Rovers, Probes, and Uncrewed Craft In General

[stevebrooks]

I've expressed cynicism about the vast expense of some of the current human spaceflight projects,

It's a conundrum for sure, but many people confuse the cost of projects with the actual result. Like, "we spent 300b sending a probe to Mars" makes it sound like they sent a ship full of money equal to 300b to Mars, whereas the vast majority of that money actually just went in a circle through the economy, and a thing worth a few million at the most ended up being launched off the ground and reaching Mars.

The problem is that circle tends to be interrupted by billionaires instead of the majority of that money ending up in workers pockets like should have, you can in the end trace everything back to actual worker input, the factories that made the metal to make the parts that go in the probe and the rocket provide income for the workers toiling away there, and at every stage that happens right up til they launch that rocket people are being paid money from that 300b.

Similar to when people complain about the US sending billions of dollars in aid to the Ukraine, no they didn't in fact send truckloads of money, the vast majority of that money was actually spent in the US and ended up recirculating back through the US economy. The value of a tank isn't for instance 50m, the value of a tank is the value of the work spent researching and building that tank, the experts and skilled workers time and effort putting it together, most of which remains in the US.

So the value placed on these projects is moot at best, they value they return is huge, horses for courses I suppose.

Just to clarify, my cynicism is about the cost of HUMAN spaceflight, in particular Artemis, then the moonbase, then putting humans on Mars. I think probes and scientific missions, done well, give good value.

Yeah I can see where you are coming from, but I am not 100% convinced that human space flight is a bad idea, and maybe that's the 60's/70's scifi fan in me talking, but I think any endevour needs to be measured against the possible return, and for human space flight that return may not actually eventuate for decades to come. Probes and scientific missions provide value in the fast return of data, but human activity isn't something that can be measured so easily and may indeed require a large and ongoing investment before actually providing anything of value.

[Irrev-Black]

Voyager 1 is glitching. This might be the end of communication.

In December 2023, Voyager 1 resumed sending gibberish; the telemetry modulation unit began emitting binary code that seemed to suggest it was stuck. The mission team believes the issue truly lies with the FDS, where the data is actually coming from. The Voyager team attempted to fix the problem by rebooting the FDS, but that failed. The gibberish persists.

“It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven’t given up,” Dodd told Ars Technica. “There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager.”

Voyager 1 is 15.14 billion miles away and continues to zip along at just over 38,000 mph. It’s been two months, and the issue remains unresolved.

“​​We can talk to the spacecraft, and it can hear us, but it’s a slow process given the spacecraft’s incredible distance from Earth,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated on Twitter. Every message sent to Voyager takes 22.5 hours to get to the probe, and vice versa.

https://gizmodo.com/voyager-1-s-archaic ... 1851235331

[Irrev-Black]

Moon.

In short: A US moon lander has entered a circular orbit 92 kilometres above the lunar surface.

It is carrying a suite of science instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA.

What's next? The spacecraft, dubbed Odysseus, will attempt to land on the Moon on Friday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-22/ ... /103497236

[Irrev-Black]

RAN proposed crewless craft may run afoul of Law Of The Sea.

https://inqld.com.au/insights/2024/02/2 ... h-no-crew/

[Irrev-Black]

Moon.

In short: A US moon lander has entered a circular orbit 92 kilometres above the lunar surface.

It is carrying a suite of science instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA.

What's next? The spacecraft, dubbed Odysseus, will attempt to land on the Moon on Friday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-22/ ... /103497236

About an hour to landing at this moment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-23/ ... /103494722

LATE EDIT: Yup, it landed. Wait for the moondust to settle, and there may be more actual info.

[stylofone]

Moon.

In short: A US moon lander has entered a circular orbit 92 kilometres above the lunar surface.

It is carrying a suite of science instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA.

What's next? The spacecraft, dubbed Odysseus, will attempt to land on the Moon on Friday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-22/ ... /103497236

About an hour to landing at this moment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-23/ ... /103494722

LATE EDIT: Yup, it landed. Wait for the moondust to settle, and there may be more actual info.

Private sector space missions: we came in profit for all moneykind.

[Irrev-Black]

Again... KLUNK!

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68388695

[stylofone]

Yup, it landed. Wait for the moondust to settle, and there may be more actual info.

It reminded me of Neil Armstrong's amazing piloting of Apollo 11. The designated landing site was too rough, so he flew around looking for a better place, using up all but 17 seconds worth of fuel required to take off again, which is why mission control were "breathing again" when Armstrong reported "the eagle has landed". I still get shivers thinking about that feat in 1969.

Now all I can think it that self-hating governments have handed everything over to deranged capitalists. The name "intuitive Machines" is in tune with the current mania for artificial intelligence. The machines in 2024 are not as intelligent as the human of 1969, or 1969 BCE for that matter.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... r-BB1iPdsS

[Irrev-Black]

(Upside) down, but not out.

https://gizmodo.com/jaxa-resumes-contac ... 1851286332

[Irrev-Black]

Ah, me old mate Hugh Manera!

The company's forecast for a premature end to the mission came as new details emerged about testing shortcuts and human error that led to an in-flight failure of the spacecraft's laser-guided range finders ahead of its landing last Thursday near the moon's south pole.

An Intuitive Machines official said the loss of the range finders stemmed from the company's decision to forgo a test firing of the laser system to save time and money during pre-flight checks of Odysseus at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"There were certainly things we could've done to test it and actually fire it. They would've been very time-consuming and very costly," Mike Hansen, the company's head of navigation systems, told Reuters in an interview on Saturday.

"So that was a risk as a company that we acknowledged and took that risk."

On Friday Intuitive Machines had disclosed that the laser range finders - designed to feed altitude and forward-velocity readings to Odysseus' autonomous navigation system - were inoperable because company engineers neglected to unlock the lasers' safety switch before launch on Feb. 15. The safety lock, akin to a firearm's safety switch, can only be disabled by hand.

The range-finder glitch, detected just hours before the final descent, forced flight controllers to send Odysseus into an extra lunar orbit while they improvised a work-around to avoid what could have been a catastrophic crash-landing.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/spac ... 024-02-26/