Lunar Roving Vehicle (Space Hall)

Prior to the opening of the Davidson Center, an lunar roving vehicle (LRV) sat in front of the full-scale lunar module mockup in the "old" building's Space Hall.

During my first visits in 2002, the LRV sat, unadorned, in front of the LM. By summer of 2003, the previous curation staff plopped an A7L spacesuit equipped with EVA gloves in the commander's seat. Of course, the LRV was used only on Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17, on which astronauts wore the later A7LB spacesuits, so placing an A7L suit (Schweickart's suit from Apollo 9) was inaccurate.

That suit was empty, but by 2006 the suit was replaced with another A7L suit which contained a mannequin; I vaguely recall this being a command module pilot's suit (although none of my photos shows definitively one way or another). This particular suit lacked the EVA gloves that the previous suit had; instead, it had what appeared to be Shuttle EMU glove mockups.

Neither suit had commander's stripes, as would be appropriate for an astronaut sitting in this seat.

Thankfully, the current curator allows the LRV (subsequently moved to the Davidson Center) the dignity of being displayed without any inappropriate spacesuits.

This LRV is the "vibration test unit" and is Smithsonian inventory number #A19750837000.