Tommorrow the Earth begins it's attack on the MOON

CptStern

CptStern

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...no really:


NASA's LCROSS mission will culminate with two lunar impacts at approximately 4:30 a.m. PDT on Oct. 9. The mission will search for water ice in the Cabeus A crater near the moon's south pole.



The Mission Objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon. LCROSS will excavate the permanently dark floor of one of the Moon’s polar craters with two heavy impactors in 2009 to test the theory that ancient ice lies buried there. The impact will eject material from the crater’s surface to create a plume that specialized instruments will be able to analyze for the presence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ZiYFbenrY&feature=player_embedded#


http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/
 
not unless you have John Titor like abilities
 
"Centaur's explosive collision is expected to create a crater roughly 60 or 70 feet wide and perhaps as much as 16 feet deep"

space.com
 
****in' nasa spending billions on sending an expensive rocket propelled bomb to the moon . just give the job to the terrorists; $6 for boxcutters and $179.956 for fuel = more effective explosion at a cheaper price
 
I brought this up in a different NASA thread a while ago, so It's been planned for some time now.

I was disappointed recently when they discovered small amounts of water.. what has it? 6 ounces per 10000 miles or someshit?

So hopefully, they find shit loads of ice/water deep under the surface. If not, I'm pretty sure it would really be disastrous for our quest to do any deep exploration in space, unless some extremely efficient propulsion technology comes along.

Also, Centaur is my favorite pinball Machine, and part of my user name at several other forums. So that's pretty cool they named it that. =D
 
AJ Rimmer said:
Huh. I thought this had already happened.
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Well, they did do this to a meteor or an asteroid or whatever it was once... firing a probe like a bullet into it.
 
it will be called fake by half the internet the next day so why care?
 
ironsky_teaserposter.jpg
 
I may want to bring out my telescope that night. If I can figure out where the collision is going to be made it would worth it to set up my fathers laptop and snag a few pics
 
Damned moon-queen thinks she can bully us into giving her land huh?
 
VirusType2 said:
I was disappointed recently when they discovered small amounts of water.. what has it? 6 ounces per 10000 miles or someshit?

So hopefully, they find shit loads of ice/water deep under the surface. If not, I'm pretty sure it would really be disastrous for our quest to do any deep exploration in space, unless some extremely efficient propulsion technology comes along.
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I believe the approximate figure was about 20 grams of water per ton of Moon dirt, which is much more water than you thought but still not a very prodigious amount. Don't quote me on that though, I read the article a few weeks ago.

Also, the moon not having water wouldn't necessarily doom our hopes of being able to harvest water and other stuff from asteroids/planets in order to provide long-term sustainable resources, there are other bodies in the system that are very promising with regards to potential water content (besides Jupiter's moon Europa, look into the current Dawn probe mission to the asteroids/dwarf planets Vesta and Ceres).

As far as efficient propulsion technology goes, I read an article the other day talking about how prototype ion propulsion systems are becoming more successful and powerful (the 200 watt power threshold was first broken with this most recent prototype), so we might have a relatively cheap, kickass way to do ultra-fast spaceflight before too long. There is already a probe several years out in the Solar System that uses an early rudimentary ion engine, and the prototype I am talking about from the article is capable of accelerating a craft from Earth to Mars in only like 40 days (which is several dozens of times faster than our conventional rocket propulsion).
 
Ennui said:
I believe the approximate figure was about 20 grams of water per ton of Moon dirt, which is much more water than you thought but still not a very prodigious amount. Don't quote me on that though, I read the article a few weeks ago.

Also, the moon not having water wouldn't necessarily doom our hopes of being able to harvest water and other stuff from asteroids/planets in order to provide long-term sustainable resources, there are other bodies in the system that are very promising with regards to potential water content (besides Jupiter's moon Europa, look into the current Dawn probe mission to the asteroids/dwarf planets Vesta and Ceres).

As far as efficient propulsion technology goes, I read an article the other day talking about how prototype ion propulsion systems are becoming more successful and powerful (the 200 watt power threshold was first broken with this most recent prototype), so we might have a relatively cheap, kickass way to do ultra-fast spaceflight before too long. There is already a probe several years out in the Solar System that uses an early rudimentary ion engine, and the prototype I am talking about from the article is capable of accelerating a craft from Earth to Mars in only like 40 days (which is several dozens of times faster than our conventional rocket propulsion).
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If it takes a space flight only 40 days to reach Mars believe me it would be well worth the trillions of dollars to make it happen. just knowing another human is on a foreign planet is awesome and necessary for humans to survive as a species
 
We are decades at least away from being able to build big manned spacecraft with ion engines I suspect (although I'm really not terribly well informed on this stuff). However I do think by the time we're a lot older (maybe 30 years from now) we'll have some goddamn sexcellent space technology. A man on Mars in our lifetime is certainly plausible and not entirely outside of the realm of possibility...
 
Moonbase Alpha

Massive nuclear explosion

Moon torn out of Earth orbit

Hurled into outer space

September

13th

1999




Nostradamus was RIGHT :O
 
They better send Bruce Willis to make sure the job is done right.
 
Trucking water from another planet is a ghastly expensive way to move water, remember gravity is gravity and you always have to fight it. Plus actually getting enough water to make a difference at all would probably give us a nasty shift (however minor) in orbits. Working with what you got is far more cost-effective.

Although, I'm giving a serious response to something that likely wasn't in the first place.
 
i don't think my tiny celestron will be able to capture this very well....too bad :(

edit: If you are in the eastern part of the US you should see the moon due south...download stellarium and see where it will be for you (if visible)
 
The moon would've done it to us if we didn't.

