8 ms·

Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

454 points by LorenDB 3y ago

LorenDB 3y ago
Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.
- internetter 3y ago
  I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?
  - foobarian 3y ago
    And apparently live video..
  - LorenDB 3y ago
    It's largely a matter of incentive. In the sixties, the US had an incentive to prove that it had more advanced technology than the USSR. Once we proved we could land on the moon, the novelty quickly wore off for the public, which influenced Congress's decision to cut funding for the Apollo program. We also haven't returned to the moon yet because of cost, I would imagine.
    - tintor 3y ago
      But there is plenty of Helium 3 to mine on the Moon, to justify the cost.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        Assuming we manage to build viable reactors to use it.
        pfdietz 3y ago
        Helion is the closest for that, but it would be easier for them to make their own 3He by DD fusion. It will be very hard to make 3He extraction on the moon energy positive, since it occurs at very low concentration in the regolith.
    - rockemsockem 3y ago
      The public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon. The government was just willing to ignore public sentiment for some reason. And I'm very glad they did.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon Wow, I wasn't aware that the "only point at which the opinion surveys demonstrate that more than 50 percent of the public believed Apollo was worth its expense came in 1969 at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing" [1]. [1] https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/exploding-the-myth-of-popular-support-for-project-apollo/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/exploding-the-myth...
        GeorgeTirebiter 3y ago
        Gil Scott-Heron had a very popular song in 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4&list=RDgoh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4&list=RDgoh2x_G0c...
        Vecr 3y ago
        Someone should see about making a few versions for various crew compositions/landing times for the Artemis program. So you'd have one ready to go pretty much whatever happens.
      - ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y ago
        This is one of the reasons I’m glad the US is a representative democracy and not a direct democracy.
  - nicklecompte 3y ago
    "Lost the ability" is an odd way of putting it. "Lost the budget" is better. Ideally we wouldn't have to pick and choose, but since I wasn't US Dictator during the 90s, the Hubble Space Telescope + a lot of probes throughout the solar system was probably more impactful for overall scientific discovery than the counterfactual where NASA invested in continued moon landings.
    - ein0p 3y ago
      We did lose the capability. Read up on the engineering behind Saturn-V. There are books that go into extensive detail. A lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024. Not to mention that cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024 Give me one example. > cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then Inflation adjusted, the Saturn V was a $45bn project [1]. That's a mulitiple of the total capital SpaceX has raised (or been granted). [1] https://apollo11space.com/the-cost-of-launching-a-saturn-v/ https://apollo11space.com/the-cost-of-launching-a-saturn-v/
        jiggawatts 3y ago
        Starship is also the biggest rocket to have ever flown, with twice the thrust of the Saturn V! That’s using a fraction of their budget.
        gibolt 3y ago
        As a bonus, Starship should be fully reusable, meaning long-term costs drop drastically to continue the program. Each flight could cost single-digit millions, mainly in fuel and employees.
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    Part of it is cost: In the mid sixties, NASA was about five percent of the federal budget. Another part is safety: Apollo was extremely dangerous. There were a lot of single points of failure, three astronauts died on the ground, three more were very very narrowly saved over the course of only about ten missions. One of the reasons the program was cut short was the political worry after Apollo 13 of having astronauts die on the moon or something similar. This level of danger was considered acceptable given the mission back then, but I don't think it would be today. Who's right is a worthwhile question. Another part was that Apollo had superb, hard working, young, smart, energetic people working on it. The nature and ambition of the project just attracted top people. The context of the Vietnam war also meant that there were a lot of engineers that would otherwise be working on weapons but maybe would rather not, and Apollo was a very nice peaceful project to apply all of that technology to. I think you see a lot of the success of Tesla and SpaceX in the same observations. Both of those companies were super ambitious, and had a goal a lot of people wanted to get behind. Their competition was unattractive to work for, and seemed unlikely to achieve the goal of getting to mars/electric cars. The result was that they were able to hire some of the very smartest, hardest working people in the country. If you get a bunch of people like that together under a common banner, amazing things happen.