A Bounce-Assisted Lunar Lander: Terminal Descent Propellant Saving from a Torsion Cushion Stage

This paper presents a complete design study of the device is a lunar lander of fifteen hundred kilograms dry mass whose final descent segment, from fifteen metres at a stated vertical speed, is absorbed by a torsion cushion stage of the kind characterised in the companion cushion study, instead of by propulsive braking, derived from stated assumptions and computed throughout by the accompanying script. Cancelling an 8 m/s terminal descent propulsively costs only 3.83 kg of propellant for the 1500 kg lander, against a stated cushion mass of 120 kg. The cushion loses the mass comparison at every speed tabulated, and its case rests on forgiveness and plume avoidance, not on mass. Every figure in the study is a computed result of the stated model and nothing was built or tested: the study is SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED, and its limits are stated as plainly as its performance.