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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

#51

Post by JumpCrisscross »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #45
not2b wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a row while launching small rockets from an atoll. Some 20 years later they are now 13k+ nerds, they're launching every other day, land their boosters and are slowly becoming an ISP with a rocket launching side business. Space is hard. There's nothing "embarrassing" in controlled landing on the freakin Moon with a shoestring budget, even if the landers fell over. Re…

> 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.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#52

Post by not2b »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #45
not2b wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a row while launching small rockets from an atoll. Some 20 years later they are now 13k+ nerds, they're launching every other day, land their boosters and are slowly becoming an ISP with a rocket launching side business. Space is hard. There's nothing "embarrassing" in controlled landing on the freakin Moon with a shoestring budget, even if the landers fell over. Re…

Not sure who you are quoting here, I never said "embarrassing". I'm sure that those "nerds" made adjustments based on the failures. That's all I was asking for.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#54

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes

And then publishes it. The fact that they have precise renders still published of their next lander [1] is a bit telling about their engineering approach.

[1] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/missions

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#55

Post by JumpCrisscross »

6d6b73 wrote: post #47
aylmao wrote: post #14

> 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?

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.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#56

Post by Retric »

aylmao wrote: post #23
mikeyouse wrote: post #13

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.

It’s 250m which isn’t bad and suggests they intended it to be the southern most probe.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#57

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rqtwteye wrote: post #53

It shows the old that getting to 90% is easy and fast but the last 10% are very tedious and slow.

> shows the old that getting to 90% is easy and fast but the last 10% are very tedious and slow

And maybe don’t bet on a SPAC to deliver advanced engineering?

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#58

Post by rqtwteye »

cyphertruck wrote: post #5
carabiner wrote: post #3

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 took up an appreciable percentage of the GDP… this is a small startup with a fraction of the funding. Firefly landed successfully, but they are bigger. This is a hardware rich, inexpensive program, and they could fly probably 100 missions for the cost of one NASA old style mission.

Exactly. If we spend the same percentage of GDP we spent on Apollo, moon bases, mars landings, fusion and others would happen quickly.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#59

Post by doodlebugging »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
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…

> pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes And then publishes it. The fact that they have precise renders still published of their next lander [1] is a bit telling about their engineering approach. [1] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/missions

That's pretty funny. Doubling down on it may not pay off.

The first two landers have different backgrounds. The third and fourth re-use the first lander background in the same orientation and mirrored. I would think that since the third lander has a model displayed and the fourth is just a proposed outline that they may be open to structural changes by the fourth if they get that opportunity.

Hopefully they take the bait and pursue modifications that give their lander a lower center of gravity or a wider footprint. If I were at NASA I would be hesitant about allowing them to launch that third model with no mods. Even if all they do is hit the free section on craigslist in Houston and grab all the free-weights and a lightly used tarp to swing, testicle-style, underneath the lander as it tries to find the moon.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#60

Post by [deleted] »

card_zero wrote: post #18
lawlessone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe make it like a hamster ball. edit: just realized my own stupidity, a ball would be very hard to land..

That worked OK for some Mars rovers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags See also the section "uprighting", further down the page - they used a tetrahedral shell with a sensor so it knew which side was down and could lever itself upright.

[deleted]
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