> One of the lander's main engines lost thrust about 50 meters (54 yards) above the moon surface, causing a harder landing than planned.
When I first heard that they might have landed upside down, a part of me felt a pang of indignation and condescension, for about ten seconds. But I kept my mouth shut and realized these things are hard and something I didn't think of in the ten seconds as an armchair lander-designer might have occurred.
I found the tone of your comment pretty condescending, tbh. Hot landing is hot landing, and you're just speculating as a layman without any insight into their design and decision-making process. "Not simulating lunary gravity correctly." Like c'mon, that's just an insult to their intelligence.
Well, I did also mention stiffness which would relate to how much of a shock absorber effect there would be - preventing a bounce, so if they came in hard, that may indeed have been a factor. Maybe more to the point, it seems to be a fairly unforgiving mode of landing - maybe a NASA "bouncing ball" landing would have absorbed the harder landing without issue ?
> One of the lander's main engines lost thrust about 50 meters (54 yards) above the moon surface, causing a harder landing than planned.
When I first heard that they might have landed upside down, a part of me felt a pang of indignation and condescension, for about ten seconds. But I kept my mouth shut and realized these things are hard and something I didn't think of in the ten seconds as an armchair lander-designer might have occurred.
I found the tone of your comment pretty condescending, tbh. Hot landing is hot landing, and you're just speculating as a layman without any insight into their design and decision-making process. "Not simulating lunary gravity correctly." Like c'mon, that's just an insult to their intelligence.