Back to the Moon?

An anonymous reader writes "This BBC story discusses the prospects of probes returning to the moon. The article first mentions the ESA's SMART-1 probe, which will overfly the Apollo landing sites during 2003, and then talks with US scientists about why NASA should send probes back."

Comments

The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

[eggsovereasy]

*scratches head*

Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

[xidix]

When people post writings which are not their own, they should at least credit the source. I have seen this before, among other places, here:

http://spiralx.dyndns.org/texts/troll1.html

Someone should mod this down for blatant plagiarism.

nasa! make money fast!

[sirinek]

I'll be happy if they send the rest of N*Sync into space. Maybe send them to the dark side of the moon and, er, mission aborted.

oops

siri

Back to the moon?

[Screaming Lunatic]

What do you mean get back to the moon? Like they got to the moon in the first place.

[cue Dr. Evil laugh]

Muwahahahahaha...hahahaha...hahahah!!! Muwahahahahaha...hahahaha...hahahah!!! Muwa.......haha?

[/cue Dr. Evil laugh]

Are we running low on cheese?

[FelixCat]

The best reason for going back to the moon is to replentish our supply of cheese. It wouldn't be that hard to go back there. In Wallace and Gromit's "Grand Day Out" they completed the project over a weekend.

I don't know why this is such a big deal!

Re:The only question.

[papasui]

God I hope not. Linux is great for servers and PC's but there are much better OS's (read QNX) for system critical missions.

Re:The moon.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This may be feeding the trolls, but ...

There were several moon missions. Apollo 11 was the first one to land; all the subseequent ones (the program ended with Apollo 17) also landed on the moon, except for Apollo 13, which suffered a meteor collision enroute and had to return to Earth. Check out this site:

Project Apollo Program Overview

Like I said, I may be feeding the trolls, but it sounds to me like you genuinely didn't know this, so ...

Re:The moon.

[nachoworld]

The US sent many missions to the moon. Many. And most of those after Apollo 11 were manned. Someone else could probably tell you how many other people landed on the moon.

I agree that travelling to the moon was essentially a race against another superpower which we opposed. But the US would have to substantiate it in order to convince the USSR (if I told my enemy that I make $1M a year, he wouldn't believe it). But the fact is, Russia eventually acknowledged it in their textbooks (although they dedicate more print to Yuri).

The flag looks like it's blowing in the wind because there's a distinct metal bar on the top of the flag to hold the flag outright. You can tell from any old photograph.

Imagine how it smells by now!

[Subcarrier]

The best reason for going back to the moon is to replentish our supply of cheese.

Do you know how long that thing has been festering in the sun?

Re:Imagine how it smells by now!

[mskfisher]

but it's vacuum-sealed!
well, almost.

Quit being Pussies, build a moonbase

[sam_handelman]

Mining the moon for use on Earth is never going to be a winning proposition. Re-entry into earth's atmosphere is just too expensive.

However, we should to move our space fabrication facilities to the moon. That's the way to lower our launch costs, in the long run. It is a lower G environment, it provides an additional slingshot for launches into the rest of the solar system, and, given a sufficient initial capital investment, energy on the moon will be cheaper than energy on the surface of the earth.

Before that's practical, we need a thorough, ground based, resource survey of the whole sattelite. In order to do that, we need a permanent base with facilities to fuel, service and repair all of the robots doing the lunar surveys.

We have the technology. We should stop dinking around, pony up the cash, and do it.

Re:Quit being Pussies, build a moonbase

[meta-monkey]

I don't think it's so expensive at all. Remember that the moon sits atop a pretty damn big gravity well. Getting stuff from the earth to the moon is hard, getting it back from the moon to earth is easy. Then all you need is to slow and control the descent...I'm sure something could be worked out. Reusable gliders, maybe.

Re:Quit being Pussies, build a moonbase

[Squiffy]

It's unfortunate that the U.S. spent so much money beating the Russians to the Moon. Sure, it's a good thing that humans went there at all, but because we pushed so hard to go there for the wrong reasons, these days people look back at how quickly the U.S. space program was advancing c. 1970 and expect things to be much farther along than they are. The truth is, however, that we need to stop comparing Humanity's space presence to what it would have been if the Cold War hadn't ended. That doesn't mean I'm not anxious for faster space development. I'm just aware of the fact that politics, personal agendas, and other human maladies constitute only part of what makes going to space hard.

Re:Quit being Pussies, build a moonbase

[zCyl]

Good thinking, we'll wait until life is perfect, and THEN we'll plan for the future.

*twiddles thumbs waiting*

Seriously, if you want the human race to prosper, you should support scientific advancement and exploration. In the end it will put food on the tables of your children and grandchildren.

