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Congrats to everyone involved! I planned to watch the live stream but wasn't able to. The moment of successful landing was quite modest, only a mostly-static s

Congrats to everyone involved! I planned to watch the live stream but wasn't able to. The moment of successful landing was quite modest, only a mostly-static screen with telemetrics was shown to the public, but it absolutely felt magical. It feels like the moon is well within humankind's reach by now. Coincidentally, I found a copy of Uchu Kyodai (by Chuya Koyama) in my local library, and started reading it recently. It's fun to compare the perspectives from more than a decade ago, to the actual development we have right now, regarding space exploration. (This was posted to another thread, but I moved it here after I realized comments were moved)

scubatubafuba 2y ago
> It feels like the moon is well within humankind's reach by now. It has been for the last 65 years. ;)
- agentkilo 2y ago
  Yeah that's true, but I haven't really experienced the Apollo era personally. After the "gap" between the old space race, and the new race inspired by private space agencies, I do feel we are getting closer, to the moon at least.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Something most people don't appreciate is that, outside of the distance, Mars is super easy mode compared to the Moon. The Moon has 2 week long nights cycling between highs and lows in the range of -130C to +120C, inhospitable terrain, constantly getting pounded by meteorites, no atmosphere whatsoever, much higher radiation, much less gravity, and so on. Mars, by contrast, is oddly similar to Earth - similar day/night cycle, even a similar axial tilt meaning similar seasonal cycles, relatively reasonable temperature ranges, some atmosphere, and more. This is why the image of the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars doesn't really make any sense. The Moon is very much 'hard mode', but it's closer. So the main tech issue to make up (long distance travel) is not one that progress on the Moon will go much towards advancing.
    - Panoramix 2y ago
      Well, Mars is so much farther away and much more massive so you need a lot of fuel if you want to come back. This is much more difficult than the extra fuel needed for the moon landing due to lack of atmosphere. Speaking of which, Mars having an atmosphere means you need complex heat shields for the landing. Furthermore it's so far that unlike the case of the moon you can't make real time adjustments from earth, there's a delay of several minutes. Then again you have dust storms...
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Atmospheres make landing easier and require less fuel! A big problem with landing is losing your speed which is going to be extremely high to begin with. On the Moon you can only do this by basically turning around in the opposite direction of your velocity and thrusting an equal but opposite amount. It's not only quite complex but also substantially complicates landing. This is made even true on the Moon because its low gravity means that even a hair of velocity is going to make you 'bounce' after landing. This is why things like probes and rovers landing (or at least ending up) on their side or even upside down on the Moon is a fairly frequent affair. On Mars (and other places with an atmosphere) you can use atmospheric braking which is essentially just slowing down by bumping into the atmosphere in a controlled fashion. You can even get things like parachutes involved in the process. The dust storms in Mars are also 'fake' at least as presented in movies/books like "The Martian." Mars has an extremely low atmospheric pressure (relative to Earth) so fiercest dust storm imaginable would feel like nothing more than a slight breeze. The only issue they pose is visibility, and dust accumulating on solar panels. Andy Weir, by the way, was well aware of this when writing "The Martian" which is otherwise a phenomenally well researched hard sci-fi book. I think it's highly telling that he had to intentionally fudge reality to create a crisis on Mars!
        dnadler 2y ago
        I think the big piece that is being overlooked here is the distance. The distance itself poses significant challenges. The obvious things like resupply and communication are much harder. But also the journey to mars is much harder on the human body. Rescue and abort options are also much harder. The moon is close enough to easily resupply or rescue people on the surface, mars is much harder.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  It's now within reach for a medium sized corporation, largely ignored by humankind. That's huge progress!
  - kibwen 2y ago
    It's not any more or less out of reach for a medium-sized corporation than it's been since the 70s. The reason no corporation has gone is that there's no economic incentives to. And there's still not; this is a NASA mission, it's exploratory science funded by the public.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - BurningFrog 2y ago
      Since the 70s, costs have gone down by a factor 10-20x, and the technology is much better and safer. If that made it "out of reach" back then depends on what you mean with those words, but it's undeniably far cheaper and safer now.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      How do you expect to get to the Moon before SpaceX? The Space Shuttle ended up costing $2+ billion per launch, and given it's a government program - getting anything on it from an untested company who didn't already have major connections would be near to a nonstarter, and that's even if they could casually foot the billions of dollars it would have cost. FireFly launched as a private company on a Falcon 9 so their cost was probably a peak of ~$0.07 billion (to maintain units) which may have been able to be privately negotiate downward given the nature of the mission.
      - numpad0 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems Smallest lunar lander so far is 200kg/440lbs, that's the weight of a carry on full of lead. Besides the Space Shuttle can't go higher or deliver higher than LEO anyway.

