How many hours of publicly available footage is there of the lunar rover moving around? Youtube only has 2 min. I want more. Especially with rooster tail.
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3 Answers
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There were 2 cameras on the LRV: a 16 mm film camera and a TV camera. The TV camera was connected to a transmitter which sent images directly to Earth via the high-gain antenna. This meant the camera could not be used while the rover was in motion (the antenna would bounce around, resulting in loss of signal).
That left video opportunities at the start and end of each drive, with one astronaut on the ground filming the other driving the rover. This was done at least once (see below). With a very busy schedule, it's unlikely the astronauts spent a lot of time doing this.
The 16 mm film camera was built by Maurer. It used film magazines that contained 4 minutes of film at 24 fps. This is the reason there isn't much LRV footage: film was a scarce resource. This camera was used during LRV drives. It was set to record at 1 fps during those drives, to get a record of the geology along the LRV's path.
Here are some lists of available footage from the Apollo 15-17 missions.
List of all video material available from the Apollo 15 mission.
Loads of video, but nothing labeled to be footage taken during the drives.
Apollo 16 videos
One of these is the 'rooster tails' clip - a driving demonstration for the rover engineers
It looks like this was made with a 16 mm film camera, not a TV camera.
HD transfer of Apollo 16 film footage
Lots of film footage from Apollo 16, including a clip made onboard the rover while driving: direct link to 350 Mb video file with 1.5 hours of footage, about 3 minutes of LRV driving from 6:30 onwards.
Apollo 17 videos
Includes a clip of the rover repair (replacing one of the fenders with a map). And a brief section of driving footage.
Also, the LEM liftoff (filmed by the camera on the rover).
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Is the main rover footage. Its about 1.5 hours. However it doesn't contain any dust, rooster tail or any complicated particle physics.
The only dust cloud or rooster tail footage is the few minutes during the grand prix on Youtube. As you mentioned.
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1$\begingroup$ "particle physics" has here probably an uncommon meaning: it means the physics of the dust particles and not of the elemental particles :-) $\endgroup$– peterhCommented Jun 15, 2018 at 20:41
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That is all there is. The majority of the moon footage is in the NASA archives. The public may never see it unfortunately.
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4$\begingroup$ Do you have any references to back up your assertions? $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 19:14