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Part of it is cost The other side to this is we don't build rockets today like we did in the sixties. Yes, some technical know-how here and there was technically "lost"--I've been in North Hollywood scrounging around for old NASA parts so that measurements could be taken and worked backwards from. But even if we had that know-how, we wouldn't do it the same again. From novel materials to simulations to communications and onboard computing, modern spacecraft deserved to be redesigned. (For the counterfactuals, see ULA and Arianespace.) So until someone (SpaceX) started eating that node-transition cost, we entered a period of apparent stasis. But that vacuum was energetic, and it wasn't about rediscovering lost knowledge, but inventing new kit.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        >Yes, some technical know-how here and there was technically "lost"--I've been in North Hollywood scrounging around for old NASA parts so that measurements could be taken and worked backwards from. Oh, I don't know. I think we've actually made improvements in leaps and bounds over the "lost" tech. Our soundstage, green screen, and post tech has definitely improved /s I know it's not what you meant, but the NoHo reference made me laugh at the thought
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I’m not entirely sure that we’ve actually lost it; is it really far fetched to think SpaceX could moon land- if not now but perhaps in a bit?
    - justinclift 3y ago
      In SpaceX's case, they'd probably be the "but we've regained it" side of things.
  - aredox 3y ago
    The best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible.
    - passwordoops 3y ago
      This comment deserves to be on the front page
      - GeorgeTirebiter 3y ago
        It's only because of a version of Willie Sutton's quote: "That's where the money is." Capital allocation.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - analognoise 3y ago
      Don’t forget the parasocial relationships they form with fans who are increasingly lonely, the new frontier in emotionally manipulative AI chatbots, and surveillance capitalism.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible Ten years ago, maybe. Today, I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I had that "wow, everyone here is ten times smarter than me" feeling at one of the big tech firms. And to the extent the system works, it's correcting. We're seeing layoffs on one side. And moon landings on another.
      - adastra22 3y ago
        The vanguard of that just isn’t in FAANG anymore. That’s why you’re not seeing it.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    There's also specifically the difference that humans being onboard added much more tolerance when it comes to things like landing. Neil Armstrong was able to fly the lander to get to a safer landing area and was able to sanity check the sensor readings in realtime. In comparison, these landers have to do everything autonomously, the computer has to figure out where it's safe to touch down, it has to be able to figure out if a sensor is malfunctioning and if so, which is the one that's wrong. Similarly, previous uncrewed landers were not expected to be that smart, they just aimed for a patch of land believed to be flat and hoped for the best.
  - helpfulContrib 3y ago
    [dead]
  - cobbaut 3y ago
    Michael Collins' book Carrying the Fire proves that the sixties were vastly different to today. For example people died while training to become astronauts, because the training was hard. This would be impossible today; the first time someone breaks so much as a leg the whole project would be suspended and several committees would need time to evaluate...
    - marcellus23 3y ago
      > For example people died while training to become astronauts, because the training was hard I don't think this is correct. Astronauts died due to equipment malfunction (Apollo 1) or from airplane crashes or car crashes. But those aren't the same as dying because the training was too intense.
- coconutpalms 3y ago
  It's not even that easy in KSP!
  - LorenDB 3y ago
    Once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty simple. Just keep pointed retrograde and you'll probably be fine (assuming you start your final landing burn soon enough).
    - XorNot 3y ago
      A KSP mod which requires you to put cameras and altimeters with failure modes on your craft would be...interesting, but probably a lot less fun.
      - r2_pilot 3y ago
        It's called "OhScrap!" for the original one and is how I would describe KSP 2 even after the big science update. I would enjoy it a lot more if they could work on adding some precision to the nav points, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed auto execute mode from MechJeb(not to mention the porkchop plots), but KSP 2 is at least some fun now.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      I’ll wager once we get a handle on it it’ll be routine and simple. But it’s been quite some time since we really tried and the efforts so far again have been pretty minimal and laced with pork.
      - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        Like that new Starbucks drink!
      - gibolt 3y ago
        Once Starship is able to reliably get to orbit and refuel, the payloads we'll be able to get the moon will increase significantly, and hopefully with high frequency. Developing custom probes where most of the development+weight is to navigate space and land, May quickly become obsolete.
- legohead 3y ago
  Supposedly they want a crewed base by 2030...
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Is there a good resource to follow all space efforts? I have no idea whats coming down the pipe and I used to
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    SpaceFlightNow is my old go-to for launch schedules [1]. I also like John Holst's Ill-Defined Space [2]. [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ [2] https://substack.com/@illdefinedspace https://substack.com/@illdefinedspace
  - ranger207 3y ago
    I like the Orbital Index's weekly newsletter. https://orbitalindex.com/ https://orbitalindex.com/
- dylan604 3y ago
  Did you try the simulator from SpaceX for docking the Dragon capsule to the ISS?
- seydor 3y ago
  Moon will be the first robot colony. Surely they will be friendly...
tiagod 3y ago
Impressive feat. Got nervous when they couldn't contact the device, but turns out they did made history. I might be wrong, but from my research it seem like they did this with $118 million paid by NASA. India did it with around $74 million, for reference.
- FredPret 3y ago
  $74m surely?
  - croes 3y ago
    https://www.businessinsider.com/how-india-moon-landing-cost-cheap-compared-to-nasa-russia-2023-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-india-moon-landing-cost-...
    - justinclift 3y ago
      The post you're replying to is just pointing out that the quoted amount (they THEY were replying to) is missing the "million" abbreviation on the end. So it looks like the original claim was India did it for US$74.00. ;)
      - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        They are extremely resourceful people.
        dylan604 3y ago
        Just proves why off shoring is so cost effective /s
        throwup238 3y ago
        It really depends on the rocket’s cultural fit.
      - 3y ago
seatac76 3y ago
Good Stuff
1propionyl 3y ago
[flagged]
- xanderlewis 3y ago
  …what?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    No, I think you meant Wat!
  - ackbar03 3y ago
    You heard the man. We're trying to convince people we've faked another landing by landing on the moon
    - _factor 3y ago
      I think you misunderstand. We actually had to fake this one to prove the faked ones weren’t fake.
      - 1propionyl 3y ago
        No, poster above you had it right. You've got it backwards. We just can't afford the extensive investment into cinematic technology (cameras, lenses, props, etc) we used to... So now we're reduced to just actually doing it. A shame really.
        peteradio 3y ago
        The catering costs alone to do it cinematically make it a no-go.
LorenDB 3y ago
A more in-depth article from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/22/us-moon-landing-odysseus-intuitive-machines https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/22/us-moon-land...
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Lots of discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465230
_yb2s 3y ago
Does anyone know anything about the possible video of the landing from EagleCam? I would love to see some video of the moon that is not 1960s quality.
yinser 3y ago
Eagle cam or it didn’t happen On a serious note I’m interested to hear what the measured boil off vs calculated was for their propellant load. Depending which direction it is could mean a huge difference to the Artemis plans.
p1mrx 3y ago
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442 https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442 > After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data. Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.
- dylan604 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - surfpel 3y ago
    It’s not a jab. There were suspicions that it landed sideways because communication was lost then became very faint right after touch down.
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    They were concerned about not landing upright in the live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM&t=5678s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM&t=5678s "looks like we had excellent pitch and yaw control throughout, but I did see a little bit of a roll excursion. could it be that we landed off-angle in roll in the final phase?"
    - adastra22 3y ago
      That would have lined up with the signal issues too. Glad it wasn’t the case.
    - Firaxus 3y ago
      I was thinking that because it was a roll excursion, assuming that’s along the axis intersecting the plain of the landing legs, it’s not a matter of being upright but rather a matter of being pointed in the wrong direction. Because they’re landed near the south poll of the moon, and because the moon is tidally locked to the earth and always shows us the same side, I imagine they have a very specific angle they need to be at to be looking at the earth just over the moon’s horizon.
