Apollo 11’s original landing spot was deemed not ideal, and was manually overridden by the human looking at the situation in situ. It becomes even more dramatic because it used up way more fuel depleting the padding. The original spot was decided based on imagery too. It feels like hubris to think that interpreting imagery alone is sufficient.
Looking at the Mars mission where they just toss the payload essentially wrapped in bubble wrap seems like a higher chance of success than something much more precise with landing legs. If there’s no soft squishy meat bags on board, why spend so much effort/risk on trying to land on legs requiring a this end up situation?
jameskilton•8mo ago
Because the major goals of all of these landers is learning what we need to know to safely put fleshy meat bags on the surface of the Moon again.
mitthrowaway2•8mo ago
Is that because we don't remember how Apollo did it?
hulitu•8mo ago
It seems that they are trying to be cool. But, until now, this was expensive.
dylan604•8mo ago
Looking at the Mars mission where they just toss the payload essentially wrapped in bubble wrap seems like a higher chance of success than something much more precise with landing legs. If there’s no soft squishy meat bags on board, why spend so much effort/risk on trying to land on legs requiring a this end up situation?
jameskilton•8mo ago
mitthrowaway2•8mo ago
hulitu•8mo ago