Re:The moon.

[fernd1]

There were in fact 5 missions that landed on the moon.
Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17.

Landing Coordinates:
Apollo 11: 0.71 degrees North, 23.63 degrees East
Apollo 12: 3.04 degrees South, 23.42 degrees West
Apollo 14: 3.65 degrees south, 17.48 degrees West
Apollo 15: 26.08 degrees North, 3.66 degrees East
Apollo 16: 8.97 degrees South, 15.51 degrees East
Apollo 17: 20.16 degrees North, 30.77 degrees East
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/flight- summary.txt

-always look up the facts before posting-

Somebody mod this for me.

[FreeLinux]

I think you're right on the money.

It seems ludicrous to me that no one has returned to the moon for 30 years! The "giant leap for mankind" now seems to have been a giant leap backwards.

LOL: +1 Informative

[Subcarrier]

This is the first moderator who has made me laugh.

Moon base may make more sense than the ISS

[ike42]

The jury may still be out on the International Space Station (ISS), but the primary problem with all zero-g environments its that they really screws up human physiology. On the moon you don't have this problem, making long term habitation a much better prospect.

NASA does not like to publicize the extent to which even short space flights negatively effect an astronaut's health. We evolved in gravity and our bodies depend on it to function properly ... and no amount of research is likely to change this fact. However, low gravity environments (like the moon) are thought to be ok.

The moon is not that hard to get to, and once there its much easier to get into a zero-g environment, if thats what you want (for research, manufacturing, etc). If the goal is to have long term habitiation off Earth, then going back to the moon is a very good idea.

Re:Moon base may make more sense than the ISS

[Dan Crash]

While you're technically right, you haven't addressed his point. You've just used a bit of sophistry to make yourself seem smart.

The fact remains that living on the ISS for an extended period of time will leave you less fit to return to Earth than a similar stay in an environment with gravity closer to 1 G, (even 1/6 G, like the Moon). You'll be stronger after a year on the Moon than you will be after a year on the ISS, and no amount of doubletalk will change that.

Of course the ISS has its place, but as a base for long term habitation and assembly of complex machinery, it, frankly, bites. The logistics of making a trip to the Moon are more difficult than making a trip to the ISS, but are offset by the advantages to construction. Construction in space is a maximally complex environment for machines that already have complex and difficult requirements. Quality control is virtually nonexistant. Just because it's close doesn't mean it's best.

Re:Moon base may make more sense than the ISS

[sckeener]

Speaking about gravity, an addition benefit of building on the moon instead of space, is trash collection. In one scenario the ISS gets taken out by junk becoming a cage/mini-asteroid field of ISS junk around the earth.

Mostly hype, but the ISS taken out would create zones of trash giving cause of concern for future billion dollar space missions.

SMART-1 Is Not First With Ion Propulsion

[John Hasler]

Look at http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html

Re:SMART-1 Is Not First With Ion Propulsion

[TomV]

To be fair, the BBC article brushes over the Ion Drive aspect of the mission in favour of the exciting return-to-the-moon side of the story.

As the SMART-1 site itself makes clear:

SMART-1 is to be the first European spacecraft to travel to and orbit around the Moon. It will also be the first time that ESA employ electric propulsion as the mission's primary propulsion. Electric propulsion on an interplanetary mission has been used only once to date, on NASA's Deep Space 1 probe launched in October 1998.

...

The electric propulsion technology to be employed by SMART-1 was initially developed over 30 years ago, notably in Russia which, since 1972, has launched a number of operational spacecraft placed in Earth orbit. They used electric propulsion for attitude and orbit control in addition to the classical chemical propulsion. In the early 90s, agreements were reached between Russian, American and European industry, notably SNECMA, France, to pursue the development and commercialisation of such thrusters.

...

In recent years commercial telecommunications spacecraft built in the United States using different types of electric thrusters have been launched. The first was the Hughes PanAmSat-5 in 1997

source

Now compared to chemical rockets, in terms of missions flown and experience gained, I'd accept ion drives as pretty 'new', so, while maybe a little clumsy, the BBC's text

The main objective is to test a new type of engine technology - solar electric propulsion - which could power future missions very long distances into deep space

seems OK, and ESA certainly don't claim to be the first with an Ion Drive themselves. They don't even claim to be the first to use the SNECMA PPS 1350 Hall-Effect thruster in question (shame the SNECMA site doesn't seem to give an off-the-shelf price for one of these cuties!).

Still determined to live in the Space Age

TomV

Re:The moon.

