SkyMan says, 50 years ago today, 7/31/71, Driving a car on the Moon

SkyMan · July 31, 2021 4:03PM

Fifty years ago today, 7/31/71, for the first time ever, humans drove a car on another celestial body besides the Earth. Post a coin from 1971 in celebration.

The Apollo 15 lunar module (LM) Falcon landed on the Moon on 7/30/71. Stowed aboard the Falcon was the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), which weighed 480 pounds, and was powered by four 0.25 horsepower motors, one for each wheel. Its top speed was roughly 11 MPH, although generally it was driven at about 7 - 8 MPH. The LRV was folded up origami fashion inside the LM.

On 7/31/71, during the first of three Moon walks, the LRV was deployed, and humans for the first time ever drove a vehicle on some other heavenly body beside the planet Earth.

The prime contractor for developing the LRV was Boeing. Needless to say, the likelihood of the astronauts being pulled over by cops was rather small, but Boeing decided to add a small ( ~ 1.3" x 0.8") blue license plate to the vehicle. The license plate was made out of aluminum, and is roughly the thickness of an aluminum beer can. The license plate alphanumeric combination was LRV-001. Boeing produced a number of duplicates in silver and black for the mission Commander, Dave Scott, to take onto the lunar surface during his Moon walks, with some to be gifted on to people associated with the LRV program, and some to be disposed of by Scott as he saw fit.

I was lucky enough to purchase one of these license plates years ago, and have displayed it with various other Apollo 15 pictures that I got signed by Scott and Command Module pilot Al Worden (the third astronaut, LMP Jim Irwin, died years ago). So here you go, a license plate for the first car ever driven off the planet Earth...

I had this picture signed by Scott, showing where the license plates were kept while he was doing his Moon walks.

Here you can see Scott deploying ALSEP (Apollo lunar science experiments package). On the right of the picture you can see the LRV and the LM.

Here's how the license plate and images are displayed...