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It's Looking Increasingly Likely India's Historic Lunar Lander Is Dead For Good
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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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It's amazing that, with all of the world's technology, simply landing on the moon is still such a difficult task.
And people expect us to colonize other worlds? When is that going to even begin? I have absolutely no faith in a manned Moon mission at this point, let alone a manned Mars mission.
I would think manned missions would be slightly less prone to this type of issue. Having a person with a brain and hands next to the machinery means that minor issues that are impossible to solve from millions of miles away become trivial (ie. a connector comes loose: just put it back in, dust on the solar panel: wipe it off). It has its own set of dangers of course, but autonomous rover issues don't necessarily translate 1:1 with manned missions.
Makes me think of that one mission (I think it was to Venus?) Where the camera's lens cap happened to land so that it obstructed a soil probe. So many dumb things like that that can just totally screw up an unmanned mission
The issue with a manned mission to the moon is still going to be dust. Moon dust is sharp and jagged due to the complete lack of weathering.
It was actually a huge problem for the Apollo missions.
One of the major hurdles of figuring out how to do a longer lunar mission is figuring out how to handle the dust. It can completely compromise the joints and seals of a standard space suit in about a dozen hours.
After watching several video clips of a helicopter taking flight on Mars, I'm far more bullish on manned missions than you are.
Isn't it because Mars have an atmosphere?
Still think we can pull anything off if we want to. Also the Indian lander did its job and it wasn't expected that it would last longer IIRC.
Mars does indeed have an atmosphere, which would be a requirement to generate lift with the propeller blades.
My point is that delivering something as delicate as a helicopter drone intact and functional on another planet is rather impressive, as far as space exploration goes.
How many Mars probes have we lost though? I'm really excited about the current rover and helicopter, but we've had a lot of misses along with hits.
Enough to gain the know-how to deploy a helicopter that has had multiple successful flights on another planet.
Flying a helicopter on Mars and successfully flying and landing a probe on Mars are vastly different.
Flying a helicopter on Mars was in fact, predicated on successfully flying to, and landing a probe successfully on Mars.
What exactly are you not grasping here?
I'm not grasping how flying a helicopter on Mars takes the same sort of technology, software and control as landing a probe on Mars. But feel free to explain why they're the same.
The point that you appear to be trying to make, is that it's really difficult to successfully land probes on the Moon and Mars, and therefore have little faith in human missions to either.
I countered with the fact that NASA was able to fly a land based probe, and something as delicate as a helicopter on Mars, intact. That's how good the landing was. That's how good the entire mission has been so far. A rather solid counterpoint to your pessimistic viewpoint.
You seem to be under the impression that I'm touting flying a helicopter probe on Mars as equivalent to launching a probe. That's a you problem, unrelated to my point.
Ok. How many times has landing a probe on Mars failed? Because I can think of at least 3. Saying "this one succeeded" doesn't really change the point.
Actually it does, since much of the success attained, is a direct result of what was learned from previous launches.
It's part of an iterative process called "learning from past mistakes".
If it's any consolation, I doubt that you'd qualify for any space mission, so you'll be quite safe from space travel related harm.
Are you really unable to talk to me without being needlessly rude?
Are you?
What? Asking you to explain something is rude? I am legitimately confused as to why you think that's rude.
This is you being rude and condescending, because you think I was claiming that flying the helicopter on Mars was somehow technologically equivalent to an entire launching of a probe.
You telling me to "feel free to explain" is based entirely on you thinking that you're dunking on me. Since that isn't my arguement, you aren't.
You're not legitimately confused about it either.
I'm sorry, that's just not true. You're making all sorts of assumptions which are false. I honestly wanted an explanation.
Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
You thought (incorrectly) that I was arguing that the helicopter probe by itself was as technologically impressive as the entire mission that delivered it.
That's why you used the "feel free to explain" verbiage.
Believe what you like, I guess.
Choose your words with no regard to tone, I guess.
I'm not exactly sure what you expect me to say at this point, but this is feeling awfully Reddit to me, so if you don't give me a reason not to, I think I'll just block you.
How many times have airplanes crashed? I can name at least 3 as well
Roughly half of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mars_landers
Success rate is a lot better this century than it was last century though.
The beautiful and terrible thing about humans is no matter how dumb something may seem to such an educated mind as yourself, someone else’s dream is to make it a reality.
I never said we should abandon space.
But we should
I never said otherwise.
@FlyingSquid @throws_lemy Most technology, especially computer and software technology, needs constant maintenance, repair, and bug fixing by skilled experts. It's hard to do that when the hardware cannot be accessed directly.
The state of software reliability should tell you everything you need to know about the difficulties of building and deploying complex/complicated systems.
At present, there's nothing valuable enough there to justify the enormous cost of a permanent settlement on another generally uninhabitable planet. It would either need to be for scientific purposes or intended as a long-term stepping stone to more distant destinations, either of which would operate at great financial loss and risk.
Unless we discover unobtanium in space it's a hard sell to leave the planet we're evolved to survive on and live somewhere there's no indigenous edible food, accessible water, or breathable atmosphere.
This is India, they're not exactly at the bleeding edge regarding space tech. NASA and SpaceX are way more promising
Their space program is generally regarded as fairly good to my understanding, they just operate on lower budgets.
In any case, wasn't this mission only designed to last a couple weeks on the surface anyway? I could've sworn I remember reading that the probe wasn't designed to survive the temperatures the moon reaches at night, and their attempts to recontact it were more or less a "it's done it's mission already, but if it happens to survive anyway, it's an added bonus, so might as well check" sorta deal.
"Operating on lower budgets" is putting it lightly, this mission cost $74M. NASA's next rover is projected at $433M