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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."
That's no moon, it's a.... ... pinata?
Now if they'd just started making this one of the secondary objectives in every mission, there would hardly ever be any failed missions. It's a Win/Win situation.
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -Isaac Asimov
And if you had said W, you have been modeed up to a 5 for sure.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Since i'm positive someone will post it, i'll debunk it ahead of time.
"WHAT IF WE DESTROY THE MOON!?"
It won't. A good anaology would be crashing the empire state building into Wyoming. It would look sorta cool, but that's about it.
"WHAT ABOUT DESTROYING NATURE!?"
Well, the moon in a dead chunk of former Earth material which has no atmosphere and certainly no ecology. And as stated previously, the explosion won't be all that neat on a planetary scale. The Moon has taken much much worse hits from meteors and what not.
So basically, break out your telescopes in '08 and enjoy the show.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Just ask the Defense lawyers for the team at Duke. This Probe is doomed to fail.
They used to crash the upper stages of the Saturn 5 to gain scientific data from the Moon. Learned a lot that way.
Hard to say if this will work though. The theoretical plume size has a lot of unknowns involved. To date, they have never directly observed water on the Moon, but have only identified a certain amount of hydrogen, which would correspond to a certain amount of water, if that hydrogen was bound in water molecules. If the hydrogen is hydrated minerals, that plume will be much, much smaller than projected.
I guess NASA did learn something from all the Mars impacts after all... ;)
Oh well, what the hell...
FTA: NASA astronauts visited the moon during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the Apollo program but have not returned.
I think it's a little late, now, to think of sending up missions to bring them back to earth.<grin>
Have they no respect for the environment?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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)?
They better not hit the sites of any of my future summer homes!
;)
"... it is expected to create a hole 16 feet deep and send up a 2.2 million-pound (998,000-kg) plume of debris"
I think they're most likely ballpark figures for a 5 metre deep crater, and 1000 tonnes of debris. Convert these to imperial measurements and back again without thinking too much, and you gain many significant figures of accuracy!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
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.
When you need to crash a spacecraft, NASA are the go to guys.
But... But... The Enterprise doesn't smash a Class 1 Probe into planets when it wants to scan for water, so why does NASA have to? Or maybe this is another instance where I'm inappropriately placing elements of Star Trek technology into contemporary science problems? I'm so confused...
-William Brendel
Good Lord,
In space there's hardly any gravity. I've seen pictures of ordinary humans being able to perform great feats of strength in space, like upside down pushups with the tip of their finger while wearing an orange jumpsuit and gobbling floating blobs of water like a chameleon. I've also seen astronauts on the moon take great flying leaps that no human could do on Earth. If an ordinary human can do those things in space, then obviously a 2 ton weight should be able to do unimaginable damage. It's likely that the moon will either crack into 2 pieces, or possibly fly off into space where it will be gobbled up by Jupiter or become a tenth planet. I can't imagine what these "scientists" are thinking. We seriously need to put a stop to this now.
Yes, but:
What is the cost per pound for GEO lift? (this will need at least that much), and how much does this highly scientific bullet weigh?
Certainly a fleet of mars style rovers (which have proven their mettle) would cost no more to lift and produce tons more science?
Just a thought.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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.
Bah, I forgot to ask:
Has the vehicle dev team talked with the launch team about whether they are using imperial tons or metric tonnes?
I can see it now: Lauch team: metric, Vehicle team: imperial.
"Sir, we don't seem to ahve enough fuel to reach the moon, best we can do is put the bullet in a LEO and wait for someone who we really want to shoot to come by."
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
"NASA's mission to crash a probe into the moon came to an unfortunate end today as the probe suffered a glitch and settled into a stable orbit around the Moon instead of the planned death-dive. Officials said they believe the cause of the problem was engineers mistakenly using the metric system in a system where imperial measures should have been used."
~Philly
I can't decide whether to try to make an Excel Saga joke out of the project name, or merely reflect on the vague similarities to Baxter's "Moonseed".
