has a gravitational pull roughly one-sixth that which we experience. Gran Turismo 6 designers engineered that into the missions, as you can see from this interesting gameplay footage. It might not be as fast as the Gumpert Apollo, but the LRV-001 does its job.

The gameplay takes place in the Hadley Rille, located at the base of the Montes Apenninus, a mountain range that cuts into the Moon's "ocean" region. That’s where the Lunar Lander came to rest, on the 30th of June 1971.

Back on Earth, NASA engineers worked hard to make the rover weigh only 210 kg (463 lbs) because every extra gram meant they had to use a bigger rocket. Hover, on the moon it only weighed around 35 kg (77 lbs), comparable to a really small scooter.

Its total length is 3.1 meters (10.2 ft) and of course it is powered by batteries since internal combustion would have been impossible. The wheels couldn’t have air in them, so instead they made them from mesh. Let’s find out how she handles!

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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