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NASA Crashing Probe to Look for H2O on Moon
Echoloc8 writes "This article from Yahoo! News reports that NASA will be smashing the Lunar Prospector probe into the moon near the probable ice deposit discovered recently, trying to send a water-vapor plume high enough to be detected. They claim a 10% chance of success." It's a pretty cool idea-the probe has just about served all of it's usefulness, and while not finding liquid doesn't mean that it is not present, I like the notion of using every last dollar they can.
>the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite...
Sorry, but each manned mission left behind a base unit that the LEM took off from to meet with the orbiter. We've got what, four? five? of the suckers up there?
Personally, I like the idea. Ladies and gentlemen, please point your spectrometers at the designated coordinates, hope there's a good light source with known characteristics behind it, and take chemical analyses of the dust plume. Water is just one compound to look for.
Messy? Yeah, a bit. Practical? Yup.
ha! and it'll have the commodore C= chickenhead on the side of it, too!
I guess you missed that episode of 'Futurama'.
Of course, that will be one less patch of ice which could have been studied.
Didn't Allan shepard leaves his golf ball on the moon too? or did he actually chase the ball in the end and brought it home?
sayyy....you just gave me an idea...
wouldn't be the ideal solution to trash all those nuclear waste on the moon?..heh, bet ther won't be any 'nimby' protest over there.
business venture anybody?
Consider this: It's a lot better to leave it as junk on the moon, than it is to let it float in space. The more junk that are left floating around, the more dangerous space travel becomes - it's risky enough with the naturally occuring junk.
You'll get more radiation from the sun (since there's no atmosphere to protect you) than you will from whatever nuclear fuel is onboard.
More to the point, lunar orbits are unstable, and anything left in orbit will crash in a few years anyway.
aha! But what if the moon collided with earth? Our moon base wouldn't be of much use then...
grammer?
This satellite is nowhere near the first thing we have landed perminantly on the moon. There are LM landing stages, ALSEP scientific stations, wreckage of LM upper stages used for seismic research, and other satellites which have crashed into the moon. And I am glad it is the flag of the good old U.S.A. that's up there at the Apollo landing sites. You do remember Apollo?
Like setting off all those atomic and hydrogen bombs knocked us out of orbit and sent us crashing into the sun? ;-) How is a relatively tiny probe crashing into a huge object like the moon going to do ANYTHING to it?
Hey, on the bright side, dropping nuke waste into the sun might conceivably add one-billionth of a second to the solar lifespan!
We could potentially do it using magnetic accelerators -- I recall Sandia wanting to build one up the side of a mountain in order to pop 5lb satellites into orbit. As I remember, they had problems with the satellite electronics being destroyed by the G-forces in their testbed systems.
Of course, realistically, we DON'T want to do anything drastic with our nuclear waste -- hey, we might find out ways to use it profitably in the future, and then all those nuke dumps will suddenly be valuable property!
For what? There's nothing more to be gained from the moon. EXCEPT finding the presence of water. We can do that with a probe, though. Hell, even a missile would work. Nope, cost/benefit is too high.
Look... I for for a big company with TONS (tons not being an exaggeration) of obsolete mainframes, midranges and whatnot lying around looping ancient Cobol programs. Is there any way I can donate them to NASA so somebody can extract a little more usefulness out of them?
This is a tricky observation- the idea, I presume, is that impact ejecta would be warm, and would emit in the infrared region where there are a ton of water vapor lines. However, there is also water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere, which blocks out precisely the same lines. They'd have to observe from space, or from a ground site with extremely low atmospheric water vapor such as Antarctica.
They could have used the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (which people I know used to look for water in the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter) but it lost its funding and its successor, SOFIA, a 2.5 meter telescope in a Boeing 747, will not be operational until at least 2001.
Au contraire! The far side of the moon would be a perfect location for astronomy. No atmosphere to mess up the viewing, no light pollution, no radio noise...not even any seismic activity, IIRC. I hear some astronomers even have a site already picked out, just a couple degrees past the nearside/farside terminator, close enough that they could run land lines (well, moon lines) to a radio transmitter on the nearside to radio the data back to Earth.
I dont think what China does is an answer, that only upsets people because they feel they are having rights taken away. Another idea could be to look to something that covers around 75% of the earth's surface, Im sure that the world could create a city underwater, it almost sounds as if it would be cheaper, and easier.
Just my $00.02
Maybe the water thing is a cover story for the lunar burial of Gene Shoemaker. This is probably NASA's final tribute to one of their colleagues. They know, however, that to openly acknowledge the burial would cause all kinds of controversy.
Ok, a quick check on askjeeves.com , the moon's diameter is 3456 km, or radius 1728km. Surface area= 4*Pi*r^2, or for the moon, 37,522,982 km^2 (14,478,533 mi^2 for US folks) if xcalc on my pentium here can be trusted :)
That's pretty damn big. [Sorry, couldn't find landmass of USA to compare] Assuming we manage to "pollute" 1000 km^2 over the next decade, that's NOTHING compared to the big picture.
