America's first private lunar lander suffers 'critical' fuel leak en route to Moon The first commercial American Moon lander – built by startup Astrobotic to carry NASA instruments and private payloads to the lunar surface – is in trouble: the spacecraft's propulsion system malfunctioned shortly after launch on Monday. Selected for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, US-based Astrobotic …
I'm guessing one of the "games" they are playing right now, would be "what would we now do if we had people on board", and they are probably using this as an opportunity to practice things that rarely get the opportunity to be practiced outside of a lab.
Glass raised because they will probably learn some stuff from this.
There is no thing as being 100% right first time.
I tell you what. Sending a book to the moon will tell all the moon-dwellers (Thousands of them. They breathe aestoliflation.) that the Earth is 100% full of idiots. Sending crypto currency tells them Earth has plenty of suckers.
The biz also said its operators had been awake and working for more than 24 hours by this point.
I wonder how much they are being paid or are they just "rockstar" youngsters being promised the world if they just "give all they have"?
Never do more than 7.5 hours at any corporation, unless you are the owner.
People often pour out their hearts, sacrifice their own health, important family events etc. for the corporation, just so that when the next funding round finishes, they get passed out through corporate bowels like they never existed.
Unfortunately we have a 40 hour week... gubmint, ya ken? So... my last 30 minutes are devoted to mindless tasks like cleaning up the group's mail box. Noone cared for *checks oldest mails* about five years, and it has begun to bother me. There are also old "tasks" in outlook still active, I already killed a bunch of those, there are more still open.
I could also restructure the f'ing sharepoint, but that is so far beyond any hope that it would be quicker to just burn everything and start over. This time with the proper Sharepoint mindset (i.e. do not treat it like a drive with directories, instead use more kategories and filters and filtered views - you can use directories / folders, but sparingly - still hate the person who set this one up, no, this time it was not me). And I'm not in it for the pain. I need to get a student intern to think about this and bounce some ideas around (seriously, those can be a good ressource, mostly to make you explain things and thereby understanding them - finally).
I also started looking at becoming a Rockstar[TM] developer... ( https://codewithrockstar.com/ )
"So... my last 30 minutes are devoted to mindless tasks"
When I worked for somebody else, I spent the last 30 minutes of the day updating my to-do list and my work journal. I could come in fresh the next day and have notes so I could pick up where I left off much faster. This was especially important if I needed to make some calls bright and early. I can't tell you how much grief I've negated by keeping a work diary (with offsite backups).
It sucks for Astrobotic to have an issue come up that will keep them from a soft landing on the moon, but it looks like they'll get a load of good telemetry back from the "lander". The upside is that it's often much easier to build serial #2.
Beyond the issues with the Peregrine lander, the Vulcan rocket with BE-4 engines performed very well on it's first launch. It didn't even take 12 tanker flights for it to send a payload to the moon. With ~70 missions already on the books, ULA is going to be busy (if they don't go bust). I can't wait to see the Dream Chaser get sent to dock at ISS and come back to land on a runway.
"serial #2 has already been built and is even larger."
I'd call that another serial #1. I've always found that it takes the most time to build the first of anything and considerably less time to built the next one since a lot of hurdles have already been cleared.
"It didn't even take 12 tanker flights for it to send a payload to the moon"
Nothing like comparing apples with concrete is there.
Do you want a 90 kg payload delivered or a 100 ton payload? Launch a thousand of these and then compare that with the <20 starship launches it would take.
Of course you're also "forgetting" that SpaceX have already sent a similar sized mission to the moon on an F9, not even a heavy, and recovered and reused the first stage of that stack.
Not taking anything away from the team at ULA and their suppliers, including BO. The rocket performed well, just a shame to see no attempt to reuse anything.
Excellent that the BE4 apparently performed well. Just got to prove their reliability and the ability of BO to produce them now ...
Only obvious issue I can see for ULA is using BE4+SRB on first stage and RL10 on second stage. The big advantage (at the moment) for SpaceX is that Merlins are used on both first and second stage so economies of scale both for engine manufacture and system integration can be applied. ULA will not have that benefit which probably means they will always be chasing financially, even if they can develop some measure of first stage reusability. Perhaps the economic problem is insignificant if ULA can rely on having enough military payloads where the military will just pay, whatever the cost ...
Not only do they use the same engines on both stages of both the F9 and the upcoming SS/SH stack (with some nozzle extensions) - they build them, they know them, they can scale production as per their needs.
ULA are reliant on suppliers who have other customers, and on varying suppliers for each of the three engine types they use.
The US military really needs two viable launch providers - if BO can get something to orbit themselves, and can start to reuse part of, or all of, that stack... then ULA will be in a more difficult position to support - the military will pay what they need to pay to have two providers, but they don't need to feed three.
"The big advantage (at the moment) for SpaceX is that Merlins are used on both first and second stage so economies of scale both for engine manufacture and system integration can be applied."
The Merlin engines are only used on the Falcon rockets. The Raptor is what SpaceX is working on for Starship.
There isn't a huge economy of scale on the Merlin. They aren't making enough of them especially with the reuse. The redundancy is helpful to hedge against mission failure, but ULA has a very good track record with 2-engine vehicles so even the redundancy through having more engines is negligible. Fewer engines means less plumbing, less electronics, less telemetry and so forth. A company I worked for had just changed from 4 engines to a more powerful single engine just before I started with them. They had finally stopped trying to get 4 engines to all work in sync since it was causing so many problems. I haven't worked there for a number of years, but that single engine development test article is still functional with hundreds of flights under its belt as far as I know.
"Of course you're also "forgetting" that SpaceX have already sent a similar sized mission to the moon on an F9, not even a heavy, and recovered and reused the first stage of that stack."
What mission was that? The F9 mission document doesn't list as much payload as Vulcan just sent as a possibility on the F9 ELV. Peregrine was just one of the payloads on the Vulcan flight.
"What mission was that? The F9 mission document doesn't list as much payload as Vulcan just sent as a possibility on the F9 ELV. Peregrine was just one of the payloads on the Vulcan flight."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beresheet
Feb 2019, and also failed to land. I don't blame you for forgetting. It was also a shared payload, with an Indonesian satellite and a US military test craft also taking that flight.
Vulcan has ~27 ton to LEO capability.
F9 has ~23t to LEO, or 15t ASDS, 12t RTLS
FH has ~64t to LEO, presumably somewhat less with booster RTLS, and would be less still with core ASDS.
(GTO drops from 27t to 8t for a completely reusable variant)
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