Hacker News Reader

Comment by delphico | Hacker News Reader

ISRO missions to Moon and Mars leveraged Sling-shotting (saves on Fuel and weight of the same to be carried). The Russian probe took a more direct approach landing to the moon.

View on HN

ISRO missions leveraged Hohmann transfers to gradually raise the orbit. It does save on fuel using the Oberth effect. It also has somewhat less uncertainty. However, they were not gravitational slingshots. Have a look at the tweet linked by the other commenter - the probe approaches moon twice. The first approach causes a rather drastic change in velocity and trajectory. It's unlikely that such a change comes from the probe's thrusters alone. I assume that the second approach and capture is somewhat mild (tangential as the other commenter put it).

In comparison, the Chandrayaan and Mars orbiter missions approached their target only once. And the insertion was also somewhat drastic, with a long retro-burn.

One could say it was somewhat too direct :)

It was a highly successful special lunar operation.

Of all the recent failures of moon landers, Luna 25 is the most intriguing one. It failed simply because the retro-burn continued too long. It was a simple timed operation, unlike all the complex logic that goes into landing. Makes me wonder about the state of the Russian space programme.

The most recent former head of the agency has apparently expressed skepticism about the US moon landings in 1969 and also has a degree in economics. Allegedly the program has been hollowed out by corruption. Perhaps someone more qualified to comment could shed some light on this?

If you mean Dmitry Rogozin, then yeah, he was a total dick (a part of which he has allegedly lost recently in Ukraine) who peddled all sorts of lies and oversaw the decline of Russian space capabilities.

I wouldn't be surprised if he expressed doubt over the Moon landings considering that he was also the one to push the absurd claim that the hole that had been drilled into a Soyuz was sabotage done by a space-crazed American female astronaut.

This wouldn't be the first time that they've lost a major mission due to a similarly simple root cause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)

The Russian space program is a real mess and a shadow of what it once was.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com