[HN Gopher] Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over ...
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Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
Author : pseudolus
Score : 118 points
Date : 2025-03-07 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nine_k wrote:
| One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a
| year ago, and also eventually toppled.
|
| Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and
| more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.
| lawlessone wrote:
| maybe make it like a hamster ball.
|
| edit: just realized my own stupidity, a ball would be very hard
| to land..
| ge96 wrote:
| A mars lander was like that but air bags
| _shantaram wrote:
| three actually
| card_zero wrote:
| That worked OK for some Mars rovers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags
|
| See also the section "uprighting", further down the page -
| they used a tetrahedral shell with a sensor so it knew which
| side was down and could lever itself upright.
| rolph wrote:
| that ball would bounce for a long time and roll for a while
| until stopping, and unfolding into tetrahedral hemisegments,
| each in its desired orientation.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the
| Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled.
|
| Presumably it's that shape to fit in the fairing of a Falcon 9?
| exe34 wrote:
| You can fit a crab sideways in the Falcon 9.
| Polizeiposaune wrote:
| No, that's not why.
|
| I found dimensions and a picture of IM-1 here:
|
| https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id.
| ..
|
| The IM-1 lander was 1.57 meters wide and 4m tall, but based
| on the picture I think the width doesn't include the legs.
|
| The Blue Ghost lander also launched on an F9; it's 2m high
| and 3.5m wide, and it landed without falling over.
| (dimensions from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ghost_Mission_1)
|
| The F9 payload envelope dimensions can be found on page 79
| of:
|
| https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf
|
| Dimensions shown appear to be <inches> [ <millimeters> ] -
| the bulk of the space is a cylinder with a radius of "180.020
| [ 4572.5011 ]" which I read as just over 4.5 meters in
| diameter; the cylindrical part is just over 6.6 meters high
| (and then you get into the conical section at the nose).
|
| The space inside the fairing is bigger than this but there is
| empty space between it and the payload to ensure they don't
| come into contact due to vibrations, etc., during launch.
|
| So IM-1 could well have been wider and shorter and still fit
| on the F9.
| tekla wrote:
| https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/intuitive-machines-im...
|
| Look at the lander. Pray tell, if you want it shorter, where is
| everything supposed to go?
| aylmao wrote:
| It could be two landers, one stacked on top of the other for
| takeoff, but separate for landing
|
| EDIT: or a horizontal lander, packed on it's side for
| takeoff.
|
| I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but landing
| something this tall seems quite complicated too in the first
| place.
| rolph wrote:
| go bigger this could be a pancake stack that separates into
| a swarm of puck like units according to some sequence
| throwup238 wrote:
| You'd be paying the extra mass cost of landing gears for
| each pancake - something has to absorb the impact of
| landing or they'll just break apart. These landers
| already operate at the margin.
| itishappy wrote:
| That doesn't look space constrained to me. The core looks
| like it would almost fit on it's side without modification,
| "just" move a few things around so it's flat and wide instead
| of tall and thin.
|
| Here's exactly that:
|
| https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/1879361461002371351
|
| Nova-C (Intuitive Machine's platform) is 3x2x2 meters, and
| fits in a Falcon 9. Blue Ghost is 2x3x3 meters, and fits in
| the same fairing.
|
| Here's a comparison (note that the Blue Ghost platform is
| currently the only one to succeed at it's intended mission,
| though IM1 did technically land safely but sideways):
|
| https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PVz5912B1iQ/maxresdefault.jpg
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| The craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made
| by Intuitive Machines (IM).
|
| Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without
| tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do
| it.
|
| Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there
| are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over
| and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from
| Firefly's, but from a high level perspective I'm sure senior
| leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to
| IM.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving
| any new contracts to IM.
|
| at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it
|
| bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have
| not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop
|
| so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for
| pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting
| contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if this
| is a partisan thing
| ok_dad wrote:
| Shit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want
| to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And
| don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once,
| how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking
| hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to
| be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but
| in reality is actually "learned knowledge".
|
| I can't believe people think they're going to "make america
| great again" by cutting funding for all the stuff that
| makes America an economic, cultural, and academic
| powerhouse.
| not2b wrote:
| They shouldn't just cancel, but with the same kind of
| failure twice in a row it seems they should require
| correcting the tipping-over issue before trying a third
| time.
| temp0826 wrote:
| They should ask the moon for a refund, or at least a
| "thank you".