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.
It would cost a heck of a lot more to design, develop, build, test, launch, and staff a fleet of rovers than it would to do this mission.
Yes and when Clinton was "ministering" young interns in the oval office we didn't have planes running into buildings either.
Is this really necessary?
I'm glad that banging stuff together when bored and frustrated is still an accepted practice.
Now to take care of some coworkers...
Didn't Beagle 2 already do this?
I'm sorry. I really am.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
NASA's incompetence is a feature, not a bug.
The knowledge that oil is available is known,
but it's not likely there is appreciable water in the moon.
The expediture is relative, and possibly just as moot.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I'd rather send Bin Ladin. As a passenger, In a small pine box with airholes. In the cargo bay.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The best part of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was when the Klingons probed an alien phenomenon in a similar way.
Let's hope NASA's probe has different results!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Okay, I admit, I'm a bit of a bumpkin when it comes to understanding the scale of all this. I was just curious: Would this be visible to the naked eye?
... of all things... fire. There was a theory that a large meteor struck the moon and put on a light show. I was just curious if a.) Anybody knows about the story I'm referring to and can point me at the right search terms to find it and b.) if there's an off-shoot chance that Nasa's going to pull a stunt that'll result in some group of people suddenly dropping to their knees and praying.
Why do I ask? I was watching some show on Discovery or History Channel several years ago. They said that in the 1600's or so some monks prayed for a sign, then they looked up at the sky and saw the moon on
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like they're aiming for another Mad Science Award.
I guess this will finally disprove the theory that the moon is made of cheese.
Assuming they do find water, I can't help but wonder what the quality of it would be. Would it be drinkable? Would it need to go through a 24 stage modern filtration system? What about the posibility of consumers of the water getting moon cooties? You gotta be careful about moon cooties...>_>
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
The parent expressed what is arguably one of the least-informed opinions yet presented on Slashdot.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Phase II = MoonRaker!
And if that doesn't clear things up, well, we'll send in MoonLeafBlower!
No, no, since the world has failed to standardize on Windows, Bill Gates is going to crash the moon into the world to start over creating his standardized world free of poverty.
I mperial+Electronic+Brain
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Revenge+of+the+
1) One has to wonder if the excitement generated by Deep Impact is just going to spawn a whole series of experiments involving slamming large impactors onto heavenly bodies... if only for the publicity of smashing a heavenly body.
That's one way to describe the mating process I guess.......
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
The project, called "Deep Orbital Water Sensing Emitter" or DOWSE, is NASA's most ambitious project in years. Current plans call for the capital-Y-shaped vessel to be finished and ready for launch in early 2007 and while the execution may be complex, the basic idea is simple. Engines in the craft's stems will propel it toward the moon, while the actual navigational commands will be issued from the hollow body of the vessel. "What will be in that half-mile long tude issuing these complex water-seeking commands," you ask? As much of the US's growing psychic population as NASA can cram in, comes the almost predictable answer. And while the psychics will certainly be killed on lunar impact, NASA feels that this will more than offset the cost of what is almost certain to be a failed mission.
why not just go there and dig?
They're using their grammar skills there.
But that is what is so great about it, if the message is so far out of place, if it doesn't make anyone laugh, then yes, it will be modded down...situation solved.
NASA tried this impact project with Lunar Prospector in 1999. But it did not lead to any substantial ejection of water vapor off the impact point. No water vapor was observed with the Hubble/STIS (spectrograph). I believe (have not RFTA) that NASA wants to do it right with a proper impactor at this time.
...planning to crash a two-ton probe into the moon."
:D
To ensure the probe actually crashes I suggest we use MS Windows.
COuldn't resist
I love humanity, it is people I hate
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.
