Russia seems to have lost contact with its first lunar probe in half a century

"The management team is currently analyzing the situation."

See full article...

 

[mpotter1024]

Russia's first Lunar mission.

Calling the previous Soviet missions "Russian" is rather inaccurate, especially considering that most of the key people in the Soviet space program were Ukrainian.

Plus Russia is a different legal entity than the Soviet Union. Thus acts or accomplishments under the Soviet Union do not belong to Russia in any legal sense. Just because they speak the same language, have the same culture, maybe institutions with the same name, have the same capital city name, use the same buildings with the same name like the Kremlin does not make it do.

 

[DovePig]

Oh don’t give me that nonsense. First off, processed cheese is still cheese. I’ve seen it made.

Second, I can get better “European” cheeses in America than I can import from across the pond.

Apologies, but if you can't just take a friendly cheesy jab (even if somewhat smelly, I'd admit), it's not exactly my fault. But I am willing to let it pass – please don't acidify our PoV differences, as I don't want our intercontinental friendship to fester. It would be a pita if we soured our relations over such a matter. It's simply better to coagulate together – can't we all just be briends?

Fromage, DovePig.

 

[llanitedave]

Morality is different from ethics, yes. As to whether morality is inferior - that depends on your point of view.

Legal ethics, for example, often results in outcomes that many may consider immoral, such as guilty parties going free.

And similar for medical ethics - for example, if the parents of a sick child are Jehovah's Witness and the child desperately needs blood - medical ethics prevents a doctor from administering it, even if the child will die without it. Is that the moral thing to do?

Ethics is akin to law. Law is often based on "morals" - the prohibition against homicide, for example, but the law is not moral, and its application may result in immoral outcomes.

I admit that my use of the word "ethics" is rather idiosyncratic, and is not the same as legal or medical ethics as officially established. I've actually been casting around a bit for a word to differentiate fundamentally humane and benevolent behavior from "morals," which is anything but objective, even in the ways you used it in your post. I consider morality inferior because it is essentially local -- it's defined by the practices and customs of a particular society. The Aztecs had a moral system quite different than that of the Hindus, for example. When we say something is "immoral" we have to set that within a cultural context.

What I have identified as "ethics" (and if you have a better word I'd love to adopt it) is based on common humanity, which transcends local cultures. The Aztec practices of human sacrifice were good and moral in their own context, but that context was rooted in scientific ignorance, tribal authoritarian hierarchy, and religious superstition. A culture with a scientific understanding of climate, for example, cannot morally justify making human sacrifices to the rain god. So morality is necessarily relative. Since my view of ethics transcends local culture, being based on what is beneficial for humans regardless of their ephemeral and superficial social belief systems, it will subsume morality and transcend it.

The question becomes... can a moral sytem itself be evil? If you make a distinction between morality, and * whatever word you want to use that overlies it* then yes, a moral system can be evil. The Aztec system, the Nazi system, both considered themselves moral, but they could not be ethical under the structure I imagine.

But yeah, it's not the best word I could have chosen.

 

[DovePig]

I admit that my use of the word "ethics" is rather idiosyncratic, and is not the same as legal or medical ethics as officially established. I've actually been casting around a bit for a word to differentiate fundamentally humane and benevolent behavior from "morals," which is anything but objective, even in the ways you used it in your post. I consider morality inferior because it is essentially local -- it's defined by the practices and customs of a particular society. The Aztecs had a moral system quite different than that of the Hindus, for example. When we say something is "immoral" we have to set that within a cultural context.

What I have identified as "ethics" (and if you have a better word I'd love to adopt it) is based on common humanity, which transcends local cultures. The Aztec practices of human sacrifice were good and moral in their own context, but that context was rooted in scientific ignorance, tribal authoritarian hierarchy, and religious superstition. A culture with a scientific understanding of climate, for example, cannot morally justify making human sacrifices to the rain god. So morality is necessarily relative. Since my view of ethics transcends local culture, being based on what is beneficial for humans regardless of their ephemeral and superficial social belief systems, it will subsume morality and transcend it.

The question becomes... can a moral sytem itself be evil? If you make a distinction between morality, and * whatever word you want to use that overlies it* then yes, a moral system can be evil. The Aztec system, the Nazi system, both considered themselves moral, but they could not be ethical under the structure I imagine.

