From Earth to the Moon?

Question

I apologize if this is a dumb question but I don't know alot about space and NASA. I was recently watching From the Earth to the Moon and I noticed that after flying in the LEMs they would jettison them. Why couldn't they bring them back somehow?

Answer 1

In order to make the LEM capable of reentry into Earth's atmosphere, it would have had to carry a heat shield. The weight of this would have made the LEM too heavy to land on the moon in the first place. Look at it this way: The designers of the LEM were so concerned about weight that they took out the seats.

Answer 2

The simple answer is money. The Apollo landings were (by design) the quickest & easiest way to get to the moon. Werner von Braun's original idea was to land the entire craft on the moon, with all 3 men aboard, and lift off with the upper half - but that meant landing a HUGE ship, and all the fuel needed to control it.
A simpler solution was to bring a craft *only* for landing on the moon - a bare-minimum weighted ship, for 2 of the 3 guys on board. It saved 60 or 65 tons of systems, craft, and propellent. Once it had landed, you left the 'descent stage' on the moon, saving more fuel & weight, and boosted back into orbit with just the 'ascent stage.' When I said a minimum of weight - I meant it - in some places, the skin of the lunar module was only as thick as a couple of layers of aluminum foil.
Now, the reason they couldn't bring it home was the re-entry phase. The command module (the cone-shaped module) was the only part of the vehicle with a heat-shield, needed for reentry. The LM didn't have a heat shield; and the 2 that have been brought back to Earth (Apollo 9 - never left Earth orbit, but tested the LM, and Apollo 13 - they used the LM as their functioning spacecraft until re-entry) were both destroyed when they re-entered.

Now... it *is* possible to land a craft on the moon, and bring it home - but you need the money, time, and resources to design it... but it really is not practical.

Answer 3

No. The LEM was designed for landing on the Moon and then leaving. It left its small "launching pad" on the Moon. After returning astronauts to the Command Module, the astronauts jettisoned the remaining portion to save mass for the return to Earth.

Answer 4

This was explained in one of the episodes of the show. The service module, which brought the crew back to Earth, and the LEM which actually landed on the Moon were designed as two separate space craft so that the craft that actually landed on the moon would be as light as possible (no heat shield) so it would take less fuel to land & take-off from the surface of the moon.

Answer 5

It wouldn't survive the trip through the atmosphere, it isn't designed for the extreme heat like the command module is with its heat shield.

Keeping the lunar module will also change the re-entry angles, and could have caused a catastophic break up or allowed hot plasma to penetrate through the joint.

The primary after a lunar landing was to return the astronauts safely to earth. The easiest way was to dump all excess modules and return them in a well insulated, well protected, purpose built command module.

Answer 6

It would have been to much trouble to bring them back.
What would be cool though is to keep a lander in orbit around the moon, and dock with it whenever we want to go down, then when we come back up leave it in orbit again. That way we wouldn't even have to bring one with us.

Answer 7

another motor