Is that Moon pounds or earth pounds? cause 2.2 million pounds on the moon is a lot more mass than 2.2 million pounds on earth....
sarcasm This is just old-fashioned pork barrel politics. Except, now they're not even pretending: instead of saying a $2,000,000,000 "bridge to nowhere" serves an actual purpose they are just going to outright spend $73,000,000 with the explicit purpose of making a pile of debris on the moon. I bet they name it after Senator Ted Stevens(R-Alaska) or Bill Frist(R-Tenn). At least Bill Frist has some experience on conducting science at a distance. "Frist Water-Seeking Mission to the Moon" sounds kind of catchy. Kind of. Maybe? Ok, no. /sarcasm
Which reminds me... Why not send a witch? If she drowns then you know there's water.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
IIRC on the shuttle it'd be about US$10,000 a pound. Using appropriate rockets, if we had any, might cost only US$5,000 a pound. YMMV. These figures are probably outdated, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
See, things like this are why I am just not that impressed with science...
If the objective of every mission is to crash, then NASA CANNOT fail. What does it take to work for NASA again (I have much experience crashing objects ;)
Sounds to me like the end of a successful dating experience.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
(Shhh. Nobody tell him about the politics section.)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Setting off a nuke on the moon. Just think of the kind of crater you can make with a nuke, the kind of dust plume you could create, and all the advertising you could get.
."
"This year's moon-nuke detonation has been brought to you by. .
I'm pretty sure I could make something from a few car batteries and a thousand bucks at the hardware store that would do the job better than a $73M small bomb, provided they supply the rocket to send it up. Is this really the best we can do? Heck, why bother with the probe if it's just going to crash? Surely the rocket alone would be much cheaper.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
if they make the probe with 2 tons of ice =)
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Maybe they should mount a dowsing rod onto the guidance system...
And the brethren went away edified.
Ok, this sound like fun and games until someone gets hurt. When they wake up Godzilla, I think he might be pretty pissed off, kindof like Napolean returning from Alba or something!
An they will *accidentally* crash the probe on the Apollo 11 landing site. Then listen to the conspirationists...
According to this CNN article, it's actually a $600 million mission. The probe itself is capped at $80 million, yes, but the entire mission's cost also includes getting the probe and its mother ship into lunar orbit, dropping the probe, and getting the mother ship to fly through the plume and search for water vapor.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Yeah except that a nuke in a vaccuum is a pretty mundane event. Think mini-star. The plume effect and shockwaves all come from superheating the air -- which wouldn't work up there. I imagine a nuke on the moon would look like a great big stadium light for about one and a half seconds, and then just leave some nice radiation-cooked moondust near where it was.
From TFA: NASA astronauts visited the moon during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the Apollo program but have not returned.
Those astronauts, who sacrificed so willingly, sitting up there all alone on the Moon for thirty years...
[/sarcasm]
What if the dust cloud sends the moon into a vicious cylce of Lunar Warming???? Is it not bad enough man has destroyed the earth atmosphere, now we must ruin the moon as well? I hope they can live with the blood of the Man on the Moon on their hands. The GreenHouse effect will surely make the moon uninhabitable.
Those kids at N.A.S.A. love comedy. Mr. Show season 3 episode six. "America will blow up the moon" This will be the best 4th of July ever!
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 .. 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.
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.
(Hey, I've seen enough people plagiarize this piece over the years, I thought I might as well post it myself for old time's sake.)
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Actually, I thought the Empire State Building analogy was fairly good. The sizes are kinda irrelevant; neither the building nor the probe will destroy Wyoming nor the moon, and both would look pretty cool. ^_^
DATABASE WOW WOW
if anything it should be:
In Soviet Russia, moon bombs you!
What do you have on the moon which can be converted to water and oxygen?
Water + energy (electricity)=hydrogen + oxygen
I give up, what can be converted to water and oxygen?
Blank until
Why don't they just use two bent sticks?
i'd say he just got red flagged by the NSA. and now i just did, too.
i disable sigs
Witches won't drown even if there is water.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
They use a damn big 2 ton divining rod!