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a row
| while launching small rockets from an atoll. Some 20
| years later they are now 13k+ nerds, they're launching
| every other day, land their boosters and are slowly
| becoming an ISP with a rocket launching side business.
|
| Space is hard. There's nothing "embarrassing" in
| controlled landing on the freakin Moon with a shoestring
| budget, even if the landers fell over. Reddit's
| r/technology is leaking in this thread.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a
| row while launching small rockets from an atoll_
|
| Once upon a time most planes crashed. Then the state of
| the art advanced.
|
| If IM can't publish a convincing root-cause analysis for
| why their landers keep tipping over while their
| competitors' don't, they shouldn't get new contracts and
| existing ones should be revisited.
| mmooss wrote:
| I thought the same, but ...
|
| 1) private companies landing on the moon is a brand new
| thing in a very difficult technology. If we want to
| encourage it, maybe we should minimize risk.
|
| 2) what were their mission goals? Maybe it was just to
| stick the landing, test landing gear, etc. (There is a
| bunch of equipment on there for other things, so they
| must have had some other plans.)
|
| 3) what is the difference between a private company and
| NASA doing it? That is, why is it so hard to do what NASA
| did over 50 years ago, without things falling over, etc.?
| Is it budget? Time for testing and retesting (investors
| want returns)? Talent? Is NASA witholding its secret
| ingredients like a self-centered chef? (At least some
| national space agencies also have had problems, like
| JAXA, but I'm not sure how widespread that is.)
|
| Edit: I would make it competitive, though. That's the
| point of private business - it can fail and disappear.
| Compete for the next contract.
| not2b wrote:
| Not sure who you are quoting here, I never said
| "embarrassing". I'm sure that those "nerds" made
| adjustments based on the failures. That's all I was
| asking for.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Worse, it's richest country on earth complaining about
| being too poor and having to enact austerity measures --
| implemented by the richest person on the planet who's
| personal pay is much, _much_ higher than any of the
| savings he's found so far.
|
| I've seen many occasions in my career when some manager
| had flown across the country with a business class
| ticket, stayed in a fancy hotel, rented a luxury car, and
| turned up to an all-hands-on-deck meeting to announce in
| a grave tone that the minimum wage workers are just going
| to have to make some sacrifices.
|
| This is almost precisely what's going on with DOGE except
| you can substitute private jet and secret service
| motorcade. And instead of minimum wage, it's... less than
| minimum wage.
|
| The richest are complaining about being too poor to help
| the needy, and fixing the issue by cutting every program
| that helps those under the poverty line.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I don't make comments based on what I want to happen
|
| An entire federal agency was deleted and thousands of non
| profits and other organizations were using the funding
| source as their only client and are also deleted now
|
| Just because this one is publicly traded we should expect
| a different outcome?
|
| I love prediction markets because now there is another
| outlet for perceiving politics than just debating. I take
| your money in a zero sum game if my worldview is more
| accurate, love that. I would almost it rewards having a
| contrarian view of the world, but there are some
| psychology studies that show even ideologues like you
| will make accurate predictions even there is a payout of
| basically any amount. So I doubt it's actually a
| contrarian view given that you have the same information.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yeah, was cool to see Blue Ghost be successful. And do the
| point about tall and thin, the Blue Ghost lander is much more
| squat than the Intuitive Machines landers
|
| https://fireflyspace.com/blue-ghost/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made
| by Intuitive Machines (IM)_
|
| Have they published a root-cause analysis?
| pbronez wrote:
| Apparently last time their laser rangefinder was turned off
| groundside and thus wasn't available during landing.
|
| This time they remembered to turn it on, but it didn't work
| very well.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| That's a proximate-cause analysis. If the root of their
| problem is a rangefinder, what happened that caused them
| to consistently miss with it?
|
| The lack of credible comments strikes me as someone
| socking the answer: they've committed to a stacked format
| that is inherently unstable. If they can't get an answer
| out before the next budget is passed, their contracts
| should be cancelled.
| mannyv wrote:
| I'm sure they're accounting for dust, but using a laser
| in an environment that kicks up a ton of dust just
| doesn't seem like a great idea.
| simne wrote:
| > Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without
| tipping over
|
| > from a high level perspective I'm sure senior leaders at
| NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.
|
| Truth is, all contractors rely on NASA data about Moon
| surface, and this data is not 100% reliable.
|
| But some people trust NASA and others much more cautious and
| include bigger possible error margins in their models.
|
| I mean, FF could just include much larger design margins,
| with less payload, so next time FF will optimize design and
| could also tip over.
|
| But good news, IM next time could make larger margins and
| will also achieve 100% success.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Which gives me great amusement about the current human
| spaceflight plan to land upright Starship on the moon, and
| lower astronauts from the top of what is effectively a tower-
| like 13-story building (52.1m without landing legs, at 9m tube
| width) using some kind of elevator solution. To put things into
| perspective, this is roughly the same height as the Leaning
| Tower of Pisa, and with landing legs extended probably about
| the same width as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS#/media/File:HLS_S...
