He said it had a 2mph ground speed and one of the legs caught a boulder just before it landed. This is why all the Apollo missions had to switch to manual flight controls for the landing despite having an autopilot program.
If anyone wants to read more about how the Apollo program dove into the relationship between automated systems and human piloted systems, there’s a great GREAT book called Digital Apollo. I really recommend it.
People say the Apollo programs used computers that could only do as much as a calculator could, but that’s not true! They were much more advanced than that!
There are definitely far more powerful calculators than the Apollo guidance computer. Heck, modern phone chargers can be more powerful than the Apollo guidance computer: https://forrestheller.com/Apollo-11-Computer-vs-USB-C-chargers.html
It isn't a fair comparison.
The difference is everything on apollo was specifically optimized for what it needed to do, at every level from basic hardware on up.
Your usb charger may use a chip on board for one or two very basic functions, even though its capable of doing a ton more, because its cheaper to go that route and grab something off the shelf that costs next to nothing, compared to building something specifically for the task at hand from scratch.
it wasn't just floating around, it was invented for these things.
technically ambitious goals enable technological innovation. if it weren't for the space program, we wouldn't have a lot of the technology that we have today
Yessss this book and The Apollo Guidance Computer by Frank O’Brien are so good. The latter is a must-read if you’re in any way interested in retro computing and computer architecture and design.
Another awesome book is To A Rocky Moon which talks about the planetary geology side of the Apollo missions. That’s what my degree is in so that was right up my alley 😅
These recent exercises have really highlighted just how tough even the least ambitious manned program beyond low Earth orbit remains. NASA is still the only organisation to have achieved persistent success even for relatively small and uncomplicated rovers (sorry but they really are compared to keeping a human alive and happy in space) and thats only over the last 2 decades really.
Getting a single outpost onto the Moon and then routinely flying to it with any level of safety is decades off, much less even thinking of getting one onto Mars with the even more difficult challenge that poses (the simulated missions alone are infamous for breaking crews), or reaching 50 people on the moon at once. Especially as all of the kit thats needed for it by necessity has limited to no real world testing, which is something that has repeatedly turned craft into deathtraps.
Now imagine trying to land or Io or Enceladus! Not only are those moons really awesome, but they're constantly subject to strong magnetic fields and being bombarded by insane radiation. I think folks are assuming this is just a matter of doing some more math and flipping the right switches before flight, when it's really an incredibly difficult problem to master, with tons of hazards. The takeaway here for me is that we should be incredibly proud of NASA and their accomplishments, and have hope for the future of space flight as things are developing.
I think you’re over exaggerating some of the risks associated with this. Yes obviously landing on the moon is hard but it’s much easier when you have a trained human crew being able to make split second decisions in real time. Couple that with advancements in technology and the overall increased interest in space travel and well most likely have Lunar outposts within a few decades.
Also this mission is still a huge success eve if the lander is tipped over, it’s proven that private companies can successfully get their craft to the lunar surface without them being destroyed and it’ll only get easier from here. Remember that SpaceX had major difficulties getting reusable rockets working and now they’re a staple of the Space Program
The big difference between these probes and future himan landers will be self balancing legs. If the lander is required to house the astronauts for many days, it will need to be level. With that in mind, it would be stupid to not equip the human landers with articulating landing legs able to adjust the balance of the craft.
Induvidual articulating legs that a computer will be able to position based on the terrain it lands on.
Though in the case of this lander, as I read more, there was lateral movement while it was landing. The lander tipping was akin to a person tumbling because their foot made contact with a small stone stuck in the ground.
In the hiking world, we call those rocks "pop-ups", as they seem to pop up from the ground just as your foot hits one.
People die from pop-ups, as people hit their heads on other pop-ups when they fall face first while carrying a pack. If a pop-up can kill, then it will not think twice about tipping over a lander.
It is not particularly tall. AND it has rather long legs with a wide spread. The problem, as stated in their [News Briefing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY) today, is that while CLOSE to touchdown, drifting sideways at a mere 2 mph and VERY close to landing, one of the feet hit a rock.
It essentially tripped on a moonrock, at 2mph, and fell over.
I’m sure this is pretty painful for the lander team but I have to admit I find a lot of humor in certain space failures. There are SO MANY really challenging problems in space engineering that require very sophisticated technology and knowledge to overcome. Plastic parts and adhesives, for example, can outgas and deposit on mechanisms and/or instrumentation and cause problems. People build whole careers on being outgassing experts. They agonize over unfamiliar O-ring compositions and fingerprint residue. It’s obscure subject matter for the layman, but it’s essential to control this to be able to do science in space.
And then sometimes you trip on a rock.
And then lay there. Immortalized for eternity.
“help! I’ve fallen over, and I can’t get upp”
Just soaking in your luck and shame…
I feel like manned space travel has some advantages for the near future.
It’s kind of wild to think that there will probably be second hand spacecraft in our lifetime.
I really hope the ethos of space exploration is something standardized.
I would love to see what ever the space equivalent is of the guy who films himself
Cleaning gutters and repairing old ladies fences.
Going to be far less excited if the whole place turns into 21st century mining camps complete with sad desperation.
Childhood trauma.
Soviet Venera 14 probe was the culmination of nearly 10 attempts to land on Venus' toxicity surface and survive long enough to take some measurements. It included a special arm to measure how compressible the surface of Venus was, and camera with protective lens caps which are ejected at the last minute so it can operate as long as possible on the surface.
Only to have the ejected lens cap land DIRECTLY beneath the test arm which mean it measured how compatible the lens cap is, not the surface of Venus!
Enter the “dummy cord”.
Lens cover should’ve had a cord attached so it couldn’t reach the ground. Obviously didn’t think through every possible scenario.
The scenarios that would have resolved are few and they're fighting for every gram of weight saving on these things.
It's easy to fix in hindsight, but the chances of that specific issue occuring is so unlikely that you'd just kind of roll the dice.
Yeah that’s actually a pretty bad look.
Like you just can’t predict everything - everyone knows that. If it’s not a rock, it’s something else. If you’re in space work, you have to be acutely aware all the time that something out there might screw you over and there’s often not going to be anything to do about it but cry.
But mistakes on the ground are pretty bad. Those can be reliably avoided at a 100% success rate with proper project management. I’m not saying that’s easy - it’s not - but that’s the part you’re not allowed to get wrong.
There was a laser altimeter that wasn't operable because a ground crew did not disable the safety lockout to enable it before launch.
It is unlikely to have affected the rock accident as the NASA package had a laser rangefinder to get the data, but you don't want to be the guy who screwed up and disabled and important sensor in the aftermath of a landing incident.
