Posted on 03/07/2025 6:48:21 AM PST by Red Badger
¡¡¡¡¡פNIԀ
Gotta put it in a gimble or something. Live and learn. Maybe a sphere
Elon needs to get that upper ship section operational so we can go fix some of this stuff on the Moon...
They should use a better parachute.
How Is That Possible?
The center of gravity of the craft is too high, the legs are too springy and the lander bounces when it touches down.
I wonder if the engineers took into consideration that the Moon’s gravity is only 1/6th that of the Earth?.....................
Build it like a Weebil. Weebils wobble, but they can’t fall down.
“Once the orientation of the lander is confirmed”
Uh, just look at the picture above!! I can confirm it is on it’s side.
Those feet make it look like a converted pop-up lawn chair.
Everything about that lander had to be structured for lower gravity, if only to save overall weight. The craft has to be designed to accommodate a very unpredictable surface and remain upright with irregular objects tipping or skipping out from under its feet. When astronauts landed the LEM, they had decisionmaking within feet of the surface, to reposition if necessary. I'm betting that designing an intelligent system for a lander to do that job onboard is very difficult. Given the distance, the communication loop to earth for control purposes would be pretty slow.
That is Out of This World Tech
Right There!
Crap! I knew we forgot something. 🚀🤔
Is it the biden edition lander?
Better if someone would simply build a large, flat landing field on he moon. Probably in Elon’s plans for the future.
Maybe they should contract with some of the engineers that worked on the Blue Ghost lander. It seems to have made it on its first try, a few days back.
Oooh... at last, internet technology has caught up, I can start my Land Down Under ping list!!!
Did you know that the first U.S. robot to successfully land on the Moon was Surveyor 1? It touched down on June 2, 1966. (I was turning 15 and was awed by it, especially since Dad was leading spacecraft design projects at the time)
Surveyor 1 landed in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), a vast lunar plain, and transmitted over 11,000 images back to Earth, along with data on soil mechanics and surface conditions. Surveyor 1 achieved a controlled landing using retrorockets, marking a significant milestone in American lunar exploration. This was the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon, beating the Soviet Union's Luna 9 (February 3, 1966) as the first ever robotic soft landing, but establishing the U.S. as a key player in lunar surface operations.
The contract for Surveyor was awarded by JPL to Hughes in 1961. Detailed design and development of Surveyor 1 occurred between 1962 and 1964. Final assembly and testing was completed by early 1966.
The Radar Altimeter and Doppler Velocity Sensor systems were activated at ~8 miles altitude after main retrorocket separation. It measured altitude and three-axis velocity (vertical and lateral), feeding real-time data to the flight control system. The Central Computer and Sequencer was a rudimentary onboard computer that processed radar data and issued commands to the propulsion systems. It lacked modern digital processing but used analog logic and preprogrammed sequences, with some real-time adjustments. Gyroscopes and accelerometers maintained orientation, working with nitrogen-gas jets (cold-gas thrusters) for attitude control during coast phases and descent.
And it did not fall over.
The SIXTIETH anniversary of that landing is coming up in 2026.
Yes, space is hard, but look what American engineers did over 60 years ago without modern digital electronic control systems!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.