How NASA Will Bomb the Moon To Find Water 280
mattnyc99 writes "A few weeks ago we got first word of NASA's plan to crash a spacecraft into the moon next February. The new issue of Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its low-cost, lightning-fast mission prep — even if delays have pushed it to late February or early March. Quoting: 'Andrews had no budget for an expensive lander to seek water, and conditions in the eternally dark polar craters would kill rovers, with temperatures close to minus 300 F. Instead, Blue Ice and its partners at Northrop Grumman came up with a concept to bring the lunar floor out in the open.... Since engineering precision hardware would break the budget, the LCROSS team had to make existing components work together.'"
Bomb what? (Score:5, Funny)
This operation will be called... (Score:2, Funny)
Like OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom), this one will be called Operation Moon Freedom (rated G for everyone), or OMFG.
Re:Bomb what? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still waiting for them to rename that planet to Urectum to stop the stupid jokes.
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Udamnnearkilledum would also be acceptable.
percussion engineering! (Score:5, Funny)
I hit stuff to fix it all the time, why shouldn't they?
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Re:percussion engineering! (Score:4, Funny)
"Percussive maintenance"
That Old Mr. Show bit (Score:5, Funny)
"The United States can, should, and will BLOW UP THE MOON!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpX5aa5Lz4 [youtube.com]
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"The United States can, should, and will BLOW UP THE MOON!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpX5aa5Lz4 [youtube.com]
NO WAR FOR....water?
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NO WAR FOR....water?
of course not that would just be silly - were after all that delicious moon cheese!
First a satelite... (Score:2)
Premptive Strike! (Score:2)
See http://www.ironsky.net/site/ [ironsky.net] for details...
Bombing the Moon for water? (Score:5, Funny)
And I find the 'water' reason to be pretty transparent. We all know that there's oil up there and this is yet another neo-con plan that's going to suck us into another war to boost Bush's ratings. But when images of those poor Amazon women up there start coming back, it's jut going to blowup in their faces like Iraq did, and further depress our economy.
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A quick search revealed this [imdb.com].
Thank you. (Score:2, Insightful)
I have mod points, but I don't know whether to rate you -1 Off Topic or +1 Funny
Hopefully someone else can make the proper call as I do a quick search for Amazon moon women.
That's decent of you. I wish more folks would do that. When I first started, someone gave me a -1 Troll for what I thought was something quite funny. Well the deal is, even if I have a +5 Funny, modding me -1 whatever gives the comment an overall score of -1. And if you're just starting out, well, you post from then on at 0 or -1 if another didn't get or didn't like the joke.
Crash Test Dummies (Score:2)
Where won't they go next!
Fahrenheit? (Score:2, Funny)
temperatures close to minus 300 F
1850 called. They want their unit of measure back.
Re:Fahrenheit? (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, while I'm generally in favor of the metric system over imperial, I've never cared nearly so much about the Celsius v. Fahrenheit debate.
Fahrenheit makes more sense in day to day contexts. 0 is very cold, 100 is very hot (both from a human experience point of view), and you have more precision on the temperatures in between. Now in this particular case it's so cold that it doesn't really matter; if I told you it was -184 C, or -300 F it wouldn't really change the fact that you can't conceive of the temperature as anything but "really, really cold".
Besides, who are you trying to chastise? The temperature was given in a quote from the article. Would you prefer Slashdot editors mangle quotes to conform to your prejudices?
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But don't you realize the having a decimal system based around the temperature of water freezing and boiling at a very specific atmospheric pressure makes the most sense? I mean CLEARLY that is better than the Fahrenheit scale which ignores this. And all those goofy fractions. Do you really like 32 9/16 degrees? Or would you rather have 0.3125 Celsius?
Clearly the Celsius scale is superior.
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I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but Fahrenheit is a decimal system based around the temperatures of water freezing and boiling at a very specific atmospheric pressure. 32F is defined to be the temperature at which water freezes and 212F is defined to be the temperature at which water boils. It's exactly the same thing as Celsius except for where the two points are placed.
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Fahrenheit makes more sense in day to day contexts. 0 is very cold, 100 is very hot (both from a human experience point of view), and you have more precision on the temperatures in between.
Fahrenheit is a superior unit of measure. Each degree corresponds to the difference in temperature a human can sense. Celsius is arbitrary and much less precise.
The metric system got everything right except temperature.
