Starliner has a 5th helium leak in it's propulsion system.(and other Space News)

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA would instead build the Artemis program around existing proven technology.  It would be a less ambitious early program.  

as stated before, the reason they went with starship was out of necessity. without starship it would be more costly, and more late. that's why they went with starship - it's their best take at actually making any sort of deadline.

 

so.. essentially.. your viewpoint here is that you dont want spacex to entertain NASA's overly ambitious ideas? (see.. i can twist your words into something you didnt say at all just the same as you've been doing...)

 

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Then once BFR is really ready then things can scale up

scale up in what way? because scaling up in size is essentially a matter of building a whole new rocket platform, and scaling up in production and flight cadence is essentially a matter of throwing the entire logistics out the window.. and it's better to just design for scale production from the start, because otherwise you're tossing out 90% of the design anyways in an attempt of making production scaleable.

 

and as i've stated before.. the process of figuring out how to "mass" produce rockets of this scale essentially provides them with a limitless supply of testing vehicles to make the rocket design more economical than spending billions on petaflops.

 

9 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

What would be different is taking achievable, incremental, baby steps to solve the problem.  Learning as we go but not blowing astronauts to kingdom come along the way ... at least not as much. 

that's why..

- they had starhopper first (water towers fly)

- then they had the grain silo (texas tankwatchers / SN5)

- then they had the first iterations of starship itself

- now they're working on the booster

- they havent stuck cargo on any of this, and they wont until it's ready for prime time, and i guarantee you that it'll be a LOOOOOONG ass time before they stick humans on starship as a launch system.

 

so - again - no, they arent blowing astronauts to kingdom come with this thing, but thank you for the lovely example of a strawman argument.

 

as for HLS - that's technically humans on a starship-ish, but in a vastly different situation, on something that might actually be closer to the grain silo 'from a rocketry point of view' than starship itself. (no bellyflop, no winglets, no flipping and burning. just a down and back up vehicle.)

 

[Uttamattamakin]

Update on Astrobotics Stricken Perigrine lander which experienced a propulsion system anomaly  shortly after separation from Vulcan Centaur.  Though they have been able to engineer their way around the problems so far and extend the mission to learn how the payloads all work in space they have opted to allow the craft to return to Earth and burn up on reentry.  The payloads included the lander, a rover, various experiments on the lander and rover and passive payloads including a persons cremains.  This is to ensure safety and not turn the craft into a piece of out of control space junk in cislunar space.  It did successfully reach translunar space but at a time when the Moon was not in that area.  The mission for it was not like Apollo , not a direct path of least time but a trajectory of least fuel requirement so this was planned .  A correction that would cause it to miss the Earth sling shot by and approach the Moon is possible but then if they loose control who knows what issues it could cause in years or decades as space junk.  

 

https://www.astrobotic.com/update-17-for-peregrine-mission-one/   

 

Quote

“I am so proud of what our team has accomplished with this mission. It is a great honor to witness firsthand the heroic efforts of our mission control team overcoming enormous challenges to recover and operate the spacecraft after Monday’s propulsion anomaly. I look forward to sharing these, and more remarkable stories, after the mission concludes on January 18. This mission has already taught us so much and has given me great confidence that our next mission to the Moon will achieve a soft landing,” said Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton.

So while Vulcan Centuar did its job and got its payload to TLI successfully the payload itself was not a success.  They did however manage to learn quite a bit of how their hardware will perform. 

IMHO their best course of action if they try again would be to replicate and retest the propulsion system to see if they can replicate the failure and understand it. That might sound absurd but engines that are on space probes are designed for short little burns.  This failure happend basically as soon as it started.  So a short pulse of the engine might be able to produce the result. Then they can improve on it.  Since everything else worked they can just replicate that and try again.  Maybe update a few things but not much. 

[Uttamattamakin]

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

as stated before, the reason they went with starship was out of necessity. without starship it would be more costly, and more late. that's why they went with starship - it's their best take at actually making any sort of deadline.

 

so.. essentially.. your viewpoint here is that you dont want spacex to entertain NASA's overly ambitious ideas? (see.. i can twist your words into something you didnt say at all just the same as you've been doing...)

NASA went with Space X for HLS in part due to Elon Time estimates, Elon cost estimates and Elon Musk promises.   Which are well I'll let his record speak for itself.  He's achieve a lot eventually but only eventually. 

