NASA to blast a crater into the Moon!

[Chaotic Cow]

In an unprecedented scientific endeavor — and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever — NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.

The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. As a potential source of oxygen for life support and hydrogen for rocket fuel, that water would be a tremendous boost to NASA's plans to restart human exploration of the moon.

But the launch is scheduled for Thursday at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was delayed a day to allow repairs to the space shuttle.

Shuttle Endeavour must fly by this weekend. Otherwise the mission to deliver the final piece of the Japanese space station lab must wait until mid-July because of unfavorable sun angles that would heat up the shuttle. The moon mission — NASA's first in a decade — must be launched by Saturday as well. Otherwise it will have to wait until the end of the month for another shot.

LCROSS is a crucial mission for Ames because it marks a return to the business of controlling space missions from Silicon Valley's NASA base, something the center hopes to build on during the next five years. Ames has planned a public

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ceremony around the launch, starting at about 11 a.m., featuring Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt.

FULL STORY: http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_12590357


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Awesome. Using the moon as target practice! lol.

[Naru523]

YESSSS!!!!!!! Finally we will get water to Luna! xD

[Chaotic Cow]

get water to Luna?

The idea is to check for water ON Luna.

Taking a bottle of water to the moon cost thousands of dollars.

If we can mine water from the Moon we can easily make a Moon Base.

[Bla]

I don't think it will be done easily.
We need oxygen. We will need to build oxygen generators, I don't know if that will be easy or not, but there will also be problems protecting the astronauts from cosmic rays and short waved photons, plus the low gravity will cause your muscles to become very small I think. Transporting materials/ressources to the Moon, like food, will also be much harder than transporting it to the space station.

[Chaotic Cow]

Well obviously. I'm just saying. If we can mine water we don't have to deliever water to the moon . If and when we get a moon base.

[Dan Dixon]

I was going to put together a simulation of this event with Universe Sandbox over the weekend, but JPL's Horizon system doesn't have any data on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter yet. (This is where all of the data for the solar system positions and velocities in Universe Sandbox comes from).
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi

More Info

NASA's Mission Website
http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Wikipedia Article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter

[monmarfori]

And if there is really a water in moon we might colonise it.

[Chaotic Cow]

I think it's cool how they are looping it around the moon and back twice and it will take 2 months.

[Bla]

Yes, we should colonize everything we can. It would be so cool if our species could live on diffrent worlds, then a nuclear war can't destroy us... Or wait, it can. But a meteor or an asteroid can't, and deseases won't be as dangerous to our species, and our population problem will be temporatily down.
If people can live there ofc, and if people choose to live there.

[Chaotic Cow]

But we first have to get there...cheaply.

[Baleur]

But we first have to get there...cheaply.

That type of thinking is whats wrong with our world
If we are ever going to become a species that lives on more than 1 planet, we have to stop thinking about space and research in terms of $$$. It just wont work.
Everything from launching a rocket & building a space station, to something as complex as building a colony on the moon or mars, costs so insanely much. It wont be done if there aint huge profit to be made.

The only way we will be able to do it properly is by somehow (i dont know how, im no genious) get a revolution in our society so we dont depend on money anymore. You cant colonize other planets or travel to other stars if you let monetary systems stand in the way of proper quality spaceships.

What im saying is, if everything is still going to be built by the lowest bidder (cheapest materials and construction methods), we wont get very far
Money and the concept of economy is the main obstacle that we have to get past.

[Bla]

In my brain, money is equial to ressources. If a ressource is rare and hard to get, it's = much money. If it's easy to harvest, it's = few money.
Everything is finite... Some more than other. We need to find the best materials that we can recycle and a big, longlasting energy source before we use up the current ones.
Money is just a way to measure the ressources I think. I don't see anything wrong in that.

[Chaotic Cow]

I'm not saying it will be cheap. I'm saying we can slash off a lot if we can limit and mine resources instead of rocketing it to the moon/planet which cost a lot.

If we our resources come from the moon/planet we have more money to take people and stuff there.

[Baleur]

In my brain, money is equial to ressources. If a ressource is rare and hard to get, it's = much money. If it's easy to harvest, it's = few money.
Everything is finite... Some more than other. We need to find the best materials that we can recycle and a big, longlasting energy source before we use up the current ones.
Money is just a way to measure the ressources I think. I don't see anything wrong in that.