Lose the knee-jerk reactions to "pollution", folks, and learn to do the math. This is NOT A PROBLEM. Go NASA!
Oh, great! Find the local watering hole and then bomb it. What about any Lunies living in the area? Shouldn't we be using non-destructive tests?
Next thing you know, any Lunies that survive will figure out that it was their Earthly neighbors... Don't say you weren't warned!
If some more advanced space-faring creatures catch us randomly bombarding our neighbors, they may just pitch a few asteroids our way to teach us a lesson.
Stop laughing, I'm serious.
DZerkel
(from news articles).l gives a mass of 295kg when fully fueled. Presuming that by "equivalent", they mean equal kinetic energy, and that a heavy car is 1800kg (1999 Cadillac Seville SLS, 3970lb)... 1100mph is 492m/s. .5*1800kg*492 m/s ^2 is 217857600J.
http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/project/spacecraftp.htm
sqrt((217857600 J / .5)/295kg) leaves us with 1215 m/s, which is 2718mph and 4373km/h, a reasonable figure. (at least, on the same order of magnitude as the numbers I've seen thrown about here)
You frequently see figures like this in the mainstream media, they take useful data, perform some calculations, and give you something entirely useless (for example, changing terabits to feet of stacked floppies, or fuel consumption in miles per liter). It's always interesting when they work out well. I find it difficult to believe that this figure originated from the media - I just don't think they are smart enough to perform this sort of calculation (and that is a scathing indictment of their intelligence, not a claim that high school physics is difficult). Which leads me to wonder, why did a NASA scientist bother to do some math for a news reporter, which he must have known could have only been used to cloud the facts?
throw linux and a SETI client on them... that would probably be the most help.
that you are serious
The rapid vaporization will also absorb heat, causing the water to freeze and form snow as well. The process is easily simulated by discharging a CO2 fire extinguisher - the liquid carbon dioxide turning to gas and dry ice "snow".
Err, when water (or anything else for that mater) absorbs heat, it gets hotter. When a gas expands it loses energy (all the little atoms have more room to move around and don't keep crashing into each other so they slow down (wow, can I over simplify thermodynamics any more?) so it gets colder.
I call first dibs!!!
No environment, no problem!
Or some already sentient beings could stumble accross it and think something along the lines of "stupid humans, always leaving crap lying around everywhere..."
First, the moon itself is not dead! It is made up of all the basic constituents of known life (atoms), so in my opinion it is alive. Second, you state that we will make it habitable while we cannot keep from destroying earth. If we stop living science fiction (dreaming about it is alright) and start living reality, with hard work, the human race can do anything we set our minds to.
Depends if its an upright or canister vacuum.
When are the people and the government going to realize that there are thousands of possible disasters and we need to prepare? I think using the moon is a great idea, not only that but we need to colonize Mars, Phobos, Demos, Ganymede and of course Europa. I know space travel isn't plausable yet, but that is because we humans are lazy and greedy. I think we need to quit wasting cash on anti-piracy and limited wars and think towards living large. Britain had the greatest navy, they had the largest empire at that time. The Romans had the largest army, they had the largest empire at that time. They all collapsed do to their condescending society. We need to keep expanding in order to stay large. Besides, science could learn a lot with frozen oceans and planets with an outcome of what we might end up being.
He means the reaction itself absorbs the heat and cools down the water. Heat of vaporization and all that. The reason there is ice is it is simply in a crater where it is permenantly in shadows. As long as it was ice when it got there it wouldn't vaporize anyway.
Reminds me of the old days of video games. After I got bored with the old Lunar Lander video game, I would see how big of a crater I could make with the lander.
Glad to see that things have not changed that much.
Minutes of NASA Lunar Prospector briefing No.2045
1st Nasa Scientist: Hmmm, you know, if there were some kind of meteorite impact in that region it might liberate some of the trapped water which we could detect.
2nd NASA Scientist: But we can't predict when a strike might happen -we could wait millions of years for such an event.
3rd NASA Scientist: Well, suppose we fire some kind of missile into the moon? That would do it, and we would know exactly where and when the impact would happen.
2nd NASA Scientist: Right! Say, we could even use the old probe that up there now.
1st Nasa Scientist: You mean, crash Lunar Prospector into the surface of the moon with an impact equivalent to a 1100mph car crash?
2nd NASA Scientist: Exactly...
Together: KEEWWWLLL!!!
I mean, really, some of the posters have displayed such ignorance of things nerdly they should have their slashdot logins revoked. Must be the "computers are kewl, starwars is kewl" kiddies.
Some examples:
"Willy K." apparently posting from MIT (MIT? then that message must be a troll. Even the janitor would know better.):
Does it seem odd to anyone else that the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite?
