Hazegrayart: NASA Lunar Escape System animation

[FutureSpaceTourist]

The mission of the lunar emergency escape-to-orbit system (LESS) is to provide a means for the crew of the Lunar Module (LM) or Extended Lunar Module (ELM) to escape from the surface in the event that the LM/ELM ascent stage is unsafe or unable to take off into orbit. The LESS role is to carry the two astronauts to the Command Service Module in orbit within three to four hours.

The LESS would use fuel from the LM ascent stage
The space-suit backpack is to be used for crew life support and environmental control and for communications.
The LESS would be equipped with a flashing light and VHF radio beacon to simplify tracking from the Command Service Module Mission stay-times are to be up to 14 days.

[Zed_Noir]

AIUI the LESS design proposals was real seat of the pants VFR flying. Since there is no navigation system.


note - VFR is Visual Flight Rules

[laszlo]

AIUI the LESS design proposals was real seat of the pants VFR flying. Since there is no navigation system.


note - VFR is Visual Flight Rules

Not quite seat of the pants. While there was no IMU or INS, there were visual alignment tools, cue cards and a timer. Attitude and acceleration were definitely manually controlled by the pilot, but not based on bodily sensations. It was dead reckoning with visual cues, instead of a compass, and a clock.

I wonder if with today's tech something like this would actually make sense. Modern tech could easily be at least as accurate as manual control and could even continue functioning with disabled or unconscious astronauts, not to mention easily fitting into pictured control panel.

Conceivably it could even be used as a personal hopper to extend an astronaut's range over the surface to tens of miles or more from what a surface rover could do.

[Zed_Noir]

....
I wonder if with today's tech something like this would actually make sense. Modern tech could easily be at least as accurate as manual control and could even continue functioning with disabled or unconscious astronauts, not to mention easily fitting into pictured control panel.
....

Even with the tech of the 1980s. In theory the MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit) could be adapted to be some sort of LESS contraption. A cheap smartphone of today is much more capable in computing power than what NASA have in total during Apollo along with limited onboard flight avionics.