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Also incredibly inefficient.


First make it work, then make it right, last make it efficient.


It's a lot more efficient than having to send a fourth rocket.


A lot of things in the world trade inefficiencies for safety.


I was surprised they had the propulsion budget for it.


It helps a lot that the Moon's gravity is about 1/6th of Earth's.


Not only was the Chandrayaan 3 budget lesser than that of Chandrayaan 2, as a meme doing the rounds point out, it was lesser than the budgets of some Hollywood blockbusters like Interstellar. So yeah, safe to say they could have had the budget for more if necessary.


"Fuel budget", "mass budget", "payload budget", even "delta-v budget" are common terms in spaceflight and refer to how much of a valuable thing a spacecraft can carry given some pesky laws of physics [1], nothing to do with money (except insofar as more money would let you build a bigger spacecraft…)

[1] https://www.kallmorris.com/columns/tyranny-of-the-rocket-equ...


I don't think they're referring to literal money, but rather that the lander had enough fuel.


This is one reason why low cost and efficiency are just a nice-to-have when it comes to to space exploration. Moreso the farther you go. A unique mission like a lunar polar landing should be conservatively engineered, where that is possible, on the first try. Early optimization and space exploration don't mix.


What numerator and denominator are you using to calculate the efficiency of an unmanned lunar soft landing mission?


The most efficient landing - high impulse reverse gravity turn suicide burn vs. what they did - hovering mid-space two or three times, slowly inching toward ground while fighting gravity.




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