Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reassuringly anachronistic to use acres as a unit of measure on the moon.
It's an official unit of the only flag on the Moon to date. What else would you suggest?
m²
Private company landing on the moon today
271–280 of 286 posts
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#272It’s interesting to watch this company operate and see just how much better SpaceX is at PR and how internet native their broadcasts annd PR efforts are — they are head and shoulders better than their competitors.
I really am stoked to see more and more space companies setting new milestones. It’s going to be a bright future for humanity if we can continue to expand space exploration and eventually become multiplanetary. It’s awesome to be alive to witness it.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#273Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"Abortion in Texas is illegal in all cases, except to save the mother's life, or prevent substantial impairment of major bodily function." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Texas#:~:text=Abor... .
Nobody knows the letter of the law in the real world and carveouts like this are meant to appease political opposition and get laws passed, not to be enforceable/usable. It's an effective total ban.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#275The 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.
It's carrying a payload for Columbia, among other things, which makes this type of marking generally called a “sponsor logo” rather than an “advertisement”:
“Besides NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.”
https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-private-company-intu...
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#276The private lander's mission control looks like the proverbial two-pizza team. Would it that the silent revolution in spaceflight, hidden under the glamour of reusable rockets, is incredibly sophisticated telemetry, communication, on-board automation? A computing stack that's making the 1x mission control a 10x mission control? I understand there will be other teams elsewhere (delivery vehicle, remote sensing etc. et…
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…
Oh I don't dispute the fact that reusable vehicles are an incredible leap forward. Anything that manages to launch significantly more payload cheaper and more frequently is awesome.
That said, things like reusability work at all because of precision control which, as far as I can tell, is near-impossible to do in a lightweight package without the cooperation of a compute stack. Same for other kinds of soft landings and autonomous control scenarios.
As an aside: achievements like reusable rockets also became possible because of advances in materials research driven by advances in computer simulation and computer-aided manufacturing. So this is perhaps another under-appreciated layer of the rocketry compute stack.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#277Update: 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.
It's still grim. All the "signals" we have are from the hypeworks. It's fascinating, actually, how basically nobody in the media had the guts to be honest & neutral, and state the obvious fact that things aren't looking _that_ good.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reassuringly anachronistic to use acres as a unit of measure on the moon.
It's an official unit of the only flag on the Moon to date. What else would you suggest?
Maybe the same units basically everybody has always ever used (in earnest) for space tech (including NASA)?
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#279The 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.
That's because you were a child at the time. A child now will most likely have the same sense of awe and wonder you had, not the cynical point of view you've developed over time.
A child now will be totally unaware about that because he will be occupied doomscrolling whatever trends is current now on TikTok.
Re: Private company landing on the moon today
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which I assume is much harder and more expensive Manned space missions are significantly more expensive (and complicated) than robotic missions. (Otherwise, we'd be sending a lot more people into space.) Let's do a little bit of back-of-the-envelope Googling: From https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo > The United States spent $25.8 billion on Project Apollo between 1960 and 1973, or approximately $…
The post you're replying to is comparing robotic missions to Mars vs. the moon. Mars is orders of magnitude harder to land on because of its atmosphere, stronger gravity, and the need to keep your robot healthy on the long trip over.
Maybe you can come up with a better comparison?