Article Options

SIUC revs up its latest moonbuggy

By Scott Fitzgerald, The Southern

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 3:21 PM CST

CARBONDALE - Six wheels are better than four, but how is it going to fold into a 4-by-4-by-4 cube?

That's the challenge facing members of Southern Illinois University Carbondale's 2008 Moonbuggy Club as they prepare for NASA's 15th annual Great Moonbuggy Race set for April 4 and 5 in Huntsville, Ala.

"We've done this for about 10 years," said Professor Tsuchin Philip Chu of the department of mechanical engineering and energy processes at SIUC, who is also the club's moderator. He generated interest for a club here after working at NASA in 1997 on a summer faculty fellowship.

At that time he saw 15 teams compete on the testing course for NASA's real moonbuggy.

"Only four or five teams finished the race. We put together our first team in 1997 and entered the competition in 1998," Chu said.

Up to 40 teams from universities and colleges throughout the country now compete on an obstacle course about a mile in length that resembles the rugged moon terrain.

"You may be driving where one side of the moonbuggy is 2 feet high and the other side is ground level. There is a part of the course that zigzags. It's pretty tough terrain. The buggy can flip over. People have gotten injured," Chu said.

Teams are responsible for building their own buggy that must be folded, put into an aluminum-framed cube and carried 20 feet by two team members to ensure the vehicle is not too heavy.

Two people propel the vehicle by foot pedal. The idea is to drive through the obstacle course without an accident in the quickest time possible. Each team gets two chances to race the course - once in the morning and once in the afternoon, Chu said.

Three years ago, the SIUC team won the pit crew award at competition as team members reassembled their broken-down buggy between the morning and afternoon races.

This year's team has constructed a buggy that varies from years past because it contains six wheels rather than four.

The six-wheel model was designed and built by Brandyn Stack, Robbie Lunnemann, Daryl Norton and Joe Owen as a senior design project to fulfill credit hours for a particular engineering design course. Building a moonbuggy takes about a year, Chu said.

SIUC'S moonbuggy club formed five years earlier. It welcomes student members from all academic fields and has a Web site. Nate Honious is current club president.

scott.fitzgerald@thesouthern.com  

351-5076