Winged vs. propulsive landing of rockets

[publiusr]

So, will Lunar Starship have thrusters farther up the nose—or no?

That (almost Stabilio/VA) approach towards propulsive landing was studied here:

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p_56U0RZId4
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20170011670/downloads/20170011670.pdfhttps://sacd.larc.nasa.gov/vab/vab-projects/hercules/

 

[RanulfC]

Jeeesh, were you wrong

Do tell

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

So, will Lunar Starship have thrusters farther up the nose—or no?

That (almost Stabilio/VA) approach towards propulsive landing was studied here:

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p_56U0RZId4
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20170011670/downloads/20170011670.pdfhttps://sacd.larc.nasa.gov/vab/vab-projects/hercules/

It was supposed to, should it every be built the Raptors as landing engines for the Moon are vastly overpowered and not able to throttle enough to land "gently". (Not to mention blasting a large crater and sending regolith into orbit)

SpaceX was paid to develop a lower power "mini-Raptor" but there's no evidence they ever did any work on it. (DoD and Space Force I guess called it a wash and didn't push them that I can find)

Randy