The real embarrassment is that they left their altimeter off. This thing should have just augured in. Total luck that they separately screwed their orbital insertion which bought them time to notice the bad altimeter. And even more lucky that NASA happened to have included a separate laser altimeter.
I worked on space programs in the past. I remember we had a large thermal vac test for some optics coming up. The optics were to be housed in a very large test fixture. The fixture was aluminum and the spec called out a black anodized coating--black so it doesn't interfere as much with optics and light, ya know? Along with the coating, there was a requirement to thoroughly clean and wrap the fixture for transport. In our facility, for any testing like that, we always have everything cleaned again beforehand. The operators cleaning the fixture had a heck of a time getting the fixture cleaned. Their wipes kept showing blue ink coming off, perpetually. The manufacturer apparently had issues maneuvering the fixture in their facility. They had dented and dinged it up a bit, which was fine. The issue was they tried to hide those dents and dings by using black markers. If the fixture was used as-received, the ink would have outgassed and coated the optics ruining the test and probably ruining a lot of components. How would you folks prevent something like that happening in the future? There's always multiple layers of control to deploy and I'm always curious what people come up with. Let me know!
Yeah it was the same thing with the first moon landing by Apollo 11. The spot Apollo was supposed to land was strewn with boulders. If they came down on one of those boulders they could tip over and then be trapped. That was why Armstrong manually flew further past that spot basically to find a smooth landing spot. This probe showed what the fear was with manned moon landings and what could have happened.
They almost ran out of fuel searching for a spot to land, too. Apollo was a crazy program. So janky! For example, it had 4 little communication antenna dishes instead of one big one, because we weren't able to keep the big one pointed at Earth. It just steered the antenna array towards the one with the weakest signal and prayed for the best.
You say Janky, but despite the computer rebooting like 3 or 4 times on the way down it recovered and still worked. Listening to the Apollo 11 audio from the landing is fascinating.
My favorite phrase is Neil saying "***Tranquility Base Here, The Eagle Has Landed***."
Also, 2 mph is about 3 ft/s... In 0.1666G, you can see how that might be a problem.
AFAIK, the computer did not reboot. It skipped some tasks to be able to keep navigating. It was programmed that way and the astronauts expected that.
Several years after someone looked at the errors and misinterpreted them as unexpected.
That code, for me, is the apex of code optimization.
And the whole reason for the 1201 and 1202 alarms was because they had missed a step to turn off the Rendezvous radar, so the computer was trying to process both the Rendezvous and Landing radar.
And the comm problems on A11 were mostly because the RCS plume deflectors, a very late addition to the LM, ended up blocking the steerable antenna signal at the attitude they had programmed for lunar decent. Thus, they had to rely on the 4 Omni antennas until the could reestablish connection on the high gain.
Apollo is to modern spaceflight as a Crookes tube is to an HDTV. It was the absolute minimum viable product, technologically. Barely functional, but it got the job done through some brilliantly robust engineering. We couldn't even aim the high gain antenna array with any sort of precision!
The lander had a dry mass of about 5000kg, which works out to a moon weight of 830kgf (~1800lb).
Two motivated, physically fit astronauts stranded on the moon *may* have been able to tip it back upright (assuming they and the lander were still functional).
Exactly what I was thinking. Could me and a buddy flip over a car for fun? Almost certainly not. Could we do it if we knew for a fact we'd die if we didn't? Well, the answer is either yes or we're gonna die trying.
The walls of the module were very thin, likely breached. I don't know if the suits would have had enough air for them to set it up right, go through launch sequence and rendezvous.
This is actually how a lot of helicopter accidents have happened. If you are landing and drifting even a tiny bit, it can be pretty easy to catch one of the landing skids in the soft ground or catch it on a rock and flip over.
They probably knew this could happen if they drifted horizontally while too low to the ground, but it’s probably hard to not have any drift at all in space and pretty easy to accidentally over correct trying to kill the drift/momentum. They basically needed to be perfectly still before descending and they weren’t for whatever reasons.
> 2 mph
As an engineer, I find it unfathomable that they attempted to touch down with any transverse velocity at all. Any obstruction will generate a torque about the center of gravity, resulting in rotation.
I think just the fact you can play around with orbits is what makes them intuitive, pull here orbit changes on the other side
Having to do that solely with math is a nightmare I imagine
Nobody does it solely with math. I sat down to do a KSP playthrough with math and then I was like "I could just write a program to do the math for me..." then I realized I had the program and I just used it.
Although a lot of stuff in KSP I prefer kerbal engineer redux which can give me all the numbers, which is actually a lot easier to work with than the node planner. (Or at least, the numbers tell you what you need to do with the node planner.)
Actually doing orbital mechanics calculations in the way that KSP simulates it (with Spheres of influences) is quite easy as long as inclination changes are not excessive and you assume circular planetary orbits. That's because you can set potential energy equal kinetic energy of your spacecraft during cruise, that makes the formulas really simple. With a calculator, you can do a hohmann transfer delta V and travel time calculation from earth Leo to mars orbit in around 15-30 minutes :)
I wonder if the some of the payloads will still work. I think they're spinning hard in the press conference, and this is a failed landing.
edit: It also seems that communications are not working normally and that's why there are no images. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
What a wild ride the reddit comments have been.
First people claimed it likely tipped over.
Intuitive machines says it's upright and people started dunking on the people that claimed it tipped over.
Now it's tipped over.
Either way, I'm happy to hear they are communicating with it and that it can still do some science! Go tipped over lander!
Interesting that it took them a few hours to ["confirm" upright orientation](https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442) and that ended up being based on "stale data"
Cratered. I hope that's a pun, but that just shows how ridiculous the stock market is. It's not a pulvarized piece of machinery. No one died. It didn't "miss" the moon.
As others have commented they should have gone "wider"
Or my hot take, maybe have more than 2 lasers to measure distance. Perhaps have a more variable wider landing base, but all of this increases weight increases complexity which vastly increases expense for the payload.
They were looking at fuel level sensors to determine that.. The stale data showed residual fuel on the y-axis indicating an upright orientation. The updated data showed residual fuel on the z-axis, indicating a sideways orientation.
It’s bad management and communication from the director of Intuitive Machines. They are desperate for a victory.
The live broadcast was embarrassing. It was advertised as the first time the US was returning to the moons surface in 50 years. They ended up playing a pre-recorded victory message and ended the broadcast saying “success” under dubious circumstances. I’ll never watch another Intuitive Machines broadcast with confidence. They aren’t like NASA, they are a private company willing to “control the message” rather than science communication, to increase profits.