Now in this particular case it's so cold that it doesn't really matter; if I told you it was -184
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It only makes sense because you're used to it.
In Celsius 0 is also very cold, but at the same time more meaningfull ("what will happen to water today?" or "what can fall from the sky today?"). Same with 100, also very hot, and usefull even in the kitchen. (and both 0 and 100 can be easily calibrated on Earth). And no, 100 Fahrenheit isn't very usefull medically - it's a temperature of somebody with severe fewer; if it would be "normal"/"border one" - I would agree with that one.
As for precision - BS, even C
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In Celsius 0 is also very cold
You're probably Western European to say something like that. 0c is mildly cool. "Cold" is when dry ice starts forming frost on the ground. 8)
No, sorry, at least for those in the northern 2/3 of North America, Fahrenheit works better for day-to-day considerations of human comfort (and perception of environmental "hot" and "cold"). 0 degrees F is painfully cold on exposed flesh. 100 F is dangerously hot (unless you're in one of the freakishly-low-humidity regions and you're hyd
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No, sorry, at least for those in the northern 2/3 of North America, Fahrenheit works better for day-to-day considerations of human comfort (and perception of environmental "hot" and "cold").
As someone from Canada, and formerly resident of Manitoba, I find Celsius works just fine.
0 degrees F is painfully cold on exposed flesh. 100 F is dangerously hot (unless you're in one of the freakishly-low-humidity regions and you're hydrated well enough to not die of dehydration trying to sweat off the heat.)
0C is chil
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By -40, do you mean F or C?
Both. Obviously. ;)
Re:Fahrenheit? (Score:5, Insightful)
"what will happen to water today?"
Before or after the salt trucks come through?
"what can fall from the sky today?"
Because it's not possible for different layers of air to be at different temperatures?
"Same with 100, also very hot, and usefull even in the kitchen."
No, it's not. When was the last time you stuck a thermometer into a liquid on the stove in the process of cooking? Does your range have temperatures on the burner controls? Boiling water isn't useful in the kitchen because it's "exactly 100 degrees Celsius" (which it isn't), but because it's at a constant temperature, regardless of what number you chose to associate with it. And even then, stovetop recipes have to be adjusted for altitude ("How high am I above sea level?" is a question asked more often than "What temperature is this boiling water?")
"(and both 0 and 100 can be easily calibrated on Earth)"
No, they can't. Celsius is defined as a linear offset to kelvin, period. At a "standard" atmospheric pressure of 101 325 Pa, water boils at about 99.974 C (and this is a mathematical approximation [iapws.org] based on experimental data). So even if you had a barometer that was accurate to 1 Pa absolute, arbitrarily declaring the saturation temperature in the room at the time as "100 C" is no more accurate than declaring it to be "212 F" (and at least there the approximately 180 F temperature difference between freezing and boiling is easier to subdivide geometrically).
As a linear offset to thermodynamic temperature, no mere mortal has the equipment to properly calibrate their thermometer (Celsius or Fahrenheit) in their kitchen.
"And no, 100 Fahrenheit isn't very usefull medically - it's a temperature of somebody with severe fewer;"
With respect to measuring human body temperature, Fahrenheit is useful medically by simple virtue of being more granular. Assuming a normal body temperature of 98.6 F (37 C), a fever of 100 F is still less than 1 C above normal. 38 C is 100.4 F.
"BS, even Celsius scale has way more precision than we need in day-to-day life"
Then the adjustments on your thermostat are marked only to the nearest 5 C? If it's more granular than you need, then put your money where your mouth is and set your thermostat up another 2 C.
"it's just above zero", "it's around 5", "a bit below 10"
So the "metric" temperature scale is one that people "feel" in units of 5 rather than 10? In Fahrenheit, that would be "in the 30's," "in the 40's" and "in the 50's," respectively.
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And no, 100 Fahrenheit isn't very useful medically
While 100F body temp isn't considered normal, it isn't severe - it is low grade fever. You're usually not bed ridden at the temp. Once you're above 102 to 104 - that is considered moderate fever. Above 105 F it is pretty bad and much above 107F you turn into an average anonymous Slash dot poster. http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_feverpho_hhg.htm [umich.edu]
Fahrenheit has approx. twice as many divisions between water freezing and boiling, so in effect given the same number of significant digits, a temperatur
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Which wold rather go out in?