Uh, hello? The US and USSR have been "landing" wrecked (and intact, but now inactive) satellites and spacecraft on the Moon for nearly 40 years now, this is hardly "first". In fact, Pete Conrad and Al Bean on Apollo 12 even brought back some pieces of one of them (Surveyor 3), to see how they'd held up to a few years of lunar exposure. There are literally tons of "space junk" on the lunar surface.
"philreed" mentions in response to somebody commenting that the orbit will decay that:
Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
He's half right, there's no detectable atmosphere. However orbits also degrade because of perturbing forces such as the gravity of Earth and Sun, solar light pressure, and the irregular gravitational field of the Moon (mascons). Nothing stays in lunar orbit forever.
"Gumpu" worries that:
The problem is that space vehicles usually use nuclear fuel for their power generation. With this they will contamenate that place on the moon for future generations..
First, space vehicles only use nuclear fuel if they need a particularly dense power source (as some old Soviet radar sats), will be operating far from the Sun (as with trans-Mars spacecraft) or will need to operate during extended dark periods (as the Apollo scientific experiment packages that had to survive the lunar night). Since Prospector was doing gamma-ray spectrometry, the last thing they'd want is a nuclear power source aboard.
Second, the lunar surface is daily bathed with radiation both from the Sun and deep space (cosmic rays), it having no shielding atmosphere.
A little extra from a few spoonfuls of isotope in (usually) an RTG is hardly anything to worry about.
"nlucent" also seems concerned about keeping the Moon and Mars green (which they aren't, but facts aren't important if we're arguing feelings), and concludes:
and then we say, Hey, lets crash something into mars
Apparently ignorant of the fact that we've been doing that since the 1960s too, and as recently as a few years ago (remember Mars Rover? That at least was within your lifetime.)
There were a few others.
Fortunately the more intelligent slashdotters eventually showed up to correct some of the above misconceptions, but the mind still boggles...
You're right; I found this on the web ...
In January 1998 NASA apologized to American Indians for including an ounce of ashes from the
cremated body of space scientist Eugene Shoemaker on the unmanned Lunar Prospector which will
ultimately crash onto the moon's surface. Navajo Nation President Albert Hale protested, "The moon is a
sacred place in the religious beliefs of many Native Americans. It is a gross insensitivity to the beliefs of
many Native Americans to place human remains on the moon." NASA promised to never again place
human remains on the moon without first engaging in a wide consultation.
Apollos 15 and 16 put small satellites in lunar orbit. The satellite deployed on 15 stayed in orbit for several years, but the one deployed on 16 crashed into the lunar surface after only 34 days in orbit.
/. readers are teen-age wanna-be's...
The Moon's gravity field is so irregular that vehicles in low lunar orbit can experience altitude transients on the order of tens of kilometers. Going to higher orbits helps some, but the effect of the Earth's gravity to increase the eccentricity without altering the semi-major axis. As a result, the altitude of the pericynthion drops. Either way, the orbital altitude will eventually dip below the surface.
Predicting orbital lifetimes for lunar satellites is a challenge because there are still a lot of uncertainties in lunar gravitational models. Given that the Lunar Prospector was placed into a polar orbit, I would guess that its lifetime could be fairly long.
Not all
I mean, really, some of the posters have displayed such ignorance of things nerdly they should have their slashdot logins revoked. Must be the "computers are kewl, starwars is kewl" kiddies.
Some examples:
"Willy K." apparently posting from MIT (MIT? then that message must be a troll. Even the janitor would know better.):
Does it seem odd to anyone else that the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite?
Uh, hello? The US and USSR have been "landing" wrecked (and intact, but now inactive) satellites and spacecraft on the Moon for nearly 40 years now, this is hardly "first". In fact, Pete Conrad and Al Bean on Apollo 12 even brought back some pieces of one of them (Surveyor 3), to see how they'd held up to a few years of lunar exposure. There are literally tons of "space junk" on the lunar surface.
"philreed" mentions in response to somebody commenting that the orbit will decay that:
Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
He's half right, there's no detectable atmosphere. However orbits also degrade because of perturbing forces such as the gravity of Earth and Sun, solar light pressure, and the irregular gravitational field of the Moon (mascons). Nothing stays in lunar orbit forever.
"Gumpu" worries that:
The problem is that space vehicles usually use nuclear fuel for their power generation. With this they will contamenate that place on the moon for future generations..
First, space vehicles only use nuclear fuel if they need a particularly dense power source (as some old Soviet radar sats), will be operating far from the Sun (as with trans-Mars spacecraft) or will need to operate during extended dark periods (as the Apollo scientific experiment packages that had to survive the lunar night). Since Prospector was doing gamma-ray spectrometry, the last thing they'd want is a nuclear power source aboard.
Second, the lunar surface is daily bathed with radiation both from the Sun and deep space (cosmic rays), it having no shielding atmosphere.
