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Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

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Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#491

Post by ianburrell »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #38
The_Colonel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not considering such a basic error condition seems like a gross omission. This can't even come from the software engineering, but must be some kind of managerial failure (e.g. we're short on time, but have to report great progress to my boss, so skip this scenario).

> seems like such a gross omission. Almost all space mission code only ever has the so-called 'happy path'. We rely on extremely tight mechanical and aerospace engineering tolerances to achieve that happy path. The Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror grinding was off by a matter of micrometres, and resulted in blurry images. Consider all the Mars rovers. Imagine some wind gust threw the descending module off cour…

Apollo 1 landed on the "failure path". Neil Armstrong noticed that the target was a boulder field, took manual control, discovered his new spot had a crater, and finally found level ground. They had low fuel but not dangerously low.

If Apollo 11 had followed the "happy path", they would have crashed and died.

Hubble was also the "failure path". The main mirror was flawed and had to be corrected.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#492

Post by georgeecollins »

lioeters wrote: post #464
georgeecollins wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a sign of habitual cynicism that you assume "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was said by a politician. I think people feel like they are defending themselves from being manipulated by not accepting anything on its face as sincere. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.

I think the saying goes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And knowing Freud, you know it's not just a cigar.

That's correct about Freud! I was referring to Magritte, who made the painting "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." By which he meant the image of the pipe was not actually not a pipe. Which means .. well I think you would have to read about it and I am not sure I am using the reference in the right way.

I believe Freud and the cigar is about our thoughts and impulses sometimes not having greater meaning in our subconscious. Magritte is about something different.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#493

Post by nexuist »

goodbyesf wrote: post #321
Ayesh wrote: post #88

If I read correctly, this is now the most watched live video on YouTube! Congratulations to India and the team on this fantastic feat of an achievement.

> If I read correctly, this is now the most watched live video on YouTube! Which is disappointing. India should have their own video sharing/livestream platform.

I mean, it's video streaming, it's not as easy as rocket science and orbital dynamics.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#494

Post by biogene »

mattigames wrote: post #465
edpichler wrote: post #432

This is such a difficult achievement. And they did it spending USD 75 Million, almost 2x less the costs of production of the Interestelar movie. Very well done, India. Respect!

It made much less on profits than Interstellar tho.

They didn't add a profit margin because its a government project.

The point was about we could be doing so much more with the resources we have. That is what I got out of it - and I agree.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#496

Post by pbj1968 »

goku12 wrote: post #236
The_Colonel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides what others said, it gets extra spice from the fact Russia failed to do the same just days ago.

Russian space program is a shadow of what it once was. Their history is full of daring missions and extraordinary achievements. I wish they would engage in a space race than in a war.

Russian space program started with killing a bunch of cosmonauts they pretended never existed…

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#497

Post by biogene »

veave wrote: post #175
thyrox wrote: post #47

Not asking rhetorically but why is this a big deal? Is it because it's going to the south pole? What are some other benefits to be gained from this?

[flagged]

Welcome to humanity - we use our feelings and emotions, often. We're not data ingesting algorithms looking to score a piece of text with an objective metric, and that's the way we like it :)

You might see it manifesting as extra attention towards topics such as minority rights, or injustices, or celebrities, or products from companies we like, or up-voting tiny open source projects that we nevertheless think are cool.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#498

Post by dotnet00 »

cpursley wrote: post #488
dotnet00 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't really the gotcha you think it is when you see Falcon 9s flying and landing multiple times a week, the most advanced conventional rocket engines ever being mass produced, two scifi-esque lunar landers under serious development and all the other things. The American space program is far and away the world leader by a huge margin, while almost 2 decades ago things were dicey, the current Ameircan space program…

I agree with everything you wrote. But you missed my point - America has an incredible space program despite their wars. If wars were the cause of space program degradation, Russia would actually be ahead .

Ah, yeah not much arguing with that.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#500

Post by stall84 »

jvm___ wrote: post #95
The_Colonel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When saying "we", do you mean you write code for the space missions? Writing only happy path code as a standard practice in the space sector seems quite absurd. You won't ever achieve absolute precision and errors do happen, yet it seems like systems recover most of the time. Recently, the antenna of Voyager 2 got misaligned, but it is expected to recover from that. That was only the last problem it encountered over…

Voyager 2 is already recovered, they waited until it was at the best possible (but still wrong orientation) and just yelled at it so that it heard, even with it being misaligned.

Voyager's programming just brings joy to me to think about.. I mean it's the system as a whole (of course) .. but the fact that they've been capable of flying through the environments they have been, using points of light to align themselves, among other things.. for decades .. and recover from incidents.. is just something I marvel at.
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