Personalized Moon Crash 466
Ich Bin Zu writes "Do you want to create your own crater on the moon? CNN has an article about a company putting a personalized moon crash for sale on ebay. The bid opens with $6 million which will enable the highest bidder to stuff up to 10kg worth of stuff on a space craft and lob it to the moon. The condition of the cargo is not guaranteed as it crashes on the moon at 4000 mph."
Not guaranteed? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not guaranteed? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not guaranteed? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paint It RED! (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of an old joke:
American astronauts arrive to the moon. Their communication with Earth:
Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
We have lots of garbage and pollution on Earth, lots of space-junk in orbit around the Earth that is widely predicted to become a hazard, and plenty of junk left on the Moon's surface from the manned and unmanned expeditions.
The place isn't even accessible to tourists yet and someone has come up with a way to pre-pollute it.
Do we really want to turn the Moon into an interplanetary garbage dump?
Keep your litter and junk to yourself.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore it's a dead rock anyway, and I can't think of a better place for an interplanetary garbage dump. Well maybe dropping stuff into Jupier. Even Venus is interesting.
Tip of the interplanetary iceberg (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't argue that because one axe cutting down one tree has little effect, that therefore the rainforests are safe. It's the same here; one canister might be inconsequential, but if we endorse it, what else will we have to allow?
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Interesting)
When space travel becomes cheap enough, I'm sure we'll this kind of thing popping up on lots of moons. The only thing moons are good for really are the fact that they're magnificent gravity wells, pretty to look at in the sky, most of the time are completely inhospitable (making them good junk locations), etc etc. I for one hate the idea of taking perfectly usable material and moving it to a location where it'll just sit unused, but in a location like space, we could find new ways to recycle the material and ship it back. The only thing stopping us now is the cost of the trip, which, with new technologies like space elevators and possible air breathing, horizonal launch vehicles, these costs should go down quickly. It's a shame we spent more time on innovation of the things we put in space, and not on the things we use to get it there.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:4, Insightful)
Why ship it to the moon to incinerate it... you could just nudge it out of earth's orbit and let the sun pull it the rest of the way in and it'll be vaporized. I imagine there are side effects of using the sun as a dump (maybe increasing the mass and gravitational forces would disrupt planets orbits??) but I think throwing even the whole earth into the sun would have so little relative effect it'd be like pissing in the ocean.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understand it actually takes more energy to send something from Earth orbit into the Sun than it would take to send the object on a path to escape the solar system. This is because in order to crash into the Sun you first have to cancel out the velocity imparted by being in Earth's orbit around the Sun in the first place. However if you wanted to leave the solar system you would simply add some velocity to your orbit around the Sun and this would kick you to an orbit further from the Sun.
In other words the quantity of energy needed to lower your orbital velocity to zero relative to the Sun would be less than the amount you need to add to escape from orbiting the Sun. This means that it probably takes less energy to send something to the Moon than it would take to send it to the Sun.
According to my quick calculations it would take a velocity of approximately 42 km/s to escape the solar system from Earth's orbit. Earth imparts a velocity of approximately 30 km/s to any object which is in a similar orbit around the sun. This means that you would need to either slow down by 30 km/s to hit the sun (30 km/s - 0 km/s) or you would need to speed up by 12 km/s to leave the solar system (42 km/s - 30 km/s).
Strange, but true - it actually takes less energy to leave the solar system than it is to crash into the sun from Earth orbit. This, of course, is not counting stuff like orbital slingshots around other planets and such which could decrease the energy needed for both crashing the Sun and leaving it.
Here's the site [krysstal.com] where I got some of the data I used for my calculations, as well as the formulas for escape velocity and such.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:3, Insightful)
What happens to such an object slowed down to 18km/s, does it take a more elliptical orbit then the earth?
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:3, Interesting)
If you only canceled out 1 km/sec of the velocity then you would just orbit a bit closer to the Sun.
As for whether the orbit would be circular or elliptical it depends on how the velocity change is done. Remember that velocity is a vector. If any part
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:3, Funny)
Well I do have a couple of bodies to bury...
