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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

#171

Post by HenryBemis »

Now, stuff like that spoon-feed with honey every conspiracy theorist that says/writes that we (humans) never actually went to the moon blah blah blah.

My thoughts about it is that.. 'hey we got tech to stream live the whole thing... from lift off to landing, with 10 cameras to each direction. I remember watching live the "Red Bull Stratos" and it was soooooooooo cool!!!!!! Why not to the moon???

How come we went to the moon 40-50 years ago, and then silence for decades? If anything technology is better/faster/safer. We should be going to the moon every year just to validate the parking ticket. And now you see we went from "flew there, landed, played golf, came back" to "oops we can't remote control land an box".

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#174

Post by vpribish »

colechristensen wrote: post #108
mikeyouse wrote: post #13

Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?

> Seems like a really large error? At one point during its transit the spacecraft will have been going about 23,000 miles per hour, suddenly 250 miles doesn't seem like much. Though obviously that's in the middle of the trip and plenty of things happen between the transit between the earth and moon and landing.

goddamn. it was 250 METERS - not miles.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#175

Post by vpribish »

nine_k wrote: 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.

not 'similarly structured' but the immediate sibling craft - the same design from the same company.

not "eventually toppled" but broke a leg and landed on its side right away.

Definitely the next mission will be the same craft - they have 2 more in the works.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#176

Post by trhway »

given the low gravity and $200M+ cost of mission, one would think that 3-4 thin spider-like-wide legs would be a must, especially after similar failure several months ago. Or just an inflatable "donut" around the lander (which would be deflated once the lander is standing upright).

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#177

Post by db48x »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #151
725686 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Every grammatical property of every natural language is organic. Only the constructed languages have the opportunity to have inorganic grammar, but most of them borrow their grammar from some other natural language.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#178

Post by trhway »

nashashmi wrote: post #96

If we send a person on a one-way mission to the moon to make sure that the instruments are able to work properly, we would have better return on the investment.

we could even supply that person with a return craft. I remember reading that it was done 50 years ago.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#179

Post by Oarch »

jimnotgym wrote: post #161
Oarch wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Placing movable type and perfecting layouts could be quite a cathartic and engrossing game...

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#180

Post by echoangle »

arccy wrote: post #92
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.

when gravity is 1/6, a lower centre of gravity might not do as much as you think

Magnitude of gravity changes nothing as long as it’s not 0. Your CG is either inside the area covered by the hull of your leg contact points or it’s not. It won’t be stable in other regimes just because gravity is lower.
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