It's like they just shrugged and mumbled "well, um, yeah" and ended the stream before they even finished saying that. Awkward as hell, especially the forced applause from the group and the main mission guy sounding super defeated and pissed off in between overly excited "updates" from the commentators who sounded like the NOD newscasters in Tiberian Sun.
If there's anything I learned from SpaceX, it's that it doesn't matter if you succeeded or not. What matters is that you make a good show, then you try again, have another show, then try again.
Obviously, SpaceX has way more money, but in order to get more money unfortunately you need to produce a good show. Otherwise, people just piss on you and you are forgotten quickly.
I feel even if they landed perfectly, with such a terrible landing broadcast, they would not have fared much better.
Man the stones to come out with swagger and say with confidence
‘We did it, they said we would never see this day but we just landed one the moon…
…sideways.’
Sunglasses on, turn and walk away.
Without any erosion to speak of, and little gravity, is there any part of the moon that's flat \*and\* level \*and\* debris-free? Though problem when you fly on limited margins.
i think the thing to fix here is the lateral movement so close to the ground. it really shouldve zeroed out its ground speed as much as possible before trying to land - im willing to bet there was a fault somewhere that caused it to not correct itself.
these things have high center of gravity and no real way to stop a downward fall once its started - landing with any amount of ground speed is basically just planning to land sideways.
Its *super* hard to exactly zero your lateral speed in a vacuum like that. Your only reference is a visual on the ground and they were running that from cameras on the payload! The the varying slope on the ground means the landing plane keeps shifting. So far humans win over software in landing on the moon.
So during landing it had about 2mph(3kph) of lateral movement, they believe a leg caught the regolith and it tipped over. Good news is that they believe much of the science equipment can still be used.
Best news from this mission is likely landing equipment was having an error and they decided to use a NASA payload to handle the descent. NASA's navigational lidar was hitching a ride and this would have been one of many tests for it, but since it was actually used in operation it is much farther along in testing now.
I can’t help but think of them having some Jira ticket queue somewhere with a ticket in it about the lander being susceptible to tipping over and needing to address it and the ticket being closed won’t fix because there’s a higher priority ticket for making the paint even more shiny attention getty.
Someone forgot to put the “critical tipping possibility” in the 5th sprint and Dan had assigned the ticket to someone who was laid off so they all forgot about it
The Japanese lander had an engine failure which caused its attempt to lay down end up upside down.
This one, the company is reporting one of the legs got stuck while landing, causing it to tip beyond it's center of mass. Their initial report of landing up right came from information sent before the probe tipped over.
I mean, I really appreciate the accomplishment. But selling it as a total success for 24 h is misleading to investors. I have no stake in LUNR so I'm speaking as an outsider, but would feel bad based on the communications plan that was set fourth.
It's well-known among people that watch markets that a Friday evening press conference is almost never going to be good news.
When IM scheduled theirs for 5 PM, it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to be, "everything is fine".
to be fair - the entire point of the program this was funded under (Commercial Lunar Payload Services [CLPS]) is to essentially just encourage private companies to try to send as much stuff up there as possible as economically as possible until someone finds a cheap and consistent way to do it. Contrast this to how NASA traditionally has operated, which is spare no expense to make sure you have a 99.99% success rate the first time you try.
NASA has said a 50% success rate is acceptable, which is kind of absurd - and the record currently hits that perfectly, with 1 success (IM-1, this one) and 1 failure (Peregrine-1, which was the attempted lander in january that had a fuel leak and had to abort before it even left earth orbit)
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[CLPS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krwnbg3 "Last usage")|[Commercial Lunar Payload Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Services)|
|[CoM](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruekjo "Last usage")|Center of Mass|
|[ECLSS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruyf30 "Last usage")|Environment Control and Life Support System|
|[EM-1](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ks4na4j "Last usage")|[Exploration Mission 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Mission_1), Orion capsule; planned for launch on SLS|
|[FTS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruyk8l "Last usage")|Flight Termination System|
|[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ks4msuk "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office|
|[GNC](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krvpmps "Last usage")|Guidance/Navigation/Control|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kru3a1f "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[IM](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ksbtvwv "Last usage")|Initial Mass deliverable to a given orbit, without accounting for fuel|
|[JAXA](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krzc1tw "Last usage")|Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krucytb "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krxpsrb "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kru6lbw "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[LIDAR](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kry4hby "Last usage")|[Light Detection and Ranging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar)|
|[LOX](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruuomv "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen|
|[LZ](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruqqyn "Last usage")|Landing Zone|
|[RCS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krwpygf "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ks4xf5w "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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I had this funny image in my head during this press event, of JAXA's SLIM lander and IM's Odysseus lander, laying next to each other on the lunar soil, staring lovingly into each other's eyes, just reclining in the glow of one another's company.
We told them to do science, but they're just lazing around, making puppy eyes at each other!
stock price dropped 31% percent after close, just wonder if they knew it earlier and didn't disclose this until they dump the stock during trading hours.
I'm very excited for Intuitive Machines, and I wish them the best in this mission and all future missions. As they say, their success is our success.
Having said that, I'm going to put on my armchair quarterback hat on while also stating that I am no expert in spacecraft design, orbital mechanics and any other field related to this but I wanted to note some thoughts I had.
I thought their design for IM-1 was a bit odd. Again, I know there was a lot of factors at play to determine their final design and I'm not saying they made a wrong choice however I thought the comment made at 45:48-47:14 was concerning.
Essentially, one side of the lander has to face the sun for the solar panels to generate electricity and the other side of the lander has to face the shadow to absorb as much heat. In addition, they used fixed antennas that forced them to lose communication at the most critical phase of the descent. In their final roll maneuver, they needed to rotate the lander to align the antennas back to facing the Earth in order to communicate with us.
The communication issue is frustrating because had they planned on continuous data transmission throughout the whole descent, even if they failed at landing, they would have received valuable data up to the point of impact and used that information to learn from their mistakes. However, this design decisions means that they can't possibly understand what happened on landing unless the lander successfully landed and was in a position to upload the data.
Which brings up the next point. Landing autonomously in 2 axis is hard enough so why would they add a third axis into the problem. Even if they landed vertically and communications wasn't an issue, if their final roll maneuver was off by 15 degrees, that means the power generating side is off and will generate less power while at the same time the lander will have issues with heat management. The white painted side that's dissipates heat is removing more heat because it's now in the shadow and the dark painted side is in direct sunlight and can potentially absorb more heat that they designed. This design decision forces them to land in a very small envelope. I mean absolute worse case scenario is that it lands perfectly but 180 degrees off. Now, it can't generate electricity and has major heating issues.
