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Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
- 4b11b4 2y agoImagine we spent this much effort on projects on the Earth.
- WillPostForFood 2y agoWe spend vastly more on projects on Earth, any way you measure. Time, money, manpower. The US Federal Govt spent $6.9 Trillion last year, Nasa's budget was $25 billion, so about 0.3% of spending. https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget
- fusionadvocate 2y agoEvery cent counts. "An estimated 63,600 deaths were attributable to air pollution in the United States in 2021." 0.3% means 190 lives were lost because we prioritize moon toys over cleaning our own environment.
- mistrial9 2y agoGil Scott Heron tends to agree
- nine_k 2y agoOne similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.
- lawlessone 2y agomaybe make it like a hamster ball. edit: just realized my own stupidity, a ball would be very hard to land..
- ge96 2y agoA mars lander was like that but air bags
- _shantaram 2y agothree actually
- card_zero 2y agoThat worked OK for some Mars rovers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags See also the section "uprighting", further down the page - they used a tetrahedral shell with a sensor so it knew which side was down and could lever itself upright.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rolph 2y agothat ball would bounce for a long time and roll for a while until stopping, and unfolding into tetrahedral hemisegments, each in its desired orientation.
- andyjohnson0 2y ago> One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Presumably it's that shape to fit in the fairing of a Falcon 9?
- exe34 2y agoYou can fit a crab sideways in the Falcon 9.
- Polizeiposaune 2y agoNo, that's not why. I found dimensions and a picture of IM-1 here: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id... The IM-1 lander was 1.57 meters wide and 4m tall, but based on the picture I think the width doesn't include the legs. The Blue Ghost lander also launched on an F9; it's 2m high and 3.5m wide, and it landed without falling over. (dimensions from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ghost_Mission_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ghost_Mission_1) The F9 payload envelope dimensions can be found on page 79 of: https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf Dimensions shown appear to be <inches> [ <millimeters> ] - the bulk of the space is a cylinder with a radius of "180.020 [ 4572.5011 ]" which I read as just over 4.5 meters in diameter; the cylindrical part is just over 6.6 meters high (and then you get into the conical section at the nose). The space inside the fairing is bigger than this but there is empty space between it and the payload to ensure they don't come into contact due to vibrations, etc., during launch. So IM-1 could well have been wider and shorter and still fit on the F9.
- ForOldHack 2y agoAbsolutely no substitute for research and the facts. Thanks for the research.
- Polizeiposaune 2y agoCorrection: (too late to edit): cylinder with a diameter of "180.020 [ 4572.5011 ]"
- tekla 2y agohttps://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/intuitive-machines-im-2-mission-lunar-lander-encapsulated-and-scheduled-for-launch https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/intuitive-machines-im... Look at the lander. Pray tell, if you want it shorter, where is everything supposed to go?
- aylmao 2y agoIt could be two landers, one stacked on top of the other for takeoff, but separate for landing EDIT: or a horizontal lander, packed on it's side for takeoff. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but landing something this tall seems quite complicated too in the first place.
- rolph 2y agogo bigger this could be a pancake stack that separates into a swarm of puck like units according to some sequence
- throwup238 2y agoYou’d be paying the extra mass cost of landing gears for each pancake - something has to absorb the impact of landing or they’ll just break apart. These landers already operate at the margin.
- ForOldHack 2y agoYou do not need as many landing gears. No meat bags to protect, but you would need separate propulsion units, less the fuel for return trip. Landing gear is light weight. What was the landing gear ratio in other NASA unmanned probes? How did the asteroid interception land? This is probe #2 from the company - NASA did not get there until Apollo 11 they are not the same... Computers are almost a billion times faster.
- ForOldHack 2y agoThis is off the hook out side the box. If you landed functional units and the had some mechanism to connect them back up, you could reduce the force of landing... Oh wait.. this is exactly the plan for colonisation. Seriously read digital apollo
- parsimo2010 2y agoThe craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made by Intuitive Machines (IM). Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it. Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high level perspective I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.
- yieldcrv 2y ago> I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM. at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if this is a partisan thing
- ok_dad 2y agoShit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once, how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but in reality is actually "learned knowledge". I can't believe people think they're going to "make america great again" by cutting funding for all the stuff that makes America an economic, cultural, and academic powerhouse.
