Comments on: NASA picks lunar science teams

By: tim

tim — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:59:04 +0000

NASA Lunar Science Institute: Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies; principal investigator Mihaly Horanyi, University of Colorado in Boulder
Yay for Mihaly! Yet another great program to come out of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:20:42 +0000

That’s good! Personally I hope the science will make discoveries about, or even eventually have as one focus, the likely best existing relatively unprocessed record of early Earth geological and biological history by ejecta impacting the moon, as I’m interested in early life and how it got started. And at least there seems to be a few early programs on impacts.

By: Cheyenne

Cheyenne — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:01:59 +0000

“We’re going to the Moon to learn how to live and work on another world. It’s that simple.”- Spudis

His name is perfect as the metaphor for how incomprehensibly idiotic that mission statement is.

By: Cheyenne

Cheyenne — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:43:22 +0000

“….and eventually we’ll be going back to stay. But that’s a discussion for another time.”

Hmmmm…………actually, kind of sounds like a discussion for right now…

By: Geo-Steve

Geo-Steve — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:06:42 +0000

Well, first of all, NASA has never said we are going back to the Moon for non-scientific reasons. The point is that the funding for going back to the Moon is already there; its called the Constellation program. Like I said previously, the LSI is about Lunar Science, and these selections almost completely neglect science that deals with anything that occurred below the surface at any point in the Moon’s history, which constitutes the vast majority of lunar science. If you’re goal is to learn about the Moon, how do you ignore everything below the surface? The money associated with the LSI could have been used to expand our knowledge of a wide range of topics in lunar science. Choosing such a narrow range of proposals does a disservice to the entire lunar science community, both exploration and research oriented. These grants are big chunks of change, in the $5 million dollar range. Is the almost non-existent lunar atmosphere really the best place to sink that amount of funding?

A more balanced choice of research areas would have put us in a far better position to decide things like where to go to better expand our sample set, what kinds of lithologies we should be looking for on the ground, etc. And are the pure science people really getting what they want when a very large portion of lunar science has been largely ignored and we end up in a far more limited ability to plan for future human missions and to interpret subsequent data? My point is that NASA could have done more for itself and gotten more significant returns had it been more balanced in its awards.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:39:48 +0000

Does it really matter if Nasa says we are going to the moon for exploration and not scientific reasons. Won’t one inevitably lead to the other? Won’t you pretty much have to do one to do the other? Yes, I wish the statements had the right attitude from the beginning, but it seems that if NASA is committed to going, unless we say we are going there to build condos, it seems the pure science people will get what they want anyway.

By: Max Fagin

Max Fagin — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 05:49:03 +0000

“What we learn at the moon can help us prepare better for Mars. Many of the same lessons can be applied, IMO.”

Can you give an example of a Mars mission component that would be better simulated on the moon than in an arid terrestrial environment, or in Earth orbit? I have yet to hear of any advantages that the moon offers as a Martian test bed.

Other than being another celestial body, the moon just doesn’t seem to have anything in common with Mars. Atmospheric properties, surface temperature, weather patterns, composition, geologic history, surface gravity, day length; the Earth wins over the moon as a better analog for the Martian environment in all of these factors. This is to say nothing of the fact that testing Martian equipment on Earth will be orders of magnitude cheaper than doing so on the moon.

The moon does have it’s uses. As a source of He3, as a base for telescopes, as a great place to build a space elevator. But not as a martian analog. It just doesn’t make any sense. Going to the moon to practice the exploration of Mars would be like going to Siberia to practice building the panama canal.