NASA lunar impact

Anyone watching NASA lunar impact ?

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

<10 minutes to go.

drsmith said:

Anyone watching NASA lunar impact ?

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

<10 minutes to go.

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Yes, about as boring as minute 98 of one of Kev07's lectures to the UN at 0223am of a saturday morning.

gg

Hopefully they find water.

Garpal Gumnut said:

Yes, about as boring as minute 98 of one of Kev07's lectures to the UN at 0223am of a saturday morning.

gg

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haha!

We wanted the Hollywood version.

Lots of destruction, fire, debris flying everywhere... and Bruce Willis.

Garpal Gumnut said:

Yes, about as boring as minute 98 of one of Kev07's lectures to the UN at 0223am of a saturday morning.

gg

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The dust grain properties of the ejecta cloud would have to be more interesting than that.

drsmith said:

Hopefully they find water.

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or gold/oil... :

Yeh great thread lasses and chaps, made my day just dropping in, cant seem to stir any interest on de other threads

so we solute the good Ole US of a cause well need all the water we can get..... IMVHO of course

emphasis on the humble bit. Bloody ego, the curse of a man

jono1887 said:

or gold/oil... :

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Oil would be a suprise.

That would mean there was once life on the moon.

explod said:

Yeh great thread lasses and chaps, made my day just dropping in, cant seem to stir any interest on de other threads

so we solute the good Ole US of a cause well need all the water we can get..... IMVHO of course

emphasis on the humble bit. Bloody ego, the curse of a man

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If we get to the stage of colonising other worlds we will need to live off the land.

Water is essential not only to drink and grow food but also as fuel (hydrogen) and a source of oxygen.

drsmith said:

Oil would be a suprise.

That would mean there was once life on the moon.

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It was a joke.. but if either of these were found, no doubt we would find a way to get there and mine it despite the lack of water and air :

jono1887 said:

It was a joke.. but if either of these were found, no doubt we would find a way to get there and mine it despite the lack of water and air :

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In that case we would need to transport it all there. To do that from one rock in space to another requires a lot of energy with obvious impacts on the economics of mining energy resources.

It's no different in principal to when pre-industrial peoples colonised other parts of the world. They took what they needed to grow their own food/lived off what grew locally rather than constantly transporting all these requirements from their original homeland.

Of interest on the moon is Helium-3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us."

"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one," he said.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one - but they still
come!"

Wysiwyg said:

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us."

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Da da daaa...
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Da da daaa...
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Looks like they found some..

NASA finds water on the moon
06:57 AEST Sat Nov 14 2009


A "significant amount" of frozen water has been found on the moon, says the US space agency.

The discovery heralds a major leap forward in space exploration and boosts hopes of a permanent lunar base.

Preliminary data from a moon probe "indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater", NASA said in a statement on Friday.

"The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon."

The data was found after NASA sent two spacecraft crashing into the lunar service last month in a dramatic experiment to probe Earth's nearest neighbour for water.

One rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the lunar southern pole, at around 9000 km/h.

The impact sent a huge plume of material billowing up from the bottom of the crater, which has not seen sunlight for billions of years.

The rocket was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact.

"We are ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the $US72.87 million ($A79 million) LCROSS mission.

"Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact.

"The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water."

Scientists had previously theorised that, except for the possibility of ice at the bottom of craters, the moon was totally dry.

Finding water on Earth's natural satellite is a major breakthrough in space exploration.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbour and, by extension, the solar system," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

But Colaprete cautioned the full understanding of the LCROSS data could take some time.

"The data is that rich," he said.

"Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances.

"The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years."

Only 12 men, all Americans, have ever walked on the moon, and the last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.

But NASA's ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to establish manned lunar bases for further exploration to Mars under the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt.

NASA's budget is currently too small to pay for Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, as well as the Ares I and Ares V launchers needed to put the craft in orbit.

A key review panel appointed by US President Barack Obama said existing budgets are not large enough to fund a return mission before 2020.

drsmith, boyou
beware someone will claim that it's all a fake anyway - filmed in hollywood. etc

thought for the day ...
"What fraction of Americans believe wrestling is real and NASA is fake?"

Fantastic news, water in the moon! Best news I have heard for a long time. Space colonies, here we come!!!!