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronauts-test-spac...
|
| Sure, there's lots of details to consider, e.g. center of
| gravity, overall weight, maximum possible duration to hover and
| ability to accurately steer and pick your landing spot. But the
| inherent difficulty in "how do you not topple over" is
| definitely there, and it's clear the proposed Starship lander
| will have to outperform these IM landers significantly.
|
| That said, if you want to scale out payload to the surface I
| guess you have to (which however eats into your center of
| gravity advantages from having lots of engines at the bottom,
| too).
| RandomBacon wrote:
| > how do you not topple over
|
| Projectile grappling-hooks to embed into nearby ground then
| winch the line taught? Just have to make sure all are
| launched at the same time with force vectors that cancel out.
| Maybe even launch them before touchdown so it doesn't topple
| over during landing if one of the feet land on a random rock.
| itishappy wrote:
| My vote is for a large BattleBots style flipper that they
| flop their rover around with until it falls in their
| preferred orientation.
| nick486 wrote:
| with enough energy(like starship would have), i suppose you
| could get out of an irrecoverable tipping over motion by just
| lighting the engines and trying again. Before you fall,
| obviously. "works in KSP"^TM
| johnyzee wrote:
| If they can control the angle of each leg with enough
| precision, that might be enough to compensate for (slightly)
| uneven terrain.
|
| I understand that the recently successful Blue Ghost has
| sensors to detect suitability of the landing spot, and used
| it to re-position twice while landing. Starship would
| probably need something like that, too.
| kristianp wrote:
| At least they're likely to do unmanned test landings until
| they successfully land upright. But it seems nobody followed
| the design of the appollo lander, except the Blue ghost which
| landed successfully last week.
| baq wrote:
| The guys designing this never played kerbal space program or
| something. My first mun lander looked like theirs and of course
| it fell over after landing. If something doesn't work in KSP,
| it probably deserves a looking at in the real world.
| spelunker wrote:
| I mean, eventually everything is crab right?
| smj-edison wrote:
| Mandatory xkcd 2314.
| carabiner wrote:
| Jesus. It really is that hard. With all the bajillion in extra
| compute and simulation time from Apollo era, we can't do hard
| things anymore. We don't know how.
| cyphertruck wrote:
| Apollo took up an appreciable percentage of the GDP... this is
| a small startup with a fraction of the funding. Firefly landed
| successfully, but they are bigger.
|
| This is a hardware rich, inexpensive program, and they could
| fly probably 100 missions for the cost of one NASA old style
| mission.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Exactly. If we spend the same percentage of GDP we spent on
| Apollo, moon bases, mars landings, fusion and others would
| happen quickly.
| svachalek wrote:
| Note that Firefly succeeded at this just a few days ago.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Landers on the Moon is pre-Apollo in fact, by about three
| years. The Soviet's Luna 9 landed on the Moon in February of
| 1966, and America's Surveyor 1 in June.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Apollo landers had human brains operating them. We're not quite
| there yet with technology.
| olex wrote:
| Surveyor and other probes have landed autonomously in the
| years leading up to Apollo, and after it as well. We
| definitely do have the technology, but having not used it for
| a couple decades, we've gone a bit rusty with it.
| ge96 wrote:
| Damn... gotta take a playbook out of MIB2 have it stand itself up
| after landing
|
| A ball design too, rolls over and stands up
| mclau156 wrote:
| The company Intuitive Machines first and second moon-landers both
| tipped over, hopefully the third does not tip over
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Hopefully someone at Intuitive Machines pores over the data and
| and design plans and makes significant changes that minimize
| the opportunity for this to happen the third time around,
| assuming NASA gives them that opportunity.
|
| If their lander is indeed top-heavy then they have some design
| issues to overcome. Perhaps adding a set of outriggers that
| deploy just before touchdown and detach or fold up on command
| once the lander is deemed to be in a stable orientation. Even
| landing it as a ball with air cushions that deflate once it
| comes to rest has to be preferred to simply keeping it the same
| and hoping for a nice flat spot to land.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _pores over the data and and design plans and makes
| significant changes_
|
| And then publishes it. The fact that they have precise
| renders still published of their next lander [1] is a bit
| telling about their engineering approach.
