[HN Gopher] Firefly 'Blue Ghost' lunar lander touches down on th...
___________________________________________________________________
Firefly 'Blue Ghost' lunar lander touches down on the moon
Author : complexpass
Score : 733 points
Date : 2025-03-02 09:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| complexpass wrote:
| More info:
|
| - https://x.com/Firefly_Space/status/1896127381670367703
|
| - https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/touchdown-carrying-nasa-sc...
| ColinWright wrote:
| More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224107
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224107 - March 2025 (40
| comments)
|
| _Blue Ghost Moon landing Sunday 3:30am EST using Earth GPS
| lock 238000 miles away_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43222015 - March 2025 (3
| comments)
|
| _Nyx Space and Rust Power Firefly 's Blue Ghost Lunar Landing_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43217811 - March 2025 (1
| comment)
| hakaneskici wrote:
| Congrats to the FireFly team, this is an amazing achievement.
|
| Video of the earth rising from the horizon reminded me of Carl
| Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech.
|
| Any opensource libraries in that satellite's tech stack will now
| get to brag about "our code running on the moon" :) I wonder if
| FireFly team has used AI coding tools in any part of their
| development process.
| apavlo wrote:
| > Any opensource libraries in that satellite's tech stack will
| now get to brag about "our code running on the moon" :)
|
| A safe bet would be that SQLite is on there. It's already in
| airplanes / satellites.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Docker is
| nothrowaways wrote:
| "Firefly is literally and figuratively over the Moon,"
| consumer451 wrote:
| I really like "Our Blue Ghost lunar lander now has a permanent
| home on the lunar surface..."
|
| It's rare that usage of word "permanent" has this close to an
| accurate meaning. Complete development of the moon's surface
| aside, what are the factors what will destroy it? Solar and
| cosmic radiation? What timescale are we talking about here?
| dmurray wrote:
| Overwhelmingly likely to be human interference, even without
| "complete development of the moon's surface".
|
| Perhaps somebody thinks it would make a good museum piece
| back on Earth, or some bored spacefaring teen vandals destroy
| it for the lulz, or religious norms will change and those in
| power will blow it up to show their rejection of idols of a
| now forbidden age.
|
| I'd give it hundreds of years, but not thousands.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The're a surprisingly high flux of micrometeoroid impacts at
| the lunar surface. Most of these are too small to do much
| damage, but there will probably be measurable erosion in
| centuries and genuine damage within about 1 million years.
| The timeline for it to be destroyed/completely broken down is
| much longer.
|
| For context, there's roughly a 50% chance of an astronaut
| being hit by a micrometeoroid large enough to kill them every
| 1.3 million years of time spent on the moon's surface.
| There's roughly a 50% chance of a square meter of the moon
| being hit by a micrometeoroid equavalent to 3 kg on TNT in a
| billion years.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Thank you for seeing through my sloppy writing, and
| identifying what I was getting at. I should have have said
| "aside from human intervention."
|
| So, aside from the human intervention, and assuming that
| the materials can generally withstand radiation... let's
| say it's 6 sq meters, [0] I know this is not exactly how it
| works, but if LLMs[1] and my own lacking skills at
| mathematics are accurate, then ~70 million years? That
| sounds so much more "permanent" than anything on Earth.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Machines_Nova-C
|
| [1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67c51a06-51e8-8012-9f21-c9a42
| 8551d... (it would be amazing if someone could verify this
| math and logic, I cannot)
| pixl97 wrote:
| Water in concert with temperature flux is really
| destructive causing a massive amount of erosion here on
| Earth.
|
| With that said thermal cycles on the moon are very large,
| with a range up to 450F. That much thermal expansion and
| contraction over time is going to be hard on anything not
| shielded under some soil.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I wonder what a structure of metal(aluminum?) would look
| like after hundreds of thousands of 14-day 450F cycles.
|
| How many cycles would it take to turn into a mound? Would
| a coherent mound still count as "existing?"
| pixl97 wrote:
| Aluminum might be one of the worst metals to use in an
| application like this.
|
| https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-
| racing/technical-fa...
|
| >Aluminum does not have a distinct fatigue or endurance
| limit, so its S-N graph curves down from the upper left
| to the right and continues to curve down lower and lower
| toward the lower right corner of the graph. This
| illustrates that it will eventually fail even from low
| stress applications, given enough of them.
|
| Steel/titanium, if its fatigue tolerance is in the
| temperature range, would last much longer if not near
| indefinably until it came to impacts.
| nine_k wrote:
| One person's rubbish is another's priceless artefact.
|
| Landed craft on the moon often carry reflectors that help
| laser location of the Moon.
|
| Spacecraft that have spent decades the Moon's surface are
| also going to give valuable clues about the behavior of their
| materials in these conditions, if / when someone collects and
| inspects them. Could save quite a bit of uncertainty for a
| larger project on the Moon.
|
| Also, isn't basically everything you see on the moon some
| kind of debris? There are no apparent structures there
| created by complex, interesting processes, such as life, or
| by interesting geological processes. The spacecraft would be
| an aesthetical center of the area :)
| schneems wrote:
| > Cedar Park, Texas
|
| For those who don't live in Texas, many people who live in Cedar
| Park would say they are from Austin. It's a suburb to the North.
| I know an engineer from Firefly from years ago. She was always
| fascinating to talk to. I also sold my MK3s+ 3D printer to a
| firefly employee via Craigslist a few years ago.
|
| I'm glad they're having some success.
| buerkle wrote:
| And they do all their manufacturing in Briggs, TX about 30
| minutes north of their HQ.
| tombert wrote:
| Hell yeah!
