- Oct 17, 2009
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We were pretty clever in that we put the heaviest part of the lander in a separate module which would vastly decrease return ascent thrust requirements. Once you take off, you don't need the landing gear, scientific equipment, heavy batteries, descent motor, fuel tanks for the descent motor, etc. All you need is the crew, some rocks, and enough fuel to get you back to the CM.
That's right. Not to mention that all the fuel that was needed to get the Saturn V off the earth was no longer there to weigh it down. When it lifted it off from earth, it had it's own fuel, along with the lander and its fuel to lift from earth's gravity. When the lander lifted off from the moon, there was no Saturn V rocket and it's fuel to lift, no lunar rover to bring back, and the orbiter was already in lunar orbit, along with one of the astronauts who remained on it--none of which weighed down the lander when it lifted off from the moon which has only a fraction of the gravity of earth.
But be prepared to have to repeat all of this soon. Maybe we should create an archive so we can file all of the answers to the FE assertions so we don't have to do so much typing. Just copy/paste.
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