rmrf100 3y ago
Cool, congratulations to IM.
sohzm 3y ago
Damn, feeling very happy we're going back to space again. Congratulations IM <3
yawpitch 3y ago
[flagged]
- dymk 3y ago
  Please keep the snide jabs on Reddit
  - yawpitch 3y ago
    [flagged]
- adastra22 3y ago
  Those are outlawed by international treaties.
  - yawpitch 3y ago
    So was the invasion of Ukraine, the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, and the enhanced interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib. Outlawed by international treaty doesn’t mean all that much.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      None of your examples are commercial.
      - mandmandam 3y ago
        Tell that to the private companies selling the arms and scooping the resources. Think Halliburton In Space.
      - RCitronsBroker 3y ago
        Unfortunately, they are. It’s hard to overestimate how scary govt contractors, especially PMIs can get.
      - yawpitch 3y ago
georgehm 3y ago
I am super curious to know what kind of software magic they did to bring the NDL system as the primary navigation system after their own system failed to function prior to landing .. From what I understood listening in to the broadcast, NDL was only a demonstration project and folks somehow managed to bring it up on demand and use 2 of the sensors on it (?) iirc .. Like how !? Was NDL set up in the same orientation as their original system ? If not, they updated their guidance system on the fly too !?? Simply amazing
- tempaway11722 3y ago
  Yes it sounds like they had to do some MacGyver level stuff at the last minute. As I understand it NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar) was a NASA project bundled aboard the craft as a non-mission-critical demo but when the main naviagation failed they had to send a patch to the craft (about two hours before landing) to activate NDL and use it as the main navigation. Hoping more details come out about this.
  - witx 3y ago
    I doubt they had the time to pull MacGyver stuff. This scenario was most likely already predicted and tested and it was a matter of changing configurations.
cstross 3y ago
I notice that the news media are bigging up the *private enterprise* angle for some reason -- marketing of commercial transport services maybe? But I also note that Odysseus cost NASA a little over $100M on a fixed price contract, per Ars Technica. By way of comparison, the Indian government's Chandrayaan-3 mission, the lander of which touched down in 2023, cost roughly $90M. So private space isn't automatically cheaper than 100% government agency-run missions: it just depends on the agency.
- edot 3y ago
  $90M goes a lot further in India, though. But yes, you’re still correct that this mission doesn’t prove that private is cheaper. I’m sure that Intuitive Machines took a big loss on this in order to get the deal, and it still cost this much.
  - oldnetguy 3y ago
    You are correct, the costs of salaries alone should show a significant difference. I wish people would actually have real conversations about what things actually cost per country. It's disingenuous to compare the USA and India without a true cost analysis
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Does it? For the person who cleans that restrooms that money goes a lot farther. For the quick boot camp and we will write html it also goes farther. However for the good engineers it doesn't go nearly as far. Great engineers in India are in demand and their prices have gone up to match. I wouldn't attempt a project like this without a lot of great engineers. (Great engineers in India make less than the US equivalent, but the difference is narrowing)
    - inemesitaffia 3y ago
      The NASA equivalent pays much less. But they have perks like chauffeurs and household staff that wouldn't be available to the equivalent in the USA
classified 3y ago
What will be the legal ramifications? Will we have wars over territory on the Moon?
- w8vY7ER 3y ago
  Before I read this comment I would have said there was no way to make the topic of a moon landing boring.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Not anytime soon. The moons is still expensive to get to, unlikely to even become self sustaining (and thus expensive to support long term), and AFAIK doesn't have any resources we cannot get cheaper on earth. There will likely be constant attempts to go to the moon because it is close, interesting to science, and a good practice for missions to elsewhere - but there is enough space that anyone who cares to go will just go someplace nobody else is. Mars might - strong might - be able to become self sustaining. If that is the case I would expect to see wars eventually as it becomes settled. There will of course be the usual crime. This might rise to the level of "cowboy shootouts" but still the police will come in quick and take care of it.
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
    Water is one resource of interest. In particular every kilo of it we can find on the moon is a kilo we don't have to drag out of earth's gravity well.

