[AR] Re: "How Hard Can It Be" rocket episode
- From: Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 11:27:01 -0500 (EST)
On Sun, 17 Nov 2013 johndom@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> As chutes often fail I wonder if it would be possible to design an
> impact resistant payload bay, just in case. OTOH, none of the (lunar)
> Ranger impact probes made it. Bad omen?
Not really -- none of the Ranger hard-landers got a chance to try.
("Impact probe" is a bit of a misnomer -- the Ranger landers had solid
retros that decelerated them to fairly low velocity before impact.)
Only Rangers 3-5 carried the hard-lander. Ranger 3 missed the Moon due to
launcher misbehavior, and Rangers 4 and 5 had major electronics failures
in the main spacecraft that prevented both the midcourse correction and
the lander deployment. Rangers 6-9 carried cameras only.
Ranger 10 was going to make the next hard-lander attempt, but it and its
successors were canceled -- Ranger had hit so many problems and delays
that by the time Ranger 9 flew, Surveyor 1 was almost ready to attempt
the first controlled soft landing, so further attempts with the Ranger
hard-lander seemed pointless.
Henry Spencer
henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
(regexpguy@xxxxxxxxx)
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