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Apollo 16 Booster Impact Site Found (asu.edu)
NormalVisual writes: After decades of mystery, the lunar impact site for the Apollo 16 S-IVB third stage has finally been found. These boosters were directed to impact on the Moon beginning with Apollo 13 in order to allow scientists to learn more about the Moon's inner structure by measuring the effects of the collisions with lunar seismographs. Five boosters were directed into the Moon during the lunar missions, and the other four impact sites had already been found shortly after the missions themselves. The Apollo 16 booster had been difficult to find because of a loss of radio contact with the booster before the impact, and the actual impact location was 30 km away from the original estimate.
Lawyers all over the earth are filing lawsuits for damages today.
Apollo 16 used the integrated face system to land on the moon.
The astronauts must have been holding it wrong. Cosmonauts would never have this problem.
Yes, it's definitely hard to imagine how nerds could be interested in LANDING ON THE EFFING MOON!!
Was an environmental impact statement filed for these procedure? Hopefully, NASA had considered the environmental impact upon disposing of said boosters in such a matter on a pristine environment.
I mean really, that's what we're most interested in.
Stuff that matters? Not so much.
Dude, I must disagree.
Successfully hitting the moon with a rocket goes a long way towards our being able to blow it up.
And NOTHING matters more than our ability to BLOW UP THE MOON!
Agreed. Most of the people who worked on the Apollo missions were cisgender white males anyway. You can tell by their microaggressive behavior (slamming boosters into a planet). What if they had harmed the indigenous species? Did they care? No.
But the conspiracy theorists all tell me the moon landings were fake... You mean to tell me there is actual evidence of us landing on the moon that we can see?
(yes I'm joking for the humor impaired)
Don't underestimate the power to blow up a moon. You never know when you run into a moon that turn out to be a battle station.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
About as interesting as climbing Everest. Now drilling into the Earth, that's the new frontier for exploration. There are some unknowns there, and lots of science to be done there, and imagine all the spinoffs?
Well, I thought I had been following the space program pretty closely all these years. I was a little kid in the 60's so I got to watch the early space program develop in real time. But I had never heard of these experiements until today. A few years ago, when the Indians crashed their probe into the moon, I thought, "What an interesting experiment. I wonder why we never thought of that." Turns out, we did think of that. Of course, the two experiments differed in what they were looking for, but they were alike in that someone said, "Hey, let's crash something into the moon in order to learn something more about it."
Proverbs 21:19
It would be interesting to see what this impact site looks like up close, in significant detail like Mars rovers (we got plenty of those). Is there any significant piece of metal or because of impact energy it exploded like a high powered bomb where entire third stage is bits and pieces scattered over miles. Probably most interesting is the soil, be able to look at fresh soil that hasn't been exposed for millions of years. Also what would it look like up close on impact (i.e. a GoPro on a tripod near impact site). A lunar rover can go to all these interesting places like landing sites, take a close up of what solar radiation does to materials over past 45 years. Unfortunately Mars Underground folks hijacked the space program setting most resources to bypass the Moon and go straight to Mars.
Speaking of Apollo 13, the third stage impact was the only planned objective accomplished by that flight. Geologists were very interested to see how much the Moon shakes. They did alert the crew good data was measured by seismographs left by Apollo 11 and 12, though crew probably didn't give it that much thought as there were more pressing matters to deal with.
mfwright@batnet.com
Imagine working 43 years, finding what you were tasked, and... now what? Not many looking for "booster spotters" anymore. Maybe the Russians? Indians? Cowboys?
Sanford's great grandson is going to be salvaging that stuff someday.
So... salvage laws... wonder if maritime laws will be extended to space someday?
That's no moon...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Hey, empty booster, 1/6 gravity, how much fuel would they have to hold back? Would just take a little clever coding on those tiny 8-bit cpus but they had people who knew how to write native machine code back then, by golly.
Oh and some landing legs....
Here is an image of the impact site.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
slamming boosters into a planet
A booster shaped like a penis.
OK, who didn't arm their spaceship?
Have gnu, will travel.
The other four impact sites weren't found right after the missions themselves as the summary says. They were also found by the LROC team, just more quickly because they had a better idea where to look for them. I noticed that as soon as I hit "Submit". Sorry guys, I fail at reading comprehension.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
slamming boosters into a planet
A booster shaped like a penis.
Vagina shaped boosters being in short supply, they had little choice.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
The SIVB stage expended essentially all its fuel pushing the CSM and LM to the moon, the only options for the stage were: crash it into the moon, or let it become a wandering HUGE bit of space junk that would periodically cross the Earth's orbit over the decades ahead. After Apollo 11 left a seismometer on the moon, it made sense for the following missions to crash the stages, generating artificial "moonquakes" which could be measured on the remotely-monitored seismographs to get a little more science for the taxpayer dollars
The performance margins on Apollo were so insanely tight that there were actual debates over how many bandages could be put into the medical kit on the LM - every ounce mattered. There was NO WAY anybody could have added excess fuel for a moon landing and landing legs to the SIVB.
Also note: There's no atmosphere on the moon, thus no aerodynamic drag decelerating a falling rocket body and no terminal velocity (the more time you spend falling the faster you go with no limit). The lack of atmosphere also means things like Musk's gridfins would not work; thrusters burning fuel would be needed all the way down, like on the LM and unlike a Bezos or Musk 1st stage returning to Earth.
You're all space cows. The MOON is for space cows. MOOOOOON goes the space cows, MOOOOOOOOOON
Ah yes, it *is* Friday. I'd not noticed in the din. Lemme get out my hat of bigotry and my robe of hate - I'll be right back.
I'm working backwards - oldest to newest - and haven't yet found the appropriate fear mongering hate thread. (The exercise for you, dear reader, is to figure out which side I speak of.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."