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Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

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Re: Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

#23

Post by qingcharles »

brookst wrote: post #11
qingcharles wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me in Space Shuttle Simulator during liftoff: "I wonder what this red switch does?" Space Shuttle: bang

You know, everyone’s obsessed with training and knowledge and practice, but it’s so much more satisfying to do something amazing by just flipping switches and pushing buttons at random.

Me in Space Shuttle Simulator during liftoff: "Can you open the bay doors and operate the robot arm during takeoff?" *clickety click*

Space Shuttle: No. *bang*

Re: Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

#25

Post by mikewarot »

qingcharles wrote: post #24

First photo arrived: https://x.com/Firefly_Space/status/1896125390386606333 Apologies for the X link. Can someone convert?

Here is the image from that Tweet, saved on the Internet Archive

https://web.archive.org/web/20250302091628/https://pbs.twimg...

Re: Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

#26

Post by walrus01 »

lopsidedgrin wrote: post #6

Link to the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChEuA1AUJAY I'd like to understand if there is a way to contribute to space missions like these, or space research in general, as a "civilian" software developer. Is there perhaps a community of space enthusiasts working on domain-specific open source tools? What are some unsolved problems in this field?

There's always some small nonprofit, research, university, ham radio and similar themed 'cubesat' projects that need embedded software engineering. I'd suggest to start familiarizing yourself with common cubesat platforms, then see what the embedded hardware looks like and what you think you could do with it.

Re: Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

#28

Post by notahacker »

lopsidedgrin wrote: post #6

Link to the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChEuA1AUJAY I'd like to understand if there is a way to contribute to space missions like these, or space research in general, as a "civilian" software developer. Is there perhaps a community of space enthusiasts working on domain-specific open source tools? What are some unsolved problems in this field?

Lowest bar to OS participation would probably be mission planning tooling. NASA's GMAT is Apache licensed and widely used https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/files/GMAT/GMAT-R2016a...

But as others pointed out, there are a lot of civil space companies needing embedded systems programmers to work on space subsystems and (generally student lead) open source CubeSat tech. You'd likely need an actual job to work on solving novel hardware-specific problems like autonomous navigation, docking, landing, robotics, advanced Space Domain Awareness etc

Re: Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

#29

Post by dingaling »

Polizeiposaune wrote: post #17
walrus01 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The approximately 1600MHz signals emitted from a gps satellite are generally aimed directly down at the earth at any given time, but with a good enough receiver and directional gain antenna on the moon you certainly could pick them up. I also have a theory this might work because at any given point in time, some of the gps satellites while moving at their orbital altitudes might be emitting signals aimed somewhat mor…

See https://www.gpsworld.com/gps-iir-iir-m-satellite-antenna-pat... "The use of GPS signals for spacecraft navigation has increased in general over the last few decades. Navigation employing GPS observations for spacecraft in low-Earth orbit is now considered routine. "However, the situation is quite different for spacecraft that fly in the Space Service Volume above the GPS constellation, including medium-Earth orbi…

Sidelobes aren't really 'soft edges' to a main beam, they're unintended peaks at angles outside the main beam which sap gain. You can see peaks here around 29, 55 and 68 degrees:

https://www.gpsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Improved...

As such, successive GPS satellite antenna designs have been refined to reduce sidelobes, just as deep-space operators have realised they could be useful.

TLDR: sidelobes aren't like gentle feathering at the edges of a beam, they're more like petals of a daisy.

Re: Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing

#30

Post by simne »

lopsidedgrin wrote: post #6

Link to the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChEuA1AUJAY I'd like to understand if there is a way to contribute to space missions like these, or space research in general, as a "civilian" software developer. Is there perhaps a community of space enthusiasts working on domain-specific open source tools? What are some unsolved problems in this field?

I was involved in this industry about decade, when relations with Russia was warmed after end of cold war, so could share some experience.

In any case, you must understand, even on warmest times, space technologies considered as semi-weapons, so if you cannot achieve military clearance, you will have access only to some niches.

If niches are not scary for you, excellent, there are plenty opportunities.

First, in many countries exist large niche of high altitude air research, for which constantly need small cheap rockets and balloons, and all of these need reliable organizations, who will do regular starts and than find all things returned from near space.

So, what I mean - great deal of space work is just find and gather all parts fallen from missions.

Sure, all that things mean, better to make reliable control system, and reliable return system, than to literally looking for needle at haystack sized about hundred kilometers. But unfortunately, even best real rockets have failure rate ~0.4..0.7% (amateurs usually considered good to achieve 10..20% fr), so for every 100 starts, could have 1 failure for professional approach, or 10..20 for amateur, and will work on field.

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

Problems near infinite, because even amateur rockets are not cheap, and in many cases civilian equipment are not working (yes, civilian GPS are just turning off or hanging if achieve military bounds for altitude or speed, so need to make your own navigation) and all additional weight subtract from profit, and any failure also could be fatal for economy, so there constantly appear new brave people and on other side, appear disappointed, who leave to more calm industries.

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