First Commercial Moon Mission Approved 601
dorantrist writes "A Discovery Channel article that The U.S. Government has just licensed the first commercial mission to the moon to TransOrbital, Inc.. Part of the mission is "to VERIFY Apollo and other landing sites" because there are still a few people out there who believe the Apollo program was a hoax. --Maybe they can also pickup the golf balls left by Alan Shepard?"
Moon as "national park"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Won't change their minds. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why does this company have to get US permission (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Moon as "national park"? (Score:2, Insightful)
You won't be able to see it with the unaided eye.
I'd rather see a dead rock get strip mined than a living planet. Although in reality it is so uneconomical to mine the moon that it won't happen in your lifetime or mine.
lot of money to disprove skeptics. (Score:2, Insightful)
You will always have skeptics, just liek you will always have people who believe in UFO's. I've seen articles about how the mission was a hoax and they are quite convincing. If your going to teb moon bring a drilling rig, set up some experiments. Mount a teliscope, a big reflector dish anything. but dont go just to find some stupid golf balls.
Can anyone explain the one interesting point (Score:5, Insightful)
For the most part, any first year physics student could counter the arguments in the documentary, which is why there were no real physicists on the show. The one that they had merely said something to the effect of "Yeah, there are a lot of crackpots out there".
For example:
1. The astronaut is climing down the lander, and is in shadow, yet his space suit is brightly lit, suggesting a studio lighting scenario.
Answer: You may have noticed that the moon reflects light. This is why it allows us to see at night.
2. The pictures are exceptionally clear, yet the astronauts were not trained photographers.
Answer: any photograph taken in a vacuum will look more clear, due to less distortion from the atmosphere.
3. There is a picture of the lander, and some rocks around it, then a picture of the "same scene" with no lander.
Answer: Due to the lack of atmosphere on the moon, large boulders and even mountains may appear to look like close-up rocks when photographed.
4. The lander just appears to "take off", with no acceleration.
Answer: That's because it was a "catapult", you idiot, not a rocket. Escape velocity on the moon is tiny compared to earth, so a large enough explosion will do the trick.
5. The flag appears to be "waving in the wind".
Answer: only when the astronaut is touching it, you retard. When he lets go, it just sits there. I can make a flag wave too. Even with no wind. Imagine that.
There were other, equally stupid pieces of "evidence", but there was ONE thing I could not explain.
In some of the photos, the camera's crosshair is *partially behind* the scene. How is that possible unless the photos were airbrushed?
Re:Verify? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but the caption of that picture states:
It was taken in 1972 from the Apollo 17 Command Module, America, orbiting about 100 kilometers above the Moon's surface
Anyways, I havent seen any picture taken from earth or space that shows proof of the lunar landings, it could be an interesting project, since it should be (relatively) cheap to send a hi-res camera in a satelite to orbit the moon
Re:Can anyone explain the one interesting point (Score:1, Insightful)
> In some of the photos, the camera's crosshair is *partially behind* the scene. How is that possible unless the photos were airbrushed?
That was also explained on the various debunking websites; the crosshairs are fine enough that they get washed out when superimposed on a bright object. Light-colored objects tend to have high levels of brightness when photographed on the Moon.
Re:Arrogant Conquerors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Calm down. It's because it's a US corporation, and according to international law, the US is responsible for policing anything from it's borders that goes up there. If they were a French company, they'd need to satisfy the French government's requirements. Scroll back on up this forum - someone cited the exact law, agreed to by the united nations.
Sheesh.
--
Evan (no reference)
Re:Who "owns" the moon, anyway? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who needs nukes when you're at the top of a gravity well? All you have to do is drop rocks from really, really, really high up on the dirtsiders. Very cheap, very effective.
And then, decades later, you find out that the site you contaminated had great scientific importance, or was a potential source of sub-surface water, or whatever.
One simple guideline for sane behavior is this: don't make irreversable changes in something that you don't thoroughly understand.
