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Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

theguardian.com

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Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#151

Post by ticulatedspline »

725686 wrote: post #133
celsius1414 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are likely aware of the English language's feature of multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before COLOR in standard English phrases. In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough in category to be…

I am not a native English speaker (or English native speaker, ;)), but I've been using it forever...but didn't know there was an official adjective ordering.

Native speaker. I don't think it's truly "official" and it's not typically formally taught. "Elements of Eloquence" by Mark Forsyth is frequently cited as an early source of the "rule". IMHO It seems to be more of an organic property of the language.

there's lots of articles on it. like this one https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/597981/adjective-order-g... and it's true that most of the time it just sounds odd or is confusing if you get the order "wrong".

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#152

Post by criddell »

doodlebugging wrote: post #48
mclau156 wrote: post #12

The company Intuitive Machines first and second moon-landers both tipped over, hopefully the third does not tip over

Hopefully someone at Intuitive Machines pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes that minimize the opportunity for this to happen the third time around, assuming NASA gives them that opportunity. If their lander is indeed top-heavy then they have some design issues to overcome. Perhaps adding a set of outriggers that deploy just before touchdown and detach or fold up on command once the…

> minimize the opportunity

Or design it assuming it will tip over on landing.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#153

Post by jimnotgym »

725686 wrote: post #133
celsius1414 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are likely aware of the English language's feature of multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before COLOR in standard English phrases. In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough in category to be…

I am not a native English speaker (or English native speaker, ;)), but I've been using it forever...but didn't know there was an official adjective ordering.

I am a native English speaker. I didn't know either.

I think it is a weird phrase to say 'robotic private spacecraft' as well. It would be much better to say 'privately funded unmanned spacecraft' or 'robotic spacecraft launched by a private company'. Much less chance of confusion.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#154

Post by dr_orpheus »

ok_dad wrote: post #30
yieldcrv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM. at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if th…

Shit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once, how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but in reality is actually "learned knowledge". I can't believe people thi…

I totally agree with the space is hard, it fails sometimes. I been in the space industry on both the super rigorous high cost, high mission assurance side of things and the low cost commercial launch 10 and hopefully most of them work side of things. The lunar lander is an ambitious first project and two failures in a row is real rough, but definitely happens the space industry in new ventures. I'm sure there are great engineers there and what they are doing is tough.

But...specifically on funding for Intuitive Machines I don't understand how NASA also gave then an IDIQ contract for up to $4.8 billion for lunar communications and PNT services [0] based on the experience of one lunar lander that didn't actually work.

[0] https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-intuitive-machines-for-lu...

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#156

Post by jimnotgym »

gtirloni wrote: post #71

Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic spacecraft" but I can't explain why.

Is it even a private mission when, like most space stuff, Nasa is paying. How about 'outsourced robotic moon-litter'

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#157

Post by vpribish »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #77
gtirloni wrote: post #71

Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic spacecraft" but I can't explain why.

The order of adjectives in English is usually: opinion, size, age or shape, colour, origin, material, purpose It is sometimes difficult to classify adjectives this way, but "private" is probably opinion and "robotic" is probably purpose, so you are correct, "private robotic spacecraft" is probably correct. The problem with English, of course, is that you can figure out what someone means, even if they jumble all thei…

This is fun : Private is origin. Robotic is material

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#158

Post by Jun8 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #78

Good advice: 1. Never invade Russia in winter. 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.

For (1): except, of course, if you’re the Mongol army. They preferred attacking in the winter (swamps and rivers are frozen so easily passable). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Ru...

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#159

Post by helsinkiandrew »

tzs wrote: post #140
LeoPanthera wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The order of adjectives in English is usually: opinion, size, age or shape, colour, origin, material, purpose It is sometimes difficult to classify adjectives this way, but "private" is probably opinion and "robotic" is probably purpose, so you are correct, "private robotic spacecraft" is probably correct. The problem with English, of course, is that you can figure out what someone means, even if they jumble all thei…

I'm curious how that would apply in this case Imagine a restaurant that sells french fries. They offer two kinds of fries, one with physically large fries (like steak fries) and the other with physically small fries (like shoestring fries). They call these "large" fries and "small" fries. You can order a large quantity of fries or a small quantity of fries, giving 4 possible orders: large large fries, large small fri…

The quantity (large or small) isn’t an adjective it’s a determiner (like John’s, my, the restaurants, a plate of) so comes before.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#160

Post by colejohnson66 »

celsius1414 wrote: post #81
gtirloni wrote: post #71

Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic spacecraft" but I can't explain why.

You are likely aware of the English language's feature of multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before COLOR in standard English phrases. In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough in category to be…

“Private” isn’t describing the spacecraft per se, but the ownership of the spacecraft. “Privately-owned robotic spacecraft” is the “full” phrase, of which we elide part of the adjective.[0] Here, “privately-owned” is ORIGIN in that list, which puts it before TYPE.

[0] “Privately owned”, while on its own an adverb and verb, is functioning as a singular adjective in the larger phrase.

Edit: Previously said “funded”, not “owned”

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