[SunkenCiv]

"Miss Otis regrets..."

• Sideways moon landing cuts mission short, private US lunar lander will stop working Tuesday [02/26/2024]
• Surprise! Japan's SLIM Moon Lander Wakes Up After a Freezing Night [02/26/2024]
• Astronomy Picture of the Day - Martian Moon Eclipses Martian Moon [02/26/2024]
• Magnitude 4.9 earthquake shook western Idaho Monday morning. Here's what we know [02/26/2024]

[Empire_of_Liberty]

So, both the Japanese and the American landers did the same thing.

In the days of Apollo, a platform called “the flying bedstead”, I believe, was used to simulate and gain understanding of the landing on the Moon. At 1 Earth Gravity, it was a very stripped-down set of mostly legs - hence the name. Neil Armstrong, I believe, had to punch out of one at near 90 degrees during testing.

Without knowing, I suppose I expect that these “landers” went through none of that. When something is barely able to land on the Moon, it is very hard to simulate on Earth, except fully inside a computer.

With both the Japanese and American landers failing, I would want to look at a sudden increase in thrust just before touchdown, as the engine nozzle gets back-pressure from the surface. But, whatever it is, it probably needs to be figured out at this end, first.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Because of Murphy’s Law, True Engineering is having 100 failures until you work out the kinks. And even then you have failures. It’s not surprising that this Lunar Lander tipped over. It’s Part of the engineering process. Always be leery when engineers say they got something to work first time…

A funny thing happened on the way to the moon…

[roving]

They faked the 60s moon landing a whole lot better than this one. This one looks comically bad.

[Smittie]

Did they include a Life Alert button?

What a sad commentary on the state of our country...