Like Apollo before them, ESA astronauts hone lunar landing skills in helicopters

European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts have completed a helicopter training course to prepare them for upcoming lunar landings. The astronauts in question include Alexander Gerst, Matthias Maurer, Samantha Cristoforetti, and Thomas Pesquet. The course consisted of one week of simulator instruction followed by two weeks of …

[Aladdin Sane]

Flying bedstead

I prefer the original

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Flying bedstead

Yes, as soon as I saw the words "the flying bedstead", I thought "no it wasn't!"

[Unoriginal Handle]

Re: Flying bedstead

Bugger. Not this one then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedknobs_and_Broomsticks

[DS999]

No, I prefer the ORIGINAL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTd2oNuLhQ

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: No, I prefer the ORIGINAL

Original? The first version I played was on a teletype terminal! A bit less "real time" though :-)

[ParlezVousFranglais]

I think the original plan was to have ESA astronauts on Artemis IV and or V, but Trump seems in favour of cancelling those at the moment anyway.

Simple fact is that even if an ESA astronaut was manually piloting a surface landing, it would be after proper training on whatever vehicle is being used, and flying an EC135 for a couple of weeks just seems like a jolly to give the ESA press office something to say

[Like a badger]

Maybe ESA's sponsors need to give more thought to what they want from ESA, and how much they want to put in. Ariane was impressive in its day, but ESA have lost all momentum in satellite launchers, and their idea of a moon mission has always been sticking their thumb out for a ride from NASA.

EU GDP (PPP) is near enough the same as the US, European education is better, but without ambition or commitment ESA isn't achieving a lot.

[kmorwath]

Why don't let AI land it?

It looks AI will do everything.... or do they need to strap to it a 2GW generator to achieve it?

[JT_3K]

Re: Why don't let AI land it?

Not enough water on the Moon for it to consume

[MachDiamond]

Virtual rides

Ages ago I was at an amusement convention and got to sample a bunch of virtual rides. They were scaled down version of aircraft simulators and very convincing. The boundaries are how much travel there is vs. time of acceleration in a sim. I don't see why NASA or another space agency couldn't build a really big one for lots of acceleration time yet not infinite. The idea is to grow muscle memory in pilots to handle milk runs and off-nominal events not lengthy mission runs. There are sneaky ways to stage a simulator by moving it all the way to one extreme very slowly when you might want the entire vertical travel for a landing sequence as opposed to staying mostly in the middle. It would be easier and cheaper than building another flying bedstead as well as being much safer. It could also be repurposed by swapping out the passenger compartment for new craft/controls.

[Alan Brown]

Hmmmm

How many lunar landers will be suffering from gyroscopic rollover issues?

Something is needed for training but helicoptors don't seem like the appropriate solution

[druck]

Re: Hmmmm

Or suffers from vortex rings.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Hmmmm

"How many lunar landers will be suffering from gyroscopic rollover issues?"

Gyros aren't mechanical devices anymore so rollover issues are almost non-existent anymore. They aren't perfect, but much much better.