 

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

.....

 

I am not dismissing what you are saying they did all of that but .  Lets say we were talking about Cars instead.  Suppose Tesla decided to take a clean sheet, pretend that no cars existed before.  Then spent time trying to reinvent the tire.    Not the Wheel but the Air filled rubber tire.   Perhaps based on the wheels used on space probes and rovers.  

 

That could be great. That could be revolutionary. That could be innovate and wonderful ..... but WHY? 

 

IMHO space X would be better served by either not going for a minor revolution and reinventing something they made operational.  Rockets that propulsive and vertically land.... OR decided to gay much much farther.  

If you want a revolution this is it.  It was scale tested in the 1990's but he did not have the sales skills of Elon.  He said 5 years in 1992.  If Elon Musk could ope rationalize this.  This is the real possible Starship.  
 

An invention by professor Leik Myrabo of Rennselear Polytechnic Institute.  A lot of the concept builds on the previous Project Orion scale testing.  IN which explosives were used to demonstrate the principle in scale testing.  The problem there was to fully test it meant using nuclear bombs. 

 

 Last video I find of this is from 2000. 

 

One of the biggest limitations of this is getting enough LASER power for the thing.  Some DNA from this is in the proposed "breaktrough Starshot".  Which involves sending a micro probe to... I think Proxima Centauri. 

That would be revolutionary for real, and if that detonated or burned up on launch that would be far more understandable than a rocket.  A type of thing we have been reliably launching for decades now. 

[wanderingfool2]

11 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Falcon Heavy GREAT ROCKET.  Builds on Falcon in a very direct way.  Starship does a little but clearly not all that much (or else it isn't that revolutionary is it. )  It would almost be better if they simply scaled a falcon up 1.5x or 2x and did that.

8 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA would instead build the Artemis program around existing proven technology.  It would be a less ambitious early program.  

What proven existing technology?  

 

Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy doesn't have a fairing that can realistically handle a moon mission that is eventually planned.  It might be able to support smaller landers, but when you start getting to what is planned in the future you are now paying for essentially twice the development costs.

 

Remember, the SLS was supposed to be proven technology that we already knew about...it's been over a decade delayed and insanely over budget.

 

Here's another hint, Falcon Heavy could just barely manage to carry the original lunar module to the moon...a module that is small compared to what they would be wanting these days.

 

You can't just scale a rocket like Falcon Heavy as well, it simply doesn't work like that, which brings back the whole notion that you seem to have no clue what you are talking about.  Actually, even if you scaled it up by 1.5x you now exponentially increase costs of recovery.  Aside from the barge/octograbber which would need to be retooled to hold the larger size (which it still struggles with it sometimes), you have to now ship it along the roads back to the facility.  The Falcon 9's size was chosen because they would be able to take it along the roads without extra permits/fitting down certain roads.

 

Even when the contracts were awarded, you wouldn't have been able to say we could rely on technology like SLS because the SLS at that stage was already well behind schedule and from what I recall the other contracts would require one or two launches of the SLS...SLS is limited by build speed and price.  If you launch another SLS it will take ~16 months and a billion or two dollars (and at that time again SLS wasn't even successfully launched and well behind schedule).  Had the SLS been on schedule and on budget then there would have been a lot more credence to letting it take us to the moon again completely.

 

9 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Falcon 9 did it really reinvent the wheel? Was it revolutionary?  You know rockets that could land on their tail like that were developed and designed and even tested before that one.   The Douglass DC X being an important one that was tested full scale.  

Throw's a paper airplane and claims I invented flight so anyone who makes a plane must not be reinventing the wheel /s

 

Seriously, anyone comparing what SpaceX is doing with the Douglass DC X and claiming that it's already been solved or that SpaceX isn't doing anything revolutionary needs to really reconsider their idea of working in a logic based industry.

 

First Falcon 9 used the engines it used to go to orbit and required it to do a suicide burn.  That is something that DC X never would have dealt with.  Falcon 9 had to deal with and engineer a whole lot more than what DC X dealt with.

 

As for DC X compared to Starship, the DC X is more equivalent to the Starhopper missions of Starship...you know before really too much scale and with a bunch of the variables controlled.

 

9 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Yes bigger rocket that does not blow up is good.   