|
| It would be very cool if we are able to properly colonize the
| moon in my lifetime. Even if we don't have humans living there
| like in Futurama (as cool as that would be), it would be
| unbelievably cool if we have constant back-and-forth trips to the
| moon.
|
| Or we could just blow it up, which might be fun in its own right:
| https://youtu.be/GTJ3LIA5LmA
| consumer451 wrote:
| As far as flights of fancy regarding the moon, I enjoyed
| Randall Munroe's "What if we put a pool on the moon" thought
| experiment. I _would_ enjoy the experience of propelling myself
| out of the water like a dolphin!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIBBj6KR-Y
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Wouldn't you be cooked immediately?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There is no reason for humans to ever return to the moon. The
| cost and risks are not justified. Drones and robots can do
| anything that needs to be done. They don't need to breathe,
| they don't need to sleep, or eat.
| tombert wrote:
| I think it would be cool, and I don't know that I care if
| there's a "reason" to do it other than "human achievement".
|
| I mean, there wasn't really a "reason" to go to the moon in
| the 60's either. I think I more or less agree with JFK on
| this:
|
| "Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory,
| who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to
| climb it. He said, 'Because it is there'. Well, space is
| there, and we're going to climb it"
|
| I could try and find a lot of justifications about medical
| research or something, and those might be cool, but it would
| be dishonest if I pitched those as a "reason" to go, because
| I would want us to return even if those reasons weren't
| there.
| bruce511 wrote:
| When Mallory climbed on Everest (and possibly summited) it
| was a big deal because it had never been done. When Hilary
| and Tenzing did it, it pushed human achievement forward.
|
| Today people still do it, but it means nothing to anyone
| other than those people.
|
| Going to the moon in the 60s was an impressive feat. It
| pushed the boundary forward. But that's all it did. There's
| literally nothing of value there.
|
| Sure most of the people who saw that are dead, or will be
| in the next 20 years. So it will seem "cool" to the next
| generation. But selling "cool" to a congressional
| appropriations committee is a tough sell.
|
| We aren't gonna colonize the moon (or indeed mars) because
| frankly it would be too expensive, and there's no point.
| There literally is nothing to gain from a colony in either
| place, and there's no way to fund it (and no reason to fund
| it.)
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| > There's literally nothing of value there.
|
| ISRU water to hydrolox to reduce amount of uplift from
| earth's gravity well?
| bluGill wrote:
| But you have to get a lot of other supplies to the moon
| to make use of that. Space travel will never be useful
| enough to pull that off. A self sustaining colony on mars
| is just barely possible (but I'm not sure if it is worth
| it), no place else in space will ever be colonized. The
| laws of physics are too harsh - only a "generation" ship
| could even leave our solar system (well you could put a
| child on something to leave and come back in old age
| without generations, but this would be pointless and
| unethical), and we have no reason to think those would
| last long enough to make the nearest star, much less one
| with habitable planets (which we might need to
| terraform).
|
| The moon lacks too much to be self sustainable. Mars is a
| stretch: it is likely someone will reply that mars isn't
| possible and they will have good points, so while I have
| concluded it is just possible I can see the points of
| those who think it is not.
| xoxxala wrote:
| If you haven't heard it, Public Service Broadcasting used
| the JFK speech in their song "The Race for Space" from the
| album of the same name. If you're even partially a space
| nerd, it's worth a listen. Very inspirational and the final
| album track is relevant to todays news.
|
| https://youtu.be/4HZAc7EKFJQ
| Salgat wrote:
| Robotics is unfortunately not there yet, unless we plan to
| send everything there fully assembled with zero maintenance
| ever. Unless you mean purely for basic exploration.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| But if we are to go more interesting places... shouldn't we
| have down breathing, eating, and sleeping on the moon so well
| that it isn't much of a cost or a risk? It's inherently a
| good testing ground for things we need to do reliably much
| further later.
|
| Imagine if we never built ISS because putting a space station
| in Earth's orbit was a solved problem...
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Not that anyone's offering me the choice of course but I'm
| happy to leave it to the robots. Lunar dust gives me the
| creeps.
|
| Imagine stepping outside into a world where absolutely
| everything is coated in dark gray copy toner that gets
| ingrained into all that touches it.
|
| I don't think I could do it due to the anxiety.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm too tall and I don't have twenty PhDs so I don't think
| "astronaut" is really on the table for me, but I would
| absolutely go to the moon if I had the opportunity.
|
| The dust would give me some anxiety too but I think it
| would be worth it.
| kragen wrote:
| Extremely abrasive toner that smells like gunsmoke.
| Aachen wrote:
| Tell that to the people of deadliest catch and dirty jobs: we
| have robots now that can do everything we want to without
| needing to sleep or eat! Sadly, we're not using them because
| they don't exist yet...
| alistairSH wrote:
| They probably could exist, they'd simply be more expensive
| than putting a human on a boat.
|
| The relative costs are flipped for putting a human on
| Mars/moon - the robot is cheaper.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| As a factorio player, once they added remote operation of
| robots to the game, I never travel back to a planet after
| I've got it set up. If they made it so I could land a robot,
| I'd never go in the first place.
| blast wrote:
| "I've been saying we should do this for years. I walked on the
| moon. Did a pushup, ate an egg on it. What else can you do with
| it?"
|
| Mr Show has held up well, maybe even gotten better with time.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Fun fact, both the US and the Soviet Union had plans to nuke
| the moon in the 50s. US Project A119 and Soviet Project E-4.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Those were direct results of "We just invented a hammer that
| is great at causing the apocalypse and are desperately
| looking for nails that don't cause the apocalypse."
