A man in an orange jumpsuit and white helmet sits in the pilot’s seat on a metal vehicle, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV. The LLRV has a lot of metal tubing everywhere, which made people compare it to a metal bedframe.NASA NASA pilot Joe Walker sits in the pilot’s platform of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) number 1 on Oct. 30, 1964. The LLRV and its successor the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) provided the training tool to simulate the final 200 feet of the descent to the Moon’s surface.

The LLRVs, humorously referred to as flying bedsteads, were used by NASA’s Flight Research Center, now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, to study and analyze piloting techniques needed to fly and land the Apollo lunar module in the moon’s airless environment.

Learn more about the LLRV’s first flight.

Image credit: NASA

60 Years Ago: Lunar Landing Research Vehicle Takes Flight