The batteries on Odysseus, the hero private Moon lander, have run out With it battery depleted and the lunar night approaching, the private-built Moon lander Odysseus has shut down quite possibly for good. There's a possibility the solar-powered lander, nicknamed Odie by its engineers, could come to life again if it gets enough sunlight come lunar daybreak, though chances are slim. The probe …
This post has been deleted by its author
Space is hard.
They say that any landing you can walk away from is a good one.
While it broke at least one leg and fell over, it did still work afterwards so that counts as "good". Not in any way "robust", though.
Though I really hope they've learned that landing livestreams need to show real telemetry, like everyone else does. Animations are pointless during landing unless they're driven by real telemetry, so either do that or just show the raw displays.
And the presenters need some actual prepared segments and a crib sheet of what various calls actually mean, instead of talking over the mission controllers to say "that's a good call".
This was an historic occasion, inane banter is just plain silly.
Maybe they are hoping that, like its namesake, the lander will suddenly reappear after 10 years, with some fanciful story about where it has been and what it has been doing.
I've been shacked up with a sea nymph for 7 years isn't exactly what you can tell your wife when you get home ten years late from the shops.
If anyone wants to learn a bit more then I can highly recommend Nathalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics - which is on BBC Sounds. Lots of weird ancient myths and writers for her to poke fun at. Plus I guess she's got to use her classical education for something. I had to read a bunch of Plato for A Level and I've used the knowledge gained since exceptionally well. I've used my knowledge to avoid philosophy at all costs.
Presumably the large white splodge is the sun, vastly larger than it should be because its brightness is overwhelming the camera. The crescent to the left of it is the earth (which should really appear much larger than the sun). And the white blobs above and below the sun are camera artefacts.
Let's recap:
a) Moon landings and space exploration isn't something you get on a budget
b) No, the market will not fix it
India did it. China did it. And they will likely do it again. How you ask? The same way you did in the 60s and 70s, by having an entire nations worth of backing and resources, and making this about national efforts and pride, and not about some companies.
If I'm wrong, and you did not learn that lesson, and your quarreling 2-party system will continue to slash budgets and rely on "the market" to somehow magically fix it, then the aforementioned countries will run circles around you, again, and again, and again.
Hm. Let's see.
Who managed to finally reuse boosters? An American company.
Who manged to land boosters on a ship at sea? An American company.
Who's launched more orbital rockets (98) in 2023 than China (67) & Russia (19) & India (7) combined? An American company.
Who upended the status quo by launching at half the price of everyone else? An American company.
Now, I'm not a big fan of Space Karen, and I think SpaceX has succeeded in spite of him, but they've undoubtedly succeeded.
Edit: and it's good to see China trying to copy SpaceX's reusability, like they copy everything else.
No, not really. SpaceX gets a fair bit of government/NASA funding but it's "free money", it's for specific tasks and/or missions, and interestingly, far, far less in most cases than the big incumbents. IIRC Boeing has had at least twice as much funding for Starliner as SpaceX got for Dragon and look where the two projects are now :-)
And yes, SpaceX had/has access to lost of NASA engineering and science research built up over decades. but then so has all of NASAs other partners and contractors. Boeing and the ULA group even have their OWN corporate R&D history going back decades and still manage to be over budget, over time and under performing. It's most likely top-heavy management rather than the engineers who just want to do the best job possible.
Let's recap:
a) Moon landings and space exploration isn't something you get on a budget>
Inflation adjusted the Apollo programme (without ground support and salaries) cost over $200 billion.
NASA paid $118 million for this lander, and it nearly got there on it's first try. They paid $108 million for Astrobotic's failed one.
With rounding that leaves them about $200 billion left to try again.
b) No, the market will not fix it
But market forces will compel investment if it looks likely to return a profit. Hence the current commercial interest in space.
India did it.
..quite famously 'on a budget' too. And arguably partially to get a slice of the lucrative space launch market.
China did it. And they will likely do it again. How you ask? The same way you did in the 60s and 70s, by having an entire nations worth of backing and resources, and making this about national efforts and pride, and not about some companies.
But that's not sustainable long term.
It still a government body i.e. NASA that did all the basic research and development that the private companies are building on.
That's how any nescient industry requiring significant capital investment tends to get going though. The government puts in enough capital to drive the initial adoption, but once done the private sector takes over.
Why should people constantly re-invent things? It always amuses me how people build upon things that their fellow countrypeople have invented, but when it's others it's just 'copying'.
Your inane comparison of the Apollo programme with the two landers is really quite impressive. The Apollo programme started from scratch.
Better examples for moneypits would be the Space Shuttle programme, which while no doubt impressive, was flawed from the start and fatally failed to learn from its mistakes; and the international space station which does little useful science but is very expensive PR.
> Edit: and it's good to see China trying to copy SpaceX's reusability, like they copy everything else.
Isn’t that the StackOverflow and AI approach to software development?
The catch is the AI and StackOverflow approach is more cut-and-paste rather than read, understand and enhance.
The BBC programme Cold War, Hot Jets contained an interesting point about the UK’s sale of jet engines to Russia. The opinion was that Russian engineers weren’t as good as our engineers and so would not be able to produce an equivalent,; an assumption that was rapidly proven to be false, their jets flew better on their copies of the UK jet engines than ours did using the original engines…
We saw similar a few decades back with the rapid rise of Japan; they took our books, read and implemented…
How about a large rubber ball coated in flexible solar cells, with protected indentations for camera, transmitter, etc. and a center placed motor to shift an internal weight that will cause the ball to roll a bit, so that transmitter and camera can be pointed as desired. Guaranteed soft landing and no way to fall over. Financing is easy - just incorporate 1g of human cremated remains into the ball somehow, at $50K a shot (cheaper than the Titan, although the passengers would have to die before boarding). Plus an annual subscription service to the balls transmissions, including space radio noises so that survivors can know what their loved ones are listening to.
OK, this is where El Reg readers point out the obvious that I'm missing, but considering this isn't the first time upside-down(ish) solar panels have prematurely ended a mission, why not put panels on both sides of the panel surface? The extra weight may be a redundancy that's worth the cost maybe?
The size and shape of the craft are driven by mission priorities and budget but the real issue is reducing momemtum in low gravity and no atmosphere so that the craft doesn't tip over. Anyone that can come up with a breaking system that doesn't need oodles of propellant and complicated guidance systems is going to be a candidate for a Nobe prize.
Make it six times heavier and put solar panels, antennae, thrusters etc on each face. Plus a leg sticking out from each corner.
Or a weeble.
What puzzles me is what combination of mass distribution and landing angle caused it to tip?
You'd think five legs should still keep it on the level, assuming they are strong enough.
Icon for robot wars, you didn't say who they were at war with.
I think we'll learn the most from JAXA and they might be the first to produce a lander that goes exactly where it should and doesn't tip. Low gravity and no atmosphere make some of the things we take for landing for granted just aren't there. This is less of a problem when you don't really care where you want to land and get let the mini-gravity do its job, but becomes a bigger one if you want more control: the craft is too far away to be piloted and it's becoming clear that tipping is easier than anyone imagined.
Well the JAXA SLIM was supposed to approach the Moon and perform a 90 degree flip before landing. Which didn't happen.
Shape it like a Gomboc. Wait till it stops rolling. Poke some legs out.
Job's a good'un.
Anything I don't understand can't be difficult, as the MBAs say.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