|
| [1] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/missions
| doodlebugging wrote:
| That's pretty funny. Doubling down on it may not pay off.
|
| The first two landers have different backgrounds. The third
| and fourth re-use the first lander background in the same
| orientation and mirrored. I would think that since the
| third lander has a model displayed and the fourth is just a
| proposed outline that they may be open to structural
| changes by the fourth if they get that opportunity.
|
| Hopefully they take the bait and pursue modifications that
| give their lander a lower center of gravity or a wider
| footprint. If I were at NASA I would be hesitant about
| allowing them to launch that third model with no mods. Even
| if all they do is hit the free section on craigslist in
| Houston and grab all the free-weights and a lightly used
| tarp to swing, testicle-style, underneath the lander as it
| tries to find the moon.
| criddell wrote:
| [delayed]
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling
| - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its
| intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?
| aylmao wrote:
| Really funny spin from their PR department too:
|
| > "the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations
| ever achieved".
|
| > "This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and
| Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from
| IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration."
|
| I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south
| in the first place.
| hcrisp wrote:
| As I recall, Apollo 11 was off by 4 miles downrange, which
| was considered good but not precise. More work on the
| guidance / navigation system allowed for a precision landing
| in Apollo 12 (to touch down near a Surveyor probe).
| sho_hn wrote:
| If you want to read about this in fascinating detail, I
| highly recommend the book "Digital Apollo" by David A.
| Mindell.
|
| David's book spends a lot of time dwelling on the tension
| between highly automated systems and the role of the human
| in them, and the HCI factors of the Apollo missions. They
| also recap each landing through that lens, including the
| major changes done to the Lunar Module UI (physical +
| software) and the landing script/programs for each mission
| and how things worked out in practice and how it was
| debriefed after. If you want the insight look at the
| decision to go for precision landing, how (and how well) it
| was achieved and how everyone involved felt about it, this
| is probably your best one-stop go-to.
|
| And for anyone working in embedded UI, or around
| automation, etc. it's a wondeful mind-sharpener with many
| lessons in an inspiring applied context.
|
| The Apollo user interface and computer were so state of the
| art that many of the problems and solutions remain quite
| similar today. I work in a similar area (cars, with ever-
| increasing amounts of automation, driver assistance and
| connectivity) and some of the debates and on-the-job
| exchanges and meeting notes cited in the book could be
| straight out of my day job 60 years later with only minute
| differences. Some of the "Lessons on Software
| Development"-type docs penned by Apollo engineers in the
| aftermath of the program (trade-offs of platform approaches
| and HW abstractions vs. optimization, how to get a handle
| on quality and testing, etc.) also still read absolutely
| modern to this day, almost with greater summarizing clarity
| than what decades of paradigms and jargon have slathered on
| top.
| Retric wrote:
| It's 250m which isn't bad and suggests they intended it to be
| the southern most probe.
| olex wrote:
| According to IM's website, it landed within 250 _meters_ of the
| intended site - could there be a unit confusion (m / mi)
| somewhere in the press chain?
|
| https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2
| sho_hn wrote:
| 250 meters is very respectable for a first try.
|
| Apollo 14 and 12 achieved 30 meters and 163 meters with human
| piloting, respectively, and that's after the program made
| precision landing a high-effort mission goal. The automated
| missions of the 60s-70s were often off target by a kilometre
| or more, but Surveyor 3 came in within 200 meters as well in
| '67.
|
| Japan did a mission in 2024 with the express purpose of
| achieving automated precision landing - SLIM, nicknamed "Moon
| Sniper" - and hit 55 meters off center of a 100-by-100 elipse
| despite losing a main engine nozzle during descent (but also
| landed on its side, bummer). 50-150 meters is what the
| Chinese missions in the 2010s generally managed to do at
| times as well. I think Chang'e 5 (2020) holds the present
| record at within 10 meters.
| mmooss wrote:
| Is 50 year old technology and expertise a good standard for
| comparison for modern tech?
| macintux wrote:
| I'd say relative to the difficulty of accuracy, the
| hostility of the environment, the known "lumpiness" of
| the moon, and the challenges of testing any of it in
| advance...yes?
