[HN Gopher] Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon lan...
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Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt
Author : belter
Score : 123 points
Date : 2023-04-25 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Is there an actual commercial reason for landing on the moon?
| What was this lander going to do? It seems like a lot of missions
| from various companies and countries are trying to get to the
| moon and they're all crashing. Is it just a rite of passage for a
| space program? What is the point of this
| swader999 wrote:
| Mine cheese.
| snacktaster wrote:
| Yeah I'm curious too. It seems like if there was actually some
| commercial benefit to this then USA would be dropping rovers on
| the moon every week. But it's mostly lost interest now.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Can not be further from the truth:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-lunar-payload-services
|
| This mission itself is in preparation for future missions
| contracted by NASA
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you're a private company looking to build a mining base
| station, tourist hotel, or any other thing a private company
| might want to do, then it's best to get the kinks worked out
| by practicing with an unmanned lander a few times first
| uni_rule wrote:
| Acquire neat rocks to flex on lesser nations with
| walrus01 wrote:
| Bonus points if you attach some to plaques and give them away
| to various nations which then lose some of them.
| belter wrote:
| "Stolen and missing Moon rocks" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_and_missing_Moon_rocks
| walrus01 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_sample_displays
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_lunar_sample_disp
| lay
|
| Assuming it wasn't lost or stolen since 1970, I wonder
| what the Taliban is doing with its moon rock.
| belter wrote:
| The Wikipedia article is missing another case. A rock
| taken by Apollo 17 from Taurus-Littrow was gifted by
| Richard Nixon to Portugal in 1973. It was in exhibition
| at the Lisbon Planetarium but got stolen 11 July 1985.
|
| https://www.jn.pt/nacional/portugal-teve-uma-rocha-lunar-
| mas...
|
| So next time some suspicious character in Lisbon,
| proposes to sell you a piece of the Moon...it might be
| real.
| pseudostem wrote:
| Not my opinion - I saw a compelling video of some prof on
| reddit a few years ago. His argument went something like this:
| name the richest businessman from the time of Columbus/
| Amerigo. Or a very powerful politician/ socialite? Progress is
| a derivative of us pursuing the unknown. That is why we do what
| we do.
|
| Disclaimer: I've lost a lot of the language behind the original
| argument, but as a sceptic it did make a lot of sense to me at
| that time. And hopefully the meaning behind the original
| message has not been lost due to my bad phrasing.
| bombcar wrote:
| Then again many still remember "Queen Isabella of Spain".
| It's hard to predict what will be famous and remembered
| centuries from now - Musk could be entirely successful at all
| he wants and does and be remembered no more than by those
| obsessed with early earth history.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Helium-3
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| It was carrying two rovers, one from JAXA, the Japanese space
| agency, and the second from the UAE. This is the equiv of
| SpaceX launching a NASA satellite.
| graupel wrote:
| We were watching live and the control room went from completely
| excited to somber in about a one second period. Space is hard.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| [flagged]
| addisonl wrote:
| Are you implying there is some conspiracy here?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| To sibling: Your comment was more "dog-whistling a
| conspiracy theory Rorschach test" than skillful commentary.
| I'm not surprised it got flagged, as it lacked any
| meaningful content or insight.
|
| In general, you might want to leave it to others to
| evaluate the quality of your "commentary".
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| [flagged]
| walrus01 wrote:
| Did they have L/S-band telemetry right up until the last
| seconds?
| anotheryou wrote:
| not sure what these bands are but the simulation stopped
| getting live data quite a few seconds before planned
| touchdown.
| walrus01 wrote:
| omnidirectional (or not very strongly directional like an
| aimed x band parabolic antenna), low data rate in bps and
| intentionally narrow channel size, used for spacecraft
| command/control/telemetry somewhere between 1200 MHz and
| 2000 MHz.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Have they tried using Apollo 11-era technology? :)
| pakyr wrote:
| If you gave them an Apollo 11-era budget I'm sure they would
| have done better.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Beautiful images of Earth from the lander:
| https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1650506233575604227/ph...