0 degrees Celsius or 0 degrees Fahrenheit?
Both are cold but one is more cold the the other. Same can be said on the hotter temps.
It really comes down to the people you are dealing with and what you are talking about. If you are dealing with sceince people and talking about the temps of space the deep ocean use Celsius. If you are talking to your kid sister/brother (or other non science people) and talking about the temp outside use what they know.
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There's a very simple and accepted way to adjust quotes to accurately reflect what a person was saying. you simply put the adjusted/added words within brackets or an elipses within brackets if you are removing something. This is done by... well by basically every major news organization in the english speaking world. So now, I don't "prefer Slashdot editors mangle quotes", I prefer that they adjust them to make their meaning clear.
As an aside, 0 F being very very cold and 100 F being very very hot might
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the true temp was in the -20s F. I've also had the pleasure of experiencing 114 F (same location).
I tend to think of this as a positive aspect of Fahrenheit rather than a negative one. Temperatures below 0 and above 100 are not unheard of in nature, but they are about as common. You were 20 below the scale on one end and 14 above the scale on the other. It's close to being symmetric.
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Those temperature points depend on the salinity of your water, and whatever the atmospheric pressure happens to be that day at your current altitude.
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Yes, how dare they use a scale that's rigidly defined in terms of kelvin! Godless metric communists!
Does 160 degrees Rankine make you happier?
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Actually, the 21st century left you a message in return. It mentioned that the guys using that crappy old measurement system successfully landed men on the moon repeatedly nearly 40 years ago. It asked how many 'metric system' countries can say the same?
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Risk of retaliation (Score:5, Funny)
The good news is that the Loonies can't do anything about it. I mean, all they could do is throw rocks at us, and what good would that do?
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He'll be lucky if he can get a packet out, let alone get those rocks in the catapult on target.
TANSTAAFL!
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The moon sure is a harsh mistress.
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Fair Dinkum observation
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+1 Heinlein
Well, you won't get my mod points for a "+1 Heinlein" unless you include a couple chapters of preachy soapboxing through sock puppet characters...
sounds like a warped 60s slogan (Score:2, Funny)
"stop the nukes"
"yeah yeah right on!"
"save the whales"
"you got that right brother!"
"bomb the moon"
"right... i mean, what?"
"bomb the moon with love, man"
"oh right, right, bomb the moon with love!"
"nuke the whales"
"ummm..."
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This is Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow, this mission strikes me as one of the coolest things NASA's done in a while. It's a struggling unit of the organization, working with spare parts from scrapped projects, jury-rigging a satellite together that will tow the spent upper stage of a rocket to the moon and smash the chunk of metal otherwise slated to be space debris into the closest heavenly body to send an Earth-visible (with a decent telescope) plume from one of its poles. Finally, it will analyze the plume to figure out if there's ice there.
Totally. Awesome
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Tricky shot (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently to make this work NASA will have to hit the opening of a thermal vent that's less than 2 meters across at the end of a canyon lined with defensive gun placements.
Many NASAians died getting us this information.
Sigh... (Score:2)
Nasa finally listened to Frank J! (Score:2)
A Realistic Plan for World Peace
a.k.a
Nuke the Moon
http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm [www.imao.us]
Mission diagram (Score:2)
NASA has released a diagram detailing the planned trajectory [wikipedia.org].
Another "Shock-and-Awe" (Score:2)
demonstration of Aerospace Dominance, followed closely by a search for WMD*.
*Water of Moist Dampening
Fools! (Score:2)
missile testing? (Score:2, Interesting)
NASA Will Bomb the Moon (Score:2)
NASA Sends George Clinton To Bomb The Moon (Score:2)
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Well all mass exerts a gravitational pull on all mass, so yes they affect each other.
Are you afraid this will affect the Earth's orbit around the Sun? The change will be negligible --- the energy we'd need to mess up the orbits dangerously is far beyond us.
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I though it was well within our current power to fuck up the Earth's orbit. Given that the whole time I was growing up we were constantly told we could "blow up the Earth 20 gazillion times over" I was under the impression that we could fairly easily knock it off kilter.
I mean, several tens of dozens of multi-megaton explosions sure as h
Re:Earth's Orbit? (Score:5, Informative)
I though it was well within our current power to fuck up the Earth's orbit. Given that the whole time I was growing up we were constantly told we could "blow up the Earth 20 gazillion times over" I was under the impression that we could fairly easily knock it off kilter.