- sho_hn 2y agoWhich gives me great amusement about the current human spaceflight plan to land upright Starship on the moon, and lower astronauts from the top of what is effectively a tower-like 13-story building (52.1m without landing legs, at 9m tube width) using some kind of elevator solution. To put things into perspective, this is roughly the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and with landing legs extended probably about the same width as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS#/media/File:HLS_Starship_rendering.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS#/media/File:HLS_S... https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronauts-test-spacex-elevator-concept-for-artemis-lunar-lander/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronauts-test-spac... Sure, there's lots of details to consider, e.g. center of gravity, overall weight, maximum possible duration to hover and ability to accurately steer and pick your landing spot. But the inherent difficulty in "how do you not topple over" is definitely there, and it's clear the proposed Starship lander will have to outperform these IM landers significantly. That said, if you want to scale out payload to the surface I guess you have to (which however eats into your center of gravity advantages from having lots of engines at the bottom, too).
- RandomBacon 2y ago> how do you not topple over Projectile grappling-hooks to embed into nearby ground then winch the line taught? Just have to make sure all are launched at the same time with force vectors that cancel out. Maybe even launch them before touchdown so it doesn't topple over during landing if one of the feet land on a random rock.
- baq 2y agoThe guys designing this never played kerbal space program or something. My first mun lander looked like theirs and of course it fell over after landing. If something doesn’t work in KSP, it probably deserves a looking at in the real world.
- jimnotgym 2y agoThat should be an official NASA spec. Must not fall over on kerball.
- magicalhippo 2y agoAnyone playing KSP learns that. So the question then is, what did their tall and skinny design optimize for?
- ForOldHack 2y agoMinimal launch cross sectional area. Tall and skinny. ( Please check previous documentation ) I was completely off. “This profound opportunity to make history isn’t solely built on technology – it’s established through the relentless dedication of our people, who have turned the Company’s words about a reliable cadence of lunar missions into action.” Looks like the company is in alignment with NASA. I am actually impressed. I would now look for a failure in one of the leg compressors.
- nine_k 2y agoMinimal launch cross-section is equally achievable for an oblong landing craft that is designed to fall on a predetermined side, with landing gear deployed to support it in the horizontal configuration. Imagine a truck with a jet engine that lands on the rear end, then falls onto its wheels, because it's designed to operate when positioned horizontally.
- spelunker 2y agoI mean, eventually everything is crab right?
- smj-edison 2y agoMandatory xkcd 2314.
- ForOldHack 2y agoCrabs cook well, but do not fly well,not drop in the vacuum of space well. But by no means dismiss this idea. It is interesting, I just do not know how right now. Their exoskelton legs. If the craft rotated like a cat,and landed like one with a dozen crab legs...where is Adam Savage when you need him?
- vpribish 2y agonot 'similarly structured' but the immediate sibling craft - the same design from the same company. not "eventually toppled" but broke a leg and landed on its side right away. Definitely the next mission will be the same craft - they have 2 more in the works.
- russfink 2y agoThis! Don’t base your designs on 1950’s sci-fi movies with big glistening rockets standing 50’ tall touching down on angled fins.
- carabiner 2y agoJesus. It really is that hard. With all the bajillion in extra compute and simulation time from Apollo era, we can't do hard things anymore. We don't know how.
- cyphertruck 2y agoApollo took up an appreciable percentage of the GDP… this is a small startup with a fraction of the funding. Firefly landed successfully, but they are bigger. This is a hardware rich, inexpensive program, and they could fly probably 100 missions for the cost of one NASA old style mission.
- rqtwteye 2y agoExactly. If we spend the same percentage of GDP we spent on Apollo, moon bases, mars landings, fusion and others would happen quickly.
- svachalek 2y agoNote that Firefly succeeded at this just a few days ago.
- lupusreal 2y agoLanders on the Moon is pre-Apollo in fact, by about three years. The Soviet's Luna 9 landed on the Moon in February of 1966, and America's Surveyor 1 in June.
- SoftTalker 2y agoApollo landers had human brains operating them. We're not quite there yet with technology.
- olex 2y agoSurveyor and other probes have landed autonomously in the years leading up to Apollo, and after it as well. We definitely do have the technology, but having not used it for a couple decades, we've gone a bit rusty with it.
