Who better to design
a martian rover than the king of custom vehicles?
Engineers at Johnson Space Center in
Houston have contacted George Barris, creator of the Batmobile in all its
television and film incarnations, for advice on building exploration vehicles
for use on the Red Planet.
Barris, now in his late 70s, expressed
surprise at the official interest in his designs.
"I'm usually the one who gets the call
from motion picture and television studios to design and build vehicles
for film and TV," he said. "This is the first time I have been contacted
by NASA for the real thing."
The call from NASA's Mars EVA [extra
vehicular activity] project office came after team engineers stumbled across
a 1960s-vintage model of Barris' "Moon Scope," a full-size working six-wheeled
vehicle designed for lunar exploration.
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"I was intrigued by the wheel and suspension
design and how far ahead of its time it was," said Robert Yowell, Mars
EVA project engineer.
After receiving detailed background
information on the vehicle, NASA is now cooperating with Barris, who has
given the space agency permission to use any of his designs for real-life
Mars missions.
Beyond the Batmobile, Barris is known
in genre circles for building the Munsters' family hearse and the urbane
artificial-intelligence car known as K.I.T.T.
His name has also been mentioned in
connection with the long-awaited live-action Speed Racer film.
To commemorate these designs and others,
Barris will receive the Life Career Saturn Award from the Academy of Science
Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films in June.
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