| and
| https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1649707714447306753/ph...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| How is it that Earth on the Moon's horizon looks smaller than
| the Moon on Earth's horizon? When the moon is on the horizon on
| earth, it looks enormous (ie https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:
| fit:1400/1*oiA6GCepn7GthCt...)
| et-al wrote:
| It's a visual illusion dependent on the focal length of the
| lens being used and any foreground objects _that are on the
| studio backlot_.
| tomxor wrote:
| * * *
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Obligatory Sagan quote:
|
| > Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.
| On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever
| heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their
| lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of
| confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every
| hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and
| destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young
| couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child,
| inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt
| politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every
| saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a
| mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is why I do not understand people who would jump at the
| chance to live on a permanent Martian or Lunar colony.
| shagie wrote:
| I would direct you to another Sagan quote as part of
| Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist :
| https://vimeo.com/108650530
|
| For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has
| left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in
| villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road
| still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of
| childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance.
| This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by
| natural selection as an essential element in our survival.
| Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game--
| none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to
| predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of
| sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life,
| or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a
| restless few--drawn, by a craving they can hardly
| articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new
| worlds.
|
| Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all
| epochs and meridians: "I am tormented with an everlasting
| itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas..."
|
| Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet.
| But those other worlds-- promising untold opportunities--
| beckon.
|
| Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.
| estebank wrote:
| Thank you for incidentally reminding me of
| https://youtu.be/zSgiXGELjbc
| dmreedy wrote:
| The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
|
| Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think a lot of people don't appreciate just how
| completely shit space is.
| bombolo wrote:
| I remember an astronaut describing being in orbit as
| permanently being on an amusement park ride.
|
| I went like: "oh..."
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Wait until you hear about earth after the core gets cold.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'll try to wait but I bet the Earth's core is a bit more
| patient than me.
| brookst wrote:
| I think it's scheduled for 2pm PT next Thursday
| jwagenet wrote:
| Until the last couple centuries, traveling across the sea
| to an unknown land may have been just as remote.
| pc86 wrote:
| Because everyone assumes they'd be an explorer or visionary
| scientist when they'd most likely just be taking out the
| trash in a frozen desert.
| LuckySalamander wrote:
| The closest experience to what living in space that can
| be experienced on earth is living on a submarine. Working
| with advanced tech in an environment where everything is
| trying to kill you, logistics challenges to maintain
| operation, schedule completely dictated for you, etc. But
| ask many people who want to live on Mars if they would go
| on a long underway on a submarine, and they don't seem to
| excited by the idea. I don't think people really think
| about the day to day operations, but jump on the
| fame/historical significance being one of the settlers on
| the moon or mars.
| belter wrote:
| If you look carefully at Earth, as the image was taken during
| the eclipse, you see the shadow of the Moon on Earth.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_April_20,_202.
| ..
| dylan604 wrote:
| or is it the beginning of the nothing growing in size coming
| for Atreyu?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| How large are these craters on the moon?
|
| https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1650506233575604227/ph...
| teraflop wrote:
| Quick math:
|
| When viewed from the moon, the earth's diameter subtends an
| angle of about 0.033 radians. On the other hand, if the photo
| was taken from an orbital altitude of 100km, then the lunar
| horizon is about 600km away from the viewpoint (using
| Pythagoras' theorem).
|
| So at the horizon, a crater the same apparent size as the
| earth would be roughly 0.033 * 600 = 20 km across.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I am currently reading the gorgeous Folio Society edition of the
| A Man on the Moon The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew
| Chaikin (worth a buy from https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/a-man-
| on-the-moon.html if you a) like the topic and b) have 235.00).
