Comments on: LCROSS plume detected, but not from Earth

By: Kaleberg

Kaleberg — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:13:54 +0000

I’m not surprised by the muted impact. The entire surface of the moon is covered with a mix of rocks of varying sizes. Piles of rocks are your best defense against artillery because all the energy gets absorbed by all the dumb rocks. If there was just one stupid rock, you might crack it into lots of pieces and see something, but cracking up a pile of gravel, size, assorted, just slightly downgrades that to a pile of gravel, size, assorted minus, and you don’t see squat.

By: Heroh

Heroh — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:37:57 +0000

Rant all you want, Sili. Apparently it can be, and was, overhyped (judging by the reaction of the slack-jawed average joes who would never have been involved, but were; For the first time in their lives they were moved to drag their attention away from reality tv for one moment, at least).

I’m not saying scientists shouldn’t be excited – but why do they even need the public ‘engaged’? Funding. It’s not like they are doing it to receive more ‘kvetching’, as you put it. So they public-relationed it to death, for money, and then didn’t deliver. We all know everyone was told to get out their big fancy telescopes and pocketbooks for the main event.
Have you ever even BEEN to NASA? I have. It’s 1 part hard science, 1 part disneyland marketing.

I’m not saying you can control experimental results – but don’t turn around and say NASA didn’t do what they most certainly did, or try to rationalize it after the fact.

I am a proponent of science and all that it entails for us and our future -but don’t hand me an apologist’s line because you don’t like the blowback from failed PR.
NASA will have to suck it up, and so should you.

By: Sili

Sili — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:55:17 +0000

The SGU just kwetched about how disappointed they were and that Nasa really had overhyped this. “Wah wah, we couldn’t see anything. Baaaaad Nasa!”

It’s a fragging rocket being shot into the Moon! That can’t be overhyped. Annoying that the felt the need to whine like that. It’s a good thing(tm) that the scientists were excited like that. You don ‘t get the public engaged by being mealymouthed.

By: d knights

d knights — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:57:20 +0000

They should have created and slammed a whale into the moon via zaphods infinity drive. that would have done the trick.

By: Taunide

Taunide — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:41:20 +0000

From what I understand it would be a good sign if they DIDN’T dectect water in the ejecta. There are two ways the water could be distributed. 1.) Like dew on a wet and cold morning. That would make harvesting it quite complicated. You would need to graze of big patches of ground to get a mentionable amount of water.

2.) More or less like a frozen Lake. Much higher concentration of Water in a small spot.

When water IS present, and the results of Miranda, Kaguya etc hint to that, than the second option would be more desirable for future colonisation.

Maybe someone should send a hovering Probe with strong lights… Maybe the Lunar Lander could be tested there. Unmanned of course.

By: IVAN3MAN AT LARGE

IVAN3MAN AT LARGE — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:29:32 +0000

@ awesomekip (#13), It is the opposite: Centaur -- 2,249 kg (4,958 lb) (min.); LCROSS -- 621 kg (1,369 lb) (min.).* It appears that Dr. Phil Plait got his facts transposed; I made a similar boo-boo on the "Worlds alien and familiar..." thread. (Tip: Always drink strong coffee before posting!) *Source: Wikipedia -- LCROSS.

By: Chas, PE SE

Chas, PE SE — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:38:20 +0000

Ack, I used “interesting” at least 15 times in that last….