I think the only one that can solve all of their problems is elon. He would fix it in few weeks. Include him in next launch, he will troubleshoot directly on the Moon. Please, someone, send that asshole to space.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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And he's so full of hot air he doesn't even need a suit.
He would try to smoke the moon regolith and come up with some rad ideas. Occupy Moon! Yeeeeaah
I mean, I would too, just to see if the moon is special.
I mean look, scientists (and random bored people) for thousands of years did the same thing. Tasted things, consumed things to see what they do..
Has anyone smoked the moon yet? No. So we don’t actually know. We can speculate it does nothing, but we don’t know.
Maybe snort moon dust? Probably more practical.
Elon in his Cave Johnson era and we're here for it
That would be awesome. It's pretty much super asbestos.
Had me in the first half, ngl
Haha, that was the idea 🤣
I'd like to share a design concept with IM given that this is their second moon topple:
Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!
I mean, you're not wrong. A low center of mass is legitimately a good idea.
The first one fell over and sank into the ~~swamp~~ crater.
Sooooo we built another one
That sank into a crater. So we built a third one. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into a crater. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest spacecraft on all of the Moon.
But I just want to sing
- Not to leave the room... even if you come and get him.
No, no. Until I come and get him.
- Until you come and get him, we're not to enter the room.
No, no, no... etc.
Breaking news, space is really really hard
It's not space that's hard. It's the stuff you encounter when you run out of space that's hard.
Like when you run into me bc I'm hard 4 u bb. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
A hard void.
Well that's a facepalm of a faceplant 😂
You'd almost think that by now they might have learned something from the Voyager 1 and 2 power systems and not relied completely on solar power...
The biggest problem with RTGs is the extreme cost and lack of availability. Pu-238 is very expensive and at any moment, there's only tens of KG of Pu-238 available for RTG use. They're not really a reasonable choice for private industry at this time.
As true as that is, they said that it cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, and the mission was only planned to last from 10 to 14 days or so. They could have used just a piece of a waste uranium rod or something as an alternate power source for such a short-lived mission.
I mean yeah, of course that would still add to the cost and complexity, and I don't even know what all that would take, but hell if you're already into the hundreds of millions of dollars range, you ought to consider redundancy and alternate power sources.
I imagine it's more complicated than that. For example, Pu-238 only emits alpha radiation. I doubt that reactor waste only emits alpha radiation, meaning you'd have to harden the electronics for a close and potentially extreme emitter of beta/gamma radiation. I also don't know if random high grade reactor waste gets hot enough to provide meaningful amounts of energy via thermoelectric means. Alternatively, it may be that it gets too hot.
I doubt they could have simply slapped something together. The cost of developing a new RTG capable of using reactor waste would likely be a significant fraction of the budget to develop the probe itself. It might have been worth it, but I feel that it's not clear-cut.
They also used the same design of a prior craft that met the same fate. But private industry are problem solvers. 🙄
Eh... I think they should stick to solar power. Given how much trouble they've been having, let's not give them any weapons grade isotopes...
For what it's worth, just last week, Firefly stuck the landIng on their first attempt. They're seriously killing it these days, I'm happy for them.
Solar power? On the south pole of the moon?
That would just barely work on its own, even if the thing didn't topple over.
Would it barely work, or would it always work?
If you plan to land on the pole, at a high altitude, you could potentially have direct line of sight to the sun 24/7 all year round. From the ground, the sun would appear to travel left to right along the horizon, making a full circle over the course of a month. You just need your solar panels pointed to the sides, not up.
However, if they aren't directly on the pole, they could still plan their landing to be in a location that gets sunlight for 15 earth days straight, with 0 interruption. As that might be more than the necessary time period for their experiments, that's probably perfect. And that doesn't even require being at a high elevation.
Also, being on the pole doesn't result in dimmer sunlight than on the equator like it would on earth. No atmosphere means the poles get the same completely unfiltered sunlight.
Look, the vast majority of lunar landers (and there have been quite a few) have used solar power, it's the obvious choice in space.
Nah, solar is the obvious choice in space near the sun, and by not borking it up by landing sideways in a crater on the south pole of the moon.
Very limited scope for solar power, it don't work after landing sideways in a crater on the south pole.
Edit: By the way, our next lunar eclipse is in 6 days, do you really think that thing would go uninterrupted, even if it did land correctly?
We are in space near the sun... And we have successfully used solar as far out as Jupiter.
Haha, no I didn't account for lunar eclipses, but that lasts what, 2 hours?
But yeah, not falling over definitely improves the whole mission. No argument there.
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When one day we get people back on the moon, is there a chance these devices could be brought back online?
More likely salvaged as part of a permanent moon base.
Brought back*
No need for this trash on the moon, even if it works.
Well, if we have boots on the moon, at that point we don't need probes like these. At that point you just drop a sensor, or whatever experiment you want directly on the surface.
I was looking at it from the perspective of all the failed probes we’ve sent and whether or not the lost costs/missions could be recouped or completed somehow.
Depends on how long it sits there, the lunar surface has a pretty wide range of temperatures that cause wear, lots of radiation and the regolith is quite abrasive. But realistically by the time something gets there that could put it back it'll probably not be worth it from anything but a historical standpoint.
I hadn’t considered the damage from radiation. Thanks for the perspective.
Whoopsi-doodles. Well, more spare parts on the Moon, all the same.
He's dead, Jim.
Landing a fridge on those spindly little legs did seem a bit... optimistic...
I really don't understand the tall moon lander strategy... I mean, if you're going to design it with a high center of gravity, then design it to fall over... Just use two landing legs instead of four, to ensure it falls over the right way. Then you put the solar panels on the side, so that when it topples over they're facing up.
I've literally done this in Kerbal space program, it's a pretty reliable landing system if your probe is tall.
Company that topled a mooncraft... topled another mooncraft.
Seems Firefly Aerospace has got this all sorted, though. Amazing feat for them last week to have a flawless landing.
This could have potentially happened to Apollo 11, had Armstrong not taken over manually to steer clear of the targeted landing site with some rough areas. Maybe it would have been just leaning and not a big deal, but at the time we had no clear idea what a real landing would end up like. And I would hazard a guess that even though we've done a lot over the decades, the polar regions of the Moon are still pretty unknown.
…but at the time we had no clear idea what a real landing would end up like…
Surveyor - “What am I? Chopped liver???”
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