A little extra from a few spoonfuls of isotope in (usually) an RTG is hardly anything to worry about.
"nlucent" also seems concerned about keeping the Moon and Mars green (which they aren't, but facts aren't important if we're arguing feelings), and concludes:
and then we say, Hey, lets crash something into mars
Apparently ignorant of the fact that we've been doing that since the 1960s too, and as recently as a few years ago (remember Mars Rover? That at least was within your lifetime.)
There were a few others.
Fortunately the more intelligent slashdotters eventually showed up to correct some of the above misconceptions, but the mind still boggles...
Orbits also degrade due to the mascons on the moon. It's impossible to get a truly stable lunar orbit. Every object in lunar orbit will either be ejected into earth or solar orbit, or will crash on the moon. Usually the latter.
This is a choice between waiting for an unpowered and useless craft to crash pointlessly on the moon, or for the craft to go out in a blaze of glory, with a 10% chance of getting reasonably important science at the end.
Which choice is better is left as an exercise for the reader.
No, it's not. It's LM (Lunar Module), formerly known as LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). I don't think that LLM was ever used as a name for the LM, at least officially.
Check out Chariots for Apollo by NASA history, and S/Cat Remembered, a site by one of the guys who worked on building the thing.
*Sniff* brings a tear to my eye remembering the scene where the project manager just stands there looking at the first one, realizing after all those years it wasn't coming back.
That scene, if we're talking about the same one, was LM 5. (The first one to land on the moon.)
Apollo 9's LM burned up in the earth's atmosphere during (IIRC) the early 80s. 10's LM is in solar orbit, daring someone to find it. (Good luck.) The rest impacted on the moon, although 11 and 12 lost power before it happened, so NORAD's official catalog sentimentally lists them as still up in lunar orbit.
From the Earth to the Moon is a great series, and I highly recommend it to everyone here. It's like they extended Apollo 13 to cover the entire campaign. (Indeed, many of the sets and props were reused.)
Just because we can mess up other planets/moons doesnt necessarily mean we should. Granted one satellite isnt going to affect anything (assuming it doesnt hit a martian king or something =), But we have already f'd up this planet enough as it is, do we really want to start screwing up possible future habitats before we even move in? Say we crash this satellite, then we say, Hey we already crashed one, a little more trash wont hurt anything right? But it does. The first time you do something is the hardest, every time after is cake. So we eventually make the moon a big galactic landfill, and then we say, Hey, lets crash something into mars. you get the point. This is all *very unlikely*, but it is very possible if we arent careful.
Besides, we need to get off this Muddball just in case Mother Nature decides to pull something. Personally, I'd prefer another star system (just in case there's a reason we're not detecting as many neutrinos as we should be from our middle-aged sun), but baby steps are a start.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Besides, this is maybe 300 lbs of metal and plastic -- you or I put out more trash than that in six months. It was going to eventually crash into the moon anyhow (what goes up...), so we might as well do it in a way that'll eventually help us build a base up there.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
These recent "faster, cheaper, better" probes are really a big contrast to the older "big waste" programs like the Space Station (motto: Now $20 billion over budget). The Lunar Prospector, the Mars Rover, DS1... These are some really exciting programs. This is just a really good illustration of the whole "think better" paradigm in action.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The problem is that mankind is the best on this world in doing that so they are known as the most evil race on the planet
How can 'following it's own instinct' be considered 'evil'? Doesn't evil require intent? Is it evil for the lion to kill the gazelle?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
But what isn't unlikely is that the orbit will eventually degrade and the satellite will 'land' somewhere on the moon.
Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Posted by Philosopher2:
You are forgetting te fact that the human race is just another race of animals which is following its own instinct. So there is no doubt that mankind will never grow up, they are simply just doing what every animal does (without thinking in a grown up fashion) that is, populating their environment trying to survive and killing everything and everyone who is threatening the the way they are living. The problem is that mankind is the best on this world in doing that so they are known as the most evil race on the planet (until they finally destroy themselves).
I'm sorry to tell you this but we are just poor (dumb) animals doomed to be killed by their own genocidical actions, by another more evil race or by some disaster from (cruel) nature. If you want to talk about it, you can mail me.
Those craters have formed over a time period of upwards of 4 billion years, which means there was typically a long time between impacts. IIRC, there is only one reported probable sighting of a meteorite impact on the moon, and that was several hundred years ago.
Micrometeorites (impacts of dust particles) may be a low level, but frequent danger. I don't know how bad.
Posted by kenmcneil:
I want to respond in general to all the people who are transferring the "save the planet" ideas over to the moon. If we eventually settle on the moon and make a big mess what would be the loss? On the earth there is something special (i.e. life) but on the moon there is nothing! We are way off in the bonnies in the universe and I don't think where going to get a ticket if we throw a few bottles out the window. Get real people!
>The problem is that mankind is the best on this world in doing that so they are known as the most evil race on the planet (until they finally destroy themselves).
