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First Commercial Moon Mission Approved
dorantrist writes "A Discovery Channel article that The U.S. Government has just licensed the first commercial mission to the moon to TransOrbital, Inc.. Part of the mission is "to VERIFY Apollo and other landing sites" because there are still a few people out there who believe the Apollo program was a hoax. --Maybe they can also pickup the golf balls left by Alan Shepard?"
Who thinks that people silly enough to believe the first trip to the moon was a hoax will now believe that this trip is for real?
I wanna know what right the US has to grant commercial missions to the moon. Like we are the only country that has rights to the moon as a resource.
The next big wars will be over space shipping lanes.
riley
Maybe they can also pickup the golf balls left by Alan Shepard?
dont have to..... take a look here or more specifically this animation.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Trailblazer is expected to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within the next nine to 12 months. "
So, WTF does it have to do withthe US government?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
lander: we are now returning with alan sheperds balls.
base: what was that? (chuckle)
lander: i said were returning with alan shepards balls.
base: hehe, sweet. did you use the retractable cup tool to scoop them up?
lander: yes, we used the cup.
base: would you say that your... hehehehehe, cupping alan shepards balls?
lander: umm, yes, weve successfully cupped his balls.... do you guys hear laughing over the frequency cutting in?
base: oh no, no laughing here. would you say your excited to be cupping....
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Am I the only person disturbed by the idea that people will go to the moon and strip mine with abandon, and destroy its beauty from the perspective of people on Earth? I think something will never be the same about our little neighborhood of space when people look up and see lights all over the moon at night and they've dug up the man in the moon's face... ;)
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Don't these guys know anything about marketing!?! What they should have mentioned is building the first Wi-Fi network and WarShuttling.
Because they are incorporated in the US and therefore bound by its laws and regulatory agencies, I assume.
It's not so much a matter of getting permission, but to inform people of what's going on. MOST launches are at least announced, since especially in this day and age, you don't want to launch off rockets without informing anyone. Jittery governments who are in the dark might think its the start of a nuclear attack. This HAS happened in the past. We don't care that you launch rockets, we just want to make sure they're going into space and not somewhere else.
Its also important that if something goes wrong with the spacecraft and all contact is lost, the craft (or debris from it) can be tracked by those who are most concerned about such things. A single screw in low earth orbit can cause major havoc if it impacts a spacecraft. You want to know where it is.
The other issue is to insure compliance with any international treaties with regards to propulsion systems or use of celestial bodies for which someone at one point in time might have signed a treaty for. True, they could launch the rocket anyway, and probably nobody could do much about it. But there's no sense pissing anyone off if a yes answer is overwhelmingly probable anyway.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Okay, so let's see. We have the technology to digitally edit people out of video scenes in REALTIME. We have the technology to digitally add in elements to a video scene (I would assume in realtime). We have the technology to do damn near anything we want digitally, given enough time and servers, short of making fully-believable humans. And some pictures supposedly sent back from a satellite is going to convince someone who thinks they managed to fake the moon landings 30+ years ago that they were wrong? Riiiiight.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
... the US government has granted permission to an undisclosed public company to verify that stories posted on /. are real.
As an added bonus, this mission will weed out all duplicate submissions, spelling, grammars, etc. of the stories.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
You don't own it until you "improve" it. That is have permanent residents living there without significant outside assistance. This rule of international law has applied to everything from continents (e.g. Australia) to homesteads (e.g. some company wanted land in the US west, or rather the oil under it, and sued for the government to take it away from the homesteader since he hadn't built a good enough cabin and hadn't cleared land for a garden -- they only lost because of a statute of limitations issue).
The next step is bulldozing everything in sight -- so when you look up at night and notice that all the peaks have been flattened and all the craters have been filled in, then you'll know that somebody really owns it!
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
whats worse is a life where you patrol slashdot for grammar heirs.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
that was brought up in the fox documentary about the moon landing?
For the most part, any first year physics student could counter the arguments in the documentary, which is why there were no real physicists on the show. The one that they had merely said something to the effect of "Yeah, there are a lot of crackpots out there".
For example:
1. The astronaut is climing down the lander, and is in shadow, yet his space suit is brightly lit, suggesting a studio lighting scenario.
Answer: You may have noticed that the moon reflects light. This is why it allows us to see at night.
2. The pictures are exceptionally clear, yet the astronauts were not trained photographers.
Answer: any photograph taken in a vacuum will look more clear, due to less distortion from the atmosphere.
3. There is a picture of the lander, and some rocks around it, then a picture of the "same scene" with no lander.
Answer: Due to the lack of atmosphere on the moon, large boulders and even mountains may appear to look like close-up rocks when photographed.
4. The lander just appears to "take off", with no acceleration.
Answer: That's because it was a "catapult", you idiot, not a rocket. Escape velocity on the moon is tiny compared to earth, so a large enough explosion will do the trick.