454 points by LorenDB 3y ago

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

internetter 3y ago
I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?
- foobarian 3y ago
  And apparently live video..
- LorenDB 3y ago
  It's largely a matter of incentive. In the sixties, the US had an incentive to prove that it had more advanced technology than the USSR. Once we proved we could land on the moon, the novelty quickly wore off for the public, which influenced Congress's decision to cut funding for the Apollo program. We also haven't returned to the moon yet because of cost, I would imagine.
  - tintor 3y ago
    But there is plenty of Helium 3 to mine on the Moon, to justify the cost.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Assuming we manage to build viable reactors to use it.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        Helion is the closest for that, but it would be easier for them to make their own 3He by DD fusion. It will be very hard to make 3He extraction on the moon energy positive, since it occurs at very low concentration in the regolith.
  - rockemsockem 3y ago
    The public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon. The government was just willing to ignore public sentiment for some reason. And I'm very glad they did.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon Wow, I wasn't aware that the "only point at which the opinion surveys demonstrate that more than 50 percent of the public believed Apollo was worth its expense came in 1969 at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing" [1]. [1] https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/exploding-the-myth-of-popular-support-for-project-apollo/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/exploding-the-myth...
      - GeorgeTirebiter 3y ago
        Gil Scott-Heron had a very popular song in 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4&list=RDgoh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4&list=RDgoh2x_G0c...
        Vecr 3y ago
        Someone should see about making a few versions for various crew compositions/landing times for the Artemis program. So you'd have one ready to go pretty much whatever happens.
    - ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y ago
      This is one of the reasons I’m glad the US is a representative democracy and not a direct democracy.
- nicklecompte 3y ago
  "Lost the ability" is an odd way of putting it. "Lost the budget" is better. Ideally we wouldn't have to pick and choose, but since I wasn't US Dictator during the 90s, the Hubble Space Telescope + a lot of probes throughout the solar system was probably more impactful for overall scientific discovery than the counterfactual where NASA invested in continued moon landings.
  - ein0p 3y ago
    We did lose the capability. Read up on the engineering behind Saturn-V. There are books that go into extensive detail. A lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024. Not to mention that cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024 Give me one example. > cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then Inflation adjusted, the Saturn V was a $45bn project [1]. That's a mulitiple of the total capital SpaceX has raised (or been granted). [1] https://apollo11space.com/the-cost-of-launching-a-saturn-v/ https://apollo11space.com/the-cost-of-launching-a-saturn-v/
      - jiggawatts 3y ago
        Starship is also the biggest rocket to have ever flown, with twice the thrust of the Saturn V! That’s using a fraction of their budget.
        gibolt 3y ago
        As a bonus, Starship should be fully reusable, meaning long-term costs drop drastically to continue the program. Each flight could cost single-digit millions, mainly in fuel and employees.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  Part of it is cost: In the mid sixties, NASA was about five percent of the federal budget. Another part is safety: Apollo was extremely dangerous. There were a lot of single points of failure, three astronauts died on the ground, three more were very very narrowly saved over the course of only about ten missions. One of the reasons the program was cut short was the political worry after Apollo 13 of having astronauts die on the moon or something similar. This level of danger was considered acceptable given the mission back then, but I don't think it would be today. Who's right is a worthwhile question. Another part was that Apollo had superb, hard working, young, smart, energetic people working on it. The nature and ambition of the project just attracted top people. The context of the Vietnam war also meant that there were a lot of engineers that would otherwise be working on weapons but maybe would rather not, and Apollo was a very nice peaceful project to apply all of that technology to. I think you see a lot of the success of Tesla and SpaceX in the same observations. Both of those companies were super ambitious, and had a goal a lot of people wanted to get behind. Their competition was unattractive to work for, and seemed unlikely to achieve the goal of getting to mars/electric cars. The result was that they were able to hire some of the very smartest, hardest working people in the country. If you get a bunch of people like that together under a common banner, amazing things happen.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Part of it is cost The other side to this is we don't build rockets today like we did in the sixties. Yes, some technical know-how here and there was technically "lost"--I've been in North Hollywood scrounging around for old NASA parts so that measurements could be taken and worked backwards from. But even if we had that know-how, we wouldn't do it the same again. From novel materials to simulations to communications and onboard computing, modern spacecraft deserved to be redesigned. (For the counterfactuals, see ULA and Arianespace.) So until someone (SpaceX) started eating that node-transition cost, we entered a period of apparent stasis. But that vacuum was energetic, and it wasn't about rediscovering lost knowledge, but inventing new kit.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      >Yes, some technical know-how here and there was technically "lost"--I've been in North Hollywood scrounging around for old NASA parts so that measurements could be taken and worked backwards from. Oh, I don't know. I think we've actually made improvements in leaps and bounds over the "lost" tech. Our soundstage, green screen, and post tech has definitely improved /s I know it's not what you meant, but the NoHo reference made me laugh at the thought
