Luna 9, soft or hard lander?

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

From cfleon:
Are probes like the soviet Luna 9 & 13 considered soft landers or hard
landers? Years ago, all the sources that I came across insisted that
soft landers had to use braking rockets to cut velocity, and that the
Lunas (and, by extention, probes that use airbags, like MER) were
survivable hard landers, ejected by a bus which then crashed onto the
surface. Is this distinction still used?

There was a lengthy discussion along these lines several years ago here
when I asserted the point that the Soviets had the capability for
landing a person on the Moon well before Apollo 8.

Some forum members freaked because they refused to accept the notion of
'landing' as inclusive of impacts ('hard landing'). There may be some
points from that old discussion that you find helpful.


~ CT

There may be some
points from that old discussion that you find helpful.

Out of my own curiosity, I poked around that old thread and found this:

________
From: (Stuf4)
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
Subject: Soviets landing first human on the Moon (take 2)
Date: 29 Dec 2001 23:46:52 -0800
Message-ID:
--------------
Here is just one NASA reference that uses the term 'hard landing'
synonymously with 'impact' (craft destroyed):

Location & Time Information
Date/Time (UT): 1965-02-20 T 9:57:36
Distance/Range (km): 1
Central Latitude/Longitude (deg): +02.71, 024.61 E
Orbit(s): Impact - Hard Landing

(see http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/ht.../ra8_p020.html)


And here is a source that refers to hard landing probes that serve as
"penetrators":

http://www.isas.ac.jp/publications/r...677/67702.html
_____________


Both links are still active. Here is a quote from the first one:

===
Earth's Moon - Ranger 8
....
Location & Time Information
Date/Time (UT): 1965-02-20 T 9:57:36
Distance/Range (km): 1
Central Latitude/Longitude (deg): +02.71, 024.61 E
Orbit(s): Impact - Hard Landing
===


And here is a quote from that second link:

===
Several planetary missions to use a hard landing probe, called a
"penetrator" have been proposed (e.g., LUNAR-A, Deep Space 2, Mars-96,
Rosetta). Utilization of penetrators for planetary explora-tion has
many advantages over soft landing probes.
===


So you have an old reference and a much newer reference that uses the
terminology "hard landing" as synonymous with impact/penetrator.


~ CT