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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

#161

Post by signatoremo »

hulitu wrote: post #132

To say it with SpaceX fans words: The launch was a success. /s

Anyone with slightest interest in space knew well in advance that the odds were stacked against achieving the full objective of that test, and any outcome that didn’t result in demolishing the launch tower would be a success:

“The most likely outcome is that something will go wrong during this flight... The primary goal of this mission, therefore, is to gather as much data as possible about the performance by Super Heavy and Starship in flight—for as long as that flight lasts.” [0]

But perhaps you know that too.

[0] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/spacex-to-make-a-sec...

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#162

Post by jacquesm »

dredmorbius wrote: post #110
xwolfi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And don't forget 'culture', which I think was a huge contributing non-technical factor.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#163

Post by golergka »

heavyset_go wrote: post #86
golergka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Idealism has brought us genocide, mass murder and war. Majority of the most awful people in human history have been idealists.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#164

Post by ghaff »

moffkalast wrote: post #160
ghaff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former mechanical engineer, any calculations involving pounds in any form I pretty much always converted to metric and then back at the end if need-be. The trinity of pound-mass, pound-force, and slugs is incredibly easy to screw up--at least as a student.

Smh, Americans will literally convert into metric and back to keep using their bald eagles per shotgun squared units.

Admittedly, engineers are pretty much the only people making calculations with those kind of units and they generally use metric as far as I know. I went to school a long time ago and there were probably enough legacy imperial units hanging around that it seemed worthwhile to at least be exposed to examples you wouldn't have encountered in day to day living.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#166

Post by _dain_ »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #157
somenameforme wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big reason not much happened in space in the past was cost. The Space Shuttle ended up costing around $60,000/kg to send stuff to space. SpaceX brought that down to $2,600/kg with the Falcon 9. And if Starship lives up to its potential, you're looking at $10/kg. You literally cannot overstate the impact of that change. Space flights costs will start to become completely viable for small companies or even individu…

> Space flights costs will start to become completely viable for small companies or even individuals. We're already at a point where - at least using companies in the UK - it costs about the same to launch a cubesat as it does to buy a poverty-spec cloth-seats-no-aircon Ford Focus. It's mad that I could launch a 10cm 1kg cubesat - think in terms of a bag of sugar - for so little money, and all I need to do is ring a…

It's already cheaper to fly between UK cities via Barcelona than to take the train; in ten years time it'll be cheaper to go from London to Edinburgh via the L2 Lagrange point.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#167

Post by krisoft »

detrites wrote: post #143
dmreedy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But is it odd? It is just a very hard problem. You need to spend a lot of resources to get it right and you need to spend them in the right way. Also you need to build up to the capability step by step. You can't drum random engineers together and expect them to build a lunar lander. You need to give them progressively harder and harder challenges, and see if they develop the right chops to handle them.

What do you want to investigate? I'm sure the commercial entities did their own investigations about their failures and the factors behind it. They are under no obligation to share anything with me or you.

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#168

Post by 0xf00ff00f »

cuSetanta wrote: post #126
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.

Can confirm it was hard to sleep last night. I knew there was a high chance of failure but still, not the best evening.

Wow, so you worked on this project? That's awesome! Congratulations on making it to the moon!

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#169

Post by philipwhiuk »

anigbrowl wrote: post #50

Maybe they should be focusing on building something robust enough to land or even crash on the moon's surface and keep transmitting for a while, then work on the cool rover payload after that. It's perplexing to me not that it failed, but that they don't (so far) have any idea why or how.

Maybe you should wait for more than 10 minutes after projected touchdown so they have time to review the data?

Re: Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt

#170

Post by detrites »

krisoft wrote: post #167
detrites wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But is it odd? It is just a very hard problem. You need to spend a lot of resources to get it right and you need to spend them in the right way. Also you need to build up to the capability step by step. You can't drum random engineers together and expect them to build a lunar lander. You need to give them progressively harder and harder challenges, and see if they develop the right chops to handle them. What do you w…

It is indeed odd to me, that the only and all three missions distinct by funding all failed in exactly the same way, at exactly the same point, where those funded from a different source only did 1 in 25 times in that way.

Perhaps the randomly-drummed up engineers argument could have some merit for overall mission failure, though it doesn't adequately explain failure on only the same, final mode.

Were the same engineers involved? If so, it seems beyond the pale they didn't learn anything?

To be clear, it's not that these landers hit the moon and expired, they all stopped transmitting on the final leg. It's a weird failure and even weirder that it wasn't experienced more frequently in govt funded missions.

I've no plausible theory why, that's why it's interesting.

All reasonable explanations have to be a bit out there, other than the de facto "bad luck", which doesn't wash with me.

I'm not interested in investigating (beyond doing sums on wikipedia numbers). But I am interested in it being investigated by someone more qualified.

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