I prefer to think of today’s event as a reset button, which when pressed, has the ability to change our focus. That it happened on a day when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to our president could emphasize the reset. For a moment in time, we looked again to the stars from which we came, and we did so not for commercial purpose, not for warmongering, not as Americans, but as humans, in search of the resources needed to sustain life if we should choose to leapfrog our way to the stars.

There will always be plenty of challenge here on earth; from poverty and hunger to war and disease, they have always been with us, and they will remain until we have not money or power but political will to deal with them.

The mission today was an example of what we can do when we set our minds to it, when we finally muster the political will to reach out and touch space. It’s a reminder to us that none of our earthly problems are insurmountable.

And to this household, it’s been incredibly important because we watched the mission this morning together as a family; we shared with our kids our wonder born during the Kennedy administration, stoked further under the Nixon administration, as we set out to touch the moon. And we heard our child dream aloud about a career in astronomy for the first time.

For that and for all the other children who might have been inspired today, flinging a piece of material born of stars out to another celestial body was worth it.

I think this was total bullshit. I’m appalled by the action and it just shows how misguided this country has become. There was no reason this had to happen.

I want us to go to Mars, and to go to Mars, we have to go back to the Moon so we can stage the Mars mission.

To go back to the Moon, we need to find water (which is massively expensive to transport) there, so exploding a device on the surface of the uninhabited rock would yield research results about the likelihood of the presence of water.

What am I missing? When did we decide that we are not after all explorers?

The other amazing part of this mission which hasn’t been mentioned has been its relationship with other international research.

This mission, run on the cheap for the last two years in spite of the Bush administration’s attempts to shut down science, has made use of new data gathered by the recent Indian lunar probe missions. The European Space Commission also cooperated with the Indian lunar missions and sent equipment for sampling and testing.

In other words, space exploration is a model for cooperation between countries on other problems. The more we work together on exercises like this, the less often pols can use excuses for not working together on our earth-bound problems.

explorers or escapists?

I like the science but yes its wrong help the people on earth first loosing their jobs and homes. Still war funding that I’d rather see cut first before NASA.

Yeah, there really was a lot of scientific inquiry underlaying this, and on several levels. Some of it will pan out, some will not; that is how it goes. But you learn even from that which does not work as intended. Besides, blowing stuff up is fun!

So why are so many describing this as bombing the moon and purposely misrepresenting this as some meaningless macho act? They don’t discuss the important science being performed, what knowledge about the moon can be gained and what knowledge the space program generates can help here on earth. Nor, until you, did anyone measure the benefits of the community of nations cooperating nor of the opportunity for schools and families to share this special event. Why must so many useful events, ideas, etc get twisted?

We’re explorers! I agree with newtonusr.

On another point raised in by Lisa in the post, is there really any serious plan to move mankind to the moon from earth?

No.

While shooting a rocket at the moon for no reason at all certainly would be stupid, this particular argument about moving mankind to the moon seems a bit gratuitous.

OT – if anyone is interested, I left my take on hate-crime-legislation at the bottom of the shibboleth thread.

And we explode basically a bomb into the moon just to see what happens. Not exactly a peaceful act from a country whose leader just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don’t see these two things as contradictory at all. In fact, I sent President Obama a not to say congratulations for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

If you’re interested in congratulating him too via the Democratic Party’s website, click here!

I like my iPod and my Macintosh and my electronically managed watch, none of which I need to survive.

So while I am not diabetic, I take it for granted that diabetics like being able to measure their glucose with a device the size of a stopwatch.

And although I have never had an MRI, I take it for granted that those that need them take comfort that they are small and ubiquitous, instead of the size of three football fields.

Not one of these would be possible without the miniaturization technology gained from space research. Not one. Much of this research is undirected, and we have no idea where it will go. Like penicillin, or the x-ray.

Have you looked at the moon lately? It’s covered with craters. What causes craters? That’s easy. Craters are caused by stuff crashing on the moon. Stuff crash lands on the moon all the time. It’s been like that for billions of years. Most of the moon is covered with smashed up rock. Another crash, especially one this small, is just going to rearrange things a bit.

In fact, we’ve already crashed a few man made objects on the moon already including the Ranger satellites and probably a few others. Landing on the moon means spewing nasty chemicals. Sure, we could wait for the next incoming meteor to strike, but odds are we would miss the show. There’s a lot of moon to watch. A controlled crash means we get to learn a fair bit for a moderate price.

I’ve heard that B.S. since before the Moon Landings. There are ALWAYS more important things here on Earth to pour money into: poverty, food scarcity, and so on. Thing is, this type of research has an anoying tendency to pay off bigtime at home. The moon landing led to breakthroughs in medicine, weather forecasting, materials, and more. We have a LOT of problems, many of which require research in materials, energy, and many other fields, and space study can become a great testbed for the next generation of solutions. I’m not saying that all research is necessary, but I also don’t dismiss it out of hand just because I happen to think something else is more important. Bottom line, I say, Bully for NASA; keep plugging away.

But they’re scientists, not saints! Why help the little people? Working for the big people- who tell you to do stupid shit like blow up the fucking Moon- is much more profitable.

Yep. Our dear Liberals kicked the crap out of the space programs, and didn’t that pay dividends.

