The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Ejecta of Lunar Landers

Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by jojobas on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:11AM (#36054310)

An orbit that start on the surface ends on the surface, in a single turn.

That can be a while if you near the escape velocity, still a slim chance to hit anything.

There's a huge gap in hit probability between "dangerous enough to consider safety" and "good enough to be a weapon".

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Re:The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Eje... by dredmorbius on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:54AM (#36054571)

The mechanism would loft a cloud of particles with a wide range of trajectories through a notoriously uneven gravitational field.

The odds that a sufficient fraction of particles would remain in orbit for long enough to make routine operations in low lunar orbit or on the surface itself seems ... plausible.

And of course, the situation could be compounded by multiple burns and/or at multiple points on the surface, at a somewhat increased cost to the attacker.

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