He also answers the question as to why we are having so many landing failures:
“Why does it seem so much harder to land on the moon today compared to 50 years ago?”

His answers (paraphrased): 1. They are choosing a much harder way to land, in the old days they come straight down, but that meant that they needed more propellant to counter lunar gravity, and the engines had to be larger.

2. The trajectories needed for the orbits to the moon also required the rockets to throw the spacecraft much faster, meaning a more expensive launch vehicle.

3. AThe old spacecraft only needed to cary a small payload, a camera, but today they are trying to put a lot more payload on the landers.

My thoughts about the unmanned landers vs Apollo is that each of the Apollos that landed were manually landed, not by the preprogramed computer. Similar to David M. Cook’s comment, the astronauts avoided hazardous conditions at their landing sites, but today’s unmanned landers are having difficulties identifying hazards. One landed within a crater.

The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values.

Why the delays? Could it be that the computers have been made with such complex software that data is not processed fast enough? Astonishing simplicity was required on the 1960s spacecraft, but these days everyone is comfortable using huge operating systems and massive (figuratively) software that takes simple tasks and makes them complex.

Pretty sure J.S. was referring to the six landers that actually descended to and landed on the surface under manual control.

Apollo 10 does not count, as they deliberately aborted at altitude above the surface.

Apollo was impressive, but things could have easily gone MUCH worse.

Pretty good success ratio for that point in history. Heck, it would be a ratio that NASA would be delighted to get from its CLPS landers now!

agimarc: You are wrong about both the Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters. NASA built seven Surveyors, and six successfully landed, including the first.

All five Lunar Orbiters reached the Moon and operated in orbit, as expected.

None used laser altimeters. All were built with slide rules.

Correct on Apollo, though they learned a lot from the Rangers, Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters they splattered on the moon for years before Apollo 10. Rangers were intended to impact. Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters weren’t, though some did. Appears some of those lessons didn’t make it thru the 60 years to today.

OTOH, one of the things about new commercial space is learning how to break stuff before learning how not to. Of course, you have the other constraint of trying not to run out of $$$ during that process. Cheers –

Tell you what, though, Resilience sent back some awesome imagery from orbit.