Give NASA a bizillion dollars, a tenacious watchdog, and an office in the state department to foster international cooperation (h/t Rayne) and let them go places. All of the places.

In science of any kind you either go forward or you stagnate. We need many things here and we just might find some of them by exploration of all kinds. What if we listened to PETA and never used meds on mice?

I have no problem with the recent moon experiment but clearly I lack the expertise that many other commenters possess and as such cannot offer any meaningful assessment.

Bingo.

This wasn’t “blowing stuff up for the sake of blowing stuff up.” I was blown away (so to speak) by the whining of the TradMed that there weren’t great video pictures, as if that was the purpose of the whole episode.

Small and ubiquitous? What?
I heard from several of my family members who’ve had MRI’s that it was not fun at all, however ubiquitous they are.
I told my sister, don’t you ever do that again, alone. You call me and I will go with you. Those kind of medical scannings are scarey.
Mars? Go.

Also, if there is a better solution for the raging werewolf pandemic than blowing up the moon I have yet to hear it.

I’ve had 2 MRIs and went to sleep both times. :)

Hate is also ubiquitous. Doesn’t make it nice or fun.

Lisa Derrick are you serious ?Puhleeeze as kaleberg pointed out the Moon is covered in craters.On any given month you can a least be certain of bombardment of the Moon by space particle more powerful than the force we just just afforded,at least 4 times a month.

Small and ubiquitous, as opposed to enormous and rare, discomfort aside – if you need an MRI, little else will suffice.

Doctors often prescribe a mild sedative to reduce the anxiety associated with MRIs. I’ve never had one but I understand it can be a bit claustrophobic.

Anti-science, anti-curiosity, anti-knowledge.

Do you really think we know all we should about the universe?

This post is like something one would read on a right-wing religious nut site.

Maybe you don’t have the same anxiety gene that runs in my family. I’m glad it didn’t bother you.

Large meteors that cause big bangs hit the moon on a regular basis. The moon hasn’t been harmed, and it isn’t a macho act.

I have no patience with arguments that we shouldn’t spend anything on science unless all other problems are solved first. The relative amounts of money are tiny; we’ve blown about a trillion dollars on the Iraq war as well as useless “defense” programs in the last decade.

I wouldn’t know.

I agree. You’re words just sometimes push my buttons. Sorry. I shouldn’t have responded.

Lisa — what have you done now? Good Lord, woman!
You crack me up.

Indeed, the “Don’t Bomb The Moon” petition was an outstanding piece of performance art by the Chicago Surrealist Group…

…

… what? You thought the petition or Lisa Derrick’s tirade had something to do with reality? You’re a silly person, yes you are… :)

Of course Lisa is quite aware that the impact operation did not cost “billions” and that there was no “bomb”.

The werewolves are safe.

For now.

And of course she’s also aware that nothing happened to the Moon that hasn’t been happening every single day on one scale or another for the past few billion years.

And of course everyone knows that the money spent on space research by the U.S. government in a year wouldn’t even fund a single day of our social services programs… hell, it might not even make it to the first coffee break…

A spent rocket stage, Centaur-class, crashed on the Moon like many have before it.

The only difference was that this one was guided to a particular crater that was believed to hold water ice in permanent shadow and a companion spacecraft was designed to fly through the debris plume to check just how much water is actually there.

But given the all-too-serious reactions by the all-too-many uninformed responses to this piece of art it seems that the term “moonbat” is having a renaissance…

No wonder so much of the space community has tended to acquire a severe right-wing bent over the decades… to the point of even feeling required to gloss over the Bush/Cheney extremities…

… they were pushed! :)

BTW would this elevate the third stages of the Saturn Moon rockets into the WMD class? They vastly outweighed the Centaur stage and their lunar impacts were used to map the Moon’s seismic profile…

Blowing shit up? Exploding… a bomb into the moon? I’m not sure you did much research for this post. What we did was basically the same as what happens at least once a month; we sent a projectile (two, in fact) into the moon at high speed. Mother Nature does it on a routine basis with bits of space junk — planetary leftovers, bits of ice, etc. — and we did it with hardware, all the better to catch data. (Ever try to collect data with a meteor?) I don’t think the advancement of science is juvenile, and I can only hope that your post was tongue-in-cheek. Otherwise, it smacks of an attack out of ignorance. Now that would be juvenile! One can only wonder what arguments were used against Columbus in his failed attempt to find a new route to the Far East.

Not to mention, they might be looking for “something”. No one I know likes surprises. Well, heh heh, not most surprises.

Deep Fried Moon Pie on a stick?

Hellium-3 on the Moon

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2006/12/72276

and

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html

Hey Newtonuser, it’s bleuz..

When I heard the ramp-up to this moon splat and what critical info could then be gleaned, I first thought of that image from the old Melies’ “Le Voyage Dan La Lune,” It’s at 4:12 of the 8:05 long 1902 film, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxB2×9QzXb0 Just knew there’d be a howl against it. After all, all we got out of the lunar landings was Tang, freeze-dried MREs and those peanut-butter flavored chewy snacks in foil packs, like squishy beef jerky, eh? Ooh, snacks from outer space! Cool.