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| Well when I was a child I tried to land on the moon but
| missed by about 384,000 km. That was only about 30 years
| ago, so their doing a heck of a lot better then that
| which is something!
| HankB99 wrote:
| Before that I tried to get to the moon. I climbed the
| nearest tree. Good progress at first ...
| kccqzy wrote:
| 250 miles? The mission official website of Intuitive Machines
| says 250 meters. From https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2
|
| > HOUSTON, TX - March 7, 2025 - Intuitive Machines, Inc.
| (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW) ("Intuitive Machines") ("Company"), a
| leading space exploration, infrastructure, and services
| company, has announced the IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena,
| landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons
| Mouton region of the lunar south pole, inside of a crater.
|
| It's also somewhat funny that this mission update is written in
| the style of a press releases, mentioning that stock ticker and
| an obligatory paragraph about forward-looking statements,
| whereas others are just a normal update.
| Oarch wrote:
| There's a long history of typos behind the paper's nickname
| Grauniad
| colechristensen wrote:
| > Seems like a really large error?
|
| At one point during its transit the spacecraft will have been
| going about 23,000 miles per hour, suddenly 250 miles doesn't
| seem like much. Though obviously that's in the middle of the
| trip and plenty of things happen between the transit between
| the earth and moon and landing.
| aylmao wrote:
| > The failure of Athena, which was packed with scientific probes
| and experiments that Nasa was relying on as it prepares to send
| astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972, was
| almost identical to IM's first moon landing in February 2024.
|
| Does this mean delays for Artemis, or do we not know yet?
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| Spaceship fiasco will delay Artemis so much that there is no
| need to even consider landing on the Moon in the next 10 years.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Spaceship [_ sic _] fiasco will delay Artemis_
|
| Artemis II is entirely delayed by Lockheed's Orion
| spacecraft. Not SpaceX's Starship.
| itishappy wrote:
| I wouldn't say entirely. Starship isn't going to be
| involved in Artemis II, but Artemis III supposed to take
| humans to the moon in December 2025. Nobody's on schedule.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _wouldn 't say entirely. Starship isn't going to be
| involved in Artemis II_
|
| So entirely.
|
| Artemis III is being delayed by Artemis II. We _expect_
| Starship to delay III. But so far, 100% of the delays
| have been caused by Orion.
| itishappy wrote:
| Technically, sure. Practically, nobody's on schedule. I
| don't think Orion's delays absolve Starship's.
| kristianp wrote:
| That artemis III date is very old. Artimis II is now
| scheduled to take place no earlier than April 2026 [1].
|
| III is scheduled for mid 2027, and will be delayed
| further as time passes [2].
|
| 1. https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii/
|
| 2. https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/
| xnx wrote:
| That photo is really poetic though.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The photo made me think "We just need to land a large sun-
| tracking mirror over there".
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Athena, a probe launched by [...] Intuitive Machines (IM) last
| month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing
| site near the moon's south pole on Thursday. Initially at least,
| it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as
| engineers worked to make sense of data showing an "incorrect
| attitude".
|
| > On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead.
|
| 250 miles off-course, _and_ their second flop in a row. I 'd
| certainly cross them off the Approved Vendor list.
|
| About that "gotta be tall & tippy to fit inside the Falcon's
| payload fairing" idea. No, it does not. The payload fairing was
| jettisoned ~1/4M miles before Athena got to the moon. So _plenty_
| of time for the lander to deploy some folded-up "spider legs"
| landing gear, making "land and fall over" virtually impossible.
| joeevans1000 wrote:
| Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety
| (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and
| unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that
| could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up
| after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being
| used on Mars.
| Liftyee wrote:
| There are indeed craft like that. The NASA Pathfinder probe and
| MER rovers (all to Mars) are probably what you're thinking of.
| joeevans1000 wrote:
| Ah, cool. I'll look those up. I just looked at the Athena and
| I'm tempted to armchair quarterback a tiny bit. I mean, that
| thing looks extremely top heavy. And it had hundreds of
| millions of dollars of equipment on it. I also wonder if
| these companies are patenting their approaches so that other
| companies can't use working solutions.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yep, most of the previous Mars rover prior to Curiosity did it
| this way. They had a number of balloons surrounding the rover
| and landed and bounced along the surface. Then the balloons
| were deflated in a particular order so the rover ended up the
| right way up. But for these there was some atmosphere to slow
| the descent with a parachute and balloons. But for landing on
| the moon you need the thrusters to slow you down for landing so
| it can't just be balloons on either side. Presumably you could
| still use something to slow you down that isn't part of the
| science mission for the lander that gets ejected right before
| landing an then let the balloons hit the surface and drop down.
| But now there are multiple mechanisms and things to do the
| landing which means more money.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbAUtyO7xo
| simne wrote:
| Size is important. For thin atmosphere or vacuum planet, airbag
| approach is optimal for small size lander, but for big size
| space crane is optimal.
|
| Unfortunately, at the moment I could not suggest what is small
| and what is big for Moon.
|
| And for about IM, things could be even worse, as they are
| limited as commercial company (NASA lander could use government
| money to achieve much higher budget and have much more
| possibilities to do same thing).