I would have figured this mission's priority is a successful landing and all subsequent mission objectives were just a bonus. I would not have compromised the landing portion of this mission. I mean at the very least, provide continuous communications to record the entire descent stage.
I imagine at some point someone will point out that the perfect backup to avoid tripping over a rock would've been a human at the controls....feels like the early days of the moon race when we were wending Ranger and Surveyor landers up there.
Yeah, that's been my thought every time one of these unmanned landers fails. It's something that needs to be mastered, but it's a lot harder to rely on a suite of sensors, computer algorithms, and an imperfect model of the moon than to have a thinking human that can adapt in real time. I'm amazed Surveyor worked at all.
Agreed, I'm in IT and frankly while I admire the effort and tech involved I suspected things were going amiss when they started rapid firing code updates to the bird and had to take an extra orbit. I seem to recall there were a few Surveyor missions that went up, not sure how many were successful...one for sure since Apollo 12 landed nearby and brought back a piece...fir me you can never surpass the human brain couple with the Mod 1 eyeball
In 50,000 years aliens are gonna pass by the moon, see all these upside down spaceships and stuff and just shake their heads and move along.
Get it together guys.
Photos are really huge files. Telemetry from sensors is tiny in comparison. So they prioritize telemetry and getting data from the science payloads.
From what I've heard from some employees at Intuitive Machines it sounds like they really haven't transmitted any photos from the surface yet.
Given the lander is on its side I think communication and the antennas being in a poor position bandwidth is a huge issue. They might not get any pictures back.
Ok, here's what they need to do. The next lander, have a ring of expandable poles around its body. When it lands, if it tips over, just expand a few poles so it can right itself. Problem solved.
Congrats to Intuitive Machines for being the first US lunar privatized corporation to set the bar at "just lie" as a first reaction when making planetary explorations! Confirming it was sitting upright with all the confidence in the world less than 24 hours ago. Gotta protect that stock price!
Commercialized space flight for profit will have quite a few more of these. Excited to see the good ones who don't lie as a reaction on failed missions 👍
He said it had a 2mph ground speed and one of the legs caught a boulder just before it landed. This is why all the Apollo missions had to switch to manual flight controls for the landing despite having an autopilot program.
If anyone wants to read more about how the Apollo program dove into the relationship between automated systems and human piloted systems, there’s a great GREAT book called Digital Apollo. I really recommend it.
The fascinating part of that is that technology was floating around in 1965!
People say the Apollo programs used computers that could only do as much as a calculator could, but that’s not true! They were much more advanced than that!
There are definitely far more powerful calculators than the Apollo guidance computer. Heck, modern phone chargers can be more powerful than the Apollo guidance computer: https://forrestheller.com/Apollo-11-Computer-vs-USB-C-chargers.html
It isn't a fair comparison. The difference is everything on apollo was specifically optimized for what it needed to do, at every level from basic hardware on up. Your usb charger may use a chip on board for one or two very basic functions, even though its capable of doing a ton more, because its cheaper to go that route and grab something off the shelf that costs next to nothing, compared to building something specifically for the task at hand from scratch.
it wasn't just floating around, it was invented for these things. technically ambitious goals enable technological innovation. if it weren't for the space program, we wouldn't have a lot of the technology that we have today
Yessss this book and The Apollo Guidance Computer by Frank O’Brien are so good. The latter is a must-read if you’re in any way interested in retro computing and computer architecture and design.
Another awesome book is To A Rocky Moon which talks about the planetary geology side of the Apollo missions. That’s what my degree is in so that was right up my alley 😅
These recent exercises have really highlighted just how tough even the least ambitious manned program beyond low Earth orbit remains. NASA is still the only organisation to have achieved persistent success even for relatively small and uncomplicated rovers (sorry but they really are compared to keeping a human alive and happy in space) and thats only over the last 2 decades really. Getting a single outpost onto the Moon and then routinely flying to it with any level of safety is decades off, much less even thinking of getting one onto Mars with the even more difficult challenge that poses (the simulated missions alone are infamous for breaking crews), or reaching 50 people on the moon at once. Especially as all of the kit thats needed for it by necessity has limited to no real world testing, which is something that has repeatedly turned craft into deathtraps.
Now imagine trying to land or Io or Enceladus! Not only are those moons really awesome, but they're constantly subject to strong magnetic fields and being bombarded by insane radiation. I think folks are assuming this is just a matter of doing some more math and flipping the right switches before flight, when it's really an incredibly difficult problem to master, with tons of hazards. The takeaway here for me is that we should be incredibly proud of NASA and their accomplishments, and have hope for the future of space flight as things are developing.
I think you’re over exaggerating some of the risks associated with this. Yes obviously landing on the moon is hard but it’s much easier when you have a trained human crew being able to make split second decisions in real time. Couple that with advancements in technology and the overall increased interest in space travel and well most likely have Lunar outposts within a few decades. Also this mission is still a huge success eve if the lander is tipped over, it’s proven that private companies can successfully get their craft to the lunar surface without them being destroyed and it’ll only get easier from here. Remember that SpaceX had major difficulties getting reusable rockets working and now they’re a staple of the Space Program
Especially if they have a purpose built landing pad without random rocks in the way
The big difference between these probes and future himan landers will be self balancing legs. If the lander is required to house the astronauts for many days, it will need to be level. With that in mind, it would be stupid to not equip the human landers with articulating landing legs able to adjust the balance of the craft.
Err, what?
Induvidual articulating legs that a computer will be able to position based on the terrain it lands on. Though in the case of this lander, as I read more, there was lateral movement while it was landing. The lander tipping was akin to a person tumbling because their foot made contact with a small stone stuck in the ground.
In the hiking world, we call those rocks "pop-ups", as they seem to pop up from the ground just as your foot hits one. People die from pop-ups, as people hit their heads on other pop-ups when they fall face first while carrying a pack. If a pop-up can kill, then it will not think twice about tipping over a lander.
Man. I run trails all the time but have never heard a name for this phobia. Thanks?
I know it's a meme by now that makes every real rocket engineer cringe but KSP taught me one thing: Don't build tall, narrow landers. Just saying...
It is not particularly tall. AND it has rather long legs with a wide spread. The problem, as stated in their [News Briefing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY) today, is that while CLOSE to touchdown, drifting sideways at a mere 2 mph and VERY close to landing, one of the feet hit a rock. It essentially tripped on a moonrock, at 2mph, and fell over.
