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NASA To Trigger Massive Explosion On the Moon In Search of Ice
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA is preparing to launch the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which will fly a Centaur rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it will hit the moon in the early morning hours of October 8 after an 86-day Lunar Gravity-Assist, Lunar Return Orbit that will allow the spacecraft time to complete its two-month commissioning phase and conduct nearly a month of science data collection of polar crater measurements before colliding with the moon just 10 minutes behind the Centaur." (Continues, below.)
"The cloud from the Centaur rocket booster will kick up 350 metric tons of debris that should spread six miles above the surface of the moon, hitting the sunlight and making it visible to amateur astronomers across North America. Over the final four minutes of its existence, as LCROSS follows the same terminal trajectory as the Centaur, the spacecraft will train its instruments and cameras on the debris cloud, searching it for the chemical signature of water. Previous spacecraft and ground-based instruments have detected signs of hydrogen near the moon's poles, and scientists are split over whether that is from ice that could have arrived through the impact of comets or by other means. Despite all the serious scientific talk about hydrogen signatures and lunar regolith, flying a rocket booster into the moon at 5,600 mph to trigger a massive explosion is just flat-out cool. 'We're certainly going to be making a big splash,' says Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist. 'We're going to see something, but I don't know what to expect. I know on the night of the impact, I'll be running on adrenaline.'"
They are using explosives to write NASA in the moon for all people to see. You won't succeed where Chairface failed!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
am I the only one who thinks we should blow everything up *here* before we start blowing everything up elsewhere?
I really can't tell if this article is serious or not.
Our intelligence is that they are storing WMD's on the moon.
Unless one of those halves goes spinning off somewhere, why would the gravitational pull radically change? It's still the same mass in the same relative position. It would have to be one hell of an explosion to nudge half the moon out of orbit.
SO, NASA is going the way of Mythbusters - from an organization devoted to scientific inquiry into one that just blows things up for kicks...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
How could it be US territory since we never went there?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Blah blah blah, we're in a financial crisis, yada yada yada.
I'm sick of the Chicken Littles bemoaning any public spending because of this "financial crisis".
If the sky is falling because of this financial crisis, having NASA research stuff up in the sky is a good idea, I say.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Will they also integrate a cheese flavor detector? How many thousands of years has human kind been wondering what flavor of cheese the moon is?
My hope is a nice sharp cheddar, but with all those holes you can see on the surface I have a sinking feeling that it will probably be Swiss.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Sept 13, 1999. Ten years and a few days late. Space:1999
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Plus, people often forget that with the sky falling it's actually cheaper to get there! Win!
We are in a financial crisis, and the government wants to see if there is ice on the moon? There's plenty on this planet. I can make some for you in my freezer and you can save 20 billion dollars.
Why do you hate science? And, no, I'm not being facetious. Humanity is reaching a potential ceiling on this planet's resources, and you deride efforts to determine whether we can ever get off this rock and sustain ourselves?
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11aug_lcross.htm
Equivalent to 2000 pounds of TNT. That's less than a bunker buster bomb carried by an F15. The moons been hit by stuff a lot more powerful, like the enormous asteroids that made the 1000-mile craters you can see without a telescope.
ZOMG!!!! A massive explosion!!! A six mile high explosion!!!!
Or would that actually be a very, very modest explosion (especially in astronomical terms) triggering a six mile high debris plume?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
It's ok to blow things up if you just want to know if "there is water there."
For instance, I just blew up a watermelon 'to see if there was water in there.' It was moist, leading me to believe that there is, in fact, water in there. Then I blew up a junk yard Ford Pinto so I could verify that there was not, in fact, "water in there." As I suspected, there wasn't.
Oh yea, remember that 2002 or whatever make of The Time Machine? With the fragmented moon? Lets just hope this time it doesn't come crashing down on Earth.
Well, technically it didn't come crashing down on the earth, the explosions they created for the lunar colony caused the moon to drop out of its natural orbit, which in turn has massive gravational effects on earth that more or less started tearing apart the continants, forcing people to make a decision to either try and survive on the surface, or retreat underground for their survival.