- bombcar 3y ago
  I’m not entirely sure that we’ve actually lost it; is it really far fetched to think SpaceX could moon land- if not now but perhaps in a bit?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    In SpaceX's case, they'd probably be the "but we've regained it" side of things.
- aredox 3y ago
  The best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible.
  - passwordoops 3y ago
    This comment deserves to be on the front page
    - GeorgeTirebiter 3y ago
      It's only because of a version of Willie Sutton's quote: "That's where the money is." Capital allocation.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - analognoise 3y ago
    Don’t forget the parasocial relationships they form with fans who are increasingly lonely, the new frontier in emotionally manipulative AI chatbots, and surveillance capitalism.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible Ten years ago, maybe. Today, I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I had that "wow, everyone here is ten times smarter than me" feeling at one of the big tech firms. And to the extent the system works, it's correcting. We're seeing layoffs on one side. And moon landings on another.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      The vanguard of that just isn’t in FAANG anymore. That’s why you’re not seeing it.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  There's also specifically the difference that humans being onboard added much more tolerance when it comes to things like landing. Neil Armstrong was able to fly the lander to get to a safer landing area and was able to sanity check the sensor readings in realtime. In comparison, these landers have to do everything autonomously, the computer has to figure out where it's safe to touch down, it has to be able to figure out if a sensor is malfunctioning and if so, which is the one that's wrong. Similarly, previous uncrewed landers were not expected to be that smart, they just aimed for a patch of land believed to be flat and hoped for the best.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  [dead]
- cobbaut 3y ago
  Michael Collins' book Carrying the Fire proves that the sixties were vastly different to today. For example people died while training to become astronauts, because the training was hard. This would be impossible today; the first time someone breaks so much as a leg the whole project would be suspended and several committees would need time to evaluate...
  - marcellus23 3y ago
    > For example people died while training to become astronauts, because the training was hard I don't think this is correct. Astronauts died due to equipment malfunction (Apollo 1) or from airplane crashes or car crashes. But those aren't the same as dying because the training was too intense.
coconutpalms 3y ago
It's not even that easy in KSP!
- LorenDB 3y ago
  Once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty simple. Just keep pointed retrograde and you'll probably be fine (assuming you start your final landing burn soon enough).
  - XorNot 3y ago
    A KSP mod which requires you to put cameras and altimeters with failure modes on your craft would be...interesting, but probably a lot less fun.
    - r2_pilot 3y ago
      It's called "OhScrap!" for the original one and is how I would describe KSP 2 even after the big science update. I would enjoy it a lot more if they could work on adding some precision to the nav points, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed auto execute mode from MechJeb(not to mention the porkchop plots), but KSP 2 is at least some fun now.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I’ll wager once we get a handle on it it’ll be routine and simple. But it’s been quite some time since we really tried and the efforts so far again have been pretty minimal and laced with pork.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Like that new Starbucks drink!
    - gibolt 3y ago
      Once Starship is able to reliably get to orbit and refuel, the payloads we'll be able to get the moon will increase significantly, and hopefully with high frequency. Developing custom probes where most of the development+weight is to navigate space and land, May quickly become obsolete.
legohead 3y ago
Supposedly they want a crewed base by 2030...
yieldcrv 3y ago
Is there a good resource to follow all space efforts? I have no idea whats coming down the pipe and I used to
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  SpaceFlightNow is my old go-to for launch schedules [1]. I also like John Holst's Ill-Defined Space [2]. [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ [2] https://substack.com/@illdefinedspace https://substack.com/@illdefinedspace
- ranger207 3y ago
  I like the Orbital Index's weekly newsletter. https://orbitalindex.com/ https://orbitalindex.com/
dylan604 3y ago
Did you try the simulator from SpaceX for docking the Dragon capsule to the ISS?
seydor 3y ago
Moon will be the first robot colony. Surely they will be friendly...