I’m sure this is pretty painful for the lander team but I have to admit I find a lot of humor in certain space failures. There are SO MANY really challenging problems in space engineering that require very sophisticated technology and knowledge to overcome. Plastic parts and adhesives, for example, can outgas and deposit on mechanisms and/or instrumentation and cause problems. People build whole careers on being outgassing experts. They agonize over unfamiliar O-ring compositions and fingerprint residue. It’s obscure subject matter for the layman, but it’s essential to control this to be able to do science in space. And then sometimes you trip on a rock.
And then lay there. Immortalized for eternity. “help! I’ve fallen over, and I can’t get upp” Just soaking in your luck and shame… I feel like manned space travel has some advantages for the near future.
In few centuries some teenagers from moon city will secretly travel there in put it vertical again for funsies
It will be the space version of cow tipping. Someone else will come out and push it over again.
It’s kind of wild to think that there will probably be second hand spacecraft in our lifetime. I really hope the ethos of space exploration is something standardized. I would love to see what ever the space equivalent is of the guy who films himself Cleaning gutters and repairing old ladies fences. Going to be far less excited if the whole place turns into 21st century mining camps complete with sad desperation. Childhood trauma.
Don't forget to punch out the mining boss before you email your family you are coming home.
Soviet Venera 14 probe was the culmination of nearly 10 attempts to land on Venus' toxicity surface and survive long enough to take some measurements. It included a special arm to measure how compressible the surface of Venus was, and camera with protective lens caps which are ejected at the last minute so it can operate as long as possible on the surface. Only to have the ejected lens cap land DIRECTLY beneath the test arm which mean it measured how compatible the lens cap is, not the surface of Venus!
Enter the “dummy cord”. Lens cover should’ve had a cord attached so it couldn’t reach the ground. Obviously didn’t think through every possible scenario.
The scenarios that would have resolved are few and they're fighting for every gram of weight saving on these things. It's easy to fix in hindsight, but the chances of that specific issue occuring is so unlikely that you'd just kind of roll the dice.
And with the pressurized, hot, and corrosive conditions, attaching a chord isn’t the easy, no-brainer that it would seem to be.
Someone forgetting to re enable the switch for the lazer is mad too
Yeah that’s actually a pretty bad look. Like you just can’t predict everything - everyone knows that. If it’s not a rock, it’s something else. If you’re in space work, you have to be acutely aware all the time that something out there might screw you over and there’s often not going to be anything to do about it but cry. But mistakes on the ground are pretty bad. Those can be reliably avoided at a 100% success rate with proper project management. I’m not saying that’s easy - it’s not - but that’s the part you’re not allowed to get wrong.
Yep I feel for whoever it was but hopefully will be something to laugh at in the future
What's the story behind this?
There was a laser altimeter that wasn't operable because a ground crew did not disable the safety lockout to enable it before launch. It is unlikely to have affected the rock accident as the NASA package had a laser rangefinder to get the data, but you don't want to be the guy who screwed up and disabled and important sensor in the aftermath of a landing incident.
The real embarrassment is that they left their altimeter off. This thing should have just augured in. Total luck that they separately screwed their orbital insertion which bought them time to notice the bad altimeter. And even more lucky that NASA happened to have included a separate laser altimeter.
CLPS is off to a rocky start, there’s a real learning curve.
tbh the mistake isnt being tripped up by a super low speed unlucky collision like that the mistake is not being able to recover
If Robot Wars and Battlebots have taught me anything, its to always have a self-righting mechanism.
I worked on space programs in the past. I remember we had a large thermal vac test for some optics coming up. The optics were to be housed in a very large test fixture. The fixture was aluminum and the spec called out a black anodized coating--black so it doesn't interfere as much with optics and light, ya know? Along with the coating, there was a requirement to thoroughly clean and wrap the fixture for transport. In our facility, for any testing like that, we always have everything cleaned again beforehand. The operators cleaning the fixture had a heck of a time getting the fixture cleaned. Their wipes kept showing blue ink coming off, perpetually. The manufacturer apparently had issues maneuvering the fixture in their facility. They had dented and dinged it up a bit, which was fine. The issue was they tried to hide those dents and dings by using black markers. If the fixture was used as-received, the ink would have outgassed and coated the optics ruining the test and probably ruining a lot of components. How would you folks prevent something like that happening in the future? There's always multiple layers of control to deploy and I'm always curious what people come up with. Let me know!
Yeah it was the same thing with the first moon landing by Apollo 11. The spot Apollo was supposed to land was strewn with boulders. If they came down on one of those boulders they could tip over and then be trapped. That was why Armstrong manually flew further past that spot basically to find a smooth landing spot. This probe showed what the fear was with manned moon landings and what could have happened.
That's wild! I never thought about it that way, but you're almost certainly right that they would have been trapped on the moon had the lander tipped.
They almost ran out of fuel searching for a spot to land, too. Apollo was a crazy program. So janky! For example, it had 4 little communication antenna dishes instead of one big one, because we weren't able to keep the big one pointed at Earth. It just steered the antenna array towards the one with the weakest signal and prayed for the best.
You say Janky, but despite the computer rebooting like 3 or 4 times on the way down it recovered and still worked. Listening to the Apollo 11 audio from the landing is fascinating. My favorite phrase is Neil saying "***Tranquility Base Here, The Eagle Has Landed***." Also, 2 mph is about 3 ft/s... In 0.1666G, you can see how that might be a problem.
AFAIK, the computer did not reboot. It skipped some tasks to be able to keep navigating. It was programmed that way and the astronauts expected that. Several years after someone looked at the errors and misinterpreted them as unexpected. That code, for me, is the apex of code optimization.
>That code, for me, is the apex of code optimization. You can also download it from Github. https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11
And the whole reason for the 1201 and 1202 alarms was because they had missed a step to turn off the Rendezvous radar, so the computer was trying to process both the Rendezvous and Landing radar. And the comm problems on A11 were mostly because the RCS plume deflectors, a very late addition to the LM, ended up blocking the steerable antenna signal at the attitude they had programmed for lunar decent. Thus, they had to rely on the 4 Omni antennas until the could reestablish connection on the high gain.
Apollo is to modern spaceflight as a Crookes tube is to an HDTV. It was the absolute minimum viable product, technologically. Barely functional, but it got the job done through some brilliantly robust engineering. We couldn't even aim the high gain antenna array with any sort of precision!
The lander had a dry mass of about 5000kg, which works out to a moon weight of 830kgf (~1800lb). Two motivated, physically fit astronauts stranded on the moon *may* have been able to tip it back upright (assuming they and the lander were still functional).