|
| Other options include but are not limited to: Digging massive
| rivers/canals. Digging a massive harbor. Digging a large
| hole. Digging through some mountains. Digging holes to store
| toxic waste.
|
| Truly a revolutionary pair of projects.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| I'd like to see us colonize Antartica with a self sufficient
| colony first. Seems like a much cheaper testbed.
| floxy wrote:
| MoonBall is a great idea by HN's dr_dshiv for getting
| commercial funding for sports on the moon:
|
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5Vtx...
| sfjailbird wrote:
| Here are the pictures it has taken so far:
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/albums/7217772031...
|
| There's also a cool lunar flyover video taken during final
| deorbit.
| sva_ wrote:
| Flickr? Moon landing? What year is it?
| consumer451 wrote:
| This is an interesting tangent. Is it Flickr's copyright
| rules that make it attractive? Or, something else? Lack of
| existing competitors? Not associated with a social media
| account?
| chefandy wrote:
| If you're going to post albums of high-res photographs on
| the internet... why not Flickr?
| caycep wrote:
| yea, flickr has always been reliable for this sort of
| thing
| butlike wrote:
| It's a valid question about ToS, and one I'm not sure of.
| chefandy wrote:
| Yeah I did a brief scan and a brief search for opinions
| on their practices when I saw the comment I initially
| replied to and didn't find anything concerning. Doesn't
| mean there isn't anything, but it either wasn't serious
| enough to be surfaced, or nobody more knowledgeable than
| me has looked.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Because its continued existence has been in grave doubt
| for years?
|
| I was a heavy Flickr user, but when Yahoo sold it to
| SmugMug in 2018, I basically assumed it was going to be
| either merged out of distinct existence or shuttered. I
| downloaded an archive of all my stuff and stopped using
| it altogether. Because what's the point of using a
| platform that's so obviously no longer viable...was my
| thinking at the time. I would never have guessed it would
| remain alive this long but it's still not anything I
| would want to invest time in or rely on anymore.
| sen wrote:
| Flickr has had a resurgence of popularity among photographers
| since yahoo sold it. It's easily the best "professional"
| photo hosting site currently.
| duxup wrote:
| The videos are amazing
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/54353240540/in/al...
| Daub wrote:
| They are indeed, but the soundtrack could be better.
| mclau156 wrote:
| need a sense of scale in that video
| hibernator149 wrote:
| That was my favorite one too. Probably because it is
| basically Outer Wilds in real life.
| LastTrain wrote:
| There are already commenters claiming it is fake SMH
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Can't wait to see the VFX breakdown /s
| samstave wrote:
| Yeah, CUDAs to the Team!
| decimalenough wrote:
| It's fascinating how the pictures have that "Apollo moon
| landing" look. I'd always assumed that a huge part of this was
| just 1960s technology (film not digital etc), but apparently
| it's actually coming from the literally unearthly lighting
| conditions of being on the Moon.
| gwarrr wrote:
| I am no expert, but to my knowledge the space flight tech
| evolves very slowly, if at all. One reason for that is that
| modern tech is supposedly too sensitive to radiation. So you
| want to balance what's worthwhile to upgrade, and fancy
| videos are probably low on that list.
| decimalenough wrote:
| The Apollo astronauts used Hasselblads for still
| photography. I'm pretty sure Firefly is not sending back
| rolls of 6x6 film.
| gwarrr wrote:
| What is the point? Are we comparing coconuts and apples?
| decimalenough wrote:
| Well, you were the one telling me "space tech evolves
| slowly", when Apollo was taking their pictures with a
| film coconut, Firefly is using a digital apple, and yet
| the output still looks eerily similar.
| gwarrr wrote:
| you are talking about stills. still don't know what the
| actual tech difference is.
| nkoren wrote:
| Here's what Apollo used:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_photography
|
| Here's what Firefly uses:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_photography
|
| Hopefully you can see that from a raw tech level, there's
| practically no overlap between those things at all. The
| technology has moved on _completely_.
| varjag wrote:
| Last Apollo landing was 53 years ago...
| pwnOrbitals wrote:
| Space engineer here, not exactly true, esp for non-critical
| systems. Check out the "Careful COTS" paper by Doug
| Sinclair
| gwarrr wrote:
| The paper is 12 years old. If there haven't been other
| methods to evaluate modern commercial tech, then it's an
| actual proof of tech evolving slowly due to radiation
| concerns. Even the process pointed out in the paper
| requires resources, but it just got a bit faster in the
| last years.
|
| Apart from that, adding new components is also costly.
| You just don't order a random megapixel camera from
| alibaba and slam it on your 1bn space project.
|
| Considering I made clear that i am no expert and my
| claims were under that context your response was simply
| arrogant and not helpful.
| gwarrr wrote:
| would be happy if someone would explain or differentiate
| "not exactly true"
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Well it's either that or the tin foil hat people will say
| they just rented the OG soundstage.
|
| Nvidia did a great presentation about the lighting for the
| original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVP6zDZN7I
| mrandish wrote:
| Once SpaceX gets Starship launching weekly, it'll probably
| be cheaper to send a bot with a camera to the moon than to
| rent a sound stage and build a big set!
| evo_9 wrote:
| Oh, how dare you praise Musk indirectly! Haven't you
| heard, that's forbidden on HN now.
| codelion wrote:
| that's a great point about the lighting... it really does
| contribute to that distinctive look. i've also read that the
| lack of atmosphere on the moon sharpens the shadows and
| increases the contrast, which probably adds to that effect.