Relying on that technology to actually get to the Moon etc is good.  Starship could be a ... test program a development program.  Making it an integral part of Artemis was IMHO a mistake.   Great thing to have someday if it works. 

Again, you are acting like the "blow up" mean's Starship must be terrible/doomed.  IT WOULD have reached orbit had it actually had a payload.

 

  

3 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA went with Space X for HLS in part due to Elon Time estimates, Elon cost estimates and Elon Musk promises.   Which are well I'll let his record speak for itself.  He's achieve a lot eventually but only eventually. 

I'm sorry but no...you would be a fool to believe that.  They had to submit detailed information, and ones that NASA engineers would also look over and properly assess.  It's a fixed price contract to SpaceX for completion of the Starship mission as well...they can't just go and ask for more money (unlike the SLS which was essentially given blank checks along the way).

 

To suggest they went on Elon time is just plain wrong and foolish to say.

 

So far on the Artemis mission, what has been delayed:

SLS, over a decade of delays, but in terms of Artemis at least years.

Spacesuits, already a year behind schedule (it's why they already pushed it to 2025 before this most recent one)

VC, supposed to have launched a year ago iirc.

[manikyath]

15 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA went with Space X for HLS in part due to Elon Time estimates, Elon cost estimates and Elon Musk promises.   Which are well I'll let his record speak for itself.  He's achieve a lot eventually but only eventually. 

they were the only bid within budget, and even *with* accounting for elon time their estimates were much closer than the other options. and if starship goes horribly over budget... nasa doesnt give a hoot, it's a fixed price contract.

 

15 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I am not dismissing what you are saying they did all of that but .  Lets say we were talking about Cars instead.

"i am not dismissing what you said, but i am dismissing what you said"

 

you're still bouncing between saying "they shouldnt reinvent the wheel" and saying "they didnt invent this wheel" as if any of your arguments make any sort of sense.

 

again - i'm having to choose between the hundreds of engineers making this happen, or some university degree in a vaguely related field on a forum with an opinion.. i elect to follow what the engineers say unless this degree with an opinion comes with some tangiable facts to show the engineers out there are wrong in what they're doing.

 

i dont care about nitpicking where the real revolution might have been, i dont care about how exactly the definition of invention and reinvention applies to this rocket.. i care about the things this platform will achieve for us once it's finished and a reliable reusable launch platform. given what they achieved with falcon 9 'despite the headwind of the industry saying that it would never work'  i gladly believe the "translated elon time" timeframes are a very possible goal.

 

ps; NSF covered the recent presentation from the big looney, TL:DR;

- IFT3 is planned to go to orbit, and do some maneuvers as per nasa requirement. some stretch goals are testing some of their own features.

- starship v2 is being developed, aiming for a payload capacity to LEO of 200 tonnes while fully reusable

- a stretched v3 design is on the table

- SpaceX plans to exceed NASA's payload requirements by the end of "2024 or 2025" (so make that 2025)

 

[Uttamattamakin]

Just now, manikyath said:

you're still bouncing between saying "they shouldnt reinvent the wheel" and saying "they didnt invent this wheel" as if any of your arguments make any sort of sense.

 

You said that it's ok that they are messing up because they are doing something revolutionary that has never been done before ever by anyone.  

I have shown you first of all they have done parts of this before.  Propulsive landing.  (Also done before by others but not operationally)  Rockets with many many small engines  (Soviet N1).  Yes I know why they make a certain sense but there are also reasons no one  else does that (over a certain number of engines in one plumbing system tends to lead to cascading failures of diverse kinds and BOOM.  

THen I showed you something REALLY REALLY almost Sci Fi different.   If they were really pushing the envelope they'd be doing something as fresh as the light craft.  Having those blow up or burn up in the first 10 or 20 tries that'd be something else.   

What Space X is doing now is like. Tesla messing this up. 
 

 

[manikyath]

6 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

You said that it's ok that they are messing up because they are doing something revolutionary that has never been done before ever by anyone.  

that's not what i said at all... how are we still at the point of "test flight, prototype" being difficult to understand?

 

they didnt "mess up" anything, they arent "skipping steps", they are going trough the process of designing this thing one step at a time, and because for them physical testing is cheaper than petaflops, these steps are just a very public thing for us all to watch.

 

IFT2's successful step was going up, the next step is IFT3 doing orbit and deorbit, then after that comes 'coming back down'.

