Can a spacecraft orbiting faster around the moon, and in tidal lock, than the moon experience higher G forces?

Question

Can a spacecraft orbiting faster around the moon, and in tidal lock, than the moon experience higher G forces?

Say a spacecraft that has a very heavy mass is orbiting the moon about 200 km from the surface with its belly facing the surface of the moon, for tidal gravity, and it's velocity around the moon is faster than the moon's inherant rotational velocity. Could this craft theoretically experience more gravity than someone would experience on the surface of the moon? And if so, about how much faster than the moon's rotational velocity would be needed?

Answer 1

There is no such stable orbit. In order to "orbit" closer than your kinetic energy / momentum dictates, you would have to apply constant thrust, which would be the same as hovering, but upside-down (as the first answer correctly states).

You might as well just hover above one spot lower than your natural "synchronous" orbit (not tidal locked), which around the Moon is very very slow. This way, you're closer to the surface for easier visits from below.

In either case, this would be one hellish financial drain, as whatever G-forces you're experiencing inside the ship would be exactly due to the engines. If you have 1g, that means you have to burn enough fuel constantly to produce 1g of acceleration. Look at how much fuel our rockets expend to produce over 1g of acceleration from Earth.....

Answer 2

If the spacecraft is *orbitting* the moon it will be in "free fall." It will experience no G forces.

Answer 3

In short: yes.

The G-force would act in the opposite direction than usual.

In other words: to people on such a ship, the direction "down" would seems to be on the side of the ship away from the Moon.

If the ship was arranged like an airliner, the people on board would be pressed against the roof of the plane, not the floor.  The faster the ship, the greater the G-force.

Note that in addition to thrusting rockets, the ship would need rockets pointing to the Moon to keep it from getting pushed away from the Moon.

Of course, the same goes for a ship in hyper orbit around any planet, moon, etc.