"They"? Are you not a member of mankind then?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
There are multiple reasons that an object's orbital trajectory might change, including changing in such a fashion that it strikes the orbited object.
The most prevalent in this case is the presence of other significant gravitational fields, namely those of the Earth and the Sun. Just as the moon's presence makes the Earth's trajectory around the sun "wobble" (basically the center of mass of the earth/moon system has a smooth orbital path), an object orbiting the moon would have its trajectory perturbed as it neared the Earth or the Sun. Each subsequent orbit approach would be different due to the previous perturbation. Because the Earth's influence is so significant, this means that lunar orbits tend to be highly irregular, and preturbations that result in orbiting objects leaving orbit of the moon or crashing into the moon are quite common.
Orbiting objects may also collide with other objects, and such collisions will have some effect on the orbital pattern. An atmosphere means that such collisions are much more likely and uniform in their effect on the orbiting object.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Remember that's forty pounds of ice turned into water vapor. It will be HOT compared to the surroundings. Try putting a balloon on a bottle(glass please) and boiling it until the balloon is full. Then measure how much water was converted into the vapor that filled the balloon under pressure. Then realize that they are doing this in a vacuum. 40 pounds of water will make a decent sized 'cloud'.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Deserts on earth are very different from the moon, in that even the deadest ones have ecosystems. Life on earth is very pervasive. So the comparison isn't really a good one.
There's a lot of space. There's a lot of planets. Probably there's very little life, in comparision. Our priorities should reflect that.
--
We missed our chance, we should've named it the A ark and sent some of the less sentient humans on a free trip to colonize the moon.
Trash on the moon may be a valuable resource for recycling. Nuclear waste is still energy that can be used until it is completely depleted for many years to come. Trash from a ship may be a valuable resource, much like the junk in a salvage yard. You may have many uses for moon rock, but a spent pipe may be readily used as a tool or put back in commision. Waste can also be used as construction material for building shields from the high speed projectiles in space.
Don't be wasteful. Learn from nature and reuse everything. When we create our own environment on the moon, we will be forced to learn this lesson.
Yes, having a little bit more U238 in a place that has no atmosphere or magnetosphere is going to make sooooo much difference.... If you are on the moon and are so ill-protected that whatever radioisotopes we manage to drop there have even the slightest effect upon you then someone did a piss-poor job in designing your environment because you are going to get cooked by general background radiation long before a this stuff is going to kill you.
We are not contaminating the moon, we are depositing processed fuel for future generations; this is our gift to the future (no, I am not kidding.)
Perhaps Space 1999 was a prophecy not just a scifi series?
Yikes! I sure hope not! I'd sooner believe that Ren and Stimpy's "Space Madness" was a prophetic vision.
> Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
you're forgetting that the earth's atmosphere extends beyond the moon's orbit (not very dense of course). there's also drag from tidal forces, solar wind, drag from cutting through magnetic fields, etc, etc.
even if it was just cutting through interstellar hydrogen it would eventually stop.
No, it wouldn't --- you can never relieve population pressure by expanding to new territory. You can't transfer people fast enough. There will always be orders of magnitude more people being born than you can ship to the lunar colonies.
You may be able to get resources that will help the situation back home --- but it wouldn't work as a population relief valve.
Second, in the case of the moon, it is already dead. What possible damage could we do that would make it any more dead?
Just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's worth preserving. Deserts are dead, too, mostly --- and we preserve those. There's no ecosystem, so it's a lot harder to make a mess (you don't have to worry about upsetting any kind of balance), but the counter to this is that any mess made on the surface is permanent. The Apollo hardware is still there. There are metal-lined craters from the hard-landed Luna probes, still there. If you strip-mine the surface of the moon, the scars will remain for millions of years.
That said, I do think that hard-landing Lunar Prospector is a good, if rather drastic, idea.
How could you discover a more efficient way? The satellite has done its job and is no longer useful. Why would it be more efficient to do something else instead of plunging a dead satellite into the ground? Seems like the epitome of efficiency to me...
There's nothing wrong with dumping garbage on the moon. It's pretty hard to create ecological problems on a lifeless rock that doesn't have an ecology to start with. I say we dump all our garbage on the moon, and maybe relocate Newark and Cleveland there while we're at it.
Damn, I wish I had some moderator points. Thanks for the info.
And...
They knew it was going to crash from the beginning, so they don't need to slam it into the lunar poles to bury him. But they ARE trying to continue Shoemaker's research by hurling the probe containing his ashes at a specific place. Way, way, way cool. Gotta love those NASA guys. Let's hope the experiment is a success.
