any theories on how to moon land without a dust cloud and thrust crater?

Question

any theories on how to moon land without a dust cloud and thrust crater?

Answer 1

You land the lunar model where there is no dust- such as on a sound stage.

Answer 2

Without another means of decelerating... I don't think so. You can *minimize* the effects of your engine - when the Vikings landed on Mars, they had 3 engines, positioned on the outboard portion of the landers, so they wouldn't disturb the soil *as much* as if there had been a singular, central engine.



You could also place the crew module forward & away from the central part of the vehicle, allowing the pilot to see 180 degrees around him (or more).



The other method is also what they used on Mars - but, a manned landing module wouldn't be an ideal candidate: Lower the the craft by a remote rocket to a few meters over the ground, and inflate shockabsorbant gas bags - and let it bounce around. (Again - *I* wouldn't want to be an astronaut on that thing...)



One early method *considered* for landing men on the moon was to attach a crew module that hung by cables below a power/service module. It would lower the crew module to the ground, then, either separate & fly off and crash, or stay attached, and land 300-400 feet away. The problem is, if you were coming down into a boulder field, you'd shift the powered module above you, and it would take a few seconds for the cables to translate that movement to the crew module hanging below...

Answer 3

No, your "argument" is false. The LM was descending at just a few feet per second just before landing, not "thousands of miles an hour as you wrongly claim, and the descent engine was shut down about six feet above the surface. The descent engine was also throttled down to less than a third of its maximum thrust at this point. As an exercise I sat down some years ago and worked out approximately what the pressure would be in the descent engine exhaust plume just before landing. I forget the exact number, but it was only a few PSI, not enough to create the crater that the moon landing hoax wackos are so fond of.



OOPS! Forgot to address your "dust cloud". There WAS dust being blown outwards as they neared the surface, and in fact several of the crews mentioned it during the landings.



We really did land on the moon, get over your hoax fairy tales!

Answer 4

Given the Moon's low gravity, you don't need a lot of thrust to make a soft landing, as the Chinese just demonstrated. Indeed, using enough thrust to create a huge crater is going to result in your ship streaking upwards at a rather fantastic rate of acceleration. The Apollo LEM's maintained this capability in case they needed to report, but physics dictated that they simply could not land while generating this sort of thrust, unless they were coming in upside down in a suicidal fashion.



So, you come in with fairly low thrust to a few meters above ground, cut your thrust, and let the ship settle.



Edit: Why would you be approaching at thousands of kilometers per hour? Hint: don't run your lunar transfer orbit to shoot you directly at the Moon, but angle it to insert you into lunar orbit (the CSM has to stay up there anyways, after all). You spend some thrust to kill orbital velocity (not directed downwards, but forwards). In terms of vertical speed, you ONLY have to counter the force of lunar gravity, so by the time you've rotated to an upright attitude and are descending vertically, very little thrust is required.



And even if you were coming in at thousands of miles per hour, why would you not kill that velocity at a higher altitude for safety's sake? You seem to be assuming that even in this case that there's some down to the last second burn manuever, which certainly sounds daring, but not the smartest approach to your bizarre alternate universe scenario.



Sorry. If you're doing a high thrust burn at the moment of touch-down on a low-G body, you are doing something VERY strange.

Answer 5

It's been done several times.



You're not approaching at thousands of miles an hour. You slow down well above the surface and touch down going at much lower speed. You don't need much thrust if your spacecraft is light. Dust 'clouds' will not be generated because there is no atmosphere to cause the dust to billow into clouds. It will be blown away along the surface at extremely high speed.

Answer 6

Thousands of miles an hour?



You would get blown debris but no cloud. A cloud suggests an atmosphere and there is no indication of this ANYWHERE.



How big a crater do you expect? Thrust was shut down before they landed. And they were not travelling at thousands of miles an hour.



So much wrong here in this assumption.

Answer 7

The Moon has low gravity, you don't need a lot of thrust to land. Also, if you actually watched the Apollo videos, a lot of dust was kicked up, the takeoff even blew down Apollo 11's flag so the later flags were planted further away.



It's only Morons who claim there was no Moon landings.

Answer 8

All changes to trajectories are made with rockets. There is no theoretical way to soft land without a rocket exhaust in an airless medium.

Correction - Mars lander trick - rocket deceleration to low low speed, cut rockets and inflate enclosing crash bag - you get a "balloon smudge" that way though.

Answer 9

There was a very small dust cloud. Very small thrust did not create a crater, due to moon low gravity

Answer 10

Land very gently. Slow and low is key.

Answer 11

Pay more attention in physics class, and maybe one day you will understand better.

Answer 12

Come in high and fast dont eject until its too late or youll be elephant turd