  A technique to estimate mass erosion rate of surface soil during landing of
the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) and total mass ejected due to the rocket plume
interaction is proposed and tested. The erosion rate is proportional to the
product of the second moment of the lofted particle size distribution N(D), and
third moment of the normalized soil size distribution S(D), divided by the
integral of S(D)D^2/v(D), where D is particle diameter and v(D) is the vertical
component of particle velocity. The second moment of N(D) is estimated by
optical extinction analysis of the Apollo cockpit video. Because of the
similarity between mass erosion rate of soil as measured by optical extinction
and rainfall rate as measured by radar reflectivity, traditional NWS
radar/rainfall correlation methodology can be applied to the lunar soil case
where various S(D) models are assumed corresponding to specific lunar sites.