If we are ever going to get the green jobs/revolution initiative underway, we have to spark kids’ imagination somehow, to get them away from their Xboxes and celebrity stalking nonsense. Watching the astronauts blast off on a 15″ TV in the cafeteria long ago.. did just that, for some kids.

Teddy is upstairs!
Fierce Advocate Omits Maine, Washington, Marriage at HRC

I lost 15 pounds and a bunch of inches. What are you trying to do to me?
Want a Skinny Cow banana and chocolate sickle?

The long-range idea is to move industry and the population overload off of Earth, to places without a fragile biosphere. To do that we need to identify water elsewhere.

Space exploration is peaceful, progressive and inexpensive.

This article is pretty much gibberish. Aside from ignoring the value of exploring the universe, it sets up a false competition between doing things on Earth and doing things in space. The money spent on space exploration is a trivial percentage of our national budget. If you want to find a way to pay for things that you advocate, you should start by looking at where the money is, not (rhetorically speaking) looking under the sofa cushions for lost change. Or, to be more explicit, if you want to spend money on improving health care (a worthy goal), don’t waste time complaining about the tiny fraction of a percent of the budget that goes for space exploration – figure out how we can stop wasting $350B/year on insurance company paperwork, or the nearly $1T spent invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

And to correct you further, the goal of exploring the universe isn’t to allow us to trash and abandon the earth, it is to learn, and with any luck to discover amazing places and people. Humanity is never going to “move someplace else”, any more than discovering North America lead to the evacuation of Europe or Asia.

What happened in your life that makes you so hostile to the opportunity to explore and learn?

Yeah, there really was a lot of scientific inquiry underlaying this, and on several levels. Some of it will pan out, some will not; that is how it goes. But you learn even from that which does not work as intended.

This is the scientific method, which we teach our kids in public schools. What we witnessed yesterday was a step in this classic process:

1 – Gather data (observations about something that is unknown, unexplained, or new);
2 – Hypothesize an explanation for those observations;
3 – Deduce a consequence of that explanation (a prediction); Formulate an experiment to see if the predicted consequence is observed;
4 – Wait for corroboration. If there is corroboration, go to step 3. If not, the hypothesis is falsified. Go to step 2.

Rinse, repeat until a hypothesis is proved.

For years we’ve complained about the Bush administration thwarting and defunding science, and now people on the left complain about one of the simplest and least expensive bit of public science we can perform which might have a massive, positive impact on our future and on youth observing this science. It drives me nuts.

And so does this:

Besides, blowing stuff up is fun!

THERE WERE NO EXPLOSIVES USED. THERE WAS NO BOMB. THERE WAS NOTHING BLOWN UP.

It’s a perfect example, though, to answer orcatjf at (8) of the lack of initiative to disprove the ridiculously simplistic frames the media (and unfortunately bloggers) used to explain what happened, even if used in a snarky fashion.

Where we once sought to learn everything possible about our trips to space a la the Apollo missions, we are now so casual with science that we can’t be bothered to do anything more than misuse lazy mainstream media frames.

On the other hand, perhaps man has finally reached Toffler’s point of future shock, where our science has finally exceeded our ability to grok it, and the media and bad frames merely reflect it.

I just wish that something far more complicated than allowing an empty spacecraft hull to impact the surface of moon at 4000 mph would have revealed the depth of our culture shock.

But, some other heads will explode when further lunar exploration on the dark side of the moon reveals no secret installations by the aliens who are beaming messages into the heads of world leader at the Bilderberg Group meetings. Gee whiz. A 9/11 truther I know is now spouting that tin hat assertion.

Just looking is low-cal.

Sometimes I just smell the good stuff. Ahhhhh.

I like those bio-fuel cars that smell like donuts

But, can you marry one? See you upstairs.

Yes, the reaction of the media was really annoying, especially while watching both tradmed and NASA feed at the same time. Amazing how NASA closed down one mission and immediately began the next phase under our noses, while tradmed wrapped up their hype and immediately set about with their anti-hype.

Even NASA’s talking heads doing their color did a better, more engaging job of coverage. My son and I listened to them discuss why the mission had been dedicated to Walter Cronkite, who’d also covered with characteristic wonder the Apollo missions. I was touched to hear one of them describe how Cronkite’s coverage of the moon landing inspired his pursuit of science when he wasn’t quite nine years old, and how he hoped his kids would be similarly inspired.

He would have been only months older than me that summer of 1969. And yeah, I hope my kids will be inspired, too.

That expectation of an optically visible spectacle was NASA’s PAO (Public Affairs Office) screwing up royally again.

In order to fan interest in the LCROSS lunar impact experiment they ginned up fancy graphics and videos that showed a vast icy plume spewing up over the horizon from the impact site…

… imagery concepts taken straight from the actual results of the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1…

… which had truly spectacular results visible to Earthbound telescopes…

… but that was the mission where we slammed a 1/3 ton impactor into a ball of rocky ice at 23,000 miles per hour just to see what comets were made of on the inside…

Needless to say, the visual aspect of the LCROSS lunar impact was nowhere near as spectacular as the Deep Impact results… resulting in a lot of disapointed earthbound astronomers and more egg-on-face for the NASA PAO.

