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Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

nytimes.com

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Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#121

Post by golemiprague »

RIMR wrote: post #114
brandmeyer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point really wasn't that these folks got what's coming to them for their arrogance. My point is that this isn't a mission of international we're-all-in-this-together cooperation. It is very much viewed by the Israeli's running the mission as a part of the nation-state space race.

Which means we can now judge the mission by the merits of the nation-state it represents. Israel is a violent apartheid state that is attempt to ethnically cleanse its population. Since the mission held zero scientific value, I'm glad it crashed.

It was a private mission financed by a private person, not a national program.

Ethnic cleansing of the native population maybe happened in the US or Australia, not in Israel where 20% of the population are Arabs and many of them are not even native but rather immigrants from other Arab countries, exactly like the majority of Jews in Israel who were forcefully kicked out of their homes in the Arab world.

There are almost no Jews in Arab countries today, so who does ethnic cleansing?

Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#122

Post by mturmon »

I-M-S wrote: post #102
ip26 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here I was thinking the new dictionary entry was going to be something like: Beresheet: (v) To fail dramatically after overwhelming confidence

So hubris?

The overweening pride is hubris. The retribution for such is nemesis.

Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#123

Post by JKCalhoun »

jesseab wrote: post #16

It's time to retire the tired old nation-state space-race narrative. We're all in this together people. Their failure is our failure.

I'll play the contrarian and suggest that a space race is the best kind of national pride. If you're okay with football (soccer) or Olympics pride, this is, in my mind, better still.

And ironaically, as you suggest, when one country wins, we in fact all win.

I would much rather we fight to push back the boundaries of space than to hurl actual bombs at each other.

Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#126

Post by rtkwe »

compsciphd wrote: post #94
rtkwe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair the hardest and most expensive part was handled by a US company. Many small countries have put satellites up using launchers from the larger players.

You do realize that Israel has put it's own satellites into space? And in a much more difficult way to avoid launching them over hostile countries.

Yeah, they use a dead simple solid-fuel rocket based on their ballistic missiles that can only really hit LEO and has a pretty limited payload.

Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#127

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

ronilan wrote: post #27
zymhan wrote: post #2

> On the way down, the main engine cut out. The engine was successfully restarted, but then communications were cut off, and no more information was sent back. Definitely a terrible time to have an engine failure :/

Based on the telemetry from the broadcast it seems that there was a failure at 13km that resulted in both telemetry and engine loss. When telemetry connection came back vertical speed has already doubled and it kept going up until spacecraft hit the ground. Engine was probably never restarted. Edit1: Telemetry came back at 10k. For the next minute and a half there was uncertainty about the main engine even though tel…

Was the request to restart the engine made from Earth?

It seems like the landing program would want to have a feature in place that automatically restarted the engine in a situation like this.

Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#129

Post by azinman2 »

oska wrote: post #47
mrtksn wrote: post #13

It seems that they just got a new word in the dictionary: https://mobile.twitter.com/teamspaceil/status/11163129311033... I find it a bit irritating to be that cocky when it comes to space technology. Better luck next time!

Contrast with Elon Musk saying the next launch of the Falcon Heavy (today) has a 5-10% chance of failure. [1] This is after it has already successfully launched once. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1115998728878321672

Meanwhile he seems to lack any doubt or humility in anything involving Tesla...

Re: Israel’s Beresheet Spacecraft Moon Landing Attempt Appears to End in Crash

#130

Post by dmurray »

aurailious wrote: post #111
reaperducer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then communications were cut off, and no more information was sent back. Have any of these moon landings been done at night where people have been able to watch it happening through a telescope? Or are things so small at the moon's distance that there'd be nothing to see?

The resolution a 10 meter telescope on Earth can make out of the moon is about 22 meters per pixel. We can yet make out the moon landing site with earth based telescope.

Making a 23 metre mark on the moon seems like a natural project for some country, then. Perhaps easier than orchestrating a soft landing.

There are lunar retroreflectors about a metre across [0] that are detectable with optical equipment, for some definition of optical. But to leave a mark that can be seen from earth - to leave your tag, or an X, or a crude drawing of a penis and testes - surely that's an urge as old as art itself.

[0]https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/...

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