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Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by jcims on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @03:37PM (#36049742)
Didn't we largely solve this with the sky crane for recent Mars missions?
Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by masklinn on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @03:45PM (#36049870)
The lander size under consideration is about 40x that of the Martian rover, I don’t know that a sky crane would work as well without a parachuting stage and atmosphere, and finally it seems rather unhelpful for taking off.
Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by inamberclad on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @04:07PM (#36050154)
I presume this is part of why SpaceX is planning to use landing thrusters that are higher up the rocket.
Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by moffkalast on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @05:45PM (#36051250)
Afaik that's mainly so the plume of razor sharp dust doesn't tear their engines to billion tiny pieces. Unlike the LEM, they won't be bringing a spare for liftoff.
Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by rini17 on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @06:07AM (#36055938)
Doubt 100meters will be enough.They need to be much higher not to kick regolith toward the rocket and beyond.
Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by ericbarrett on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @04:44PM (#36050626)
Velocity required to reach a 50 km orbit* above the moon's surface is only ~1.6 km/sec, and there's no air resistance to slow dust particles kicked up by the craft.

For Mars, the orbital velocity is ~3.5 km/sec, thus requiring almost 5x the energy for a given mass of detritus (E = 1/2mv^2); and while its atmosphere isn't as thick as Earth's, it'll definitely cause drag for particles going that fast.

* You don't quite need orbital velocity for a plume to get high enough to disrupt an orbiting craft, but it's a handy reference point.