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Astronauts per Capita Corvette? NASA's car past

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In April, NASA announced the designation for its "Return to the Moon" program. According to the plan, Canoo, a new U.S. car company from Texas, will deliver a number of work vehicles based on its large pure electric van Canoo LV to NASA in June 2023 to serve as ground-based manned transport vehicles (CTV) during the artemis manned lunar landing spacecraft.

The highly integrated drive system not only provides more space for the interior members and cargo, but also the skateboard chassis and the versatile modular body can also meet individual customization needs.

Although NASA is a part that focuses on "looking up at the stars", it has had an indissoluble relationship with the automobile since its establishment in 1957. From the wide variety of command vehicles and space fuel delivery vehicles to the car tastes of Astrovan and astronauts throughout the ages, it can be said that it is not the same... It can even be said that NASA's automobile past is like a different history of human spaceflight.

Astrovan: How trenches are the astronauts' shuttles?

The RV, printed with NASA flowers, then continued to serve for several more years. In 1969, it was with this ASTROVAN that Neil Armstrong embarked on the first lunar journey in human history.

Because each Astrovan usually serves for many years, many astronauts even see the Astrovan as part of a pre-flight "blessing ceremony."

Like the pirates of the Age of Discovery, although these space knights are well-trained and have both flying technology and scientific knowledge, they are a group of the most "superstitious" researchers in the face of countless unknown and risky space journeys. It is said that former Soviet astronauts urinated on the right rear wheel of the shuttle before launch, because Yuri Gagarin did the same thing in 1961, and this move was later considered to bring good luck. For NASA astronauts, riding astrovan is a form of good luck blessing ceremony.

In 1983, NASA commissioned the famous caravan brand Airstream to build three second-generation Astrovans based on its own motorhome Excella.

In fact, this second-generation Astrovan also has a lot of special designs. First, the beds and dining tables in the rear compartment were removed and replaced by two rows of benches that could accommodate up to 8 astronauts. By adjusting the height of the cushion, astronauts can place a bulky air circulation device under the cushion. But the bathroom and refrigerator of the original car have been preserved in Astrovan, and the leather wood grain decoration and champagne-colored curtains are also standard 1980s home furnishings.

For example, John Glenn, the first American to fly around the Earth in 1962, boarded Astrovan in 1998 and returned to space at the age of 77; Kathryn Sullivan was also one of the passengers of the air streamer as the first female astronaut in the history of American spaceflight to complete a space capsule.

Astrovan: How trenches are the astronauts' shuttles

Therefore, for young astronauts, it is a great honor to be able to take this Astrovan that has ridden many legendary predecessors to the launch base. In addition, as mentioned earlier, many astronauts see as a ritual of "blessing" or "respect for tradition." Within NASA, these are unwritten "regulations." Breakfast on launch day, including launch day, must have been steak with omelette; before boarding Astrovan, the astronaut crew had to play several rounds of cards until the commander lost a game before the crew set off for the launch pad. It is said that these are the "original scene reproductions" of NASA's first manned spaceflight. I am afraid that only by relying on the theory of quantum mechanics can we find the inevitable link between these "traditions" and improving the success rate of flight.

Then NASA has successively purchased models such as the Aerial Streamer Atlas (based on the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chassis modification) as Astrovan, but its position in the hearts of astronauts and technology fans is not the same as that of the previous two generations.

Why do astronauts love Colvet?

At the beginning of the movie "Apollo 13", Tom. Commander Jim Lovell, played by Hanks, drives a red Corvette (C3) through the streets of Houston, and Jim Lovell himself does own a sports car of the same type. It is worth mentioning that the Colvet car owner among the astronauts is far more than Jim Lovell.

In the Apollo 11 moon landing trio, only Michael Collins was not the Owner of the Colvet, which, according to gossip, is probably why Collins eventually stayed in the command module and failed to perform a lunar walk.

If you go back to the roots, the special feelings of NASA astronauts for the Corvette sports car are still "traditional".

According to his colleagues, as early as when he was training in the space program, Shepard drove a second-hand Colvet bought from his father-in-law.

According to staff at the time, they saw the fanatical fan drive more than once on the runway of the airbase at speeds of more than 100 miles (about 160 km/h).

So Shepard got dreamcar, and GM did free advertising, which was supposed to be the best of both worlds. But NASA called it off. Under U.S. law, astronauts are government employees, and government employees cannot accept any free gifts.

NASA was completely speechless, and almost all the astronauts gladly accepted the price. For a time, Cape Canaveral Air Force Base was full of $1 rental Corvette sports cars.

Editor's Summary:

Whether it is a car or a spaceship, all of them are external extensions of human bodily functions, and the old saying goes: "A gentleman is good at faking things." Confined to the limits of physiology, human beings have invented countless machines to expand the boundaries of life activities. From Elon Musk sending the Tesla Roadster into space in order to test the payload capacity of the Space X Falcon rocket, to the new generation of lunar rover jointly developed by GM Group and Lockheed Martin, it is believed that with the continuous advancement of human space technology in the future, cars and aerospace will collide with more sparks in the future.

Why astronauts love Colvet

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