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NASA Begins Work on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
soldeed writes "Space.com is reporting the beginning of construction on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Which is scheduled for launch in late fall of 2008. It will orbit the moon at fifty kilometers and image the entire surface at high resolution. A far Ultraviolet instrument will enable it to see into areas permanently in shadow and see if there is indeed ice there. LRO will count craters and image American and Soviet landing sites."
The article doesn't mention if these images will be public domain or not. It would be really awesome if they were. At present, Google Moon is pretty damn low-res (I know it was created as a joke, but still), being able to zoom in and out of high-resolution pictures of the moon would be really cool.
I found it almost comical when I learned that people like the L5 society were actually serious about advocating space colonies, decades ago. (In their case, this means full orbiting cities at Lagrange points...) It just seemed impractical to the point of silliness. Someday, sure, but not now.
Colonizing the moon, even if it just means a permanent base of some kind on the moon, is similarly impractical - though on the moon, at least, there may be a reasonable amount of raw materials to build from. But ferrying people and supplies back and forth would be crazy-expensive. And suppose something goes wrong? Are the people there just hosed or what? Anyone who's living up there for any prolonged amount of time will basically be subsidized by the government for a very expensive and complex life-support system. Food, air, fuel, raw materials, and so on will all have to be provided to sustain the colony. That also means a lot of rocket traffic (and the cheaper ones put out toxic exhaust, not water like the hydrogen rockets.) going up to the moon, a lot of disposable rockets being wasted in space, and a lot of space junk being produced as a result.
The benefits of such an endeavor have the be a lot less abstract to be worth the waste. In time, technology will reach the point where we can do this much more cheaply - that will be the time when it really makes sense to do it. We can accelerate the process a bit by throwing money at the problem, but that can only get us so far...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Have you personally met anyone who has been to the moon?
Two of them, actually. All part of the fun of growing up near the JSC.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
According to one eye witness (Eugene Cernan? I'm not sure..) the ascent motor caused the flag to wave a bit- The Only Time It Waved Without Being Touched. (for any Hoax Believers or others who are hard of thinking)
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Really, I think the best proof that it's not a hoax is that there's no way that many people could keep a secret for that long.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
That wouldn't make a lick of sense at the present time. You could spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars sticking up a constellation of navigation satellites for 4 astronauts at a time, or you could spend a couple hundred grand on a radio direction finder system like a mini-LORAN set up at each landing site.
Plus lunar orbits are unstable (the article didn't go into this in detail, but I suppose it's probably due to the big freaking ball of gravity somewhere off in the vicinity of Earth). The satellites would have to frequently adjust their orbits to maintain accuracy. If I remember right, knowing the precisely the orbit of the satellites is critical for the accuracy of GPS.
I am 45, and grew up during Apollo missions. I closely followed every mission. I KNOW it happened. It could not be faked. If you disagree, consider, If it were a hoax the Soviet Union and any other country with a radio telescope could tell it was. On launch mornings, the television coverage would include a shot of the Soviet "trawler" hanging off the coast observing the proceedings. In fact, the soviets were very interested in observing our spaceflights. They tracked them in orbit, they tracked them going , decending, acending, and returning from the moon, and then at the splashdown theres another "trawler" hangin around. It was easy to do! you did'nt need a powerful radar as the spacecraft was constantly beaming back telemetry data and radio transmissions in the clear. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world at the time because of their absolute secrecy, the Soviets manned lunar programwas having a little trouble with their N1 boosters blowing up. In light of their own failure, and the general hostile attitude toward the United States, you cannot convince me that they would just stand by and let us evil capitalist pigs get away such a fakery! WE WENT!
Catholic Australian Primary children were always taught to place full stops after each letter of an ancronym. If you didn't, you were hit with a ruler or sometimes even clipped around the ear by a Nun, as she would repeat, "If you are going to write, then DO IT PROPERLY! ."
Catholic Australian High School students were taught more colloquial writing and acronyms were allowed to be spelt without full stops in text or dialogue IF it was pronounced eg Say NASA or N.A.S.A.
Acronyms in titles, sub-headings etc had to include full stops.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
So how long after the pictures are taken will the entire moon be available on GoogleMoon?