Will the Earth's Tail Fry Moon Visitors?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers working for NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission have discovered that the Earth's magnetic tail could be harmful to future astronauts. The moon stays inside Earth's 'magnetotail' for six days every month — during full moon. This can have consequences ranging from lunar 'dust storms' to strong electrostatic discharges, according to one researcher quoted by NASA in 'The Moon and the Magnetotail.' So far, this is pure speculation: no man has been on the moon when the magnetotail hits. As added the same scientist, 'Apollo astronauts never landed on a full moon and they never experienced the magnetotail.' But read more for additional details about how Earth's magnetotail could affect men on the moon."

Comments

All I know

[Bastard of Subhumani]

All I know is, I don't get any tail for six days every month!

Re:All I know

[Anonymous Coward]

who said you could leave the kitchen? Go make me a sandwich sweetie.

Re:All I know

[that IT girl]

Spoken like a true anonymous coward.

Re:All I know

[that IT girl]

Haha! And people wonder why more women don't take an interest in computers. It's not the computers they're afraid of, it's putting up with all the comments like this... Good thing I can handle it -flex- :D

Re:All I know

[that IT girl]

Oh, of course. In fact, I'm secure and know I'm good at my job, so generally I find these comments pretty funny. Especially knowing some of the women that I work with who I just know HAD to have gotten where they are through... unscrupulous means. Nevertheless, it's not exactly a welcoming environment for the average lady, no matter how savvy. ;)

Magneto Tail?

[that IT girl]

Am I the only one who can't get past the image of the villain from X-Men? ;)

moot

[McGiraf]

This is moot, as we all know they will not make it thought the Radiation Belt anyway.

Giant, predictable magnetic distrubance?

[toastee]

Sounds like a great opportunity to harness the energy potential. this could very well be useful.

Re:Fix from article

[Anonymous Coward]

"So far, this is pure speculation: no man has been on the moon" Fixed.

One reply seemed to take this seriously, not as a joke, so I'll bite too.

To believe that the moon landing never happened as per Fox documentary (oxymoron?) you would have to..

.. believe that Soviet and China was in on the conspiracy, at the height of the cold war when this was a major blow to them. They could easily have disproved a fake moon landing, and choose to let US revel in glory instead..?

.. believe that all the actual moon rock available to scientists and universities is... what?

That's just two Occams Razor points, not going into NASAs rebuttals against the so called photo evidence.

Roland the Plogger again

[Animats]

It's Roland the Plogger, wrong as usual.

It's not like this is a newly discovered phenomenon. After all, there have been many unmanned moon landings and equipment has operated through the "magnetotail" many times. The USSR landed two lunar rovers, both of which worked for months. Lunokhod 1 was operational for 322 days, and Lunokhod 2 was operational for about four months. This was in the early 1970s.

Re:Roland the Plogger again

[1u3hr]

And Roland got his "for more information" link to his blog through again. Recently the editors have omitted these (though if you look in the firehose, Roland puts his spammy blog link in every submission).

Tagged "blogspam" and "fuckroland".

Electrostatic discharge ?

[d3m0nCr4t]

They are going to need one hell of a cable to earth that...

This was brought up in 1956 then 2005:

[Fluffeh]

A detailed look at this can be found in this link from Nasa on the topic of moon fountains, which is basically the exact same thing under a different name.