|
| I just finished the book 1 which ends with well known Apollo 13
| disaster and the RCA of the explosion is that the liquid O2 tank
| for the fuel cell was intended for Apollo 10, but was removed for
| modifications, and during that was dropped about 5cm, a "minor
| jolt, but enough to damage the tube assembly used to fill and
| empty the tank". As part of testing - and under full, and capable
| supervision of NASA astronauts and mission control - the tank was
| filled and tested, and would refuse to drain fully due to the
| tube assembly being in the way. Alternative procedure to empty it
| was to heat it with the internal heater and have the liquid O2
| simply evaporate. BUT! The heater inside was originally spec'ed
| to use 28V, but was upgraded to 65V, and everything in it was
| redesigned to do so, EXCEPT the thermostat inside the tank
| itself. The thermostat was supposed to provide temperature
| control and shut the heating process off if temperatures exceed
| things. Well, during that ground draining operation the 65V fried
| the thermostat, and the temp gauge on the ground only went up to
| 85 degrees. The insides of the tank went up to a 1000, which
| cracked the insulation on the wires of the motor designed to stir
| the tank, and those arced while in transit to moon and boom, made
| that mission what it was.
|
| So yeah, space is hard. I am sure the mission people for the
| lander will do their design review and I look forward to their
| findings.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Maybe they should be focusing on building something robust enough
| to land or even crash on the moon's surface and keep transmitting
| for a while, then work on the cool rover payload after that. It's
| perplexing to me not that it failed, but that they don't (so far)
| have any idea why or how.
| sva_ wrote:
| German national/public broadcasting service ARD reported the
| lunar lander has successfully landed while they watched a
| rendered animation[0] (from the perspective of the surface of the
| moon!!). Can't make this shit up.
|
| 0. https://pr0gramm.com/top/5662958 (German)
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| I mean... I think that's a good quality landing animation.
| uwagar wrote:
| because it was plasma?
| beders wrote:
| It was heartbreaking to see the control room during the first few
| minutes after the landing.
|
| Imagine a project you've worked on for years going kaput and you
| won't even know why. None of these engineers will find sleep
| tonight.
|
| I hope some moon orbiter can take pics of the landing site soon.
| adastra22 wrote:
| According to the doppler telemetry analysis on Twitter, it
| entered free fall 90 seconds before loss of signal. So
| presumably the engine cut out and they have telemetry data to
| determine why. Most likely explanation: insufficient fuel.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| This was a commercial landing though. I guess its not there to
| do science or improve the human race.
|
| What was behind it?
| golergka wrote:
| Most of the things that have improved the human race have
| been done commercially, and those motivated by profit have
| done a hundredfold more for humanity than those who were
| motivated by idealism.
| opportune wrote:
| A commercial endeavor being able to land on the moon is an
| accomplishment in itself. That's how you go from proof of
| concept to economic viability
| ke88y wrote:
| _> That's how you go from proof of concept to economic
| viability_
|
| I don't think this is particularly coherent in this case.
| It's commercial, but there is no private sector customer.
|
| All of the customers are government scientific agencies.
| It's all still very much science and/or nation-state
| prestige-driven. What's more, it's unclear what the
| commercial case for lunar landing would be in the near
| term, where "near term" means "any reasonable expectation
| of return on capital that doesn't come from taxpayers".
| opportune wrote:
| That's a fair criticism, but one important distinction is
| that this develops infrastructure and expertise for
| purely economically/recreationally motivated projects
| down the line.
|
| As for economic motivations in the near term, a lot I can
| think of are indeed still based on public funds, but one
| important thing about commercial landing being viable is
| that those publically funded endeavors don't need to work
| the bureaucracy engine to get a government launch/can
| span governmental boundaries. If some US or UAE entity
| wants a telescope array on the moon, if they have the
| money for it, they could just pay for a commercial lunar
| lander. If the DOE wants to test he-3 mining they don't
| need to go through congress to get NASA to deliver their
| payload.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| It was a commercial craft carrying a payload from a few
| sources, including a rover from JAXA, the Japanese space
| agency, and a second rover built by the UAE.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Do the rovers at least still work?
