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Why it’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon
When the robotic lander Odysseus last month became the first U.S.-built spacecraft to touch down on the moon in more than 50 years, it toppled over at an angle. That limited the amount of science it could do on the lunar surface, because its antennas and solar panels were not pointed in the correct directions. Just a month earlier, another spacecraft, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, sent by the Japanese space agency, had also tipped during landing, ending up on its head. Philip Metzger, a former NASA engineer who is now a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, explained the math and the physics of why it is more difficult to remain standing on the moon. “I’ve actually gone through calculations, and it’s really scary,” Metzger said last week on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “The side motion that can tip a lander of that size is only a few meters per second in lunar gravity.” (One meter per second is a bit more than 2 mph.) Odysseus was supposed to land vertically with zero horizontal velocity, but because of problems with the navigation system, it was still moving sideways when it hit the ground. Dr. Metzger’s calculations suggested that for a spacecraft like Odysseus, the landing legs need to be splayed about two and a half times as wide on the moon as on the Earth to counteract the same amount of sideways motion. If, for example, six feet wide were enough for landing on Earth at the maximum horizontal speed, then the legs would have to be 15 feet apart in order not to tip on the moon at the same sideways speed. For simplicity of design, the landing legs of Odysseus did not fold up, and the diameter of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that lifted it to space limited how wide the landing legs could spread out.“So, on the moon, you have to design to keep the sideways velocities very low at touchdown, much lower than you would if landing the vehicle in Earth’s gravity,” Dr. Metzger wrote on X.
The New York Times
‘A Joyous Responsibility:’ How One of Chick-fil-A’s Youngest Operators Got Involved with the Chain
Chick-fil-A restaurants in the Orlando market occasionally partner with the Opportunity Jobs Academy, which offers disadvantaged and at-risk high school teens and young adults the chance to engage with business leaders for mentoring and education. Skills taught in this program include how to interview for a job, how to present themselves in public, how to network, etc. When an OJA group recently visited Holly Rivera’s Chick-fil-A restaurant in Orlando’s Lake Nona community, they were a bit surprised. They couldn’t believe how young she was, or that she was a woman, or Hispanic. “Wait, you’re the owner?” one participant asked. For Rivera, having the opportunity to show this diverse group the possibilities in front of them was very meaningful. “I think of it as a joyous responsibility, not a heavy responsibility,” she said during a recent interview. Rivera’s path to becoming a Chick-fil-A owner/operator in Lake Nona three and a half years ago is paved with serendipity. She studied hotel and restaurant management at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management with an objective of “doing something service oriented.” “I loved people, and I knew if I got that degree, I could be successful by taking care of people. Awesome,” she said. That initial opportunity came from longtime Chick-fil-A operator (and UCF alumnus) Charlie Fish, who is known as an "operator tree with a knack to coach up" by some in the company.
Nation’s Restaurant News