But yeah, it's not the best word I could have chosen.

Now we are getting into philosophy. Ethics are universal, morality is local.

 

[Snarky Robot]

Since my view of ethics transcends local culture, being based on what is beneficial for humans regardless of their ephemeral and superficial social belief systems, it will subsume morality and transcend it.

You are searching for a distinction without a difference. "Common morality" is just as based on cultural norms as anything else. There isn't any (and can not BE any) universal, objective morality, from a truly scientific or logical standpoint. It's all subjective, mostly taught from one generation to the next, and entirely based on preferences. "Survival of the fittest" isn't any more or less objectively correct than "live and let live". One is preferable to most, but that's subjective. Even the method of "ethics" that you're describing just seems to boil down to "least common denominator" morals. In other words, stuff that is common across cultures. But that's frequently just a matter of meeting up with other cultures and existing in the same world in the same time.

It's also largely based on external factors, like availability of resources. If there's a catastrophic, cataclysmic event that makes the world less livable, the majority of societies and cultures will turn inwards. New norms, new morals will be formed. And they will not be any more objectively correct, even if all of them line up perfectly. Same is true in the other way, perhaps, if we establish first contact with a new and (subjectively) more kind species.

The only way you can get to a truly "objective" morality is religion. This is not an advertisement for religion, or a claim that any are correct. Yet it's only in a world where ethics/morals are (literally or figuratively) set in stone that a moral can have been objectively established by an outside entity/presence.

And even then, you can disagree with that entity/presence as to whether their morals are moral. Slaughtering firstborns doesn't need to be moral, after all.

 

[wagnerrp]

Molten aluminum and water have about the same kinematic viscosity so they end up atomizing about the same (I'm speaking from experience here). If you drop a cup of water it will atomize (splash) so yeah, molten aluminum accelerating from 2 km/s to zero in a few meters will too. I'm not suggesting the metal droplets will be 50 microns. They might be several millimeters across. That's still an atomized fluid. And from where I started: pulverized and atomized, I still feel my initial description was right. Ok, nothing not near propellant will vaporize. Fine.

I'm mistaking the term "atomized" for something more literal, as opposed to just making a fine spray.

 

[a nonny moose]

i think it might be kinda nice if india or indonesia or maybe idaho sent a team up to poke around and see if they can spot anything obvious.

 

[Papewaio]

Ever tried milking a buffalo?

Don't confuse the different buffalo phenotypes!

Also note to self: Just because the buffalo enjoys being milked, does not actually mean you acquire milk...

 

[Papewaio]

I'm mistaking the term "atomized" for something more literal, as opposed to just making a fine spray.

I was confused by the atmomizing event being landing and not launch...

 

[mouseKnuckles]

Don't confuse the different buffalo phenotypes!

Also note to self: Just because the buffalo enjoys being milked, does not actually mean you acquire milk...

Try milking a bison. Good luck.

 

[vep]

I'm a bit torn, I think the efforts around moon exploration is great, I would just as prefer to not have Russia be able use it for propaganda. Consequently, I'm fine with this turn of events

i agree with you and on reflection : the russian people can fuck themselves for letting their country come to this. do a couple of generations of penance and then crawl back to join civilization when you know how to civil. i have no fucking sympathy for the cruel, backwards, cynical fucks enabling their fascist zombie klepto-country. stick the next moon probe up putin's ass and then we can talk

 

[Hydrargyrum]

I wonder if Luna 25 used any of the same types of thruster and/or valve components which were involved in the Nauka module's failure to terminate thrust when commanded to do so.

This seems like it could be the exact same failure happening a second time. Which would certainly smack of carelessness.

I would expect Roscosmos to probably use the same hypergolic propellants on Luna 25 that they're already using on other systems, so maybe some of the same parts were in use... but the thrust and deltaV requirements of Luna 25 would be pretty different from Nauka, so maybe not?

 

[Hydrargyrum]

i agree with you and on reflection : the russian people can fuck themselves for letting their country come to this. do a couple of generations of penance and then crawl back to join civilization when you know how to civil.

After WW2, the Germans (and to a different extent, the Japanese) largely "learned to civil" by having new social structures imposed externally by the victors.

Russia's large nuclear arsenal probably prohibits such an "intervention".