I for one fail to see the problem. How many "natural" impacts has the moon suffered since its formation? Does it really matter if an iron cored meteor fragment or a spacecraft causes the impact? That spacecraft was made from materials that can be found all over the solar system. Just because we've put it into a new and useful form doesn't make it any less of a natural object. This whole business of trash and littering is based in emotional reasoning. The real danger to our world isn't from the so-called litter, but from the concentration of substances which are toxic to life (substances which - by the way - already permeate the earth in a chemically fixed state). Every ounce of "industrial waste" and "trash" existed in some other state before we refined it. Even the nuclear wastes existed, but in a different atomic configuration.
Here's an example. A big corporation wants to dig an open copper mine about 100 miles from where I live. A byproduct of that effort would be a large holding basin of toxic material - a byproduct of the copper extraction method. Those toxins are already in the earth there, and the environment/ecosystem isn't the least bit affected by it -- tons and tons of the stuff. The toxins are not dangerous because they are chemically "fixed" in the ground. Now we come along and isolate those toxins in the process of isolating the valuable metal ore. We have the ability to re-process the toxins into a safe(r) state, but to do that would make the entire effort un-profitable. So instead of cleaning up the mess, we just leave the concentrated "toxic waste" lying in an open pit. The elements that were harmless, possibly beneficial, in diluted/fixed states are now free to wreck havoc with the ecosystem. It is this continuing behavior that is killing the world and us.
I agree with the intent, but i feel very little or no attention is being paid to how we are going to clean this thing up (or are we?)
Out of sight, out of mind.
I feel we are being rather short sighted. The same short sightedness is why we have so many ecological troubles today. "If we just dump it into the ocean, what can it hurt?"
With the billions upon billions of dollars we spend on defense (offense?) I would think we could discover a more efficient (and cleaner) method of finding water.
[Sn]
-The above comments are mine, but I wont admit to them.
Year: 1999 (August if I remember rightly)
Moonbase Alpha torn out of Earth's orbit by nuclear explosion...
...perhaps caused by NASA crashlanding a nuclear probe on the moon and
>The moon's just a barren rock
not turning out to be true after all? Perhaps Space 1999 was a prophecy not just a scifi series? Shame we haven't built a base up there already though.
:-)
No, it wouldn't --- you can never relieve population pressure by expanding to new territory. You can't transfer people fast enough. There will always be orders of magnitude more people being born than you can ship to the lunar colonies.
Actually, while this is true in principle, not having off-earth settlements would still be worse. Population pressure will increase regardless, and if we have no other relief for that pressure, we will overwhelm earth that much faster, and with far more permanent results.
Just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's worth preserving. Deserts are dead, too, mostly --- and we preserve those. There's no ecosystem, so it's a lot harder to make a mess (you don't have to worry about upsetting any kind of balance), but the counter to this is that any mess made on the surface is permanent. The Apollo hardware is still there. There are metal-lined craters from the hard-landed Luna probes, still there. If you strip-mine the surface of the moon, the scars will remain for millions of years.
Agreed. However, at some point, we still have to make the decisions that give us the best chances to preserve humanity. We can only hope that we learn enough of our lessons to use future resources wisely.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
Personally, I think this is a good experiment, even if we had to build a brand new probe to accomplish it. The fact that we can use an existing one is frosting on the cake.
There's no logic in the argument that this kind of experiment is going to lead to more destruction of some 'natural' environment by man.
First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth. If we find water in some form on the moon, it is an additional aid to forming a settlement that can eventually be self supporting (admittedly quite a ways into the future, but a good goal, nonetheless).
Second, in the case of the moon, it is already dead. What possible damage could we do that would make it any more dead? On the other hand, if we settle it and make it habitable at least in some degree, we gain a great deal. For example, one thing to consider is the potential for some sort of global catastrophe on earth. Unless we spread ourselves out a bit onto other planets, a global catastrophe *could* cause the complete end of the human race. Settlements on other planets would give us at least some chance of avoiding complete extinction.
Finally, if we argue that we should avoid any efforts to settle other planets in the name of preserving their pristine characteristics, we would actually open the door to furthering the damage we already do to earth. Like it or not, human population is not going to diminish (barring a catastrophe), and as it expands, the drain on existing resources will only get worse. By offloading some of this drain onto other planets (and their associated resources), we have the potential to halt (or even reverse) the ecological damage we do to earth, and, if we have learned our lessons, we might even be able to use all of our resources (including those on other planets) more wisely, and maybe we can avoid repeating our mistakes.
