US Moon Lander fails as Japan succeeds

Team Comedy (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Noor Al-Sibai (Futurism); Dick Speed (The Register)

NASA’s new moon lander is turning into a disaster (Futurism/msn.com)

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Stars suddenly visible? That pale blue dot is BS.

Once upon a time a group of American scientists went to an international tech conference in Tokyo, bragging about how great capitalism is for scientific advances.

• While we were raised to believe that an odyssey is a "journey," it is actually an Ancient Greek word for "agony," according to Homeric translator and author Emily Wilson.
• NASA's big reveal: Odysseus lunar lander captured in alleged orbit photo and images before it dies

CGI or artist's rendition of Japan's SLIM

But then they saw what the Japanese had built with government support to land on the moon and rove around. They were abashed, so they bragged about future plans for their next project after conquering the Moon.

"What's that?" the Japanese scientists asked the Americans, curious about getting to the next celestial body. "Mars, Venus?"

 "The Sun!" the Americans boasted.

The Japanese were dumbfounded at America's great boldness.

"But how," one Japanese engineer inquired, "will you overcome the heat?"

The American team scoffed, "Ha, that's easy! We'll be landing at night."

The Japanese team giggled behind the American team's back, "We'll concentrate on the Moon."

"Whatever," the U.S. team dismissed the other science teams, "we've already conquered the Moon! We can do it again easy. We have Elon Musk!"

"Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,

Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!

Sudden, these honours shall be snatch'd away,

And curs'd for ever this victorious day.

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown'd,

The [walkies] crackle, and the mill turns round.

On shining altars of JAPAN they raise

The silver lamp; the [SLIM lander doth] blaze."

-Alexander Pope, "The Rape of the Lock"

• Japan’s moon lander SLIM survives 2-week lunar night after landing, wakes up. responds to commands, sends photos (The Guardian)
• JAXA: Moon lander SLIM comes back to life and resumes mission as USA lays limp upon the dusty surface, helpless and embarrassed (BBC)

Look, you can even see the curvature of our moon

The private capitalist company Intuitive Machines -- backed by NASA technology, boosted by Elon Musk's private SpaceX Corporation launcher -- has failed miserably in its propaganda campaign of pretending to land on the moon a second time 52 years after putting the USSR to shame with fake footage of a first landing. What can we do? I know! Let's throw more money at the problem. That fixes everything. Who cares that everyone is trying to claim the lunar surface or that the Earth's satellite is hollow, watery, and full of enslaved beings! We're cleared to take the surface, if we can get to it. And Eric Dubay says we can't, even if it's actually very close and smaller than we've been told.

• LANDER BLUES: NASA's new Moon lander may have touched down in one piece, but the story keeps getting more embarrassing and underwhelming for the space agency. Intuitive Machines, the company that built the Odysseus lander, said in a series of updates posted on its website and on X (Twitter) that although the craft is online and beaming images back to Earth, its operators believe it won't be able to keep up communications for much longer [as the battery dies and fails to get charged by solar panels].
• Machine breaks through digging HS2’s longest tunnel
• American Odysseus probe moonwalking on the edge of battery life after [tipping over] (Dick Speed, The Register, 2/27/24) Controllers estimate 10-20 hours remain for Intuitive Machines lander. Intuitive Machines' Odysseus Lunar Lander is facing another countdown. This time the question is how much longer it can continue to operate until it exhausts what remains of the battery life.… On Monday, flight controllers reckoned they had until Tuesday morning before communication with the lander [died and] ceased [until Japan's SLIM can come by and give it a nudge, lift, or something]. At the time of writing, controllers hoped there might be as much as 10-20 hours of battery life remaining. While the landing has been called a success, surviving a few days on the lunar surface is far from the original plan of seven days or more before the lunar night arrived and Odysseus ceased operations. The question now is exactly how much work the stricken lander can actually do on the Moon, considering it is on its side -- or "on the wonk," as one space agency insider memorably told us to put it more nicely -- with its battery life fast depleting. According to Intuitive Machines, the lander has "efficiently sent payload science data and imagery in furtherance of the Company's mission objectives." More

Nearby "super-Earth" discovered in space

MSN.com, July 31, 2019; Pat Macpherson, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Illustration: Astronomers discover a nearby super Earth, but is it habitable or glacial?

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A potentially habitable “super-Earth” has been discovered just 31 light-years away from our solar system, astronomers announced Wednesday [7/31/19].

The planet, named GJ 357 d, is about six times larger than Earth and orbits the dwarf sun GJ 357, much smaller than our own, every 55.7 days.

The international team of astronomers that discovered the planet said in a news release that it could “provide Earth-like conditions.”

“With a thick atmosphere, the planet GJ 357 d could maintain liquid water on its surface like Earth, and we could pick out signs of life with telescopes that will soon be online,” Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell U. and associate professor in astronomy, said in a statement. More

Buddhists in Space

The Long-March II-F rocket is assembled at a workshop at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu province 8/10/08. Astronauts readying for China's next leap into space have arrived at the launch site of the Shenzhou 7 craft, official media reported, as enthusiasm grew over the Olympic host nation's next attention-grabbing feat (Reuters/Stringer).