 

10 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

(over a certain number of engines in one plumbing system tends to lead to cascading failures of diverse kinds and BOOM.  

how are you this f*cking dense.. let's put it in font size 36 for you, so you cant possibly miss it.

THE PLUMBING IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

 

it was never a problem for starship, it likely will never be a problem for starship. if you actually do care at all, which i'm sure of you'd rather just live in your bubble.. go look at whatever you can find about the "thrust puck" in the starship booster. it's a beautiful piece of engineering, it really is a case of the best solution for a very complicated problem being shockingly simple.

 

i'm willing to entertain a lot of your juggling of half truths to question a lot about starship.. but can we please for the love of whatever deity you may or may not believe in, stop the ridiculous premise that a given number of engines is just a guarantee for failure.

 

just because of your endless whining about engine count and N1.. i went to delve into the details of N1, and a lot of people believe that if N1 had a few more iterations to get the issues with the first stage engine reliability figured out (especially with the then radically new and much improved flight computer) it would have very likely flown, and be very successful.

N1 was a massive project from a nation that at the time didnt really have the budget for it to begin with, with project management that wasnt very well aligned, and was axed due to cost reasons pretty much right at the point where it might have started to be viable.

 

the issues that plagued N1 were political, financial, and motivational. N1's failure wasnt due to the number of engines, it was a lack of reliability in the parts supplied, and a launch computer that was WAY underspec for a craft this complicated. (until they replaced it with an "actual" computer)

 

and actually - while writing.. i figured i never actually read about the plumbing being the root cause in any of the N1 flights.. so i went to look:

1969 (feb): an engine blew up, KORD misdiagnosed the issue and shut everything down, FTS took care of it.

1969 (jul): a LOX pump ingested junk and blew up, causing a fire that essentially spread to enough engines to doom the rocket and made it fall right back down onto the pad.

1971: a new maneuvre to avoid blowing up the pad caused roll beyond what the control of the rocket could handle, which caused it to break up during maxQ

1972: engine shutdown in preparation for staging blew up a LOX pump, exact root cause was debated, but it was either an engine issue or liquid hammer issue (pyrotechnical valves are cheap). if the rocket had staged this could have been a successful flight, but FTS took over before staging.

 

so - we have an engine explosion that was misdiagnosed by the flight computer, junk getting sucked into an engine causing a catastrophic fire, a new maneuvre that caused excessive aerodynamic stress due to the relative lack of control authority the rocket had, and one potential case of liquid hammer causing issues just seconds before the stage was supposed to be ditched. (also, the liquid hammer blew up a LOX pump in one of the engines, not the pipework.)

 

exactly how is this proof that the starship's booster will never work because of the complexity of the pipework? i cant even find much hard evidence that the pipework was even a problem in N1, let alone a major showstopper.

[wanderingfool2]

21 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

IMHO their best course of action if they try again would be to replicate and retest the propulsion system to see if they can replicate the failure and understand it. That might sound absurd but engines that are on space probes are designed for short little burns.  This failure happend basically as soon as it started.  So a short pulse of the engine might be able to produce the result. Then they can improve on it.  Since everything else worked they can just replicate that and try again.  Maybe update a few things but not much. 

And yet you are on SpaceX's case for a failure.  I hope you do realize what you are suggesting is just plain ignorant, not only do they already have a suspect cause you are effectively suggesting a $100 million test to replicate the failure that they already think they know.

 

Honestly, if you read the statement as well what makes it a bad statement is that despite going with the recommendation they still pretty much highlighted that it's up to them whether or not they wanted to force a deorbit into Earth or try powering it into a more stable orbit.

 

5 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

What Space X is doing now is like. Tesla messing this up. 

FUD, that's what you are doing.  It was below -24C, and the chargers were all full.  Yes range drops when you drive EV's, it's a known thing and people didn't prep for it.

 

Do you know what happens to my ICE car in -24C...it doesn't start because it's too cold.  Lots of people charge outside, so the thing to remember that you have to heat up the battery so IF it's really cold it needs to dump more heat into heating it up to correct temps.  On top of that it's too cold to correctly precondition your battery for fast charging.

 

It's not a Tesla thing, it's an EV thing in general.