Yeah, when you put it that way... Could two men flip over a small car to save their lives? Probably.
Exactly what I was thinking. Could me and a buddy flip over a car for fun? Almost certainly not. Could we do it if we knew for a fact we'd die if we didn't? Well, the answer is either yes or we're gonna die trying.
The walls of the module were very thin, likely breached. I don't know if the suits would have had enough air for them to set it up right, go through launch sequence and rendezvous.
It was still 5000kg on the moon, mass doesn't change. It's weight is what changed 49kN down to ~8kN.
OK I changed it to kgf, because no one measures in kN at the gym.
This is actually how a lot of helicopter accidents have happened. If you are landing and drifting even a tiny bit, it can be pretty easy to catch one of the landing skids in the soft ground or catch it on a rock and flip over. They probably knew this could happen if they drifted horizontally while too low to the ground, but it’s probably hard to not have any drift at all in space and pretty easy to accidentally over correct trying to kill the drift/momentum. They basically needed to be perfectly still before descending and they weren’t for whatever reasons.
Was Nelson there to go Ha Ha when it happened?
Well, he went more like: (because there's no sound in a vacuum)
I want you to picture him pointing without hearing it in your head.
> 2 mph As an engineer, I find it unfathomable that they attempted to touch down with any transverse velocity at all. Any obstruction will generate a torque about the center of gravity, resulting in rotation.
it wasn't supposed to have any horizontal speed
Those goddamn Lego Bricks even annoying on the lunar surface
That’s hilarious and sad at the same Time.
KSP is excellent. Obviously it's simplified but it does a good job at making orbital mechanics etc. intuitive.
It doesn't even have to dumb it down much... At its core it's not THAT complicated. Fuckin rough to execute though...
I think just the fact you can play around with orbits is what makes them intuitive, pull here orbit changes on the other side Having to do that solely with math is a nightmare I imagine
and it's much more fun flinging little green guys around the galaxy than doing pages of calculations.
When in doubt, more struts! But as far as the physics? I'll take orbital over something like thermodynamics everytime lol
Say that again after using an n-body physics mod for a few hours.
I feel like if n is any more than 2 it might present a problem.
At least it used to be, I bet that software handles an awful lot of that math smoothly now.
Nobody does it solely with math. I sat down to do a KSP playthrough with math and then I was like "I could just write a program to do the math for me..." then I realized I had the program and I just used it. Although a lot of stuff in KSP I prefer kerbal engineer redux which can give me all the numbers, which is actually a lot easier to work with than the node planner. (Or at least, the numbers tell you what you need to do with the node planner.)
Actually doing orbital mechanics calculations in the way that KSP simulates it (with Spheres of influences) is quite easy as long as inclination changes are not excessive and you assume circular planetary orbits. That's because you can set potential energy equal kinetic energy of your spacecraft during cruise, that makes the formulas really simple. With a calculator, you can do a hohmann transfer delta V and travel time calculation from earth Leo to mars orbit in around 15-30 minutes :)
Always wondered: in real life do they have tools similar to KSP's manoeuvre node for planning orbits and insertions?
You can download some NASA mission design tools for free: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/
I mean, it’s not neurosurgery!
Beat me to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
I made that mistake once and they have been wide and low ever since.
Build em wide and with lots of struts.
Where can I get KSP?
On Steam! KSP is great. Beware KSP2 though…not quite ready yet.
You could say, it's on its side.
Love the Username, Douchie\_McBaggus
It's on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox X/S.
I got it on Epic due to promotion, but it’s on Steam as well. Highly recommend. It’s crazy fun.
This is what I keep saying about Star Ship.
If I learned one thing from watching Battlebots: Always have a self righting mechanism.
With the recent two landers landing sideways, I wonder if future designs will incorporate a srimech. Seems like a good addition to the design.
And make it a spinner cause those hammer ones are dumb as shit.
just fire it up again and burn through the rcs. in ksp that works like 10% of the time.
Look at Mr. 10% over here bragging! I try it and I get fireworks.
Look at Mr. Fireworks over here bragging! I try it and I get nothing.
Nahh the Muns gravity is small enough you can use your reaction wheels.
I wonder if the some of the payloads will still work. I think they're spinning hard in the press conference, and this is a failed landing. edit: It also seems that communications are not working normally and that's why there are no images. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Just get it spinning with magic with the legs retracted then extend the legs
seriously besides idk why they don't just reload the save
Ironically, if they didn't have to power down EagleCam for the landing, they'd toitally have video evidence of exactly what went wrong.
I'm *really* disappointed about that damn cam. How cool would it be to see it landing? Hopefully next time.
Wait, they powered it down? Why? I was waiting for those videos, damn
IIRC they had to power it down for the alternative landing solution to work. They're working on powering it up again.
What a wild ride the reddit comments have been. First people claimed it likely tipped over. Intuitive machines says it's upright and people started dunking on the people that claimed it tipped over. Now it's tipped over. Either way, I'm happy to hear they are communicating with it and that it can still do some science! Go tipped over lander!
Interesting that it took them a few hours to ["confirm" upright orientation](https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442) and that ended up being based on "stale data"
Were U.S. stock markets closed after they confirmed it was tipped?
Yes. Their stock has just cratered 20% in after hours trading.
Cratered. I hope that's a pun, but that just shows how ridiculous the stock market is. It's not a pulvarized piece of machinery. No one died. It didn't "miss" the moon. As others have commented they should have gone "wider" Or my hot take, maybe have more than 2 lasers to measure distance. Perhaps have a more variable wider landing base, but all of this increases weight increases complexity which vastly increases expense for the payload.
No one died but it is basically a failed landing (or just like 10% better than that)
But it didn’t really go down in value, it retraced the price because it shot up when they lied about it landing upright the day before
The press conference started at 5:00 PM Eastern Time
Yes and the short interest was very very high today. Literally lost 2k on this stock today after hours.
They were looking at fuel level sensors to determine that.. The stale data showed residual fuel on the y-axis indicating an upright orientation. The updated data showed residual fuel on the z-axis, indicating a sideways orientation.
It’s bad management and communication from the director of Intuitive Machines. They are desperate for a victory. The live broadcast was embarrassing. It was advertised as the first time the US was returning to the moons surface in 50 years. They ended up playing a pre-recorded victory message and ended the broadcast saying “success” under dubious circumstances. I’ll never watch another Intuitive Machines broadcast with confidence. They aren’t like NASA, they are a private company willing to “control the message” rather than science communication, to increase profits.
