But who the hell died and made you God?
Today’s the day NASA bomb the moon with a 2 ton Centaur rocket. WTF!??
For an alleged water-seeking and lunar colonization experiment … since when does America own the moon?
This is in complete violation of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty and The Moon Treaty of 1979.
Article IV of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty states:
“The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.”
Article 7 of the Moon Treaty states:
“In exploring and using the moon, States Parties shall take measures to prevent the disruption of the existing balance of its environment whether by introducing adverse changes in that environment, by its harmful contamination through the introduction of extra-environmental matter or otherwise. States Parties shall also take measures to avoid harmfully affecting the environment of the earth through the introduction of extraterrestrial matter or otherwise.”
I’m appalled that this is being allowed to happen!
If there are inter-galactic police out there, they are going to give us the biggest F’kn summons ever!
@Willem You have given me new hope… It is a relief to know that some people take the type to research a subject PRIOR to forming an opinion 🙂
You said it Sue!
Your “sky blob” is still there Scott 😀
It was like watching a modern ‘chicken licken’ story- all very amusing. Besides, huge space disasters are a good way to pass a Friday.
ahhhh thanks Willem! lol I was too lazy to read up on it when I first heard of the plan, but if the force of the impact is the same as always and its just that they can direct it to where they want, I have no problem with it, plus alot of planning and studying would have gone into this (it just sounded scary) Anyways, yay for Willem the informer, thanks dude.
Dwama has a point, lol we’re being hysterical without finding out all the facts surrounding the issue.
Haha! Left hanging 🙂
LOL! The highlight 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkI_W8Ps0y4
Michelle – Well, I want to help and inform the blogger and, of course, out of sheer politeness.
@willem well said. Keeping our eggs in one basket is a very bad idea. Although i cant seem to get that scene from The Time Machine where the moon is fragmented out of my head. http://io9.com/352391/strip-mining-shatters-the-moon
Well, one good thing is at least we know the thing is solid…
Oh come on people. Its a test for when the Asteroid hits earth in 2012…
@Dwama – if you find this blog post so irrelevant or care what the “ill-informed” are saying, then why bother keep reading or commenting?
I’ve looked. And looked. And looked. And I can’t see a slung insult. Anywhere.
“Ill-informed” is hardly an insult – it’s a fact – your post may have been your opinion, but it was ill-informed because it was incorrect in the facts you based it on.
Insults? I never even mentioned jou ma se’s anything.
Where’s the insult?
well said Willem. it’s not hard to to lay out ones opinion / known facts in a calm, polite manner. funny how those throwing insults always hide behind un-linkable names.
Thank you Willem. The information you posted in the comments here has been most informative and helpful!
@dwama There’s no need to sling insults. If you feel someone’s wrong about something you can lay out the evidence and explain it nicely. The only ones to blame are people like Ted Twietmeyer (who I mentioned above) who make ignorance about science and spreading misinformation their calling.
I hardly think I’m making a “massive hysterical fuss”. This is my personal blog and I’m expressing how I feel about a subject that I have an opinion on.
Its already happend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI
No, no, no!!! Not at all!
No. I think there a huge number of ill-informed people making a massive hysterical fuss over nothing.
So, no, you’re not alone.
I didn’t see anyone else quoting irrelevant misinformation about these treaties, though.
(You’re more than welcome to direct me to other blogs that are quoting irrelevant misinformation about these treaties, if you wish…)
Seriously? You think I’m the only person who was a bit shocked to find out about this?
All so dwamatic. Honestly.
Firstly, the US isn’t even a signatory of the Moon Treaty, the terms of which they’re not even breaking.
Can you say – irrelevant?
And regarding the Outer Space Treaty:
“A State Party to the Treaty which has reason to believe that an activity or experiment planned by another State Party in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, would cause potentially harmful interference with activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, may request consultation concerning the activity or experiment.”
Well, seems like out of all the nations involved in that treaty, all their scientists and experts, all their astronomers, military chiefs and governments: NO-ONE OBJECTED. AT ALL.
Only your blog is a bit upset about this.
Can you say… er… irrelevant?
I haven’t, no … I’ll check it out 🙂
@justbcoz Nice quote! Have you read Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope”? Great read. 🙂
@acidicice Haha, maybe you’re right. But even so, that isn’t a good reason to not continue along a path to such a goal. In a disastrous scenario like I mentioned above, it doesn’t matter who survives, as long as enough people do to continue the species.