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could find a way of making someone pay you 6 million to dump a bucket full of 'stuff' in your yard, you'd do it
If someone payed you 6 million to dump a bucket full of stuff somewhere in yellowstone park, subject to some restrictions, then you'd likely do it in a heartbeat.
Ah yes. The ultimate justification for any idiotic, debase action: money.
I'm sorry to hear you have so little moral fiber in your body and can't fathom why someone finds the idea of intentionally polluting an object we can't even inhabit so despicable. It's unfortunate that there are so many people that think like you, because the underlying problem with that kind of thought process is always the same:
If it doesn't directly affect me, why should I care?
Dropping 10 kg of junk on the surface of a desloate object in space isn't a big deal. It's the principal of the thing. Human beings seem to be the only life on earth that would consider intentionally dropping garbage somewhere just because they can. A sad commentary on human nature, I suppose.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I've found that the usual reason is the smug self-righteousness that possesses a lot of people, which convinces them that whatever they do must be a correct action since their hearts are pure and they're so much more... you know... moral than all those other people.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee, you're right. I'm going to change my culture and ideals because you took time to insult me and all the people you grouped me with.
So, are you saying that you would not
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
So, your culture and ideals include, explicitly, your ability to be bought off?
You're getting caught up on the quantity when I'm talking about the principal. The quantity is irrelevant. Would you shoot a starving child in the face who was going to die anyway for 6 million dollars? More? How about 1 billion? The act you're being paid for is not the point, and that's the point.
The point is this: human beings would actually seek to ACTIVELY GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to pollute something.
However, if you'd like to discuss the particulars of the issue instead, I have a serious problem with your "ends justify the means" mentality. If you dump 22 pounds of trash in the middle of yellowstone (ah yes... "with restrictions"), you are polluting yellowstone national park. Are you going to dispute that? So, you get your 6 million, and you give it ALL to charity. So what? You still polluted Yellowstone, now didn't you? In fact, you went out of your way to do it.
Now, while it's still immoral, it's FORGIVABLE which is entirely different. However, this is a "commercial spacecraft project" that is seeking to profit by intentionally polluting a foreign object and is going well out of its way to do it. Only humans could be so pathetically crass.
Is ~22 pounds of material a big deal? No, it's the point that these morons are doing it on purpose and for profit, and that some imbecile will actually spend the money for it.
I can accept that human progress pollutes. This is not progress. This is intentional destruction for the amusement of some sorry buffoon who doesn't have anything better to do with his or her time. The point isn't that 22 pounds isn't a big deal, it's that they're doing at all.
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest beef with this ridiculous idea is that they are wasting a launch that could be used to do useful things; now, if they were using the launch to test a new lunar-capable booster and this was a way of raising funds, ok. But they're not. These guys are going to buy a booster launch from someone else for an idea that, on the face of it, is just plain stupid.
This is intentional destruction for the amusement of some sorry buffoon who doesn't have anything better to do with his or her time.
s/time/money.
What a waste. I hope their auction fails because people with $6M are too intelligent to waste it in this way. (Unfortunately, someone just may take them up on it - reminds me of the old axiom of fools and money). What the hell, it probably won't go anyway - and if it does, they'll end up spending more to pull it off than they get (or get sued by the auction winner when they go bust). Stupid, stupid, stupid.
SB
pollution isn't inherently immoral (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If I had my choice, (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You're a polluter (Score:3, Insightful)
Great reason to throw all principles away, huh? Believe it or not, I ride around on a bicycle to/from work because I believe it makes a difference. And sure, I dry my clothes in the dryer instead of on the line right now. But just because we can't be perfect (and none
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interplanetary pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
In this and many other cases it's often a personal belief or desire. In some cases there are reasonable reasons for avoiding certian 'pollution' (such as rinsing the orange juice glass before filling with milk).
-Adam
Big airbags - bubble wrap - foam - cones. (Score:5, Interesting)
Implying that it will be destroyed, right?
Not necessarily.
This is just an extreme case of the "egg drop" problem used by the UofMich ingineering school ion their packaging class one year (and no doubt other engineering schools from time to time).
Problem: Package a raw egg with less than (x) grams of packing material so that it can be dropped from the roof of the four-floor engineering building to the concrete below and arrive intact.