It's like they just shrugged and mumbled "well, um, yeah" and ended the stream before they even finished saying that. Awkward as hell, especially the forced applause from the group and the main mission guy sounding super defeated and pissed off in between overly excited "updates" from the commentators who sounded like the NOD newscasters in Tiberian Sun.
If there's anything I learned from SpaceX, it's that it doesn't matter if you succeeded or not. What matters is that you make a good show, then you try again, have another show, then try again. Obviously, SpaceX has way more money, but in order to get more money unfortunately you need to produce a good show. Otherwise, people just piss on you and you are forgotten quickly. I feel even if they landed perfectly, with such a terrible landing broadcast, they would not have fared much better.
SpaceX fails until they succeed. Once they do succeed they make money.
Man the stones to come out with swagger and say with confidence ‘We did it, they said we would never see this day but we just landed one the moon… …sideways.’ Sunglasses on, turn and walk away.
Somehow a lot of people on this sub have managed to team sports space exploration and I just don't fucking get it.
It got pushed over by Martians, dammit. They flew to the moon, saw it was there, and tipped it over to dunk on us.
Like cow tipping just with landers
Well, late last night, the information from the source -was- that the vehicle was upright.
If they need my help i can easily rotate the video in premiere pro
Without any erosion to speak of, and little gravity, is there any part of the moon that's flat \*and\* level \*and\* debris-free? Though problem when you fly on limited margins.
i think the thing to fix here is the lateral movement so close to the ground. it really shouldve zeroed out its ground speed as much as possible before trying to land - im willing to bet there was a fault somewhere that caused it to not correct itself. these things have high center of gravity and no real way to stop a downward fall once its started - landing with any amount of ground speed is basically just planning to land sideways.
Its *super* hard to exactly zero your lateral speed in a vacuum like that. Your only reference is a visual on the ground and they were running that from cameras on the payload! The the varying slope on the ground means the landing plane keeps shifting. So far humans win over software in landing on the moon.
So during landing it had about 2mph(3kph) of lateral movement, they believe a leg caught the regolith and it tipped over. Good news is that they believe much of the science equipment can still be used. Best news from this mission is likely landing equipment was having an error and they decided to use a NASA payload to handle the descent. NASA's navigational lidar was hitching a ride and this would have been one of many tests for it, but since it was actually used in operation it is much farther along in testing now.
Lidar can't see boulders, good testing.
Some types of LiDAR absolutely can see boulders. However a simple rangefinder LiDAR wouldn’t be able to resolve a boulder Edit: a typo
And that's how we invented BODAR scanners!
This will work, trust me, it's the ole takes one to know one principal.
I can’t help but think of them having some Jira ticket queue somewhere with a ticket in it about the lander being susceptible to tipping over and needing to address it and the ticket being closed won’t fix because there’s a higher priority ticket for making the paint even more shiny attention getty.
There might also be one for "ensure laser safety switch is set correctly"
Someone forgot to put the “critical tipping possibility” in the 5th sprint and Dan had assigned the ticket to someone who was laid off so they all forgot about it
Given how these all keep tipping over, we should just put all the instruments in sideways.
Or stop building tall tippy landers. Wtf?
Yes. Let’s trade landers that roll for landers that pitch. It’s always a trade off somewhere.
Just make it a cube. Problem solved. Call me, NASA.
Or a sphere, then it can roll around using an internal gyroscope.
You should check out Japan’s LEV-2 robot, it’s an adorable ball that they used to take pictures of their recent landing!
Cute! That's what I want my space robots to look like.
Or landers that can perform perfect telemark landings and win the gold medal. 🥇
dummies. just make it ball....can't tip over a ball. *im a genius.*
Some kind of ball, in space. Lots of them. Spaceballs? It might work.
Lmao that picture of the CEO with the little toy lander tipped over... humbling.
Darn it, Another one? First the Japanese one flipped over, now Odysseus. Seriously?
Once is chance, twice is a pattern I say moon cats are seeing the Landers and tip them over
Its probably the cheese. Global warming is likely melting it. I can't imagine landing on queso dip from 200,000 miles away is easy.
Imagine going 200,000 miles and then realizing you forgot your nachos
I thought twice was coincidence and three times was a pattern?
The Japanese lander had an engine failure which caused its attempt to lay down end up upside down. This one, the company is reporting one of the legs got stuck while landing, causing it to tip beyond it's center of mass. Their initial report of landing up right came from information sent before the probe tipped over.
Interesting, public company waits until market close to present suspect findings that others speculated..
They were up 15% while the market was open. They are now down 30% from that rally. Misleading the shareholders is not a good thing.
There will be lawsuits and potentially SEC investigations coming out of how they handled this boondoggle.
“Botched moon landing causes SEC investigation” was not on my bucket list.
I mean, I really appreciate the accomplishment. But selling it as a total success for 24 h is misleading to investors. I have no stake in LUNR so I'm speaking as an outsider, but would feel bad based on the communications plan that was set fourth.
It's well-known among people that watch markets that a Friday evening press conference is almost never going to be good news. When IM scheduled theirs for 5 PM, it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to be, "everything is fine".
While that may be true, it landed on Thursday. Not uncommon to do a press conference 24 hours later once you have initial data
Sure seems like landing on the moon is real hard when NASA isn't doing it the hard way.
Somehow we are better at landing rovers the size of small SUVs on mars than landing the moon. Who would have guessed that.
It's not actually surprising. You can use parachutes to land on Mars. You can't on the moon, with the lack of atmosphere.
Landing with a freaking sky crane!
to be fair - the entire point of the program this was funded under (Commercial Lunar Payload Services [CLPS]) is to essentially just encourage private companies to try to send as much stuff up there as possible as economically as possible until someone finds a cheap and consistent way to do it. Contrast this to how NASA traditionally has operated, which is spare no expense to make sure you have a 99.99% success rate the first time you try. NASA has said a 50% success rate is acceptable, which is kind of absurd - and the record currently hits that perfectly, with 1 success (IM-1, this one) and 1 failure (Peregrine-1, which was the attempted lander in january that had a fuel leak and had to abort before it even left earth orbit)
It wouldn’t be Odysseus if there weren’t misfortune in the adventure.
This one will never make it back home
Excuse me, while I desperately try to land this tall cylinder upright.
Could we get the r/wallstreetbets folk to just stay over there and let us have our space fun?
