Intuitive Machines - IM-1 - Moon Mission Lander
Discussion
Eric Mc said:
It will depend on the amount of thrust required to lower the thing down and maybe to lift the whole thing back up again as to how much in the way of rocks and rubble gets thrown about and how far and how high the rubble gets thrown.
The damage to the engines on the very first Starship launch was caused by the pad under the exhaust distintegrating under the thrust pressure. That was supposedly a properly, bonded and strengthened concrete pad.
The moon won't have such things for a long time. It's lumpy, bumpy, loose and slopey.
I just can't see tall structures working well in such situations.
The launch mass and thrust of a lunar Starship are a fraction of the (5000T) full super heavy/Starship stack. Then factor in that that mass is then divided by six again. The damage to the engines on the very first Starship launch was caused by the pad under the exhaust distintegrating under the thrust pressure. That was supposedly a properly, bonded and strengthened concrete pad.
The moon won't have such things for a long time. It's lumpy, bumpy, loose and slopey.
I just can't see tall structures working well in such situations.
It’s not even remotely comparable.
I’d say that NASA and SpaceX have such calculations well in hand.
You do have form for massively underestimating SpaceX, Eric.
The first unmanned SpaceX Moon lander demonstrator isn't actually required to take off again by NASA. A successful landing is all that's required. The landing rockets are all mounted high up as well don't forget, so blasting the lunar surface should be kept to a minimum.
More on the IM-1 lander with a couple of crappy photos they're released:
More on the IM-1 lander with a couple of crappy photos they're released:
Eric Mc said:
essayer said:
So was this a failure? Or success?
I'd say, partial success.I’d describe it as an almost total failure , made much worse than the crowing about it.
Compare and contrast with SLIM which although it crashed (through the most random failure: an engine bell falling off) at least worked pretty well.
There’ve been a couple of ropey images from the pre-landing phase they’ve managed to downlink but no proof any instruments actually work.
Anyway - it’s a “failure” vote from me. I feel bad saying it as it represents a lot of work by a lot of very clever people, but I fail to see how you can spin it any other way.
Always cautious, that's me.
So far, they have had the luxury (and also the methodology) of being able to fail and fix fast. They can't use that technique when there are people sitting on top of their devices.
I am pretty convinced that their moon landing model is very wrong. They can't launch, crash, fix, launch again, crash again, fix again when all this is happening 250,000 miles away and NASA are sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting with trained crews ready to go to the moon.
I was always dubious about using Starship as a lunar lander.
On the other hand, I'm more than happy for them to succeed and me to be proved wrong.
So far, they have had the luxury (and also the methodology) of being able to fail and fix fast. They can't use that technique when there are people sitting on top of their devices.
I am pretty convinced that their moon landing model is very wrong. They can't launch, crash, fix, launch again, crash again, fix again when all this is happening 250,000 miles away and NASA are sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting with trained crews ready to go to the moon.
I was always dubious about using Starship as a lunar lander.
On the other hand, I'm more than happy for them to succeed and me to be proved wrong.
hidetheelephants said:
Eric Mc said:
I was always dubious about using Starship as a lunar lander.
It could be done, but why not land it sideways? Are they all Tintin obsessives like me? Maybe it's just deeply ingrained in the human psyche that rockets are supposed to land that way.
SpudLink said:
I can't remember which documentary I was watching, but when he was interviewed the head of the European Space Agency had the rocket from Destination Moon on his desk.
Maybe it's just deeply ingrained in the human psyche that rockets are supposed to land that way.
I love that rocket - I actually tweeted a pic of it to Musk suggesting that they really should launch a starship with that paint job. It’d be epic! Maybe it's just deeply ingrained in the human psyche that rockets are supposed to land that way.
Dog Star said:
Eric Mc said:
So far, they have had the luxury (and also the methodology) of being able to fail and fix fast. They can't use that technique when there are people sitting on top of their devices.
<cough> Dragon. The thing is that they might be doing a lot of falling over and blowing up ON THE MOON - which makes things quite a bit more difficult and expensive - and no doubt means it will take longer to get right.
Don't forget, the original plan was for Starship to be landing humans on the moon THIS YEAR. Now, that was always rather optimistic. Now they are saying 2026. That is still way too optimistic. If they do it by 2030 I'll be surprised.
As for horizontal landing - NASA did consider it for Apollo when they still favoured the "Direct Ascent" idea. They were worried even then that anything too tall might tip over.
