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From an aviators point of view the piloting skill of the Apollo pilots was impressive.
In recent re-enactments of the Apollo 11 landing I was looking the altitude and rate of descent on a graphic that was running in parallel with the RT chatter of Armstrong and Aldrin. The initial rate of descent looked to be 5200 feet per second...i.e. over 300,000 feet per minute!
I suspect this was a fuel conserving approach that avoided a constant rocket burn for the entire descent.
I expect the new lander will have an almost fully automated descent and landing capability...but details of this are remarkably scant on any NASA information release.
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