Be prepared….the signs are clear….the answer is up there….keep looking….

“Ozonator Says: October 15th, 2009 at 7:11 pm … Moon was squeezed dry”

several hours later – “Like a big sponge, moon absorbs charged particles to produce water” (Divya Gandhi; hindu.com, 10/17/09).

Where to start.

Theoretically, the Moon and Mars are intimately related. By your logic, Mercury should enjoy an atmosphere and thus should not be boiling, comets passing close to the Sun also should be boiled into oblivion lacking mass, the boiling ground and clouds of Venus should have turned the planet into a dust storm with atmosphere lost to solar flares (nineplanets.org/venus.html), and the mass of the Sun should be surrounded by a cloud of water vapor due to it’s mass. “Temperature variations on Mercury are the most extreme in the solar system ranging from 90 K to 700 K. The temperature on Venus is slightly hotter but very stable” (nineplanets.org/mercury.html). The magnetic field on Mars exists in pockets where Venus has none. Yet, some atmosphere is on Mars and lot on Venus through replenishment from significant underground volatiles. Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the Moon should not have any atmosphere due to CMEs washing them away. For examples, a small CME (coronal mass ejection) starts from an arc, filament, or jet off the western limb of the Sun on 2009/10/12 04:42 that is quickly ejected on 11:18 – toward Mars, Mercury, or Venus – (“THE SUN NOW” – “LASCO C3”; sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov) (planets by fourmilab.ch, 2009-10-12). And, a large CME (coronal mass ejection) starts from the western limb of the Sun on 2009/10/14 06:18 that is quickly ejected – toward Mars, Mercury, or Venus – (“THE SUN NOW” – “LASCO C3”; sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov) (planets by fourmilab.ch, 2009-10-12). Thus, significant volatiles exist under Mars, Venus, within comets, and within our star. Theoretically, with both intimately related to Mars, the Moon was squeezed dry and Mercury was baked dry.

Pretty much the only thing the moon and Mars have in common is their age. Unlike the moon, Mars has sufficient mass to have a gravitational force strong enough to hold an atmosphere, and thus water vapor. I’m also pretty sure that the days on Mars are less than 13-1/2 of our typical 24-hour days here on the earth. And the temperature on Mars doesn’t exceed the boiling point of water.

No, the conditions on Mars and on the moon are quite different, and while my logic truly does apply equally to both, the arguments are necessarily different.

( And my faith in the American educational system remains to be strengthened, although there are some good astronomy classes available at public universities that will provide much knowledge for a diligent and worthy student.)

The future of humanity is in space, and a discovery on the moon is quite possibly the type of thing that will drive every rival space agency and economy into a new race. I think its a bit naive to assume that NASA is going to so casually announce its findings to the public. If theres something up there to be had, you can be sure the US will take steps to make sure it will get there first, including delaying and downplaying any info it may have acquired.

Your logic is also applicable to Mars. But, Mars is looking more like the mother of all comets with the ice just under the surface. Heck of a job with those 3 Rs.

Figure then, that if (1)the moon is several billion years old, (2) there is no atmosphere to refract the sun’s rays, (3) any given surface of the moon is subjected to approximately 13-1/2 days of sunlight at a time, and (4) the gravity of the moon is too weak to hold an atmosphere and therefore has no hope of holding water vapor. . . (water ice sublimes as well, so it needn’t have necessarily boiled off), it should follow through simple reasoning that there is NO WATER ON THE MOON!

I’m with Ave on this one. It’s a colossal waste of tax payers’ money to look for water on the moon by bombarding it with rocket parts in the hopes of kicking up some dust. That being said, I wonder if that was simply the “cover story” NASA was giving when in actuality they may have been looking for something else. Goodness knows that the average American has neither the sense nor the education to think critically. Not to mention that there is little enough true science being taught in government schools for the majority of folks to think this one through.

So what, then, is NASA really up to?

And we had maps of the moon before we got there – we made them using telescopes, and we used them to plan the Apollo missions. How does that make it “not” exploration? And what relevance does the presence or absence of maps or whatever quality have to do with Columbus’ achievements as an explorer?

He went, he learned stuff he and his people did not know before, he came back and reported his findings. His nation (well technically the nation he worked for) learned something new because of him, and went on to get rich because of it.

As for the American economy – never is a very very long time.

I’m guessing that the moon will not have the sufficient resources necessary for full self-sufficiency, at least not for a long time, and will probably end up serving as a stepping stone to establishing truly independent settlements elsewhere further out.

To make it very, very simple for you Ave – it is not a zero-sum game. The vast majority of all economically profitable advances began as serendipitous discoveries made while pursuing pure basic research motivated by nothing other than curiosity.

What do you think would have happened if Ferdinand and Isabella declined to fund Christopher Columbus because of cost concerns? (Which, in fact, they very nearly did) Some other European would probably still have “discovered” the New World, but the nation reaping the economic windfall would not have been Spain. Or even more apropros, look at what really happened when Ming Dynasty China chose to stop funding the voyages of Zheng He, because of economic concerns among others. (Make no mistake, the Chinese remember and are watching this closely)

Even if it was a zero-sum game, go look up the actual budget for NASA and the actual cost of this mission, and compare it to the amount spent for one day’s worth of operations in Iraq, and then come back and tell me what policy changes would have the greatest monetary impact on the economy.