“I think given that there are a lot of communities that are having hard times right now, I think people just want to make sure the money is not being wasted, and that is part of my responsibility as president, to make sure it isn’t.”
– Barack Obama on rebuilding New Orleans, 22 August 2009.
@Willem If we reach a point where we’re technologically advanced enough to colonize other worlds, the vast majority of people probably would not be able to afford to move to the new ‘neighbourhood’. So is it for the greater good? Who decided who gets to go and who must stay? Imagine the red tape. Sounds like a nightmare to me.
@acidicice Yes, but if we get to a point where we’re technologically advanced enough to colonize other worlds, the destruction of a single planet won’t wipe out our entire species. The work NASA, the public sector, and other space agencies across the world do are all steps towards this goal. 🙂
@Willem If something does, in fact, destroy Earth…we’ll all be dead and it won’t matter.
I haven’t checked the current authenticity or validity of those treaties you mentioned, but even so:
They’re not contravening Article IV of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty mentioned above – they’re not building a military base, installation or fortification, and they’re not conducting military manoeuvres. This isn’t even weapons research.
They’re not contravening Article 7 of the Moon Treaty mentioned above either – they’re not disrupting the existing balance of its environment – far worse impacts have happened naturally before, and within a few thousand years many many additional asteroid impacts would have covered any evidence of this one. As for introducing extraterrestrial matter, yes, they’re sending material from Earth there, but that’s no worse than the flag and lander module from Apollo 11 and the other moon missions that were left behind. These have no negative effect on the moon’s environment.
Whether money should be put into space exploration has always been a big debate, but I for one believe it’s extremely important. People tend not to realize exactly how many eggs humanity has in a very very small basket at the moment… A single strong enough gamma ray burst, asteroid impact, or one of hundreds of other cosmic events could eliminate almost all life from the planet (as has happened many times in the past, if not for an event like this exterminating the dinosaurs, mammals would never have surpassed lizards in the evolutionary food chain).
Yes, we have many problems on the planet that need a lot of money to be solved, but we also have to think long-term. In the words of one of the world’s greatest physicists, Stephen Hawking, “The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because of an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth”.
That sounds a little alarmist, but he was simply trying to make the point that if we don’t focus outwards, disasters that could have been prevented or lessened are very likely to destroy us. 🙂
I think it’s absurd.
@justBcoz Now it sounds like an even bigger waste of money, doesn’t it?
That’s true justBcoz!
That does nothing to justify NASA’s actions in contravening the aforementioned treaties and spending many millions that could be put to good use on earth.
@Willem – Ye, I’m watching the live feed and they’ve just explained that the moon experiences collisions like this several times a month and that they are doing exactly the same, but they can actually aim where it’s going.
It’s absolutely fascinating to follow this, I’ll be working late tonight, cos this has impacted on my work, dammit NASA 😛
Hey guys & gals
It seems like there are quite a few misconceptions about this… 🙂
Firstly, there are no bombs involved. Part of the LCROSS probe itself will smash into the Moon’s surface near a region where scientists have predicted that ice could be (the crater Cabeus A, near the south pole). This will happen at 11:30 AM GMT (South Africa is GMT+2), and only if you have a very decent telescope would you be able to see the collision.
Given that the probe weighs about two tons and will impact the surface at a speed of 2.5km per second, the energy of the impact will be roughly equal to a ton of TNT exploding – much less than the energy released by millions of asteroids and comets that have hit the moon over billions of years.
To put this in perspective, the crater from the probe’s impact will be about 30m across and 4m deep, while craters like Aristarchus (caused by an asteroid) is 40km across and 3.6km deep. The largest crater on the moon is the South Pole-Aitken basin and is 2240km across and 13km deep.
Over billions of years many comets (which are mostly made up of ice) have hit the Moon. Most of the water from these comets vaporize upon impact, but it’s possible that some of it settled at the bottoms of deep craters near the poles (permanently shadowed regions where the temperature keeps some of the water locked as ice).
Hydrogen has been detected on the moon by earlier spacecraft, and the easiest way we know of to have a repository of hydrogen is to lock it up in water (a common molecule in the solar system).