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Ignored, denied, or discounted by artificial technicalities, Buddhists in fact comprise one of the largest religions in the world. More than a billion Buddhists are regularly left out of the count. For one thing, American analysts do not recognize that Asians regularly uphold more than one religious affiliation. For another, official Communist party census takers do not ask or care about religious affiliation. It would rather there were no affiliation, and monotheistic traditions are happy to see their counts appear to trump all contenders in the absence of a viable alternative.

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The Shenzhou-7 manned spaceship, the Long-March II-F rocket and the escape tower are transferred to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, in Gansu province, 9/20/08 (Stringer/Reuters).

What is in fact the fastest growing religion? That changes month to month from place to place. It's probably always been Animism. But Catholicism is almost certainly the largest official faith. No one discounts its numbers on account of the dual-affiliations of its many adherents in third world countries. For example, Haitian, Central and South American, and African Catholics hold many pre-Christian beliefs in spite of the colonialism that brought Catholicism to them when soldiers and missionaries co-conquered them with guns and Bibles. Those pre-Christian (and quite un-Christian) beliefs still thrive in Catholic guise — such as the worship of a large pantheon of gods using Catholic saints as their representations.

The billion plus uncounted Buddhist are mainland Chinese, who also adhere to a Taoist philosophy and Confucian social principles. Buddhism is part and parcel of the Chinese zeitgeist, and Buddhism is the light of Asia. Therefore, as China develops and expands its space presence, so Mahayana Buddhists move into space. And that includes, politically and philosophically, Vajrayana Buddhists from Mongolia and Tibet (semi-autonomous regions of China).

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The Shenzhou-7 manned spaceship 9/20/08 (Reuters/Stringer).

China's third manned mission to include spacewalk
Christopher Bodeen (AP)

BEIJING — China this week launches its most ambitious space mission yet, a sign of rising confidence as Beijing cements its status as a space power and potential future competitor to the United States.

The Shenzhou 7 mission, to launch as early as Thursday, will be the first to carry a full complement of three astronauts, one of whom will perform China's first space walk, or EVA for "extra-vehicular activity." It is China's third manned mission.

The maneuver will help China master docking techniques needed for the construction of a space station, likely to be achieved initially by joining one Shenzhou orbiter to another. The mission launches from the Jiuquan launch site in northwestern China. The lead astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, is expected to carry out the 40-minute spacewalk, which China will broadcast live.

"Shenzhou 7 is an incremental but important step forward," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on the Chinese space program at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island.

Riding a wave of pride and patriotism after hosting the Olympics, China's communist leaders face few of the public doubts or budgetary pressures constraining such programs elsewhere. That has allowed them to fuse political will and scientific gusto in a step-by-step process that could one day see Chinese astronauts landing on the moon.

Chinese space programs are methodically moving forward in a "very deliberate, graduated" manner, said Charles Vick, a space analyst for the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org. Beijing is accumulating the building blocks of a comprehensive program, demonstrating "caution but confidence" as it gains on the U.S. and other space powers, he said.

Future goals are believed to include an unmanned moon landing around 2012, a mission to return samples in 2015, and possibly a manned lunar mission by 2017 — three years ahead of the U.S. target date for returning to the moon. A manned lunar program, although yet to be formally approved, is "certainly the ultimate goal," Johnson-Freese said.

First, Chinese scientists need to put the final touches on the new generation Long March 5 rocket capable of launching 25-ton components for a space station or future lunar missions.

Once that happens, Johnson-Freese said she expects further progress to come rapidly.

"When the new vehicle is ready, China wants to be ready too," she said. Shenzhou craft are currently flung into space by a Long March 2F rocket, the workhorse of the Chinese fleet, with 66 consecutive successful launches.

The first manned Shenzhou mission in 2003 saw China join the United States and former Soviet Union as the only nations capable of launching astronauts into space.

From the start, China has focused squarely on high-payoff areas where it can match or exceed the achievements of others. That garners new capabilities while maximizing the political impact, something observers sometimes call "techno-nationalism."

All along, China has relied heavily on homegrown technology, partly out of necessity. China has trouble obtaining such technology abroad due to U.S. and European bans and is not a participant in the International Space Station.

The Shenzhou ships closely resemble Russia's three-module Soyuz capsule, but have been completely re-engineered and enlarged. China's team of 14 astronauts, sometimes called "taikonauts" from the Chinese word for outer space, are trained at Chinese facilities.

Veteran chief designer Qi Faren says China's systems, while basic, have been carefully designed for safety and reliability.

"What we're proud of is that, although we're not the best, it's our own, and its very Chinese," Qi, 75, said in an interview published in Monday's Beijing News.

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Astronauts readying for China's next leap into space have arrived at the launch site of the Shenzhou 7 craft, official media reported (Reuters/Stringer).

File photo shows China's Shenzhou ll module being loaded on to the booster rocket unit prior to its launch in Jiuquan, northwest China. A 42-year-old fighter pilot has been chosen to become the first Chinese person to walk in space, with the historic mission set for 9/25/08, the government has said (AFP/Xinhua/File).