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Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

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Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#501

It’s landed! Congratulations to India on this great achievement!

Why such a long political speech and no views from onboard camera?

The whole Prime Minister thing was bizarre to me .. He was like on the mission-control screen with his own panel .. it was just weird lol.. Even in the US where our presidents fancy themselves god's.. it still just had a weird perception from my point of view..

But I'm proud of the people that worked on and executed that mission for them. Obviously a moment of immense national pride, well deserved.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to general software development but is especially true in this case While we think "this cannot ever happen" in a lot of cases it can, in ways you did not consider. Both for good and bad

I really ought to dig up a reference for this, but there are strong echoes from the past here. Margaret Hamilton (who coined the term 'software engineering' and can be seen standing next to a tall pile of green bar printouts of the Apollo software) brought her daughter to work one weekend during the Apollo program and she (daughter) fiddled with the buttons and caused an error condition. Hamilton, based on this, argu…

Having seen what happens when you let a toddler start randomly pressing stuff on an Android tablet she was spot on, and if anything every environment should be out through this.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having served (but I did help out on Operation Code for a couple years): "Chair Force" does sound like something they would say about armchair generals. No?

Absolutely. Just pointing out that one is strictly a pejorative, while the others would likely be viewed as 'someone in the airforce.' I think OP was wanting things more of the former, like gravy seals, meal team six, y'all queda, etc.

I like y'all queda!

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#504
post #482
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A look at the previous lunar missions [1] should give an idea. There have been 7 lander missions since 1976 (not including impactors): - 3 by China: All success - 1 by Japan (along with a rover from UAE): Failed - 1 by Israel: Failed - 1 by Russia: Failed - 2 by India: Previous one failed. This one succeeded I can see why the entire world would be excited by something like this. I hope that there will be routine land…

why 1976 is a starting point? Why not counting successful Lunokhod rover missions? Looks like you're trying to to fit facts to narrative.

There was a fervent space race before that. Do you believe that anybody forgot about the countless interplanetary missions before that? Every time someone tries to collect data points, someone like you will start accusing vested interests rather than argue the reasons behind the data.

Edit: Added later:

Consider these questions:

1. Russia's lunar missions were all done in 18 years until Luna 24. Why did they then wait 47 years for Luna 25?

2. The US's last lander mission and manned mission was in 1972 (Apollo 17). Why do they want to restart it again after waiting more than half a century?

Or am I making this up too? The simple fact is that the current lunar missions are undertaken by an entirely new generation. Those from 1976 has long retired. That's good enough to consider them as two separate timelines.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#505
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They also created a bunch of tech that Americans thought impossible at the time - especially the staged combustion cycle with oxygen-rich preburner. And the American space programme too had its share of human losses due to sheer hubris - the 2 shuttle disasters included and possibly Apollo 1 as well. Let's not understate the achievements of the Russian space engineers and the bravery of their astronauts just because of the current political situation.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#506

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 .

I'm not a supporter of war mongering by any country. And what I hoped for Russia is what I hope of the entire world. But the assumption that the impact of their war efforts on their economy are similar is completely wrong. Russian economy is in shambles due to it while America goes on as usual.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious if it's at all interesting from a technical perspective. It was impressive in the 60s and 70s because a lot of new things needed to be discovered and understood to make it happen. But now a days.. are there really technical aspects that would not be covered in a typical engineering course? I get it's very expensive and hence difficult to pull off - but this makes it comes off as mostly nationalism and…

The budget with which this mission was accomplished is something. Less than a typical hollywood movie budget.

Less even than some Bollywood movie budgets.

Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious if it's at all interesting from a technical perspective. It was impressive in the 60s and 70s because a lot of new things needed to be discovered and understood to make it happen. But now a days.. are there really technical aspects that would not be covered in a typical engineering course? I get it's very expensive and hence difficult to pull off - but this makes it comes off as mostly nationalism and…

The money used on these programmes doesn't burn up, it gets recirculated. As an Indian I consider this a pretty good use of tax payer money.

It's a common perspective. My personal experience (working in the defense sector) is that these kinds of endeavors end up tieing up a lot of very smart doing vanity projects that in effect don't "generate value" for society. All the people involved wouldn't just be sitting on their hands if the moon project didn't exist. But I guess it could be worse.. they could be working on moving money around or pushing ads on to people
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