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Things tend to stop working after a crash landing
| shmoe wrote:
| Most of the US fleet is now commercial as well, and they're
| doing plenty of science on NASA's behalf. This is the future.
| Or we'd be stuck with one SLS launch every decade instead.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| [flagged]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > you won't even know why
|
| Not necessarily. We've frequently been able to determine the
| cause of unmanned spacecraft failures via telemetry and/or
| post-failure investigation. For example,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter famously
| failed because NASA used metric and a vendor did not.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or another example, ESA's ExoMars lander cut its parachute
| and deployed itself 3.7 km above ground due to IMU
| saturation, thinking it was already landed.
|
| https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex.
| ..
| speedgoose wrote:
| Foot pound second is such a weird unit. How did that pass the
| quality controls?
|
| I also don't understand how one team of educated engineers
| could decide to use imperial units instead of metric units.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It's how literally all engineering in this country was done
| a single generation ago. When I studied mechanical
| engineering it was all units like slugs and foot-pound-
| second.
| ghaff wrote:
| As a former mechanical engineer, any calculations involving
| pounds in any form I pretty much always converted to metric
| and then back at the end if need-be. The trinity of pound-
| mass, pound-force, and slugs is incredibly easy to screw up
| --at least as a student.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| There were 2 other commercial landing that blacked out just
| before landing must be something they all didn't take care of or
| maybe nasa is holding out some secret info
| gregoriol wrote:
| Maybe it's very hard to get everything working together? A lot
| of spacecrafts have failed on various missions, not just moon,
| since the beginning of space exploration.
|
| This is not 1960s unlimited race budgets, this makes things
| harder.
| detrites wrote:
| Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times ...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| ...means landing must be one of the tricky parts. Just like
| how landing a plane is one of the tricky parts.
| detrites wrote:
| How many landings succeeded?
|
| Then do percent successes vs failures, broken down as
| government and commercial.
|
| Then ask why's only commercial landing the tricky part?
|
| It's not like these people are stupid, nor like they
| haven't had multiple decades to learn from plus the state
| of the art.
|
| Three in a row is as weird to me as if there were seven in
| a row. All only commercial, while govt landed fine.
|
| Would you think that odd too?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Only a certain number of launches will be successful.
| Only a certain number of landings will be successful.
| Sometimes you just hit a Poisson distribution.
| dmreedy wrote:
| https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/beyond_earth_detail.h
| tml
|
| this is a neat book on the history of unmanned
| spaceflight.
|
| Take a look and see how long it took to get a probe into
| orbit. Into someone else's orbit. All that before they
| even tried landing anywhere
|
| For moon landings, sourced from wikipedia[0] but you can
| certainly find the information in the aformentioned book:
|
| > Luna 15, Luna 18, and Luna 23 all crashed [into the
| moon] on landing; and the U.S. Surveyor 4 lost all radio
| contact only moments before its landing.
|
| Finally, here's a list of rocket launch failures in 2022
|
| https://www.space.com/12-biggest-rocket-failures-2022
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing
| Waterluvian wrote:
| And if we're approaching this from a "it's a conspiracy!"
| point of view, we then must also consider all the crashes
| they aren't telling us about. ;)
| bagels wrote:
| ... they're crashing on purpose? What are you trying to
| imply?
| malfist wrote:
| Not everything is a conspiracy
| Aperocky wrote:
| > just before landing
|
| I would characterize it as failing during the landing process,
| or lithobraking if you will.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Three failed commercial landers now. Are the moon Nazis shooting
| them down on approach? /s
| gpderetta wrote:
| There is no moon, it is just a giant cardboard soundstage in
| orbit. The lander just felt behind it.
| orangepurple wrote:
| [flagged]
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