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A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

arstechnica.com

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Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#51

Post by zymhan »

dlgeek wrote: post #44

They crashed. Based on the occasional English commentary during the stream, they had an IMU failure, that recovered, but then a main engine failure right near the end of the descent. They got the engine online again, but just looking the speeds on the telemetry, it was too late.

Yup, sadly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19638357

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/israel-moon-landi...

> On the way down, the main engine cut out. The engine was successfully restarted, but then communications were cut off, and no more information was sent back.

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#53

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #33
dr_dshiv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science first, but the biggest economic driver will be tourism and sports. Moonball will be the biggest sporting event broadcast on Earth. Jumping 20 feet for the dunk? Yes please. But before team sports, dirtbiking will be a special once-in-a-lifetime moon tourist experience. Going forward, there will be special culinary options due to the excessively large moonfruits that can be grown in low gravity. The trip will…

> Science first, but the biggest economic driver will be tourism and sports. Tourism for a couple of ultra-rich, yeah, but sports? Need massive structures for that one. I rather believe that Moon commercial usage will be dominated by resource gathering: mining for rare materials deposited by aeons of asteroid hits, helium-3 (assuming the Moon Nazis from Iron Sky left us anything), or anything that can be chemically c…

[deleted]

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#54

Post by beagle3 »

flyinglizard wrote: post #4

It's semi-private; the funding is private, and the team is lead by volunteers, but much of this effort is supported by Israeli Aerospace Industries which is a government owned company. I'm not sure how much, but you have the IAI logo plastered all over the mission. What's true is that it's not a government initiated program per se, but it's still not entirely private either. Commendable nonetheless.

AFAIK all funding was private, and though IAI provided expertise, they were paid for it (likely at-cost and not for-profit, but still)

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#55

Post by drewmol »

kaycebasques wrote: post #15

> a nascent commercial space effort that seeks to develop a base of economic activity on the Moon Can someone clue me in on what types of commercial activity will happen first?

"Despite early speculation which consisted largely of unique and fantastical possibilities... by affording unprecedented visibility due to it's mamouth size, proximity to dense population centers and rotational properties of the celestial body, Lamar advertising was able to secure exclusive rights to the entire lunar surface by 2036."

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#56

Post by nir »

JshWright wrote: post #45
JshWright wrote: post #7

I took my daughter to this launch (we happened to be vacationing in the area). It was an evening launch and we spent the day at KSC. On the bus tour around the launch pads we happened to sit right behind a couple members of the SpaceIL team (including the chief systems engineer). They were extremely friendly and happy to answer all sorts of questions. Best of luck to the team on this exciting day!

Unfortunately it looks like the landing was unsuccessful.

This spacecraft was the main thing my three year old and five year old were talking about all week, so at least partial success here :) Next time!

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#57

Post by jandrese »

atemerev wrote: post #11

Mission budget is around $100 million (including launch costs). Which is modest for moon landing attempts, but still well outside of a one-shot fully privately funded initiative. Perhaps still a possibility of being crowdsourced. Google Lunar X prize was $20 million, which is more realistic for a private program. Still, this is a _great_ leap forward. Now, students routinely design and launch satellites (around $50k…

$100 million is like 1/1000 of Jeff Bezos net worth. He could easily fully fund another moon landing mission if he wanted.

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#58

Post by jandrese »

radley wrote: post #10
tracer4201 wrote: post #5

Any word what imaging or video capabilities are on the lander? Would love to see video from the surface in 4K.

Probably not. The goal of the project was to demonstrate a private company landing safely on the moon. Their second goal is for it to travel a short distance on the surface.

Might have met the second goal depending on how well it bounced.

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#59

Post by [deleted] »

radley wrote: post #10
tracer4201 wrote: post #5

Any word what imaging or video capabilities are on the lander? Would love to see video from the surface in 4K.

Probably not. The goal of the project was to demonstrate a private company landing safely on the moon. Their second goal is for it to travel a short distance on the surface.

[deleted]

Re: A private spacecraft from Israel will attempt a moon landing Thursday

#60

Post by atemerev »

jandrese wrote: post #57
atemerev wrote: post #11

Mission budget is around $100 million (including launch costs). Which is modest for moon landing attempts, but still well outside of a one-shot fully privately funded initiative. Perhaps still a possibility of being crowdsourced. Google Lunar X prize was $20 million, which is more realistic for a private program. Still, this is a _great_ leap forward. Now, students routinely design and launch satellites (around $50k…

$100 million is like 1/1000 of Jeff Bezos net worth. He could easily fully fund another moon landing mission if he wanted.

He owns Blue Origin, so perhaps he will.
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