| ngneer wrote:
| The moon has a very thin atmosphere, or at least so the
| mission science reporters said.
| Tagbert wrote:
| While it is measurable, it is so thin as to be irrelevant
| for most considerations including impact on photography.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| > 1960s technology
|
| Still photography has gotten more convenient since then, but
| in the agreeable lighting and atmospheric conditions one
| would encounter while taking a vacation snap outside at noon
| _Cynthian_ time, image quality now isn 't better than then*
|
| *Unless you're willing to spend $10,000+
| close04 wrote:
| > *Unless you're willing to spend $10,000+
|
| OP is comparing photography tech that made it to the Moon,
| so not cheap tech. The "special" way the photos look like
| is probably more a product of the environment than just the
| equipment.
| xattt wrote:
| Different films have varied responses/curves to contrast
| than digital sensors. This is likely what GP is referring
| to.
| ZiiS wrote:
| They always get you on the delivery costs; every camera on
| the moon costs over $10,000+.
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah it's the lack of atmospheric scattering.
| porphyra wrote:
| Yeah due to the lack of a blue sky, shadows on the moon are
| basically completely black and challenging to photograph.
|
| Also the Hasselblad camera they sent to the moon back then
| was actually pretty good even by modern standards.
| ballooney wrote:
| Spectacular still by modern standards.
| FredPret wrote:
| It was a medium format camera; it's going to be good
| camera at any point.
|
| I think it had a 7x7cm film - that's a humongous, 49cm^2
| sensor compared to a regular full-frame camera, which
| clocks in at 8.64cm^2. As far as I can tell, the iPhone's
| is a tiny 0.25cm^2.
|
| Combine with no-holds-barred lenses and you're bound to
| get fantastic pictures even six decades ago.
|
| https://www.hasselblad.com/about/history/500-series/
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html#:~:te
| xt=...
| porphyra wrote:
| To be fair, the optical light gathering ability of a full
| frame f/1.4 lens is slightly better than that of the
| Hasselblad 80mm f/2.8, and modern digital sensors have
| eclipsed 6x6 film in every respect, such as resolution,
| sensitivity, and indeed even dynamic range. Photo
| technology has in fact progressed a fair bit in the last
| half a century.
|
| Of course, nothing can touch the light gathering ability
| of that Zeiss 50mm f/0.7, but then that lens wasn't very
| sharp anyway and modern digital sensors can go up to way
| higher ISO than possible with film while still making
| decent pictures.
| FredPret wrote:
| I'd love to see a Phase One take some pics on the moon.
|
| - 5cm x 4cm sensor
|
| - 150 MP
|
| - $60k
| thinkingemote wrote:
| we get a taste of this light when out in the countryside when
| it's a full moon. Very bright but cold light. Full, hard
| shadows. Just black and white. No diffraction, no softness.
|
| It's like many of the current LED car and street lights.
| echoangle wrote:
| How would that work? The hardness of the light on the moon
| is because the moon has no atmosphere. Moonlight at night
| is still affected by the atmosphere in the same way
| sunlight is.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's because the moonlight is comparatively dim. Even
| when your eyes have fully adjusted there is a threshold
| below which you just can't pick up the light. The
| scattered moonlight is below your detection threshold so
| the shadows appear completely black. Your color cones are
| also less sensitive than the black and white rods, so
| colors are muted or even missing and you are left with a
| landscape of stark greys just like the moon.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| a lot of "unearthly lighting" is because of regolith' contra-
| reflexivity
|
| it reflects light in (roughly) the direction of light source
|
| so you have /even bigger/ contrast between shadow and its
| border than you'd expect from "no air to soften shadows with
| dispersed light"
| genewitch wrote:
| Is that different than rerto-reflection?
| krunck wrote:
| The lack of an atmosphere to filter and diffuse sunlight
| makes all the difference.
| SoleilAbsolu wrote:
| Or...the Hollywood soundstage these are filmed on hasn't been
| updated since the '60s...j/k
| zingerlio wrote:
| How are the videos captured or processed? The solar lens flares
| are smoothly interpolated but the moon surface shows lower FPS,
| almost feels like the flares were on a separate layer.
| dguest wrote:
| My guess: they are the same update rate. The lens flares have
| blurrier edges and move less across the screen. This makes
| the jumps less obvious.
|
| CGI animations also add blurring, and even your eyes have an
| integration time that will make fast moving objects blurry.
| So your brain good at interpolating blurry edges.
| hello12343214 wrote:
| this is awesome, look at all those craters!
| alfanick wrote:
| These pictures are great - maybe it's time for me to get a new
| desktop background.
|
| Kinda related: some years ago NASA published all the Apollo
| missions pictures. I downloaded all of them (hundreds, maybe
| bit more), acting as a photo editor then I selected "good
| ones", cropped them to 16:10 format and made a background
| picture pack - I'm using it on all my devices since then. If
| someone is interested, they're published at [0] - feel free to
| use.
|
| [0]: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0577bWqlyiqqaz9zeI0cEcE7Q
| nymiro wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this!
| alfanick wrote:
| Here [0] is the original archive, 15k pictures.
|
| [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/wit
| h/5133...
| ddejohn wrote:
| I did something similar with their lunar libration videos
| captures by the LRO [1], using the frames from the video with
| the Windows desktop background 'slideshow' functionality
| (desktop background changes once a minute).
|
| [1]: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5415
| Daub wrote:
| Pity that the videos were accompanied by such cheesy music. A
| soundtrack derived from telemetry would have been killer.
| Example project here:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbLdd1fdNg5ymNYshv2xW...