[Angry Toad]

Not hardly, man. I recall watching the "handshake" live - I guess I was in grade 3, and had limited interest in space at the time, but that was the first time I clearly recall seeing a big event (even if it was only a stage-managed PR stunt) happening realtime on TV.

Re:btw, there is not "dark" side of the moon

[Skyfire]

um, what? actually, my dear friend, the period of the moon's revolution is exactly the same as it's period of rotation. Therefore, the same side of the moon (the "light" side) is always facing the earth. It doesn't really matter where you are.

Private missions to the moon

[smoondog]

People are always looking for ways for the private sector to get involved in space. IMO, A profitable one may be in going to the moon and back. It may seem silly, but moon rock is some of the most valuable stuff on earth. The value now is in the millions for relatively large chunks, and in the hundreds of thousands for small ones.

While I realize that having more of the rare stuff will reduce its value, could you imagine selling small moon particles (100ths or even 1000ths of a gram) to private citizens/collectors? 1/100 of a gram * $500 * 10kg * 1000g/kg = 1,000,000*500 or $500,000,000 with 10kg and only 100,000 customers.
500,000,000 may not be enough for a small robot mission to the moon (with the intent of returning) but it is getting close.

-Sean

Re:Private missions to the moon

[apsmith]

Sounds like the business plan for Applied Space Resources - they haven't been able to raise much money yet though I hear.

Re:Private missions to the moon

[Saeger]

IMO, you're vastly overestimating the value of "moon dirt". You'd need to ask a few interested people what they'd be willing to pay...

Personally, I wouldn't want to own an encapsulated speck of moon dust, but I would want a good sized moon rock that I could hold in my grubby hands. *I* would value an average density 1cm moonrock at no more than $1,000, which is still a profit over the insane $/kg of chemical-rocket transportation costs.

The reason I wouldn't pay any more than that is because its novelty value will drop to zero over time, just as if Columbus had brought back "American Soil!"...

--

Re:Private missions to the moon

[smoondog]

IMO, you're vastly overestimating the value of "moon dirt".

You may be correct, *but* right now, moon rock that has fallen to earth as a meteorite is valued at 100,000 a carat (1/5 of a gram). According to this article, a finger tip size piece of moon rock (1.2 grams) is valued at $5 mil! I think you would get two types of buyers, the handful of wealthy people looking for mantle trophies and the masses looking for something for posterity. I don't think the value of moon rock would drop all that fast (at first).

-Sean

Oh, crudd

[dpilot]

And here I thought the giant weather baloon we normally call the "Moon" was for people to go looking for renegade androids and robots.

I'll be this means there aren't androids and robots amoung us either, doesn't it. And I thought sure I'd run into some, too.

NRC recommends a sample return mission

[apsmith]

#2 on the new planetary exploration priority list from the National Research Council is a sample return mission from the South Pole basin of the Moon. So if NASA doesn't have plans right now, they're going to be thinking about it real hard real soon.

#1 Reason For NASA To Return

[The Dobber]

Closer = Easier To Hit

return to the moon?

[spongebobsquarepants]

According to top level sources broadcasting out of Pahrump, Nevada (ie Art Bell), we've yet to make the trip. It will be embarrassing when some new lunar probe confirms this ;)

Re:return to the moon?

[HypersonicAtheist]

The Clementine probe did confirm the Apollo 15 site.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/ap ol lo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html

You can watch a film of the landing at:
www.apolloarchive.com
Click Multimedia on the left side and go to the realvideo file "Lunar landing filmed from LM window".

If you play it a few times next to the Clementine image in the article you'll see that they're right on.

Lack of communication in the space biz

[apsmith]

It always amazes me how limited the picture most people seem to have, even in the media, of the huge variety of space-related efforts that are going on. If it isn't on NASA's list (even if NASA people are involved in it) or occasionally on a European or Japanese list, it's as if it doesn't exist. Here's a short list of lunar missions and projects currently in development, private and public:

• SMART-1 from ESA (the only one this BBC article mentions)
• LUNAR-A from ISAS/NASDA (Japan).
• SELENE also from ISAS.
• TrailBlazer and Electra from TransOrbital Inc.
• Lunar Retriever from AppliedSpace Resources
• IceBreaker from Lunacorp
• Lunar Service from Celestis (you have to be dead...)
• Lunar Architecture is a subject of study for HJ Rombaut, including a recent Lunar Base design workshop
• Bill Mook's lunar tours
• The Artemis Project

Many of these have received approval - some of the commercial missions seem to have had a bit of trouble finding funding or overcoming regulations and have announced delays of a year or so, but then the government missions have been delayed too.

