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Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

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141–150 of 190 posts

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#141

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.

Can not be further from the truth: https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-lunar-payload-services This mission itself is in preparation for future missions contracted by NASA

I think Artemis is largely going in the wrong direction. It's not really unfair to say the main reason it exists is to give the SLS a reason to exist. The grand ambition of Artemis is to recreate the Apollo landing (with some identity politics injected), and create a mini-ISS around the Moon. Even if you took us 10 years in the future and this was achieved (which one can very safely say it will not be), it would not be particularly relevant.

The reason I say it's the wrong direction is not only the lack of ambition, but cost! Artemis is planned to cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which is just absurd given our trajectory with space. This (back to the topic of this thread) company sent their rover to the moon on a $67 million SpaceX launch. Add the cost of their rover and operations, and it's likely this entire project, of landing a rover on the moon, cost less than $0.1 billion.

The future of space belongs to whoever can get these costs down as much as possible. Because the goals are big - like industrializing the Moon. Water is enough to make rocket fuel, simple raw resources can be exploited to develop things in a near 0-g environment, and so on. At NASA level costs these sort of concepts would bankrupt the entire country. So it's going to be whichever entity/nation can operate most cost-effectively that will decide the future of space. And, for better or for worse, I know who I'd expect to win that game.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#143
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many landings succeeded? Then do percent successes vs failures, broken down as government and commercial. Then ask why's only commercial landing the tricky part? It's not like these people are stupid, nor like they haven't had multiple decades to learn from plus the state of the art. Three in a row is as weird to me as if there were seven in a row. All only commercial, while govt landed fine. Would you think that…

https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/beyond_earth_detail.html this is a neat book on the history of unmanned spaceflight. Take a look and see how long it took to get a probe into orbit. Into someone else's orbit. All that before they even tried landing anywhere For moon landings, sourced from wikipedia[0] but you can certainly find the information in the aformentioned book: > Luna 15, Luna 18, and Luna 23 all crashed…

Good wikipedia list, thanks.

So, moon landings where the craft suddenly and unexpectedly lost comms in the seconds or minutes immediately prior to contact with the surface:

  Government: 1 of 25 (4%)
  Commercial: 3 of 3 (100%)
I'm saying it's odd, weird, and deserves investigating specifically from the angle of why commercial has this happen, but not government.

I'm saying this because it is odd.

I've not once mentioned conspiracy - though others seem ready to jump to that, probably as a subtle ad hominem instead of engaging with the discussion. Thank you for engaging, it's an interesting topic.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#144

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…

This all reads like “they were racing to hit deadlines” to me.

The Moon landing would have never happened without racing to meet deadlines.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ChatGPT, which will take over from us, according to HN, in 5 years, will find a way to reheat the core, or at least to explain convincingly that cold is cool.

Reheat the core? The Sun will expand, oceans will evaporate. It will be too hot here, like today’s Mercury.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#146
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A billion years ago fish hasn't evolved yet.

You get my point, on the grand scheme of things, we can’t stay here.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#147

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…

This all reads like “they were racing to hit deadlines” to me.

They didn't call the Space Race the "Space leisurely jog". The Kennedy speech really was treated like a deadline.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#148
post #123

Not only did I not realize Japan has its own rocket launches, it has multiple complexes, nice. Always figured they used NASA, etc. https://global.jaxa.jp/about/centers/tnsc/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_space_program

This mission used SpaceX though

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#149

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…

Dropping it 5cm shifted the position of the tube assembly far enough to cause more problems? Why wouldn't that disqualify the part for flight?

Because the damaged pipe was only IIRC used to drain fuel on the launch pad and had no in-flight role. The subsequent explosion happened because the drain-fuel workaround they used on the ground had the unfortunate side effect of melting some wiring insulation in an oxygen tank

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#150

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

Not my opinion - I saw a compelling video of some prof on reddit a few years ago. His argument went something like this: name the richest businessman from the time of Columbus/ Amerigo. Or a very powerful politician/ socialite? Progress is a derivative of us pursuing the unknown. That is why we do what we do. Disclaimer: I've lost a lot of the language behind the original argument, but as a sceptic it did make a lot…

- "name the richest businessman from the time of Columbus/ Amerigo"

The copper monopolist. His name is easy to remember,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Fugger

(Some crossover: the bio says he was a major investor in some of those spice-route-seeking expeditions, possibly including Magellan's).

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