But then the NASA PAO is somewhat less connected to reality than the Chicago Surrealist Group. I blame Reagan.

I agree with Stephen Hawking. We-the human race-need to get off this planet, to insure our survival. This shot did not cost billions but millions. Yeah we could have done plenty with that money, but there’s a whole universe out there. We need to get into it. The knowledge and technology we gain from the effort may very well help us solve our problems here. This is no paperback sci-fi fantasy, this is the future! So right in so many ways.

79 million well spent!

Many things that we have today were in the sci-fi books and comics many, many years ago. I remember in Flash Gordon the man flying around with this backpack-like thing on. We all laughed. Much of our present was written in the past by Arthur C. Clarke. It’s amazing.

Lisa,

I wonder, do you also oppose the Hubble Space Telescope? What about weather satellites? Communications satellites? GPS?

Have you really thought this through?

The author of this article, by her ignorance, criticizes what ought to be applauded. A group of government employees, working with industry people, came up with a way to piggy back on another space mission that was already planned. LCROSS rode the same launch vehicle as the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO), the LCROSS team used part of the launch vehicle as an impactor, and they built their follower spacecraft on LRO’s adapter ring (something that would normally be discarded after it served its primary purpose of holding the LRO spacecraft during launch). LCROSS went from an idea on a white board to launch in 29 months, which is very fast in the space world. The project was completed on time and on budget. And it performed science on lunar soil to a depth of 4 meters that might have cost billions of dollars if it used conventional approaches, but due to their innovation the mission came in at substantially less than $100 million (which is inexpensive for a spacecraft that flies to another solar system body).

Oh for Ghu’s sake.
WE DIDN’T BOMB THE MOON.
Please go find out what was actually being done before you go shrieking about it.

They allowed a dead rocket stage to fall into a crater near the moon’s south pole, because it was the only way they could find out if there was ice in it, followed by a satellite that was also not explosive. (I understand the results were inconclusive at best.)

This isn’t even the first time this has been done; they crashed the ascent stages of the Apollo landers so they could find out what’s inside the Moon – the astronauts left scientific-experiment packages that included seismometers, and those sent back information that couldn’t have been gotten any other way.

Not only that, but the whole LCROSS project cost $79 MILLION. (That’s not much money, any more, when major cities run billion-dollar budgets.) And ALL of that money stayed here on earth, circulatiing in our economy.

/rant

The straight story here.

you heard about that stuff with pluto?

that’s messed up.

Afraid you got this one wrong, Lisa. It was not a bomb. It was using the spent stage from the rocket of another mission that had already been paid for. Which otherwise would have orbited the moon as space garbage. It did not explode. It burrowed in. The purpose was not to produce a big explosion for thrills. It was to unearth (unmoon?) lunar material for spectroscopes and other instruments to analyze (which results are yet to be analyzed and announced).

Yes, the prospects of finding water as a useful precursor for oxygen and energy for a moon base was trumpeted to justify the expense.

But there is a lot of pure science here in service to just plain increasing our knowledge of the universe we live in.

Helium 3 as a fusion energy resource… a persistent argument for lunar exploration… is apparently about to be superceded by something even rarer, more expensive, and much harder to get… boron ;)

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/wb8_contract_pr.html

For non-geeks: we apparently have real fusion power in development, the Navy is funding it because this would be a great advantage for their ships (and incidentally for everyone else on the planet)… and the fuel need not be strained a molecule at a time from lunar regolith (the Moon’s “topsoil”) but can be scooped up by the trainload from the floor of Death Valley.

Interesting times, no?

LEAVE LISA ALOOOOOONE!!!11!1!

… and look up The Chicago Surrealist Group instead :)

I understand that they had a rational for this. A scientific pretext,if you will. However, I initially felt the same as you did. Then, to my surprise I found other people had similar feelings of unease (Kieth Olberman among them). I think it might be because many of us grow up learning a good deal of the mystique and mythology of the moon. It just doesn’t seem respectful to just slam crap into the moon without so much as an acknowledgement of what she has given to out imaginations and our ways of thinking. It’s just more “let’s treat this like we treat everything else; like disposable matter. Don’t worry it’s not like the moon never gets hit by meteors anyway. *boom* hee hee”

Afraid I don’t agree with you on this one . There were no explosives involved , the explosion was caused, by the kinetic energy of a spent rocket stage slamming into the surface.
As a previous commenter mentioned this was a spent rocket from a previous mission
As far as this not being the right time for this kind of expenditure we can always find some kind of excuse. Just when is the right time? These missions are often planned years in advance. How are we to know what the economic conditions are going to be when the missions actually take place?
This was done in the pursuit of knowledge ,something I would consider a noble endeavor
Your response to this is not what I’d expect to hear from a progressive . Isn’t that what this is all about,moving us into the future ?

Billybugs, I forone understand why they did it (see my above message). I just felt they didn’t show much respect..and many scientists do not have one clue about the emotional attachment some people feel towards the moon. I don’t think this is a moment for claiming that our feelings make us anti-progressive. This is a moment to reflect on why we have those feelings.

That we can do that is what makes us progressive.

