Slashdot Mirror
Hubble Zooms In On Moon Minerals
DIY News writes "Lunar scientists have already returned to the moon, using the Hubble Space Telescope and old Apollo Program rock samples to begin prospecting for useful ores. Locating ores rich in oxygen and metals is seen as the first step in making the next decade's human return to the moon more self sufficient and cost effective. Some wavelengths of UV are filtered out by Earth's atmosphere, which is why Hubble can do the job better than a ground-based telescope."
So how about a hires shot of the flag and footprints so we can all say "I TOLD YOU SO !"
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I sure am glad that such a waste of valuable resources like the Hubble is going to be scrapped soon. The sooner we stop doing such useless things with it like valuable research that will directly result in more efficient space travel, the better.
my pet machine
"We require more minerals"
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
here's some more.
I wasn't aware Hubble could focus to so close of an object. Anyone have details about this?
I've always liked Hubble, not only for pushing back the bounds of our knowledge (and more importantly our ignorance, its made us realise there is much more we don't understand) but also for the very very cool pictures that get people interested in science.
This is a very useful and productive use of Hubble... but will it help it get more funding? I'm not sure that the chaps in the Whitehouse will get excited about finding rocks on the Moon unless they can claim that THIS was where Saddam had is WMDs.
Rock A - No oxygen
Rock B - No oxygen
Rock C - No oxygen
Rock D - A bit of metal
Rock E - A bit of oxygen
Rock F - No oxygen
When they find something the photo is going to be rubbish, even worse than when scientists try and get people excited about red dust on Mars.
I suggest that they do the colouring job on the Moon that they always do on the star systems, and make it look way cooler...
"Rock X not only has a large amount of gold, shown in gold, and oxygen, shown in blue, but also various other minerals, show in pretty rainbow colours and is resting on a mauve background which represents the futility of mans existance and the desire to expand our knowledge"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
While we're up there, how about we start work on power satellites?
If you can get the math to work and sweet talk some venture capitalists then by all means do so. Believe me, people are trying. The numbers just don't work out well. Oil, or any other energy source, is cheap by comparison. The launch costs and inefficiencies in the energy transfer back to earth just don't correlate into profit.
Winds up being the same story with the rail gun. Good idea, in principle, but the devil is in the details.
-everphilski-
Dear god man, no! Didn't you see what happened in 1999 when there was an explosion and the moon was torn out of earths orbit and flung into outer space!
http://www.space1999.org/
The HST does not have sufficient resolution for this. The biggest thing that astronauts left on the moon is on the order of 1m, and the moon is 4e8 meters away, for an angular size of about 2.5e-9 radians. To resolve this at a wavelength of 800nm, you need a circular mirror with a diameter of 390m = 1.22 * 8e-7 / 2.5e-9. It would be cheaper to go and look, rather than to build a mirror that big.
they would have to bring ... troups
There's going to be a circus?
Sign me up!
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Did you just call me disgustingly ignorant? Not that I necessarily disagree, I just think it was premature.
That's kinda like running around in a large field hunting rabbits with a stone club, while there's a large flock of sheep walking around in your back yard.
- These characters were randomly selected.
There's going to be a circus?
gives a new meaning to "Moon Bounce". And it makes the trapese child's play.
You sir, need to find a wife.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
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!)
.. 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.
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
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.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Since it's almost Halloween, I figured I'd go ahead and post a warning I found while searching for the exact Quayle quote:
When/if oil (and coal, and natural gas) get too expensive, we'll shift our electricity generation away from those fuels and towards nuclear. Between direct use of electricty, and the generation of hydrogen for a portable fuel source, we can do/build everything we need.
Of course, these commodities aren't just used as fuels; oil provides lubrication, plastics, and lots of other refined products. Most of those can be obtained through recycling though, especially if there is plenty of electricty. Also, when the reserves got low, we'd stop using the stuff as fuel and conserve what's left for these other uses.
Your uber knowledge of napkin math makes me feel stupid :(
I'm not worthy...I'm not worthy...I'm not worthy!
Life is not for the lazy.
Which is why we should be building nuclear reactors to produce cheap hydrogen *now*, not 10 years from now. Maybe small ones on boats, that could also distill potable drinking water, as well as produce electricity for local consumption. and so why not hydrogen for non-local (fuel) use, too?
Interested? more information here
What happened? I remember when we were told that aiming Hubble at the Moon or the Earth would destroy it's sensitive instruments.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
"The latest lunar prospecting first required aiming Hubble at Apollo landing sites and looking with special filters that showed only subtle UV signatures reflected by soils there.
By then comparing the Hubble data to actual laboratory-studied samples that astronauts brought back from the same sites, they were able to get a clear idea just how these same minerals look through Hubble's eye. The Hubble Space Telescope can discriminate very subtle color differences on the surface," said planetary scientist Mark Robinson of Northwestern University. So subtle that Hubble can see mineralogical differences in rocks that look identical in color to the human eye, he said."
So the Hubble can in fact discern with a usable degree of precision....
"At Aristarchus, Hubble detected what appeared to be an abundance of the mineral ilmenite, which is good news, said NASA lunar scientist Michael Wargo. By heating or passing an electrical current through ilmenite, it's a simple matter to release oxygen, which can be used for breathing and for rocket fuel, he explained."
It will be easy to extract at least one useful element....
Ahhh...I'll just include the rest of the article.
"In some ways the Hubble prospecting is just the bare beginning of the next phase of lunar exploration, said Garvin. The next step will be taken by the robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is being built to map out the moon's resources in details.
A second lunar probe is also being planned, all before the planned return of humans to the moon by about 2018, as directed by President George W. Bush's vision for humans in space.
In a sense, said Robinson, the Hubble prospecting experiment is giving scientists the first taste of how to interpret the deluge of lunar data that will be coming from those spacecraft.
"It will be a Niagara Falls of data," he said. "This is really going to jump start our ability to understand this data.""
So this Hubble use is part of what seems to me to be a sound plan for preparing to build a base on the moon.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
"Honey, I love you, but I'm tired of you talking about this stuff. Why don't you talk to your nerd friends on Slashweb or whatever it's called".
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/gallery/
and here
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1283 056.html?page=1&c=y/
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Ya but think of all the other great stuff we could do with a mirror that big!
If it's dead, you killed it.
Why in gods name isn't there a lunar orbiter satellite? Surely it would cost too much to set one up, and we could get some really hi-res images of the surface, I mean we really should have better quality ones by now.