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Comment by PantaloonFlames | Hacker News Reader

Ya the wording was not quite … satisfactory. I think they meant , it could tell X and Y, but not Z.

But all three are important.

Related - I’m not clear how the article can describe that landing as “not crashing”. If that was not a crash, what was it? Will they call it a crash only if there are Hollywood-style explosions?

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Bringing "Hollywood-style explosions" into it is a little much. If you slam the breaks on in your car, your tires hit some debris in the road, and you spin around and end up somewhere you didn't intend to be, but the car wasn't meaningfully damaged (i.e. you didn't hit other cars or manmade structures), you made a dangerous uncontrolled maneuver, but you didn't crash. That seems more like how they're describing this "skid."

Relevantly, it sounds like this lunar spacecraft was still functioning after the hard (non-)landing. The only reason it died after that was because of debris settling on the solar panels, which made it run out of power.

If you do something with your car that ends up with it skidding on its side, that's a crash by any possible definition.

Probably, but this is a space probe, not a car. It's lighter than a car, and is operating in an environment with less gravity.

"The only reason?" One reason for prematurely losing most of the investment is enough. The car analogy is inadequate but let's say my car skids gently into a position from which it won't start and I can't get out and I slowly die of starvation and/or hypothermia. Am I glad that I didn't "crash?"

I didn't say the mission was a success. I was addressing someone's nitpick over the definition of the word "crash."

If the space probe had a wiring failure after landing that caused the loss of "investment," that wouldn't be a crash. It would be a separate problem.

One of the legs broke off which requires significant forces not just a skid.

I mean if my car lands on the side and one of it’s wheels fell off that’s a significant crash.

The leg breaking off is probably the best supporting evidence towards calling it a crash, I'll agree with that.

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