A number of solutions were tried. Some I remember hearing about:
- Suspended inside a ball by rubber bands.
- bubble wrap variants
- foam peanut variants
- Stuffed into the top of a stack of styrofoam cups with kleenex, fins added to last cup to insure bottom cup arrives end-on. (Energy absorbed by friction of cup stack cracking and collapsing).
(That last one was a winner and led directly to the nested-sheetmetal protectors you sometimes see on freeways in front of overpass support piers.)
Then we have NASA's recent "airbag" landing on Mars.
4K MPH is a bit extreme. But you've got a LOT of space to, for instance, blow up a LARGE airbag/bubblewrap analog, and plenty of time to do it.
Encapsulated electronics, and even moving parts if packed correctly, can handle thousands of Gs easily. (Think about MOOG's final test for his synthesizer components: Three feet to a cement floor, must stll be fully operational and still correctly tuned afterward.) 4000 MPH = 5867 fps. Bullets are routinely accellerated to that velocity in a few feet without distortion from the g forces involved (though that is a bit extreme), and bullets with moving parts (such as spin-armed explosive rounds) to maybe a couple thousand FPS ditto.
So figure inflating maybe a 50 foot radius cluster of 'way thin kevlar balloons or bubble-wrap with aerojell just before impact, and taking maybe 20kg at the peak of decelleration, and it should be survivable.
Re:Big airbags - bubble wrap - foam - cones. (Score:4, Interesting)
fp? (Score:5, Funny)
I want to send my mother in law to the moon...
RS
Re:fp? (Score:5, Funny)
Zoom boom to the moon Alice...TO THE MOON!
Re:fp? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:fp? (Score:2)
Re:fp? (Score:2)
You could always chop off her limbs...heck, the head alone would take off a good portion of weight
Redneck (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hey Bubba, I know what let's do! Lets go throw sh*t at the moon and see if we can make craters. Yeah, that's cool Zeek. heh, heh, heh."
Seriously though, where is the science in this? They claim to want to take pictures, but they are pictures of the near side of the moon, of which we have plenty. And, unless you wanted to bury your cremains on the surface of the moon, this is the same kind of thing you find when you go hiking in the desert or mountains and find cans and things that people have shot at and left to rust or names carved into trees or rocks saying "Steve was here".
I am usually a strong supporter of science related work and space exploration, but this seems.....well?......What's the point?
Condition of the cargo cannot be guaranteed after the 4,000 mph impact, Orbital Development explains, although the cargo is contained within a special burst-resistant canister.
P.S., what is the point of using a "burst resistant container" if you are going to be aiming your "object" for a 4000 MPH impact with the moon? I am currently unaware of any container system weighing more than
Re:Redneck (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Redneck (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to take visible-light pictures only. You could do something else cool, like bombard the surface with neutrons, looking for hydrogen (= water).
Actually, if you put pretty much any vehicle in the vicinity of the moon, you will probably find a scientist who will want to do an interesting experiment with it. Scientists are ingenious that way.
There was also a story not long ago about an effort to deliberately crash things into the moon to liberate clouds of debris, which could be analyzed by ground instruments. In that case the useful payload could be nothing but bricks.
And a "burst resistant container" may be useful if you want to do science in the millisecond that the probe has to survive on the surface. Seriously! A recent Mars mission had a couple of probes that were supposed to work this way (they failed).
Re:Redneck (Score:3, Funny)
Beagle II?
Re:Redneck (Score:2)
Water ballons, perhaps?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Redneck (Score:4, Insightful)
"Interesting" jobs like that only stay interesting until you are paid to do them. When you get down to the actual work, there is little difference between designing a spacecraft, an aircraft, a car or an engine component. As the complexity of the overall object rises, the amount of impact any one person makes on the project reduces accordingly. Of course, that doesn't stop it being fun to talk about the time you used to work on project X.
Re:Redneck (Score:5, Insightful)
Go for it, guys. Run pointless, self serving commercial space launches. Make it cheap.
There really isn't *too* much of a stretch of imagination between this, and a University landing a portable, robotic observatory on the moon for $500,000.