 

[jdale]

Plus Russia is a different legal entity than the Soviet Union. Thus acts or accomplishments under the Soviet Union do not belong to Russia in any legal sense. Just because they speak the same language, have the same culture, maybe institutions with the same name, have the same capital city name, use the same buildings with the same name like the Kremlin does not make it do.

The people didn't change -- except to the extent the borders changed. Renaming and restructuring the government, and changing their flag, doesn't remove their history or erase their accomplishments. Or their failures. Government isn't what defines us.

 

[Hydrargyrum]

The people didn't change -- except to the extent the borders changed. Renaming and restructuring the government, and changing their flag, doesn't remove their history or erase their accomplishments. Or their failures. Government isn't what defines us.

That's true, but it's still important to remember that many things accomplished by the Soviet Union were a joint venture of Russians with other Soviets. In aerospace particularly, that included a lot of Ukrainians! The Russian people are entitled to the historical credit they're due, but not the credit due to non-Russian Soviets.

 

[jdale]

You are searching for a distinction without a difference. "Common morality" is just as based on cultural norms as anything else. There isn't any (and can not BE any) universal, objective morality, from a truly scientific or logical standpoint. It's all subjective, mostly taught from one generation to the next, and entirely based on preferences. "Survival of the fittest" isn't any more or less objectively correct than "live and let live". One is preferable to most, but that's subjective. Even the method of "ethics" that you're describing just seems to boil down to "least common denominator" morals. In other words, stuff that is common across cultures. But that's frequently just a matter of meeting up with other cultures and existing in the same world in the same time.

It's also largely based on external factors, like availability of resources. If there's a catastrophic, cataclysmic event that makes the world less livable, the majority of societies and cultures will turn inwards. New norms, new morals will be formed. And they will not be any more objectively correct, even if all of them line up perfectly. Same is true in the other way, perhaps, if we establish first contact with a new and (subjectively) more kind species.

The only way you can get to a truly "objective" morality is religion. This is not an advertisement for religion, or a claim that any are correct. Yet it's only in a world where ethics/morals are (literally or figuratively) set in stone that a moral can have been objectively established by an outside entity/presence.

And even then, you can disagree with that entity/presence as to whether their morals are moral. Slaughtering firstborns doesn't need to be moral, after all.

There are commonalities across moral systems. Some formulation of the golden rule (either the negative formulation "do not do to others what you do not wish them to do to you" or the positive "treat others as you wish to be treated") is widely present across cultures, history, and religions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule Moral systems consistently assign significant value to human lives, too; people should not be killed without good cause (details of what qualifies as good cause is the part that varies).

I think it's fair to say some portion of morality arises from human nature and the needs of more-or-less rational beings. And some portion of morality arises from historical circumstance and accident. You shouldn't let the latter part keep you from noticing the former.

 

[Veritas super omens]

You can be moral and also be a fun guy.

 

[CenterLess]

Russian space plan moving forward:
0. Skip any and all QC
1. Launch complete garbage into space
2. ????
3. Claim you're number one.

P.S. China, DPRK, Iran, etc. want nothing to do with Russia and just smile and wave, pretending to be helpful to Russia, whilst realizing the current Russian government are inept, dangerous and stupid.

Mathematicians were stunned to find out that the collective IQ of Russian government and agencies is square root of -1. This seemed impossible, yet here we are.

Source: I'm Russian-Canadian, and I get to read their news (propaganda) of "complete" success, in any given situation: military, space, life, you name it.

The principle of square root of -1 is actually valid. Mathematicians for a long time thought it was nonsense and not practical in any way, but it has a huge impact in electrical engineering. Sorry for diverting the conversation.

 

[Deleted member 850282]

I don’t think arming a bunch of fuckwit orcs would do any good…

Read what I wrote. I advocated DISarming the fuckwit orcs, and arming the ordinary russian civilians, the great majority of which want putin and his buddies out.

 

[Deleted member 850282]

You cannot outrun a bad diet.
You cannot out build a bad political environment.

Soviet Union had some of the best engineers, launched the most tonnage to orbit, had some of the most robust hardware in the world. Soviet Union still failed due to its politics.

Roman Engineering was legendary. Rome still fell due to its politics.

Nazi German Engineering was ahead of the Allies. Nazi Germany still fell due to its politics.

China has a rising amount of science and engineering graduates, they also have the unusual situation of having a body politic stuffed with engineering and science trained politicians.

