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NASA's $73 Million Water-Finding Trick
An anonymous reader writes "The folks at NASA, obviously looking for new ways to explore the universe, are planning to crash a two-ton probe into the moon. The goal? To find water." From the article: "NASA plans a series of robotic precursor missions including the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, which will plow into the crater, and the mapper, called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. When LCROSS strikes the crater, it is expected to create a hole 16 feet deep and send up a 2.2 million-pound (998,000-kg) plume of debris for sensors and cameras stationed on a second spacecraft to monitor. Dozens of ground-based telescopes, as well as possibly space observatories, such as the Hubble telescope, will be trained on the plume as well."
You know what would be amazing? If we could talk about technology on Slashdot again, and leave Bush out of the conversation. Seriously. What prompted you to say that? Was it political, or about technology (and the troll who tells me that technology is political should lay off)?
Dozens of ground-based telescopes, as well as possibly space observatories, such as the Hubble telescope, will be trained on the plume as well.
It does not look like Hubble will be around long enough. Without shuttle-based repairs, it is not expected to last more than a few more years unless it gets luckier than the Mars rovers.
This collision mission sounds similar to the comet-crash mission last 4th of July, Deep Impact.
Table-ized A.I.
One thing I like about Moon missions is we can see the results pretty much immediately, we can even see the mission via a telescope!
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
You see, Son, that is the thing about political humor. You can't just go sticking it in all willy-nilly where it doesn't fit.
And the guy who responded to you with the W comment completely misses the joke and comes off looking ignorant. That's right dude, stick it to the Slashdot man! You are truely a rebel without a cause.
Poorest logic yet! You are clearly not familiar with the precepts of guerrilla warfare. Kill one, terrify a thousand. They counted on a predictable response and we have not needed another "lesson."
Those pesky terrorists who "hate our freedoms" haven't HAD to do anything. Your gov. has taken away more liberties and freedoms than terrorists could have hoped to. The War on Terror has obviated the terrorists' need to conduct any attacks. They got the desired effect with almost no effort! Classic guerrilla tactics.
How many more White House, Pentagon, State and intelligence officials must come forward for the remaining minority (thankfully) of Americans to accept what is so obviously true?
Or you could just look around you at any measure of "quality of life" you care to. Education: in the pooper with funding continuing to plummet. Economy: Avg income dropping, savings rate is negative, Federal surplus has become record deficit, wealth gap continues to widen, job creation at lowest rates in 50 years (though a recent upswing), etc. 7 years ago, would you have ever thought election fraud would become an important issue in the US? Times, they are a'changin'....
Or Iraqis could examine the "quality of life" in Iraq as I got to see first hand for 3 years. Sure, most thought Saddam should be overthrown. Duh. But now after more than three years even the major cities don't have the same level of utility serive as before, employment is a fraction of what it was, 60-80% of schools and universities are still closed, access to helath care is even worse than before (coalition efforts have builkt only 23 of the 147 planned clinics), etc.
Maslow and his heirarchy of needs tells us that it's hard to focus on abstractions like "democracy" when you have no idea how you'll continue to feed the family (and can't help but think about how you could before the US came....) I only pray that they can collectively hold on. Iraqis are a wonderful people.
Face it: there is no evidence that ANY of it has worked - every metric you choose points to an unmittigated failure.
But it would be 5 times as expensive, and 10 times more likely to fail. NASA can't afford either of those at this time. You also get to point way more instrumentation at the result, and almost the entire technology is already tested with the 'deep impact' probe.
As for 'trashing' the moon, that's rather like saying that a mosquito is trashing my arm -- except that my arm has had far fewer mosquitos.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Yes certainly NASA should come around your house every time they want to plan a mission or spend some money and take time to explain it all to you v e r y s l o w l y indeed so you'll understand and be in a position to to give the yea or nay to whether or not they can go ahead with their plans.
Of course if you weren't so stupid and could read all the information NASA provides for yourself without the massive expense involved in having NASA come and talk to you specially we'd all be a lot better off.