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The big question was the rocket that had to fire to return the LEM to the orbiter. It was packed in next to the retrorocket that was used to descend. It was vib
by jordanb 10y ago
The big question was the rocket that had to fire to return the LEM to the orbiter. It was packed in next to the retrorocket that was used to descend. It was vibrated and jolted by the landing, then sat for three days, and then it had work perfectly to get them off of the moon. There was no possibility of any redundancy or the ability to test it under realistic conditions.
I saw a quote by Buzz Aldrin once where he gave the rocket a 50/50 chance of working properly.
- stevenwoo 10y agoThe Moon Machines documentary series states the rocket used to get off the moon could never be test fired to make sure that particular rocket engine worked due to the propellant used - the engine had to be rebuilt after each firing, so it was one use only for space vehicles. They compensated for this by using the simplest design possible with self igniting propellant (separate fuel and oxidizer sources).
- theoh 10y agoThere's a five-minute video specifically about the chemistry of that rocket here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLCrZGgKD-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLCrZGgKD-k
- greglindahl 10y ago... and the amount of risk was driven by the fact that a human was needed to land. NASA did a bunch of incremental tests before landing a human on the moon, but the amount of human interaction needed limited their ability to do unmanned tests. Future systems are likely to be a lot more autonomous, which will allow more unmanned testing.