Good advice: 1. Never invade Russia in winter. 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.
> Never invade Russia in winter.
I thought it was never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
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Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#92Good advice: 1. Never invade Russia in winter. 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.
when gravity is 1/6, a lower centre of gravity might not do as much as you think
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#93Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#94Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic spacecraft" but I can't explain why.
The order of adjectives in English is usually: opinion, size, age or shape, colour, origin, material, purpose It is sometimes difficult to classify adjectives this way, but "private" is probably opinion and "robotic" is probably purpose, so you are correct, "private robotic spacecraft" is probably correct. The problem with English, of course, is that you can figure out what someone means, even if they jumble all thei…
I think private is an origin, not an opinion.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are likely aware of the English language's feature of multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before COLOR in standard English phrases. In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough in category to be…
Upvoted, but just wanted to say it explicitly: What an in-depth and thoughtful answer. Thank you for this!
Comments like these are literally why I come to HN honestly. It’s such a wonderful community here.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#96If we send a person on a one-way mission to the moon to make sure that the instruments are able to work properly, we would have better return on the investment.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#97Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#98Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#99Not a native English speaker here, my focus stopped at the subtitle "Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday". It feels odd to read "robotic private spacecraft" instead of "private robotic spacecraft" but I can't explain why.
You are likely aware of the English language's feature of multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before COLOR in standard English phrases. In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough in category to be…
A rational reference, but there are no hard and fast rules.
Perhaps more importantly, in well written English superfluous words are removed - thus 'private robotic spacecraft' becomes 'private spacecraft', since all spacecraft are by definition at least partly autonomous.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#100One 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.
> One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Presumably it's that shape to fit in the fairing of a Falcon 9?
No, that's not why.
I found dimensions and a picture of IM-1 here:
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id...
The IM-1 lander was 1.57 meters wide and 4m tall, but based on the picture I think the width doesn't include the legs.
The Blue Ghost lander also launched on an F9; it's 2m high and 3.5m wide, and it landed without falling over. (dimensions from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ghost_Mission_1)
The F9 payload envelope dimensions can be found on page 79 of:
https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf
Dimensions shown appear to be [ ] - the bulk of the space is a cylinder with a radius of "180.020 [ 4572.5011 ]" which I read as just over 4.5 meters in diameter; the cylindrical part is just over 6.6 meters high (and then you get into the conical section at the nose).
The space inside the fairing is bigger than this but there is empty space between it and the payload to ensure they don't come into contact due to vibrations, etc., during launch.
So IM-1 could well have been wider and shorter and still fit on the F9.