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Lunar airbags
Would there be any advantage to using the Mars style airbag descent on
the moon? Get down near the surface via rocket, slow the descent, fire airbags and then bounce around till you stop. |
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In article .com,
wrote: Would there be any advantage to using the Mars style airbag descent on the moon? Get down near the surface via rocket, slow the descent, fire airbags and then bounce around till you stop. The one real advantage is the same one airbags have on Mars: they make the landing much less sensitive to the exact choice of touchdown point, improve the odds for a safe blind landing in hostile terrain. However, that is a fairly minor issue for the Moon, where speed-of-light lags are short enough to permit landing-point selection by ground control during descent. (The actual flying of the descent still has to be done on board, but looking at an image shot during descent and telling the control system "land *there*" is quite practical.) Airbags also have many of the same disadvantages for the Moon as they do for Mars: they are complex and heavy (early hopes for a simple, light system did *not* pan out) and they give a rough, poorly-controlled landing. -- No, the devil isn't in the details. | Henry Spencer The devil is in the *assumptions*. | |
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A rocket engine would be needed to slow the descent enough to use the
airbags. For using a lunar rover, exact landing site is not an issue. I simply wonder if airbags are simple enough that it would make sense to use them when you still have to use a rocket to initially slow the descent. On the moon, do we have enough control over the landing to keep ourselves from hitting a boulder on descent if we use rockets alone? |
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Turns out that Luna 9 used a combo rocket/airbag for landing on the
moon. |
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