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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

#221

Post by Terr_ »

bloomingeek wrote: post #141
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted, but just wanted to say it explicitly: What an in-depth and thoughtful answer. Thank you for this!

Having been raised in the states, I was a little shocked when I purchased a small book on English grammar. It explained a lot of tenses and proper arraignments of sentences I never knew. [which is clear from the things I just wrote. :)]

I found them learning another language (Spanish) gave me tools and categorizations for English that I didn't have and never applied before--at least not on a conscious level.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#222

Post by chrsig »

bell-cot wrote: post #201
Jun8 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To paraphrase one of my favorite historians - Every sweeping historical generalization has a "probably doesn't apply to the Monguls" exception. If you don't expect your professor to waste chalk writing this over and over, then he won't grade you down for omitting it from your test answers and term paper.

This is a great perspective on pedantry

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#223

Post by K0balt »

Jun8 wrote: post #158
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...

Mongol spacecraft do tend to have a rather high center of gravity, but they land with sufficient velocity to imbed the landing spire of their spear-like ships deep into the crust for stability and dramatic effect.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#224

Post by ziddoap »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #219
ziddoap wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CGEL Is probably either Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language from 1985 or The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language from 2002. I have no idea which.

Cambridge. The abbreviation is conventional. Does it matter to you?

>The abbreviation is conventional.

I don't know a lot about language stuff like this, but the conversation here interested me. Your comment gave me an in on more reading, so I googled your acronym, because it was unfamiliar to me. I got 2 prominent results. Wikipedia gave me a disambiguation page.

>Does it matter to you?

It matters to me because I wanted to know what you were talking about... Maybe follow up with some more learning myself. Sorry.

I'll try to learn the acronyms for fields I'm not familiar with prior to getting interested in them next time.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#226

Post by inamberclad »

Definitely concerned about the laser rangefinders not working on descent. My recollection is that they were very finnicky instruments.

A lot of discussion is happening around the aspect ratio of the Noca-C landers. Part of the reason they're so tall and skinny looking is that the lander is built around two linerless composite fuel tanks. Two big tanks are more efficient than four smaller ones. The legs should definitely be wider on the next two landers.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#227

Post by stouset »

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.

It’s more emergent than official. It’s not something I think is ever taught in school and yet everyone intuits it with high accuracy.

Even crazier is that we intuitively mix this rule with another implicit rule, where “I” sounds go before “A” sounds go before “O” sounds in similar words, so “big, bad wolf” violates the normal adjective ordering rule but would sound weird any other way because of… reasons.

Language is insane.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#228

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

vpribish wrote: post #174
colechristensen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Can we just remind ourselves that launching a probe from the Earth and landing it within 250m of a target on THE MOON is incredible engineering?

I know it's taken for granted, but it really shouldn't be.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#229

Post by db48x »

tengwar2 wrote: post #204
db48x wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an over-simplification at best. Some features of English grammar and spelling were planned changes - yes, based on other languages, but with particular agenda in mind. Generally grammatical changes were to conform English to Latin grammar: the stricture that one should avoid a split infinitive was introduced for this reason. Spelling in mediæval times was often changed to reflect the semantics and Latin or Gr…

I’m talking about grammar, not spelling. There are a few adopted grammatical rules (that many people ignore) but no artificial ones.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#230

Post by swat535 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #153
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.

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.

Right but this is because grammar is simply difficult (no matter the language), in fact, majority of native speakers struggle at writing simple essays or fail at basic literature courses..
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