 

5 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I have shown you first of all they have done parts of this before.  Propulsive landing.  (Also done before by others but not operationally)  Rockets with many many small engines  (Soviet N1).  Yes I know why they make a certain sense but there are also reasons no one  else does that (over a certain number of engines in one plumbing system tends to lead to cascading failures of diverse kinds and BOOM.  

Stop with this stupid, unintelligent argument of arguing in bad faith.  IT WAS NOT THE FAILURE OF THIS FLIGHT.  IT WASN'T THE FAILURE OF THE FIRST FLIGHT.

 

Again since you can't seem to grasp it.  The reason IFT-2 failed was because they vent oxygen to better match the conditions they would have faced if they actually were carrying payload...and of course the oxygen caused things to burn that wasn't supposed to burn.

 

Even on the first flight, they had gotten it to the point where they could have attempted to launch the stage 2

[manikyath]

8 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Stop with this stupid, unintelligent argument of arguing in bad faith.  IT WAS NOT THE FAILURE OF THIS FLIGHT.  IT WASN'T THE FAILURE OF THE FIRST FLIGHT.

you know.. the more i look into N1, the more it seems like the plumbing wasnt an issue at all.. it's all just engines exploding.

 

it feels accurate to assume that "the complex plumbing was fragile" was a media interpretation of pyrotechnical valves causing the lox pump on one of the engines to rapidly self-disassemble.

5 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

What Space X is doing now is like. Tesla messing this up. 

i somehow missed this horrid piece of twisted reality...

 

cars having issues in the cold has been a problem since the invention of "the automobile".

electric cars lose (a fairly predictable amount of) range in cold weather.

ICE cars need more starter power to get started in cold weather, simultaniously with the cold also affecting said starter battery the same way it affects electric cars. result being if it doesnt fire up within the first few tries, your ICE car is just as stranded as the electric car.

here in belgium the first day of frosty weather usually goes paired with some TV interview with a car mechanic literally driving from call to call to jumpstart people's vehicles because the starter battery went jello from the weather. yes, once it's running it's running... but EV's can pre-heat their batteries so they arent as affected by the cold, as long as you can charge overnight at home (which, IMO that's the only way an EV makes sense.) 

 

this is also nothing to do with tesla specificly.. it affects every electric car the same, just like it hits every ICE car the same. you just pulled up some 'high number channel' fishing for views by putting a high profile brand in their title. since you've talked about neutrality in reporting before... this example is not that.

[Uttamattamakin]

NASA has lost contact with the USA's Mars Helidrone ingenuity.    IT has flown 72 times and lasted on Mars years longer than it was supposed to. 

 

https://www.engadget.com/nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-has-gone-silent-on-mars-195746735.html

 

Quote

Perseverance serves the go-between for all communications to and from the helicopter; Ingenuity sends information to Perseverance, which then passes it on to Earth, and vice versa. According to NASA, the small helicopter completed the ascent as planned, but ceased communications while on its way back down. “The Ingenuity team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish communications with the helicopter,” NASA said in a status update on Friday. Ingenuity had previously ended a flight earlier than it was supposed to, and Thursday’s jaunt was meant to “check out the helicopter’s systems.”

 

Ingenuity has been on the red planet since 2021, when it arrived with the Perseverance rover. And it’s far exceeded its mission goals. NASA originally hoped the experimental helicopter would be able to complete a handful of flights. It went on to fly more than 20 times within its first year in operation. The space agency officially extended its mission in 2022, and it’s since executed dozens more more successful flights. Ingenuity is the first aircraft to take flight from the surface of Mars.

 

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA has lost contact with the USA's Mars Helidrone ingenuity.    IT has flown 72 times and lasted on Mars years longer than it was supposed to. 

 

https://www.engadget.com/nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-has-gone-silent-on-mars-195746735.html

Godspeed, little helicopter.  Hopefully it's just a very, very tired battery. 

 

They should send a swarm of Ingenuity-s up with the resupply / sample return mission. Maybe add a couple small relay stations so they don't all have to go through Perseverance. (Or iterate the old Mars Exploration Rover design, because we know that works.)

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA has lost contact with the USA's Mars Helidrone ingenuity.    IT has flown 72 times and lasted on Mars years longer than it was supposed to. 

I wonder if the solar panels got covered or maybe solar radiation took its toll?

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

The actual background of the delays in the Artemis program (and not some BS misrepresentation)

gotta love scott manley.

