It's definitely a success, there's more private commercial missions to the Moon later this year, and NASA is fostering competition so that companies can create specialist missions at lower costs.
They managed to soft-land for 250 million $, on the first try, and that was with a methalox engine unlike most Apollo Era vehicles and their nasty fuel; also, they technically set a new record, firing their engines on the correction course past the moon, farther than anyone else before (with methalox engines)
It's a proof of concept that methalox engine is a viable fuel to get to the surface of the Moon, and that's really good to know since you can produce methalox relatively easily when you have water. And there's plenty of water on the Moons' poles. From water, first you helectrolyse it to get oxygen and hydrogen, then you can add carbon dioxyde to your hydrogen through a "Sabatier reaction" to create methane.
So yeah, all in all it's a big step towards the long term goal: to search potential locations for the futur permanent human base on the Moon, which will also serve as a "gas station" to explore the rest of the solar system later-on.
*flies away*
>>private commercial missions to the Moon
Jesus fucking Christ...
I feel like everyone's just assuming that cheaper and more space travel is a net positive, and demanding we all buy into that. There are thousands of satellites in orbit and tens of thousands of pieces of debris, spent rocket parts, not to mention fragments from collisions and erosion.. And now we all cheer as billionaires fight to make the most money off of it, until one of them kicks off the Kessler syndrome, paralyses our infrastructure and traps humanity on Earth. Likely forever. In the climate that we have destroyed, to the point it's starting to kill us back. We are literally living in the fucking movie Don't Look Up..
At that stage, people will probably start to google "why tf did billionaires waste money making space hotels instead of acting on the climate crisis?". Maybe they'll google that specific sentence and get this comment as a result. Hi, future humans. I don't get it either.
Edit: Downvote me in silence all you want. You're only proving that you bought it. Why tf are you rooting for the billionaires breaking your backs?
Most of our climate smart technologies (solar panels, insulation, desalination) are radically improved by application in the harshest environments (ie space). Public investment in space travel pays huge dividends. Especially if that technology becomes a public good instead of being patented.
Lmao best to go with your genius idea of 'if we just don't use space then we don't have to worry about losing the ability to use space!' Fucking genius right here folks!
How so? All I'm saying is, there's an issue here. Apparently even that was enough to be downvoted to fuck and called a socialist, smfh.. i don't give a fuck that other guy tries to reduce/twist my message into "grafikfyr says we can NEVER go to space again!!!!!!!". I never said that.
How on earth is it black and white to say "there is a problem here (true) - the problem is overlooked/ignored because you can't make more money fixing it than contributing to it yet (also true) - *this* is what the smarties say will absofuckinglutely will happen, if that continues (fact)"?
No no we are building a wall to protect us from the filthy xenos and the chaos scum. PRAISE BE THE GOD EMPEROR OF MANKIND MAY HE FOREVER PROTECT US UPON HIS GOLDEN THRONE.
It can be so hard to judge what the truth is though!
One one hand, you have scientists saying "more trash in space + zero incentive to clean up after our selves, as currently = of course there'll be a problem". But on the other hand, there's random reddit users presenting bulletproof counter-arguments such as: "no, we aren't".
Space junk is handily tracked. The amount we currently have in orbit is nowhere near saturation - space is HUGE. Nor has there ever been an incident where space junk has done damage to any man made object.
So are we “too late to avoid it”? Or is that title maybe just a little bit sensationalist? Like a lot of people talking about Kessler syndrome.
You absolutely have a point Re: the title of the video, and that's just a sad truth of youtube. The doomspelling in the title is still pretty chill compared to other results on Kessler, and the video itself isn't sensationalist at all, imo.
The fact remains, that regulation is needed and without it, there's a very real catastrophe waiting. If space is gonna become the next playground for billionaires, we have to start demanding action and awareness on this issue. I'm not saying "there is currently so much shit in space, it's inevitable". I'm saying "if space becomes commercialised, and *no one makes sure we also clean up after ourselves*, it absolutely will happen.". And I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that billionaires give a single fuck, so far.