- ge96 2y agoDamn... gotta take a playbook out of MIB2 have it stand itself up after landing A ball design too, rolls over and stands up
- mclau156 2y agoThe company Intuitive Machines first and second moon-landers both tipped over, hopefully the third does not tip over
- doodlebugging 2y agoHopefully someone at Intuitive Machines pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes that minimize the opportunity for this to happen the third time around, assuming NASA gives them that opportunity. If their lander is indeed top-heavy then they have some design issues to overcome. Perhaps adding a set of outriggers that deploy just before touchdown and detach or fold up on command once the lander is deemed to be in a stable orientation. Even landing it as a ball with air cushions that deflate once it comes to rest has to be preferred to simply keeping it the same and hoping for a nice flat spot to land.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes And then publishes it. The fact that they have precise renders still published of their next lander [1] is a bit telling about their engineering approach. [1] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/missions https://www.intuitivemachines.com/missions
- doodlebugging 2y agoThat's pretty funny. Doubling down on it may not pay off. The first two landers have different backgrounds. The third and fourth re-use the first lander background in the same orientation and mirrored. I would think that since the third lander has a model displayed and the fourth is just a proposed outline that they may be open to structural changes by the fourth if they get that opportunity. Hopefully they take the bait and pursue modifications that give their lander a lower center of gravity or a wider footprint. If I were at NASA I would be hesitant about allowing them to launch that third model with no mods. Even if all they do is hit the free section on craigslist in Houston and grab all the free-weights and a lightly used tarp to swing, testicle-style, underneath the lander as it tries to find the moon.
- mikeyouse 2y agoKind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?
- aylmao 2y agoReally funny spin from their PR department too: > “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”. > “This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.” I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south in the first place.
- hcrisp 2y agoAs I recall, Apollo 11 was off by 4 miles downrange, which was considered good but not precise. More work on the guidance / navigation system allowed for a precision landing in Apollo 12 (to touch down near a Surveyor probe).
- sho_hn 2y agoIf you want to read about this in fascinating detail, I highly recommend the book "Digital Apollo" by David A. Mindell. David's book spends a lot of time dwelling on the tension between highly automated systems and the role of the human in them, and the HCI factors of the Apollo missions. They also recap each landing through that lens, including the major changes done to the Lunar Module UI (physical + software) and the landing script/programs for each mission and how things worked out in practice and how it was debriefed after. If you want the insight look at the decision to go for precision landing, how (and how well) it was achieved and how everyone involved felt about it, this is probably your best one-stop go-to. And for anyone working in embedded UI, or around automation, etc. it's a wondeful mind-sharpener with many lessons in an inspiring applied context. The Apollo user interface and computer were so state of the art that many of the problems and solutions remain quite similar today. I work in a similar area (cars, with ever-increasing amounts of automation, driver assistance and connectivity) and some of the debates and on-the-job exchanges and meeting notes cited in the book could be straight out of my day job 60 years later with only minute differences. Some of the "Lessons on Software Development"-type docs penned by Apollo engineers in the aftermath of the program (trade-offs of platform approaches and HW abstractions vs. optimization, how to get a handle on quality and testing, etc.) also still read absolutely modern to this day, almost with greater summarizing clarity than what decades of paradigms and jargon have slathered on top.
- aylmao 2y ago> The failure of Athena, which was packed with scientific probes and experiments that Nasa was relying on as it prepares to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972, was almost identical to IM’s first moon landing in February 2024. Does this mean delays for Artemis, or do we not know yet?
- 6d6b73 2y agoSpaceship fiasco will delay Artemis so much that there is no need to even consider landing on the Moon in the next 10 years.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Spaceship [sic] fiasco will delay Artemis Artemis II is entirely delayed by Lockheed’s Orion spacecraft. Not SpaceX’s Starship.
- itishappy 2y agoI wouldn't say entirely. Starship isn't going to be involved in Artemis II, but Artemis III supposed to take humans to the moon in December 2025. Nobody's on schedule.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> wouldn't say entirely. Starship isn't going to be involved in Artemis II So entirely. Artemis III is being delayed by Artemis II. We expect Starship to delay III. But so far, 100% of the delays have been caused by Orion.