tiagod 3y ago

Impressive feat. Got nervous when they couldn't contact the device, but turns out they did made history. I might be wrong, but from my research it seem like they did this with $118 million paid by NASA. India did it with around $74 million, for reference.

FredPret 3y ago
$74m surely?
- croes 3y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/how-india-moon-landing-cost-cheap-compared-to-nasa-russia-2023-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-india-moon-landing-cost-...
  - justinclift 3y ago
    The post you're replying to is just pointing out that the quoted amount (they THEY were replying to) is missing the "million" abbreviation on the end. So it looks like the original claim was India did it for US$74.00. ;)
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      They are extremely resourceful people.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        Just proves why off shoring is so cost effective /s
        throwup238 3y ago
        It really depends on the rocket’s cultural fit.
    - 3y ago

seatac76 3y ago

Good Stuff

1propionyl 3y ago

[flagged]

xanderlewis 3y ago
…what?
- dylan604 3y ago
  No, I think you meant Wat!
- ackbar03 3y ago
  You heard the man. We're trying to convince people we've faked another landing by landing on the moon
  - _factor 3y ago
    I think you misunderstand. We actually had to fake this one to prove the faked ones weren’t fake.
    - 1propionyl 3y ago
      No, poster above you had it right. You've got it backwards. We just can't afford the extensive investment into cinematic technology (cameras, lenses, props, etc) we used to... So now we're reduced to just actually doing it. A shame really.
      - peteradio 3y ago
        The catering costs alone to do it cinematically make it a no-go.

LorenDB 3y ago

A more in-depth article from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/22/us-moon-landing-odysseus-intuitive-machines https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/22/us-moon-land...

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Lots of discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465230

_yb2s 3y ago

Does anyone know anything about the possible video of the landing from EagleCam? I would love to see some video of the moon that is not 1960s quality.

yinser 3y ago

Eagle cam or it didn’t happen On a serious note I’m interested to hear what the measured boil off vs calculated was for their propellant load. Depending which direction it is could mean a huge difference to the Artemis plans.

p1mrx 3y ago

https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442 https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442 > After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data. Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.

dylan604 3y ago
[flagged]
- surfpel 3y ago
  It’s not a jab. There were suspicions that it landed sideways because communication was lost then became very faint right after touch down.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  They were concerned about not landing upright in the live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM&t=5678s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM&t=5678s "looks like we had excellent pitch and yaw control throughout, but I did see a little bit of a roll excursion. could it be that we landed off-angle in roll in the final phase?"
  - adastra22 3y ago
    That would have lined up with the signal issues too. Glad it wasn’t the case.
  - Firaxus 3y ago
    I was thinking that because it was a roll excursion, assuming that’s along the axis intersecting the plain of the landing legs, it’s not a matter of being upright but rather a matter of being pointed in the wrong direction. Because they’re landed near the south poll of the moon, and because the moon is tidally locked to the earth and always shows us the same side, I imagine they have a very specific angle they need to be at to be looking at the earth just over the moon’s horizon.

rmrf100 3y ago

Cool, congratulations to IM.

