Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 221 posts

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

#111

Post by adityaathalye »

itishappy wrote: post #43
koolala wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was flipped upside-down like a Turtle?

Sideways. Still functional, but in somewhat limited capacity.

So... the mission literally went sideways? Yet, our indomitable heroes saved the day!

Jokes apart, I think anybody getting anything off the ground and out of the planetary gravity well are heroes. It's kind of wild how... mundane... rocketry has become. Between that and always-on nearly-free global video calling from a smart watch, I feel like I'm living in the future of some of the 1950s SciFi books I read as a kid.

"Kings of Space" by Capt. W. E. Johns comes to mind. The smell of that old paperback copy I have transports me to another time.

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

#112

Post by numpad0 »

somenameforme wrote: post #85
kibwen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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

Smallest lunar lander so far is 200kg/440lbs, that's the weight of a carry on full of lead. Besides the Space Shuttle can't go higher or deliver higher than LEO anyway.

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

#113

Post by somenameforme »

numpad0 wrote: post #112
somenameforme wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orbital_launch_systems Smallest lunar lander so far is 200kg/440lbs, that's the weight of a carry on full of lead. Besides the Space Shuttle can't go higher or deliver higher than LEO anyway.

That's not an answer as we're looking for choices available from "the 70s" to before SpaceX so let's say around 2000. This issue is literally why SpaceX was started. Elon looked into NASA's plans for sending humans to Mars, saw they didn't exist and wanted to get the public more excited in space. His idea was to use his money to fund the launch of a greenhouse to Mars, which would be live streamed. No company in America was willing/able to do this, and in Russia the costs were far too high. So SpaceX was born.

You're right that Space Shuttle was a nonstarter for technical reasons, but it doesn't change the core issue. Neither does the mass. Unless you can find other companies willing to share a launch with you, you're paying for a whole rocket. And that's if you can manage to contract a rocket in the first place. As an inconsequential nitpick, no lander weighs 200kg. You're conflating landing mass (of which there's been well smaller than 200kg) with total launched mass. Fuel, thrusters, and so on multiply the weight substantially.

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

#115

Post by alfanick »

nymiro wrote: post #108
alfanick wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These pictures are great - maybe it's time for me to get a new desktop background. Kinda related: some years ago NASA published all the Apollo missions pictures. I downloaded all of them (hundreds, maybe bit more), acting as a photo editor then I selected "good ones", cropped them to 16:10 format and made a background picture pack - I'm using it on all my devices since then. If someone is interested, they're publishe…

Thank you for sharing this!

Here [0] is the original archive, 15k pictures.

[0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/with/5133...

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

#116

Post by DeepSeaTortoise »

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?"

Way worse.

Even when the moon is finally settled on, I guarantee you that nobody will make any effort to clean it up and throw it away.

It is truely sad that we can be sure that even thousands of years in the future, despite millions of humans looking at it every day, people will rather put a glass box around it, so nobody is bothered by it, than just tossing it into the lunar landfill.

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

#117

Post by Aachen »

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.

Tell that to the people of deadliest catch and dirty jobs: we have robots now that can do everything we want to without needing to sleep or eat! Sadly, we're not using them because they don't exist yet...

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

#118

Post by robbomacrae »

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

I'd like to see us colonize Antártica with a self sufficient colony first. Seems like a much cheaper testbed.

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

#119

Post by t43562 »

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?"

Well, the universe is fairly big and humankind even if you add it all up is quite small. So....I don't think it will be a great problem for a while.

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

#120

Post by close04 »

skhr0680 wrote: post #105
decimalenough wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fascinating how the pictures have that "Apollo moon landing" look. I'd always assumed that a huge part of this was just 1960s technology (film not digital etc), but apparently it's actually coming from the literally unearthly lighting conditions of being on the Moon.

> 1960s technology Still photography has gotten more convenient since then, but in the agreeable lighting and atmospheric conditions one would encounter while taking a vacation snap outside at noon Cynthian time, image quality now isn't better than then* *Unless you're willing to spend $10,000+

> *Unless you're willing to spend $10,000+

OP is comparing photography tech that made it to the Moon, so not cheap tech. The "special" way the photos look like is probably more a product of the environment than just the equipment.

Post reply on HN