If You Lived On The Moon........

[margamatix]

and you wanted to visit Earth...












Would you go in this?

[LunarOrbit]

I sure wouldn't. It isn't capable of entering the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, if you asked me if I wanted to visit the Moon in that then I would say "hell ya! let's go!".

[ottawan]

What kind of question was that!!!!

Do you have nothing else to do?

I'm serious.

[margamatix]

admin said:

I sure wouldn't. It isn't capable of entering the Earth's atmosphere.

.

Let's be honest. Apart from being the subject of an early piece of Photo-Shoppery, it isn't capable of anything

[LunarOrbit]

Prove it.

[sts60]

Of course I wouldn't try to go from the Moon to Earth in an Apollo LM. Would you try to drive from England to the U.S. in your auto? Or in one of those neat old roller coaster rides you showed us? You'd take a boat or a plane, right?

But you trust your life to your auto working properly for the environments for which it was built. And, presumably, your truck when you're on the job. Right?

I would trust the LM with my life to get me off the surface of the Moon to a rendezvous with my Earthbound spacecraft, though. It was quite reliable.

Oh, wait, gosh, that was a rhetorical question you asked, wasn't it? You don't like the way it looks, that's right.

Well, why don't you back that up with something more than your opinion? My opinion says it looks just fine, and I've actually worked on spacecraft.

[sts60]

Let's be honest. Apart from being the subject of an early piece of Photo-Shoppery, it isn't capable of anything

You continue to beg the question.

Do you ever intend to back up your claims, or do you simply intend to keep repeating them until everyone gets bored?

[ottawan]

margamatix,

Please for once ask a serious question.

Listen to the replies and references and research them.

Are you an intelligent, rational human?

The gentlemen here have provided you with countless references yet you choose to ignore them.

Why?

[Jason Thompson]

Not capable of anything?

OK, it has a sealed environment that can withstand a pressure gradient of 5psi. It can therefore protect me from the vacuum of space.

It can carry enough oxygen to suport me and a colleageue for a few days.

It has a rocket engine in it, so it is capable of manoeuvring in space and of blasting off from the lunar surface.

It has an RCS system to stabilise it in flight.

OK, so let's see. It's capable of supporting me and a mate in space for a few days and of moving in a controlled fashion. Why should I object to travelling in that?

[JayUtah]

This is the umpteenth thim you have made this claim, Margamatix. Are you prepared this time to prove it? Or will you simply continue to beg the question?

You are not qualified to determine by glancing at photographs that a spacecraft is or is not capable of its mission. No one is.

If you have specific reasons why the LM would not have performed as specified, please give them. Simply asking us to look at a photo and then agree with you is not an argument.

I remind you that you are speaking with well-educated and well-experienced engineers, many of whom have made detailed studies of the LM and the principles by which it and other spacecraft operate. No handwaving allowed.

[Bob B.]

margamatix said:

Let's be honest. Apart from being the subject of an early piece of Photo-Shoppery, it isn't capable of anything

To the contrary, the LM is an engineering marvel.

[JayUtah]

Let's be honest. Apart from being the subject of an early piece of Photo-Shoppery, it isn't capable of anything

Describe the study of the LM that you undertook in order to arrive at this conclusion. Details, specifics.

[Count Zero]

sts60 said:

Of course I wouldn't try to go from the Moon to Earth in an Apollo LM. Would you try to drive from England to the U.S. in your auto? <snip> You'd take a boat or a plane, right?

To continue this analogy, you probably would drive a car to the airport or harbor to meet with more appropriate (and capable) transportation to the U.S. I would definitely ride this...



...from the Moon to the Earth, and use the LM to go meet it.

[jaydeehess]

countzero said:

sts60 said:

Of course I wouldn't try to go from the Moon to Earth in an Apollo LM. Would you try to drive from England to the U.S. in your auto? <snip> You'd take a boat or a plane, right?

To continue this analogy, you probably would drive a car to the airport or harbor to meet with more appropriate (and capable) transportation to the U.S. I would definitely ride this...



...from the Moon to the Earth, and use the LM to go meet it.

Of course you would , it even looks right. It has a honkin big engine visible at the rear and a pointy end like all spacecraft are supposed to have. ;D

[PeterB]

G’day Margamatix

You have some severe doubts about the Lunar Module, and without an engineering background (I don’t have one either) I can see why you’d have problems with what appears to be a very flimsy spacecraft. Was it you who used the term “static and cobwebs”? Excellent metaphor. However, you’re missing a lot of context.

