back to article 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 …

  1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
    WTF?

    Cryptocurrency????

    " Other payloads include time capsules, artwork, books, music, and cryptocurrency"

    What idiot has sent cryptocurrency to the Moon? And why?

    Lost For Words.

    1. pdh

      Re: Cryptocurrency????

      The ultimate cold wallet...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cryptocurrency????

      Well, it's just some numbers, so in principle, it could have been sent in spare system memory for a zero mass budget... And at least that payload has no value lost if the spacecraft really can't be recovered

      1. David Newall

        Re: Cryptocurrency????

        Numbers are still numbers even if they're not physical. If cryptocurrency is (said to be) on the moon but nobody's there to see it, does it still have value?

        1. jgarbo

          Re: Cryptocurrency????

          Something has "value" only if there's demand. No demand, worthless.

          1. Brian 3

            Re: Cryptocurrency????

            Availability is also required for value to exist; if there isn't any they can't be sold or bought after all. If you can't find it, or it's out of reach, the value is only hypothetical at best.

    3. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Cryptocurrency????

      Yeah, someone sent some Bitcoin and Dogecoin to the Moon in one of the private payloads.

      Edit: Almost.

      C.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: Cryptocurrency????

        Were they hoping it would have become more valuable when they got it back again??

    4. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Cryptocurrency????

      "What idiot has sent cryptocurrency to the Moon? And why?"

      It's the perfect payload. It weighs nothing, and it means nothing. So if it blows up, you've lost nothing.

      Other than any real money used to buy it.

      1. Wellyboot Silver badge

        Re: Cryptocurrency????

        I'll bet they have a backup copy

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Cryptocurrency????

          Maybe. Is that on the cryptocurrency buyer's list of smart things to do?

    5. LionelB Silver badge

      Re: Cryptocurrency????

      It's a cunning ploy to scam those aliens who set up a moon base to invade us from. Or to lull them into believing we're too plug-stupid to mount a serious defence... oh, wait...

  2. DS999 Silver badge
    Trollface

    They may have to lower their goal

    From first private lunar "lander" to first private lunar "crasher".

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: They may have to lower their goal

      Not even the first private lunar 'impactor', just the first US one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beresheet

      1. DS999 Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: They may have to lower their goal

        The US one has more than twice the mass, thus leaving a bigger crater. US space superiority is preserved!

  3. Phones Sheridan Silver badge
    Pint

    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.

    1. PhilipN Silver badge

      Right but it’s a crying shame either way.

      2024 already …..

  4. Peter Prof Fox
    Facepalm

    A wise man said

    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.

  5. gecho

    Good news bad news

    Your package is arriving early but ...

    1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Good news bad news

      ... it will be left at the planet next door.

  6. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Corporations

    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.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Corporations

      Yes, I don’t believe that going without rest is good for the people or the project. If they haven’t got shift teams available then that’s not heroic, it’s another failure.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Corporations

      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/ )

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Corporations

        "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).

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Corporations

      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"?

      Whether they are or not, they'll be working at much less than maximum capacity on a job that needs just that.

  7. HuBo Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    No showers, speed limit

    "operators had been awake and working for more than 24 hours"

    Skunkworks rulez! (on a highway to the moon!)

  8. jgarbo
    FAIL

    "...showing the strength of American technology and innovation," ...Er, like failure?

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      It’s time for them to turn to the Indian Space Agency for help with how to fly a flawless soft moon landing mission.

      1. munnoch Bronze badge

        You mean Chandrayaan-3?

        Where do you suppose the 3 came from? Maybe check what happened to Chandrayaan-2.

  9. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Some data is better than nothing

    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.

    1. Peter Mount

      Re: Some data is better than nothing

      serial #2 has already been built and is even larger. It was due to launch at the end of the year but has been delayed until they work out what went wrong with #1

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Some data is better than nothing

        "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.

    2. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Some data is better than nothing

      "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.

      1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

        Re: Some data is better than nothing

        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 ...

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          Re: Some data is better than nothing

          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.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Some data is better than nothing

          "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.

      2. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Some data is better than nothing

        "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.

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          Re: Some data is better than nothing

          "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)

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like