Mishaps befall Canadian teams at NASA moonbuggy race

Friday, April 3, 2009 CBC News

Carleton University students Chris Polowick (left) and Lindsay Los (right) ran into difficulties 10 metres into the race, when Polowick’s chain lost tension due to a sprocket that fell out. (CBC)A warped wheel, a loose sprocket, and a bloody finger were a few of the challenges that reared up against the Canadian teams at NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race in Huntsville, Ala., Friday.

Teams from McMaster University in Hamilton, Carleton University, in Ottawa, and Ryerson University in Toronto were among the 75 scheduled to take on a twisting course through moon-like terrain strewn with obstacles such as rockets.

Each team had lovingly designed and built a three- or four-wheeled human-powered vehicle inspired by the original lunar rovers from the 1970s Apollo missions to navigate the racecourse.

Neither the McMaster team nor the Carleton team managed to finish their first race within the 12-minute time limit Friday due to mechanical mishaps during the race, one of which ended in a trip to the hospital for Carleton University engineering student Chris Polowick.

During the first 10 metres of the race, Polowick had been riding side-by-side with teammate Lindsay Los when a sprocket necessary to maintain tension on his drive train fell out.

The four-wheeled vehicle has two drivetrains, one for each driver, so Los continued pedaling as Polowick reached underneath the seat trying to fix the problem.

“His hand got caught in the sprocket, and it resulted in a finger injury, which sent him to the hospital,” Los told CBC News.

Despite the injury, the team waited until after the race before seeking first aid, said Doug Parks, father of Carleton team leader Curtis Parks.

Instead, they continued doggedly through the course with half their pedal-power. In some of the tougher terrain, Polowick got off the buggy and pushed it, incurring a time penalty in the process.

The team eventually ran out of time, but managed to repair the vehicle after the race in preparation for another chance on Saturday, Parks said.

Each team was to race once on Friday and once on Saturday, with the best of the two times counting in the competition for prizes.

In fact, the mechanical challenge faced by the Carleton team pales in comparison to the one faced by McMaster.

Collision with mogul
While their buggy was rolling down one of the downhill slopes on the course Friday morning, powered by the pedaling of engineering students Bogdan Burbulea and Tabitha Johnson, it hit a large mogul, causing the steering to jar and forcing the wheel sideways over the mogul, reported McMaster mechanical engineering student Brenden Wendover.

“The wheel got warped pretty bad,” he said, adding that the disc brake also suffered a little bit of damage. “Our custom rear differential took a bit of a pounding too.”

Wendover said the team was hoping to get a replacement wheel from a local bike shop on Friday afternoon, but had also been offered plastic wheels of the wrong size from another team if that didn’t pan out.

They planned to work well into the night repairing the buggy, and Wendover was confident the team still had a chance at a prize on Saturday.

“I think we have a good shot, yeah. Our buggy’s really durable,” he said, drawing laughter from his teammates, who were in the process of conducting repairs nearby.

“Well — the major parts of it are pretty durable.”

Ryerson University’s team of Aerospace Engineering students Cindy Hok and Gautam Mehta were scheduled to race late in the day.

NASA has run the Great Moonbuggy Race annually since 1994. More than 475 students designed and built moonbuggies for the 2009 competition at Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Ala. The course is about 1,100 metres long and includes hills and craters as well as actual space debris such as: the Saturn Moon Rocket.

Prizes will be awarded Saturday both for fastest course completion times and best vehicle assembly.