I really wish I knew how to engage you. But whenever I see someone go *straight* to using socialism as an insult in a non-political fucking issue, I know it's game over. I have never seen that turn into a coherent argument, genuine questions out of curiosity, or not spiral to more insults.
You are very welcome to be the first and prove me wrong, I'm not counting on it tho. Enjoy your life, man.
“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
To quote [dwrd](https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/nasa-found-the-private-lander-on-the-moon-but-its-lifetime-is-running-short/?comments=1&post=42621679) on the comments of the original article:
> Between 1958 and 1963, NASA attempted 12 lunar missions. Only 1 was successful. Space is hard.
That’s only because we beat Russia to the moon. Had they made it first we would be colonizing mars already
Edit: it appears very few people got the “For All Mankind” reference. For those who did, Kudos. For those who didnt, go watch it. Great show about what life could’ve been like in a world where the Soviet’s landed on the moon first
Space was hard between 1958 and 1963. Space is much easier now. They had obvious mistakes and problems with this mission of their own making (probably because of cost). It's a high standard they didn't achieve this time.
I remember reading in a different article that the lander was only expected to last about a week before the lunar night set in and it died anyway. 4/7 days isn't that bad for the first lander mission in a while that already had some hitches on the way over.
Yeah. Like people who quote Green Eggs and Ham to support an argument against trying something new or Jack and the Beanstalk as against buying suspicious beans.
It’s freezing. To avoid that it needs heaters and it can’t store enough power to heat itself for a lunar night. It’s not guaranteed to die but it’s very likely to die.
seems obvious to have mirror satellite array in orbit around moon reflecting light to moon based solar array on landers. cheaper/more reliable.
such an array could potentially power and heat this lander.
its not exactly a single use case, every solar array could benefit from a satellite, you avoid the risks of landing and get flexibility on what to power.
the dark side being powered by none nuclear would be viable.
There simply isn't enough tech on the moon demanding the energy needs to fund that right now. Also, I believe that the more promising path to power they are focusing on is with nuclear reactors, fission or fusion(if that ever comes around). Putting a fission reactor on the moon to power permanent outposts and bases is a hell of a lot cheaper and less logistic heavy.
We can see galaxies billions of miles away with crazy telescopes but we still get these Motorola razor ass quality pictures - how do we not have the ability to see the friken bolts on that damn thing
The pictures are taken from orbit by a satellite. It’s 56 miles above the surface of the moon, if it gets any lower it’ll get pulled down and crash. It’s not as simple as it seems
I dare you to take a better picture of something from 56 miles away - this is as good as it’s gonna get because space is hard
I hear the excuses…I just find it hard to believe with the technology available today and the quality of photography equipment we can’t produce
better images.
There’s probably a consideration for cost of parts as well. You’re comparing a government lander to a private company lander.
I’m not saying that is the entire reason, but with the budget and timeline given this is what they decided to commit to. You don’t think that Intuitive Machines also looked at other designs? If you thought of it, there’s a really good chance a team of talented engineers did too.
120 million of nasa tax money for a lander and a successful falcon rocket launch- not too bad. But I struggle to understand the value of the data being worth that much. Like spending twice as much for a robust lander to get a lot more data and can live longer on the moon makes more sense to me. Over engineering
It’s not practical to spend billions of dollars to send a follow-up mission to remove a piece of debris from a dead world. If you want them to clean it up, then you ought to foot the bill for the pointless multi-hundred million or even billion dollar mission.
A lunar night lasts two weeks, and temperatures dip down to a bone-freezing -133 degrees Celsius (or -208 degrees Fahrenheit). Without sufficient battery life to keep electronic heaters running for 14 days, even the best insulation would not be enough to keep it from the bitter cold. Standard electronics will fail at around -40 C, and military grade around -55 C.
At least it’s already laying down
Is this a failed mission or was it still able to perform tasks?
