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NASA already let 'em off the hook for testing an elevator to get down to the surface from the ship. The best part is no part/elevator!

One giant leap?

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That thing ain't landing vertically on the moon anyhow. Look at what Neil had to do to find a remotely flat spot to put a much smaller ship down.

Yes but we now have very detailed topographical maps of the moon, and the GNC systems are way better. I expect they will carefully choose the exact landing spot and hit it within 10m or so. Certainly it lacks the heroism of eyeballing a good place to set down with 60 seconds of gas in the tank.

Musk never does it right the first time, second time and maybe the third time. Not going to happen

> One giant leap?

The gravity is weaker so just jump down /s

40 foot drops would be survivable on the moon.

It's 40 meters, so it is only survivable with jump jets. That would be cool though.

(ChatGPT answered, I was too lazy to computer 40m with gravity being 1.62m/s on the lunar surface.)

Velocity on impact: ~11.4 m/s km/h: ~41 km/h mph: ~25.5 mph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS

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