Odysseus Flops

From Space.com, “The private Odysseus lander is down on the lunar surface, in more ways than one. The 14-foot-tall (4.3 meters) Odysseus, which was built by Houston company Intuitive Machines, apparently settled on its side during its historic touchdown yesterday (Feb. 22), mission team members said. But don’t panic — the pioneering spacecraft is still very much alive.” Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the days when only NASA went to Mars, the Moon, or into L2 Earth orbit and actually did so successfully. Maybe I’m spoiled by government achievements such as Mars Pathfinder (1996), Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity (2003), Phoenix Mars Lander (2007), Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover)(2011), Mars InSight Lander (2018), Mars Perseverance Rover (2020), and the James Webb Space Telescope (2022). To be sure, NASA has had its fair share of failures, even recently, but not many. And I find it mildly amusing that Intuitive Machines is trying to convince us that a lander on its side is “alive and well” and “still functioning.” What part of their plan and which scientific experiments were intended to be conducted with a spacecraft tipped over? Except for the lander’s ability to communicate, the machine is worthless. I don’t know what they hope to achieve or claim as success. Sure, the lander did not crash and burn, so I guess that is something. I’m not necessarily against commercial or privatized space exploration, but maybe in the advancement of humanity, we should leave it to We the People.