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radioli t1_j2fcxwx wrote

You just made a WRONG ANALOGY you probably didn't know.

Surveyor was a series of flyby + orbiting + landing missions.

Ranger was a series of flyby + orbiting + crashing missions.

None of them brought sample back home. The first pile of lunar sample was brought by Apollo 11 astronauts. Chang'e 1, 2, 3 (2007, 2010, 2013) had probably done much more than the Surveyors and Rangers. After all, they are late-comers.

Chang'e 5 was a lunar sample return mission in 2020. It was a combo of 4 modules, a lander, an ascender, an orbiter and a returner. It worked like this:

  1. After reaching the lunar orbit, the lander+ascender seperated from the combo and landed on the surface.
  2. After collection the samples were carried by the ascender, which lifted off from the lander and docked with the orbiter+returner.
  3. The ascender transferred the samples to the returner in orbit and left.
  4. Then the orbiter+returner accelerated and returned.
  5. The returner seperated from the orbiter and landed on earth.
  6. The orbiter passed Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point and then entered the lunar DRO for VLBI tests. It is still working in orbit now.

Step 1-5 was a robotic miniature of the sequence of Apollo 11 mission. It was surely not an equivalent, but enough as an experiment to develop the pattern of crewed missions and further lunar mining projects.

The information above are all in ENGLISH, as accessible as a few clicks on Wikipedia.

As currently disclosed, the 2030 lunar crewed mission won't need some behemoth like Saturn V, but two or more CZ5DY launches to dock a crewed ship, a lander and some boosters together in LEO. Then the combo will bring astronauts to the moon and return like Chang'e 5. There are still 8 years to get this plan done. And this is just part of the moon base project.

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