We have the technology... the time is now... science can wait no longer... children are our future. America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon!
<stolen>http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/1c81d0df12/mr-show-america-blows-up-the-moon-from-thaffner</stolen>
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI
Look at a picture of the moon. Go on I'll wait.
OK, did you see the craters covering the surface? Look again if you want.
Those are quite big no? In fact, they're bigger than the rocket booster - about half a million of them have diameters bigger than 1km (according to wikipedia). Since not one of those 500,000 (some of which are fairly recent) has had any significant effect on the moons orbit I'd say we're safe.
The world is always in a crisis ...you do realize that most of the world is in poverty ....so did that stop us from doing science, plays, movies, theaters, art, sports
So why stop now ...because a few people made stupid investments in companies run by more stupid people ?
...we never went there?
Since when has that been a prerequisite?
(AP) NASA announces that they have discovered that there were in fact trace amounts of ice on the moon.
"We detected a modest amount of water by blowing up a small part of the moon, but is not really sufficient to allow for future use."
Critics argue that NASA may have destroyed the precious lunar water, damaging the lunar system irreparably.
"They blew it up, I tell you. This is a travesty. It's all just testosterone, blowing things up. We thought we were changing away from this white male blowing up the moon business. Now, future life will not be able to evolve on the moon without water.", said the head of the leftist Environmental Action Front.
Other critics disagreed. "Drill, baby, drill", argued the head of the Chamber of Christian Commerce. "There's probably plenty more water on the moon. NASA couldn't have blown it up. It's the moon for Pete's sake...besides, there's no such thing as evolution anyways... "
President Obama's press secretary forgot where he was for a moment, then blamed the launch of the space craft on George Bush.
Dick Cheney replied that blowing up part of the moon was for national security but regretted that there will not be sufficient water to waterboard alien terrorists with.
Aliens from Alpha Centauri expressed their outrage through their ambassadors at Area 51. Ambassador Xwillxiahch told human reporters "First, you shot down our spaceship, after we showed you how to make pyramids, and now you do this. You humans are far too aggressive. We could have told you that there was water on the moon". Are you going to go killed the fish on Europa to see if they are there...oh, there's fish on Europa...didn't know that, did you HUMANS.."
This is my sig.
Well, to start with the mission is costing $78 million, not $20 billion. Second, it costs $100,000 to launch one (1) gallon of water on the Shuttle. Probably closer to $10,000 per gallon on other vehicles; but, we all know the Shuttle is expensive to operate. Even at $10k/gal, that's still a lot of money. So, if we are going to put people on the Moon, it makes no sense, economically, to send them water from Earth. Even in high orbit of Earth, it's likely to be more cost effective, in the long run, to lift water out of the Moon's gravity well than it is to lift water out of the Earth's gravity well. It is clearly the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Sure, the LCOSS is intended to crash, but I bet NASA will announce eventually that the probe missed, made a soft landing instead and is now sending data from the surface. Way to lower expectations, guys.
http://xkcd.com/397/
That's no moon, it's a pair of moons!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
That's no moon, it's a target.
rewriting history since 2109
Several S-IVB stages from Saturn V rockets impacted the moon in the 1960s and '70s. All of them were more massive than the little Centaur.
At least one Apollo mission left seismic sensors on the moon, which recorded the effects of S-IVB impacts on later flights.
One of Largest conventional explosion on earth was a single ship:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
3000 tones equivalent of TNT. 3000 short tons = 6 000 000 pounds.
6 000 000 pounds = 3000 Bunker Buster Bombs.
That's more like it!
In other big bangs of note, The US did make two conventional explosions that were bigger (4 kilotons) to try and simulate a small yield nuclear device. Also the British tried to blow up an island (3.2 kilotons).
The US ones were basically Nitrate Fuel bombs, the British one was various old WW2 munitions, Canadian was WW1 munitions. Be interesting to see what you could do with some more high tech stuff.