Talk about your Astral Projectionism…

This ARTICLE was wrong on so many levels. Can it be after all the months of buzz leading up to this event that you don’t know this was part of a search for water? Surely you at least received the viral email that wailed that the US was going to blow a “five mile crater” in the surface of the moon. That was pretty silly, but no sillier than your claim that we are bombing the moon, “just to see what happens” and that this is “not a peaceful act.” Let’s just hope the moon men don’t retaliate. And, sure enough, we’ve left an ugly pock mark on the surface of the moon.

If the adventure and romance of humans as a race once again, and at last, setting out on that last great frontier doesn’t move you, if the reminders of past scientific breakthroughs forged as a byproduct of space travel and still paying dividends don’t impress you, if the promise of useful discoveries not yet dreamed of don’t interest you, how about a couple of other points of pragmatism?

If the NASA test revealed water, colonists could live on the moon. How would they spend their time productively? One possibility is the mining of helium-3, rare on earth but relatively abundant on the moon. One kilo of helium-3, if current calculations (and fusion development) pan out, could, according to my admittedly suspect math, power about 13,000 average US homes for a year. Meaning that, with a payload of 26786 kilos one shuttle load could power about 348,218,000 homes for a year, which is greater than the number of individuals in the US. Of course, this might not pan out, but there is potential. Other possibilities we haven’t even considered yet; that’s the nature of research and exploration.

One other possible utility for a moon base: it’s only been a few years since the Shoemaker-Levy comet punched a series of holes in Jupiter’s atmosphere. One of those holes was bigger than the planet earth. Several near-earth objects in recent years have given astronomers moments of concern. Small celestial objects bombard the earth frequently. It’s only been a hundred years since a larger space object impacted our planet in Siberia, with a resulting explosive force one thousand times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It is a certainty that an object large enough to threaten life on earth will strike us again; we just don’t know when. And we don’t yet have a good strategy for fending off such objects, even if we see them coming (our early warning system isn’t that good either). No doubt part of the reason we’ve not given such issues much concern is the carping of anti-science commentators such as yourself, caviling about all the things we could be doing with space exploration money here on earth, like bailing out General Motors (who probably would be sitting pretty right now if they hadn’t committed infanticide on their own electric car).

It just might develop that some of us will be very glad that we have colonies on the moon – or Mars – to which to flee. That is, if you think the human race is worth saving. I guess my sentiments in the face of such a cataclysm would depend on who was taking passage. The Obamas? Sure. Members of some future Cheney-Bush-like administration? I’d wish they’d spent that money here on earth to perfect 3D TV.

Your post has issues, let me show you them.

First, space colonies don’t work in real life. Too much material, too much shit to move, too much time to move that shit in. A moon colony is slightly more feasible than a Mars colony, by which I mean it’s possible we’ll see it in a hundred years, instead of in never.

In addition, basic net common sense informs you that if you have to capitalize anything in a response that isn’t capitalized because of grammar, you are automatically going to fail in your response.

Thirdly, if the NASA test did reveal water, it would almost certainly not reveal enough to sustain a moon colony. Humans consume water. Loads and loads of water. The Moon, while being the size of Africa, is too dense and solid to contain a great deal of water. We’re talking perhaps- at wildest- ten percent of the Moon could be made of water. That is roughly equivalent to what New York uses in a week.

Fourthly, I don’t give a shit about humanity expanding into the universe. I want to fix Earth. Let the universe do its own thing, it’s survived without us out there and I’d rather not fuck it up too, if the way we’ve treated our home planet is any indication.

Fifthly, if moon colonies were developed for use in an emergency, you and I would most certainly not be on them. Instead, it would be the super-rich, the politically relevant, who would get to escape while the rest of us died in a horrible apocalypse. That’s the way it goes.

Sixthly, even assuming that mining helium-3- a scientific wet dream for over a century, which should give you an idea of how long they’ve been trying and failing to do it- pans out, it’ll simply be opposed by big energy corporations, or co-opted by them, so it’s doubtful the common man would see any real benefit.

In summation, you have shown a basic love of space exploration, which I do not fault, but I do fault your tendency to confuse the romantic ideal of space travel and scientific progress with the reality of human nature and physics. It’s a lovely ideal, beautiful, really.

It’s also a lie. NASA wanted money. That’s why we bombed the moon.

Blowing shit up just to see what happens is pretty effing juvenile.

Didn’t we un-elect Mr. Likes-to-Blow-Up-Frogs?

But in return, we got Mr. Likes-To-Blow-Up-Moons. If anything, we’ve upgraded!

This wins the “Tsunami of tstupid”* award.

*Tbogg

Your post has issues, let me show you them.

And your post is severely information challenged, let me show you…

First, space colonies don’t work in real life. Too much material, too much shit to move, too much time to move that shit in. A moon colony is slightly more feasible than a Mars colony, by which I mean it’s possible we’ll see it in a hundred years, instead of in never.

Silly overstatements and an understimation of technological potential. The actual discussions on the subject at various space agencies have concerned how to make lunar outposts and bases more self-sufficient and they might be able to support further exploration with resources that might be locally available… with any “colonization”, if any, as a distant concern when we have better ships.

In addition, basic net common sense informs you that if you have to capitalize anything in a response that isn’t capitalized because of grammar, you are automatically going to fail in your response.