- itishappy 2y agoTechnically, sure. Practically, nobody's on schedule. I don't think Orion's delays absolve Starship's.
- kristianp 2y ago
- xnx 2y agoThat photo is really poetic though.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoThe photo made me think "We just need to land a large sun-tracking mirror over there".
- bell-cot 2y ago> Athena, a probe launched by [...] Intuitive Machines (IM) last month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Initially at least, it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as engineers worked to make sense of data showing an “incorrect attitude”. > On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead. 250 miles off-course, and their second flop in a row. I'd certainly cross them off the Approved Vendor list. About that "gotta be tall & tippy to fit inside the Falcon's payload fairing" idea. No, it does not. The payload fairing was jettisoned ~1/4M miles before Athena got to the moon. So plenty of time for the lander to deploy some folded-up "spider legs" landing gear, making "land and fall over" virtually impossible.
- ballooney 2y ago250 _meters_, this is science not javascript.
- joeevans1000 2y agoNot being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.
- Liftyee 2y agoThere are indeed craft like that. The NASA Pathfinder probe and MER rovers (all to Mars) are probably what you're thinking of.
- joeevans1000 2y agoAh, cool. I'll look those up. I just looked at the Athena and I'm tempted to armchair quarterback a tiny bit. I mean, that thing looks extremely top heavy. And it had hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment on it. I also wonder if these companies are patenting their approaches so that other companies can't use working solutions.
- dr_orpheus 2y agoYep, most of the previous Mars rover prior to Curiosity did it this way. They had a number of balloons surrounding the rover and landed and bounced along the surface. Then the balloons were deflated in a particular order so the rover ended up the right way up. But for these there was some atmosphere to slow the descent with a parachute and balloons. But for landing on the moon you need the thrusters to slow you down for landing so it can't just be balloons on either side. Presumably you could still use something to slow you down that isn't part of the science mission for the lander that gets ejected right before landing an then let the balloons hit the surface and drop down. But now there are multiple mechanisms and things to do the landing which means more money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbAUtyO7xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbAUtyO7xo
- thehappypm 2y agoOn the moon, you would eventually slow down after bouncing because of the energy loss from the not very elastic balloons. But it might take a while and you might bounce into a crater or something.
- Simon_O_Rourke 2y agoI presume it was all that Lunar wind that just toppled it in the end.
- rqtwteye 2y agoIt shows the old that getting to 90% is easy and fast but the last 10% are very tedious and slow.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> shows the old that getting to 90% is easy and fast but the last 10% are very tedious and slow And maybe don’t bet on a SPAC to deliver advanced engineering?
- dothack 2y agoCounterexample: Rocket Lab's tech [1] landed Blue Ghost on the Moon. [1]: https://www.rocketlabusa.com/updates/rocket-lab-space-software-supports-lunar-landing-for-fireflys-blue-ghost-1-mission/ https://www.rocketlabusa.com/updates/rocket-lab-space-softwa...
- meepmeepinator 2y ago[flagged]
- necubi 2y agoPlease don't post LLM generated comments on HN.
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoWhat’s the tell?
- gtirloni 2y ago<tangent>Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic spacecraft" but I can't explain why.</tangent>
- jchw 2y agoI agree, as a native speaker. It's a known phenomena[1], though I'm not sure in this case what type of adjective you'd classify "private" as. [1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/adjectives-order https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/adj...
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoNit: Phenomena is plural. The singular form is phenomenon. (Other similar words with a Greek root: lexicon/lexica, criterion/criteria, automaton/automata)
- jchw 2y agoHah. While I am a native speaker, I am still American. (Thanks. I was aware of this, but I still mess it up from time to time. Same for media/medium, though not nearly as much anymore.)
- thaumasiotes 2y ago-on, plural -a, is just the ordinary second declension neuter nominative/accusative ending. It's about as common as a linguistic phenomenon can be. Etymologically, you'd expect it to apply to the physics particles named for qualities, like photon, but I don't think that's ever done.
