Nasa prepares to bomb the moon

Nasa scientists are preparing to launch a space mission from Cape Canaveral carrying a missile that will fire a hole deep in the surface of the moon.


By Ben Leach
18 Jun 2009

The aim is to see whether any traces of water will be revealed by the disruption caused to the planet's surface. Nasa will analyse the space cloud caused by the explosion for any sign of water or vapour.

Scientists expect the impact to blast out a huge cloud of dust, gas and vaporized water ice at least 6 miles high - making it visible from Earth.

If the search is successful it could provide vital supplies for a moonbase. The moon is mostly dry desert but ice may be trapped in craters which never see sunlight.

The unmanned Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) will fire a Centaur rocket into the surface at twice the speed of a bullet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5566137/Nasa-prepares-to-bomb-the-moon.html

all weapons testing on celestial bodies such as the moon or other planets.

NASA's disregard is shocking.

Although I suppose it could be.

Some of it is even intentional!

:D

the 60s, ratified that in the 70s, bolstered it with further legislation in the 90s...

a "space weapon?"

:rofl:

What is this constant need to explode things and blast things and disrupt?

Am I the only one who thinks this is a rough way to find things out?

...but it'd take a lot longer...

could fund sending, say, a couple of hundred otherwise unemployed shovel-bearers during the goddam recession....

This is just the "cheap" way to throw things up into the lunar surface so that we can analyze it (both with LCROSS and with telescopes here on Earth, including Hubble orbiting Earth).

As long as no Moonpeople are harmed, I see no problem.

Bush2 started the threats all over again during the dying days of his second Administration.

/

/

would stop and think, all of these people are saying I am wrong, perhaps I am wrong or at the very least, perhaps I should explain how a piece of metal designed to crash into a lifeless body and harm no one and nothing is equal to a banned space weapon.

You are continuing to make me doubt that you are in fact a sane person.

drafting treaties that banned all this type of activity I would say that derogatory swipes make no difference.

The UN has outlawed all experimental detonations, missile attacks, ballistics experiments, staged satellite crashes etc, ect.

The legislation still stands.

one would think you could cite the actual section that says "you can't crash a satellite into an object for scientific purposes."

I'm assuming that's because said section only exists in the dusty recesses of your own delusions, but still, humor us.

As somebody who worked for the secret shadow government for 26 years, I drafted bulls that overrode your treaties that banned this sort of thing.

So carry on.

Ha! I've been working for the Shadow government for 226 years. We developed immortality about 235 years ago and I got in on the ground floor!

It's a shame, too, because at one point I believed the UN could actually accomplish something good.

First, would a conventional bomb even detonate without air?

Second, they want to look for the spectrographic signature of water in the dust cloud, and if you exploded a bomb, there would be water in the cloud from the "water of combustion".

This "crashing" approach a clever way to sample a large volume of lunar material, and it will be interesting to learn the results.

science and making sense. :)

/./

not only not illegal, but this isn't the first time we've crashed something into a celestial body and IIRC either the Europeans or the Japanese have done it as well (but not sure of that last bit).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/23/japanese-kaguya-satellite_n_219393.html

Scuba

The Japanese are taking over space with their weapons!!!!!!

Dude.

Loosen. The. Tin. Foil.

And have a very large drink.

Jebus.

Here's a free clue: Science sometimes involves a very large "BOOM". Deal.

Or are you one of the bliss-ninnies who wants to call fish "sea-kittens"?

It's a science experiment, of absolutely no military value, to determine how much, if any, water is on the moon, so that maybe one day we can start a permanent station or colony there. How you could possibly object to this eludes me (Science experiments are illegal? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it...), unless you are some born-again Luddite.

Get. A. Grip.

Hyperventilating and hand-wringing that "It's illegal!!OMG!!!" merely makes you look/sound like some crazed Chicken Little. No-one is going to take you seriously until you can explain why it's a bad idea on sound scientific and/or moral principals.

But please, continue the hystrionics if it makes you "feel" good. It's currently the funniest thing on the entire net.

the speed of your language is the issue/problem ;)

...morally obligated to try. :crazy:

Explosives almost by definition bring their own oxidizer to the party. But I think you're right about the contamination problem.

not an issue, but who needs explosives when you have all that kinetic energy to work with?

I didn't know how they were planning on detecting the water, H2O or via its constituent elements. I would think a chemical explosion would just dirty up everything.

they are only crashing a rocket into the moon, don't you? There is no bomb involved. If rockets were indeed part of weapons ban in space it would prove rather difficult to get there in the first place.

There are five active treaties concerning space, only one of which deals with weapons. The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies prohibits nuclear weapons and other WMDs but does not prohibit conventional weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

During Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17, the spent Saturn V third stages (S-IVB) were intentionally crashed into the Moon in order to perform seismic measurements. This is the same thing only with better instrumentation.

What day is it going to hit?

7:30 EST?

Is it going to be visible from Michigan?

Lot of information here: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation.htm">Observe the LCROSS impacts!.

even in Michigan ;)

When I saw the following item, I thought it was baloney until I saw your post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Alfred Lambremont Webre, author of Exopolitics: Politics, Government and Law in the Universe, will appear on the Thom Hartmann show on Wed. July 1, 2009 at 2 PM (Eastern time), 11 AM Pacific time, discussing NASA's planned moon bombing.

Webre's Examiner.com June 19, '09 article exposed NASA's planned bombing of the moon under Project LCROSS on October 9, 2009 as violating space law and triggering possible conflict with lunar-based extraterrestrial civilizations that the U.S. government (National Security Agency and NASA) has reportedly known about since the mid-1960s."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't listen to Thom Hartmann, and am not sure where to find him; I think he used to be on Air America. I used to listen to Webre occasionally on Air America Phoenix, now off-the-air, but lost interest when he played famous people's remarks - BACKWARDS. I figured that's just too scientific for me.

OP says:
"If the search is successful it could provide vital supplies for a moonbase. The moon is mostly dry desert but ice may be trapped in craters which never see sunlight."

What if it isn't?

Let's do it. Like Rachel Maddow would say, "What could go wrong?" in her delightful rhythmic confident way...

Because in 1945, the Nazis established a lunar base and have been living there ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn4DW1uvsAE

:D