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Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Coming Soon: The moon's first 7-11

NEW DELHI -- India on Wednesday landed a spacecraft near the moon's south pole, an uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold vital reserves of frozen water and precious elements, as the country cements its growing prowess in space and technology.

25 comments:

  1. If Neil Armstrong where alive today, he'd be excit3ed at the prospects oof grabbing a Slurpee and lotto tickets.

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  2. India made it!
    India has a middle class bigger than the whole US population, they are a nuclear power, they have now landed on the moon... the world is changing, hang on!

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  3. Congratulations to ISRO.
    On the other hand, that article says "According to a failure analysis report submitted to the ISRO, the crash was caused by a software glitch." Which is only vaguely accurate. It would be more accurate to say that the engineers writing the software to perform the landing assumed that everything would go according to plan. As anyone who's every done anything complicated and difficult will tell you, nothing ever goes completely according to plan. Their problem was that they designed the software and provided it just enough topological data to cover their proposed landing site. When their craft strayed beyond the limits of their data, it only tried to get back within its bounds, which turned out to be physically impossible, it didn't simply decide 'oops, plan b, the new landing spot is THERE'. I believe if they had done so, they would have landed succesfully in 2019.

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    1. I remember watching the Apollo moon landings on TV. In at least one of them, they overshot the mapped landing area, and the astronaut piloting was looking for a clear landing spot as the rocks flew by underneath at thousands of mph. So this is the same as before, only it's a robot with inflexible programming.

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  4. “Tandori base here. Apu has landed.”

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    1. " one large curry for all mankind "

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  5. Alright, Ken, that 7-11 comment moved me to LMFAO. Perhaps Apu from The Simpsons will greet the first lunar customers, "Greetings! It 'tis written you will buy de slurpee and not a liquid drink to prevent spillage! That will be a charge of 8300 rupees (~$USD100)!! We are green on teh moon so straw/spoon is not plastic!! Thank you come again!!"

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  6. I saw that they had done this but your header about the 7-11 is hilarious. I didn't know that their space program was this advanced. As the world's number 2 most populous nation, no doubt the Biden administration will be sending India several billion dollars to help feed their starving people, as the government used the money to pay for their version of SpaceX.
    I didn't think that using NASA as a comparison was ok, because they actually accomplished something.
    Unless a previous Republican starts a project with a clear plan in place to both follow and to pay for it, American space program via NASA doesn't have a great track record as of late. With China and the Russian Federation as our opponents who are willing to use space as a modern battlefield, we can't afford to sit on the sidelines and watch without also being involved. I thought that our Space Force as another military branch was a joke. Apparently someone in the Oval Office had some information that I didn't. And had the guts to act on it.

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    1. NASA has a bad track record? No way!!!!! Millions of dollars spent on 'space' come back to Congress as (re)election 'contributions'. And then we build 'new' 'rockets' using 1970s designed engines.
      Go Elon! Elon and SpaceX want to go to space, Congress wants to spend money.
      Clear objectives.

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  7. I wonder if I look at the moon with a telescope I will see a big "big gulp" sign.

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    1. Remember Robert Heinlein's story "The Man who Sold the Moon"? It was about a privately-funded moon landing. The entrepreneur asked Coca-Cola to buy shares to prevent 7-Up from buying in and having "7-UP" painted across the moon.

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  8. Yep. The first 7-11 and the first democrats shoplifting $950.

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  9. We could elect Ramasmarmy and import more Indians. They already run the IT industry. Let's give'm Space.

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    1. Oh, fuck no. Everytime I turn to YouTube to chase down a computer glitch, it's some dot-type narrating, talking ninety to nothing and I can't understand a word he's saying.

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    2. Henry, you misspelled 'ruin'.

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  10. The man in the moon gets curry heartburn...

    CC

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  11. Wait, weren't the blaqqs in Baltimore promised "Space" to destroy? Who do these upstart Hindu Nuffins think they are, muscling in on Da'Vonte and La'Trina's turf?

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    1. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet . Da'Vonte and La'Trina , approve dis message !

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  12. NASA forgot how to send people to the Moon.
    Didn't keep the Apollo notes.
    Apu, good luck!

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  13. The first review of the first Indian restaurant on the moon: "The food was good, but there's no atmosphere."

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  14. 24 hours from now, we'll start getting the first scam phone calls.

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  15. Eating Indian food and then being stuck in a spacesuit? What could possibly go wrong?

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    Replies
    1. BadFrog, there is a good, sensible reason why astronauts wear Depends!

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  16. Quote" I'm so glad to be being in this country"....

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