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Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

cnn.com

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Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#81

Post by gorgoiler »

SoftTalker wrote: post #18
tombert wrote: post #8

Hell yeah! It would be very cool if we are able to properly colonize the moon in my lifetime. Even if we don't have humans living there like in Futurama (as cool as that would be), it would be unbelievably cool if we have constant back-and-forth trips to the moon. Or we could just blow it up, which might be fun in its own right: https://youtu.be/GTJ3LIA5LmA

There is no reason for humans to ever return to the moon. The cost and risks are not justified. Drones and robots can do anything that needs to be done. They don’t need to breathe, they don’t need to sleep, or eat.

Not that anyone’s offering me the choice of course but I’m happy to leave it to the robots. Lunar dust gives me the creeps.

Imagine stepping outside into a world where absolutely everything is coated in dark gray copy toner that gets ingrained into all that touches it.

I don’t think I could do it due to the anxiety.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#83

Post by BurningFrog »

kibwen wrote: post #42
BurningFrog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's now within reach for a medium sized corporation, largely ignored by humankind. That's huge progress!

It's not any more or less out of reach for a medium-sized corporation than it's been since the 70s. The reason no corporation has gone is that there's no economic incentives to. And there's still not; this is a NASA mission, it's exploratory science funded by the public.

Since the 70s, costs have gone down by a factor 10-20x, and the technology is much better and safer.

If that made it "out of reach" back then depends on what you mean with those words, but it's undeniably far cheaper and safer now.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#84

Post by WalterBright »

oxonia wrote: post #24

"At the end of its operations, Blue Ghost will stay put, destined to remain on the moon’s surface indefinitely." Is that a euphemism for "Humans are leaving rubbish to pollute another part of the universe?"

Leaving spare parts for the lunar colony seems a fine idea.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#85

Post by somenameforme »

kibwen wrote: post #42
BurningFrog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's now within reach for a medium sized corporation, largely ignored by humankind. That's huge progress!

It's not any more or less out of reach for a medium-sized corporation than it's been since the 70s. The reason no corporation has gone is that there's no economic incentives to. And there's still not; this is a NASA mission, it's exploratory science funded by the public.

How do you expect to get to the Moon before SpaceX? The Space Shuttle ended up costing $2+ billion per launch, and given it's a government program - getting anything on it from an untested company who didn't already have major connections would be near to a nonstarter, and that's even if they could casually foot the billions of dollars it would have cost.

FireFly launched as a private company on a Falcon 9 so their cost was probably a peak of ~$0.07 billion (to maintain units) which may have been able to be privately negotiate downward given the nature of the mission.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#86

Post by [deleted] »

cryptoz wrote: post #48
RangerScience wrote: post #39

Horray! Also: - Wow but the moon is 3D. Like, when we see shots of Earth, the ground always looks so flat, but the depth of the craters and the heights of the ridges is really, really amazing to see - ...KSP did a really good job mimicking the real thing

One of the coolest things ever is you can see the shadows and depths of the craters on the moon from here on Earth, with a cheap ~$15 telescope or probably binoculars too. I remember buying the galileoscope for $15 many years ago and was absolutely shocked how cool the moon looked, and how 3D . Pro-tip: the full moon isn't so fun to look at, you want some level of crescent moon so you can avoid getting overloaded on…

[deleted]

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#87

Post by freediver007 »

markdown wrote: post #15

Anyone know if they flew over the site of the Apollo 11 lunar module landing? Surely they'd do it just for the publicity and ability to shut up Joe Rogan and the other nutjobs that consider that landing fake.

No, we didn't fly over any of the Apollo sites for BGM1. We flew pretty close to the terminator line.
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