 What's more futuristic than jetpacks? How about jetpacks on the moon? Yeah, this is something we almost sort of saw in the 1970s. So close. It was no secret or surprise to NASA and lunar scientists planning the Apollo landing missions that the astronauts exploration of the moon was inherently limited. The personal life support system that came with every lunar EVA suit had a limited amount of consumables. That meant there was only so much battery power, so much consumable oxygen and so much cooling fluid to actually stop the astronauts from overheating that the EVAs could only be so long. NASA didn't have the luxury of extending an EVA or visiting an extra site if things were going really well. The astronauts had a limited amount of oxygen and once that was done or close to done they had to return to the LM, otherwise they would die. So NASA knew this going into the Apollo missions. They knew that the astronauts would land at a given point and could only really visit the sites around the lunar module. They wouldn't be able to cross mountains or craters and they had to be within that safe walk back distance. If something went wrong they had to make sure that they could get back before they ran out of oxygen. The scientific community knew this as well, and so in 1967 the manned spacecraft center held a study on lunar exploration at the University of California and Santa Cruz to discuss future and long-duration lunar missions. And in this report came the interesting advice that NASA ought to start looking at one man or two man lunar flying vehicles. Now this study was not an official NASA plan. This was really just to get the scientific community thinking about how to solve these problems in the future. The first landing missions would of course be just landing missions to get the thing done. It was really looking ahead at those long-duration later missions, the J missions, that would have the extended EVAs to see what technologies couldn't be brought to the moon to extend surface operations while we had people up there. The idea of one or two manned flying units didn't really gain a lot of traction right away, but the idea did return in early 1969. This was around the time when NASA was ready to go for its first lunar landing attempt, so started looking at these advanced lunar landing mission technologies. In January of that year the agency let two study contracts, one to Bell Aero Systems and one to North American Rockwell, and they each came back with two very different and very interesting personal flying units for astronauts to use on the moon. Bell drew off its previous experience with the rocket belt, which developed 300 pounds of thrust and had made more than 3,000 successful flights on Earth in developing its one man lunar flying unit. Like the lunar module, Bell took advantage of the excellent shock absorbers that are human legs and had the astronauts standing on a platform. There were safety straps to keep him in, but he would also be able to balance using handlebar type handle controls, not unlike the ones inside the lunar module. These controls would send information to the two rocket engines mounted on either side of the vehicle, and this was how it flew. It was a fairly simple design where the astronaut in his space suit could simply climb up onto the platform and start flying. Because the lunar module handles, don't forget, were already designed with big heavy gloves in mind, so it took advantage of existing technology. Bell designed its system to travel to the moon with a crew stored inside one of the payload bays in the lunar module's descent stage. It was that same stage that would also provide fuel for the lunar flyer. Because NASA put more fuel than needed inside the vehicle, just for safety margins, it assumed that there would be more than enough to fuel a lunar flyer, a small vehicle that is. Fueled, carrying an astronaut and NASA's recommended 100 pound payload, the entire vehicle weighed about a thousand pounds, which on the moon is a very manageable weight and not that much to lift off the ground with small rocket engines. And Bell wasn't stopping with this one vehicle. In the study proposal, it recommended developing a larger version that could cover more distance and eventually adapting the whole system to facilitate astronauts discovering Mars. North American Rockwell system had some similarities to Bell's. It also used a flat platform as the base, had four legs for stability, and was designed to carry a 100 pounds payload and to be fueled with leftover residual fuel from the lunar module's descent stage, but that's about where these similarities end. North American Rockwell clustered four engines right in the center of the vehicle as the propulsion unit. The pilot's seat was directly over it, and because he was sitting, he couldn't use his legs as natural shock absorbers, which meant that the legs on this vehicle had to have shock absorbers in them. The benefit was the redundancy this brought. The vehicle could still fly if it lost one engine. The downside was it added weight. Fueled with an astronaut in a space suit and carrying 100 pounds of payload, the vehicle weighed 1,075 pounds, but it was still manageable in the moon's lower gravity environment. But there was another weird problem with this design. Because the engines were so much closer to the moon's surface, there was a risk that any debris kicked up from the engine exhaust at the moment of takeoff could actually bounce back and hit the vehicle, potentially damaging an engine. And so North American Rockwell had the odd solution of rolling out a special fabric blanket cover on the moon's surface, then having the astronauts drag the flyer on top of it and then taking off from that. Of course, going to a remote site, there wouldn't be a landing blanket ready for the astronauts to land on. And so North American Rockwell said that it was best to just cut the engine at about 58 inches above the surface and then let the vehicle fall. In the moon's lower gravity environment, this would be just fine, and the shock absorbers would protect the astronaut. But it wasn't ideal, and it still meant that he always had to have one of those takeoff launch pad blanket things with him to unroll on the moon's surface to take off safely. As we know, neither of these proposals actually came to fruition. Early in 1969, not long after these two study contracts were let, NASA decided that wheels were maybe better than jets and commissioned Boeing to build what we know as the lunar roving vehicle. I've got a lot more about these two very interesting one-man lunar flying proposals over in my companion blog post at Discover. The link is in the description below, and definitely check that out. So many more cool details that I know you guys will really love. I also want to let you guys know that there is an awesome new feature available on YouTube that is in beta, but it is available on Vintage Space, and that is sponsorships. I am now able to take sponsors on Vintage Space. I've got a video explaining what that means right up here. This little card right here will have all your answers, how it works in conjunction with Patreon. But ultimately, you have a chance now to help make Vintage Space possible. So if you're interested, definitely check out the card. And the link is also in the description below. So do you have more questions about these one-man lunar flying units? Or are there any other really interesting surface mobility systems that you've heard about that you'd like me to dig into? Because this stuff is so much fun. Let me know all of your thoughts, questions, comments, concerns, anything in the comment section below. Be sure to follow me on social media for daily Vintage Space updates. And of course, with videos going up right here every single week, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.