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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

#81
post #76

https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442 > After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data. Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.

[flagged]

They were concerned about not landing upright in the live stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM&t=5678s

"looks like we had excellent pitch and yaw control throughout, but I did see a little bit of a roll excursion. could it be that we landed off-angle in roll in the final phase?"

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#82
post #7

Impressive feat. Got nervous when they couldn't contact the device, but turns out they did made history. I might be wrong, but from my research it seem like they did this with $118 million paid by NASA. India did it with around $74 million, for reference.

That's to be expected, a dollar in India goes much further than a dollar in the US. https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p... says a dollar in India can buy you about 23 times as much stuff as that same dollar could in the US, although I'd expect that number to drop significantly for highly technical projects like a moon landing.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#83

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…

Re: who is right

So long as; the participants are willing, the death rate is in the single percents per mission,the mission value add on terms of new capability is high, the risk is probably worth it. At least in my opinion.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#84
post #22
post #21

Earlier 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).

A KSP mod which requires you to put cameras and altimeters with failure modes on your craft would be...interesting, but probably a lot less fun.

It's called "OhScrap!" for the original one and is how I would describe KSP 2 even after the big science update. I would enjoy it a lot more if they could work on adding some precision to the nav points, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed auto execute mode from MechJeb(not to mention the porkchop plots), but KSP 2 is at least some fun now.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…what?

You heard the man. We're trying to convince people we've faked another landing by landing on the moon

I think you misunderstand. We actually had to fake this one to prove the faked ones weren’t fake.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#86
post #7

Impressive feat. Got nervous when they couldn't contact the device, but turns out they did made history. I might be wrong, but from my research it seem like they did this with $118 million paid by NASA. India did it with around $74 million, for reference.

That's to be expected, a dollar in India goes much further than a dollar in the US. https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p... says a dollar in India can buy you about 23 times as much stuff as that same dollar could in the US, although I'd expect that number to drop significantly for highly technical projects like a moon landing.

It's 23 rupees to a dollar at PPP. The exchange rate is 82, so a dollar goes 3.5 times further in India not 23 :)

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#87
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's to be expected, a dollar in India goes much further than a dollar in the US. https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p... says a dollar in India can buy you about 23 times as much stuff as that same dollar could in the US, although I'd expect that number to drop significantly for highly technical projects like a moon landing.

It's 23 rupees to a dollar at PPP. The exchange rate is 82, so a dollar goes 3.5 times further in India not 23 :)

[deleted]

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#88

Earlier 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…

These are all factors but they pale in comparison with the fact that the US was at war, and was trying to catch up with the phenomenal lead of the USSR. Silicon Valley loves talking about "moonshots", but that parlance gets so much wrong. What is important is not the moonshot moment. It is the sputnik moment that is disruptive.

Interesting thought. I guess in a way AI is having its "sputnik" moment now.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#89
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You heard the man. We're trying to convince people we've faked another landing by landing on the moon

I think you misunderstand. We actually had to fake this one to prove the faked ones weren’t fake.

No, poster above you had it right. You've got it backwards.

We just can't afford the extensive investment into cinematic technology (cameras, lenses, props, etc) we used to...

So now we're reduced to just actually doing it. A shame really.

Re: Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon

#90
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Read up on restarting Stinger production. Retired engineers had to pitch in to train the current generation. So I wouldn't say "totally fine".

How is needing to train young people the same as deindustrialization exactly?
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