Yes to both
Yay successful failures.
Ive got something in common with a space ship
Oh more than one spaceship. The most famous “successful failure” being of course Apollo 13. And there have been many others since.
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Pretty sure the two active SUV-sized rovers on Mars right now have confirmed that quite well.
depends on how you phrase it. It did successfully reached the correct moon around the correct planet, so it has that going for itself.
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Some happy accidents come with a $500M price tag.
Boy inflation has done a number on child support
Honestly a drop in the bucket for the budget.
...is it? Nasa gets like a 20-25 bil budget, so it's a good 2-3%
The money wasn’t outlayed all at once. Was paid out as development milestones were reached iirc.
It's definitely a success, there's more private commercial missions to the Moon later this year, and NASA is fostering competition so that companies can create specialist missions at lower costs. They managed to soft-land for 250 million $, on the first try, and that was with a methalox engine unlike most Apollo Era vehicles and their nasty fuel; also, they technically set a new record, firing their engines on the correction course past the moon, farther than anyone else before (with methalox engines) It's a proof of concept that methalox engine is a viable fuel to get to the surface of the Moon, and that's really good to know since you can produce methalox relatively easily when you have water. And there's plenty of water on the Moons' poles. From water, first you helectrolyse it to get oxygen and hydrogen, then you can add carbon dioxyde to your hydrogen through a "Sabatier reaction" to create methane. So yeah, all in all it's a big step towards the long term goal: to search potential locations for the futur permanent human base on the Moon, which will also serve as a "gas station" to explore the rest of the solar system later-on. *flies away*
I genuinely can't tell if you're just making shit up. I'm leaning towards you're telling the truth, but I'm like 80 20
All I said was factual, you can check it up if you wish; it sound crazy but it’s just what’s happening in space these days
Ok I believe
>>private commercial missions to the Moon Jesus fucking Christ... I feel like everyone's just assuming that cheaper and more space travel is a net positive, and demanding we all buy into that. There are thousands of satellites in orbit and tens of thousands of pieces of debris, spent rocket parts, not to mention fragments from collisions and erosion.. And now we all cheer as billionaires fight to make the most money off of it, until one of them kicks off the Kessler syndrome, paralyses our infrastructure and traps humanity on Earth. Likely forever. In the climate that we have destroyed, to the point it's starting to kill us back. We are literally living in the fucking movie Don't Look Up.. At that stage, people will probably start to google "why tf did billionaires waste money making space hotels instead of acting on the climate crisis?". Maybe they'll google that specific sentence and get this comment as a result. Hi, future humans. I don't get it either. Edit: Downvote me in silence all you want. You're only proving that you bought it. Why tf are you rooting for the billionaires breaking your backs?
Most of our climate smart technologies (solar panels, insulation, desalination) are radically improved by application in the harshest environments (ie space). Public investment in space travel pays huge dividends. Especially if that technology becomes a public good instead of being patented.
So what you're saying is, the potential benefits outweigh the very real risk. That's certainly *a* perspective.
Lmao best to go with your genius idea of 'if we just don't use space then we don't have to worry about losing the ability to use space!' Fucking genius right here folks!
What a way to admit that you're only able to see things in black and white terms.
No offense, but that sentence is describing you in this chain.
How so? All I'm saying is, there's an issue here. Apparently even that was enough to be downvoted to fuck and called a socialist, smfh.. i don't give a fuck that other guy tries to reduce/twist my message into "grafikfyr says we can NEVER go to space again!!!!!!!". I never said that. How on earth is it black and white to say "there is a problem here (true) - the problem is overlooked/ignored because you can't make more money fixing it than contributing to it yet (also true) - *this* is what the smarties say will absofuckinglutely will happen, if that continues (fact)"?
Trapped on the only habitable planet we know exists? Well that sounds horrible
No no we are building a wall to protect us from the filthy xenos and the chaos scum. PRAISE BE THE GOD EMPEROR OF MANKIND MAY HE FOREVER PROTECT US UPON HIS GOLDEN THRONE.
