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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

#351

Post by ForOldHack »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #276
doodlebugging wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hopefully they go out of business for having ignored the advice of the entire scientific community simply because they wanted to pull some SpaceX-type-shit on the Moon and ended up costing everyone over a hundred million dollars and probably a setback of years, all because of their CEO's ego.

As much as I do not want to believe this, it sounds like the horrid truth. Feynman did it his way and furthered the science. Randolf of blacklite power was a shister.

I do agree.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#353

Post by jjani »

ethagknight wrote: post #317
hombre_fatal wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the title and then your first sentence is the most HN experience. All they had to do was just...

Spin up a quick national plutonium reserve, takes like 3 minutes, such incompetence

I smell an opportunity for a new player in the NPRaaS space!

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#355

Post by kbelder »

tekla wrote: post #343
hombre_fatal wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the title and then your first sentence is the most HN experience. All they had to do was just...

Clearly HN is smarter than an entire team of Aero/Mechanical/Electrical engineers who have not thought of the obvious solution.

The Aero/Mechanical/Electrical engineers all know this. They just aren't allowed to do it.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#356

Post by inamberclad »

ForOldHack wrote: post #295
inamberclad wrote: post #226

Definitely concerned about the laser rangefinders not working on descent. My recollection is that they were very finnicky instruments. A lot of discussion is happening around the aspect ratio of the Noca-C landers. Part of the reason they're so tall and skinny looking is that the lander is built around two linerless composite fuel tanks. Two big tanks are more efficient than four smaller ones. The legs should definit…

There was also lots of dust. Read digital apollo. If your tanks are empty, they are now dead weight. Use them as pads. If you had 30 empty tanks on spikes you could bounce, roll onto the surface. Again tanks as landing gear. A delivery craft that crashes somewhere else, or flies over the rights the other two. ( Three for one)

the tanks aren't empty when you land, since you always want to have reserve fuel (and pressure)

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#357

Post by dreamcompiler »

sfblah wrote: post #318
somenameforme wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the center of gravity. I think people really underestimate how hard landing on the Moon is, because counter-intuitively, the lack of an atmosphere makes things harder, not easier. Landing on Mars (or even Venus (!!) - which is the first other planet we ever landed on) is easy mode by comparison. With the lack of atmosphere is that there is no 'natural' attitude/orientation correction. If you're tilted 5…

So are you saying that landing the lunar lander in 1969 was substantially harder than SpaceX landing its boosters back on Earth?

Yes. SpaceX absolutely depends on the v^2 automatic deceleration effect the atmosphere provides. They also depend on GPS which is not available on the moon. SpaceX also takes advantage of 50 years of improvement in orientation sensors, INS, image analysis, thrust vectoring servos, and thrust control.

As another post points out, the Apollo landings had real pilots who could look out the window. It's a testament to their skills that they all made it home.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#358

Post by sfblah »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #357
sfblah wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying that landing the lunar lander in 1969 was substantially harder than SpaceX landing its boosters back on Earth?

Yes. SpaceX absolutely depends on the v^2 automatic deceleration effect the atmosphere provides. They also depend on GPS which is not available on the moon. SpaceX also takes advantage of 50 years of improvement in orientation sensors, INS, image analysis, thrust vectoring servos, and thrust control. As another post points out, the Apollo landings had real pilots who could look out the window. It's a testament to the…

Thanks for the context. Agreed it's amazing what people can do it such an unforgiving environment.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#359

Post by foxglacier »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #277
foxglacier wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

> 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. Because $150M was/is at stake and "b…

Legged landers have also been proven to work on the moon many times. I suspect the reason for this thinking is that engineers like to find technical solutions to problems but when the only information you have is "it fell over", the only apparent technical solutions are to use different concepts that can't fall over. Once you know more specifics of why it failed, you'd be thinking of ways to prevent those, like maybe correct the software bug or implement redundant sensors or whatever. The troubles with these landers won't be something as difficult as "Reliably balancing a slender object upright is beyond the cutting edge of technology" since that problem has been thoroughly solved in other contexts like Falcon 9 and Segway.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#360

Post by 6d6b73 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55
6d6b73 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaceship fiasco will delay Artemis so much that there is no need to even consider landing on the Moon in the next 10 years.

> Spaceship [ sic ] fiasco will delay Artemis Artemis II is entirely delayed by Lockheed’s Orion spacecraft. Not SpaceX’s Starship.

Spaceship - Starship who do hell cares, it will never get to the Moon anyway.
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