If the moon is traveling 2,288 MPH with no atmosphere, how were we able to land on it?

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The explanations of the moon rotating while always keeping one side facing earth are still perplexing to me, but I hadn’t thought about how fast it’s actually orbiting us. I know the Apollo rockets traveled 24,000 MPH, but how were the astronauts able to safely land the lunar module on a body moving so fast? The lunar module wouldn’t have been able to slowly descend to the surface, it would have to race to catch it. There’s no air resistance to make astronauts or moon dust fly off, but wouldn’t there still be an insane amount of g-force at such high speeds?

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

G forces have to do with acceleration. Not speed.

If you were to accelerate from 10 mph to 20 mph (so really slow to still really slow) in 0.0001 seconds you would die.

Speed is also relative. All the module would need to do is match the speed the moon is rotating and then, thanks to the lack of atmosphere causing it to slow down. It’s basically not moving all relative to surface of the moon.

I’m not entirely sure *what* they did do. But the moons speed is basically a none issue as far as being able to land on it.

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