- mhink 2y agoI'll grant that it definitely sounds ambiguous, but I actually think the phrasing "robotic private spacecraft" is more correct in the end. I think this is a fair analogy: suppose we were talking about a "private detective". If we were writing a sci-fi book, we might talk about a "robotic private detective", but "private robotic detective" would sound odd. Now, I'll grant that "private detective" has a lot more cultural weight than "private spacecraft", but I think it's fair to say that at least the word "private" is playing a nearly identical role in both phrases. With that in mind, I think "robotic private spacecraft" makes sense. I suppose you could take this argument one step further and resolve the ambiguity by asking which distinction (robotic/non-robotic, private/public) the article writer thinks is more notable and placing that first.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoGood advice: 1. Never invade Russia in winter. 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago> Never invade Russia in winter. I thought it was never get involved in a land war in Asia.
- analog31 2y agoEspecially never invade the part of Russia that's in Asia, in winter.
- marcosdumay 2y agoThe thing about the more generalized form is that on most of the cases people remember, the invasion started on spring or summer.
- analog31 2y agoIndeed, and there are two fields where "when will the project be finished" is recognized as a logical fallacy: Software development, and warfare.
- bluGill 2y agoThere are been lot of land wars in Asia over history. Sometimes it goes well for the defender, sometimes the attacker. Never get involved in a war is good advice, but sometimes impossible to keep.
- mannyv 2y agoUnless you're Asian, then you'll win.
- jordanb 2y ago
- nashashmi 2y agoIf we send a person on a one-way mission to the moon to make sure that the instruments are able to work properly, we would have better return on the investment.
- trhway 2y agowe could even supply that person with a return craft. I remember reading that it was done 50 years ago.
- jwsteigerwalt 2y agoOn average… but think about the long tail…
- matt3210 2y agoThe lowest bidder messed up :(
- worik 2y ago> Athena had the same tall, thin design that some experts had feared could lead to a repeat of the accident. Good grief
- quantadev 2y agoIt's so easy to design vehicles that can't roll over on their backs and die like a turtle. All you need to do is use large wagon-wheels and put the cargo/payload near the axles of it, where it doesn't extend above the top of the wheel. Then the device can continue to work as well upside down as right-side-up. In other words, it has no such thing as upside down. There are lots of robots like this now, where if they get upside down, the wheels are on 'arms' that can just swing to the other side to make it right-side-up again. Admittedly I'm a mechanical engineer myself, but this design doesn't seem like "Rocket Science" to me. haha. (nice pun amirite)
- ambicapter 2y agoThey should've watched more battlebots.
- quantadev 2y agoyeah! you are exactly right. Especially the original 1960s moon lander, because it could've encountered aliens and needed to defend itself. bwahaha.
- ForOldHack 2y agoIf a space probe falls on the moon, does it make a sound?
- aabiji 2y agoNo, sound needs a medium to pass through and there isn't (ok fine, yes there is, but it's not sufficient) an atmosphere on the moon. Interesting philosophical questions though :)
- ZeWaka 2y agoWouldn't the crash make a vibration in the lunar soil? I know it's actually quite dry, thin, and dusty, but half the density of common Earth rock (~1.6 v. ~2.7g/cm³) should still conduct some sound. If you put your ear (or more likely, a microphone) on the ground...
- ForOldHack 2y agoLook up the earth material with the closest density. It's a type of cheese,and yes, the sound will propigate through Christmas. Wtf? Firefox I said Cheese. . (Myth) Actually the closest rock is silicate basalt. Sharp and dusty. What if we had sticky landing pads? And literally glued the probe to the surface? ( No. You would either have to find a rock or you would simply collect dust. ) There are many brilliant ideas here.
- echoangle 2y agoThe moon itself is the medium, it’s still sound. Just like listening to rails for approaching trains.
- thrance 2y agoYes, the sound is carried through the ground.
- fnordpiglet 2y agoThis is really making me suffer from my Kerbal Space Program PTSD.
- modeless 2y agoI was confused because I saw a picture taken from the private moon lander and it was upright. Turns out two private moon landers recently landed and the first one was successful.
- ForOldHack 2y agoThen have the sucessful one walk over and right the others. It could not be that hard? NASA did not have cellphones. They put rovers on the moon. How about putting a couple of spare battery packs and a remote pilot on a rover? Does Uber and Lyft want to start service early?
- ForOldHack 2y agohttps://science.nasa.gov/resource/view-of-surveyor-iii-in-its-crater/ https://science.nasa.gov/resource/view-of-surveyor-iii-in-it... NASA did it right, but that surface looks like a no-joke bed of razors. Thank you NASA. When do we launch the lunar tow truck? Cash or charge?
