Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 190 posts

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#81

Post by LuckySalamander »

pc86 wrote: post #39
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because everyone assumes they'd be an explorer or visionary scientist when they'd most likely just be taking out the trash in a frozen desert.

The closest experience to what living in space that can be experienced on earth is living on a submarine. Working with advanced tech in an environment where everything is trying to kill you, logistics challenges to maintain operation, schedule completely dictated for you, etc. But ask many people who want to live on Mars if they would go on a long underway on a submarine, and they don't seem to excited by the idea. I don't think people really think about the day to day operations, but jump on the fame/historical significance being one of the settlers on the moon or mars.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#82

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

sva_ wrote: post #79

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)

I mean... I think that's a good quality landing animation.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#83

Post by tomxor »

et-al wrote: post #80
chrisco255 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Yup, even in person i.e without zooming, the moon looks way smaller when in the middle of the sky; yet on the horizon amongst man made structures it can look bigger... measure it with your thumb and it's the same size - context changes our perception.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#84

Post by Firmwarrior »

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.

I dunno if I'd jump at the chance, but I'd probably go there for work once things kick into high gear and all the money is out there

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#85

Post by LuckySalamander »

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.

Aerospace engineering is still a mix of both units. Especially on the aeronautics side, imperial is still widely used. Part of the reason for this is that past reference materials and tooling at many manufacturers still using imperial tooling. A team of good engineers is expected to be proficient with both unit systems --- its not really a big deal to use imperial on projects.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#86

Post by heavyset_go »

golergka wrote: post #61
hungryforcodes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a commercial landing though. I guess its not there to do science or improve the human race. What was behind it?

Most of the things that have improved the human race have been done commercially, and those motivated by profit have done a hundredfold more for humanity than those who were motivated by idealism.

Weird considering idealism got us things like free insulin[1] when none existed, Linux, important things like human rights, democracy etc.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expe...

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#87

Post by samtho »

jwagenet wrote: post #71
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least I would have a reasonable assumption of breathable air, a fresh water source, flora and fauna I can gather and hunt to eat, and likely arable land that I can use to grow additional food sources from. Space and planets we can visit has absolutely none of these things.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#88

Post by CydeWeys »

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... )

We don't know the field of view of the lens (or crop) being used here, so you can't say anything about the apparent size of objects. With a smaller FoV lens, or even just a tighter crop, the Earth could look significantly larger.

If you took a normal snapshot of a scene on Earth with a typical 55 degree field of view lens (e.g. your smartphone's 1X lens) I think you'd be quite surprised by how small the Moon appears in your photo.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#89

Post by samtho »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #18
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.

This was a commercial landing though. I guess its not there to do science or improve the human race. What was behind it?

Just because it’s a commercial endeavor does not make it useless, impactful, or suggest the people behind it genuinely care about the work they are doing. I’m willing to bet people working there right now watched in awe while humans first stepped foot on the moon, or watched the first space walk, or even witnessed some of the tragedies that happened during the shuttle program, all while dreaming to be part of them next team to do something even greater.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#90

Post by biorach »

Aperocky wrote: post #41
m3kw9 wrote: post #32

There were 2 other commercial landing that blacked out just before landing must be something they all didn’t take care of or maybe nasa is holding out some secret info

> just before landing I would characterize it as failing during the landing process, or lithobraking if you will.

> lithobraking

Love it

Post reply on HN