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I presume it was all that Lunar wind that just toppled it in the
| end.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It shows the old that getting to 90% is easy and fast but the
| last 10% are very tedious and slow.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shows the old that getting to 90% is easy and fast but the
| last 10% are very tedious and slow_
|
| And maybe don't bet on a SPAC to deliver advanced engineering?
| dothack wrote:
| Counterexample: Rocket Lab's tech [1] landed Blue Ghost on
| the Moon.
|
| [1]: https://www.rocketlabusa.com/updates/rocket-lab-space-
| softwa...
| meepmeepinator wrote:
| Athena's failure might actually hint at a spaceflight paradigm
| shift. Instead of derailing lunar ambitions, the lander's tumble
| (blamed on glitchy laser rangefinders) underscores how "fail
| fast" can drive innovation in private spaceflight. In fact,
| Athena still managed the Moon's southernmost touchdown on record
| and even sent back some data before freezing up in the dark.
| Sure, two tipped landers in a row is a setback, but each misstep
| teaches engineers invaluable lessons at a fraction of the cost of
| a traditional program.
| necubi wrote:
| Please don't post LLM generated comments on HN.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| What's the tell?
| crummy wrote:
| The last sentence, for me.
| gtirloni wrote:
| <tangent>Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at
| the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250
| miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd
| to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic
| spacecraft" but I can't explain why.</tangent>
| jchw wrote:
| I agree, as a native speaker. It's a known phenomena[1], though
| I'm not sure in this case what type of adjective you'd classify
| "private" as.
|
| [1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-
| grammar/adj...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Nit:
|
| _Phenomena_ is plural. The singular form is _phenomenon_.
|
| (Other similar words with a Greek root: lexicon/lexica,
| criterion/criteria, automaton/automata)
| mhink wrote:
| I'll grant that it definitely sounds ambiguous, but I
| actually think the phrasing "robotic private spacecraft" is
| more correct in the end.
|
| I think this is a fair analogy: suppose we were talking about
| a "private detective". If we were writing a sci-fi book, we
| might talk about a "robotic private detective", but "private
| robotic detective" would sound odd.
|
| Now, I'll grant that "private detective" has a lot more
| cultural weight than "private spacecraft", but I think it's
| fair to say that at least the word "private" is playing a
| nearly identical role in both phrases. With that in mind, I
| think "robotic private spacecraft" makes sense.
|
| I suppose you could take this argument one step further and
| resolve the ambiguity by asking which distinction
| (robotic/non-robotic, private/public) the article writer
| thinks is more notable and placing that first.
| card_zero wrote:
| Yeah, _private detective_ is an open compound:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)
|
| At least I think that's the right term (I hunted around for
| one that fits). So, is _private spacecraft_ also a
| compound? Is it idiomatic? Maybe. Another example is
| _little black dress,_ where "my new little black dress"
| sounds right and "my little new black dress" seems to refer
| to a different kind of garment.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >I agree, as a native speaker. It's _a_ known phenomena[1]
|
| phenomenon is the singular, phenomena is the plural, dear
| native speaker ;)
|
| google: phenomenon vs phenomena
|
| or:
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-
| english/...
| card_zero wrote:
| There is such a thing as adjective order.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective#Order
|
| Arguably "private" is _origin_ and "robotic" is _purpose_.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The order of adjectives in English is usually:
|
| opinion, size, age or shape, colour, origin, material, purpose
|
| It is sometimes difficult to classify adjectives this way, but
| "private" is probably opinion and "robotic" is probably
| purpose, so you are correct, "private robotic spacecraft" is
| probably correct.
|
| The problem with English, of course, is that you can figure out
| what someone means, even if they jumble all their words up,
| most of the time.
|
| I wonder if the standard of English composition has been
| reducing in journalism, over the past few years.
| bombcar wrote:
| Private large old round blue American metallic robotic
| spaceship.
|
| Sounds a bit wrong, I want to put American first.
| asah wrote:
| That's your American opinion !! :-)
| adriand wrote:
| > Sounds a bit wrong, I want to put American first.
|
| That would require labelling the spacecraft transgender,
| then cutting its budget.