So as johnmayer failed to note that Lisa was riffing off the Chicago Surrealist Group’s performance art of a petition… does that mean that you will fail whenever you use the phrase “bomb the moon”?

Thirdly, if the NASA test did reveal water, it would almost certainly not reveal enough to sustain a moon colony.

Please keep up with the literature before making such flatly silly statements.

A Moon colony,..

… i.e. a permanent lunar population of such size as to be genetically diverse enough to be self-sustaining…

… would require hundreds of tons of water to be consistently present in the environmental systems.

The older theory was that the polar cold traps, those permanently shadowed crater floors and recesses near the lunar poles, might hold remnants of cometary impacts ranging from hundreds to thousands of tons worth of readily available water ice crystals mixed in with the regolith.

But recent studies have shown that the Moon may have far more water left over from its formation than previously thought… and even more surprising was the finding that the Moon is apparently generating water to this day…

… “?” you say…

Apparently water was actually in the rock samples that Apollo brought back from the Moon but the test results were so different from what was expected of the “sun-baked airless Moon” that the scientists at the time assumed that the sample boxes had leaked after the return trips and that the volatiles that they were detecting had to be actually from Earth… so they threw that data out…

As for the process that apparently generates new water: hydrogen from the solar wind constantly strikes oxygen-rich lunar regolith…

…and the regolith is very oxygen-rich… the Moon is composed of 50-60% oxygen by mass…

… and this impact of the hydrogen carried on the solar wind on the regolith creates bonds of one hydrogen and one oxygen atom… hydroxyl molecules.

These molecules skitter and migrate across the lunar surface under the impact of the Sun and solar wind. Some molecules break up… some escape into space… some drift into the lunar night and freeze out as H2O only to be disassociated again when lunar daylight catches up with them…

… and some of the hydroxyl molecules drift into the polar cold traps and freeze out as H2O… and stay there.

Thus the revised estimates have the cold traps with the potential of holding thousands of tons of accessible water.

Sufficient for outposts, bases, lunar refueling refineries… or perhaps a colony.

Humans consume water. Loads and loads of water. The Moon, while being the size of Africa, is too dense and solid to contain a great deal of water. We’re talking perhaps- at wildest- ten percent of the Moon could be made of water. That is roughly equivalent to what New York uses in a week.

No. Not only do your figures have little to do with reality but you overlook stable communities that exist on Earth in climates that would leave your average New Yorker a parched mummy… and you completely disregard the impact of the water recycling technology that would perforce have to be built into the lunar environmental systems.

Fourthly, I don’t give a shit about humanity expanding into the universe. I want to fix Earth. Let the universe do its own thing, it’s survived without us out there and I’d rather not fuck it up too, if the way we’ve treated our home planet is any indication.

Null meaning. The sort of “Let’s whip up the base into a mindless froth!” rhetoric we’ve seen all to much of already. And completely disregarding all the potential benefits of any space-based commercial and/or R&D programs.

Fifthly, if moon colonies were developed for use in an emergency, you and I would most certainly not be on them. Instead, it would be the super-rich, the politically relevant, who would get to escape while the rest of us died in a horrible apocalypse. That’s the way it goes.

And your point was?…

…

… it would be sad if our corporate oligarchs were to be the only survivors of humanity. But the way you fix that is to see to it that ordinary humans have a say in the setting up of the colonies. You don’t solve the problem by running off into the night screaming “Unfair!”… and getting left behind because you refused to even be involved in the discussions.

Sixthly, even assuming that mining helium-3- a scientific wet dream for over a century, which should give you an idea of how long they’ve been trying and failing to do it- pans out, it’ll simply be opposed by big energy corporations, or co-opted by them, so it’s doubtful the common man would see any real benefit.

Fusion as a research topic since the 1930’s. Fusion as a military topic sine the 1940’s. Fusion as a civilian power topic since the 1950’s. Lunar 3He as a potential power source for Earth has only been a topic since the 1980’s.

Controlled fusion has been achievable and achieved for decades.

Extracting sustained net power from an artificial fusion reaction is the current goal.

International consortiums of scientists are building new hardware based on classical concepts now (ITER etc.) and as I noted upthread new projects such as Polywell and Focus Fusion look likely to bypass the traditional concepts even as we speak here.

In summation, you have shown a basic love of space exploration, which I do not fault, but I do fault your tendency to confuse the romantic ideal of space travel and scientific progress with the reality of human nature and physics. It’s a lovely ideal, beautiful, really.

It seems that you could stand to learn a great deal more of these various concepts yourself.

It’s also a lie. NASA wanted money. That’s why we bombed the moon.

And that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve read yet on the subject… Whip the base into a mindles froth! Whip them! Whip them good!

Yeesh.

This was an experiment! Lest I offend some, the Russians and Americans have been crash landing vehicles into the moon since the 1960s (primarily as spent results of early tests) and no one said a word. Here, we sent the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to truly map the moon (did you know the moon is less well mapped than Mars?) and as a byproduct the LCROSS spent Centaur stage and a probe took pictures and measurements on the way down. If there’s water there, it’s possible there’s life. We find out a great deal of scientific data such as the origin of the moon, how the solar system works, and oh, yes, we might be able to live up there. For those who say it “can’t happen”, well that’s what they told Columbus. Given the technology of their times that might have been true. We don’t know what technology we’ll spin off as a result that might have the effect of “space elevators” or other such technology which would be game changers. Let’s applaud NASA. Besides LCROSS was approved under President Bush. Nobel Prize Winner Obama just got the credit.

