Originally Posted by
wiggy
As I understand it most of the upper structure on Odysseus was light weight so how high was the CoG and probably more importantly what were the tilt limits?
Tilt is one thing that will throw your spacecraft on it's side, but much more important is a horizontal residual motion upon touchdown. Lunar gravity, the force that will hold it down, is only 1/6 of what it is on earth, but momentum, or the force (not a force in the true physical sense but for simplicity I will call it that) that will overturn it due to residual motion, remains the same. So one could say that it is six times as easy to overturn a lander on the moon than on earth. But certainly the guys who designed this thing knew about that.