The modern world understands climate change, that includes the fossil fuel companies understanding climate change too. However it isn't getting fixed because of the politics, that includes lobbying by the fossil fuel companies to not do anything.

We are in the messes we are, precisely because we don't have enough engineering and science trained people in politics. So staying in 'our lane' and pretending we shouldn't get involved is part of the problem that got us here and it is not how we get out of the issues we are facing.

The Soviet space program engineering was greatly inferior to the US. Even their early firsts were by only just barely beating the Americans with simpler, inferior spacecraft launched repeatedly until a singular success with increasingly embarrassing stunt firsts. After about 1965, the American engineering was generally far superior. Read Chertok's memoirs on the NASA history page.

Nazi engineering was generally inferior to the allies (nuclear energy, proximity fuse, cavity magnetrons, heavy strategic bombers, cryptography, off the top of my head. Nazis ahead slightly with jet fighters, and lots with the V-2.

 

[Deleted member 850282]

Actually, NASA made far larger craters on the lunar surface during the Apollo program by crashing the S-IVB third stages of the Saturn V. The resulting shock waves were used to calibrate the seismic instruments left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts.

Yes, NASA left bigger craters, but when I close my eyes and imagine Luna 25 digging it's crater, it's just so damn SATISFYING to think about . . .

 

[Deleted member 850282]

Speaking of, the budget in Russia was recently modified so that military spending is now one third of the federal budget.

In contrast, the US military spending, by far the greatest in the world, is about 3% of the budget.

So the county is selling its entire future on this gamble, which has no chance of paying off. The minerals and grain in perpetuity are worth less than they’ve dumped into this.

For further contrast, the US’s ten years in Vietnam cost about 1 billion in total, inflation adjusted, or about 1/23rd GDP or about 2.5% on a yearly basis. That war caused the fall of the gold standard and rampant inflation and the resulting high interest rates of the 1980s that nearly cost our family our house.

So yeah, they can’t afford this but they’re in full HODL mode like a guy with two bored apes.

I'm calling out the numbers here. There is NO WAY the US only spent $100 million a year average in Vietnam. No WAY. Just buying, transporting, storing and pumping the jet fuel alone would blow that budget. And the gold standard in reality was abandoned in the early 1930's, the phrase existed on paper only for a couple decades more. And, I think, the inflation and high interest rates of the 80's were caused by the 70's oil shocks and/or trying to keep a semblance of a balanced budget.

 

[passivesmoking]

So why don't they work for Boeing or Ford or whatever?

Because they work for SpaceX

I think I'm about 10 times more adult than you and the proof of this is that I don't care.

Oh really? Because somebody who's an adult would probably decide that we're just a lost cause and walk away with their dignity intact. Instead you choose to throw a temper tantrum like a Karen demanding to see the manager. Someone who claims to be 60 years old should not be this childish

Fortunately, this whipper-snapper is far more mature than your sorry wrinkled old butt and has now put you on his ignore list. I'm walking away from this. You should do likewise.

 

[Snarky Robot]

Read what I wrote. I advocated DISarming the fuckwit orcs, and arming the ordinary russian civilians, the great majority of which want putin and his buddies out.

Please provide proof of this.

 

[DB63]

The principle of square root of -1 is actually valid. Mathematicians for a long time thought it was nonsense and not practical in any way, but it has a huge impact in electrical engineering. Sorry for diverting the conversation.

No. You're imagining that.

 

[passivesmoking]

Didn't know they sent grunts to Phobos before sending them to Donbas
/s

 

[fcrary]

The principle of square root of -1 is actually valid. Mathematicians for a long time thought it was nonsense and not practical in any way, but it has a huge impact in electrical engineering. Sorry for diverting the conversation.

I'm not sure why you say that. Mathematician invented complex numbers long before electrical engineering existed. It's just a closed group of operations on a pair of numbers. I'm not aware of any mathematicians who considered it nonsense.

 

[passivesmoking]

Being born is not laying your life on the line. It's not like you had a choice in the matter.

Also, if his claimed age was correct, then he wasn't born until decades after the end of WWII and was never at any more threat of being nuked than any of us who were alive at the time were. I think I've seen more inept cases of stolen valour before, but none spring instantly to mind.