3 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

It was just some terrain obstructions and Ingenuity is alive and well.

is this the space equivalent of a kid losing his RC helicopter over the hedge, and the neighbor bringing it back?

[manikyath]

7 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

A little bit. Ingenuity encountered an anomaly on its previous flight leading to this situation. NASA is assessing the situation. It might still be goodbye very soon.

i suppose they'll just park it and use it as a comms beacon (that's what happens with all landers/rovers when their duty is done, by the way.)

[Uttamattamakin]

LISA is a major science mission which will develop and launch a constellation of three satellites.  These will bounce a laser beam between them and use time delay interferometry to measure the distance between the satellites very precisely.  This will allow the detection of gravitational waves.  Due to the long baselines, distances between the satellites they will be able to measure different frequencies than the ground based LIGO.  

 

ESA - Capturing the ripples of spacetime: LISA gets go-ahead :

Quote

Today, ESA’s Science Programme Committee approved the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the first scientific endeavour to detect and study gravitational waves from space.

 

This important step, formally called ‘adoption’, recognises that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced, and gives the go-ahead to build the instruments and spacecraft. This work will start in January 2025 once a European industrial contractor has been chosen.

 

LISA is not just one spacecraft but a constellation of three. They will trail Earth in its orbit around the Sun, forming an exquisitely accurate equilateral triangle in space. Each side of the triangle will be 2.5 million km long (more than six times the Earth-Moon distance), and the spacecraft will exchange laser beams over this distance. The launch of the three spacecraft is planned for 2035, on an Ariane 6 rocket.

LISA, LIGO, VIRGO, KARGA and other such gravitational wave observatories all complement each other. 

 

As I am personally involved in this one this is GOOD NEWS EVERYONE in deed. 

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The launch of the three spacecraft is planned for 2035, on an Ariane 6 rocket.

oh no, that means it's running behind schedule.

https://www.aei.mpg.de/177750/lisa-mission-passes-review-successfully-and-begins-next-stage-of-development

 

Quote

LISA is scheduled for launch into space in 2034 as a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA).

 

[Uttamattamakin]

On 1/25/2024 at 2:35 PM, manikyath said:

oh no, that means it's running behind schedule.

https://www.aei.mpg.de/177750/lisa-mission-passes-review-successfully-and-begins-next-stage-of-development

 

 

I my head I had always thought 2035.  When we discuss it amongst ourselves we say 2035.   2034 even better.    You know how space missions are.  They get pushed back for so many reasons.   

[Uttamattamakin]

The Japanese Space Agency is the 5th to land successfully on the Moon with their SLIM lander.    It managed to deploy an autonomous rover before touchdown.  That is two probes on the Moon for JAXA.  However the images from the rover indicate that the lander is upside down somehow. https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/japans-upside-down-slim-is-the-most-accurate-lunar-lander-ever

 

Quote

JAXA’s latest triumph comes with a unique twist – the images sent back from the lunar surface taken by a wheeled autonomous rover deployed by SLIM before it touched down suggest that the spacecraft might be lying upside-down.

 

The mission, affectionately dubbed the "moon sniper," now faces an unexpected challenge with the probe seemingly having tumbled down a crater slope, leaving its solar panels facing the wrong direction, unable to generate electricity. 

 

The resulting power outage has hindered the lander's multi-band spectral camera, limiting its ability to generate high-resolution images for studying moon rocks. However, JAXA remains optimistic, emphasizing that a change in the direction of sunlight could power SLIM up before the next lunar sunset on Feb 1.

Oki then.   That this thing is still working while upside down is like something right out of a gag manga.   Amazing.  I am so glad for Japan.  

 

This makes me wonder if Astrobotic couldn't've made some kind of attempt for the Moon.  Even to just photograph a part of it that hasn't been photographed up close and personal could've had value. 

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

ou know how space missions are.  They get pushed back for so many reasons. 

and yet, just a few posts ago you were making a big fuss about SpaceX's ability to hit deadlines.

and like i've said plenty of times in this thread; delays are expected in space stuff, but you have to be consistent.. you cant blame one project for not hitting deadlines we havent even arrived at yet, and another project announcing a delayed launch, and state that as normal.

 

look... i'm not here just to constantly toss the proverbial ball back in your camp, but you must see the complete

contrast behind that statement, and all of the deadline nonesense you've been talking about just on this page 10 of this thread.

