Comments on: India successfully lands Vikram on the Moon

By: J Fincannon

J Fincannon — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 20:28:01 +0000

Terrific!

I saw that their mission was only for the Sunlit period (they say ~14 days). Too bad. I calculate they will end their mission on Sept 4/8 GMT after 11.87 days. Terrain shadowing.

By: James Street

James Street — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 20:24:26 +0000

It doesn’t surprise me that India has a successful space program. Most of the coders in my department are here on H-1B work visas and over half are from India. They are excellent coders and easy to work with because they are very American in their way of thinking.

On the other hand they are socialists to the point of being commies. Examples are Kshama Sawant and Pramila Jayapal. Back when Trump was president I was sitting at my desk reading one of his books at lunch. A coworker from India walked up to me and asked if Trump wrote it. I said yes. She waved her hand in a circle indicating the whole room and said “Everyone here hates him”.

By: Blair Ivey

Blair Ivey — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 19:31:41 +0000

Shaabaash!

By: David Eastman

David Eastman — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 16:20:51 +0000

It’s interesting that they brought the lander to a horizontal stop several kilometers up and came down on a long slow controlled burn. That seems like the obvious way to do it, but it’s not what most landers have done and I don’t recall that Vikram-1 did that, I recall the earlier attempt being much closer to a hover-slam landing. They must have done a lot of work on the programming, and also found a lot of extra delta-V and testing to assure themselves that the landing thrusters could manage the long burn.

Congratulations to everyone involved! Soft landing on the moon is obviously a big achievement.