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If Apollo 11 (or the other Apollo missions) would have aborted during the landing sequence, would they have staged and just used the upper part of the LEM while descending, or would they have used the lower part to gain velocity and then staged?
Space

If Apollo 11 (or the other Apollo missions) would have aborted during the landing sequence, would they have staged and just used the upper part of the LEM while descending, or would they have used the lower part to gain velocity and then staged?


What the title says. Wondering if anyone knows what the abort procedure was in regards to the LEM when landing. If you watch the Apollo 11 descent and landing there is a couple times where the various stations at mission control have to approve the next step for descent and the final landing. I'm wondering what exactly the procedure was for an abort in regards to whether they would have immediately detached from the bottom (or descent stage) of the LEM immediately or if they would have used it and then aborted.

Thanks for anyone who knows! I can't find an exact answer on this.

by 0011100100111000

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4 Comments

  1. popeter45 on

    I think it depends on what caused the abort

    If not related too the decent stage prob would have used it for a quicker response

    If the decent stage failed prob would have used the accent stage for everything

  2. The_Real_Ghost on

    It would have depended entirely on what phase of the landing sequence they were in and why they were aborting.

    In the actual landing, the descent stage was almost out of fuel by the time they landed. The place they intended to land turned out to be full of boulders, so they had fire the engines for longer while they looked for a different place to land. If their reason for aborting was that they didn’t find a suitable landing site, they would have had to drop the descent stage to return to orbit.

  3. echothree33 on

    I don’t know for sure but my perception has always been that if they hit the abort button the descent stage would detach and then the ascent engine would fire, likely very quickly in sequence. It shouldn’t rely on the descent engine because a failure with that engine could be the reason for the abort.

  4. MyMomSaysIAmCool on

    I’m surprised you couldn’t find the answer. I googled “Apollo lunar lander abort procedure” and got an immediate answer.

    During an abort, the descent stage is immediately jettisoned.  

    There are several reasons for this. The first is that the astronauts trained to do an ascent in the ascent stage.  Using the descent stage for ascent would have required additional training.  

    The second is that the most likely reason for an abort would be something wrong with the decent stage, including mechanical failure or fuel exhaustion.  Because of that, it’s best to just get rid of it and fire up the ascent engine.