We can look at the Lunar Module from two directions. One is the history of its development. The other is a straight-up assessment of how someone might design a craft to operate on the Moon.

The history of the LM is covered in considerable detail. The concept grew out of theories of how to land on the Moon. When Kennedy first set the goal of a mission to the Moon, the generally accepted theory on how to land was to send a whacking great rocket up, have it land on the Moon, then lift off and return to Earth. This is sort of similar to the method described in the two Tintin books about a mission to the Moon.

But there were two problems. Firstly, sending the main spacecraft to the Moon meant a big weight penalty. After all, the spacecraft carrying the astronauts had to survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, so it needed to be strongly built and carry a heat shield. Taking all this to the Moon required a lot more fuel. Secondly, if the astronauts were lying down in their couches for the landing, they wouldn’t be able to see the surface of the Moon, but, alternately, if they were standing up, they’d need a second set of instruments to guide them, as those in front of the couches would be in the wrong place.

So when some engineers came up with the idea of a second craft to do the landing business, it was quickly attractive. A craft designed to land on the Moon only could make several savings. Firstly, it wouldn’t need a heat shield. Secondly, because it would only fly through a vacuum, it wouldn’t need to be smooth sided. Thirdly, because the only gravity field it would operate in (as opposed to being a passenger) was the Moon’s, it could be built with much lighter materials. This last factor made constructing it on Earth tricky – there are a number of stories of accidental damage caused by workers who forgot how fragile it was on Earth – drop a screwdriver and it would fall through the floor.

The original design of the LM was conservative. That is, it still had rounded corners on the outside, and seats for the two crew. But as the designers strove to save weight, they dispensed with the seats (you can stand for a long time in one-sixth gravity without tiring) and redesign the shape almost as they wished. The result, after several redesigns, was the spidery contraption you see in the photos.

But let’s now look at the straight design. You have very specific objectives. You need to design a spacecraft to fly two astronauts from lunar orbit down to a specific location on the Moon; the astronauts have to have supplies for a couple of days; they then have to lift off the Moon and rendezvous with another spacecraft orbiting the Moon. Your spacecraft will therefore only operate in a vacuum, and only in zero gravity or the Moon’s 1/6th gravity. Weight is a very stringent restriction, and you also need to provide for unexpected contingencies.

Put all that together, and you’re pretty much forced to use ultra-light materials, milled to the thickness of a drink can to provide an air-tight structure. To provide stability in the same way as a tight-rope walker, you place the fuel tanks low and wide, with the engine as high as possible. Structure outside the air-tight skin only needs to be protected from direct sunlight, so only needs to be covered by the thinnest reflective material. This is pretty much describes the Lunar Module.

This isn’t to say that the Lunar Module was the best possible design. The LM would have been a lot safer and more liveable if the designers had been allowed more weight. But within their weight restrictions, it’s considered by aerospace engineers to be close to a pure spacecraft.

In fact, it’s possible that an even lighter design might have been used if the Saturn V rocket hadn’t been available. The engineers who came up with the first Lunar Module design also came up with an alternate design which was simply an open platform. It would have weighed a fair bit less than the final LM design, but the astronauts wouldn’t have had an air-tight skin to live within. That in itself would have made for a much shorter visit to the Moon.

The LM was then tested several times. Firstly, an unmanned flight on Apollo 5 simply ran the LM through its paces in space. Apollo 9 was the first manned test of the LM, in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 then tested it in lunar orbit. Apollo 11 then tested the last untested matter – landing and taking off.

So while the LM design looks like static and cobwebs, it was a thoroughly tested and viable design.

Incidentally, if you consider Apollo to have been faked, you might like to indicate whether you think the non-landing missions were faked:

Apollo 4: unmanned test of the Saturn V rocket in Earth orbit;
Apollo 5: unmanned test of the LM in Earth orbit;
Apollo 6: unmanned test of the Saturn V rocket in Earth orbit;
Apollo 7: manned test of the Command Module in Earth orbit;
Apollo 8: manned test of the Saturn V and Command Module in lunar orbit;
Apollo 9: manned test of the LM in Earth orbit;
Apollo 10: manned test of the LM in lunar orbit.

Cheers