Luna 9, soft or hard lander?

Pat Flannery wrote:
You can see it on these drawings of the LK:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/l/lkkaluga.jpg
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/l/lkkaluga.jpg

snip

Yep - I've seen them - and the myspacemuseum pic.

Still not the smoking-PrOP-M-deployment charge that I was looking for.
It's not that I distrust diagrams but we've all seen artfully
airbrushed diagrams (thinking mostly here of Venera and Luna cutaways)
which are just too neat and tidy. I sometimes wonder if the
zond-equivalent of Trotsky hasn't been removed to make the diagrams
more pleasing.

I *could* imagine a slab of crushable material beneath each footpad, as
a means of reducing the jolt to the main legs which appear to be
articulated. Such a block might plausibly be missing from boiler-plates
and EM versions, but in the absence of photographs of such a thing I'll
mentally file it under 'perhaps'. For all we know the material may not
have been canonical aluminium honeycomb.

Ah well - thanks Pat, for digging around.

-James Garry

wrote:


Still not the smoking-PrOP-M-deployment charge that I was looking for.
It's not that I distrust diagrams but we've all seen artfully
airbrushed diagrams (thinking mostly here of Venera and Luna cutaways)
which are just too neat and tidy. I sometimes wonder if the
zond-equivalent of Trotsky hasn't been removed to make the diagrams
more pleasing.



I've seen either a photo or video showing the block of honeycomb
material, and am still looking around for a photo showing it.
It might be on one of my videos about the Russian space program, as it
dates from the period just after the LK was revealed and when it was
still in storage rather than on public display.
I'll keep hunting.
As I said, the honeycomb was pretty beat up in the image or video.


I *could* imagine a slab of crushable material beneath each footpad, as
a means of reducing the jolt to the main legs which appear to be
articulated. Such a block might plausibly be missing from boiler-plates
and EM versions, but in the absence of photographs of such a thing I'll
mentally file it under 'perhaps'. For all we know the material may not
have been canonical aluminium honeycomb.



It sure looked exactly like it, with the cells aligned vertically.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


I've seen either a photo or video showing the block of honeycomb
material, and am still looking around for a photo showing it.
It might be on one of my videos about the Russian space program, as it
dates from the period just after the LK was revealed and when it was
still in storage rather than on public display.
I'll keep hunting.

And I found it! It's in the program "The Russian Right Stuff".
They have an interview with Vasili Mishin where he takes them to the
stored lunar hardware in Moscow. They go over to the LK, and parts of it
are detached and lying on the floor under it.
Mishin picks up one of the landing pads and holds it up to the camera
showing the honeycomb on its bottom, which is chewed up and has numerous
holes it it.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

And I found it! It's in the program "The Russian Right Stuff".

Gosh!
snip

Mishin picks up one of the landing pads and holds it up to the camera
showing the honeycomb on its bottom, which is chewed up and has numerous
holes it it.

Circularly symmetric and shaped like the image at?
http://www.myspacemuseum.com/lkscan.jpg

Approximately a cake-like shape?
http://www.weihnachtsseiten.de/brauc...-panettone.gif

Thanks Pat - I'll keep an eye out for that Nova programme.

-James Garry

wrote:



Mishin picks up one of the landing pads and holds it up to the camera
showing the honeycomb on its bottom, which is chewed up and has numerous
holes it it.



Circularly symmetric and shaped like the image at?
http://www.myspacemuseum.com/lkscan.jpg



Yup, that's it.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


Circularly symmetric and shaped like the image at?
http://www.myspacemuseum.com/lkscan.jpg



Yup, that's it.


I was on the phone when posting that- here's some more info- you can
quite plainly see that it's made out of metal honeycomb of some sort
with the cells aligned vertically, as it's shiny silver in color and
unpainted. The cells appear to be fairly small in diameter; maybe twice
to three times the diameter of a pencil. The honeycomb section is maybe
10" in diameter by 6" thickness top to bottom. Mishin states that the
pad is designed to sink into the lunar surface and get a good grip to
stabilize the LK. I think the idea is that the honeycomb is to serve as
a crushable shock absorber if the LK touches down on rock, and to pierce
the lunar soil if it comes down on a dust-covered surface. As to why
it's so chewed up is a good question, but the base of the honeycomb has
holes in it. These could be for bolting it to the bottom of the landing
pad, but they don't look symmetrical.
The interview is in part 2 of Nova's "The Russian Right Stuff", the
episode entitled "The Dark Side Of The Moon".
James Oberg is in this section, trying to track down old Soviet Moon
hardware.

Pat