Re:Redneck (Score:4, Insightful)
However, your concern about pollution is a valid one and I agree that it would suck if we made the moon into a wastepaper basket and chucked random shit at it. That said, it would be kinda cool to be the first person ever to be 'buried' (not literally, unless you were Verne Troyer you'd be too heavy for the cargo weight limit) outside of Earth. Quick, get grandma's ashes!
Exactly (Score:4, Funny)
Think of the irony of sending a college textbook on physics as the payload! Actually, I have a specific one in mind, care to chip in? I was considering making a bonfire out of it, but this would be MUCH more fun.
Re:Redneck (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, someone's beaten you to it - Gene Shoemaker [bbc.co.uk], of comet fame.
Shortly before Professor Shoemaker died he said, "Not going to the Moon and banging on it with my own hammer has been the biggest disappointment in life."
Well, he sort of got his wish. I'm not certain he's the first but haven't heard of anyone before him.
Re:Redneck (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but do you have fun when you're fragging?
Fun between you and a few others improves the quality of life for you and those few others - and that's bettering the human race, too.
Re:Redneck (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not charge $10 million... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not charge $10 million... (Score:2)
Of course the moon itself is a hell of a brake...
imagine (Score:5, Funny)
Re:imagine (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine if people could so that repeatedly to spell something...like chairface did with that laser on the Tick
As long as you're not in charge, sure!
#1 bidder is... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... the #1 bidder, someone named GWBush2004, lives in Yucca mountain, and has 77,000 tons of something he wants to get rid of.....
And the second chance offer goes to... (Score:5, Funny)
Dr. Evil
"A frickin' good eBayer, they sent my "laser" to the moon in frickin' quick time. A++++++++++"
10KG of water (Score:5, Funny)
Re:10KG of water (Score:5, Funny)
huh? (Score:2)
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're pointing out that some people are simply useless. Bored rich guys are typically the most useless people we have on this planet. Along with those bimbos who walk down catwalks.
Re:huh? (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one, can think up several uses for/with them Bimbos
10kg paintball (Score:2)
Put Bush on a diet! (Score:2, Insightful)
'Cuz I bet GWB could slim down to 132 if he really tried. Don't think it's gonna happen for Cheney, though.
Re:Put Bush on a diet! (Score:3, Informative)
Better than being cremated (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Better than being cremated (Score:2)
That was actually an idea I once had, only it involved being cryogenically frozen and having your body encapsulated and shot into space, hopefully with the intention of being picked up by technologically superior aliens at some point and brought back to life. Crashing into the moon seems counter-productive.
Yes, I have no religion. It was my only hope of living forever...
Re:Better than being cremated (Score:3, Interesting)
I was thinking the same thing, but the cost is prohibitive. Apparently cremated human remains weigh between 4 and 10 pounds, meaning you could only get about 3 people in the capsule. $2 million a pop isn't the right price.
Of course, there may be more than just carbon left after the mere 1500 degrees in a standard crematorium. If a serious industrial incinerator could get the weight
Re:Better than being cremated (Score:3, Interesting)
That process costs from $2500 to $14k. If a 0.5 carat stone only weighs 0.1 grams (according to google), you could fit a whole bunch of those stones into the capsule.
So not only do you get to spend eternity as a diamond, you get to do it on the moon.
Send a Black Obelisk (Score:2, Funny)
Sure, it *seems* like a good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
Star Jones (Score:3, Funny)
Toner. (Score:5, Funny)
Even better! (Score:5, Funny)
Procure a corporate sponsorship from the Kraft company to get their logo on there, then you really could mess with little kids by telling them the moon is made of cheese. ^_^
Re:Toner. (Score:2)
PAC-MAN FOREVER!
For $24,000 (Score:5, Funny)
(I have karma to burn and a conscience to clear)
Re:For $24,000 (Score:3, Funny)
In Texas we... um... well, you see in Texas we have a saying... maybe you have a saying here too, but we have this saying, if you shoot a sidewider missile at a mosque, and two guys come running out on fire, then you just killed two arabs with... that is... two bad guys, you know, because they're bad... anyway, you get two guys with one sidewinder missile. That's what we say in Texas. Do you say that here too?
