[cyth]

Originally Posted by Gooral

Spoiler for ep. 39:

how long were they falling (or from what height). Since there is no terminal velocity on the moon (because there is no air resistance) they would accelerate until they would reach the ground and depending on the height they could reach a speed that would be deadly. If it was 100 m then they would hit the ground at about 70 km/h if my calculations are correct. Depending on how they would hit the ground it could turn out to be deadly.

Also it's rather lame that even though it's in the future and they have even a moon base they didn't bother to map the surrounding area and install a GPS system or something that would be like GPS system (since for GPS they would need a satellite and these are not cheap). Not to mention that after near death experience they've made the same mistake (even more stupid since they were not looking at the road ahead).

Of course without it it would be pretty boring so I can easily accept that.

The question is whether it's even possible to place three small satellites to the Moon's stationary orbit required for a "GPS" system without them getting derailed over time by the Earth's gravitational pull, or even the Sun's or its radiation effects. Apparently, there exist a few stationary points between the Earth and the Moon, which would cover for at least one of the satellites, but I wonder how this would be possible for the two on the dark side of the Moon, since its gravitational pull is quite thin due to its relatively small mass. The Moon should have a theoretical stationary orbit, but considering all these other factors, in practice a "GPS" system for the moon would be difficult if not impossible to implement and maintain for any useful amount of time.

EDIT: Yeah, theoretically, the other two satellites would have to be placed so far away that other pulls would have larger effect on them.

As for a GPS-like system, that is quite possible with triangulation, just that such a system wouldn't be as accurate or as timely as GPS, which puts its usefulness into question. Apparently some dude received funds to develop it though.