To close off any avenue of expansion to our poplulation will eventually result in the extinction (or mortal damage) of the human race, either through population pressure, resource depletion, or a global natural disaster.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
You of course are assuming that we might eventually plan to fix this planet. Unlikely. I would rather have that we used this planet before we discard it. Whats the use to humanity, if we move on of course, to leave Earth sitting along with all its mineral resources? With Von Neuman's mathematical discovery of the von Neumann engine and advances in nanomachinery we might find that it will be relatively easy to mine the Earth to oblivion. It may be a virus-like idea, but who says thats not the future of humanity anyways. Terraform Mars? Unlikely, I say that it will probably be mined first. But why not? There's more life to exploration of the galaxy (or further) than to sit watching your field and hoping that a comet won't fall out of the sky.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Its highly highly highly unlikely that a satellite would ever strike another (except in polar or geostationary orbit). But what isn't unlikely is that the orbit will eventually degrade and the satellite will 'land' somewhere on the moon. Since its going to hit eventually its a good idea that we tell it where.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
I don't know the height the satellite is above the moon so I don't know the speed exactly. I would guess that orbiter is at least 50-100 miles above the surface and is probably travelling from 7-15,000 km/hr. Does this sound right? Perhaps slower, but it is most definately traveling many thousands of km/hr. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere (a trace atmosphere) so you won't have to worry about a terminal velocity. We probably only need the ice to be up 5 miles or so. With the low gravity of the moon, I think that its a realistic chance. The hardest part is probably finding the correct crater to drop the satellite into.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Too bad that plenty of Apollo hardware (LEMs and Saturn-V fourth stages) had already been deliberately crashed on the moon to do seismic surveys in the 1970's...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
The astronauts installed seismometers on the moon as part of the ALSEP project. The seismometers detected the seismic waves produced when lunar modules and Saturn upper stages hit the Moon. This produced data on the structure and composition of the Moon. Scientists on Earth have done similar work using the seismic waves produced by earthquakes and nuclear weapons tests.
The USA and USSR have landed/crashed a large number of probes on the Moon. Here is a list of the missions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That's fine.
When we all move off this rock we can leave you and your progeny behind.
If the human race does not further explore the realms of the Universe, you have to wonder why we are here. It would be an awfully big waste of space.
I don't know about anyone else but I would like NASA to plan a return mission to the moon. I mean the last mission was in 1972 for God's sake. How many of us are actually old enough to remember it. If we send a mission to the ice caps, we could probably actually do some practical experiments to prove/disprove the feasability of a Lunar colony.
One thing you have to say about the cold war with the USSR. We at least tried to keep up with the Joneses.
like I said I dont care about the moon or mars or anything that doesnt already have life there. My point is that, there iss no reason we have to kill everything we see. Homo Sapians could try and grow up beoynd being mindless killers. If we were even half as advanced as we think we are, We could have done alot more and learned alot more. If we had spent half the energy we've wasted killing life and each other with our great toys we could have already Been on every planet in this solar system.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
moreover, have you heard about the conspiracy of john glen and others when they first walked on the moon that they did see aliens?
Except John Glenn never went to the moon.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The problem is that space vehicles usually
use nuclear fuel for their power generation.
With this they will contamenate that place
on the moon for future generations...
Don't think it's really junk... think of it as historic artifacts. As soon as we have a colony up there, the old landers, lunochods, and probes will be tourist attractions and hopefully protected as monuments :)
I am in Germany, man. No Futurama here yet for a long time to come. :-(
That's why the mission to Saturn raised such a stink. It was the first nuclear-powered mission since 1979. Pretty much any missions that are staying inside the orbit of Jupiter will be solar powered.
See this link and look toward the bottom for "...surface mounted solar cells..."
Or this one for more info on the vehicle. Or, finally, the FAQ, which says:
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
speling????
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
..think of it as historic artifacts...
For an interesting take on this, read "Steel Beach" by John Varley (and anything else you can find by him!) There's a park and museum built around the lunar landing sites, but few people bother looking at it... Great book, anyway.
I agree that this sounds pretty neat. However....
Does it seem odd to anyone else that the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite? Haven't we messed earth up enough as it is? Do we really need to start in on the moon? I know it's not that big a deal...just one satellite...but it seems like there could be some note of the fact that we are on our way to creating a lunar landfill, no?
Joke aside, nobody pointed out 'internet'. It's Internet.
:)
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
I don't know the height the satellite is above the moon so I don't know the speed exactly. I would guess that orbiter is at least 50-100 miles above the surface and is probably travelling from 7-15,000 km/hr. Does this sound right?
Lunar Prospector recently dropped from it's mapping orbit of ~100Km to something like 25Km. Orbit time is around 1hr 40min, so I figure a speed of ~6500kph. It should leave a dent.
While the plan is good thinking overall, what is the plan to pick up the garbage later?
Dave Bennett
I've got this from the BBC News site:
The impact - equivalent to smashing a heavy car into a wall at a speed of more than 1,100 mph - is an attempt to confirm the presence of ice at the lunar poles.
~ Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity ~
just wondering
Just bashing some thoughts around :) I would have thought "offending the wolves" was a better argument, personally, than getting all logical.
I know this is pretty old, sciencewise, but does anyone else find it a bit scary that NASA has a realistic chance of detecting a crash landing into the moon that displaces a grand total of 40 pounds of ice?