I know what you mean, and i hate to break it to you, but NO resources are rare on our planet..
Diamond for instance, the strongest natural material here, is extremely expensive so you might think its rare. But its actually the global diamond industry that is stockpiling all they mine, making them rare to keep the price up.
In reality, we could build an entire spaceship out of diamond (though i dont know how practical that would be lol!).

[Dan Dixon]

Here's a short (11 minute) video that gives a good summary of the mission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yruN1iqeorw

The collision commentary begins around 6:00.

If we are ever going to become a species that lives on more than 1 planet, we have to stop thinking about space and research in terms of $$$. It just wont work.

If humanity would stop spending money on killing each other (war and weapons of war), there would be lots more money for science. We need to start thinking of each other as fellow humans instead of members of opposing nationalities or followers of incompatible religions.

And another more specific money example: The United States spends $400 billion dollars each year on health insurance bureaucracy, doing away with that would free up the resources to launch a brand new international space station every 3 months.

[Bla]

I can only agree. Heh, I guess the religious people are afraid science will prove them wrong.
The problem is to make everyone stop making military. What if USA stopped, but then another country attacked USA. It's almost impossible.

And Baleur, okay, in that case it didn't work. But... I think it works in most cases. Ok, I'll stop discussing that now.

Btw exciting video - I'll watch it now. :O
Yes, it was an interesting video.

[Chaotic Cow]

We can only dream what will happen. Making it happen is a whole other matter.

[hbmp88]

I'm just going to say one thing:

Money is a problem because it makes people greedy, and the government makes way too much of it. If you live in the US you will know what I mean. Money can also be counterfeited. But the main point is you have money worth more than you have resources on the market.

[Dan Dixon]

Here's a 2 minute video that shows the path of the LRO:

http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=SP_090622_lro_orbit

[Bla]

Cool. In the end when orbiting the Moon it didn't look so natural all of the time. Sometimes it looked like it suddenly changed into more circular orbits, I think it happened 2-4 times. In the start it was very elliptic, but in the end it was almost circular.
Ofc it could also do that with rockets or something like that, but it just looked strange.

[Dan Dixon]

...Sometimes it looked like it suddenly changed into more circular orbits...
[They] could also do that with rockets...

I think that's exactly what they're doing. Slowing down the craft (with rockets or something) in order to enter a constant 50km high orbit above the Moon.

Orbits only deteriorate if some force is acting on it. For example, a planet's atmosphere can add drag on a body causing it to eventually crash into the planet, but generally, in the vacuum of space, a two body orbit is very stable.

[Chaotic Cow]

Nice. So it will take about a week. Hmm.

[FGFG]

about the money argument:

I don't think that the world will gain if money disappears. Probably to make that our society needs to change too much and people aren't so happy of radical changement (me with them).

Something like that is very similar to an extreeeeeeeme comunist dictature. How can you assign things to people? With a central governament that decide for everyone. And how can we decide who will have the power?If they use i for them?

We use money to evaluate our work and with this money you buy things maded by other people's work.

(it's so hard to expreme myself in English )

and Dan, you talk about no more wars. I'm with you and I wish it so much, but it is a total utopy. What happens if all the world stops make wars and destroys all the weapons? No wars, yes, but if anyone make an army it can conquer the whole world without any resistance, and can kill A LOT of people. At least we need weapons to defend ourselves, that would be optimus. Even if all of us change mind there will be always someone thinking in another way.

[hbmp88]

Well you don't have to assign positions. A simple law like one adult in a family has to work, and they could do anything they like. How about a married couple has one of them work one week and the other the next week. It doesn't have to be communist to be a world without money.

[FGFG]

There is a problem when you have to assign goods to people: maybe one work is harder than another, and so it should be "paid" with goods more than the second. Actually is quite difficult to do it without money: you still have to "quantify" the work, that is already done, with money. The fact that some hard work is less paid than a less hard work is different (and should be changed). It will be much more easy to create a world without money - awwm from here). Without money (the way you want it) people who doesn't work at all will have the same rights of people who do.
Awwm (in my opinion) can exist only if robots do all the works on the planet. (however there would be someone to reasearch new robots or create new works according to the needs of people. We can still create some robots to do this, sure, but we will definitely lose the control of our lives, or we can mantain the research wich is a form of work and should be paid... more rights, more power bla bla bla.)

I'm just explaining my point. I don't want to be harsh with anyone

[As this is a topic about a crater on the Moon and not about a world without money, i created a new topic in the Off-topic section (A world without money) where i copied this post.]