41–50 of 360 posts
Jesus. It really is that hard. With all the bajillion in extra compute and simulation time from Apollo era, we can't do hard things anymore. We don't know how.
Apollo landers had human brains operating them. We're not quite there yet with technology.
Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?
According to IM's website, it landed within 250 _meters_ of the intended site - could there be a unit confusion (m / mi) somewhere in the press chain? https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2
Apollo 14 and 12 achieved 30 meters and 163 meters with human piloting, respectively, and that's after the program made precision landing a high-effort mission goal. The automated missions of the 60s-70s were often off target by a kilometre or more, but Surveyor 3 came in within 200 meters as well in '67.
Japan did a mission in 2024 with the express purpose of achieving automated precision landing - SLIM, nicknamed "Moon Sniper" - and hit 55 meters off center of a 100-by-100 elipse despite losing a main engine nozzle during descent (but also landed on its side, bummer). 50-150 meters is what the Chinese missions in the 2010s generally managed to do at times as well. I think Chang'e 5 (2020) holds the present record at within 10 meters.
Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?
Really funny spin from their PR department too: > “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”. > “This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.” I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once, how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but in reality is actually "learned knowledge". I can't believe people thi…
They shouldn't just cancel, but with the same kind of failure twice in a row it seems they should require correcting the tipping-over issue before trying a third time.
Space is hard. There's nothing "embarrassing" in controlled landing on the freakin Moon with a shoestring budget, even if the landers fell over. Reddit's r/technology is leaking in this thread.
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.
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/intuitive-machines-im... Look at the lander. Pray tell, if you want it shorter, where is everything supposed to go?
Here's exactly that:
https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/1879361461002371351
Nova-C (Intuitive Machine's platform) is 3x2x2 meters, and fits in a Falcon 9. Blue Ghost is 2x3x3 meters, and fits in the same fairing.
Here's a comparison (note that the Blue Ghost platform is currently the only one to succeed at it's intended mission, though IM1 did technically land safely but sideways):
> The failure of Athena, which was packed with scientific probes and experiments that Nasa was relying on as it prepares to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972, was almost identical to IM’s first moon landing in February 2024. Does this mean delays for Artemis, or do we not know yet?
The company Intuitive Machines first and second moon-landers both tipped over, hopefully the third does not tip over
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 lander is deemed to be in a stable orientation. Even landing it as a ball with air cushions that deflate once it comes to rest has to be preferred to simply keeping it the same and hoping for a nice flat spot to land.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really funny spin from their PR department too: > “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”. > “This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.” I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south in the first place.
As I recall, Apollo 11 was off by 4 miles downrange, which was considered good but not precise. More work on the guidance / navigation system allowed for a precision landing in Apollo 12 (to touch down near a Surveyor probe).
David's book spends a lot of time dwelling on the tension between highly automated systems and the role of the human in them, and the HCI factors of the Apollo missions. They also recap each landing through that lens, including the major changes done to the Lunar Module UI (physical + software) and the landing script/programs for each mission and how things worked out in practice and how it was debriefed after. If you want the insight look at the decision to go for precision landing, how (and how well) it was achieved and how everyone involved felt about it, this is probably your best one-stop go-to.
And for anyone working in embedded UI, or around automation, etc. it's a wondeful mind-sharpener with many lessons in an inspiring applied context.
The Apollo user interface and computer were so state of the art that many of the problems and solutions remain quite similar today. I work in a similar area (cars, with ever-increasing amounts of automation, driver assistance and connectivity) and some of the debates and on-the-job exchanges and meeting notes cited in the book could be straight out of my day job 60 years later with only minute differences. Some of the "Lessons on Software Development"-type docs penned by Apollo engineers in the aftermath of the program (trade-offs of platform approaches and HW abstractions vs. optimization, how to get a handle on quality and testing, etc.) also still read absolutely modern to this day, almost with greater summarizing clarity than what decades of paradigms and jargon have slathered on top.
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.
The craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made by Intuitive Machines (IM). Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it. Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high…
Have they published a root-cause analysis?