| bawolff wrote:
| Otoh, if you cut out some - "old american spaceship" sounds
| fine to me, where "american old spaceship" does not (or it
| makes it sound like "american old" is a brand name)
| bombcar wrote:
| Part of it might be that the age is changing, but the
| "American" isn't.
|
| I don't know. It's weird that there's obviously some kind
| of ruleset here, but it's difficult to nail it down.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I think private is an origin, not an opinion.
| tzs wrote:
| I'm curious how that would apply in this case Imagine a
| restaurant that sells french fries. They offer two kinds of
| fries, one with physically large fries (like steak fries) and
| the other with physically small fries (like shoestring
| fries). They call these "large" fries and "small" fries.
|
| You can order a large quantity of fries or a small quantity
| of fries, giving 4 possible orders: large large fries, large
| small fries, small large fries, and small small fries.
|
| If an order of large small fries asking for a large quantity
| of the shoestring fries or a small quantity of the steak
| fries?
|
| I think I'd expect it to mean a large quantity of the
| shoestring fries.
| celsius1414 wrote:
| You are likely aware of the English language's feature of
| multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing
| to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example
| "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon"
| sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before
| COLOR in standard English phrases.
|
| In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough
| in category to be confusing. In the Order of Adjectives[0],
| "robotic" is in the TYPE category, near the bottom of the list,
| and "private" seems to fit in that same category at first
| glance. By that interpretation, either "robotic private" or
| "private robotic" works.
|
| What if instead of "private" it said "Californian"? That would
| make it an ORIGIN, and "Californian robotic spacecraft" becomes
| the obvious choice -- otherwise, you'd think they were talking
| about a spacecraft belonging to robots from California. ;)
|
| So if we interpret "private" as an ORIGIN, your "private
| robotic spacecraft" sounds better. That would have been my
| choice as well.
|
| [0]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-
| grammar/adj...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Upvoted, but just wanted to say it explicitly:
|
| What an in-depth and thoughtful answer. Thank you for this!
| kulahan wrote:
| Comments like these are literally why I come to HN
| honestly. It's such a wonderful community here.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| They are especially flavorful recently.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Having been raised in the states, I was a little shocked
| when I purchased a small book on English grammar. It
| explained a lot of tenses and proper arraignments of
| sentences I never knew. [which is clear from the things I
| just wrote. :)]
| contingencies wrote:
| A rational reference, but there are no hard and fast rules.
|
| Perhaps more importantly, in well written English superfluous
| words are removed - thus 'private robotic spacecraft' becomes
| 'private spacecraft', since all spacecraft are by definition
| at least partly autonomous.
| alwa wrote:
| In the domain of moon spacecraft particularly, doesn't
| there remain a clear distinction to be drawn between manned
| and unmanned spacecraft, given the power of the "man on the
| moon" trope in English-speakers' imagination?
|
| "Private spacecraft tips over on moon" would mean something
| rather different if a modern-day Neil Armstrong were inside
| at the time.
|
| If anything, the fact that it's just a machine matters more
| to me than who paid for it.
| 725686 wrote:
| I am not a native English speaker (or English native speaker,
| ;)), but I've been using it forever...but didn't know there
| was an official adjective ordering.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I don't think most native English speakers know that,
| either. I only learned about it by hearing people explain
| it as an aspect of English to non-native speakers; it was
| not something anyone taught me in school, it's not
| something I've ever heard anyone mention in the context of
| proofreading or writing advice, and I couldn't actually
| tell you how it works - though I'm sure I must be using it
| instinctively.
| card_zero wrote:
| It's strangely intuitive, unlike English spelling. People
| going around getting it right all the time without even
| knowing it.
|
| Not unique to English, either: Wikipedia has examples in
| Tagalog where the order is almost the same (apart from a
| clause inserted in the middle of the second sequence).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagalog_grammar#Sequence_of
| _mo...
| smithkl42 wrote:
| "I first tried to write a story when I was about seven.
| It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except
| a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the
| dragon, but pointed out that one could not say "A green
| great dragon," but had to say "a great green dragon." I
| wondered why, and still do." - J. R. R. Tolkien
| Onawa wrote:
| The order of adjectives was never taught in K-12. It seems
| to be followed naturally by native English speakers without
| much thought until the order isn't followed. Then it sounds
| weird but most native speakers wouldn't be able to tell you
| why.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| afaik Grammar is an attempt to systematize how native
| speakers speak, descriptive rather than prescriptive and
| so on. Tho maybe with writing there's a feedback loop,
| and more instances where corrections are in order than
| colloquial speech.
| ticulatedspline wrote:
| Native speaker. I don't think it's truly "official" and
| it's not typically formally taught. "Elements of Eloquence"
| by Mark Forsyth is frequently cited as an early source of
| the "rule". IMHO It seems to be more of an organic property
| of the language.
|
| there's lots of articles on it. like this one
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/597981/adjective-
| order-g... and it's true that most of the time it just
| sounds odd or is confusing if you get the order "wrong".