Something to think about... (Score:5, Insightful)
#
For the interest of Slashdot readers, national governments, and any other interested organization, I am posting instructions on how to fake a moon landing and not get caught for 30 years.
Before the Landing
Put out a request for tenders for a contract to build the lunar hardware to major aerospace companies. It would be pretty obvious after the fact that no one had built your launchers and landers.
In the contracts, give a specification that would lead the 10,000 engineers who work on the project to reasonably believe that the equipment could be used to land on the moon. Engineers are smart people; they could easily spot holes in your assumptions if you make the requirements less stringent than they have to be. If it were obvious that the hardware couldn't land on the moon, you would be caught.
Have the hardward manufactured and delivered. Again easy to spot if this wasn't done, especially for a Saturn V-class rocket and related assemblies.
In summary: You would actually have to build stuff that would probably be able to land a man on the moon, with all the associated expenses.
During the missions:
You will actually have to launch the thing you contracted to build. You could launch something else -- but why bother? We've already established that you have to build a moon rocket, and you'd have to pay off everyone who was involved in its destruction and substitution. Besides, it would be big news, so news organizations would want to film the launch of the big rocket.
So, the capsule could be suborbital, or stay in orbit, and the rest of the mission could be faked, right? Wrong. Antennas around the world will be tracking the radio signals from the capsule, including the continuous telemetry feeds. Something would have to go to the moon, on a realistic lunar trajectory, or this would be immediately spotted by legions of radio astronomers and HAM radio amateurs around the world, many of whom have advanced signal processing available to them (like Doppler analysis, etc.). They would also be able to tell the difference between a lunar trajectory and a different orbit, like a geosynchronous orbit, because of the moon's particular position in the sky.
So, the capsule has to go to the moon. Does it have to orbit? Yes. The capsule must stay in the vicinity of the moon for several days (again checked by those with large radio antennas). The only foolproof way to do that is to orbit.
So, the capsule has to orbit. Does it have to land? Yes. While in orbit, the capsule can't communicate with Earth from the far side of the moon. Yet a lander must be able to send continuous telemetry to the Earth. It would be pretty obvious fakery to have the "lander"'s telemetry fade out at the same time as the capsule's.
Does it have to come back? Yes; for the same trajectory reason. The return trajectory could be tracked.
Does the capsule/lander have to be manned? Not necessarily, but there would be many complications if it weren't. You would have to be able to carry on ground/capsule communications in a realistic manner even though the communications from the capsule would have to be recorded and beamed back (because your radio is being monitored). The "astronauts" would be unable to perform any diagnostic tasks aboard the spacecraft (because they're not aboard it), so the entire flight control team would have to be in on the hoax (dozens, even hundreds, of people to pay off).
In summary: You would have to actually send something to the moon, which may as well be manned.
After the Landing
Bring back tons of "moon rocks" and other materials for analysis by independent scientists around the world. These rocks could not be obviously of terrestrial origin, implying some exotic materials science (or creative geology). Either that or pay off anyone who comes in contact with the "lunar samples".
And if you're NASA - do this seven times, with one of the seven attempts turning into a remarkably realistic failure.
The upshot: It's equally easy and expensive to actually land a man on the moon than fake it convincingly. Furthermore, the evidence for fakery would not be found in trivial forms of evidence, like photographs, but in more obvious places, like contracts, accounting, radio monitoring, and the lunar samples themselves.
Fake Moon so well done. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Moon as "national park"? (Score:2, Insightful)
I do not think that I care much for your ideas on 'natural beauty'.
Grand Canyon: big ugly pit. Might as well dam it up.
Death Valley: some dried up old rocks. Harvest all the salt which is just sitting around on the surface.
Sandy beach, streching on for miles: Oh the wasted space. Why don't we pave the ocean to have more room to build Walmart Discount Stores?
sheesh.
The best reason I could think of for uglifying the moon with a bunch of mining operations (which I seriously doubt would ever by cost effective for ore to be used Earth) is that we've fscked up everything else we've gone near, and the pristine lunar surface is evidence of how much we've screwed things up here. Destroy the evidence so future generations don't find out.