Great news for all of us... (Score:2, Funny)
One a secondary note...if you were really worried about your legacy standing the surface of earth in 100 years after we finish with this planet then you could potentially safely store a whole bunch of things...DNA, booze, *nix admin bible...
Link to Auction (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Link to Auction (Score:4, Informative)
Orbdev = crackpots (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Link to Auction (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Link to Auction (Score:2)
No shit....
I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
wtf (Score:2, Informative)
Ebay link (Score:2)
Littering or trespassing? (Score:5, Funny)
me! (Score:3, Interesting)
But I see there is a 10kg weight limit...
Thus, I have decided to cut off my head, and have just it sent to the moon! Eat your heart out, Walt Disney!
Gah... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm all for scientific missions and even some sight-seeing by probes, but I can't help but wonder how throwing our junk at the moon would impact possible future plans to establish a human presence there.
But hey, maybe those moon creatures living in the craters could use a few old Playboys or some worn-out shoes.
Stinking face in the Sky (Score:3, Funny)
Why not the sun? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not the sun? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's say you're a satellite orbiting earth and you want to hit the earth's surface as soon as possible. What direction should you fire your thrusters? Assume current techology: you have relatively little thrust at your disposal.
Most people say, "fire the thrusters directly away from the earth!" This is actually wrong. It will make your orbit elliptical, but it would take a very long time to actually hit the earth. The best direction to fire is exactly against the direction of your forward motion, tangential to earth. Slow yourself down and let the earth's gravity take over.
The moon orbits the earth at 2300 MPH (1 km/s), but orbits the earth at 67,000 MPH (30 km/s). This should give some idea as to the difference in scale. There are more difficulties too, mostly because you're trying to boost yourself UP to the moon but DOWN to the sun.
Of course, you could also shoot yourself toward another planet and get a gravity assist toward the sun. That would take a lot less energy but a lot more time.
Too bad it's not february... (Score:2)
Quick calculation (Score:2, Funny)
Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else here thing this is horrible?
But what happens when... (Score:5, Funny)
Jolyon
Info about company and founder (Score:5, Informative)
Gregory Nemitz is an interesting character. I am a little skeptical about the deal since you are purchasing a "project" and not an actual mission. So there are very few guarantees attached, and you have limited authority of the project.
I think Nemitz's more interesting project [erosproject.com] is the most credible attempt to assert ownership over an extraterrestrial body. Specifically, he is asserting his claim over the near earth asteroid Eros.
On his website you can see legal correspondence [erosproject.com] between him and NASA as he gives them an invoice for a parking fee for their NEAR spacecraft that crash landed on the asteroid. Also available is his explanation [erosproject.com] of what he is doing and why he is doing. A very interesting read, and it gives some in-depth analysis of the nature of property ownership.
Re:Info about company and founder (Score:4, Informative)
So NASA said there claims are without basis. Then state department says it violates the Outer Space Treaty, however that only applies to governments annexing extra terrestrial bodies and doesn't apply to private citizens.
So now he's involved in litigation and his argument is based on some complex legal theory that I don't pretend understand called work-equity. You can think of like it homesteading, where you squat a piece of land, and put development in it. After a while, the government recognizes your claim because of all the work you put in it. However, Nemitz isn't physically at the asteroid. Possession is 9/10th of the law, but he doesn't have possession, so his legal arguments are based on other 1/10th.
Anyway, though his claims may be dubious, his goal is to set a legal precedent for this kind of thing where one does not currently exist. This will give investors a clearer understanding and more certain environment of the legal framework for space property where one does not currently exist.
I'd set up encrypted data storage... (Score:4, Interesting)
-Adam
Not likely (Score:3, Funny)
Not only that: they don't take PayPal.
Misplaced resources (Score:3, Insightful)
Spending 6 million bucks on shifting lunar rock?
or
Feeding some homeless people?
I'm interested in getting a hold of an IQ test on all millionaires, and comparing the results to the rest of the population.
This is intresting (Score:3, Funny)
You'd figure for 6 Million this would aply world wide.
Simple Question (Score:3, Funny)
Forget the cargo, take some pictures (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How much does a A-bomb weigh? (Score:3, Funny)
D'oh!! We have to save those for the oncoming asteriods, you nitwit!
Re:If I had to guess... (Score:3, Informative)