 

i'll be the first to tell you that the issue with elon time is very real, but when you make statements like above, and then go and say stuff like below.. you are clearly and obviously biased. it's okay for you to be, given one project is clearly very close to your heart, but it's a matter of being honest about that.

On 1/15/2024 at 3:47 AM, Uttamattamakin said:

NASA went with Space X for HLS in part due to Elon Time estimates, Elon cost estimates and Elon Musk promises.   Which are well I'll let his record speak for itself.  He's achieve a lot eventually but only eventually. 

 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

and yet, just a few posts ago you were making a big fuss about SpaceX's ability to hit deadlines.

The  is to acknowledge that.    Plus saying 2034 then missing by six months and hitting 2035 is % wise a lot closer than saying we'd land on Mars by 2022.  

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

and like i've said plenty of times in this thread; delays are expected in space stuff, but you have to be consistent.. you cant blame one project for not hitting deadlines we havent even arrived at yet, and another project announcing a delayed launch, and state that as normal.

Yeah I know it's just Musk will promise we'll have the first warp 5 ship by 2040.  

 

If he had said dates like 2030 and landed in 2032 thats different.  They just have so much Elon time. Elon Musk suggests SpaceX is scrapping its plans to land Dragon capsules on Mars - The Verge

 

 

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

 

look... i'm not here just to constantly toss the proverbial ball back in your camp, but you must see the complete

contrast behind that statement, and all of the deadline nonesense you've been talking about just on this page 10 of this thread.

 

i'll be the first to tell you that the issue with elon time is very real, but when you make statements like above, and then go and say stuff like below.. you are clearly and obviously biased. it's okay for you to be, given one project is clearly very close to your heart, but it's a matter of being honest about that.

Again our timeline is far more precise.  Call it LISA time.  If LISA depended on Space X we'd say 2035 and not launch until 2305. lol

[manikyath]

12 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Again our timeline is far more precise.  Call it LISA time.  If LISA depended on Space X we'd say 2035 and not launch until 2305. lol

you havent launched yet, you have no way of claiming your timeline is more precise until it is in orbit and working.

 

also - you're comparing a launch on mature (enough) hardware to a radically new launch design where many cogs need to come together in the same machine.. and then blaming one of those cogs despite all of them being on the same 'delay timeline'.

 

and besides that, elon time has proven to be exceptionally precise, in a weird way.

it's the time SpaceX needs to sort something out, given no outside factors. as long as those outside factors are predictable, you can get very precise readings out of elon time. right after we got "elon time" on IFT-3, NSF already translated that to february this year, which is what it looks more and more like what IFT-3 will be.

[Uttamattamakin]

7 hours ago, manikyath said:

you havent launched yet, you have no way of claiming your timeline is more precise until it is in orbit and working.

 

also - you're comparing a launch on mature (enough) hardware to a radically new launch design where many cogs need to come together in the same machine.. and then blaming one of those cogs despite all of them being on the same 'delay timeline'.

 

Of course we want to launch on a known safe reliable system*

Arianne 6 is kidna new.  Arianne 5 is the one ESA is famous for using.  NASA even uses it when they want to be 10,000% sure it will not blow up.  6 we'll see about.  

The ground breaking, world changing thing isn't getting to space.  Anyone can do that.  Constructing a triangle of light over 2 million km on a side and measuring gravitational waves with a space probe is something else.   

[manikyath]

4 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The ground breaking, world changing thing isn't getting to space.  Anyone can do that.  Constructing a triangle of light over 2 million km on a side and measuring gravitational waves with a space probe is something else.   

similarly, getting a literal block of flats worth of payload bay up in space is "something else".

similarly, RTLS is "something else".

 

and again.. you're comparing the complexity of rocketry to a science experiment. simply the claim that "anyone" can get something to space is such an incredibly disgusting statement, you're essentially reducing all the work thousands engineers have done over the past 70 years to make your project even possible at all, to lighting a candle.

 

i could similarly dumb down your science experiment to "just measuring delays in light transfer, anyone can do that", and praise the engineers that made a rocket that can place said satalites for said experiment in orbit at a precise enough location for your experiment to work. would that upset you at all? if the answer is yes, your post should upset every single rocket engineer.

