231–240 of 286 posts
Ridiculous this isn't more prominent in mainstream news. Eg. I open Google News to stories of killers and a new real estate tax and some sort of scandal by an actor. This is why I come to HN instead.
Was watching NASA administrator Bill Nelson's congratulatory message; can't help wondering if he also recorded a commiseration one looking to the future in case it didn't work...
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better, lighter-weight computing stacks have been a huge boost; that's what made cubesats possible. but the much bigger deal is the dramatic drop in launch costs driven by spacex, even though so far that's only a factor of 3.4 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-e... with lightweight computers driven by the cellphone industry, it became possible for a small team or even individual to launch a l…
The big improvement is not launch costs, but miniaturization and automation. A university team can make a credible lunar rover or cubesat today using off-the-shelf components. Unlike launch vehicles, that technology did not exist in 001960, or even 002000, at any price.
it doesn't matter if you can make a credible lunar rover or not if the price to launch it is three times the grant the nsf will give your university team. given that nasa published their lunar roving vehicle documentation in mostly 0001973, down to circuit schematics and some machining dimensions, i'm pretty sure a university team in 00002000 could have duplicated it for less than the several million dollars the launch would cost. it only took boeing 17 months to design and build them in the first place, and they mostly use technology from the 000001940s (aluminum tubing, nylon webbing, wire mesh wheels, silver-zinc plexiglass batteries, brushed dc motors, cable brakes; fiberglass arm rests and fenders were apparently the highest-tech part and, unsurprisingly, the part that failed)
https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/alsj-LRVdocs.html
with respect to cubesats, you're in violent agreement with my comment. you obviously can't put a trs-80 in a cubesat. in 0000002000 you could put a basic stamp in it, but you couldn't get mems gyros and accelerometers, and you weren't going to be able to run your star tracker camera off a pic16. computer and imu miniaturization is a big deal for cubesats. that's one of the main points of my comment
the other main point is that it isn't nearly as big a deal for bigger satellites; when we were launching cubesats (before i joined the team) it was really important that we could use tiny cellphone components, but once we were launching 37kg monstrosities, the fact that the gumstix boards only weighed a few grams was just nice, not critical. the optics weighed a lot more
so tell us, what's your experience?
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Edit: Front page of a few sites Reuters: See the right part of the image https://imgur.com/VpGAIBl CNN: https://imgur.com/TzRtit8 AP News: https://imgur.com/OgrtzrC NBC: Not so apparent but there https://imgur.com/7itvGeh NYT: Also not obvious https://imgur.com/4DMDqr0 NPR: Gotta scroll: https://imgur.com/dp5UDCq I found it on Fox News by search and it's a fair scroll down. I also found in MSNBC by search, but actual…
It’s the fourth story on the Washington Post website right now.
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Ground infrastructure is important for space missions. Intuitive Machines is operating under a NASA contract for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) [1]. As such, they can negotiate access to NASA resources such as DSN and NEN for this mission. Intuitive Machines has also built several ground stations of their own [2]. These allow communications with the spacecraft as well as the range/velocity measurements need…
You are awesome! Thanks for all the links and info, to an open-ended question. The process of bootstrapping to Earth-space-parity is fascinating to me. One thing in the 1960s, when there was no GPS and terrestrial net assumption, but now you're going from everything we've built here to... if you don't bring it, you don't have it. The accretion of Mars support satellites has also been fascinating.
It looks like it touched down, mission control picking up a faint signal, trying to refine it now.
The spacecraft has an ad prominently displayed on itself, it's depressing. We will never reproduce the experience of 10 year old me watching the moon landing with my dad. It's all just egos and entertainment now.
We planted an American flag on the moon. An advertisement for the Coca-Cola of American imperialism versus the Pepsi of Soviet communism. The entire space race was literally nothing but ego and propaganda.
Update: communications have been a bit glitchy but the craft has made a safe landing and is transmitting data. Was watching NASA administrator Bill Nelson's congratulatory message; can't help wondering if he also recorded a commiseration one looking to the future in case it didn't work...