| fgededigo wrote:
| Return to the basics like Pierre Henry:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZPDrNAFo1U
| moffkalast wrote:
| Absolute cinema, Firefly showing how it's done.
| Aldipower wrote:
| They are definitely made in a studio!
|
| Having too much karma points... ;-)
| ge96 wrote:
| Why does the moon looks soft/smooth in the videos? Is it
| because the material is soft? Or a scale thing. If you consider
| mountains on Earth they look jagged.
| inamberclad wrote:
| As a former Intuitive Machines employee, I feel obligated to
| correct the title! IM-1 landed on the moon last February and
| although it didn't stay upright, it was still operational and
| returned some decent scientific data.
| dang wrote:
| (This comment was posted at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43235933, where the title
| was "Firefly Aerospace becomes first commercial company to
| successfully land on moon". We merged that thread hither.)
| koolala wrote:
| It was flipped upside-down like a Turtle?
| itishappy wrote:
| Sideways. Still functional, but in somewhat limited capacity.
| adityaathalye wrote:
| So... the mission literally went sideways? Yet, our
| indomitable heroes saved the day!
|
| Jokes apart, I think anybody getting anything off the
| ground and out of the planetary gravity well are heroes.
| It's kind of wild how... mundane... rocketry has become.
| Between that and always-on nearly-free global video calling
| from a smart watch, I feel like I'm living in the future of
| some of the 1950s SciFi books I read as a kid.
|
| "Kings of Space" by Capt. W. E. Johns comes to mind. The
| smell of that old paperback copy I have transports me to
| another time.
| inamberclad wrote:
| That was a separate lander, from Japan!
| somenameforme wrote:
| Well how else do you expect to be able to keep the Moon up?
| consumer451 wrote:
| Former and current employees, congratulations to you all!
|
| How cool is it to have your work preserved for thousands to
| millions of years, on the surface of the moon?!
|
| I cannot imagine much anything more fun.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Congratulations to both teams :)
|
| Getting to the moon at all is a huge accomplishment.
|
| The article actually mentioned IM-1 (though not by name) and
| got me looking.
| markdown wrote:
| Anyone know if they flew over the site of the Apollo 11 lunar
| module landing?
|
| Surely they'd do it just for the publicity and ability to shut up
| Joe Rogan and the other nutjobs that consider that landing fake.
| blitzar wrote:
| They did, they flew over the same set at Area 51 (/s???)
| geoffpado wrote:
| Would it? Surely they'd just claim that this new company is
| themselves "in on the hoax".
| protocolture wrote:
| Theres no level of evidence they will accept. They have thought
| terminating cliches for everything.
| freediver007 wrote:
| No, we didn't fly over any of the Apollo sites for BGM1. We
| flew pretty close to the terminator line.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Rogan hasn't believed that for nearly a decade because he
| learned more about the physics of the Moon and the engineering
| of the time. Since you have an interest in truth and honesty,
| I'm sure now that you've been informed you won't spread this
| misinformation anymore and will do some reflection on how you
| ended up holding this view for so long past when it no longer
| was true.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmlmxamw_k
| pell wrote:
| Rogan has questioned the moon landing again just five months
| ago. Here is him having a conversation with Matt Walsh about
| it from episode 2204 of his podcast:
| https://youtu.be/xGoQcOIONVs?feature=shared
| vman81 wrote:
| There have been plenty of pictures of older landing sites. Most
| of those people have a part of their identity tied up in
| contrarian ideas, and would find a way to call it fake, even if
| you personally flew them up to the landing sites to have a
| look.
| agentkilo wrote:
| Congrats to everyone involved!
|
| I planned to watch the live stream but wasn't able to. The moment
| of successful landing was quite modest, only a mostly-static
| screen with telemetrics was shown to the public, but it
| absolutely felt magical. It feels like the moon is well within
| humankind's reach by now.
|
| Coincidentally, I found a copy of Uchu Kyodai (by Chuya Koyama)
| in my local library, and started reading it recently. It's fun to
| compare the perspectives from more than a decade ago, to the
| actual development we have right now, regarding space
| exploration.
|
| (This was posted to another thread, but I moved it here after I
| realized comments were moved)
| scubatubafuba wrote:
| > It feels like the moon is well within humankind's reach by
| now.
|
| It has been for the last 65 years. ;)
| agentkilo wrote:
| Yeah that's true, but I haven't really experienced the Apollo
| era personally. After the "gap" between the old space race,
| and the new race inspired by private space agencies, I do
| feel we are getting closer, to the moon at least.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Something most people don't appreciate is that, outside of
| the distance, Mars is super easy mode compared to the Moon.
| The Moon has 2 week long nights cycling between highs and
| lows in the range of -130C to +120C, inhospitable terrain,
| constantly getting pounded by meteorites, no atmosphere
| whatsoever, much higher radiation, much less gravity, and
| so on. Mars, by contrast, is oddly similar to Earth -
| similar day/night cycle, even a similar axial tilt meaning
| similar seasonal cycles, relatively reasonable temperature
| ranges, _some_ atmosphere, and more.
|
| This is why the image of the Moon as a stepping stone to
| Mars doesn't really make any sense. The Moon is very much
| 'hard mode', but it's closer. So the main tech issue to
| make up (long distance travel) is not one that progress on
| the Moon will go much towards advancing.
| Panoramix wrote:
| Well, Mars is so much farther away and much more massive
| so you need a lot of fuel if you want to come back. This
| is much more difficult than the extra fuel needed for the
| moon landing due to lack of atmosphere. Speaking of
| which, Mars having an atmosphere means you need complex
| heat shields for the landing. Furthermore it's so far
| that unlike the case of the moon you can't make real time
| adjustments from earth, there's a delay of several
| minutes. Then again you have dust storms...
