How was this done 70 years ago but it so hard now? Was it a ruse back then?
voidUpdate•13h ago
Back then, it was done by national space agencies with huge budgets, and some of them had people on. They tested things for months or years beforehand, refining their systems as much as possible for deployment
“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.” -Edward Gibbon
generic92034•13h ago
Human pilots versus automation, I would guess.
AStonesThrow•7h ago
The USA and Soviet Union sent out wave after wave of robotic orbiters and landers to Mars and Venus alike. NASA enjoyed several quite successful Viking missions, among other things.
Did you know that while the Apollo 11 lander was on the Moon's surface, and the astronauts were out there exploring the Moon, the Soviet Union's Luna 15 crash-landed into the surface -- about 554km away from the Eagle LM.
Yet, the very next mission, Luna 16, was the first successful sample-return mission from the Moon (or anywhere I guess), and the Soviets did it uncrewed, in 1970.
It only took one more iteration, Luna 17, to carry a rover to the Moon: Луноход-1; and have it successfully rove around up there, uncrewed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1
That was so fun that the Soviets followed it up with a second successful rover!
The Soviets also did Venera missions to Venus. They sent like 12 of them. Many were successful landings or atmospheric entries with good data. 4, 5, 6, and 7, to begin with.
Sorry I went a little heavy on the Soviet side of things, but rest assured that NASA was enjoying robotic success as well, including the Surveyors on the Moon, which blazed trails for Apollo landings.
I believe that the radio round-trip delay, from the Earth to the Moon and back, is something on the order of 3 seconds. "Cowboy Neil's" manual intervention isn't the only way to land there.
That being said, NASA's Viking and Pioneer programs were qualitatively different from the newer probes coming out of JPL, and even different still are the commercial ones. All these space agencies need to try out their own combinations of inspiration, perspiration, and high-tech.
foxyv•5h ago
The inevitable answer is money. It was done with a firehose filled with money.
iSpace is running on a $50 million budget. The moon landing was $250 billion in today's dollars.
Edit: To put that in perspective, SpaceX has invested about $5 billion into Starship. The F-35 program cost about $2000 billion.
jezze•13h ago
Sad to hear this since I think this was the lander containing the Moonhouse art project. I would have loved to see the little red cottage on the moon with the earth as it's backdrop.
I know it didn't exactly serve any scientific purpose but an image like that could have been very inspirational to a lot of people.
cornfieldlabs•12h ago
Elon Musk started something similar for Mars which led to him founding SpaceX
antibull•14h ago
voidUpdate•13h ago
Mistletoe•13h ago
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-it-so-much...
“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.” -Edward Gibbon
generic92034•13h ago
AStonesThrow•7h ago
Did you know that while the Apollo 11 lander was on the Moon's surface, and the astronauts were out there exploring the Moon, the Soviet Union's Luna 15 crash-landed into the surface -- about 554km away from the Eagle LM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_15
Yet, the very next mission, Luna 16, was the first successful sample-return mission from the Moon (or anywhere I guess), and the Soviets did it uncrewed, in 1970.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16
It only took one more iteration, Luna 17, to carry a rover to the Moon: Луноход-1; and have it successfully rove around up there, uncrewed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1
That was so fun that the Soviets followed it up with a second successful rover!
The Soviets also did Venera missions to Venus. They sent like 12 of them. Many were successful landings or atmospheric entries with good data. 4, 5, 6, and 7, to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Venusian_...
Sorry I went a little heavy on the Soviet side of things, but rest assured that NASA was enjoying robotic success as well, including the Surveyors on the Moon, which blazed trails for Apollo landings.
I believe that the radio round-trip delay, from the Earth to the Moon and back, is something on the order of 3 seconds. "Cowboy Neil's" manual intervention isn't the only way to land there.
That being said, NASA's Viking and Pioneer programs were qualitatively different from the newer probes coming out of JPL, and even different still are the commercial ones. All these space agencies need to try out their own combinations of inspiration, perspiration, and high-tech.
foxyv•5h ago
iSpace is running on a $50 million budget. The moon landing was $250 billion in today's dollars.
Edit: To put that in perspective, SpaceX has invested about $5 billion into Starship. The F-35 program cost about $2000 billion.