What's missing on this list? Where's NASA you say? Interestingly NASA has spent over 50 times as much on Mars missions as on missions to the Moon since Apollo 17 left in Dec 1972. But that may change now that the NRC has put a lunar return among the highest priority missions.

Want to be involved? Check out the National Space Society and the Moon Society and you may help make some of these things happen!

Re:btw, there is not "dark" side of the moon

[gerardrj]

Wrong on two counts.

As already mentioned by the others, the same hemisphere of The Moon is seen by all of the Earth observers. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, just as the Earth is slowly becoming tidally locked to The Moon and Sun.

Also there is no "dark side" of The Moon. The entire surface of The Moon all gets Sun light, we Earthlings just never see it so we stupidly call it the dark side. Because of course, the Universe revolves around humanity. It is more appropriately called the far or distant side"

Re:i thought

[Yunzil]

you can make up your own mind by checking out some of the sites listed below.

Here's another.

Re:The moon.

[Yunzil]

what better way to show American superiority than to fabricate a lie saying we were the first to reach the moon?

Mm-hmm. And if we didn't go, what better way for the Russians (who were watching the whole thing closely) to embarass the US than to demonstrate that it was all a fake?

Practical steps to answering the main question

[ynotds]

low gravity environments (like the moon) are thought to be ok

Unfortunately we don't yet have any evidence whether or not this might be true and it is starting to rank as the most important question of the new (half?) century in determining our destiny.

If, and it remains a significant "if", humans can operate (in suitably protected structures) on the lunar surface long term without seriously adverse health consequences, then the course that makes the most sense is to establish a serious lunar industrial complex before we worry too much about sending anything more than ever smarter robotic probes to explore other parts of the solar system.

For quite a while yet, there are going to remain very serious constraints on what unattended robots can achieve. On the moon we can push that boundary to reach the point of confidence in sending off the robots that will be needed to prepare on Mars (and/or its satelites) sufficient supplies for the first arrival of human vistors/colonists.

Not only will it be much easier to do this if humans can stay healthy for years rather than months on the moon, but that will also open the way to much greater development on the moon when we start to see the energy and environmental trade offs from a lunar perspective.

Re:The moon.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Okay, I misremembered. Hey, it was a long time ago.

Not so fast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it was posted anonymously, how do you know it was plagiarized? Its quite possible the person who wrote it is the same person who posted it.

The url you cite just happens to host "The /. troll HOWTO", which curiously enough says, "Because you're posting as an AC..."

All that is beside the point, because there are plenty of people who don't give a shit about getting (or giving) "credit". If you wrote it, fine, bitch all you want.. otherwise go preach your IP ideology elsewhere.

WE NEVER WENT TO THE MOON!!

[ashitaka]

Never!

Not once!

You're a complete idiot if you believe for one friggin second we went to the moon.

We didn't have an "accident" on lucky #13.

We didn't bring back any dusty rocks.

We didn't boot around in an electric buggy.

We didn't slowly bounce up and down like Britney Spears on Qualuudes.

We didn't make any "small steps for man."

We didn;t drive golf balls "miles and miles"

I AM CANADIAN! We didn't go to the moon!

Bunch of Americans did though...

IMAX Camera to the Moon

[ashitaka]

I watched Space Station for the first time the other day.

I sat there either with my mouth hanging wide open or with a huge grin and thinking "oh, maaaannnn..".

The only thing cooler than that would be an IMAX film taken from lunar orbit possibly with a low-level fly down as they did on Apollo 10.

Next we send an IMAX camera to Mars.

Hell, people don't need to go anywhere as long as you have IMAX.

(And yes I know all about the technical limitations of IMAX having watched them since the very first in Toronto in 1971.)

Re:Luddites Embarrassing Themselves

[ashitaka]

There are no luddites.

Only trolls trying to get reactions like yours or jokers like me making fun of the whole thing.

They are succeeding all too well. The guy who said there was only one landing was a classic! Look how many got sucked in.

Re:Let's probe uranus!

[PsychoSlashDot]

Why would you probe her anus? Last time I checked that body part was used to extrude fecal matter. You know. Poop. Doesn't sound terribly appealing to me.

You might find a more natural orifice in that general vicinity though, if you look hard enough. Please get back to us with a detailed description of your research.

Sometimes I Despair

[Peahippo]

I read articles like that one on BBC News, and thus know that space programs are always in serious jeopardy from misdirection and emotional decisions.

The word "manufacturing" wasn't used even once in the article, and only the main-picture caption had the word "industry". The main picture doesn't even show any equipment that can be identified as for manufacturing -- it just looks like a mission base.