 

with every post you make, i get more and more convinced that you are in no position what so ever to make an opinion about rocket design, because it really appears you are -what we refer to in IT as- "just smart enough to be dangerous". you know just enough about it to think you know what you're on about, but you *really* dont. (referring back to the plumbing statements here)

 

stop comparing things that are vastly different concepts, and stop dumbing down everything that is not your own field to "just lighting candles". as it turns out, if you want people to respect your work, disrespecting the work of others doesnt help.

[Uttamattamakin]

14 hours ago, manikyath said:

similarly, getting a literal block of flats worth of payload bay up in space is "something else".

similarly, RTLS is "something else".

 

14 hours ago, manikyath said:

stop comparing things that are vastly different concepts, and stop dumbing down everything that is not your own field to "just lighting candles".

I'm not dumbing it down.  I mean Launching a bigger version of something is nice.   One could say we are launching a bigger version of LIGO.  (Ignoring that we are using time delay interferometry) 

14 hours ago, manikyath said:

as it turns out, if you want people to respect your work, disrespecting the work of others doesn't help.

My failure to self deprecate is not putting anyone else down.  What I'm doing will get a Nobel prize awarded to the top people involved by name for all of our work.  That's not a put down.  I do the same thing as Newton, Einstein, Richard Feynman LISA will test theories I work on, as well as many others.  More than likely I'll be wrong which is how it usually goes.  Don't playa hate celebrate.   I worked really hard to get what I have and I will not put on false humility. 

[manikyath]

4 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

My failure to self deprecate is not putting anyone else down.  What I'm doing will get a Nobel prize awarded to the top people involved by name for all of our work.  That's not a put down.  I do the same thing as Newton, Einstein, Richard Feynman LISA will test theories I work on, as well as many others.  More than likely I'll be wrong which is how it usually goes.  Don't playa hate celebrate.   I worked really hard to get what I have and I will not put on false humility. 

all of this is so far beside the point...

 

it has nothing to do with self deprecation or what the LISA project will achieve, it's about not acting as if you're somehow the only project out there doing important work.

4 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I'm not dumbing it down.  I mean Launching a bigger version of something is nice. 

and yet..

23 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The ground breaking, world changing thing isn't getting to space.  Anyone can do that.

your project, for all the scientists that work on it, would be on the ground if not for the engineers that make it possible to put it up there. your complete and utter inability to see how shallow of a statement that is shows just how close minded you're acting around the topic of rocketry.

 

and also;

4 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I mean Launching a bigger version of something is nice.

starship is *not* "a bigger version of something" - that has been my exact point for half a douzen pages, while you were claiming that that is what they *should* be doing. they are doing very new things with their launch vehicle, to be able to do very new things in space.

 

your viewpoints in this topic are about as shallow as this retired old NASA phart that suggested they should ditch the commercial partners, and *essentially just do a worse apollo to go to the moon*.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/former-nasa-administrator-hates-artemis-wants-to-party-like-its-2008/

(btw, props to the writer for that title, because it's a killer title.)

 

he states

Quote

 the Artemis Program is excessively complex, unrealistically priced, compromises crew safety, poses very high mission risk of completion, and is highly unlikely to be completed in a timely manner even if successful.

which might in a lot of ways be fairly correct, but the alternative he porposes is..

- based on technology that is on NASA's roadmap, but not developed yet.

- more expensive, by many orders of magnitude

- given most aspects of this plan are combined from apollo derived technology, and the man's own imagination... of questionable benefit to crew safety compared to commercial offerings.

- based on a horrendously unrealistic timeframe

 

basicly.. he took a plan that was conceived of in 2005, but dropped due to cost and complexity reasons.. and then just re-proposed this to go against the new plan which:

- reduces the cost for NASA by relying on commercial partners that are inherently better at cost optimizing.

- shifts the complexity to commercial solutions which can be developed and tested without NASA budget.

 

i particularly like this quote;

Quote

The problem with Griffin's plan is that it failed miserably 15 years ago. The independent Augustine Commission, which reviewed NASA's human spaceflight plans in 2009, found that “[t]he US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practices of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources." And that is probably putting it politely.

or in human language:

"we dont have the money to keep doing this, we set goals we cant afford, shyte will break if we keep  doing this."

 

 

----

on a positive note...

SpaceX is doing lots of work, presumably in preparation of IFT-3