"Blue Ghost" lands on the moon.......why

[bigred]

"The data captured will benefit humanity by providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth," NASA said in a statement.

I guess that shows my limitations of the topic, but strikes me as a little odd that we couldn't do that from Earth, or from a satellite above the Earth. Seems to me if you're going to the moon, it's to study the moon, not "space weather" etc.

 

[shemp]

Mush will cancel it later today.

 

[theprestige]

Earth's atmosphere, magnetosphere, and radiation belts interfere significantly with ground-based observations. Parking a space observatory on the moon avoids those problems.

 

[EHocking]

"The data captured will benefit humanity by providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth," NASA said in a statement.

I guess that shows my limitations of the topic, but strikes me as a little odd that we couldn't do that from Earth, or from a satellite above the Earth. Seems to me if you're going to the moon, it's to study the moon, not "space weather" etc.

It should get some great close ups of 2024 YR4 in 2032 hopefully.

 

[alfaniner]

Earth's atmosphere, magnetosphere, and radiation belts interfere significantly with ground-based observations. Parking a space observatory on the moon avoids those problems.

And we'll probably need the extra info since the guy fired a large amount of NOAA employees.

 

[Planigale]

Not because it is easy...


ETA
Now I am going to re-watch 'For All Mankind' and appreciate what a great step it was when the USSR put the first man on the moon.

ETA 2
I guess in Trump's America that history has already been re-written with an American landing on the moon first!

 

[JayUtah]

I'm not seeing the thread in which we talked about Intuitive Machines' lander. Their IM-2 lander "Athena" touched down nearly two hours ago, but again under circumstances which are consistent with its having tipped over. Their controllers have been working for about an hour and a half without any public updates.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I'm not seeing the thread in which we talked about Intuitive Machines' lander. Their IM-2 lander "Athena" touched down nearly two hours ago, but again under circumstances which are consistent with its having tipped over. Their controllers have been working for about an hour and a half without any public updates.

You seem to have a decent handle on space stuff. How hard would it be to make a lander that can right itself?

 

[JayUtah]

You seem to have a decent handle on space stuff. How hard would it be to make a lander that can right itself?

Well, that's two questions. How hard would it be to make a self-righting lander for the Moon? Not hard at all, but the righting mechanism will affect many other aspects of the design. That leads to the other question, which is how hard would it be to make Intuitive Machines' NOVA C chassis self-righting. The answer there, based on what I can see of its intended mission, is that it would be quite hard depending on how specifically you accomplished it. The outside of the spacecraft is festooned with things pertaining to its scientific mission and specific engineering decisions that are there because they have to be. That means they have to fight for real estate, and adding a mechanical righting mechanism to that just intensifies the fight.

And if you want the righting mechanism to restore the spacecraft to nominal mission capability, you have to wonder what damage happened to those externally-mounted instruments when the spacecraft tipped over. At the end of that thinking exercise, you might have circled back to the proposition that preventing it from falling over in the first place is still the best answer. All of those decisions are governed by the same questions as every other engineering pursuit, such as cost and complexity.

Clearly IM wants to prove the reliability of their chassis and mission design, because they want to get to a point where they're satisfying commercial lunar surface delivery missions. They might have their answer at this point.

 

[JayUtah]

Intuitive Machines press conference alongside NASA. Guidance platform data suggests the spacecraft is on its side. IM people say there's not enough information yet available to determine what parts of the mission can be salvaged or what the exact orientation of the spaceship is.

 

[Myriad]

Well, that's two questions. How hard would it be to make a self-righting lander for the Moon? Not hard at all, but the righting mechanism will affect many other aspects of the design. That leads to the other question, which is how hard would it be to make Intuitive Machines' NOVA C chassis self-righting. The answer there, based on what I can see of its intended mission, is that it would be quite hard depending on how specifically you accomplished it. The outside of the spacecraft is festooned with things pertaining to its scientific mission and specific engineering decisions that are there because they have to be. That means they have to fight for real estate, and adding a mechanical righting mechanism to that just intensifies the fight.

And if you want the righting mechanism to restore the spacecraft to nominal mission capability, you have to wonder what damage happened to those externally-mounted instruments when the spacecraft tipped over. At the end of that thinking exercise, you might have circled back to the proposition that preventing it from falling over in the first place is still the best answer. All of those decisions are governed by the same questions as every other engineering pursuit, such as cost and complexity.

That being the case, the first company to land a long-range lunar rover equipped with a lander-righter arm will have a lucrative business. For a small additional fee, they can deploy the moondust brush afterward. Or the customer can go all in for the Diamond Celestial Package, that includes undercarriage wax.

 

[JayUtah]

That being the case, the first company to land a long-range lunar rover equipped with a lander-righter arm will have a lucrative business. For a small additional fee, they can deploy the moondust brush afterward. Or the customer can go all in for the Diamond Celestial Package, that includes undercarriage wax.

This will only work if there's a little robot arm that hangs a pine-tree air freshener on the customer's antenna.

 

[SteveAitch]

How about... they base the design on Weebles. Have retractable legs that don't come out until the craft is upright. Make the external instrumentation retractable too. OK, it would make the craft a bit bigger and heavier but, hey, if it improves the odds of success...

 

[JayUtah]

The Intuitive Machines Athena spacecraft is being declared a loss. As soon as its current battery charge is depleted, it is expected to shut down forever. Photographs from the spacecraft engineering cameras show it fully on its side in a crater, apparently having landed on its interior slope.

 

[JayUtah]

That being the case, the first company to land a long-range lunar rover equipped with a lander-righter arm will have a lucrative business. For a small additional fee, they can deploy the moondust brush afterward. Or the customer can go all in for the Diamond Celestial Package, that includes undercarriage wax.

So this exists.

 

[zooterkin]

Robot Wars/Battlebots robots have had self-righting mechanisms for years, but it would be a big addition to the overall weight, for a one-off use, I'm guessing.

 

[JayUtah]

Robot Wars/Battlebots robots have had self-righting mechanisms for years, but it would be a big addition to the overall weight, for a one-off use, I'm guessing.

Indeed there are innumerable mechanical solutions for righting, some of them ingeniously passive. And you're right that it would add significant weight to the spacecraft and probably also significant complexity. When you're trying to make the righting mechanism fit in with all the primary mission components (and righting is a contingency, a "what if..." question), then you get into territory that I call "Solving the solution." The problem is that the spacecraft is too top-heavy and too unstable. Maybe fix that, so that the need for a, "What if it tips over?" contingency falls out of the design.

Spacecraft bus design is a mature field. So the choice for a tall, thin lander is probably driven by other objectives that make passive touchdown stability less important. Notably, Starship HLS falls under the category of "tall thin spacecraft." It will be interesting to see how far NASA will want to pursue this particular spacecraft bus design.

 

[novaphile]

Robot Wars/Battlebots robots have had self-righting mechanisms for years, but it would be a big addition to the overall weight, for a one-off use, I'm guessing.

And probably wouldn't work for anything that has landed on the side wall of a crater.

IIRC, those self righting mechanisms pretty much always eventually fail (in Robot Wars).

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

I think I just found the perfect design!

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Not their fault someone turned the Moon upside down