China successfully landed a probe on the moon today. This was the first successful lunar probe mission in over 40 years.

Regardless of your opinion on China, take a moment to appreciate how fucking cool that is.

:xi-clap: :hex-moon:

    • SaberTail [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Honestly, I wish the Soviets had made it to the moon first, so America could stop pretending it "won" something.

      The Soviets had the first satellites, the first animals in space, the first man and woman in space, all sorts of firsts about the moon (landing a craft, taking photos of the dark side, a rover), the first space stations, and some firsts with Mars and Venus. But America is considered the winner (or at least all the propaganda that's been fed to me since birth says so).

      But the US did the national equivalent of yelling "race you to the moon" and get credit for winning a race they invented.

      • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I mean, they did. They had the first spacecraft to *successfully land there (Luna 9.) U.S. are just the first ones to put boots on the ground there.

      • ToastGhost [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        the Soviets also had a cooler shuttle.

        The Buran Shuttle was the Soviet version of the Space shuttle, and was just a fucking upgrade in every way, sadly it didnt see much use outside of a few tests.

        To start with my favorite part, it had jet engines and could fly under its own power! The US shuttle only got one landing attempt. Fuck it up? just die! The Buran could turn around and try again, and could even take off under its own power and transport itself between runways. The Buran could also fly itself with no crew on board, and perform its entire mission takeoff to landing completely automated, another positive for safety. The US Shuttle required there to be a crew on board, and is the only rocket ever that had a crew on its first flight ever, which is quite dangerous considering new and experimental rockets can just explode (looking at you SpaceX).

        Another upgrade was that it instead of carrying giant main engines all the way through its mission, its main engines were attached to the main fuel tank, what would be the orange tank on the US shuttle. The center tank and side boosters were considered their own launch vehicle, called the Energia, and could carry any payload side mounted like a shuttle would be. It was planned for the energia core stage to land itself much like SpaceX does, but this was all the way back in the 80s (Elon Musk is not a creative genius). The side boosters were better too, they were liquid fueled, unlike the US Shuttle which had solid fuel boosters which once lit were unthrottlable, uncontrollable, unextinguishable trash fires. Liquid fuel boosters can vary their thrust and be shut off and re-ignited multiple times. These side boosters were also planned to land and be re-used as well. The Energia rocket had enough payload mass to be capable of putting a moon mission into space, so would the US Shuttle if it were designed to carry anything other than a reusable glider.

        The project was going well, with the Energia launch vehicle itself successful in both of its missions, even if its first payload failed once separated in space. The project only ended because of the end of the USSR. We could have been seeing booster landings and a return to the moon by the early 2000s if the USSR were still around.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia

    • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      6 months from now: GIANT NEWS IN THE US AS THEY LAND THE FIRST SUPER-PROBE ON THE MOON, THE ONLY MOON LANDING OF SIGNIFICANCE IN THE PAST 40 YEARS!

      • opposide [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Weird how when the US made way for private companies to be the next step in space exploration they have accomplished nothing. made Elon musk $100 billion since January 2020

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Starship is genuinely an amazing accomplishment by the workers of Space X (Musk can fuck off out the nearest airlock) but I admit feeling a certain pleasure watching that aluminium tower sit idle on the pad because they cut corners on the pad concrete and shards fucked their engines up.

              • Melon [she/her,they/them]
                ·
                4 years ago

                The current heat shielding strategy for SpaceX is to move away from the conventional use of ceramic plates and instead have "pores" throughout the rocket that bleed rocket fuel in order to keep the unit cool enough for reentry. https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-bleeding-transpirational-atmospheric-reentry-system-challenges-2019-2

                The issues are numerous since it's untested grounds and a not-so-hypothetical scenario where the pores are warped or clogged would lead to disaster. The stainless steel being used for the body (melting point being around 1300 degrees Celsius) wouldn't do so well in atmospheric reentry (where temperatures reach up to around 1500 degrees Celsius at the cone). It's not impossible, but it may soon prove to be unreasonable to attempt.

    • SSJBlueStalin [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      it's really amazing how bad we are at it. Especially when you think how up our assess we are about it.