5. The flag appears to be "waving in the wind".
Answer: only when the astronaut is touching it, you retard. When he lets go, it just sits there. I can make a flag wave too. Even with no wind. Imagine that.
There were other, equally stupid pieces of "evidence", but there was ONE thing I could not explain.
In some of the photos, the camera's crosshair is *partially behind* the scene. How is that possible unless the photos were airbrushed?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
...many Europeans still don't believe people have actually landed on the North American continent!
;)
Many believe that life on other continents is just to absurd an idea to take seriously. Or, if life is there, the ocean is just too big a distance to cross, so we will never know.
In fact there is an European internet project called SATI@home, or Search for American Territories Intelligence, that is listening for intelligent life in North America. This project may fail though. If there is life in North America, it is likely that Europeans would never be able to decode the meaning of any of the messages or culture.
Many Europeans think its all just political mumbo jumbo anyway.
"The concept most foreign in all religions is that of a universe existing forever. Beginnings and endings are a fools dream."
-Anonymous
Personally, I'd like to see the Apollo landing site declared an International Historical Site. As the man said, it was a giant leap for all of mankind, and I'd like to see it preserved as-is.
Yes, I know this mission is just going to take pictures, but sooner or later someone (Chinese? Bill Gates?) is going to once again land on the moon, and could casually destroy a significant part of mankind's history.
So Transorbital has gotten permission (whyever) for sending up a single probe that will a) take detailed pictures, b) drop a "time capsule" on the moon and c) collect lots of telemetry useful to space scientists. The first probably has a market--a detailed lunar atlas would be pretty neat and the other pictures would sell. The second pays for the trip itself but doesn't produce anything of value so it's just a sink for my disposable income. :-) And the third I'm assuming exists but there probably isn't much reason to talk about it--it isn't sexy enough.
Future plans involve dropping navigation beacons? Okay--so they've got a map and beacons. They could sell those to anyone who wants the information. They have a few other one-way craft planned, too.
But commercial uses have to make money. The first commercial use would have to be mining. But that only works if it is cheaper to shove equipment up the gravity well and catch it on the way down than digging somewhere on Earth. Anything else is way too expensive today. Maybe that's changing and Transorbital is betting that it is.
--- "It annoyed me, so I fixed it." -- Tom's First Principle of Engineering
Who thinks that people silly enough to believe the first trip to the moon was a hoax will now believe that this trip is for real?
That was my first thought too.
But then I realized that the solution is obvious: We just need to round up all the people who think that the moon landing was a hoax, take them to the moon, and -- this is the important bit -- leave them there.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
The surviving family of Jackie Gleason is suing for patent infringement.
/.'d into slag.
They claim that Jackie Gleason held the intellectual property for going to the moon some 15 years prior to the 1969 lunar landing. "To the moon, Alice!" is the phrase being used as proof that the business model was originally Gleason's.
TransOrbital could not be reached for comment due to a massive Slashdot effect, but expects that their poor webservers will be replaced sometime next week after being
"Our ancestor, The Great One, would have wanted us to protect his intellectual property," one of the relatives was quoted as saying.
Useless opinions, worthless observations, and more!
Who can forget the urban legend about Mr. Gorsky?
When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
On July 5, 1995 (in Tampa Bay, FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky.
As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mrgorsky.htm
This legend, seemingly an obvious joke, began circulating on the Internet in mid-1995 and was picked up by the media a few months later. The inclusion of specific details (e.g., the name of Armstrong's neighbor, the date of the press conference on which he revealed the meaning of his remark) apparently led some to believe the farcical story might have some truth to it.
At its most basic level, this tale is a humorous anecdote that plays on the stereotypical portrayal of Jewish wives as reluctant to engage in recreational sex (and especially oral sex). In variant forms of this legend the last name of Neil Armstrong's neighbor is different, but the name used is always a "Jewish-sounding" one, such as Gorsky, Seligman, Schultz, or Klein; the unusual word order employed by the wife in her refusal ("Oral sex you want?") is also a stereotypical speech pattern attributed to Jews. On another level, this legend can be seen as an attempt to humanize a cultural hero by associating him with a story that is both humorous and racy: Neil Armstrong, the world-famous astronaut, is made to seem like a "regular" guy.
Any doubts about the veracity of this legend are laid to rest by the official NASA transcripts of the Apollo 11 mission, which record no such statement having been made by Armstrong. Armstrong himself said in late 1995 that he first heard the anecdote delivered as a joke by comedian Buddy Hackett in California.
Calm down. It's because it's a US corporation, and according to international law, the US is responsible for policing anything from it's borders that goes up there. If they were a French company, they'd need to satisfy the French government's requirements. Scroll back on up this forum - someone cited the exact law, agreed to by the united nations.
Sheesh.
--
Evan (no reference)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
for final proof of the moon landings, visit http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhelp/Apoll oLaser.html.