Manufacturing -- the activity of a real economy -- must be the main point of sustainable space development. Anything else is the masturbatory fantasy of the academic class. The academics (as unwitting dupes of the aerospace contractors) are clearly unfit for directing space programs, given their propensity for spending billions to get some kilograms of rock and megabytes of data back. As far as a space program is concerned, academics should be used as skilled labor, not managers.

Well, what will these non-academic managers aim for? The Moon is an ideal site for space manufacturing. There's enough gravity to hold things down and keep Human bones from decaying too much -- while also being light enough to make it 22 times easier to deliver a load of material to LEO (low Earth orbit) than from Earth. There's plenty of solar power -- for heat and electricity -- due to no clouds, and no weather either to disrupt activity. The regolith is a fine powder that itself is a very useful ore, being oxygen, silicon, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, iron and then other trace elements. Scoop it up into foundries; melt it with your free solar energy; then use whatever extraction techniques are required to obtain materials. The vacuum even at the surface of the Moon (note that within ~30 feet of the surface, there is a dim but measurable "atmosphere" of sorts involving dust influenced by static charges) is finer than usually obtained on Earth in labs. Imports from Earth will be the qualitative counterpart (people, parts, volatiles) to the quantitative exports (aluminum, oxygen, steel) from the Moon. (Note the exports are for building Earth's orbital facilities.)

The only things making the Moon a real problem for manufacturing are the hostilities of vacuum and radiation toward lifeforms. There is basically an inverted paradigm, where on Earth you live freely but undergo constraints in work environments, but the Moon requires constrained living methods while the work environment is everywhere. If only Earth-based manufacturing problems were so simple.

Do we really want to throw more billions of dollars at socially-inept types to spend, to get JUST some rock and data in return? Why not spend the billions making an industry that returns products and investment margin, and then those academic types can charter themselves flights, housing and equipment. They can go out and do all the science they want while a real economy churns away at their backs, making it sustainably possible for them to do it in the first place. Necessities before luxuries, folks.

you're right, for the wrong reasons

[guybarr]

yes, we definately need a moon base, but only for mining purposes.

1) space fabrication will benefit much more from microgravity: build them in orbit, then use centrifugal forces for whatever gravity you wish.

2) solar-power-satellites can be built with much less resources (and less fuss) in microgravity: build them in orbit.

3) the moon AFAIK is mainly made of Si, O, N and some C (not in that order) what is really missing is Hydrogen, which you can provide by bringing small asteroids/comets back to near-earth orbit. (landing them on the moon in one piece is much harder ...)

so, to summarize: yes, the human race very much needs a moon base, but not as a standalone project, but as part of a larger free-space colonizaiton and industrialization effort.

Re:you're right, for the wrong reasons

[Dan Crash]

1) Everything I've read on the subject regards construction in space as the most difficult and expensive environs possible. Maybe you can point me at something that says otherwise.

2) Your point about solar power satellites is incorrect. An article in more depth about this appeared in The Industrial Physicist in May. A relevant quote from the article follows:

Several types of solar-power satellites have been proposed. They are projected, over 30 years, to deliver approximately 10,000 kWh of electric energy to Earth for each kilogram of mass in orbit around the planet. To sell electric energy at $0.01/ kWh, less than $60 could be expended per kilogram to buy the components of the power satellites, ship them into space, assemble and maintain them, decommission the satellites, and finance all aspects of the space operations. To achieve this margin,launch and fabrication costs would have to be lowered by a factor of 10,000.

There's more in the article.

The Moon is the only practical place to build extraplanetary solar power, considering, as you note in point 3, that the Moon is made up of the very same materials in solar cells to begin with.

At any rate, we both agree that the human race needs a moon base. I just happen to think that it will be considerably more useful than you do.

Re:I agree

[shd99004]

Ok. I actually don't know how those cameras work or how to change the settings...
But, about the shadows. My english isn't very good, but I'm guessing "perpendicular" means the shadows were going in different directions? My explanations, as well as others I've seen, is that they appear to go in different directions due to the "bumpy" and rocky surface of the moon, skewing the shadows. Also, there were indeed other light sources. The sun was ofcourse the most dominant one, I'm guessing the earth and the moons surface come in as number two.
Anyway, if this was staged in a studio on earth, with multiple spotlights, chances are that each object would have more than one shadow.
About the crosshairs on the cameralenses... It appears that the brighter the object is, the more does its color or light "overflow" the dark thin crosshair. My guess is that this is because the white objects became too bright in this environment where there is no athmosphere to spread the light. I did see the documentary (if you mean the one by FOX), and only a few times could I not explain most things they brought up there. There are a few websites that explains more about the moon hoax, http://www.badastronomy.com is one of them.