Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon • Hacker News Board

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#241

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:07 AM UTC

ziddoap wrote: post #224

thaumasiotes wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> Your comment gave me an in on more reading

I love reading from it, but you might want to know that it's an 1842-page reference work, so reading the whole thing for fun might take a while. Mostly I use it if I want to look up how it treats some phenomenon that's caught my interest.

So far I've always been able to find a discussion of whatever it was that I wanted to look up, which is a testament to both the quality of the treatment and the quality of the index.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#242

Post by losvedir » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:07 AM UTC

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…

As a native English speaker, "I'll have a large small fries" pretty clearly means a large quantity of small type fries to me. It's the kind of thing you'd say sort of jokingly, but I don't think anyone would really struggle with understanding it.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#243

Post by gerdesj » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

stouset wrote: post #227

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.

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…

You use the word intuit as a verb where I would go old school and use "understands it intuitively". You slap a letter s on the end to make the word sound correct to your ear. I will eventually use the word intuits in the same way you do but it will jar for a while. However it is concise and conveys the same meaning as "understand intuitively".

As you say, language is insane.

Now, adjective ordering. I think there is an "official" order but native speakers are not formally taught it because it is largely innate for us. It is likely something taught as a very advanced language feature because you can mix up the order and it still works.

I think a few experiments are in order:

Dark satanic mills. Jolly green giant. Large blue marble. Long winding road. Darling buds of May. Big fat Greek wedding. OK it looks like:

  * Emotive (jolly, happy, sad)
  * Quantitative (big, small, fat, tall, short)
  * Colour
  * Shape (winding)
  * Other adjectives - needs some work
  * Noun

This is going to need more work but there is a bit of a pattern. What I've picked up as emotive probably includes other classes of adjectives

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#244

Post by ForOldHack » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:15 AM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #234

baq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anyone playing KSP learns that. So the question then is, what did their tall and skinny design optimize for?

Minimal launch cross sectional area. Tall and skinny. ( Please check previous documentation )

I was completely off.

“This profound opportunity to make history isn’t solely built on technology – it’s established through the relentless dedication of our people, who have turned the Company’s words about a reliable cadence of lunar missions into action.”

Looks like the company is in alignment with NASA. I am actually impressed.

I would now look for a failure in one of the leg compressors.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#245

Post by dhosek » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:36 AM UTC

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…

Indeed, this doubled potential meaning of private means that “private robotic spacecraft” is one that is privately-owned, but “robotic private spacecraft” means that there’s something private about the spacecraft, like it’s naked or on antidepressants or maybe it just doesn’t like talking to the press.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#246

Post by gerdesj » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:45 AM UTC

smithkl42 wrote: post #147

marssaxman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most native English speakers know that, either. I only learned about it by hearing people explain it as an aspect of English to non-native speakers; it was not something anyone taught me in school, it's not something I've ever heard anyone mention in the context of proofreading or writing advice, and I couldn't actually tell you how it works - though I'm sure I must be using it instinctively.

"I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say “A green great dragon,” but had to say “a great green dragon.” I wondered why, and still do." - J. R. R. Tolkien

Vocal language is not a solved problem and hopefully never will be. I think it is important that we all maintain our respective languages. Let them flow and change and never fetter them. Co-opt words, phrases and more as you like but cherish your roots.

Mr T invented an "Elvish" script and language and I think he also did so for Dwarves too. I'm pretty sure he was a prof at Oxbridge with a focus in languages, mostly English.

Most English native speakers never notice adjective order as being a thing.

It is a thing and I suspect Prof Tolkien learned that dimension comes first and colour second. I don't know why we insist on this but it is pretty deep!

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#247

Post by thordenmark » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:45 AM UTC

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.

English adjective order is further complicated by the vowel order. For example "tick tock" sounds correct, while "tock tick" sounds wrong. English is a beautiful mess.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#248

Post by iJohnDoe » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:47 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #24

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.

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…

Starship is simply due to the desire to have a Sci-Fi looking ship land on a planet. It’s not being done for practical reasons. It’s being done because it looks cool.

To learn more about the strategy for landing on the moon, listen to this audiobook. Extremely good.

The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#249

Post by ndr42 » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 2:50 AM UTC

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…

In other languages (e.g. German) you can "fine-tune" the order and hierarchy of the attributes with a comma.

private, robotic spacecraft (with comma) -> private and robotic are attributes to spacecraft, the order could be changed but as in english you have an order that is more likely used

private robotic spacecraft (without comma) -> the attribute private refers to a robotic spacecraft

If you would like to emphasize that this is a private (and not public) robotic spacecraft you would use the version without comma.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#250

Post by hansvm » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 3:24 AM UTC

ForOldHack wrote: post #202

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is entirely irrelevant. It just changes the speed of the topple. Does not affect at all the tendency to tip over?

Physics 1A: the center of mass does not change. It is irrelevent. The tendancy to tip over is how wide the base is: look at the LEM. Big wide base. Did not tip over. None of them tipped over. They tip over faster on earth due to larger Earth's gravity and mass.

A big wide base with a center of mass magically very high off the ground would still be tippy though.