- HenryBemis 2y agoNow, stuff like that spoon-feed with honey every conspiracy theorist that says/writes that we (humans) never actually went to the moon blah blah blah. My thoughts about it is that.. 'hey we got tech to stream live the whole thing... from lift off to landing, with 10 cameras to each direction. I remember watching live the "Red Bull Stratos" and it was soooooooooo cool!!!!!! Why not to the moon??? How come we went to the moon 40-50 years ago, and then silence for decades? If anything technology is better/faster/safer. We should be going to the moon every year just to validate the parking ticket. And now you see we went from "flew there, landed, played golf, came back" to "oops we can't remote control land an box".
- echoangle 2y agoDid you look at the development cost of the apollo program vs intuitive machines budget? And the number of participating people? The IM-1 mission was about 100 million dollars, a single Saturn V launch was more than a billion. Total Apollo budget for Apollo (6 crewed landings and a few manned missions for testing, and some uncrewed test flights) was 260 billion in todays money.
- ForOldHack 2y ago"The Saturn V program cost was $41.3 billion in present day dollars and its cost per launch was $3.2 billion also in present day dollars." Thus, the IM-1 was cheap.
- Laremere 2y agoThe Apollo program had a wartime budget and a wartime risk tolerance. The US and Russia were at war, though they did not directly engage with each other due to the threat of mutual nuclear destruction. Along with various proxy wars, technological dominance in space was a key factor in this war. If one side gained enough advantage, they could potentially leverage it into using it to win a direct war. Another factor is that Kennedy's assassination protected the program from political pressure within the US. Since then, other factors have turned the attention of the space program: The USSR fell apart and didn't pose much of a threat, reducing the budget to a fraction of the size. The Space Shuttle was designed to be the next big thing in space, as a reusable launch vehicle; it could only do low earth orbit and fell short of its goals. Focus shifted to science, and a lot of good science could be performed in low earth orbit; This has lead to, for example, the significant achievement of a continuous human presence in space since the year 2000. Finally, the accepted risk for Apollo was several times what is acceptable today. Even if we had all of the old hardware on the launchpad ready to go for another mission, NASA would never put an astronaut on it.
- ChicagoDave 2y agoI seriously do not understand why moon or mars landing structures aren’t some kind of dodecahedron. It can always correct itself after landing and then “unpack” itself. Someone tell me why we’re not doing this.
- kulahan 2y agoThat sounds pretty darn complex to get perfectly. It’s a lot more moving parts, untested mechanics, etc. IMO, it’s probably just easier to have a few long pole extend so your base is absolutely enormous, no? Then again, I’m just some internet nerd lol.
- echoangle 2y agoBecause making a lander that’s wider and lower like the Firefly one is simpler and you have to control attitude for the landing anyways. Making it not tip over is easier than making it spherical and unpacking it after landing. But IM apparently chose to do neither of the 2 options…
- ForOldHack 2y agoDifficult to get into or it, but assemble in orbit... Read Digital Apollo. The moon is rocky. Really really rocky. You need enough fuel/thrust for your remote sensing to idle while Houston proceses you options. What if spherical comes up against a rock or crater wall as big as it is? Splat.
- ForOldHack 2y agoThere are both a ton of rocks and 1100 foot cliffs. Drop a Tesla tow truck...( A joke... But you would be able to see the explosion from Earth)
- trhway 2y agogiven the low gravity and $200M+ cost of mission, one would think that 3-4 thin spider-like-wide legs would be a must, especially after similar failure several months ago. Or just an inflatable "donut" around the lander (which would be deflated once the lander is standing upright).
- ForOldHack 2y agoThis is brilliant but for the very wrong reasons. Make it a rescue mission. All you have to do is to have one mission pick up the first mission.
- ForOldHack 2y agoI realise that it is a lot more difficult. What if it landed on a sea of smooth pool balls? I bet there is going to be a good long laugh when we find it.
- ge96 2y agoWonder if it would be feasible/worth it to design something to land next to it and tip it upright.
- thehappypm 2y agoIt’s landers all the way down.
