Comments on: Watch TV tonight! Learn stuff!

By: dusty59

dusty59 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:08:47 +0000

@ Wayne:
thanks, yes; guess I made my point poorly. was joking about the “Cairo” thing.
Just seems for such a slickly produced series there are some odd errors.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:01:18 +0000

Jarrod, a good point, but part of NASA’s mission is also to serve the public interest. I would think that displaying photographs of the old lunar landing sites that are of great historical interest would fall within that, and would be of great general interest to the public at large. Besides, the locations are known because the mirror locations are known, and it would probably not be a great deal of trouble to take the photos at some point during the LRO’s lifetime. And unless I am mistaken, NASA once said that they were going to photo the sites anyway.

If the naysayers want to claim that even those resulting photos were hoaxed, so be it. They lost a lot of credibility with me a long time ago anyway, so what they prattle on is i

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:56:41 +0000

Oh man, thanks so so much for the heads-up on the NOVA episode. The section on the Russian orbiting spy station was like something out of a 60s James Bond movie; unbelieveably cool stuff.

By: Japhy

Japhy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:55:30 +0000

As long as we’re on the topic of viewing, The DVD of In the Shadow of the Moon comes out on Friday.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XJ5TPE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

By: Trebuchet

Trebuchet — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:44:01 +0000

I watched the “Astrospies” segment, which was good but not great, then switched to the History Channel Universe segment on supernovas. Which I thought was truly awful. Lots of meaningless graphics (explosions, more explosions, still more explosions), but no real content. Unless, of course, it came after the first 15-20 minutes which was when I gave up.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:46:10 +0000

@dusty59,

I haven’t watched the program, but they are likely referring to “cryophiles” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryophile
Literally, “cold loving” organisms. I imagine they would have said such things _could_ live on Titan, not that they _are_ living there.

When we find places in the Solar System where earth-life could survive, it’s tempting to think there is life already there, but until we know more about the circumstances of the origin of life here it’s a bit of a leap to expect it to happen in a relatively hostile environment. It seems reasonable to assume that earth-life only conquered the extreme environments of Earth after starting in more hospitable surroundings.

By: Jarrod Henry

Jarrod Henry — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:18:51 +0000

Charles, while the site can be photographed, it’s sad to say that these people won’t accept that as any kind of evidence. They’ll state that “of course we put THINGS on the moon.. just not men.”

And then it’ll all be handwaved away.

Our resources are limited with regards to Nasa and the missions it undertakes. I would hope that , if they do take pictures, they do it for other reasons than to just attempt to prove to the hoaxers that we were really there.