• Skelectus@suppo.fi
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    9 months ago

    I think it’s pretty impressive they managed to do a soft KSP-style landing without an engine nozzle.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, that’s the bigger deal. They lost an engine and still managed a soft landing. They just landed upside down – but the solar cells might still work.

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s actually amazingly impressive! In contrast, in the past few years Israel, India and even Russia have had disappointing failures trying to land on the moon - not because they’re engineers aren’t as good, but because it’s just really freaking hard to get right and a lot of unexpected things can happen.

      The Japanese team lost an engine nozzle and with it about 40% of their thrust as they were mid landing. Losing 1 out of 2 engines is the kind of critical malfunction that usually dooms a mission (like it did once for India); but regardless, their software was able to adjust on the fly, automatically switch into a different flight mode, and still put the lander exactly where they wanted it.

      This is a remarkable success where so many talented others have failed. In a couple of weeks, the sun will be shining from the right direction to hit their solar panels and their mission should continue!

    • Zron@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Having played rp-1 and had multiple landers slam into the moon at 2 km/s due to random engine failures, having the probe simply be upside down is quite fortunate.

      Now I want to play RP-1 again. Never did manage to get to a manned mars mission that survived.

        • Zron@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Mod for KSP.

          All the fun of building KSP rockets, and all of the pain of real rocket engines, part masses, ullage, life support for crew, and reliability issues.

          You do get to see the real solar system in RP1 too, so it’s a lot of fun. Just can be kind of painful some times.

            • Zron@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              If you’ve never modded KSP before, a word of warning: Use CKAN. It’s a mod manager for ksp.

              You want RP1-express install.

              RP1 is a big mod, it has a lot of dependencies, and installing everything manually will be very frustrating.