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I feel this somewhat glosses over the unsolved challenge of how to land a Saturn V rocket.
by justrealist 3y ago
I feel this somewhat glosses over the unsolved challenge of how to land a Saturn V rocket.
- jdminhbg 3y agoMuch easier to do on the moon than on Earth though at least, right? No atmosphere, fraction of the gravity.
- justrealist 3y agoYeah but there's still no precedent at all for re-ignition, stabilization, automatic landing, etc. It took SpaceX like 20 tries to do this using 2010's technology and computer automation, with a much smaller rocket.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 3y agoNo? Grid fins don’t work in a vacuum. Lower gravity means your engines need a wider throttle range, which was already challenging at Earth gravity.
- XorNot 3y agoNo! Not at all! The Moon is harder to land on then Mars! Aerodynamic drag is amazing. It means fins and parachutes work. It means you can slow yourself down without propellant and with passive systems. Mars actually kind of sucks too because it has just enough atmosphere to interfere with rocket engine ignition but not enough to be able to land on chutes alone. But any amount of parachute and aerobraking is better then none. But the Moon is terrible: no atmosphere, so you're under engine power the whole way down. The propellant and mass demands are thus much higher.
- jdminhbg 3y agoThanks, good explanation. My thought on "no atmosphere" is that it eliminates the need for heat shielding to enter it, but I can see how that's not really an issue compared to all the benefits.
- psunavy03 3y agoWhat would be being landed would be a CSM-based shelter, not the whole Saturn V.
- cratermoon 3y agoNobody proposed landing a Saturn V. The Apollo lunar base proposal called for a shelter based on the existing Lunar Module[1], along with an extended CSM and LM Taxi hardware derived from the basic Apollo program. 1. http://www.astronautix.com/a/apollolmshelter.html http://www.astronautix.com/a/apollolmshelter.html