Erm, the moon has withstood thousands of asteroid collisions before, this bomb is no different.

Best case scenario: Water on the moon.

Worst case scenario: Another hole in the moon and several million dollars wasted.

 

But yes, as Nick said I can't see the moon being knocked out of orbit. And I'm sure NASA has thought this through.

I don't see how this is going to work if the impact is going to be weak compared to what the Moon has taken so far. Aren't they trying to get inside the Moon? They'll need a large collision to do that.

I guess it's a very small, centered collision. It should be designed to bore straight through in a long narrow hole, and the other one will improve the original hole. I admit I can't see this working, unless the moon is actually hollow (and I haven't seen any evidence that supports that theory).

They crashed into one crater that was visible on a telescope; then the satellite crashed into a different crater on the dark side of the moon- not visible by a telescope.

Erm, the moon has withstood thousands of asteroid collisions before, this bomb is no different.

 

Seriously. I mean, check out those huge [wagon] craters.

 

Reminds me of the LHC. NASA know what they're doing.

 

Exactly. This 'bombing' would have to be immense to have any noticeable effect. The positives greatly outweigh the negatives. If they found water, it would mean a massive step towards colonising the moon, and to the next leap, to mars.

Doesn't the US have bigger things to worry about at the moment, such as a crumbling infrastructure, health care, heck how much is the national debt now? 13 trillion i think. And now their going to spend another couple of million to see if there is water on the moon in the hopes of spending another several billion for a moon base?

Money is irrelevant for space. Besides, the amount of money that would come from the solutions formed from a moon base would be more than whatever you could think of.

 

Space Learning > Earth.

I think space exploration/experimentation should be prioritized over a lot of things. I was watching some of the news conference this morning and they got some results that look pretty positive.

Haha, I was right. Poor guy.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkI_W8Ps0y4

Indy's already said most of what I was going to say, but for christ's sake use some common sense. Consider the size of the moon and consider the size of two small spacecraft, there's no way that collision could do anything that we'd notice in terms of gravity. Much of the media is astonishingly ignorant when it comes to science.

Haha, I was right. Poor guy.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkI_W8Ps0y4

Yeah, I showed that to my journalism teacher. We watched it several times, laughing at the guy a whole lot.

 

Bummer.

 

The video was pretty cool, though. Not as cool as I'd hoped; the picture isn't great. But still cool.

Sounds like a good experiment to me. Considering how heavy and expensive it is to take water into space, the idea of having accessible and usable water on the moon would be considerably helpful.

 

Also the largest crater on the moon is 2,240 km in diameter and 13 km in depth. Whatever created that is barely comparable to the tiny spacecraft that will be launched into it.

 

Anyways, it's just stupid as hell considering not a single drop of water has ever left this planet.

You might wanna re-check that :D

 

 

 

Edit: Nevermind, I mean, this this excludes water leaving Earth manually by people lol. :P

Wow that was disappointing...

 

If you woke up early to watch it.

Wow that was disappointing...

 

If you woke up early to watch it.

 

What did you expect? A giant explosion? Because no oxygen=no fire.

The total cost of this project was very little when compared to other projects.

79mil for LCROSS

back in 1973, NASA spent over 100mil on Mariner 10

 

NASA gets very little money every year. In fact the Augustine committee just finished a study saying that NASA's budget is too small to achieve its goals. So if you want to complain about the costs of space exploration, tell the people who sell the fuel, cameras, antennas, thruster systems, thermal shielding, radiation shielding, launch vehicle, GNC systems, C&DH systems, and other instruments I guarantee you've never heard of, to sell them for cheaper. And don't forget to force the people watching the Space Debris, who make sure each satellite that enters an orbit doesn't hit something else, to work for free.

That's a lot of crap flying around Earth.

I can just imagine the brainstorming for this mission:

"India says there's water on the moon guys!"

"India?"

"Yea."

"India has a space program?"

"Yea!"

"When'd they get a space program?"

"...there's water on the moon!"

"Oh. Right. Hmm. How do we make sure?"

Everyone's concentrating, trying the figure out a way to do it with their limited budget, when suddenly one of NASA's employees storms in, drunk out of his mind.

"LET'S BOMB THAT MOTHER [bleep]ING PIECE OF [cabbage] MOON!"

Everyone goes quiet, just looking at him. The head researcher says in a quiet voice.

"It's so crazy, it just might work!"

 

 

Long story short, they bomb the moon and film a decidedly undramatic video.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091113/ts_afp/sciencespaceusmoon

 

The experiment was a success. A significant amount of water was discovered on the moon.

It would be nice if all the idiots who thought this was going to do something catastrophic to the moon would come back and remember how stupid they were for worrying.

 

Seriously, people on this board need to stop listening to fear mongers in the media (see also: vaccination topic) and realize that they aren't nearly as smart as the scientists who work on this stuff.

 

EDIT: OK, off of the rant now.

 

It's pretty cool that they found water on the moon. This actually gives legitimacy to building a lunar base.

http://news.yahoo.co...encespaceusmoon

 

The experiment was a success. A significant amount of water was discovered on the moon.

Ugh, creeped out.

http://news.yahoo.co...encespaceusmoon

 

The experiment was a success. A significant amount of water was discovered on the moon.

Ugh, creeped out.

 

Why are you creeped out?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091113/ts_afp/sciencespaceusmoon

 

The experiment was a success. A significant amount of water was discovered on the moon.

Well hot damn.

Wow that was disappointing...

 

If you woke up early to watch it.

 

What did you expect? A giant explosion? Because no oxygen=no fire.

I know that there wasnt going to be a fire ball, im talking about the dust cloud it would insue...

http://news.yahoo.co...encespaceusmoon

 

The experiment was a success. A significant amount of water was discovered on the moon.

Ugh, creeped out.

 

Why are you creeped out?

 

 

She's a girl.

"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."

 

This eerily reminds me of The Andromeda Strain :ohnoes:

Hey guys, look! The moon isn't hurtling towards Canada! Who wouldve thunk it!

If only it had found oil on the moon, then we'd be an interstellar species in a couple of decades.

If only it had found oil on the moon, then we'd be an interstellar species in a couple of decades.

 

I don't know about interstellar, that seems pretty unlikely in a few decades, it would give a better chance of being interplanetary though.