| somenameforme wrote:
| Atmospheres make landing _easier_ and require less fuel!
| A big problem with landing is losing your speed which is
| going to be extremely high to begin with. On the Moon you
| can only do this by basically turning around in the
| opposite direction of your velocity and thrusting an
| equal but opposite amount. It 's not only quite complex
| but also substantially complicates landing.
|
| This is made even true on the Moon because its low
| gravity means that even a hair of velocity is going to
| make you 'bounce' after landing. This is why things like
| probes and rovers landing (or at least ending up) on
| their side or even upside down on the Moon is a fairly
| frequent affair. On Mars (and other places with an
| atmosphere) you can use atmospheric braking which is
| essentially just slowing down by bumping into the
| atmosphere in a controlled fashion. You can even get
| things like parachutes involved in the process.
|
| The dust storms in Mars are also 'fake' at least as
| presented in movies/books like "The Martian." Mars has an
| extremely low atmospheric pressure (relative to Earth) so
| fiercest dust storm imaginable would feel like nothing
| more than a slight breeze. The only issue they pose is
| visibility, and dust accumulating on solar panels. Andy
| Weir, by the way, was well aware of this when writing
| "The Martian" which is otherwise a phenomenally well
| researched hard sci-fi book. I think it's _highly_
| telling that he had to intentionally fudge reality to
| create a crisis on Mars!
| dnadler wrote:
| I think the big piece that is being overlooked here is
| the distance. The distance itself poses significant
| challenges. The obvious things like resupply and
| communication are much harder. But also the journey to
| mars is much harder on the human body.
|
| Rescue and abort options are also much harder. The moon
| is close enough to easily resupply or rescue people on
| the surface, mars is much harder.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Completely agreed. Distance will impose substantial
| challenges, but the good thing is that that's really the
| "only" big challenge there is. I think many people have
| this mental model where the Moon is easy and Mars is
| hard, perhaps because we've already set foot on the Moon
| and so clearly it can't be _that_ bad.
|
| But if somehow both of these bodies were orbiting around
| Earth, Mars would be just orders of magnitude more
| straight forward than Mars, and I think it's relatively
| likely we'd already have permanent outposts, if not
| colonies, there. So the mental model of it being viewed
| as a stepping stone is somewhat misleading. The Moon is
| _hard_!
|
| And also I don't think the distance will be _that_ bad.
| We 've already had 374 day ISS stays which is far longer
| than any possible transit to Mars (though nowhere near as
| long as a late-stage mission abort would entail) and the
| overall effects of such a stay were not markedly
| different than significantly shorter stays on the ISS. So
| it seems very unlikely that even a late stage emergency
| abort would be fatal.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's now within reach for a medium sized corporation, largely
| ignored by humankind.
|
| That's huge progress!
| kibwen wrote:
| It's not any more or less out of reach for a medium-sized
| corporation than it's been since the 70s. The reason no
| corporation has gone is that there's no economic incentives
| to. And there's still not; this is a NASA mission, it's
| exploratory science funded by the public.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Since the 70s, costs have gone down by a factor 10-20x,
| and the technology is much better and safer.
|
| If that made it "out of reach" back then depends on what
| you mean with those words, but it's undeniably far
| cheaper and safer now.
| somenameforme wrote:
| How do you expect to get to the Moon before SpaceX? The
| Space Shuttle ended up costing $2+ billion per launch,
| and given it's a government program - getting anything on
| it from an untested company who didn't already have major
| connections would be near to a nonstarter, and that's
| even if they could casually foot the billions of dollars
| it would have cost.
|
| FireFly launched as a private company on a Falcon 9 so
| their cost was probably a peak of ~$0.07 billion (to
| maintain units) which may have been able to be privately
| negotiate downward given the nature of the mission.
| numpad0 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_syst
| ems
|
| Smallest lunar lander so far is 200kg/440lbs, that's the
| weight of a carry on full of lead. Besides the Space
| Shuttle can't go higher or deliver higher than LEO
| anyway.
| somenameforme wrote:
| That's not an answer as we're looking for choices
| available from "the 70s" to before SpaceX so let's say
| around 2000. This issue is literally why SpaceX was
| started. Elon looked into NASA's plans for sending humans
| to Mars, saw they didn't exist and wanted to get the
| public more excited in space. His idea was to use his
| money to fund the launch of a greenhouse to Mars, which
| would be live streamed. No company in America was
| willing/able to do this, and in Russia the costs were far
| too high. So SpaceX was born.
|
| You're right that Space Shuttle was a nonstarter for
| technical reasons, but it doesn't change the core issue.
| Neither does the mass. Unless you can find other
| companies willing to share a launch with you, you're
| paying for a whole rocket. And that's _if_ you can manage
| to contract a rocket in the first place. As an
| inconsequential nitpick, no lander weighs 200kg. You 're
| conflating landing mass (of which there's been well
| smaller than 200kg) with total launched mass. Fuel,
| thrusters, and so on multiply the weight substantially.
| kibwen wrote:
| The space shuttle isn't relevant to this conversation.
| Private industry has been putting things in space for
| decades, long before SpaceX existed. The reason no
| private company put a thing on the moon isn't because
| they couldn't, it was because nobody was paying them to,
| and because there is not otherwise any economic benefit
| to them for doing so. If your expected income is zero, it
| doesn't matter how low your costs are.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I agree that Space Shuttle is not relevant (as a peer
| poster mentioned it simply lacks the delta v to even get
| to the Moon), but do not agree that this capability has
| readily existed for decades. You needed (1) private
| industry (2) affordable (3) moon capable and (4) civilian
| availability. We were failing on various points at
| various times, but now a days none of those really pose
| an issue anymore.