When people say we could blow up the entire Earth, they really mean we could cover the surface of the Earth in nuclear explosions. It would kill all of us, but the Earth wouldn't care. It would just keep trundling along as ever.
Some maths: Suppose we wanted to increase the speed of the Earth by 1m/s. Kinetic energy = mass * speed^2, so (as the mass of the Earth is 5.9736*10^24 kg) we'd need 5.9736*10^24 joules. A megaton explosion is 4.184*10^15 J, so we'd need the equivalent of about a billion megatonnes of TNT. That's about one hundred million pretty big nukes (assuming all the energy of the nukes goes into the Earth's movement, which it wouldn't). And that's just to accelerate the Earth by 1m/s. And when you add to that the fact that the Earth's orbit is stable (so we need a lot of movement to do any real damage), you can see how little we could really do.
Hope that makes sense!
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Your computation actually has some errors in it. The amount of energy required to increase the earth's speed from what it is (about 30,000 m/s) by 1 m/s is not the same as the amount of enery needed to increase it from 0 to 1 m/s (which is what you computed, except that you also made a mistake by a factor of 2).
A better estimate (with same mass, but increasing the speed from 30,000 m/s to 30,001 m/s) yields
1.7921e29 joules needed. That's 5 orders of magnitude greater than your solution.
I once computed that
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I'm doing absolutely no maths whatsoever.
I'm legitimately asking (because nobody ever really quantified what "blow up the Earth several times over" means) whether or not we could. Having been around in the 70's and 80's as a kid, you'd think we'd have been able to pulverize the whole planet by now.
I have no idea of how to wrap my head around how much energy would be required to cause a change in orbit, let alone in relation to what we could actually produce.
Let's face it, a larg
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Even if we could blow up the Earth several times over (we can't), doing that requires orders of magnitude less energy than actually changing the Earth's orbit. If you blow up the Earth into millions of tiny little chunks, all those tiny little chunks will keep happily orbiting the sun (See: Asteroid belt) at very nearly the current speed and path that the Earth currently travels.
An object with the mass of the Earth, travelling through space at the speed that it is, has an unbelievable amount of kinetic ener
Re:Earth's Orbit? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Earth's Orbit? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Earth's Orbit? (Score:5, Informative)
The mass of the moon is ~ 7e1022 kg
I think you're mixing up 7x10^22 and 7e22 there; the Moon's mass most certainly is not 7e1022 kg. Estimates for the mass of the observable universe, for example, are around 2e52 kg [wikipedia.org].
That said I agree with your point - this will have an utterly negligible affect on the orbital dynamics of the Moon.
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Holy cow, 7e1022 kg? So that's where the universe's missing mass is!
Hint: Slashdot will always mess up superscripts, so either do 7E22 or 7e22, or do 7x10^22 or 7*10^22. The 'e' notation takes the place of 'x10^'.
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I didn't read this particular article, but I think the idea here is to examine the dust that is ejected, most likely using various spectrometers.
This was done with a comet some time ago, at a far greater distance.
It's similar to the high tech way of identifying mysterious substances in a modern laboratory, just on a larger scale and at a much greater distance.
I would imagine that the "bomb" would be primarily of the kinetic energy variety.
Re:Earth's Orbit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Virtually all of the mass of this mission, except for maybe a little rocket propellant, will stay within the Earth-Moon system, so the center of gravity of the two won't change. In other words, no, this won't affect Earth's Orbit thanks to CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM!!
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Earth did have a second moon (first moon?).
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/second_moon_991029.html [space.com]
It grew up and moved out. Now it just visits once in a while.
Re:Earth's Orbit? (Score:5, Funny)
> Isn't Earth's orbit intimately mingled with it's moon?? How precise can the potential impact be measured in relation to this fact? I think Earth's orbit is fine where it is...
Sigh. I blame public schooling.
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The moon is smacked by meteors all the time, many much larger than any space probe could ever be. After all, it has a nasty case of acne scars. Most meteors are still usually too small to make any detectable difference. It's probably been hit by some biggies that perhaps could alter its orbit, but the average
Re:is that a good idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple physics tells us that bombing it with any bomb we currently have or are likely to have in the forseeable future will make no measurable difference and probablly a lot less difference than the various natural rocks that have hit the moon over the centuries.