scubatubafuba 2y ago

> It feels like the moon is well within humankind's reach by now. It has been for the last 65 years. ;)

agentkilo 2y ago
Yeah that's true, but I haven't really experienced the Apollo era personally. After the "gap" between the old space race, and the new race inspired by private space agencies, I do feel we are getting closer, to the moon at least.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Something most people don't appreciate is that, outside of the distance, Mars is super easy mode compared to the Moon. The Moon has 2 week long nights cycling between highs and lows in the range of -130C to +120C, inhospitable terrain, constantly getting pounded by meteorites, no atmosphere whatsoever, much higher radiation, much less gravity, and so on. Mars, by contrast, is oddly similar to Earth - similar day/night cycle, even a similar axial tilt meaning similar seasonal cycles, relatively reasonable temperature ranges, some atmosphere, and more. This is why the image of the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars doesn't really make any sense. The Moon is very much 'hard mode', but it's closer. So the main tech issue to make up (long distance travel) is not one that progress on the Moon will go much towards advancing.
  - Panoramix 2y ago
    Well, Mars is so much farther away and much more massive so you need a lot of fuel if you want to come back. This is much more difficult than the extra fuel needed for the moon landing due to lack of atmosphere. Speaking of which, Mars having an atmosphere means you need complex heat shields for the landing. Furthermore it's so far that unlike the case of the moon you can't make real time adjustments from earth, there's a delay of several minutes. Then again you have dust storms...
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Atmospheres make landing easier and require less fuel! A big problem with landing is losing your speed which is going to be extremely high to begin with. On the Moon you can only do this by basically turning around in the opposite direction of your velocity and thrusting an equal but opposite amount. It's not only quite complex but also substantially complicates landing. This is made even true on the Moon because its low gravity means that even a hair of velocity is going to make you 'bounce' after landing. This is why things like probes and rovers landing (or at least ending up) on their side or even upside down on the Moon is a fairly frequent affair. On Mars (and other places with an atmosphere) you can use atmospheric braking which is essentially just slowing down by bumping into the atmosphere in a controlled fashion. You can even get things like parachutes involved in the process. The dust storms in Mars are also 'fake' at least as presented in movies/books like "The Martian." Mars has an extremely low atmospheric pressure (relative to Earth) so fiercest dust storm imaginable would feel like nothing more than a slight breeze. The only issue they pose is visibility, and dust accumulating on solar panels. Andy Weir, by the way, was well aware of this when writing "The Martian" which is otherwise a phenomenally well researched hard sci-fi book. I think it's highly telling that he had to intentionally fudge reality to create a crisis on Mars!
      - dnadler 2y ago
        I think the big piece that is being overlooked here is the distance. The distance itself poses significant challenges. The obvious things like resupply and communication are much harder. But also the journey to mars is much harder on the human body. Rescue and abort options are also much harder. The moon is close enough to easily resupply or rescue people on the surface, mars is much harder.
BurningFrog 2y ago
It's now within reach for a medium sized corporation, largely ignored by humankind. That's huge progress!
- kibwen 2y ago
  It's not any more or less out of reach for a medium-sized corporation than it's been since the 70s. The reason no corporation has gone is that there's no economic incentives to. And there's still not; this is a NASA mission, it's exploratory science funded by the public.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    Since the 70s, costs have gone down by a factor 10-20x, and the technology is much better and safer. If that made it "out of reach" back then depends on what you mean with those words, but it's undeniably far cheaper and safer now.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    How do you expect to get to the Moon before SpaceX? The Space Shuttle ended up costing $2+ billion per launch, and given it's a government program - getting anything on it from an untested company who didn't already have major connections would be near to a nonstarter, and that's even if they could casually foot the billions of dollars it would have cost. FireFly launched as a private company on a Falcon 9 so their cost was probably a peak of ~$0.07 billion (to maintain units) which may have been able to be privately negotiate downward given the nature of the mission.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems Smallest lunar lander so far is 200kg/440lbs, that's the weight of a carry on full of lead. Besides the Space Shuttle can't go higher or deliver higher than LEO anyway.