The goal behind the controlled impact is to try and dislodge frozen water from one of these deep craters. If the crater does contain water, the impact will cause the ice to be shot up above the lunar surface (and outside of the crater’s shadow) where sunlight will break it up into H+ and OH- molecules – matter detectable by sensors.
Secondly, that article you linked to (http://www.rense.com/general86/moonbomb.htm) is by Ted Twietmeyer, an alarmist and conspiracy theorist. He’s the same guy who wrote this article (http://www.rense.com/general79/apol11.htm) saying that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked, and falls squarely in the camp of people who believed that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider would collapse the earth into a black hole. 🙂
Given what I wrote above about the size of the impact crater (30m across and 4m deep), and given that the moon’s surface covers an area roughly equal to the continent of Africa, you can see that there’s no risk to “orbital stability”, “the futures of countless life-forms on Earth”, or “irreversible disaster”. Even if the mission goes horribly wrong and the probe impacts the wrong location or impacts too fast or too slow, the worst that can happen is that the scientists won’t have their data and will have to try again. 🙂
Just tweeted that and was going to share it here 🙂
Thanks!
Watch it live here:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
leave it alone! what gives them the right to “play God’??? The moon was put that far away from us for a reason!! Surely they can’t be 100% with their ‘predictions’of where to bomb and EXACTLY what the impact might be? Maybe we’ll have floods for the next month. Something’s wrong with today, weird Nobel handouts, bombing the moon, what next??
what is it with the US government and the need to blow things up, millions and millions of dollars wasted, use the dollars to sort out problems closer to home. And stop blowing things up!!!!
It’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s about them…
Alexander Pope – “One science only will one genius fit: So vast is art, so narrow human wit.”
@myphotographer
@David – Exactly my thoughts, the Russians are going to get cross – Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize and now he’s bombing the moon and causing chaos!
Uhm… they’re doing WHAT to WHAT?! bloody hell! This is quite bizarre to say the least! No, they should stop this nonsense. If they happen to blow the moon up entirely, we’re so fucked it is not even funny! Unlikely, maybe, but for Pete’s sake, leave it alone!
I think it’s at 1.30pm???
That such a good point, acidicice.
Why not invest all that energy, time and money into our earth and the people who live here.
Completely warped priorities IMO, but then again, when money like this is involved, humanity always takes a back seat.
@acidicice – Ye, I spotted all the tweets as well and didn’t know what was going on. I think the search for water is a good thing, but I agree with justBcoz about the US having control and I can’t help but think that there’s more to the story than what the public are being told :/
I agree, when I read the news yesterday about this crash landing I immediately thought ‘well if the states do it then Russia will also want to etc etc’.
What next? “Well we just want to drop a nuke on the moon to see if it moves, that way we can measure how many nukes it will take to move the earth and therefore how big an Astroid needs to be to move Mars”… its all in the name of science.
I was wondering what on earth (or on the moon) was going on with the tweets this morning. Uh. Are these people st00pid? We kinda need the moon for tides and stuff.
*sigh* I wonder how many millions of starving children could have been fed with the money they are spending on this crap.
Grief, well I guess we just have to hope and pray that the calculations they’ve done are dead accurate, otherwise we could experience something beyond our imaginations.
Will we be able to see, hear, feel anything when the collision happens? I couldn’t seem to see a time for this to take place..
Read this … http://www.rense.com/general86/moonbomb.htm
“Is bombing the Moon really worth risking orbital stability, killer Earthquakes and the futures of countless life-forms on Earth? Or creating an irreversible disaster?”
God I know!!! I’m so worried about the ramifications of this action, and if there aren’t any still as you said since when does the USA own the moon, I’m dumbfounded as how they can do this, but then on the other hand they must be 100% certain what they are doing can have no consequences, using computer models and projected anaylsis crap etc, but it’s a really stupid thing to do in my opinion.
Wow, I saw a tweet about the moon earlier, but didn’t realise it was something quite like this. So they’re looking for water and the potential to colonize, that’s really interesting!
Must agree, the US often think that they can just claim things; I’ve got mixed feelings though, because I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing and the US is most capable (guess there are a few other countries) of pulling something like this off, the moon could lead to valuable resources and so forth.
Outside of the US having control, and the potential distruction, how do you feel about it?