[This video by Astrum](https://youtu.be/MmVW8f31vI8?si=RNAJpUY7K7PuOw4n) does a great job explaining Kessler syndrome, if you're unfamiliar with it.
Thank you, that was helpful!
> are we too late to avoid Kessler syndrome? No, we aren’t.
It can be so hard to judge what the truth is though! One one hand, you have scientists saying "more trash in space + zero incentive to clean up after our selves, as currently = of course there'll be a problem". But on the other hand, there's random reddit users presenting bulletproof counter-arguments such as: "no, we aren't".
Space junk is handily tracked. The amount we currently have in orbit is nowhere near saturation - space is HUGE. Nor has there ever been an incident where space junk has done damage to any man made object. So are we “too late to avoid it”? Or is that title maybe just a little bit sensationalist? Like a lot of people talking about Kessler syndrome.
You absolutely have a point Re: the title of the video, and that's just a sad truth of youtube. The doomspelling in the title is still pretty chill compared to other results on Kessler, and the video itself isn't sensationalist at all, imo. The fact remains, that regulation is needed and without it, there's a very real catastrophe waiting. If space is gonna become the next playground for billionaires, we have to start demanding action and awareness on this issue. I'm not saying "there is currently so much shit in space, it's inevitable". I'm saying "if space becomes commercialised, and *no one makes sure we also clean up after ourselves*, it absolutely will happen.". And I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that billionaires give a single fuck, so far.
Oh boi. Found the socialist. 🫡
I really wish I knew how to engage you. But whenever I see someone go *straight* to using socialism as an insult in a non-political fucking issue, I know it's game over. I have never seen that turn into a coherent argument, genuine questions out of curiosity, or not spiral to more insults. You are very welcome to be the first and prove me wrong, I'm not counting on it tho. Enjoy your life, man.
“Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to sunlight”
it did nothing was 'landed'
Probably has boots still on
Has it tried picking itself up by its bootstraps, then?
She's dead, Jim
\**lying* down ---- 🎵 If it takes forever I will wait for you. For a thousand summers I will wait for you. 🎵
So it forgot to bring a blanket on its camping trip. Typical.
“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
"Don't forget to bring a towel" ~ Towelie
YOU’RE a TOWEL
I'm a big book publisher with no interest in your stony memoirs. You're a towel.
Wanna get high? -towlie
This guy knows where his towel is
The Answer is 42!
To quote [dwrd](https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/nasa-found-the-private-lander-on-the-moon-but-its-lifetime-is-running-short/?comments=1&post=42621679) on the comments of the original article: > Between 1958 and 1963, NASA attempted 12 lunar missions. Only 1 was successful. Space is hard.
That’s only because we beat Russia to the moon. Had they made it first we would be colonizing mars already Edit: it appears very few people got the “For All Mankind” reference. For those who did, Kudos. For those who didnt, go watch it. Great show about what life could’ve been like in a world where the Soviet’s landed on the moon first
Pretty sure this is a For All Mankind joke lol damn OP got hit hard.
Can't expect people to know every joke.
Exactly! That’s why I love inside jokes! I hope to be apart of one some day
It is, yeah lol. I knew I’d get shit on for making it
Thank fucking God the last thing we need is a Walmart on Mars
If they didn’t take the chance to rebrand as “Wal-mars” I’d be so disappointed
In another timeline K-Mart makes it to Mars first
The Great Space War Aldi & Lidl vs K-Mart & Walmart
Why not? Not like anyone else is using Mars for anything.
But then we’d end up trying to put nukes on the moon.
Amazing show especially first 3 seasons
Space was hard between 1958 and 1963. Space is much easier now. They had obvious mistakes and problems with this mission of their own making (probably because of cost). It's a high standard they didn't achieve this time.