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Re:is that a good idea? (Score:5, Informative)
Granite contains Uranium. Get a geiger counter and test the nearest granite countertop and be amazed!
Of course, it's not *dangerous*, but it is definitely radioactive.
Re:is that a good idea? (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the radioactivity in stone and ceramic building materials is from potassium 40 decay, not uranium.
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Where is the "Whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag? If this article had ANYTHING to do with biology, it would have been up already.
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WON'T ANYONE THINK OF THE WHALES?
Stop the bombing! Save the moon whales!
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Re:The Time Machine (Score:5, Funny)
Geez, a plot like that'd make me crack the DVD in half and eat it.
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That is what I was thinking.
I heard a conspiracy theory that the renewed interest in the moon by NASA at the direction of George Bush was due to the discovery of Helium-3 there.
Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 [wikipedia.org]
My understanding of this is that this means is you can have fusion without radiation only dealing with heat and actually raw electricity as a by product. So it seems the energy generation is far greater than other forms of fusion. ... Or in other words.. Bush
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Oh I have no idea if its true or not..
But it does raise the question of "Who owns the moon?" It's perfectly fine to say, nobody.. or all people.. or whatever when nobody can get to it.. but a valuable resource that you can get to and use.. I don't expect governments around the world to be ok with "community" ownership for very long.
Initially the wars in space will be pretty cool I think though.. lol
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To kick off the construction, a large bomb was set off. The result, the moon cracked in half and people eventually started to eat each other.
Wow, I think this is the Webster's definition of non sequitur. WTF does the result have to do with the cause?
Re:Wasn't this the plot of that Time Machine Remak (Score:4, Insightful)
My God. Has the IQ of Slashdot dropped twenty points in the last fifteen minutes?
Re:Wasn't this the plot of that Time Machine Remak (Score:5, Funny)
It's a bit hard to tell but I'm afraid you're on to something. We seem to be getting more "whoosh" posts before the joke.
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Seriously. I saw an AC make the same comment first. I wrote it off as a troll attempt. Then I see three logged in users making the same point. I was about to make a reasoned retort, but couldn't get past the "How Fricking Stupid Do You Have to Be!?!?" shock. Very similar when I have to explain something technical to the COO.
maybe they got mixed up (Score:2)
Remember the articles about how Earth could be saved from a collision with a asteroid by putting a small satellite and changing the orbit enough to miss Earth. Perhaps they are thinking that this will do the same to the moon.
Or maybe they think that movies actually follow the laws of physics instead of the laws of what will get people into the seats.
Re:Wasn't this the plot of that Time Machine Remak (Score:4, Funny)
Look up gravity on the internet, if you don't believe me. I don't like the idea of loosing the moon just for sake of an experiment.
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P.S. It's "lose", not "loose". And that's why I never even considered a career teaching English in college.
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His post was a joke. Totally a joke.
And, technically, his use of "loosing" works in the sentence. It is certainly not what he intended, but it also works in a bizarre, funny way.
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That other guy who dropped a hammer onto the surface had to drop a feather at the same time for the same reason.
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I find it's a shame, with all the old classics remakes we've seen for the past decade or so, that they missed the chance for a remake of Space 1999 (as a movie) in 1999.
Or maybe they're waiting for a remake called "Space 2099".
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A moon based disaster-adventure would be pretty cool. Even with near future tech, you don't need as implausible a premise as the Space 1999 one to isolate a group and place them in danger.
Actually, as a Hollywood studio made that Val Kilmer Mars movie, where they discovered that there was air on Mars after all, perhaps audiences would go for it?
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Is everyone taking crazy pills [cariboufoot.com]?
Dudes! (and dudettes. Won't discriminate on ya'll. I figure there's some goofs on your side as well)
What's the freaking fear with the word Bomb? We set off bombs all the time on the earth? No one's complaining about those. And this isn't really even a bomb but more like a big rock, designed to turn the soil.
Sit down and shut up, Francis!
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The Moon provides a) gravity and b) moonlight. I don't see either changing.
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Re:Have they exceeded their authority? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are indeed worried about this, perhaps a remedial course in physics is in order. You might start a couple of books before the ones on orbital mechanics.
If you're funn'in us - well, sorry - not quite enough caffeine here.
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"He wasn't an astronaut! He was a TV comedian. And he was just using space travel as a metaphor for beating his wife."