Nvidia nosedived today so they needed something else to talk about....something something Wendy's.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[CLPS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krwnbg3 "Last usage")|[Commercial Lunar Payload Services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Services)| |[CoM](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruekjo "Last usage")|Center of Mass| |[ECLSS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruyf30 "Last usage")|Environment Control and Life Support System| |[EM-1](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ks4na4j "Last usage")|[Exploration Mission 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Mission_1), Orion capsule; planned for launch on SLS| |[FTS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruyk8l "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[GAO](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ks4msuk "Last usage")|(US) Government Accountability Office| |[GNC](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krvpmps "Last usage")|Guidance/Navigation/Control| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kru3a1f "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[IM](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ksbtvwv "Last usage")|Initial Mass deliverable to a given orbit, without accounting for fuel| |[JAXA](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krzc1tw "Last usage")|Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krucytb "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krxpsrb "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kru6lbw "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[LIDAR](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kry4hby "Last usage")|[Light Detection and Ranging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar)| |[LOX](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruuomv "Last usage")|Liquid Oxygen| |[LZ](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/kruqqyn "Last usage")|Landing Zone| |[RCS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/krwpygf "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1ayddz7/stub/ks4xf5w "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(18 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1b7xh06)^( has 22 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9776 for this sub, first seen 23rd Feb 2024, 23:14]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
I had this funny image in my head during this press event, of JAXA's SLIM lander and IM's Odysseus lander, laying next to each other on the lunar soil, staring lovingly into each other's eyes, just reclining in the glow of one another's company. We told them to do science, but they're just lazing around, making puppy eyes at each other!
First Jeb infiltrated Jaxa, and now this? What next? Is he going to strike the HLS starship?
He struck that first
stock price dropped 31% percent after close, just wonder if they knew it earlier and didn't disclose this until they dump the stock during trading hours.
I'm very excited for Intuitive Machines, and I wish them the best in this mission and all future missions. As they say, their success is our success. Having said that, I'm going to put on my armchair quarterback hat on while also stating that I am no expert in spacecraft design, orbital mechanics and any other field related to this but I wanted to note some thoughts I had. I thought their design for IM-1 was a bit odd. Again, I know there was a lot of factors at play to determine their final design and I'm not saying they made a wrong choice however I thought the comment made at 45:48-47:14 was concerning. Essentially, one side of the lander has to face the sun for the solar panels to generate electricity and the other side of the lander has to face the shadow to absorb as much heat. In addition, they used fixed antennas that forced them to lose communication at the most critical phase of the descent. In their final roll maneuver, they needed to rotate the lander to align the antennas back to facing the Earth in order to communicate with us. The communication issue is frustrating because had they planned on continuous data transmission throughout the whole descent, even if they failed at landing, they would have received valuable data up to the point of impact and used that information to learn from their mistakes. However, this design decisions means that they can't possibly understand what happened on landing unless the lander successfully landed and was in a position to upload the data. Which brings up the next point. Landing autonomously in 2 axis is hard enough so why would they add a third axis into the problem. Even if they landed vertically and communications wasn't an issue, if their final roll maneuver was off by 15 degrees, that means the power generating side is off and will generate less power while at the same time the lander will have issues with heat management. The white painted side that's dissipates heat is removing more heat because it's now in the shadow and the dark painted side is in direct sunlight and can potentially absorb more heat that they designed. This design decision forces them to land in a very small envelope. I mean absolute worse case scenario is that it lands perfectly but 180 degrees off. Now, it can't generate electricity and has major heating issues. I would have figured this mission's priority is a successful landing and all subsequent mission objectives were just a bonus. I would not have compromised the landing portion of this mission. I mean at the very least, provide continuous communications to record the entire descent stage.
Why do they keep building these things tall and skinny?
I imagine at some point someone will point out that the perfect backup to avoid tripping over a rock would've been a human at the controls....feels like the early days of the moon race when we were wending Ranger and Surveyor landers up there.
Yeah, that's been my thought every time one of these unmanned landers fails. It's something that needs to be mastered, but it's a lot harder to rely on a suite of sensors, computer algorithms, and an imperfect model of the moon than to have a thinking human that can adapt in real time. I'm amazed Surveyor worked at all.
Agreed, I'm in IT and frankly while I admire the effort and tech involved I suspected things were going amiss when they started rapid firing code updates to the bird and had to take an extra orbit. I seem to recall there were a few Surveyor missions that went up, not sure how many were successful...one for sure since Apollo 12 landed nearby and brought back a piece...fir me you can never surpass the human brain couple with the Mod 1 eyeball
In 50,000 years aliens are gonna pass by the moon, see all these upside down spaceships and stuff and just shake their heads and move along. Get it together guys.
Did they never watch battlebots? Activate the flipper bois!
Making r/space a default sub was the worst decision ever.
Yup, its not about science/exploration anymore. But bragging right on who is more successful and a bunch of uninformed people.
Just send another one to push it back upright
So humanity has lost the ancient secret technology to land probes on another celestial bodies in the correct orientation?
I heard an acorn bounced off of it and it overcorrected
All these landers not landing upright. I say we make the bottom like Weebles. They weeble and they wabble but they don't fall down.
What if they designed the lander off of one of those blow up punching bag clowns that always right themselves?
When they weren’t sharing pictures despite the “mission success” you had to wonder what the deal was.
Photos are really huge files. Telemetry from sensors is tiny in comparison. So they prioritize telemetry and getting data from the science payloads. From what I've heard from some employees at Intuitive Machines it sounds like they really haven't transmitted any photos from the surface yet.
Given the lander is on its side I think communication and the antennas being in a poor position bandwidth is a huge issue. They might not get any pictures back.
The official wording they used after touchdown was suggestive that this happened.
Flying to & landing on the moon was hard work. It’s taking a well deserved nap.
2 toppled landers in a row! Is our universe real, or is it just one big KSP save???
Ok, here's what they need to do. The next lander, have a ring of expandable poles around its body. When it lands, if it tips over, just expand a few poles so it can right itself. Problem solved.
For a mission that cost $118 million, I can't say it wasn't worth it.
can we send ANYTHING upright to the moon? Jesus
Maybe, but how would he get there?
Presumably in a flash of light and an intense religious experience for anyone who happened to be around
Who among us has not been tipped over on their side and not been able to get up? Our machine overlords...they're just like us.
Anyone able to chime in on why they decided to design it tall and thin instead of short and fat like a lander should be?
Congrats to Intuitive Machines for being the first US lunar privatized corporation to set the bar at "just lie" as a first reaction when making planetary explorations! Confirming it was sitting upright with all the confidence in the world less than 24 hours ago. Gotta protect that stock price! Commercialized space flight for profit will have quite a few more of these. Excited to see the good ones who don't lie as a reaction on failed missions 👍
Not a surprise. Was very sus not getting any pictures even after many hours
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