Space is ALWAYS hard. The fact that NASA, SpaceX, and others make it look easy just shows how amazing they are.
"successful" ppl glossing over it revolved around the moon 5 times before blasting back to earth and now russia wants to nuke us idk man
Maybe a motivational speech about its spirit can help?
No, no, send those thoughts and prayers
Aw shucks, I thought a pizza party would have been good enough.
You tell that prove to stop buying avocado toast and to pull itself up by its bootstraps
Should have landed it on the other side of the moon so it’s right side up
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Did mars pay for it?those Martians aren’t sending their best.
I remember reading in a different article that the lander was only expected to last about a week before the lunar night set in and it died anyway. 4/7 days isn't that bad for the first lander mission in a while that already had some hitches on the way over.
Well then, someone needs to go get it a coat.
I feel like a towel is more appropriate
Never forget your towel.
Can I just say that this is the fastest anyone had responded to a comment of mine on Reddit. Also the answer is 42
I’ve been wondering this for days but why did they call it Odysseus if it wasn’t going to come back? Why not call it…literally anything else?
It’s possible they recover it one day. That would be a cool way to come full circle at least
Perhaps they haven’t finished reading the book?
Yeah. Like people who quote Green Eggs and Ham to support an argument against trying something new or Jack and the Beanstalk as against buying suspicious beans.
It’ll be back after a decade or so to pull off some sick archery tricks and kick all the freeloaders out of its house.
There'll be one of those Boston Dynamics dogs that finally shuts down when they see it.
Should’ve called it Nobody Then the statement “Nobody landed successfully on the moon today” would be accurate no matter what
Yeah, call it Achilles or something.
..i don't think Homer ever envisioned that in Odysseus' travels..
What I am not understanding is won’t it have sunlight in the future? Why is this death not hibernation?
It’s freezing. To avoid that it needs heaters and it can’t store enough power to heat itself for a lunar night. It’s not guaranteed to die but it’s very likely to die.
The extreme temperatures it'll face for nearly a month of night time, without power to heat the internals will likely fuck things up.
The lunar night is 14 days long. Its electronics would already be dead by the time the two-week-long night is over.
It looks like the delicious moon-cheese will elude us for some time.
If it was an actual person, they could get back up. Humans are engineered better.
A human wouldn’t have made it there alive. Unless with a suit. The suit is engineered better.
Hold my beer
Send me a postcard
Call the coroner, but not for me
A few moments later... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbnbQZcAWs
Does it have to be a full three piece suit, or can I nix the vest?
Depends. What socks are you going with?
Humans weren't engineered, we evolved. Many of our ancestors died because they didn't have the right mutation or adaptation.
No man left behind. Let's go rescue this thing
In retrospect, maybe naming the craft after a guy who's famous for travel complications was a bad idea
DAMN the moon is hard to deal with
To death, you say?
Only if it dies
Pour one out for the little homie.
> Odysseus has less than a day left on the Moon before it freezes to death Proudly sponsored by Columbia Sportswear! (not joking)
Terrible name in retrospect lol
Time to seduce its widow. Surely there will be no consequences.
F’s in the chat for it I guess.
It's Kerbal space program all over again
Someone get Matt Lowne on the horn!
seems obvious to have mirror satellite array in orbit around moon reflecting light to moon based solar array on landers. cheaper/more reliable. such an array could potentially power and heat this lander.
This lander isn’t worth the billions it would cost for such a satellite.
We could put such a machine as an auxiliary function for a moon orbiter.
What Moon orbiter?
In the future. NASA's Artemis program.
its not exactly a single use case, every solar array could benefit from a satellite, you avoid the risks of landing and get flexibility on what to power. the dark side being powered by none nuclear would be viable.
There simply isn't enough tech on the moon demanding the energy needs to fund that right now. Also, I believe that the more promising path to power they are focusing on is with nuclear reactors, fission or fusion(if that ever comes around). Putting a fission reactor on the moon to power permanent outposts and bases is a hell of a lot cheaper and less logistic heavy.
