You could land at 500 km/h on wheels and use breaks to stop. This makes it much safer and lowers how much propellant you need to bring to the moon by a lot. Similarly it makes getting back into lunar orbit much safer and easier because you can use electric motors to propel a craft to around 500 km/h before ditching the wheels and starting your chemical rockets. This lowers your propellant mass by 30%.
replyAlso the landing strip can be designed to slowly go up hill which could help with the breaking phase as well.
> you can use electric motors to propel a craft to around 500 km/h before ditching the wheels and starting your chemical rockets.
replyMakes me wonder if you could accelerate to orbital velocity using something like a maglev train and not have to worry about rockets at all.
That is the idea behind "mass drivers" on the moon I believe. Maybe that search term helps.
replyYou can do that but it would require a track that is tens of kilometers long along with a magnetic levitation technology. My suggestion is something we can do right now with a basic landing strip. But yes a meglev is the end game. Needs to reach 8,570 km/h for moon orbital velocity.
replyYou would have to do at least a circulization burn no matter the budget spent on maglev.
reply> lowers how much propellant you need to bring to the moon by a lot
replyRough estimates? Mass drivers make sense. I haven’t seen the numbers for just compressing and leveling regolith.