• Kokesh@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

      • Cavemanfreak@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        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.

    • Badabinski@kbin.earth
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      2 days ago

      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.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • Badabinski@kbin.earth
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          2 days ago

          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.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      2 days ago

      They also used the same design of a prior craft that met the same fate. But private industry are problem solvers. 🙄

  • veee@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    When one day we get people back on the moon, is there a chance these devices could be brought back online?

  • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Landing a fridge on those spindly little legs did seem a bit… optimistic…

  • Talaraine@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Seems Firefly Aerospace has got this all sorted, though. Amazing feat for them last week to have a flawless landing.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    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.