Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

Still photography has gotten more convenient since then, but in the agreeable lighting and atmospheric conditions one would encounter while taking a vacation snap outside at noon Cynthian time, image quality now isn't better than then*

*Unless you're willing to spend $10,000+

Nvidia did a great presentation about the lighting for the original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVP6zDZN7I

it reflects light in (roughly) the direction of light source

so you have /even bigger/ contrast between shadow and its border than you'd expect from "no air to soften shadows with dispersed light"

It's like many of the current LED car and street lights.

[1]: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5415

CGI animations also add blurring, and even your eyes have an integration time that will make fast moving objects blurry. So your brain good at interpolating blurry edges.

> The terminator is where you'll see the most pronounced shadows cast by the lunar features like craters, mountains, and valleys. This is because the Sun is at a low angle relative to the lunar surface, emphasizing the topography and allowing you to see craters and other features in sharp relief

That's huge progress!

I mean, there wasn't really a "reason" to go to the moon in the 60's either. I think I more or less agree with JFK on this:

"Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there'. Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it"

I could try and find a lot of justifications about medical research or something, and those might be cool, but it would be dishonest if I pitched those as a "reason" to go, because I would want us to return even if those reasons weren't there.

Imagine if we never built ISS because putting a space station in Earth's orbit was a solved problem...

Imagine stepping outside into a world where absolutely everything is coated in dark gray copy toner that gets ingrained into all that touches it.

I don’t think I could do it due to the anxiety.

Other options include but are not limited to: Digging massive rivers/canals. Digging a massive harbor. Digging a large hole. Digging through some mountains. Digging holes to store toxic waste.

Truly a revolutionary pair of projects.

For context, there's roughly a 50% chance of an astronaut being hit by a micrometeoroid large enough to kill them every 1.3 million years of time spent on the moon's surface. There's roughly a 50% chance of a square meter of the moon being hit by a micrometeoroid equavalent to 3 kg on TNT in a billion years.

Perhaps somebody thinks it would make a good museum piece back on Earth, or some bored spacefaring teen vandals destroy it for the lulz, or religious norms will change and those in power will blow it up to show their rejection of idols of a now forbidden age.

I'd give it hundreds of years, but not thousands.

Landed craft on the moon often carry reflectors that help laser location of the Moon.

Spacecraft that have spent decades the Moon's surface are also going to give valuable clues about the behavior of their materials in these conditions, if / when someone collects and inspects them. Could save quite a bit of uncertainty for a larger project on the Moon.

Also, isn't basically everything you see on the moon some kind of debris? There are no apparent structures there created by complex, interesting processes, such as life, or by interesting geological processes. The spacecraft would be an aesthetical center of the area :)

On another note, I'm currently reading "Sunburst and Luminary An Apollo Memoir" from Don Eyles, which is a great read that makes you realize the feat it really was at the time.

My main interrogation now (and I've not yet looked anywhere for elements of answer) is why is it so difficult to reproduce with the current tech and scientfic advances ? Is bloatware involved or is the scope really different ?