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Lunar Landing Vehicle, Number 1

Lunar Landing Vehicle, Number 1
This 1964 photograph shows NASA Pilot Joe Walker in the pilot's platform of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) number 1. When Apollo planning was underway, NASA was looking for a simulator to profile the descent to the moon's surface. Three concepts surfaced and eventually the LLRV became the most significant one.

This 1964 photograph shows NASA Pilot Joe Walker in the pilot’s platform of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) number 1.
When Apollo planning was underway, NASA was looking for a simulator to profile the descent to the moon’s surface. Three concepts surfaced: an electronic simulator, a tethered device, and the ambitious Armstrong Flight Research Center (then NASA’s Flight Research Center) contribution, a free-flying vehicle. All three became serious projects, but eventually the LLRV became the most significant one.
Simultaneously, and independently, Bell Aerosystems Company, a company with experience in vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, had conceived a similar free-flying simulator and proposed their concept to NASA. The challenge was to allow a pilot to make a vertical landing on Earth in a simulated moon environment, one sixth of the Earth’s gravity and with totally transparent aerodynamic forces in a “free flight” vehicle with no tether forces acting on it.Image Credit: NASA