|
| Now that we've clearly nailed all 4 of those points,
| we're starting to see lots more interesting things in
| space from tourists visiting the ISS, people sending
| their ashes to space, to doing private space walks and
| going further into space than any human has since the 70s
| [1], and now even things like this with a private company
| landing a payload on the Moon. Many of these things are
| done with no return beyond doing them.
|
| More specifically though, this is also literally why
| SpaceX was created. Elon was researching NASA's plans for
| getting men to Mars. They literally did not exist. He
| wanted to get society more interested in space and so his
| idea was to launch a greenhouse to Mars and live-stream
| it. The capability for that simply did not exist in
| America, and in Russia the costs were far too high. So
| SpaceX was born.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_Dawn
| kragen wrote:
| With US$100 million in taxpayer funding.
| oxonia wrote:
| "At the end of its operations, Blue Ghost will stay put, destined
| to remain on the moon's surface indefinitely."
|
| Is that a euphemism for "Humans are leaving rubbish to pollute
| another part of the universe?"
| curiousObject wrote:
| > Is that a euphemism for "Humans are leaving rubbish to
| pollute another part of the universe?"
|
| Yes, in the same sense that the Pyramids and Stonehenge and the
| Parthenon are rubbish
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well, I guess some alien archeologists will have some fun
| trying to figure out what it was used for.
| shlip wrote:
| IMHO it would be more Yes, in the same sense that mount
| Everest is covered with all the garbage all the tourists
| can't be bothered to bring back from their (ego) trip.
|
| On another note, I'm currently reading "Sunburst and Luminary
| An Apollo Memoir" from Don Eyles, which is a great read that
| makes you realize the feat it really was at the time.
|
| My main interrogation now (and I've not yet looked anywhere
| for elements of answer) is why is it so difficult to
| reproduce with the current tech and scientfic advances ? Is
| bloatware involved or is the scope really different ?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Oh no, were going to damage the biosphere of the moon!
| WalterBright wrote:
| Leaving spare parts for the lunar colony seems a fine idea.
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| Way worse.
|
| Even when the moon is finally settled on, I guarantee you that
| nobody will make any effort to clean it up and throw it away.
|
| It is truely sad that we can be sure that even thousands of
| years in the future, despite millions of humans looking at it
| every day, people will rather put a glass box around it, so
| nobody is bothered by it, than just tossing it into the lunar
| landfill.
| skeaker wrote:
| I think it's okay to be sentimental about our first steps
| into space travel.
| t43562 wrote:
| Well, the universe is fairly big and humankind even if you add
| it all up is quite small. So....I don't think it will be a
| great problem for a while.
| scubatubafuba wrote:
| "Firefly is the prime contractor for lunar delivery services
| using Blue Ghost landers."
|
| Cool! Now we can start cluttering up the moon with garbage, too!
| duxup wrote:
| Super cool. This is one of those things you watch and just "feels
| like the future". I know, we've been there before but it still
| feels like an awesome event.
|
| (someone go back to Venus, I know it's hard, but someone please)
| bobobob420 wrote:
| Do we get 4k video? :)
| freediver007 wrote:
| Yes, but be patient, we're 1.24 light-seconds away (so lower
| bandwidth) and we have a lot of science to get done in the next
| 14 days, and that's the main objective of the NASA CLPS
| program.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Truly incredible!
|
| https://flic.kr/p/2qP1yLU
|
| https://flic.kr/p/2qJKm4o
| RangerScience wrote:
| Horray!
|
| Also:
|
| - _Wow_ but the moon is 3D. Like, when we see shots of Earth, the
| ground always looks so flat, but the depth of the craters and the
| heights of the ridges is really, really amazing to see
|
| - ...KSP did a _really_ good job mimicking the real thing
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| _insert flat-moon comment here_
| tiahura wrote:
| Why are the interiors of the craters uniformly deep?
| lstodd wrote:
| because rock behaves like liquid at the time of impact.
| tiahura wrote:
| it seems like craters of different side are roughly the
| same depth.
| cryptoz wrote:
| One of the coolest things ever is you can see the shadows and
| depths of the craters on the moon from here on Earth, with a
| cheap ~$15 telescope or probably binoculars too. I remember
| buying the galileoscope for $15 many years ago and was
| absolutely shocked how cool the moon looked, and how _3D_.
|
| Pro-tip: the full moon isn't so fun to look at, you want some
| level of crescent moon so you can avoid getting overloaded on
| the brightness.
|
| (You can also stay up for a few hours and actually observe Io
| revolving around Jupiter, I think it takes most of the night to
| get 1/4 of the way around. Pretty obvious revolutions when you
| keep observing throughout the night.)
| nerdponx wrote:
| I noticed this too. Something about the perspective is
| unnerving, like an amusement park ride. You can see clearly
| that the moon is small, the craters are big, _and_ the orbiting
| spacecraft is moving really really fast, all at the same time.
| None of that is apparent from video of low Earth orbit. And
| then the stark lighting makes it feel even more bizarre and
| alien.
| consumer451 wrote:
| The most 3-D experience that I have had with the moon, on the
| cheap, is when its not in it's full phase. With a cheap
| telescope, when you observe the edge of the partial-phase
| moon's crescent, you see the "terminator." It suddenly feels
| so different, finally you see the moon's bumpy spherical
| nature. It's like you are flying just above it.
