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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

#261

Post by philistine »

ambicapter wrote: post #183
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a row while launching small rockets from an atoll Once upon a time most planes crashed. Then the state of the art advanced. If IM can’t publish a convincing root-cause analysis for why their landers keep tipping over while their competitors’ don’t, they shouldn’t get new contracts and existing ones should be revisited.

We are definitely closer to the biplanes era of landing on the moon than we are to the Concorde era, as far as technological readiness goes. The pace of moon landers created has been much slower than the pace of airplanes built was in the early days.

Yup. The most fun fact about early aviation I heard that highlights how fast and loose everything was is that General Henry Harley Arnold in charge of the US Army Air Force during World War II learned to fly from the Wright brothers.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#262

Post by thaumasiotes »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #86
jchw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, as a native speaker. It's a known phenomena[1], though I'm not sure in this case what type of adjective you'd classify "private" as. [1]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/adj...

Nit: Phenomena is plural. The singular form is phenomenon . (Other similar words with a Greek root: lexicon/lexica, criterion/criteria, automaton/automata)

-on, plural -a, is just the ordinary second declension neuter nominative/accusative ending. It's about as common as a linguistic phenomenon can be.

Etymologically, you'd expect it to apply to the physics particles named for qualities, like photon, but I don't think that's ever done.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#263

Post by jimbokun »

ncallaway wrote: post #134
cameldrv wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity. Hmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS

Don't worry, there will be people inside! Oh, wait, hrm...

Well that’s a big improvement because the humans can climb out and push the rocket upright again!

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#264

Post by thaumasiotes »

jordanb wrote: post #256
mannyv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're Asian, then you'll win.

Tell that to the Japanese.

What are you referring to? They had a failed invasion of Korea; they had a very successful invasion of China that ended when they were defeated in a naval war well outside of Asia.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#265

Post by jordanb »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #264
jordanb wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the Japanese.

What are you referring to? They had a failed invasion of Korea; they had a very successful invasion of China that ended when they were defeated in a naval war well outside of Asia.

The invasion of China wasn't successful. It was a quagmire. Japan didn't have the men or resources to conquer China and Chiang could just retreat whenever he had to.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#266

Post by ballooney »

bell-cot wrote: post #22

> Athena, a probe launched by [...] Intuitive Machines (IM) last month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Initially at least, it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as engineers worked to make sense of data showing an “incorrect attitude”. > On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead. 250 miles off-course, and their second flop…

250 _meters_, this is science not javascript.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#267

Post by gausswho »

ndr42 wrote: post #249
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…

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's fascinating and makes me ponder my interactions (in English) with Germans.

I believe even though this trait does not feel proper in written English, it's somewhat common in spoken English, if you interpret the comma as a stulting of rhythym and tone.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#268

Post by foxglacier »

doodlebugging wrote: post #48
mclau156 wrote: post #12

The company Intuitive Machines first and second moon-landers both tipped over, hopefully the third does not tip over

Hopefully someone at Intuitive Machines pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes that minimize the opportunity for this to happen the third time around, assuming NASA gives them that opportunity. If their lander is indeed top-heavy then they have some design issues to overcome. Perhaps adding a set of outriggers that deploy just before touchdown and detach or fold up on command once the…

The first one tipped over because a sensor failed. I suppose we don't know why this one did yet but why do these sorts of failures bring out the caveman in everybody suggesting completely giving up on the whole concept and doing something "dumb" that doesn't require control systems? Just because control systems feel scary and you might not personally know how to design them yourself doesn't mean they aren't great when they work. Falcon 9 lands upright pretty reliably but even in the early days of that when it wasn't working, people were saying they should give up and use a giant net or towers or something for it to dumbly fall into. It's like seeing a car crash and saying "Why don't we just have giant balloons around cars to absorb the impact when they crash or guide rails along the roads so they won't go off course if the driver falls asleep?". Yea we could but it's both cheaper and possible to do it smarter.

If you were writing software and it had a bug, you wouldn't throw out the whole thing and replace it with a spreadsheet, you'd fix the bug.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#269

Post by thaumasiotes »

jordanb wrote: post #265
thaumasiotes wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to? They had a failed invasion of Korea; they had a very successful invasion of China that ended when they were defeated in a naval war well outside of Asia.

The invasion of China wasn't successful. It was a quagmire. Japan didn't have the men or resources to conquer China and Chiang could just retreat whenever he had to.

> Japan didn't have the men or resources to conquer China

Historically that doesn't take much. Having almost no men or resources didn't stop Nurhaci.

What was going wrong with the occupation?

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#270

Post by nine_k »

ForOldHack wrote: post #244
magicalhippo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imp…

Minimal launch cross-section is equally achievable for an oblong landing craft that is designed to fall on a predetermined side, with landing gear deployed to support it in the horizontal configuration.

Imagine a truck with a jet engine that lands on the rear end, then falls onto its wheels, because it's designed to operate when positioned horizontally.

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