Bombing the Moon for Water

s20451 writes "In 1998, NASA scientists deliberately crashed the Lunar Prospector into the Moon, in a failed attempt to detect traces of water allegedly hiding in deep craters at the lunar south pole. Now the BBC is reporting a new proposal to attack the lunar poles with "Bunker Buster" missiles to liberate a detectable amount of water. Called Polar Night, the mission is being proposed as part of the "Discovery" series of probes."

Comments

Re:Yeah, but why?

[inertia187]

From the BBC article:

• What is the nature of the deposit?
  
• What is the source of the water?
  
• Are other ices besides water ice present?
  
• Is the hydrogen actually in the form of water ice, or is
• it hydrogen from the solar wind?
  

So, we want to know more. And this is one way to do it.

Re:hmm

[nate1138]

Did you even read the article? There aren't going to be any explosives at all on these missions (if approved). They use the PENETRATION technology of "Bunker Busters" to bury sensors under the moon's surface, and those sensors look for water/life/whatever and send the data home.

And by the way, bombs don't generally need atmospheric oxygen, the oxidizer is part of the explosive compound.

Re:The Time Machine?

[RatBastard]

Too bad they screwed that all up. The moon is drifting away from the Earth and there is nothing we can ever do about it. Ever.

Re:Damn�

[HalfStarted]

Ok... string me up for not reading my own linked article through... its not the best description... an air blast weapon gets most of it's explosive power by dispersing a fine mist of a highly reactive agent over a large area using the oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere as the oxidant. Thus... no air... no boom, in all reality I would bet that most if not all conventional explosives would fail to detonate in space due to the lack of atmospherically supplied oxygen... any demolitions experts here that can answer this?