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Post by capricorn1 on Aug 3, 2011 17:11:53 GMT -4
I have a technical question that I'm intrigued about....namely the abort landing process.
I saw a video about how the LM fired its engine to take into an elliptical orbit....closest point 80 miles...where it was to fire the descent engine.
The abort process was then, if the engine had a problem firing again, the orbit would take it back up to the height of the CSM.
OK so far(?).
I assume that they would then jettison the descent stage and fire the ascent stage engine to maintain that height?
How would they then achieve rendezvous?
Surely they would be very far apart now, so is the process complicated to catch up another craft in orbit, and what about fuel?
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 3, 2011 20:43:50 GMT -4
Abort was done by dumping the decent stage and firing the acent engine. I suspect that the CSM would have been responsible for any burns required to change orbit so they could rendezvous, just as they did with the after mission rendezvous.
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Post by chew on Aug 4, 2011 14:54:54 GMT -4
This article on Lunar Orbit Rendezvous discusses orbital rendezvous in detail including landing and lift-off and will give the reader a fuller appreciation for the procedures, including aborts.
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Post by capricorn1 on Aug 4, 2011 16:57:03 GMT -4
This article on Lunar Orbit Rendezvous discusses orbital rendezvous in detail including landing and lift-off and will give the reader a fuller appreciation for the procedures, including aborts. Thanks for that....looks dead complicated, so will take some reading. But I guess orbital mechanics is like that!
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Post by echnaton on Aug 4, 2011 23:40:58 GMT -4
Complicated? They call it It is rocket science for a reason.
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Post by ka9q on Aug 5, 2011 3:11:38 GMT -4
Whether an abort involved dropping the descent stage depends on when in the descent the abort occurs. Early in the descent you'd want to hold onto the descent stage for its unspent delta-V as well as its much larger store of consumables (particularly battery power) that would give you a lot more time to arrange a rendezvous with the CSM. The ascent stage has only about 600 amp-hours of battery vs the 2000 in the J-type descent stage.
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