>>11864075Each craft was officially designated LRV-1, 2 and 3, respectively-no nicknames were ever used.
A plaque was affixed to the control panel of LRV-1, commemorating its status as the first car on the Moon. Something I'd like to know (but have never been able to find out) is whether similar ceremonial stuff was affixed to the other two, or if they just skipped it for the last missions.
Although the buggy was designed so that either astronaut could grab the stick if needed, only the commander drove, while the LMP was just a passenger who navigated. Thus, only three people ever drove on the Moon (although six "rode" on the Moon).
>>11864105The only hope of putting a sick whip on the Moon was to utilize an un-used quadrant compartment on the LM's descent stage. Engineers came up with a tiny fold-y design which worked, and threw it all together in seventeen months. The result was a game-changer for the J-missions, meaning that the astronauts could do much more than just dink around within a mile or so of their landing site.
The control panel/dashboard reported three critical numbers: bearing (an angular argument of orientation with respect to the LM), distance (the odometer: distance driven on a sortie) and RANGE, current distance from the LM. When Geno and Jack got to Nansen crater at the South Massif, LRV-3 reported a range of 7.6 km (4.7 mi) from the LM, a number which Geno clearly stated at the appropriate spot in a mission transcript. This remains the furthest that humans have ever sojourned away from a pressurizable spacecraft, in the vacuum of space, in history.
