Slashdot Mirror
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
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"
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
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.
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...
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)
Phase II = MoonRaker!
And if that doesn't clear things up, well, we'll send in MoonLeafBlower!
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.
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
Which reminds me... Why not send a witch? If she drowns then you know there's water.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You gotta be careful about moon cooties...
Somehow, I suspect that's the only kind of cooties you need to worry about.
An they will *accidentally* crash the probe on the Apollo 11 landing site. Then listen to the conspirationists...
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]
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
Is that Moon pounds or earth pounds?
Pound Sterling. Converting to US dollars would roughly double the size of the plume, and using Lira would create a dust cloud that encircles the solar system.
Blank until
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.
See, things like this are why I am just not that impressed with science...
comments like this are why science just isn't that impressed with you
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC