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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

#101

Post by thescriptkiddie »

adastra22 wrote: post #76
speedgoose wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A slug is defined as the mass that is accelerated by 1 ft/s2 when a net force of one pound (lbf) is exerted on it.[2] One slug is a mass equal to 32.1740 lb

this is like if you tried to explain the difference between a newton and a kilogram to an alien an they didn't quite get it

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#104

Post by [deleted] »

estebank wrote: post #56
shagie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would direct you to another Sagan quote as part of Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist : https://vimeo.com/108650530 For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal,…

Thank you for incidentally reminding me of https://youtu.be/zSgiXGELjbc

[deleted]

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

samtho wrote: post #87
jwagenet wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Space and planets we can visit has absolutely none of these things.

Because of that, you'll be carrying with you sources of better breathable air, fresher water, and food that's much less likely to kill you or escape you. At least early on, before the market pressure reduces aforementioned consumables to lowest possible quality still able to sustain some degree of life.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#106

Post by kzrdude »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #97
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.

We can’t stay here forever. This planet is 4.5 billion years old and has 1 billion years left. That’s assuming that our species will be able to survive so long.

If you compare with the history we know, if we'd survive for that long, we would not be the same species anymore anyway, I think :)

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#107

Post by krisoft »

dylan604 wrote: post #23
snacktaster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm curious too. It seems like if there was actually some commercial benefit to this then USA would be dropping rovers on the moon every week. But it's mostly lost interest now.

If you're a private company looking to build a mining base station, tourist hotel, or any other thing a private company might want to do, then it's best to get the kinks worked out by practicing with an unmanned lander a few times first

> mining base station

What would you be mining on the moon and what for?

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#108

Post by adastra22 »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #101
adastra22 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A slug is defined as the mass that is accelerated by 1 ft/s2 when a net force of one pound (lbf) is exerted on it.[2] One slug is a mass equal to 32.1740 lb this is like if you tried to explain the difference between a newton and a kilogram to an alien an they didn't quite get it

It's not that complicated. A slug is the Imperial unit of mass, like the kilogram. It's just that while in metric the unit of mass is primary and the unit of force (Newton) is derived, in foot-pound-second it is the reverse. Pounds is a fundamental unit of force and the slug is derived.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#109

Post by dotnet00 »

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.

I feel like in the 'cynicism' that's popular in tech circles like this about tech as a career, we tend to forget that many people's passions don't really have a lot to do with wanting to be famous or rich. This is to the point that we apparently can't fathom that someone simply wants to do something without any special stereotypically grand aspirations.

Even in tech, some portion of people chose it for the money and some chose it purely as a passion, such that they would've chosen it even if there wasn't as much money to be made. I know that I would still be pursuing the same career even if I didn't get to work on the things I am currently working on.

Remember that plenty of people work 'boring' jobs like garbage collection, being a janitor, being a soldier or riskier stuff with even worse conditions. Many of them are perfectly content with that as long as that doesn't get in the way of things that are important to them.

So it's entirely reasonable that many people would genuinely be willing to happily sacrifice everything to go to Mars, simply for the sake of being there, regardless of any potential glamourous outcomes.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#110

Post by dredmorbius »

xwolfi wrote: post #94
danielodievich wrote: post #72

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 fo…

Space is hard and they had not even left the Earth.

Many failures of complex systems originate in fabrication / maintenance rather than in operation. Flights are doomed from the start due to such defects.

The Columbia disaster is a partial exception --- the proximate triggering factor occurred during (very early) flight, but a deeper-cause analysis would include factors that originated on the ground in design, operations, and assessments of earlier incidents.

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