Say goodbye to the whalers.
 
so I'm going to wake up at 7:25 for this to watch it on TV at 7:30. should be a fun thing to watch, and its nice to see more baby steps of mankind
 
weak....you'd think they'd aim hubble or some other massive telescope at the site and make this event more visible to get people excited, all i saw were disappointing people watching and saying things they didn't understand
 
80 million dollar dud, whoo! Glad I didnt wake up for it.
 
Maestro said:
Trucking water from another planet is a ghastly expensive way to move water, remember gravity is gravity and you always have to fight it. Plus actually getting enough water to make a difference at all would probably give us a nasty shift (however minor) in orbits. Working with what you got is far more cost-effective.

Although, I'm giving a serious response to something that likely wasn't in the first place.
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Water is H2O

Hydrogen = fuel for rockets.
Oxygen = ...air
Water = greenhouses, drinking water, etc.

the moon has much less gravity and atmosphere to overcome when it comes to rocket propulsion, so it would make an ideal launchpad. It is closer to other planets when the orbit is in sync. If it has a large surplus of water or ice, that would make it an ideal base for the further exploration of space, not to mention a great place to study and conduct research while we are there. A telescope on earth has to look through miles of particle filled atmosphere. Solar cells would do great on the moon as well.

And like you said, we can't bring shit loads of water with us off-world. Water is 8lbs per gallon.
 
VirusType2 said:
the moon has much less gravity and atmosphere to overcome when it comes to rocket propulsion, so it would make an ideal launchpad.
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Except you still need to launch the majority of materials needed for any launch out of the earth and to the moon, so its not that great.

Also, @ tenacious, they said it was supposed to kick up a six mile spread of moon dirt that would be visible from earth. Its my understanding that it didnt happen that way.
 
Krynn72 said:
Except you still need to launch the majority of materials needed for any launch out of the earth and to the moon, so its not that great.
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This is the big problem: Before we do anything, we really need to bring down the costs of taking stuff into LEO. That's where everything has to start, anyway.
 
what we should do is make a robot building facility on the moon and have them make all the necessary components before we even get there. shipping everything there would take a very long time.
 
Maestro said:
Interestingly I found this on Slashdot today:

A physicist proposes plan to build 1.1km-long gun for $500 million. It could launch a 650kg projectile into low orbit. I thought it was pretty cool.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/11/2130226/Gigantic-Air-Gun-To-Blast-Cargo-Into-Orbit
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oh man! we should try this out with death row inmates. if they live, they can work on Mars for as long as humanly possible.

also if we had really large magnets in low orbit we could do a throw and release type catching device and it would save even more money.
 
Warped said:
oh man! we should try this out with death row inmates. if they live, they can work on Mars for as long as humanly possible.

also if we had really large magnets in low orbit we could do a throw and release type catching device and it would save even more money.
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ROCKET LAUNCHER!
 

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Krynn72 said:
Except you still need to launch the majority of materials needed for any launch out of the earth and to the moon, so its not that great.
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Speaking long term here, once they get a base set on the moon--a base that can extract water and strip the elements from each other ... what I mean, is if there is a massive surplus of water on the moon, they can create hydrogen from water, and oxygen from water. So once that factory base is set up, along with temporary living quarters, all they need to do here on earth is strap a secondary space travel craft to some boosters and land it on the moon, where they can refuel with hydrogen and resupply with oxygen and water.

There on the moon, fully loaded for years of human life support, the craft won't need significant boosters like we use on earth to leave the moon. Therefore, once it leaves the moon, it will still be loaded with fuel for long term space travel. There's no friction in space, so they just need to get this secondary cruising ship up to speed and they can coast extremely vast distances very quickly, with very little fuel consumption.

Additionally, they may not even need human life support on board if they just want to explore robotically.
 
Maestro said:
Interestingly I found this on Slashdot today:

A physicist proposes plan to build 1.1km-long gun for $500 million. It could launch a 650kg projectile into low orbit. I thought it was pretty cool.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/11/2130226/Gigantic-Air-Gun-To-Blast-Cargo-Into-Orbit
Click to expand...

That actually sounds like an interesting, and cost effective way of getting the building materials in orbit. This option already is possible with current technology, unlike the space elevator idea.

The downside is, this method would be too dangerous to send people. Oh wait, right now astronauts are riding giant hydrogen powered firecrackers...
 
650 kg is a huge step downwards in capacity per launch, but depending on how much time there would be between, and the cost of each launch, maybe it'd be worth it.
 
VirusType2 said:
Speaking long term here, once they get a base set on the moon--a base that can extract water and strip the elements from each other ... what I mean, is if there is a massive surplus of water on the moon, they can create hydrogen from water, and oxygen from water. So once that factory base is set up, along with temporary living quarters, all they need to do here on earth is strap a secondary space travel craft to some boosters and land it on the moon, where they can refuel with hydrogen and resupply with oxygen and water.

There on the moon, fully loaded for years of human life support, the craft won't need significant boosters like we use on earth to leave the moon. Therefore, once it leaves the moon, it will still be loaded with fuel for long term space travel. There's no friction in space, so they just need to get this secondary cruising ship up to speed and they can coast extremely vast distances very quickly, with very little fuel consumption.

Additionally, they may not even need human life support on board if they just want to explore robotically.
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I worry about shifting gravitational balance long term if we launch enough flights, nothing like flinging the earth into the sun but shifting tides and such which could be detrimental.
 
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