|
| > The terminator is where you'll see the most pronounced
| shadows cast by the lunar features like craters, mountains,
| and valleys. This is because the Sun is at a low angle
| relative to the lunar surface, emphasizing the topography and
| allowing you to see craters and other features in sharp
| relief
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > - ...KSP did a really good job mimicking the real thing
|
| The pic with the shadow of the lander is really close to what
| you get out of KSP when you first land on Mun or Minmus. Really
| really cool. Congrats to everyone who made this happen!
| moffkalast wrote:
| Interesting how Luna has more of a Minmus feel in terms of
| scale, the horizon is so close. Something to do with the wide
| angle lens I imagine?
| lstodd wrote:
| Selena is just small.
| jccooper wrote:
| Much smaller, no atmosphere. You can get a lot closer to it in
| orbit. Until Apollo 14, the LM would enter a 50,000 ft
| periapsis on the way to landing. Dunno the exact phasing of
| this lander, but that video could be from a similar height (or
| lower, if you have good navigation.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _...KSP did a really good job mimicking the real thing_
|
| Yes. That flyby video looks almost like taken straight from KSP
| - the only thing that made my mind stop feeling like I'm
| watching a Mun landing, was the light reflecting off the
| metallic surfaces of the actual lander - it looked too
| computationally expensive for a videogame.
| ww520 wrote:
| This is excellent news. Private sector companies are going into
| space, landing on extraterrestrial bodies. Hope this spur more
| activities outward.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Firefly is carrying out this mission as a contractor under
| NASA's CLPS and Artemis programs
| bavell wrote:
| There's that pale blue dot! Nice selfie.
|
| https://x.com/Firefly_Space/status/1896158394295390367/photo...
| Animats wrote:
| Nice. Now to kill the manned lunar program and send more robotic
| missions.
| sidcool wrote:
| My manager: What's the hoopla about? It was done more than 50
| years ago. Tech people make a lot of noise about things that have
| been done already.
| jmspring wrote:
| This is great. And it's sad to think this, but given current
| trends at the federal level and a competitor with influence, is
| there risk for the company and financing/operational options?
| spaceng wrote:
| Here's some behind-the-scenes from the vision navigation team:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s9E8DBK896w
| freediver007 wrote:
| Super cool! Good working with you guys ;-)
| criddell wrote:
| Offtopic, but what is up with YouTube's algorithm? Is it just
| me? When I scroll to see the next videos they are all very
| strange kids videos. Full of primary colors and super bizarre
| sequences. I was expecting to see more Firefly related videos.
|
| One video is a kid flushing things down a toilet so an adult
| makes a cardboard toilet and picture cards they can put in.
| Next was a woman going into a theater and somebody put
| something in her backpack. Turns out it was a doll. Is anybody
| else seeing this stuff? What is it? Who's making it?
| smolder wrote:
| Don't click on weird stuff if you want to see less. Go in to
| your "My data in google" page and delete the weird stuff from
| your history and you should not see it so much. Also use the
| "not interested" feature in the video feed.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I bet the code for the ship and the lander wasn't written by AI.
| jgord wrote:
| awe inspiring photos .. and we really need awe-inspiring right
| now.
| BlueGh0st wrote:
| What a strange name.
| skc wrote:
| I still very childishly examine every frame of those videos
| looking for something, anything to move. Ha!
|
| Awe inspiring stuff.
| t43562 wrote:
| I am a fan of the LuGRE instrument from Italy. It's a sneaky
| little precursor to the ESA Lunar Pathfinder which will put a
| lunar communications system and positioning system into orbit.
| That will be able to use the LuGRE instrument to get it's own
| position fixed accurately and then it can start providing
| communications and positioning services to the surface. A few
| more satellites and the whole moon will be covered.
| butlike wrote:
| What gets me is that the videos warp the perspective of the Earth
| in a way where it doesn't appear large anymore; and I wonder if
| that would happen with astronauts too.
|
| They break through the atmosphere and then all of a sudden it
| looks like a small globe when the point-of-reference switches to
| the blackness of space.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The moon is a long way away. The furthest man has ever been
| from terra firma. The Earth is small at that distance compared
| to images from ISS or even a geosync satellite. The distance to
| the moon is about 30 Earths for perspective, over 400,000
| kilometers away.
|
| Here's a very famous image from Apollo 8:
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/82693/earthrise-rev...
|
| For a different perspective, check out the view of earth/moon
| from Mars:
|
| https://science.nasa.gov/resource/earth-and-moon-as-viewed-f...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Earth in that image from the moon looks way bigger than the
| one he's talking about
| dylan604 wrote:
| Different lenses would be the obvious answer. The lander's
| imagery looks like wide angle lenses while the Apollo image
| was taken by a human using a 250mm lens. If you watch the
| video in the link you'll see all of this info. It even
| shows a recreation of what it would look like to the
| astronauts which makes the earth look much smaller in the
| images
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That just has to do with the lens size. The earth will be
| bigger using a 300mm zoom lens than a wide angle 17mm.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| This is the outcome of Elon's vision for cheap space flight.
| Without reliable and reusable rockets, small missions like this
| would never be possible.
|
| In 3-5 years, once Starship is running continuously, expect a
| flurry of these types of unique "small" missions.
|
| The future of spaceflight is so exciting.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Extremely informative analysis from Scott Manley was just
| released:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XmhxEDsVTY
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >About 14 days into the mission, Blue Ghost's landing site will
| be plunged into lunar night. The lander will then need to rely on
| battery power as the company aims to keep it functioning in
| temperatures as cold as minus 250degF (minus 130degC).
|
| Why not hibernate?
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