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker and I think it's weird as well.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| Imagine we spent this much effort on projects on the Earth.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| We spend vastly more on projects on Earth, any way you measure.
| Time, money, manpower. The US Federal Govt spent $6.9 Trillion
| last year, Nasa's budget was $25 billion, so about 0.3% of
| spending.
|
| https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/nasa-budget
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Good advice:
|
| 1. Never invade Russia in winter.
|
| 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of
| gravity.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _Never invade Russia in winter._
|
| I thought it was never get involved in a land war in Asia.
| analog31 wrote:
| Especially never invade the part of Russia that's in Asia, in
| winter.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are been lot of land wars in Asia over history.
| Sometimes it goes well for the defender, sometimes the
| attacker.
|
| Never get involved in a war is good advice, but sometimes
| impossible to keep.
| mannyv wrote:
| Unless you're Asian, then you'll win.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Never go in against a Sicilian when death (of a spacecraft)
| is on the line
| arccy wrote:
| when gravity is 1/6, a lower centre of gravity might not do as
| much as you think
| doormatt wrote:
| Surely it just needs to be 6 times lower? ;)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I think that is entirely irrelevant. It just changes the
| speed of the topple. Does not affect at all the tendency to
| tip over?
| mathgeek wrote:
| It's been a while, but IIRC when we assume all other
| variables as constant, a lower center of mass (a) will
| decrease the denominator and thus increase the resulting
| necessary tipping force.
|
| F[?] = (m x g x cos(th) x b) / (a + b)
| hansvm wrote:
| Adding to the sibling @mathgeek's comment, that's only true
| when there are no outside forces other than gravity. You
| can see that by taking the counter-argument to its extreme:
| with gravity of epsilon, even a gentle prod at the top of
| the object will topple it over.
| skykooler wrote:
| That just makes it six times as important!
| caycep wrote:
| Why didn't they use that bouncy inflatable ball technique the
| cute JPL robot used?
| cameldrv wrote:
| > Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of
| gravity.
|
| Hmm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS
| ncallaway wrote:
| Don't worry, there will be people inside!
|
| Oh, wait, hrm...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Humans - and the mostly empty space they require - up top.
|
| Fuel, engines, and water will be at the bottom.
|
| (For practical examples, look at the F9 first stage, or the
| Starship prototypes they've already tested.)
| nashashmi wrote:
| If we send a person on a one-way mission to the moon to make sure
| that the instruments are able to work properly, we would have
| better return on the investment.
| matt3210 wrote:
| The lowest bidder messed up :(
| worik wrote:
| > Athena had the same tall, thin design that some experts had
| feared could lead to a repeat of the accident.
|
| Good grief
| quantadev wrote:
| It's so easy to design vehicles that can't roll over on their
| backs and die like a turtle. All you need to do is use large
| wagon-wheels and put the cargo/payload near the axles of it,
| where it doesn't extend above the top of the wheel. Then the
| device can continue to work as well upside down as right-side-up.
| In other words, it has no such thing as upside down.
|
| There are lots of robots like this now, where if they get upside
| down, the wheels are on 'arms' that can just swing to the other
| side to make it right-side-up again. Admittedly I'm a mechanical
| engineer myself, but this design doesn't seem like "Rocket
| Science" to me. haha. (nice pun amirite)
| ForOldHack wrote:
| If a space probe falls on the moon, does it make a sound?
| aabiji wrote:
| No, sound needs a medium to pass through and there isn't (ok
| fine, yes there is, but it's not sufficient) an atmosphere on
| the moon.
|
| Interesting philosophical questions though :)
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Wouldn't the crash make a vibration in the lunar soil?
|
| I know it's actually quite dry, thin, and dusty, but half the
| density of common Earth rock (~1.6 v. ~2.7g/cm3) should still
| conduct some sound. If you put your ear (or more likely, a
| microphone) on the ground...
| thrance wrote:
| Yes, the sound is carried through the ground.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This is really making me suffer from my Kerbal Space Program
| PTSD.
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