Clearly he is a great fan of Grammer, IN, zip code 47236.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
>It would be an awfully big waste of space. :)
It's only an awfully big waste of space if you assume the universe was built explicitly for us... While I fully support exploring every facet of the unknown, I don't do so because I think it's mankind's destiny... I think mankind as a whole has no great purpose. We are here, we breed, and we die. Purpose is something for the individual. BTW, nice handle..
Geek-grrl in training
"Give a monkey a brain, and he'll swear he's the center of the universe."
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
Let's see here. One nuclear powered satellite + (possible) Lunar ice field = contamination of the Moon's water supply?
Pendants might note that some of the Mars probes (like the crashed Russian one) used RTHs (Radioisotope Thermal Heaters), which keep the landers warm through the cold Mars night, but generate no electricity.
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
All you can do is bitch about spelling? I happen
to work very hard to improve my spelling ablity.
It has never come easy. And very late at night
after a 10 hour work day, and several hours being
a single parent to a cocky teenager, I get a
little tired, and my concentration waivers. The grammer was also weak and the thought progression
stank. SORRY!
I have worked with people whos spelling was
perfect. They couldn't program worth shit.
I am totally in favour of this experiment. The possiblity of finding water is cool enough, but smashing stuff up in space is definitely worthwhile. Their analogy basically equates it to wrecking a $63M sports car. Just like in Ferris Bueller. Heh.
Hehe yah, crash it, crash it! It's always good to see NASA crash something that costs $63 million dollars. Maybe we'll see it in slow motion on "Real TV" someday. -NG
+--
Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
Actually, according to the article referenced above, the probe orginally was intended to crash on the lunar surface when its power ran out. They've just decided to make the crash more interesting and useful.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This sounds like a good job for Jar-Jar and for the guy who thought he should be a star. He should become part of the moon instead
ride fast, die young, leave clean underwear and a dirty bike.
Hey--everyone complains about flamewars between *BSD and Linux users, but there are very few to defend us journalists on /. Journalists get a worse rap than lawyers here. *I*, for one, always get the physics on my stories correct.
(point of information: my father is a lawyer, so don't start being mean to them)
While I share your concern for the environment and such, I also feel that it would be nice seeing our tax dollars used to their fullest extent instead of simply letting an unuseable hunk of metal float around in space like the rest of them.
Besides, if it bothers you that much to think we're leaving our "trash" on the moon, we CAN retrieve the darn thing that way. Plus, this may be a way to start colonization on the moon, which might be a wonderful solution to earth's overpopulation issues (i.e. China, Japan, etc.)
Yes, the human race may spread like a virus a-la-The-Matrix-quote, but we also reason and can think consequences out. I have faith in NASA that this may be the first step to truly exploring the moon in depth.
-- Shadowcat
kageneko@kageneko.net
"I can roleplay. I can frag. I can PK while you lag."
Our best chance to colonise the moon in the near future is if there is water on the moon.
It would appear that there may be water near the Lunar south pole.
So NASA has decided to crash a probe right into the middle of it to send a huge chunk of it into space!!!???
The way that the moon is supposedly being used as a dump doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that NASA wants to waste a quantity of water (a very precious resource - even more so on the moon), possibly a huge quantity of water (relatively speaking) JUST TO FIND OUT IF IT EXISTS???
Surely there are better and less wasteful ways of discovering if water exists on the moon!!!
NASA missed a bet here. For the "minimal" expense of adding a video camera to the Lunar Prospector, they could have web-cast the final moments of the mission, plowing into the south pole of the moon.
I would have paid to see that. EVERYONE would have paid to see that! They could have recovered the cost of the entire mission, and then some!
: There are two kinds of people; the kind that knows there are two kinds of people, and the kind that are wrong.
Here's a tribute page for Eugene by Carolyn Porco:
h tml
http://condor.lpl.arizona.edu/~carolyn/tribute.
I read an article about him recently. His studies of impact geology changed the basic foundations of modern geology. Previously geologists frowned apon geological theories that involved major catastrophies, instead assuming everything important happened through slow, gradual processes such as plate tectonics. All the craters on the moon were thought to be volcanic in origin. His studies suggested that exterrestrial object impacts happened on a periodic basis and greatly affected the landscape.
His studies also greatly affected biologists, who adapted evolutionary theories to account for periodic impact catastrophies and resulting extinctions. Since then paleontologists and geologists have worked together to try to determine when major impacts took place and where.
Anyone mention that Eugene Shoemaker's ashes are in the probe? I guess this would be the first burial on the Moon or any extraterrestrial body.
It's rather fitting, though. He tried to become an Apollo astronaut, but failed due to health problems. He became one of the first experts on lunar geology and impact crater geology, and spent much of his later life searching for comets and Earth-crossing asteroids. He was the co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy comet that struck Jupitor a few years back.
I'm surprised NASA's not playing this up more. I know they had some protests from a Native American group a while back for sending his ashes up, but I'm not sure the details of that.
Here's an article about the ashes:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news82.html