Apollo 11 left a mirror up there so that we could use a laser rangefinder to calculate the distance to the moon.
It's still there - and it still is working. You can remove your tin foil hat now...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
If you are actually trying to claim it's a hoax - I'm not sure - then think about the *difficulty* of pulling this off... what follows is quoted from another /. thread long ago. It covers most of the difficulties rather nicely I think.
#
For the interest of Slashdot readers, national governments, and any other interested organization, I am posting instructions on how to fake a moon landing and not get caught for 30 years.
Before the Landing
Put out a request for tenders for a contract to build the lunar hardware to major aerospace companies. It would be pretty obvious after the fact that no one had built your launchers and landers.
In the contracts, give a specification that would lead the 10,000 engineers who work on the project to reasonably believe that the equipment could be used to land on the moon. Engineers are smart people; they could easily spot holes in your assumptions if you make the requirements less stringent than they have to be. If it were obvious that the hardware couldn't land on the moon, you would be caught.
Have the hardward manufactured and delivered. Again easy to spot if this wasn't done, especially for a Saturn V-class rocket and related assemblies.
In summary: You would actually have to build stuff that would probably be able to land a man on the moon, with all the associated expenses.
During the missions:
You will actually have to launch the thing you contracted to build. You could launch something else -- but why bother? We've already established that you have to build a moon rocket, and you'd have to pay off everyone who was involved in its destruction and substitution. Besides, it would be big news, so news organizations would want to film the launch of the big rocket.
So, the capsule could be suborbital, or stay in orbit, and the rest of the mission could be faked, right? Wrong. Antennas around the world will be tracking the radio signals from the capsule, including the continuous telemetry feeds. Something would have to go to the moon, on a realistic lunar trajectory, or this would be immediately spotted by legions of radio astronomers and HAM radio amateurs around the world, many of whom have advanced signal processing available to them (like Doppler analysis, etc.). They would also be able to tell the difference between a lunar trajectory and a different orbit, like a geosynchronous orbit, because of the moon's particular position in the sky.
So, the capsule has to go to the moon. Does it have to orbit? Yes. The capsule must stay in the vicinity of the moon for several days (again checked by those with large radio antennas). The only foolproof way to do that is to orbit.
So, the capsule has to orbit. Does it have to land? Yes. While in orbit, the capsule can't communicate with Earth from the far side of the moon. Yet a lander must be able to send continuous telemetry to the Earth. It would be pretty obvious fakery to have the "lander"'s telemetry fade out at the same time as the capsule's.
Does it have to come back? Yes; for the same trajectory reason. The return trajectory could be tracked.
Does the capsule/lander have to be manned? Not necessarily, but there would be many complications if it weren't. You would have to be able to carry on ground/capsule communications in a realistic manner even though the communications from the capsule would have to be recorded and beamed back (because your radio is being monitored). The "astronauts" would be unable to perform any diagnostic tasks aboard the spacecraft (because they're not aboard it), so the entire flight control team would have to be in on the hoax (dozens, even hundreds, of people to pay off).
In summary: You would have to actually send something to the moon, which may as well be manned.
After the Landing
Bring back tons of "moon rocks" and other materials for analysis by independent scientists around the world. These rocks could not be obviously of terrestrial origin, implying some exotic materials science (or creative geology). Either that or pay off anyone who comes in contact with the "lunar samples".
And if you're NASA - do this seven times, with one of the seven attempts turning into a remarkably realistic failure.
The upshot: It's equally easy and expensive to actually land a man on the moon than fake it convincingly. Furthermore, the evidence for fakery would not be found in trivial forms of evidence, like photographs, but in more obvious places, like contracts, accounting, radio monitoring, and the lunar samples themselves.
There's no $$$ in 'team'...
www..--..net - for incisive, w
Well, #1, the purpose of mining would not be for use on Earth, but for use in space, and for that every mineral on the Moon is useful, being many km/sec closer to anywhere in space than minerals on Earth.
Second, the Moon had a (very ancient) volcanically active past - the Mare basins on the near side are volcanic basalts, there are several mountainous regions that appear to be volcanic rather than caused by impacts, and numerous "rille" formations thought to be collapsed lava tubes, etc. One of the mineral deposits associated with some of this is the 'KREEP' that includes some concentrations of heavy metals, including thorium and uranium.
Third, the Moon's surface is exposed directly to the solar wind and apparently has quite high and useful (if we had fusion power plants) concentrations of Helium-3. That is probably the only mining target that would actually be worth transporting back down to Earth.
Energy: time to change the picture.
I'd be happier if Carmack and Co could check for us.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
A WalMart truck needs at least state approval to drive on the highways.
A FedEx airplane needs federal approval to fly over US airspace, and to land at a US airport.
If you put anything into space, you need approval from the host nation, and verify that your flight pattern won't connect with something else (say... hubble, ISS, or any GPS sats...
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my