Live data from Hacker News

Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

theguardian.com

161–170 of 360 posts

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#161
post #149
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250 miles? The mission official website of Intuitive Machines says 250 meters. From https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2 > HOUSTON, TX – March 7, 2025 – Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW) (“Intuitive Machines”) (“Company”), a leading space exploration, infrastructure, and services company, has announced the IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons M…

There's a long history of typos behind the paper's nickname Grauniad

And an interesting history too. The paper used to be printed in Manchester. The London papers made errors too, but corrected them in their second edition. There was no second edition of the Guardian due to the time it took to get it to London

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#162
post #24
post #2

One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.

Which gives me great amusement about the current human spaceflight plan to land upright Starship on the moon, and lower astronauts from the top of what is effectively a tower-like 13-story building (52.1m without landing legs, at 9m tube width) using some kind of elevator solution. To put things into perspective, this is roughly the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and with landing legs extended probably abo…

I wonder what height you can safely jump from onto the moons surface?

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#163

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…

CGEL gives this order:

Evaluative > general property > age > color > provenance > manufacture > type

[There's plenty of elaboration on what kinds of descriptors fit into each category. For example, artisanally handcrafted goes in the "manufacture" category, and the label "manufacture" makes sense for it, but the label "material" doesn't.]

CGEL also correctly notes that this order only applies when all descriptors are being coordinated in parallel; if that isn't the case, the innermost descriptors must appear on the right, joining the head of the phrase.

> In the absence of special factors, a modifier of size precedes one of colour: a large black sofa represents the preferred order while a black large sofa is very unnatural. But this constraint can be overridden, as in [ii]: the context here is one where it has already been established that I want a large sofa, so that now only the colour is at issue. Black is thus interpreted restrictively, picking out a subset of the large sofas, and in this context in can precede large.

> while a new cotton shirt, say, is normally preferred over a cotton new shirt, the latter is not ungrammatical. It is admissible, for example, in a context where there has been talk of new shirts, and the concern is with different kinds of new shirt.

[Returning to that earlier example, you'd always expect an artisanally handcrafted Belgian waffle and not a Belgian artisanally handcrafted waffle because "Belgian waffle" is its own idea. "Belgian" and "handcrafted" are not parallel; this is a Belgian waffle that is handcrafted, not a waffle that is handcrafted and also Belgian.]

I was surprised to learn that ESL classes emphasize descriptor order so heavily. It is a real rule of fluent English usage. But the only thing that can happen if you get it wrong is that other people notice you're foreign, so in almost all cases learning the ordering has zero value to the student. Almost all students are obviously foreign by many, many different tells, and aren't hoping to pass for native.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you not topple over Projectile grappling-hooks to embed into nearby ground then winch the line taught? Just have to make sure all are launched at the same time with force vectors that cancel out. Maybe even launch them before touchdown so it doesn't topple over during landing if one of the feet land on a random rock.

My vote is for a large BattleBots style flipper that they flop their rover around with until it falls in their preferred orientation.

Just don't land too close to where the house robots are...

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#165
post #158

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...

Yes, this is why they did a similar thing with Ukraine (Feb/everything is frozen - for those who haven't been in frozen countries in the Winter, the earth/ground/dirt (pick your word) becomes hard like cement)).

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#166

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 article uses "robotic mobile probes," which also seems out of order.

I (native english speaker) would order it as "mobile robotic probes". But if I were writing it, I'd say "robotic probe", "surface probe", or "mobile probe". In this case, robotic and mobile mean the same thing, so using both is redundant.

And although I would order it as "private robotic spacecraft", I don't think that's correct. The spacecraft is robotic, but it's not private. It might be privately-operated, privately-owned, or privately-funded (each has a slightly different connotation). But private by itself means that a private company is somehow responsible for the mission.

So if I were writing it, I'd use something like "privately-funded robotic spacecraft" or "robotic spacecraft operated by private company XYZ".

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#167
post #65
post #2

One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.

The guys designing this never played kerbal space program or something. My first mun lander looked like theirs and of course it fell over after landing. If something doesn’t work in KSP, it probably deserves a looking at in the real world.

That should be an official NASA spec. Must not fall over on kerball.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#168
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, as a native speaker. It's a known phenomena[1], though I'm not sure in this case what type of adjective you'd classify "private" as. [1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/adj...

Nit: Phenomena is plural. The singular form is phenomenon . (Other similar words with a Greek root: lexicon/lexica, criterion/criteria, automaton/automata)

Hah. While I am a native speaker, I am still American.

(Thanks. I was aware of this, but I still mess it up from time to time. Same for media/medium, though not nearly as much anymore.)

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#170

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

> 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.

Also, make sure your robotic private spacecraft doesn't land on the edge of a crater. Or partly on a big rock. Or where a rock or ledge is high enough between the legs to reach the rest of the craft.

Post reply on HN