sohzm 3y ago

Damn, feeling very happy we're going back to space again. Congratulations IM <3

yawpitch 3y ago

[flagged]

dymk 3y ago
Please keep the snide jabs on Reddit
- yawpitch 3y ago
  [flagged]
adastra22 3y ago
Those are outlawed by international treaties.
- yawpitch 3y ago
  So was the invasion of Ukraine, the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, and the enhanced interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib. Outlawed by international treaty doesn’t mean all that much.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    None of your examples are commercial.
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      Tell that to the private companies selling the arms and scooping the resources. Think Halliburton In Space.
    - RCitronsBroker 3y ago
      Unfortunately, they are. It’s hard to overestimate how scary govt contractors, especially PMIs can get.
    - yawpitch 3y ago

georgehm 3y ago

I am super curious to know what kind of software magic they did to bring the NDL system as the primary navigation system after their own system failed to function prior to landing .. From what I understood listening in to the broadcast, NDL was only a demonstration project and folks somehow managed to bring it up on demand and use 2 of the sensors on it (?) iirc .. Like how !? Was NDL set up in the same orientation as their original system ? If not, they updated their guidance system on the fly too !?? Simply amazing

tempaway11722 3y ago
Yes it sounds like they had to do some MacGyver level stuff at the last minute. As I understand it NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar) was a NASA project bundled aboard the craft as a non-mission-critical demo but when the main naviagation failed they had to send a patch to the craft (about two hours before landing) to activate NDL and use it as the main navigation. Hoping more details come out about this.
- witx 3y ago
  I doubt they had the time to pull MacGyver stuff. This scenario was most likely already predicted and tested and it was a matter of changing configurations.

cstross 3y ago

I notice that the news media are bigging up the *private enterprise* angle for some reason -- marketing of commercial transport services maybe? But I also note that Odysseus cost NASA a little over $100M on a fixed price contract, per Ars Technica. By way of comparison, the Indian government's Chandrayaan-3 mission, the lander of which touched down in 2023, cost roughly $90M. So private space isn't automatically cheaper than 100% government agency-run missions: it just depends on the agency.

edot 3y ago
$90M goes a lot further in India, though. But yes, you’re still correct that this mission doesn’t prove that private is cheaper. I’m sure that Intuitive Machines took a big loss on this in order to get the deal, and it still cost this much.
- oldnetguy 3y ago
  You are correct, the costs of salaries alone should show a significant difference. I wish people would actually have real conversations about what things actually cost per country. It's disingenuous to compare the USA and India without a true cost analysis
- bluGill 3y ago
  Does it? For the person who cleans that restrooms that money goes a lot farther. For the quick boot camp and we will write html it also goes farther. However for the good engineers it doesn't go nearly as far. Great engineers in India are in demand and their prices have gone up to match. I wouldn't attempt a project like this without a lot of great engineers. (Great engineers in India make less than the US equivalent, but the difference is narrowing)
  - inemesitaffia 3y ago
    The NASA equivalent pays much less. But they have perks like chauffeurs and household staff that wouldn't be available to the equivalent in the USA

classified 3y ago

What will be the legal ramifications? Will we have wars over territory on the Moon?

w8vY7ER 3y ago
Before I read this comment I would have said there was no way to make the topic of a moon landing boring.
bluGill 3y ago
Not anytime soon. The moons is still expensive to get to, unlikely to even become self sustaining (and thus expensive to support long term), and AFAIK doesn't have any resources we cannot get cheaper on earth. There will likely be constant attempts to go to the moon because it is close, interesting to science, and a good practice for missions to elsewhere - but there is enough space that anyone who cares to go will just go someplace nobody else is. Mars might - strong might - be able to become self sustaining. If that is the case I would expect to see wars eventually as it becomes settled. There will of course be the usual crime. This might rise to the level of "cowboy shootouts" but still the police will come in quick and take care of it.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  Water is one resource of interest. In particular every kilo of it we can find on the moon is a kilo we don't have to drag out of earth's gravity well.