Now you’re just being Silly. Like the old lefties who blamed poverty on the fact we went to the moon. there’s more than enough money to be found with cutting into something so vital as space.

Like it or not population expands exponentially. Sooner, much sooner than later we’re going to need more space. More space requires more planets. Exploring planets requires water. The moon is a possible midway point to places, hence water there would be great.

The moon gets demolish by comets and much bigger things then we hit it with constantly. That’s what the craters are. We didn’t do anything bad.

And quite frankly, I find you trying to demonize it unintelligent and giving the left a bad name.

I’d prefer if you’d take the time to chew out something that deserves it, and leave NASA alone.

If what the space program is doing was designed to benefit mankind as a generic whole i would have less of a problem with this than i do knowing that the sole purpose of our “exploration” of space is to discover a planet where our super-rich thieves can escape to when anomie finally reigns supreme here after the final charade of coexistence between the utterly selfish class and the rest of us has come to an end.

As to cost, looks like this was a mere add-on to another mission, so that couldn’t be the problem. Besides, space science has always paid off big time at rates Wall Street could only dream of. As to respect, I actually LIVE on the Earth and we’ve had plenty of empty rocket stages crash here. Nobody seems to mind. Besides, it looks like that stage would have crashed on the Moon anyway. Not getting some value from it seems even MORE disrespectful, IMHO.

Just to be clear: I’ve been programming since before the PC and professionally for over 30 years. If someone came along and said I was “just typing shit”, I’d be offended at that, too. I’ve been a lefty for a long time, but sometimes our folx can give me a pain.

We did it because the loonies were going to sell their oil priced in Euros. Can’t have that.

It’s also the only way we get another new world to try again on.

the reason we could have America, and whatever you think of it now America was a massive shift for good in government in the beginning, the only reason we could have it was because it was “A new world”

The Indians were there yes but there was no modern government that was entrenched that had to really be thrown off.

In a sense you can’t have a 2nd American revolution because it’s entrenched.

So yeah it’s a chance for the lecches to get out, but it’s also a way for us to start again.

There’s always a chance the leeches come to, but honestly, it’s more likely we would do it right at first and it would corrupt from within as America is doing.

But we must try. Or we resign ourselves to live and die on a single planet with a set time of life left.

Ahhh…it would seem you’ve hit a nerve, Lisa.

Well, I for one, agree with your post.

I don’t think we should be spending millions on blowing things up when there are people on Earth who are starving, who are homeless, etc. This part of your post just flew over the heads of most of the posters, who seem to be so dazzled by the wonder of it all.

The excuse that this science will be used for “all” is bogus. As we are seeing with the healthcare debates, the *haves* have access to all that technology.

You have to be able to pay for those medical tests in order to use them. As technology gets more advanced (and costly), it will become less and less affordable. Cars are another example–as their technology increases, they become increasingly more expensive so that less folk are able to afford them.

And, as some assert, the moon has been taking hits on a recurrent basis from objects in the Universe–we have no control over that, but we do have control over what we do. It’s been my experience that the Universe can and does take care of itself–it’s when we start messing with it that trouble starts.

And I might add that we did okay for thousands of years *without* technology. Gees, we actually survived by our wits with the help of Nature.

We’re once again messing with Nature (the Moon) not knowing the ramifications. It’s known that the Moon affects the Earth (tidal waves), so could this have an effect on that? What other effects could occur? Has anybody even thought that out? (My guess is probably not–they don’t seem to be too connected with Nature).

For me, I could not look a homeless person in the eye and tell them that space exploration is more important than giving them shelter and food. Ditto for war expenditures. But that’s just me.

Beavis and Butthead Do the moon. ” Hehe-hehe- I like to break stuff”

I agree. God help NASA, but they aren’t actually important. People are important. The Moon is just a damn rock in space.

Excuse me? No government? Do you have a clue what the Native Americans had going here? There was a government! We just killed them all!

The US has bombed most of the Earth, I’d far rather they pissed their money away bombing places where there are no people.

How does this analysis apply to the MIP mission of last Nov? If you need to look that mission up, then how can you possibly consider yourself qualified to comment on LCROSS?

boogiecheck had a rant…

… and I will ignore most of the bait and the ill-informed jiffy-science because the following tautology is apparently their zinger-du-jour…

For me, I could not look a homeless person in the eye and tell them that space exploration is more important than giving them shelter and food. Ditto for war expenditures. But that’s just me.

Yeah, it’s just you.

People who actually work with the system know that the money to feed and shelter that homeless person isn’t “going into space.”

(But you whip that base good, y’hear?)

We, as a people, have choices as to how we spend our wealth.

(Well, actually, the corporations work triple overtime to override that as much as possible and to divert our wealth directly to themselves, but that’s another topic…)

And we choose how to spend that wealth.

We choose how much of our wealth goes to the government agencies that handle the military and defense and policing and social programs and disease control and regulation and housing and etc, and etc, and always last in line, space.

