Life imitates art... · 2:05pm February 27th
So, a privately built and operated space probe became the first US lander to soft-land on the Moon last week- Odysseus.
The problem is, in landing it flopped over on its side, which means two of its antennas ended up pointing at the surface and that its solar panels (hard-mounted to the sides of toe probe) are too low to catch any sunlight after today, meaning its science mission time got cut by more than half and its data cut even more so.
So what happened? Well, NASA and the company who built the probe are still working that out, but in addition to the probe being tall and top-heavy, and in addition to landing on a 12 degree slope, the probe had to use a last-minute improvised landing system because its main landing system failed.
Odysseus was supposed to get rangefinding data on the surface below it through a series of laser rangefinders built into the probe. Two of those lasers failed to activate in orbit of the Moon, forcing the controllers to cobble together a system that could substitute two other, different lasers from one of the NASA science packages on the probe. There was no time to test this improvisation, and it's quite possible that it led to the probe thinking that a heavily slanted (or rock-strewn- we have no images of the surface thanks to the antenna screwup) landing zone was in fact flat and safe.
And today we found out the reason why those two lasers failed.
The lasers have a safety pin that can only be removed by hand, on the ground. That's meant to happen during pre-launch tests to make sure the system works.
The tests never happened. They got skipped for reasons of time (and money).
So, because of cut corners and improvising, a probe barely makes it to its destination with considerable lost functionality and its operational lifespan cut by more than half.
Sound familiar to any of you?
Well, at least there's nobody stuck up there in danger of starvation this time around...
When you cut corners, the corners often come back to cut you.
This is why I dont watch live streams anymore.
Landers should be spherical or tetradedral. that awy theres no argument about which way up theyre supposed to land, or remain.
It is amazing how much human error fits into the category of 'a checklist was skipped'.
I'm pretty sure the Kerbal crowd are already hard at work to replicate the exact nature of the landing, presuming that it hasn't already happened with someone's lander design. And you're right, the whole series of events does sound like something straight out of a story. I'm sure that the Changelings at CSP would feel a certain kinship.
5770105 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4qZQgqgJqg - relevant bit begins about 4:00 in.
Aircraft have streamers on pins that have to be removed before flight. (Watch Top Gun : Maverick for a great example of that.) I suspect this important precaution was skipped for the probe. Also, it probably didn't help that somebody posted this sign on the lander.
It's always this stupid balance: money vs time.
They never once considered the other factor: reliability.
And of course, the saying, "measure twice, cut once".
We're not just wasting money by launching a second probe (probably), we're always wasting all that macro resources like fuel and materials. Not to mention all those micro resources like food, water, and also fuel that humans use daily.
Those times are better spent on other projects rather than repeats for no good reasons.
Even if this is miniscule in terms of global warming, this stupid method of cutting corners has contributed not a small amount of destruction of nature. Just look at all those oil spills and capsized cruise liners and tanker ships for example.
In terms of KSP... yeah, pretty spot on.
I work in the satellite aerospace industry.
Yes, this does sound very familiar.
Gonna say it. Somebody just lost there job. Probably several somebody's
5770122
Considering how much money goes into this I imagine a round of silent layoffs and then a massive campaign internally to smack dumb engineers over the head and say "hey don't do stupid again"
5770122 5770123 For something which was almost certainly a management decision.
5770128
Oh Managment will also see job losses. That's a while lot of lost money and any order to skip steps generally will come from upstairs.
5770128
I wouldn't lay blame on the management yet,just working at fast food and restaurants tells me no matter how good a manger is the low lv employees can still f everything up
Time vs Money is like Safety vs Speed.
Someone always convinces themself something is too small a thing to make a difference to do right and ends up like this:
5770101 And somewhere Twilight Sparkle is nodding smugly to herself.