Substance and Spectacle
Seeing is believing, and the right images - when they truthfully represent progress - can change the world.
Earlier this week, the Intuitive Machines lander IM-1 “Odysseus” touched down on the surface of the Moon. Despite an instrument failure of its laser rangefinder, worked around with a hasty software patch and one of the on-board experiments stepping in to provide equivalent data, the landing appeared to go well. However, on landing it was slow to contact the ground, it’s signal was weak, and it turned out the lander had fallen over. Thankfully, it still had power and communications, and the experiments on the now upper side of the lander were able to function. A partial success.
I had hoped for this article to have some fantastic images to show. Aboard Odysseus there was a payload called Eaglecam. This is a small, 5kg camera that is ejected before landing in order to take a third-person shot of Odysseus as it touched down. There isn’t a huge amount of scientific merit to it - there are cameras on the lander itself which will are designed specifically for capturing what happens to regolith when the landers engine hits it. Eaglecam is literally just for space selfies.
In addition to the other landing issues, Eaglecam was not ejected prior to landing as planned, and is still attached to the vehicle. Intuitive Machines say they will eject it later and get some images from it, which will be useful to see the exact status of the lander, but ultimately less valuable than its original mission in my opinion. Hopefully they attempt to repeat this experiment with subsequent landers, and get the landing shots.
If we a to assume the the fraction of the launch cost Eaglecam represents is proportional to its fraction of the lander’s mass, then it would have cost around $440,000 to launch to the Moon. Let’s round it up to $500,000 for the total cost, as its not a hugely complicated device. In terms of space hardware, this isn’t that expensive, and will I believe be well worth the cost. The imagery Eaglecam could produce is important, because space projects require support from either big investors, the broader stock market or from government, and none of these groups can be expected to deeply understand the subject. They need a visual proof that something of significance has been achieved.
For instance, years ago there were many people skeptical that the Ingenuity helicopter would work at all. I saw videos criticising the power and thermal systems, claiming it was unlikely to work. I could go through a detailed breakdown of why such critics were wrong - or I could so something quicker and simpler: show a picture of Ingenuity flying on Mars.
As a result in part of remarkable images like this, Congress has gone so far as to demand more of these vehicles on future Mars missions (p. 121). They have skipped immediately from being a daring experiment to being standard equipment.
Changing Beliefs
The right event, especially if visually remarkable, can force people to later their perception of what is possible, reasonable, and normal - and this can be a very powerful thing.
A critical moment for me, that got me started researching space colonisation, was the first successful landing of a Falcon 9 in December 2015.
I had been initially skeptical of SpaceX - after all, their first three rockets all failed to reach orbit. I had seen them build a successful launch company but did not see it as more remarkable than companies like ULA or ArianeSpace. The landing, however, forced me to pay more attention and reevaluate. It made me realise that the world was changing.
For a previous generation, the most significant event in space was the first Moon landing. It left such an impression that people would often say afterwards “If we can land a Man on the Moon why can’t we...”. This impression was not accidental either - the 1960s were a period of rapid decolonisation across the world, and the United States wanted a clear visual demonstration of which economic model was better for the benefit of newly formed governments. Images like this speak very clearly.
Additionally, if Man had not landed on the Moon, then it would now be much harder to make the case for sending humans beyond Earth orbit today. Many critics make bold claims about the dangers of cosmic radiation, typically exaggerating both the danger itself and the difference between the environment at the ISS and the environment on the way to Mars. Were there not living humans who have been outside the van Allen belts, returned, and mostly died at advanced age of natural causes - they would be able to make far bolder claims.
Cynics will always have their say; it’s a cheap way of displaying intellectual gravitas. There were plenty of people who are made to feel small by the achievements of others, and can deal with these feelings by being snarky towards those who attempt things. Often they will score a hit, because hard things have a high failure rate, especially in their early iterations.
Spectacles must be robust to criticism so as not to provide fuel for such cynicism though. People may initially be wowed by an image of the future, but when first the cynics and then the genuine experts come along and show that it is not what it appears to be, there is disillusionment. To keep this positive, I won’t name names, but many examples abound in the space industries. There is no shortage of companies in the space telling tall tales about their capabilities, their addressable market, or the prospects of them being the next SpaceX.
Cynicism itself though, is also a shallow spectacle. The cynic will attack the optimist as naive, and pretend to be a wise parent trying to talk a silly child out of their delusions, but often the factual basis of their claims collapses when you understand the subject. I have shown the ignorance of such people myself many, many times through this newsletter.
The Future
We can expect in the near future to see more spectacles the will usher in material changes. The first Starship booster catch. The first Starship on orbit. The return of humans to the Moon.
One that I anticipate is the point when our construction in Earth orbit reaches the scale it can be resolved with the human eye. Our eyes have a resolution of around 1 arcminute (a sixtieth of a degree). If we are viewing an object in low Earth orbit, accounting for it being off zenith a bit, we might be looking at something 500 kilometres away. At that distance, 1 arcminute covers about 150 metres.
The ISS is only 100 metres along the length of its truss - where it perhaps twice the size it would go from being a single point of light to being a sort of peanut shape, with the dominant light from it being the reflection from the two arrays of solar panels making discrete points.
When we build larger stations in low orbits (which it seems we must do it in order to economically open up space to the largest amount of people) then they will appear to those on the ground as small, spinning wheels in the sky. Who would be able to ignore the revolution in space then?
This has been a fairly light post; next week will be another Mass Value Report which has more data content. Please consider subscribing to get this and more in your inbox.
A nice look into the power of “spectacle." For types like myself, who are awed by the data and engineering alone, we often lose sight that most people are only inspired by the spectacle…that which they can see with their own eyes.
Interestingly, Elon Musk recognized this very early on. His original goal for SpaceX was to buy a Russian ICBM and launch a greenhouse to Mars. He thought that he could inspire policymakers and the public to devote more resources to space exploration. He did not want to be in the space business.
He soon realized that the cost of rockets was unjustifiably high and realized that to inspire would require a rethinking of how rockets were designed and built. The rest is history.