[flagged]
…what?
You heard the man. We're trying to convince people we've faked another landing by landing on the moon
Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
51–60 of 165 posts
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#52Lots of discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39465230
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#53Earlier 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.
> very difficult to replicate in deindustrialized United States of 2024.
While we might have deindustrialized a lot of commodity electronics and small consumer things, I'm pretty sure we're still totally fine when it comes to aerospace. What with our Air Force and NASA and SpaceX and all that. More than fine, even.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 communicatio…
>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. Oh, I don't know. I think we've actually made improvements in leaps and bounds over the "lost" tech. Our soundstage, green screen, and post tech has definitely improved /s I know it's not what you meant, but the NoHo refer…
> the NoHo reference made me laugh at the thought
I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s a scrapyard with all kinds of space stuff (large and small) that I’m halfway sure isn’t ITAR controlled solely because the guy got it before 1976.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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://apollo11…
Eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_forming of upper and lower parts of the fuel and oxidizer tanks with extremely tight restrictions on the weight of the part, and its structural integrity. This is but one example - there’s a great book on this, “Saturn-V, Owner’s workshop manual”. Your mind will be blown literally on every page. Buy it and read it just to see how incredible the engineering was, and how unrealistic it is to reproduce today, when NASA can’t even get humans to LEO on its own.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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://apollo11…
Eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_forming of upper and lower parts of the fuel and oxidizer tanks with extremely tight restrictions on the weight of the part, and its structural integrity. This is but one example - there’s a great book on this, “Saturn-V, Owner’s workshop manual”. Your mind will be blown literally on every page. Buy it and read it just to see how incredible the engineering was, and how unr…
We’re building lighter and stronger pressure vessels—more reliably, at larger scale and, inflation adjusted, probably cheaper—today than those tanks.
We’re entering a halcyon of American space flight, with multiple teams doing what others cannot and Apollo-era engineers could only dream of. It’s mind-boggling to see the disconnect between a lunar landing alongside a caricature of American industrial decline.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_forming of upper and lower parts of the fuel and oxidizer tanks with extremely tight restrictions on the weight of the part, and its structural integrity. This is but one example - there’s a great book on this, “Saturn-V, Owner’s workshop manual”. Your mind will be blown literally on every page. Buy it and read it just to see how incredible the engineering was, and how unr…
We’re building lighter and stronger pressure vessels—more reliably, at larger scale and, inflation adjusted, probably cheaper—today than those tanks. We’re entering a halcyon of American space flight, with multiple teams doing what others cannot and Apollo-era engineers could only dream of. It’s mind-boggling to see the disconnect between a lunar landing alongside a caricature of American industrial decline.
Until we successfully land people on the Moon again we by definition haven’t surpassed the Apollo program. And don’t latch onto just this one example. Read the book. There are a thousand more things like that there.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#58Earlier 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.
This is one of the reasons I’m glad the US is a representative democracy and not a direct democracy.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty simple. Just keep pointed retrograde and you'll probably be fine (assuming you start your final landing burn soon enough).
I’ll wager once we get a handle on it it’ll be routine and simple. But it’s been quite some time since we really tried and the efforts so far again have been pretty minimal and laced with pork.
Once Starship is able to reliably get to orbit and refuel, the payloads we'll be able to get the moon will increase significantly, and hopefully with high frequency.
Developing custom probes where most of the development+weight is to navigate space and land, May quickly become obsolete.
Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 communicatio…
North Hollywood? Looking through prop storage from studios or something?
Some interesting junk and scrap shops in the area. Spent a few weekend afternoons puttering around looking at random stuff.