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
this probe will probably land, begin running experiments and set up a biosphere before quietly and uneventfully returning to earth
I bet this thing crashes into the Apollo landing site, conveniantly destroying all traces of its existance (or non existance).
NASA:"Opps, you will just have to take our word for it now and stop asking us to prove it"
I wonder what the effect tons of debris flying from the moon will have... Oh wait, I know! The rocks will be aiming for: Earth. So that means George Bu-, I mean, NASA will shoot down our climate monitoring satellites so we can all sell our souls to the devil without knowing better. All we have to worry about is some of those WMD that terrorists have hidden on the moon... Boy, is it just me or is it starting to get hot on this planet?
I have always been under the impression that the moon was too close and too bright for Hubble to look at.
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.
The $270B could have gone into research (including NASA) and other more useful things.
Instead it's essentially being used to create a bunch of smaller, far less productive holes in the ground -- some filled with bodies; some filled with nothing.
Some geeks are reasonably upset about this -- including some with friends and family members filling some of these expensive holes. I say let them vent, and go on to the next comment.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
"He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf the Grey
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
truely
http://outcampaign.org/
When the main character doing the time travel in the 2002 adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic goes into the future, doesn't he end up in the midst of mass panic due to the orbit of the moon having been disturbed by resort construction that used explosives or something?
If you're going to crash a 2 tonne probe into the surface, why not just send a block of concrete? surely cheaper.... :-)
Personally i think its quite disturbing.. a 2 ton object into the moon.. What effect does this have on it trajectory?.. etc. and whats next a 50, 100, 1000 tone object? We should stop them they dont own the moon!! Heck i think we should drop a 2 tone object from out of space in NASAS back yard and see what they have to say about that.
www.orionsimracing.com
What if the moon is destroyed ? Hm, they should watch the movie ... Timeline once more :)
Somethings should be left alone, the rainforest, Iraq, North-Korea and the Moon. Once you start fiddling with it you may expect the unexpected.
The Clangers will take it as an act of war and start nuking us from orbit.
Look like dodgy units conversions to me. What's the betting that it's really a five metre hole and a one-gigagramme plume of debris?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
planning to crash a two-ton probe into the moon.
Well that's one way to really piss off the man in the moon...
I'm viewing only posts of +3 and above, and your post is the only one to mention B*sh.
:)
Change your settings and drop the subject, and you're set.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
Just as I was about to carve my name on the moon with a laser, they have to go and smash the damn thing, the insensitive clods!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Makes more sense than a lot of current foreign policies.
Fire ze missiles!
LithoBreaking, Its not just for Mars anymore!
Perhaps that should be caseibreaking? (stopping by use of cheese)
meh
"... it is expected to create a hole 16 feet deep and send up a 2.2 million-pound (998,000-kg) plume of debris"
I think they're most likely ballpark figures for a 5 metre deep crater, and 1000 tonnes of debris. Convert these to imperial measurements and back again without thinking too much, and you gain many significant figures of accuracy!
The parent was modded +5 Informative?!? It's a joke, people. You don't gain any significance by changing units. If the final exclaimation mark wasn't enough of a giveaway, the phrase "without thinking too much" might have been a clue.
Funny, perhaps, but not Informative. Oh well, at least the author is probably laughing.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
That might also put an end to the Microsoft monopoly ;)
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Why do I get the feeling that the correct number is 1 million kg? I suspect that the original figure was 1 million kg, which then got translated to 2.2 million pounds for the non-scientific American audience. Then it got translated back to kilograms for the international audience, with some rounding errors. Even more interesting is that the number of significant digits went from 1 to 3 in the whole translation process.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Wow, what an insightful and thought provoking post. I now realize my faults for being liberal. I am going to switch my registered political party right away. I'd rather be around intelligent people like you who make valid, relative points and use logical reasoning.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
What if the collision, via a quantum anomaly, creates a microscopic black hole, which will fall to the center of the moon, and oscillate back and forth, finally eating up the entire moon?