 

[Rauth85]

I'm calling out the numbers here. There is NO WAY the US only spent $100 million a year average in Vietnam. No WAY. Just buying, transporting, storing and pumping the jet fuel alone would blow that budget. And the gold standard in reality was abandoned in the early 1930's, the phrase existed on paper only for a couple decades more. And, I think, the inflation and high interest rates of the 80's were caused by the 70's oil shocks and/or trying to keep a semblance of a balanced budget.

Yeah ive heard what was spent on vietnam could have paid for the ship in 2001.

 

[fcrary]

The Soviet space program engineering was greatly inferior to the US. Even their early firsts were by only just barely beating the Americans with simpler, inferior spacecraft launched repeatedly until a singular success with increasingly embarrassing stunt firsts. After about 1965, the American engineering was generally far superior. Read Chertok's memoirs on the NASA history page.

Nazi engineering was generally inferior to the allies (nuclear energy, proximity fuse, cavity magnetrons, heavy strategic bombers, cryptography, off the top of my head. Nazis ahead slightly with jet fighters, and lots with the V-2.

Please explain why the Soviet Union put balloons in the atmosphere of Venus, with a good set of scientific instruments on them, in the 1980s. While no other nation has ever done anything similar.

 

[Factorial]

That's news to me. I've read a number of histories of the Second World War and the Manhattan Project. As far as I know, they never got as far as putting together a list of German targets for atomic weapons. Do you have a reference to support your statement?

https://www.dhm.de/blog/2023/02/28/the-race-for-the-atomic-bomb/
edit Why am I doing this, you're obviously trolling. No mathematicians thinking the square root of negative numbers was weird during the renaissance even when they knew how to solve it... /edit

 

[Factorial]

I'm calling out the numbers here. There is NO WAY the US only spent $100 million a year average in Vietnam. No WAY. Just buying, transporting, storing and pumping the jet fuel alone would blow that budget. And the gold standard in reality was abandoned in the early 1930's, the phrase existed on paper only for a couple decades more. And, I think, the inflation and high interest rates of the 80's were caused by the 70's oil shocks and/or trying to keep a semblance of a balanced budget.

He's confusing billons and trillions.

 

[Papewaio]

Try milking a bison. Good luck.

The joke is about getting the Cow & Bull mixed up...

Edit: My spelling is shite when multi-tasking. Heck it is bad enough when I am mono-tasking...

 

[thrillgore]

I don't give a fuck what people tell me to think. I am going to indulge myself in the schadenfreude of Russia's failed launches and SpaceX explosions due to their misgivings all I fucking want, and celebrate their successes like a human being would because it's fair.

Luna-25 is a successful lunar drilling operation now.

 

[fcrary]

https://www.dhm.de/blog/2023/02/28/the-race-for-the-atomic-bomb/

Very unimpressive. That's a blog by one person about the whole atomic weapons program and which contain a lot of factual errors. With a one sentence mention that "Berlin as well as Mannheim-Ludwigshafen were considered to be potential targets". I wrote that there wasn't an actual target list for Germany. "Considered to be potential targets" isn't even close to being a planned target.

 

[bebu]

Kiev, Lunar South Pole - something large and resilient got in the way - Ukraine, the Moon.

 

[panton41]

Very unimpressive. That's a blog by one person about the whole atomic weapons program and which contain a lot of factual errors. With a one sentence mention that "Berlin as well as Mannheim-Ludwigshafen were considered to be potential targets". I wrote that there wasn't an actual target list for Germany. "Considered to be potential targets" isn't even close to being a planned target.

I heard the "joke" that during the Cold War a "tactical nuclear weapon" was any that fell on Germany.

 

[Mongo McMongo]

I'm calling out the numbers here. There is NO WAY the US only spent $100 million a year average in Vietnam. No WAY. Just buying, transporting, storing and pumping the jet fuel alone would blow that budget. And the gold standard in reality was abandoned in the early 1930's, the phrase existed on paper only for a couple decades more. And, I think, the inflation and high interest rates of the 80's were caused by the 70's oil shocks and/or trying to keep a semblance of a balanced budget.

Yep, Wikipedia numbers for "direct costs" 1953-1974 are $111B US military, $23B economic + military aid, totalling over one trillion in 2015-adjusted dollars. When citizens complained about the economic cost of the war they weren't fussing about 50 cents per year on their taxes...