
India Acknowledges Lunar Lander Crashed - wglb
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/782890646/2-months-after-failed-moon-landing-india-admits-its-craft-crashed
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zeta0134
Condolences on the failed landing. That it got as far as it did continues to
be a fantastic achievement. Space is _hard._ Good to hear that enough data was
recovered to establish the cause of failure; that means it wasn't a total
loss. Nothing to do but learn from it and move forward.

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dreamcompiler
Landing on the moon is very hard.

Landing on the moon without a human at the controls is even harder.

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Aperocky
That's arguable, the Soviets landed a rover in 1970 and it worked for about a
year. Nobody regarded that as a greater achievement than American landings on
the moon - and probably because it isn't.

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NikolaeVarius
You forget with the Apollo mission, the fleshy bits came back instead of
staying on the moon.

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jquery
It's really incredibly hard to understate just what a phenomenal
accomplishment the Apollo mission was. I consider it one of the greatest
accomplishments in the history of mankind. Not just sending a human on a
rocket to the moon, but with enough finesse to make it a _round trip_. The
bravery of the astronauts blows my mind. The risks were extreme.

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rsmckinney
And it was accomplished in 1969 — engineering with a slide rule. I wonder what
was different with American culture 60 years ago that enabled such an
achievement?

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maha96
>I wonder what was different with American culture 60 years ago that enabled
such an achievement?

You should read Peter theil's book zero to one then. In the book, he
highlights how the culture have changed from taking deterministic risks to
placing non-deterministic bets all over the place to minimize risks. This
pessimism according to him came due to the numerous bubbles like dot-com
bubble, the real estate crisis, and the clean energy bubble that have gone
bust due to over optimism.

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OnlineGladiator
If we're talking specifically about the Apollo 11 mission, there are quite a
few other differences as well. The obvious one was that it was entirely fueled
by politics to "beat the Russians." The other fact that few people seem to
talk about today is how _incredibly_ dangerous it was. There were many
individual components that had known failure rates - some of them as high as
50% - and if any of them failed everybody would 100% die. Now combine all of
these. Based on the limited testing they did (and don't forget the first
Apollo crew died in training), there was _at best_ a 1/6 chance of the mission
succeeding.

If you had the chance to go to the moon but knew you had about a 10% chance of
success (the odds improved substantially with later missions), would you do
it? And keep in mind, you literally watched your colleagues - the original
crew that was supposed to be the first on the moon - burn to death.

For all intents and purposes, going to the Moon was a military campaign. We
had to do it, even if we killed people in the process (the Russians killed way
more people than we did in their attempts). Americans (I cannot speak for
other countries and cultures) just don't have that mindset anymore, for better
and for worse.

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acqq
> Russians killed way more people than we did in their attempts

I doesn't seem that support for that can be found in Wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-
related_ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-
related_accidents_and_incidents)

"not included are _alleged unreported_ Soviet space accidents, which are
_considered fringe theories by a majority of historians._ "

Maybe you refer to the overall conditions of all those involved in the
projects (construction workers etc)?

Otherwise, I agree with your premise of a military campaign, the moon landing
just wouldn't have happened without all the earlier development of nuclear
missiles. Everything about the rockets, their propulsion and their navigation
was first developed to successfully bomb the planned targets with the nuclear
and thermonuclear warheads.

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OnlineGladiator
> Maybe you refer to the overall conditions of all those involved in the
> projects (construction workers etc)?

This is what I meant, but I worded it very poorly. I appreciate the correction
:)

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mfrw
It takes courage to admit failure. Appreciate the transparency.

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roberson87
They were literally coerced to making the admission by lawmakers, if it
weren't for them they'd still be "analysing data".

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ganitarashid
Being from India myself, I always believed these funds would be better spent
on helping the less fortunate.

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tehlike
I suggest you read this: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-
space.html?...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-
space.html?m=1)

~~~
ganitarashid
Interesting. But I have personally witnessed poverty and people dying of
hunger in front of my very eyes. I’d rather help those people than invest in
failed moon missions.

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ckozlowski
I've seen this argument come up a lot. It inevitably comes up with regards to
foreign aid as well, expeditions, and all sorts of pursuits.

The thing is, sending things to the moon is part of that fight too. Pouring
every last cent into say, food, isn't the best approach. To build an economy
to greater heights, there has to be demand and motivation for great things.
Think of all of the industries and support that is stoaked as part of an
effort like that. There's downward effects that ripple outwards for many, many
degrees. New problems to be solved from just "how do we build a better
flange?" to "how do we feed a staff located at a remote site?". I'm not
talking trickle down economics here, but real impacts on a nation's economy.
And a government can do this very effectivally (provided it does so with
integrity).

The other part to this of course, is that there has to be something to take
pride in, something to point to as an accomplishment, something visible and
concrete. Something your kids can aim for and strive to become. As important
as tackling say, poverty, or homelessness is, those are long term struggles
that are hard to point to and say "see, that!" except over long periods of
time.

So, really, I wouldn't feel bad they tried. They should. Yes, India has many
problems to solve. And there's direct ways they can and should tackle those.
But pursuing endeavors like this is important to, and has an impact on those
immediate problems as well.

I genuinely hope they keep trying and we (the rest of the world citizenry
interested in pushing mankind's exploration starward) hope they succeed next
time. Space travel is hard. Really hard. But they'll get there, and the planet
will be better for it.

(P.S. Read the link to that letter above again.)

