The economy can't be that bad-

[ambrosiaD]

-if we can afford to waste this kind of money. Guess those starving people can wait! :

NASA satellite to intentionally slam moon
by Anne Ryman - Sept. 28, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic .
In less than two weeks, a NASA satellite is scheduled to slam into the moon on purpose.

A 2-ton piece of equipment the size of a school bus, known as the impactor, is expected to bore a 13-foot hole into the lunar surface and kick up a plume of dust 6 miles high. A few minutes later, an unmanned part, about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, is programmed to fly through the debris, recording and transmitting data back to Earth before smashing into the moon as well.

NASA hopes to determine whether the moon has water, which could be used as a resource for future astronauts.

"We have never actually sent a spacecraft to the polar regions of the moon," said Jennifer Heldmann, coordinator of the satellite's observation campaign for NASA.
The impact is expected to be visible for only a few seconds around 4:30 a.m. Arizona time on Friday, Oct. 9. And you'll need at least a 10-inch telescope to see anything.

If you have no telescope and would rather sleep in, don't worry.

Plenty of professional and amateur astronomers are getting up early in hopes of capturing the event on video.

"This is something you don't normally get the opportunity to see," said Adam Block, program coordinator at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center near Tucson.

The 36-year-old plans to use a 24-inch telescope to watch the impact and will have his video recorder ready when the $79 million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS for short, smashes into the moon.

If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will reveal more about the moon's composition and makeup, including whether water could be present on the south pole.

Finding water is important if astronauts ever want to establish a human outpost there, because water can be used to manufacture rocket fuel.

Scientists have long believed the moon harbors water. Digging beneath the surface enables them to find out more about the moon's composition.


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...mooncrash.html

[Beastmaster]

Seems like a worthwhile investment to me... Also sounds like one of the most exciting space missions NASA has undertaken in awhile.




If it still seems frivolous, consider that there might be an alien outpost there and they've been spying on us for decades and this is going to be the first salvo in an intergalactic war with an aggressive extra terrestrial race that has been uncooperative and threatening towards us, and this will stop the space rays that control our minds, so no more tin foil hats after this! The water thing is just a cover story!

[eatyualive]

think the other day i saw something about this. they wanted to test the water on the moon. maybe for future mining operations. seems too costly for me. why not just make desalinization more cost effective. the price it would cost for moon ice would outweigh the price for desalinization.

[TVCasualty]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

If it still seems frivolous, consider that there might be an alien outpost there and they've been spying on us for decades and this is going to be the first salvo in an intergalactic war with an aggressive extra terrestrial race that has been uncooperative and threatening towards us, and this will stop the space rays that control our minds, so no more tin foil hats after this! The water thing is just a cover story!

If that were true, the impactor would've been sent to hit the dark side. (where the alien base is, in other words).

[SilvrHairDevil]

Research money is seldom wasted. In this case, water found on the Moon could very well be the enabling factor for future space exploration.

If a base can be set up on the Moon and water from there can be used as hydrogen fuel, the exodus of humans from the Earth may commence in time to save our species' DNA from becoming extinct in one of the many types of cataclysms the Earth is prone to.

The driving imperative of human DNA is to expand and grow. To attempt to stop that is as futile as commanding the tide to halt.

To suggest space research money be diverted to feeding the never-ending crush of humans is frivolous.

[ambrosiaD]

Originally Posted by SilvrHairDevil

Research money is seldom wasted. In this case, water found on the Moon could very well be the enabling factor for future space exploration.

If a base can be set up on the Moon and water from there can be used as hydrogen fuel, the exodus of humans from the Earth may commence in time to save our species' DNA from becoming extinct in one of the many types of cataclysms the Earth is prone to.

The driving imperative of human DNA is to expand and grow. To attempt to stop that is as futile as commanding the tide to halt.

To suggest space research money be diverted to feeding the never-ending crush of humans is frivolous.

How would speculative water reserves on the moon make human DNA expand and grow?

Are we going to build big space stations up there? (We still can't even find a way to deflect all of the radiation) We are not near close to living on the moon. The economic hit alone would be in the quadrillions. We have slam dunked our limitations on this planet.

My view is that all of these visionaries like McKenna and a few others who believe that our evolution will take us into space are actually falling short. Sure, we got there, but the amount of energy it takes is no where near being able to sustain any of those science fiction predictions of space colonization. One thing we need to do is be realistic and mature enough to understand our limitations along with our potential.

We ain't goin' to Mars. If we try, we will probably end up with a cosmic soda can full of cooked, dead astronauts. At best, we might be able to invent a safer version of Botox

[Wild-find-I.D.]

you do all know nasa is just a waste of government money it has been proving that it doesnt take over 16 mil. per mission to get to space nasa has never been to the moon we have never been to the moon unless you over ate some cubes!!!

why would we need to start all these missions to a place we've already been too the moon samples cant say if water was there at any time??? answer is no there was never moon samples they were meteors that fell to earth & was suspected to be pieces of the moon

all we had to do was beat the Russians to the moon and we did by lieing the hole world already knows its I mean we cant get there now & we are way more advance now then what 50 years ago or more??? we couldnt landed on the moon because of the large amounts of radiation always hitting the moon we'd cook before ever landing

anyone seen the fake moon pictures from the moon walk & missions?
I cant believe I even had to say all that

[Hippie3]

i can't believe you wasted my time,
reading such an useless rant.
this entire thread is utterly useless,
a bunch of flat-earthers that think THEY figured it all out

to the dump- unworthy