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Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

theguardian.com

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Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#31

Post by ein0p »

nicklecompte wrote: post #6
internetter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

"Lost the ability" is an odd way of putting it. "Lost the budget" is better. Ideally we wouldn't have to pick and choose, but since I wasn't US Dictator during the 90s, the Hubble Space Telescope + a lot of probes throughout the solar system was probably more impactful for overall scientific discovery than the counterfactual where NASA invested in continued moon landings.

We did lose the capability. Read up on the engineering behind Saturn-V. There are books that go into extensive detail. A lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024. Not to mention that cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#32

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cameldrv wrote: post #11
internetter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

Part of it is cost: In the mid sixties, NASA was about five percent of the federal budget. Another part is safety: Apollo was extremely dangerous. There were a lot of single points of failure, three astronauts died on the ground, three more were very very narrowly saved over the course of only about ten missions. One of the reasons the program was cut short was the political worry after Apollo 13 of having astronauts…

> Part of it is cost

The other side to this is we don't build rockets today like we did in the sixties. Yes, some technical know-how here and there was technically "lost"--I've been in North Hollywood scrounging around for old NASA parts so that measurements could be taken and worked backwards from.

But even if we had that know-how, we wouldn't do it the same again. From novel materials to simulations to communications and onboard computing, modern spacecraft deserved to be redesigned. (For the counterfactuals, see ULA and Arianespace.)

So until someone (SpaceX) started eating that node-transition cost, we entered a period of apparent stasis. But that vacuum was energetic, and it wasn't about rediscovering lost knowledge, but inventing new kit.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#33

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ein0p wrote: post #31
nicklecompte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lost the ability" is an odd way of putting it. "Lost the budget" is better. Ideally we wouldn't have to pick and choose, but since I wasn't US Dictator during the 90s, the Hubble Space Telescope + a lot of probes throughout the solar system was probably more impactful for overall scientific discovery than the counterfactual where NASA invested in continued moon landings.

We did lose the capability. Read up on the engineering behind Saturn-V. There are books that go into extensive detail. A lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024. Not to mention that cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then.

> lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024

Give me one example.

> cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then

Inflation adjusted, the Saturn V was a $45bn project [1]. That's a mulitiple of the total capital SpaceX has raised (or been granted).

[1] https://apollo11space.com/the-cost-of-launching-a-saturn-v/

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#34

Post by passwordoops »

aredox wrote: post #30
internetter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

The best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible.

This comment deserves to be on the front page

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#35

Post by analognoise »

aredox wrote: post #30
internetter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

The best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible.

Don’t forget the parasocial relationships they form with fans who are increasingly lonely, the new frontier in emotionally manipulative AI chatbots, and surveillance capitalism.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#36

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rockemsockem wrote: post #18
LorenDB wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's largely a matter of incentive. In the sixties, the US had an incentive to prove that it had more advanced technology than the USSR. Once we proved we could land on the moon, the novelty quickly wore off for the public, which influenced Congress's decision to cut funding for the Apollo program. We also haven't returned to the moon yet because of cost, I would imagine.

The public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon. The government was just willing to ignore public sentiment for some reason. And I'm very glad they did.

> public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon

Wow, I wasn't aware that the "only point at which the opinion surveys demonstrate that more than 50 percent of the public believed Apollo was worth its expense came in 1969 at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing" [1].

[1] https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/exploding-the-myth...

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#37

Post by dotnet00 »

internetter wrote: post #3
LorenDB wrote: post #2

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

There's also specifically the difference that humans being onboard added much more tolerance when it comes to things like landing. Neil Armstrong was able to fly the lander to get to a safer landing area and was able to sanity check the sensor readings in realtime.

In comparison, these landers have to do everything autonomously, the computer has to figure out where it's safe to touch down, it has to be able to figure out if a sensor is malfunctioning and if so, which is the one that's wrong.

Similarly, previous uncrewed landers were not expected to be that smart, they just aimed for a patch of land believed to be flat and hoped for the best.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#38

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

ein0p wrote: post #31
nicklecompte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lost the ability" is an odd way of putting it. "Lost the budget" is better. Ideally we wouldn't have to pick and choose, but since I wasn't US Dictator during the 90s, the Hubble Space Telescope + a lot of probes throughout the solar system was probably more impactful for overall scientific discovery than the counterfactual where NASA invested in continued moon landings.

We did lose the capability. Read up on the engineering behind Saturn-V. There are books that go into extensive detail. A lot of the things described there required completely novel approaches that would be very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024. Not to mention that cost of all this would be absolutely astronomical, far more so than it was back then.

I, too, am eager to learn of one example.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#39

Post by JumpCrisscross »

aredox wrote: post #30
internetter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still just cannot wrap my mind around how we could get people there, and then all this time later have lost that ability. What happened?

The best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible.

> best minds of our generation are working on byzantine financial derivatives, making social media more addictive, and turning fake pictures/videos/bots as realistic as possible

Ten years ago, maybe. Today, I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I had that "wow, everyone here is ten times smarter than me" feeling at one of the big tech firms.

And to the extent the system works, it's correcting. We're seeing layoffs on one side. And moon landings on another.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#40

Post by yieldcrv »

LorenDB wrote: post #2

Huge congratulations to IM. Landing on the Moon is extremely difficult, despite what playing KSP will condition you to think. For them to successfully land on the Moon is a huge milestone. Now to get people back there... maybe someday.

Is there a good resource to follow all space efforts?

I have no idea whats coming down the pipe and I used to

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