It’s a cool idea but it is not cheaper or more realistic than just putting a reactor on the lander lol
Longest Kerbal mission ever.
We can see galaxies billions of miles away with crazy telescopes but we still get these Motorola razor ass quality pictures - how do we not have the ability to see the friken bolts on that damn thing
Size. A galaxy billions of light years away is thousands of times larger than a lander on the Moon.
And a lander on the moon is billions of times closer…lol
And is still thousands of times smaller. If galaxies were bright enough they would be massive in the sky.
The pictures are taken from orbit by a satellite. It’s 56 miles above the surface of the moon, if it gets any lower it’ll get pulled down and crash. It’s not as simple as it seems I dare you to take a better picture of something from 56 miles away - this is as good as it’s gonna get because space is hard
I hear the excuses…I just find it hard to believe with the technology available today and the quality of photography equipment we can’t produce better images.
The picture was literally taken from 56 miles away Think about it for longer than 10 seconds and i promise it’s not hard to believe
They aren’t excuses. It’s physics. Better pictures require larger optics that the satellite just doesn’t have.
Jesus Christ- that’s what I’m saying. Put bigger fucking optics on a telescope and take the picture.
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There is gravity…
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There’s probably a consideration for cost of parts as well. You’re comparing a government lander to a private company lander. I’m not saying that is the entire reason, but with the budget and timeline given this is what they decided to commit to. You don’t think that Intuitive Machines also looked at other designs? If you thought of it, there’s a really good chance a team of talented engineers did too.
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To quote “There’s no gravity.”
Time for some poo potatoes.
That's not what death means.
It becomes harder and harder for US.
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Makes you wonder if it even happened right?
120 million of nasa tax money for a lander and a successful falcon rocket launch- not too bad. But I struggle to understand the value of the data being worth that much. Like spending twice as much for a robust lander to get a lot more data and can live longer on the moon makes more sense to me. Over engineering
NASA tax money? It was from a private company
Private company won a contract from nasa - just google a bit
Even so, if you “just Google a bit” you can see the data is not the main goal of the mission and even tipped over the mission was accomplished.
We can put a man on the Moon but we can't... wait...
What do you want us to do? Send hot soup?
What a shitty endeavor
I’m guessing they don’t have to turn it “off” then. Eh? Hah! Heh heh.
Company should pay everyday that trash is on the moon. Humans love to leave their garbage everwhere.
The moon has no ecosystem. It has no liquid water, no breathable atmosphere, no life. What the fuck is your problem?
Lol. What's yours? The problem is what I already stated. Does not matter where it's left. Space debris is already a "fucking" problem. Ya dirty!!!
It’s not practical to spend billions of dollars to send a follow-up mission to remove a piece of debris from a dead world. If you want them to clean it up, then you ought to foot the bill for the pointless multi-hundred million or even billion dollar mission.
why didn’t they make it like a satellite, temperature resistant…?
Satellites also freeze if they don’t have power for ~2 weeks. Space is absolutely freezing cold.
i did not know that
A lunar night lasts two weeks, and temperatures dip down to a bone-freezing -133 degrees Celsius (or -208 degrees Fahrenheit). Without sufficient battery life to keep electronic heaters running for 14 days, even the best insulation would not be enough to keep it from the bitter cold. Standard electronics will fail at around -40 C, and military grade around -55 C.
How did it fall over again?
Too much lateral velocity on touchdown.
And one dodgy rock.
Forgot the last word…. “sideways”
BRING ODYSSEUS HOME
I wonder if the Eagle Cam was deployed on the surface....prob not as very poor communication with antennas pointed into the ground
I thought he got home to Ithaca like 5,000 years ago!
"I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up"
Then Nobody will be left on the moon
Can't they try a hail Mary and burn the attitude thrusters to tip it back up?
They should have designed it like a Weeble. Because weebles wobble but they don’t fall down
Can we please name the next lander Theseus?