The direct ascent Apollo spacecraft was BIG -
Look at the angle the Apollo 14 Lunar Module ended up at. Would a Starship cope with that?
The direct ascent Apollo spacecraft was BIG -
Look at the angle the Apollo 14 Lunar Module ended up at. Would a Starship cope with that?
dukeboy749r said:
I'm with Eric on this.
Until you can build a suitable landing pad on the Moon, you are far better off (and safer) landing either horizontally or a much shorter, squat lander.
Eric said these exact things about landing boosters - never work, fall over, better just parachute them into sea, horizontal blah blah. Until you can build a suitable landing pad on the Moon, you are far better off (and safer) landing either horizontally or a much shorter, squat lander.
Proven utterly wrong - and here we have a far far stronger gravity well to consider, frictional heating, winds, pitching seas and a target landing zone about the size of a tennis court.
Far more qualified people than anyone on here have decided the 120’ lander is good. And far more qualified people at NASA agreed. They’ve got a lot more resources, money and experience.
For what it’s worth for the first missions at least I’d have thought they could have used a sort of “Staship Lite” as I mentioned above; a shorter, stubbier version. They won’t need the size or tonnage and hence the fuel. Maybe things will change? But for now a bunch of rocket scientists say Starship; I doubt they need to listen to a load of blokes on the internet.
Eric does seem to have changed his tune, going back to the first page of the SpaceX Tuesday thread he actually argues the exact opposite points to those he’s making above, one example being…
Eric in 2015 said:
And I would argue that a lower gravitational field and less of an atmosphere makes a rocket controlled landing IMMEASURABLY easier precisely BECAUSE the weight and fuel requirements are so much less. Aerodynamic factors can also be ignored when coming down in a vacuum.
So based on almost a decade of almost flawless landings (in fact the Block V has been 100%) I would say they might know what they’re doing…We shall see. I don't mind being wrong.
But I suspect that the spacecraft engineers of the 1960s, who really WERE flying their craft into the unknown, came to the correct conclusions when it came to certain aspects of their ship designs.
I cannot recall any lunar lander of that first generation falling on its ear after touchdown. We seem to be having a number of such instances now.
On a separate note, before the embarrasing tip over, Odysseus managed to send back some nice pre-touchdown images, which makes it all the more galling that it fell on its face.
But I suspect that the spacecraft engineers of the 1960s, who really WERE flying their craft into the unknown, came to the correct conclusions when it came to certain aspects of their ship designs.
I cannot recall any lunar lander of that first generation falling on its ear after touchdown. We seem to be having a number of such instances now.
On a separate note, before the embarrasing tip over, Odysseus managed to send back some nice pre-touchdown images, which makes it all the more galling that it fell on its face.
Dog Star said:
dukeboy749r said:
I'm with Eric on this.
Until you can build a suitable landing pad on the Moon, you are far better off (and safer) landing either horizontally or a much shorter, squat lander.
Eric said these exact things about landing boosters - never work, fall over, better just parachute them into sea, horizontal blah blah. Until you can build a suitable landing pad on the Moon, you are far better off (and safer) landing either horizontally or a much shorter, squat lander.
Proven utterly wrong - and here we have a far far stronger gravity well to consider, frictional heating, winds, pitching seas and a target landing zone about the size of a tennis court.
Far more qualified people than anyone on here have decided the 120’ lander is good. And far more qualified people at NASA agreed. They’ve got a lot more resources, money and experience.
For what it’s worth for the first missions at least I’d have thought they could have used a sort of “Staship Lite” as I mentioned above; a shorter, stubbier version. They won’t need the size or tonnage and hence the fuel. Maybe things will change? But for now a bunch of rocket scientists say Starship; I doubt they need to listen to a load of blokes on the internet.
But I'm still going with the engineers on this.
Eric Mc said:
I cannot recall any lunar lander of that first generation falling on its ear after touchdown. We seem to be having a number of such instances now.
To be fair the SLIM lander effectively had an engine missing and crashed - its shape had no effect whatsoever on it ending up upside down. That photo with the engine nozzle falling off is something else. So that’s only this IM-1 lander in reality - they admit it came in too fast, wasn’t using the original ranging lasers. I’m not sure that you can predict a trend from a single example. My view is that it just crashed, no matter how they’re trying to frame it to the public.
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