Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
www.theguardian.com
Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
57 comments
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I'd like to share a design concept with IM given that this is their second moon topple:
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I mean, you're not wrong. A low center of mass is legitimately a good idea.
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Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!
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The first one fell over and sank into the
swampcrater. -
Breaking news, space is really really hard
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It's not space that's hard. It's the stuff you encounter when you run out of space that's hard.
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Like when you run into me bc I'm hard 4 u bb. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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A hard void.
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Well that's a facepalm of a faceplant 😂
You'd almost think that by now they might have learned something from the Voyager 1 and 2 power systems and not relied completely on solar power...
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The biggest problem with RTGs is the extreme cost and lack of availability. Pu-238 is very expensive and at any moment, there's only tens of KG of Pu-238 available for RTG use. They're not really a reasonable choice for private industry at this time.
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As true as that is, they said that it cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, and the mission was only planned to last from 10 to 14 days or so. They could have used just a piece of a waste uranium rod or something as an alternate power source for such a short-lived mission.
I mean yeah, of course that would still add to the cost and complexity, and I don't even know what all that would take, but hell if you're already into the hundreds of millions of dollars range, you ought to consider redundancy and alternate power sources.
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They also used the same design of a prior craft that met the same fate. But private industry are problem solvers. 🙄
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Eh... I think they should stick to solar power. Given how much trouble they've been having, let's not give them any weapons grade isotopes...
For what it's worth, just last week, Firefly stuck the landIng on their first attempt. They're seriously killing it these days, I'm happy for them.
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When one day we get people back on the moon, is there a chance these devices could be brought back online?
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Brought back*
No need for this trash on the moon, even if it works.
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Well, if we have boots on the moon, at that point we don't need probes like these. At that point you just drop a sensor, or whatever experiment you want directly on the surface.
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Whoopsi-doodles. Well, more spare parts on the Moon, all the same.
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He's dead, Jim.
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Company that topled a mooncraft... topled another mooncraft.
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Landing a fridge on those spindly little legs did seem a bit... optimistic...
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I really don't understand the tall moon lander strategy... I mean, if you're going to design it with a high center of gravity, then design it to fall over... Just use two landing legs instead of four, to ensure it falls over the right way. Then you put the solar panels on the side, so that when it topples over they're facing up.
I've literally done this in Kerbal space program, it's a pretty reliable landing system if your probe is tall.
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Seems Firefly Aerospace has got this all sorted, though. Amazing feat for them last week to have a flawless landing.
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This could have potentially happened to Apollo 11, had Armstrong not taken over manually to steer clear of the targeted landing site with some rough areas. Maybe it would have been just leaning and not a big deal, but at the time we had no clear idea what a real landing would end up like. And I would hazard a guess that even though we've done a lot over the decades, the polar regions of the Moon are still pretty unknown.
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…but at the time we had no clear idea what a real landing would end up like…
Surveyor - “What am I? Chopped liver???”
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57 comments
I think the only one that can solve all of their problems is elon. He would fix it in few weeks. Include him in next launch, he will troubleshoot directly on the Moon. Please, someone, send that asshole to space.
And he's so full of hot air he doesn't even need a suit.
He would try to smoke the moon regolith and come up with some rad ideas. Occupy Moon! Yeeeeaah
Had me in the first half, ngl
Haha, that was the idea 🤣