Moon Landings with no base...?
 

What bothers me, besides the life and strife, is that with all this Space-X moon landing and building manufacturing plants (Shotwell latest Times Interview), and of course NASA's future moon landings;

Is that how the heck is a multi-tom space craft with what, 4 engines burning away, going to land with the all the loose dust/soil on untested ground stability?

The intranet (and Space-x - NASA), are showing these huge craft sitting happily on the surface and not in a blown-out crater, leaning like a tower of Pizza.

I can only imagine a boxy type landing craft with auto EV bulldozer bots (lots of panels on top), rolling out prepping a 'better' site.

If water is there and I assume that moon rock is suitable for a 'cement' type product, you still need the mechanical means to prep all this stuff.
Shotwell said she would be surprised not to see a moon base in 10yrs...!

And haven't that last few landings (was it India and Italian), fallen on the sides after (one assumes), a leg(s), landing on top of rocks - and these craft supposed to have the latest greatest range finding, computer self autonomous avoidance software known to man?

I dunno, but maybe the fear of a red flagged moon base might get the ball rolling sooner than later...

There's my tuppence :hmm:

This seems to be one of those areas where the private companies who are designing the competing landers aren’t saying too much.

From discussions I’ve read about this on line it looks like for Space-X design the main engines will shutdown at, say, 100 metres and the final part of the descent will be flown on a ring of relatively low powered thrusters mounted roughly half way up the vehicle to avoid the impingement you mention.

as for the CofG issue….not read much by way of opinions on that

Voila....

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....69207d0253.png

Many higher end motor homes and travel trailers (caravans for those of you on the other side of the pond) have self-leveling systems - seems like it wouldn't be all that hard to add that to a lunar lander.
If they are sufficiently clever, they could have it function during the actual landing (assuming the slope of the landing spot isn't too great).

TD, methinks the only 'self leveling' option is ONLY once it's on the ground :)

I can't see why no one is mentioning this soft dust/ground issue...!
Wasn't it a Russian guy who warned about how fine the dust would be - which turned out to be correct - as the US astronauts mentioned about it on their boots (and everywhere else), when getting back into the module?

Isn't there footage of the Rover, churning up lots of 'soft' debris?
[We have been to the KSC and seen where the Rover was origami packed under the module].
Honestly, I found it hard to believe that a full rover was there (Its potential weight etc), but hey, I'm not a NASA engineer...!

I don't know (well, ok, I'm sure ok :), if this is a huge blindsided dumb public (aka - Tax Payer), image about landing one of Space X's/Nasa rockets as the billions of people have seen from comics and even now as Turin shows, over 50 years ago these type of upright/long rockets landings.

As a last note (the dragon is calling tea, so I'm off), one would expect this Artemis around the moon is going to have some serious surface radar/penetrating shmoozle stuff going on - and who knows - some 2026 gen hi res cameras of the/some lunar landers - just to prove it..?

Wot, like this?

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....03814e16d9.png

But seriously, there is some concern about the storm of debris that will be blasted across the moonscape at immense velocities by a lander of any sort, let alone the huge ones being proposed and the damage that would inflict on anything and everything above the surface for many miles around as low gravity allows debris to fly great distances. So far no one has come up with a credible solution wrt the effect on complex above surface infrastructure afaik.
I have also read that some have suggested that the exhaust velocity of a lander's rockets might be sufficient to blow debris into or nearly into moon orbit which would make the problem dangerously persistant and extremely widespread but I gather the jury is out on that.

Just a follow up on the landing sites etc.

Did anyone notice/heard of NASA testing a new Optical communications system 100Mb/s being tested in the latest news/press conference and also 'looking at terrain'...?

One wonders if a certain 'moon link' orbiting comms system, supplied by a company that does this sort of thing and has a BIG spaceship that has 5 times the thrust of Artimus II, to deliver and deploy such orbiting comms sats....?

If 100Mb/s can be done optically, what's that, 0.5sec two way?
That's enough to have a robot Optimus V6 (who makes them?), walking around driving EV (Site/Prep), vehicles (Oh wait, who makes those as well), LOL!

Optical Comms mentioned - 10:10

Speed of light - comms delay between the earth and the moon is 1.25 seconds each way.

Bit of a DOH! moment on my part (I always thought it was 0.25secs, but got confused with the moon being 250,000miles away, give or take).
I try not and use the G, Wiki, Groki gods - but maybe times have changed LOL!

Oh, and an edit as to when the Optical comms system is mentioned in the above Video.

Maybe the Chinese and Russians can pour concrete and keep their projected new base well brushed and free of dust?
China is planning to land people on the Moon — and might beat the United States to it