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Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

cnn.com

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Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#71

Post by jwagenet »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #36
mostlysimilar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory Sagan quote: > Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, ev…

This is why I do not understand people who would jump at the chance to live on a permanent Martian or Lunar colony.

Until the last couple centuries, traveling across the sea to an unknown land may have been just as remote.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#72

Post by danielodievich »

I am currently reading the gorgeous Folio Society edition of the A Man on the Moon The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin (worth a buy from https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/a-man-on-the-moon.html if you a) like the topic and b) have 235.00).

I just finished the book 1 which ends with well known Apollo 13 disaster and the RCA of the explosion is that the liquid O2 tank for the fuel cell was intended for Apollo 10, but was removed for modifications, and during that was dropped about 5cm, a "minor jolt, but enough to damage the tube assembly used to fill and empty the tank". As part of testing - and under full, and capable supervision of NASA astronauts and mission control - the tank was filled and tested, and would refuse to drain fully due to the tube assembly being in the way. Alternative procedure to empty it was to heat it with the internal heater and have the liquid O2 simply evaporate. BUT! The heater inside was originally spec'ed to use 28V, but was upgraded to 65V, and everything in it was redesigned to do so, EXCEPT the thermostat inside the tank itself. The thermostat was supposed to provide temperature control and shut the heating process off if temperatures exceed things. Well, during that ground draining operation the 65V fried the thermostat, and the temp gauge on the ground only went up to 85 degrees. The insides of the tank went up to a 1000, which cracked the insulation on the wires of the motor designed to stir the tank, and those arced while in transit to moon and boom, made that mission what it was.

So yeah, space is hard. I am sure the mission people for the lander will do their design review and I look forward to their findings.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#73

Post by brookst »

bee_rider wrote: post #68
mensetmanusman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you hear about earth after the core gets cold.

I’ll try to wait but I bet the Earth’s core is a bit more patient than me.

I think it's scheduled for 2pm PT next Thursday

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#74

Post by throwaway743 »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #12

Is there an actual commercial reason for landing on the moon? What was this lander going to do? It seems like a lot of missions from various companies and countries are trying to get to the moon and they're all crashing. Is it just a rite of passage for a space program? What is the point of this

Helium-3

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#75

Post by adastra22 »

beders wrote: post #10

It was heartbreaking to see the control room during the first few minutes after the landing. Imagine a project you've worked on for years going kaput and you won't even know why. None of these engineers will find sleep tonight. I hope some moon orbiter can take pics of the landing site soon.

According to the doppler telemetry analysis on Twitter, it entered free fall 90 seconds before loss of signal. So presumably the engine cut out and they have telemetry data to determine why. Most likely explanation: insufficient fuel.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#76

Post by adastra22 »

speedgoose wrote: post #52
ceejayoz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you won't even know why Not necessarily. We've frequently been able to determine the cause of unmanned spacecraft failures via telemetry and/or post-failure investigation. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter famously failed because NASA used metric and a vendor did not.

Foot pound second is such a weird unit. How did that pass the quality controls? I also don’t understand how one team of educated engineers could decide to use imperial units instead of metric units.

It's how literally all engineering in this country was done a single generation ago. When I studied mechanical engineering it was all units like slugs and foot-pound-second.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#77

Post by aardvarkr »

flangola7 wrote: post #59
WillPostForFood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a commercial craft carrying a payload from a few sources, including a rover from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, and a second rover built by the UAE.

Do the rovers at least still work?

Things tend to stop working after a crash landing

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#78

Post by chrisco255 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #6

Beautiful images of Earth from the lander: https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1650506233575604227/ph... and https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1649707714447306753/ph...

How is it that Earth on the Moon's horizon looks smaller than the Moon on Earth's horizon? When the moon is on the horizon on earth, it looks enormous (ie https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*oiA6GCepn7GthCt...)

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#79

Post by sva_ »

German national/public broadcasting service ARD reported the lunar lander has successfully landed while they watched a rendered animation[0] (from the perspective of the surface of the moon!!). Can't make this shit up.

0. https://pr0gramm.com/top/5662958 (German)

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#80

Post by et-al »

chrisco255 wrote: post #78
noisy_boy wrote: post #6

Beautiful images of Earth from the lander: https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1650506233575604227/ph... and https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1649707714447306753/ph...

How is it that Earth on the Moon's horizon looks smaller than the Moon on Earth's horizon? When the moon is on the horizon on earth, it looks enormous (ie https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*oiA6GCepn7GthCt... )

It's a visual illusion dependent on the focal length of the lens being used and any foreground objects that are on the studio backlot.
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