50 years have passed and all we get are two crappy photos of the "landing". Hilarious.
Private company landing on the moon today
251–260 of 286 posts
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, yeah, can't help you there. I was thinking you were commenting as a person in a blue state worried about a red state political policy. There's blue vs red and then there's Europe vs US. A whole different order of magnitude. I mean all the same economic freedom vs policy concerns trade-offs still apply; but I'm well aware that there is a massive rift in risk comprehension going in both directions. The US is huge a…
The lack of thoughtful urban planning is only a small factor. Yes, you have 30% more traffic related deaths, but check all other quality of living related indices and you can only conclude the US is a not even competing. As a result, check your position in the happiness index and wonder if you, as a country, maybe fail your citizens. The only index where the US is leading is GDP, and that’s not a big factor in anyone…
Woah now, its been awhile since I looked but I think we also tend to be in the top 5 countries of number of people incarcerated per capita. If that doesn't spell happiness, I don't know what does.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not moving my family to Texas, Florida, or Alabama, for anything. Beautiful states, but I have a daughter. Are women not safe in these states? I'm not sure I'm picking up whatever you are implying.
Women die because they're not allowed to abort nonviable fetuses that would also likely kill them. Seems very unsafe, I wouldn't want to be a woman there.
For non-Americans everywhere, disallowing abortion including nonviable pregnancies sounds barbaric. America is viewed as the most advanced nation in the world. But these Taliban-level backwardness is mind boggling.
America was never this regressive and tribal when I went to school there in the mid 80's til the 1990.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know specifically about wifi but, check out EME bounces. With a hand held ham radio on the 6M band and a directional antenna made from like $6 of supplies from your local hardware store, you can have a radio that can bounce a signal off the moon and talk to someone on the other side of the earth.
It’s more like the 2m and 70cm bands, and really big expensive antennas. You can bounce signals off of meteor trails with a cheap antenna and 6m radios, though!
Been out of it awhile so i was thinking 6m, mighta gotten mixed with the scatter-e propagation. But I knew a guy down in San Diego who used to do EME bounces with cheap directional antennas he homemade. But that guy was also an EE at Qualcomm there.
But that was 6 years ago and since I've moved up to Oregon, I havnt gotten to do much ham stuff because I could never hit the repeaters around here. Maybe they are no longer up, maybe its all the hills and volcanic rock?
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
i came here for an argument, but this is just contradiction 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 dupl…
My big-picture point is simply that electronics are getting small and cheap much faster than launch costs are decreasing, so that is the important trend. We could have a revolution in space exploration and remote sensing even if launch costs flatlined. Beyond that I'm not sure what we're arguing about, so I'll tap out here.
they aren't commensurable; as ben tilly pointed out, you cannot replace the oxygen you need to breathe with a sufficiently large quantity of granite (without equipment and energy to process it, anyway), and you cannot replace lower launch costs with smaller and cheaper electronics, in particular in the areas you named, space exploration and remote sensing, for the reasons i described
now, bring me a shrubbery!
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#256Ridiculous 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.
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 a major (red background!) story with live coverage on The Guardian site here in Australia.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s more like the 2m and 70cm bands, and really big expensive antennas. You can bounce signals off of meteor trails with a cheap antenna and 6m radios, though!
Been out of it awhile so i was thinking 6m, mighta gotten mixed with the scatter-e propagation. But I knew a guy down in San Diego who used to do EME bounces with cheap directional antennas he homemade. But that guy was also an EE at Qualcomm there. But that was 6 years ago and since I've moved up to Oregon, I havnt gotten to do much ham stuff because I could never hit the repeaters around here. Maybe they are no lon…
You can make it work with normal human antennas, as long as the other person has the big ones! I could never contact someone with the same antenna and radio as me via the MOON, but I can on certain days be heard by those big dogs!
Meteor scatter is pretty fun though!
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#258Update: 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...
Wow, I'm pleased to hear this. I watched the stream, but by the time I had turned it off there hadn't been any word and things looked pretty bleak.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
The JWST is on a similar level of impressive (if not more), and arguably more important than a single moon landing, and the general public doesn't have much interest in that either.
To defend the general public, landing an unmanned craft on the moon just doesn't sound impressive anymore, it's like SpaceX landing their boosters. The first time it's mindblowing, the Nth time, not so much. EDIT: And for JWST for the average person it's just a new Hubble.
The average person is likely to not even know about Hubble or any space telescopes.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
How dare they put an ad on the moon. We are truly spreading the worst of humanity into the cosmos. Good job it's only us that appear able to witness it. Defraying costs by using ads is a strawman. If you can't afford to do something, maybe don't do it. If you really, really want to do it, maybe ask yourself if the world genuinely needs what you're doing. If it does, find a way. If the only way you can do it is by sel…
> If you can't afford to do something, maybe don't do it. Clearly they can afford to do what they just did. Oh, you don't like how they raised money? Good, pay attention to something else, they aren't doing things for your approval.
I would dearly love to "pay attention" somewhere that isn't plastered in advertising.
They didn't do it for approval, but they sure as shit didn't ask for approval either.
And I'd like to see a breakdown of exactly how much the ad revenue contributed to payload delivery.