(Yes, NASA actually performs national functions that we need and functions that we desire… or is supposed to, anyway.)

And the choices as to whether or not to help that homeless person, and by how much, have to be made and are made by the legislature long before NASA gets even a slice of the budget.

NASA’s budget is very large by the standards of the other national space agencies of the world but NASA does a lot more than they do… and is actually expected to be doing even more than it is.

But even NASA’s entire 16 billion dollar budget wouldn’t solve the causes of the homeless crisis.

But what’s worse is that NASA can’t even function as it’s expected to because NASA has been badly broken.

Surprised? It was dysfunctional for years and then the Bushies got into the works and royally fucked things up, as is their wont.

That the various science mission directorates can do even as much as they’ve done by reusing spent rocket stages etc etc has been a string of miracles of ingenuity.

NASA doesn’t need its budget gutted. NASA needs a thorough housecleaning and a clear set of mission priorities assigned… and funded.

But between the leftover Bushies in-house and the corporations that believe that they are in charge of our space agency and its budget… what are the chances of our dear corporatist Obama actually doing the right things that need to be done?

I now leave you to this ill-thought-out resurgence of the culture wars with one last thought:

The left/liberal/progressive movement has only made as much progress as it has because it represented a reality-based view as opposed to the unchecked fantasies of the wingnuts.

So if the l/l/p follows the lead of anarchist surrealists like this then it would seem to be the surest way to set themselves up for a truly colossal fall.

I have registered specifically to leave a comment telling you that this moronic article made me unsubscribe from Firedoglake. I would try to debunk it, but by writing the article you have shown that you are too much of a dumb outrage junky to respond to reasoned argument. I sometimes wonder why the American left is so ineffective, but now I realise it’s because a lot of them are as dumb as this article.

And the choices as to whether or not to help that homeless person, and by how much, have to be made and are made by the legislature long before NASA gets even a slice of the budget.

Tell that to someone who lived through Katrina in New Orleans…they’re still waiting for their “slice of the pie”…

But even NASA’s entire 16 billion dollar budget wouldn’t solve the causes of the homeless crisis

Nice strawman argument. Because we couldn’t solve “all” the U.S.’s problems, we shouldn’t take what money we do have to ease the situation a bit?

But what’s worse is that NASA can’t even function as it’s expected to because NASA has been badly broken.

Surprised? It was dysfunctional for years and then the Bushies got into the works and royally fucked things up, as is their wont

No, I’m not surprised. I studied Communications in college, and one of the things we studied was the communications breakdown at NASA that led to the Challenger disaster. The scientists were raising the red flag about the problem with “O” rings, but they were ignored by the powers that be. Next thing you know, we’re seeing that horrible sight on TV (yes, I was watching it as it happened). And ole Saint Ronny uttered his line of “Touching the Face of God” (courtesy of Peggy Noonan).

But between the leftover Bushies in-house and the corporations that believe that they are in charge of our space agency and its budget… what are the chances of our dear corporatist Obama actually doing the right things that need to be done?

You know, this may come as a shock to you, but I don’t necessarily want to see the space program come to an end. BUT I cannot in good conscience support it now that this country is swirling down the drain. Too many folks are hurting.

I have registered specifically to leave a comment telling you that this moronic article made me unsubscribe from Firedoglake. I would try to debunk it, but by writing the article you have shown that you are too much of a dumb outrage junky to respond to reasoned argument. I sometimes wonder why the American left is so ineffective, but now I realise it’s because a lot of them are as dumb as this article.

THANK YOU, dripgrind. I read Ms. Derrick’s ignorant rant on Friday and — as a longtime subscriber to Firedoglake — realized that this really isn’t the forum for me. I unsubscribed and, after posting this note today, I don’t ever intend to visit here again. Life’s too short to waste on blowhards — whether Bill O’Reilly or people on the left who spew the same kind of Bush-ite disdain for science.

I shared the outrage of many on the left during the Bush years as they slashed and burned science budgets and the entire scientific process — indeed, the whole “reality-based” community. But I find unhinged, irrational lefty outrage just as offensive as I do from the right.

LCROSS was one of many missions that astronomers, physicists and space scientists perform every month, every year in low earth orbit, near earth orbit, on the moon, in the solar system, etc. Some with NASA funding, some not. LCROSS didn’t make a big “boom” when it hit the lunar surface, and that was a surprise. But in science, surprise can often be a good thing — leads to new ideas, new theories, new experiments. All in the service of better understanding — in this case — the solar system in which we live.

The findings are still coming in. Some good science bloggers are covering this. Here, here and here for starters.

I don’t know enough about LCROSS’s science mission to write an article, but I do know enough to recognize in an article when — as scientists often conclude — more research is clearly needed.

Interesting. Willing to throw away a valuable site from your roll because you disagree.
Good luck.

Earth-Things

You throw stuff at our Green Cheese Centrifuges. Ha-Ha go 500 Mclicks deeper. You want our water? Fine! We want plenty of your Earth-Stuff kept on Earth. Negotiate or War???

How out we parachute Moon-Mice on your Cheddar and Brie factories?? Ha-Ha. Ha-Ha.

Want talk? Show sign of good faith. Shut down fukin TV broadcast!!!!!!

MoonDog