Moon Shot 2009

[Smithy]

;D
Straight up question for those that are interested and particularly addressed to our in house Prof. Thomas Goodrick, esq. (only joking Tom )

Q1: What do we think of the latest Moon shoot, or as some are saying NASA attacks the Moon!!

Just wondering what your thoughts are

Q2: who is gonna win the Nobel Peace prize in 2010?

cheers all

[Allen Peterson]

Well, Smithy, I think the ones saying NASA attacks the moon either have short memories or haven't been around very long.
I remember in the 70s eagerly watching the predecessors to Surveyor (can't remember their name) crash into the moon, and I'm sure several spacecraft have also crashed into it. No one hollered about attacking the moon then.
I didn't have a clue as to who would win the 2009 Nobel peace prize, and nothing that has happened makes it any easier to guess who might win in 2010

[Allen Peterson]

Well, my memory is not so good either. The predecessors were Rangers and the flights were in the 60s, not the 70s. Time flies when you are having fun.
I've noticed that my copy of Flying now seems to come every 2 weeks or so, instead of once a month .

[Tom Goodrick]

The latest "moon shot" was a big public relations goof. It was oversold by NASA and by certain TV networks. But I am sure NASA scientist learned something interesting from the data. The public does not now and will never understand how "data" can be informative and helpful in advancing science. NASA did no harm to the moon. It has no protection against incoming objects so it gets hit all the time with somethings bigger and faster than what we threw at it. It was a good use of equipment. We had a disposable chunk of mass and decided to dispose of it in a way that might add to our knowledge of the moon.

It just was not pictorially spectacular.

Incidentally, I have mixed feelings about the current "scare" tactic by NASA to get more funding by talking up the fear of big chunks of matter hitting the Earth. I question whether many of the studies of impact damage are accurate because the mass of an object in space does not relate well to the mass at impact. From my studies of objects entering the Earth's atmospher, an unguided object will encounter such high thermal and deceleration loads that it will melt, break into powder, or do something else with only a small portion actually impacting the Earth. We have, obviously, very little data relating original mass to final mass. Physicists love to take the orbiting mass and the orbiting energy (easily determined) and apply that kinetic energy to the creation of impact damage ignoring the fact that most of the mass won't get to the surface.

But the fact remains we are vulnerable to some of the impacts that are known to have occurred in geological history. A large incoming object would be nearly impossible for us to defend against. These objects are in Solar orbit which means that to intercept them we have to put our intercepter nearly into Solar orbit itself. That takes time, careful planning and expense. Simply blowing an object up, if we have a big enough bomb, is like changing, in mid flight, a bullet into shotgun pellets with the same total energy. We would still have considerable damage.

[Smithy]

I always thought the Moon was made of mozeralla

( but I see what you are getting at)

....it would take rather large balls to take a flight back there...

my point is, when will man land on the Moon again

....not nearly as soon as one would think, ~ is my guess

2020 at the nearest, and it might even be a Chinaman

;D

[Smithy]

Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 goes to....

David Letterman

[Tom Goodrick]

I have no idea when anyone will return to the moon. NASA was working on a program to make a self-sustaining base on the Moon for the purpose of low-G experimentation, geologic exploration and to support a farside large telescope. That would have begun in five to eight years. But that has been put on hold due to the economy.

I find it very perplexing that we shut down a Moon program due to the economy. It seems to me a good space program can help the economy. The Apollo program spread money around to a lot of places. But the intellectual level of Congress is so low they cannot grasp that concept.

[flaminghotsauce]

I beg to differ, Tom. Well, I agree with the "intellectual level is so low" part.

The Apollo program did indeed spread money around, but that money was either taxed from the citizens to begin with, borrowed, or merely printed. All of these funding options have been tapped hard for years. The Government is officially broke and desperately trying to go broker, faster. We've gone from 400 billion dollar deficit last year to 1.4 Trillion deficit this year. A moon shot would have limited appeal in this economic climate from those that are funding the government. Congress is playing a desperate shell game to make it appear that being broke and trillions of dollars in debt really isn't so bad. Hey, look over there!

Not that I'm opposed to science. The science that came about from the space program was tremendous. I'd love to see more moon exploration, a move to build a settlement there, etc. We just can't afford it right now.

[Tom Goodrick]

You are right, of course. Our Government is out of money. The only fiscally responsible thing we can do is shut down the Government. Well, maybe we can keep the IRS open to collect more taxes to pay on the debt. But we'll shut down NASA, DOD, the FBI, the CIA, the FAA, etc, etc.

[flaminghotsauce]

Actually if the expansion of Government would stop and all spending levels frozen, the economy could indeed catch it's breath, catch up, and start paying down the debt. But to continually run a deficit.... I'm a big supporter and advocate of the FairTax. If we could move the country to that system, business would pour into the country instead of out of, and our economy would soar.

Whoa, swerving wildly off topic , I am.

I would like to see more Moon science, and hope to live long enough to see a settlement there. I suppose this moon shot was successful based on all the hype, but it sure didn't make much of an impression on video. I watched on NASA TV live that morning. It was cool and all, but it was sort of fuzzy pictures, lots of dramatic radio calls to switch system freqs or whatever, and not much of a climax after all the buildup. Glad I watched though.

The nobel prize is a joke. When Yassir Arafat won a Peace Prize, I knew it was all junk. Might as well give Saddam Hussein an award posthumously. Or Osama Bin Ladin.

[Smithy]

From my recollection Apollo was shut down because of mounting pressure on the Nixon, Vietnam and Oil embargo situations in the early seventies, along with of course many other things including high unemployment and lack of interest rates!
So all was to be canned as they had this new newfangled shuttle deal in the works. After all the space race started within the cold war, but was won once the moon was conquered it seemed and there were other things to do, like rehab from the sixties and disco. Bring forth the eighties revolution and with the shuttles ups and downs going on, no one gave a stuff about that either after awhile. Bit like a childs toy being discarded after little use.
Then of course lack of vision and lack of funding and tragedy strikes. twice.
But for all the missions launched, these stick in the gullet of anyone with intelligence. The space race is not over, nor is it won. It has only just begun. With the shuttle to be decommissioned in the near future, those in the know understand that the only major taxi into space is the legendary Soyuz rockets. So tell me, has the states given up? Can they not afford to do it? and does it seem that the reds may even get to the red planet first.
The Saturn V certainly wont.
...looks like its back to the drawing board
(hey I know, lets shoot a rocket into the moon, like they did in 1950 something)
Stanley Kubrick would be proud !!