GEO prices vary even more than LEO prices. But look at the mission price tag - this is less than a tenth as much total cost as the MER program. Simple mission = low price, in general (although I suppose Gravity Probe B would seem an exception).
The Spanish-English dictionary is out of ink.
[quote] The $272 seems to be working so far. Look ma! No planes hitting buildings![/quote]
You're right! Terrorism is way down.
The Spanish-English dictionary is out of ink.
Wow, while we are at it let's see how much it will take to knock the moon off of its rotation and send us into chaos. Is NASA just running out of ideas? I thought the Mars thing was pretty cool and they are doing some other scheduled things that look good too. I just don't understand why they would do this, especially when people are doubting whether NASA should exist anymore.
~Bryan
Space.com has the following photo of the Aiken Crater on the South Pole. Pretty colors.
Of course if they do find water up there, we'll be exploiting it. Reminds me of the song from the Moon theme park in Futurama: We're whalers on the Moon! We carry a harpoon! But there ain't no whales, so we tell tall tales, and sing our whaling tune!
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
If MS Windows is used for this mission, the probe may crash just a couple of seconds before actual it must and what will we have then? A probe, hanging there 150 meters above the Moon serface totally crashed... We must supply the probe with a reset button, but if the probe reboots, will it return to Earth for a relaunch?
You can't handle the truth.
^^^ That is what we should be doing. Forget crashing a tiny craft into it, we should be nuking it.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Is is that hard to drill 16 feet? If their weight budget is two TONS, surely they could build a drill to dig at least that far. I would think a small sample from 30 feet would be more valuable than a large sample from 16 feet.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
On Google news, the first story (that I saw on Google news) was from ABC News: Probe Will Be First to Reach Lunar Surface Since Apollo ABC News - 19 hours ago By NED POTTER. April 10, 2006 -- NASA announced today it will send a rocket to crash into the moon, an early step to delivering the ...
I seem to recall we did this before in 1999:
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast03sep 99_1.htm
Maybe there's a new conspiracy theory that we never went to the moon (again).
Since they didn't specify, I assumed they were using lbm (pounds mass). The fact that you saw something describing the size of a cloud and immediately assumed it was lbf (pounds force) leads me to worry significantly about the rate of deteriorating education in the world today, as I wasn't in school that long ago, and even the greatest idiots in my classes knew the difference. Seriously, why would you measure a quantity of rock by a force?
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Actually, there's been a plan floating around for years, to use the same methodology to collect particles from the surface of Europa: drop an impactor on the surface, fly the orbiter through the plume, collect particles. Analyze some on the fly, bring others back home for more detailed study.
It looks like the impactor/collector mode is becoming popular among the space-oriented smarty men, probably because it works and is cost-effective.
Think about it.
You don't have to design the impactor for precision guidance and soft landings. You don't have to load it down with robotic collectors and onboard labs. And you obviously don't have to include any lunar launch and earth return capability. This constitutes a significant reduction in weight and complexity, with its attendant reduction in cost and increase in success chances.
The orbiter/collector, meanwhile, can be optimized for its discrete tasks: collecting, analyzing, and (possibly) returning samples. It also doesn't need to be designed for soft landings and lunar launch capability. It can be designed specifically for zero-g operation, rather than multi-environment operation (zero-g in space, 1/6th g on the lunar surface). Again, this leads to weight and complexity savings, further increasing the chances of success and reducing cost.
This approach--multiple, specialized stages, each optimized for a set of discrete tasks--was chosen for the Apollo project, where it was implemented very successfully to deliver several groundbreaking missions at an acceptable cost and within the weight and engineering budgets imposed by the state of the art at that time.
I'm not at all surprised to see it being considered here. It's a proven approach with many benefits and few drawbacks.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
an episode of "The Tick" I'm reading about....? Did Chairface succeed?!
