Day 71: Great Moonbuggy Race motto: Mostly, just finish.

The Great Moonbuggy Race took place Friday and Saturday, in the shadows of model shuttles and rockets at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The weather cooperated swimmingly for the Great Moonbuggy Race in Huntsville, Alabama on Saturday.

The moonbuggies, not always.

It’s challenging, after all, to model a craft after lunar rovers — combining featherweight gear with the durability to withstand craters, gravel pits and undulating erosional features called rills. Teams from high schools and colleges across the United States and even beyond our borders rose to the challenge. Most of the crafts ended up looking like quad-cycles, but between them were plenty of subtle structural differences so that some teams flew through the course at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center — and others barely managed to carry their beleaguered vehicles across the half-mile track. 

I spent a few hours cruising the course, talking to the teams and chronicling some of their finer moments — along with their frustrating ones. Check out the photos, and enjoy the ride!

I was still getting my bearings when this team, from Alabama A & M University in Huntsville, came screaming across the finish line — and threw a pedal. Holding the wayward pedal is Justin Vaughner, a senior. The drivers were junior Deme Trea Gooden and senior Roderick A. McKenzie.

Here’s a trooper: Chris Polowick, from Carleton University in Canada, lost part of his finger in the first day’s race. Determined to compete in the second round, he had the finger re-attached and wore this ill-fitting glove (duct-taped to his arm) to protect the wound.

No sooner were Polowick and co-pilot Lindsay Los over the first obstacle than he had to repair a slipped chain with his good hand, directing Los to drive back and forth while he got it re-seated. “I was terrified,” he admitted after the race.

This team, from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, took a cycling class to train for the race. Their vehicle held up and they did quite well, finishing the course in less than five minutes.

Michael Casutto and Beth Bodea had one of the coolest-looking moonbuggies in the race, but the fine machine was no match for the rugged lunar terrain. I wonder if their “note to self,” below, came in handy …

Samuel Ortiz Castro and Pamela Blanco Yordan, from University Gardens High School in Puerto Rico, crashed the first day — and seemed a little accident-prone on the second day too, taking out a few cones and a couple of straw bales along the route.

I’m not sure which team this is, but here they are working through the lunar pit (pushing garners a time penalty) with a nice view of the American flag, wired much like the one placed on the moon during Apollo 11 in 1969.

If I was the newspaper reporter in Longton, Kansas (population 300), I’d be all over this story. Rick Bruce, below, is the physics teacher at Elk Valley High School there. From a student body with 52 members (including eight seniors), he’s managed to put together teams of about 10 students apiece two years in a row, to build a moonbuggy for the Huntsville race. “We get to apply physics instead of just learning about physics,” Bruce said. “I’ve gotten bigger classes because of it.”

The Elk Valley High School team driver, Briar Baty, was a good sport about posing for photos after the race, even though he looked ready to take a nap in the grass. His face says it all: driving on the moon is hard work!