...I find it interesting that I have not seen any guidelines or testing done for one astronaut on board.
I believe that you have not yet seen them. There is a vast amount of material easily available on the lunar rover. It takes the average person several weeks to read it all carefully. It's not exciting reading, but then again most engineering documents are not meant to be entertaining. And with the NTRS down until further notice, alternate sources must be sought out.
But consider this. Given the characterization of what you have already read, which likely goes into meticulous detail, what is the most likely explanation for your inability yet to find documentation for single-occupant testing: (a) the tests were never done, or (b) you just haven't run across them yet?
As I pointed out throughout the thread, the rovers with one astronaut are horribly unbalanced...
Asserted, but no quantitative argument provided. Begging the question does not convince me.
The problem with this is that it does indeed appear as though only one astronaut shifts the CoG outside the acceptable limits...
By what argument and computation? It's not necessarily inappropriate to anticipate your critics' objections and attempt to account for them. It borders on the straw-man fallacy, but not in this case. However if you anticipate that we will make a certain argument, and it is a quantitative argument according to a physical model, you cannot just handwave away the objection. If you claim the LRV would be unacceptably unstable when operated by one person, you bear the burden to provide the computations that support that conclusion.
In particular, one might expect a lower speed limit for one astronaut, yet by all accounts the highest speeds were reached with only one on board, such as Gene Cernan claiming a lunar speed record of 18 kilometers/hour (1).
Did he execute any turns at that speed?
So what is the allowable CoG envelope?
For what purpose? The practical c.g. limits for vehicles are determined by intended use, as discussed later.
When a contractor says "acceptable" in his documentation, it means the envelope of operation inside which he guarantees the performance will meet the acceptance criteria imposed by the customer. It does not mean the equipment may not be operated successfully outside that envelope, perhaps with degraded performance. It means that if the equipment is operated outside the contractor-specified envelope, the contractor cannot be held liable for degradation, malfunction, damage, injury, or loss that ensues.
Conversely the
practical envelope varies by use. The real-world c.g. envelope for straight-and-level operation at high speed is different than the real-world c.g. envelope for operation on an incline or for low-speed, high-maneuverability operation on any terrain. The speed envelope is different along uneven terrain than for flat ground. The Grand Prix was intended to investigation the relationship between the practical limits and the as-specified limits. Given that NASA has an acceptable design in-hand, the exercise was to determine confidence in the margins surrounding that accepted envelope.
The allowable center of gravity location or the total LRV, including payload, is shown in figure 5-1. Loading the LRV such that the center of gravity falls outside the defined envelope will cause degradation of performance...
I can think of many things that degrade a vehicle's performance. Does that mean that operating them under those conditions is impossible, such that by such inference we can conclude that claims to have operated them as such must be fraudulent?
You may have noticed I haven't posted for a few days. I was down in Moab, Utah, enjoying a little thing called Jeep Safari where we take a bunch of 4x4s and drive them through all kinds of circumstances that happily exceed the manufacturer's specifications. The Jeep reps were there, handing out color glossies. Yes, from them can be computed the manufacturer's stated operational envelopes. Did we see people happily exceeding them? Yes, all the time. Did we exceed them ourselves? You betcha. Did we roll over, skid, panic, die, or otherwise experience anything that would convince a non-believers that red-rock four-wheeling was a hoax? Nope. Did we all meet at the Blu Pig for KC BBQ and beers? Yup. Is Pasta Jay's named after me? No, but I'm in there often enough that it might be.
In other words, I don't believe your handwaving.
Now, my back of the envelope calculations put the CoG about 7 inches off center with one astronaut...
Show your calculations. You are making an engineering argument without providing any engineering. I'm not buying your handwaving one bit, and you won't show your work. You've tried this same rhetorical stunt before. You convince us that you really aren't interested in knowing.
...let alone driven to the extreme.
Your one example of "driven to to the extreme" with only one occupant is a single claimed speed record. However you have previously emphasized roll instability as the reason single-occupant operation would be problematic. Do you understand that speed and maneuverability are not the same thing, and that "extreme" operation in one mode is not necessarily problematic in another mode? Why are you blurring important distinctions? Your handwaving didn't work at the other forum where you tried these identical claims and it work work here either. When you are discussing engineering with engineers and calling them liars, you need more game than this.
Again we return to the Grand Prix example, which would be a test of roll stability with one occupant. In that test the on-site crew even joked about the likely roll instability that would occur with an eccentric load in a sharp, high-speed turn. The Grand Prix also tested lateral breakaway traction. The operator discovered that he could steer quickly enough to correct loss of back-end traction before a tripping roll became likely.