Since the article posted on Slashdot doesn't really explain why scientists think there might be ice on the Moon, I think your questions deserve a decent answer. Some recent unmanned missions like the Lunar Prospector have made spectroscopic measurements that suggest there are higher than normal concentrations of hydrogen near the Moon's poles. This could indicate the presence of water ice, or hydrogen tied up in the molecules of the rocks on the Moon. They did try crashing the Lunar Prospector into the Moon at the end of its mission, but the experiment didn't work out as planned. The reason why they are looking in deep craters, is that parts of the deepest craters near the Moon's poles may be permanently in shadow. Sunlight never reaches the bottoms of these craters, so that water ice might be able to exist there in a sort of permafrost layer. There is some evidence for water ice in deep craters near the poles of the planet Mercury as well. If I understand the new NASA mission correctly, they are basically going to do a more sophisticated version of the Lunar Prospector experiment. Even if this new mission finds evidence for water, it doesn't mean the water is necessarily in a form that could easily be used by astronauts - it could be bound up chemically in the rocks, making it difficult to extract.
Maybe they can't use emission spectroscopy the way most people think about it, but there are other spectroscopic techniques that can be used by orbiting satellites to study the Moon's composition. Check out this page about the instruments on board the Lunar Prospector mission. This mission was launched in 1998, and crashed into the Moon in 1999.
My actual question is why, after decades of neglect, is our first big public attempt at re-invigorating moon exploration something as negative as slamming meteors into it? Yes, there are ways to belittle people who think we should approach scientific discovery with a little more finesse. Belitting critics will just turn people away from science.
Has anyone at NASA noticed that students are systematically rejecting science as a career path? When science is presented as something elegant and beautiful it draws in inquisitive minds. Today, when science is presented with such arrogance and hubris, students and the public at large turn away from science.
Yes, you have an argument that science is not necessarily elegant. Neither is it necessarily arrogant. Slamming celestial bodies into each other might be fun, but it will not result in the same public support as elegant science like the Mars rovers. We have the technology and public support to engage in elegant exploration. Why not chose that over exploring with hubris?
Anyway, have fun belittling all the people who disagree with you. I realize that I am in the minority who believe that both science and math are intrensically beautiful. I am quite certain that this thuggish approach will reinforce world opinion that American science is arrogant. Unlike the Mars Rover, it will turn public sentiment against science.
A campaign where NASA scientists belittle people opposed to the experiment will probably work in selling this project, but it will turn public sentiment against NASA and drain the pool of students thinking of science as a career.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I realize that this would likely evaporate any water vapor that would be ejected, but i wonder how big a dust plume one of the US's nuclear bunker busters would make, and what we could learn as a result...
The television will not be revolutionized.
You heard it from me first on slashdot.....they are looking for Helium-3. They must have found something on the last meteor we smashed hoping to find "water" and pixie dust. The government/military wants in on this cashcow Helium-3. Our natural resources is going fast and that's a fact. So lets literally "shoot the moon" hoping that the earth's gravity will not be affected, but that a risk we are willng to take. If you can sell a few grains of this stuff for millions would you shoot the moon? http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_0006 30.html/
Didn't they do that in 1999 near Moonbase Alpha?
http://www.space1999.org/
Fight Spammers!
This is a post a little off-topic to ask for an help from you. I'me new to Slashdot and I don't understand how to open a new thread; the way is the "Submit a Story" form or there is another page to enter a new thread? (probably it's very simple but I've not seen it!) The argument of the thread I wish to open is about my proposal to build an SLV (with MANY advantages) for VSE moon missions insted of CLV/CaLV as explained here: http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/004.html/ Can you say me if there are other threads on Slashdot about VSE rockets where I can post my opinions about? Thank You.
http://www.ghostnasa.com/ http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/articles.htm
Another little help from you that are expert users of Slashdot: Since english is not my mother language I've made some grammar errors in my previous post. How can I edit my Slashdot's post? Thank You again.
http://www.ghostnasa.com/ http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/articles.htm