- bobrobpr 2y ago[flagged]
- busymom0 2y agoI know space is hard but so many of these missions seem to fail in such silly ways. In this case, this company's both missions had the same problem attributed to its "tall thin design". Why do they keep making the same mistake again and again? > "The failure of Athena....was almost identical to IM’s first moon landing in February 2024" > "Athena had the same tall, thin design that some experts had feared could lead to a repeat of the accident."
- UltraSane 2y agoAt least the front didn't fall off
- inamberclad 2y agoDefinitely concerned about the laser rangefinders not working on descent. My recollection is that they were very finnicky instruments. A lot of discussion is happening around the aspect ratio of the Noca-C landers. Part of the reason they're so tall and skinny looking is that the lander is built around two linerless composite fuel tanks. Two big tanks are more efficient than four smaller ones. The legs should definitely be wider on the next two landers.
- ForOldHack 2y agoThere was also lots of dust. Read digital apollo. If your tanks are empty, they are now dead weight. Use them as pads. If you had 30 empty tanks on spikes you could bounce, roll onto the surface. Again tanks as landing gear. A delivery craft that crashes somewhere else, or flies over the rights the other two. ( Three for one)
- inamberclad 2y agothe tanks aren't empty when you land, since you always want to have reserve fuel (and pressure)
- astar1 2y agoThese 2 failures could have been easily avoidable both times. I really wish there was a push in the US government to create and stockpile plutonium-238 and ensure it's readily available, subsidized, and offered for all US probes/rovers/other scientific instruments in space (whether it be for NASA's use who currently has to ration because of how little they have left, or for private use after approval). Like, why aren't all of space scientific instruments RTG powered like voyager 1 which is still providing useful scientific data 47+ years later. Think about all of the lost scientific insights over the past few decades because either NASA (because of a low stockpile) or private companies like intuitive (from their 2 failures) end up choosing solar panels for their source of power with no other alternative. Besides the fact that solar panels can fail if they aren't pointed a certain way, they usually offer far less power, and are subject to radiation, micro meteor, or dust damage. All of these are the main reason why these instruments tend to have a far shorter lifespan than voyager 1.
- nuccy 2y agoGenerally I agree, but Moon is not a bad place for solar panels if a spacecraft has no contingencies and is able to harvest energy during Moon's day and store it in batteries to be used over the night. The sufficient power can be generated by a solar panel of the size (or even smaller) of the spacecraft itself. The other story is for missions like Juno [1] or Europa Clipper [2] which use solar panels near Jupiter - instead of centering develoment and mass budget around payload most of the spacecraft is an enourmously sized solar array. Juno panels generate 14kW on Earth orbit and only 500W near Jupiter [1]. 1. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-spacecraft-breaks-solar-power-distance-record/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-spacecraft-breaks-s... 2. https://www.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/nasas-europa-clipper-gets-set-of-super-size-solar-arrays/ https://www.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/nasas-europa-cl...
- nuccy 2y agoAnother non-obvious problem is that RTGs, as any other thermal machines, need a gradient of temperature to work, i.e. to generate electrical power there should be hot (nuclear material) and cold (radiators) side. On interplanetary spacecraft (Voyager, New horizons) Sun is in a predictable (and stable) direction so RTG's radiators can be put in a permanent shadow of the spacecraft. On the Moon the sun is moving, and there is no atmosphere (unlike on Mars where RTGs are used), so on a small spacecraft RTG will need to be dug deep into the regolith which is absoluteky non-trivial since just landing straight sometimes is a problem. There are always tradeoffs, it is almost never "why don't they just" case in spacecraft development.
- guelo 2y agoNASA and Soviet engineers of the 60s were able to accomplish this with less computing resources then an atari game console.
- GoToRO 2y agoScrum was not invented yet.
- damnitbuilds 2y agoTo lose one lander, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness; to lose three must be enemy action :-o
- agnosticmantis 2y agoMoonshot business idea: robots on the moon that jumpstart, tow or flip other robots in distress.
- russfink 2y agoCall it Moon Autonomous Taskable Equipment Reorienter (MATER)
- tagami 2y agoCG too high. Why not orient the spacecraft design horizontally rather than vertically.
- shsbdncudx 2y agoI just can’t fathom this. If I was asked to design a lunar lander… “if it falls over, it’s fucked”, wouldn’t make the cut.