Sooner Boomer writes "In a historic event, Japan today launched its first lunar probe. The mission is nicknamed Kaguya after a fairy-tale princess from Japanese myth. The news media is calling it the 'latest move in a new race with China, India and the United States' to explore the moon (don't forget Google). From the article: 'The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter took off into blue skies, leaving a huge trail of vapor over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (9:31 p.m. EDT) as it headed out over the Pacific Ocean. The mission consists of a main orbiter and two baby satellites equipped with 14 observation instruments designed to examine surface terrain, gravity and other features for clues on the origin and evolution of the moon. China has plans to launch an orbiter later this year, with unmanned rover lander mission scheduled for 2010. India and the US also have orbiter missions scheduled for next year.'"
I can't wait for these lunar satellites to be in position. I have a $50 bet with a "nut case" friend of mine that NASA's moon landing was real (he is a real conspiracy theorist - I blame drugs). Once these babies are in position, they'll be able to take nice pictures of the Apollo mission sites.
Everyone knows the Japanese are secretly working with the NSA to provide so-called "proof" of the non-existent Apollo landing sites. The truth is out there people!
. I have a $50 bet with a "nut case" friend of mine that NASA's moon landing was real (he is a real conspiracy theorist - I blame drugs). Once these babies are in position, they'll be able to take nice pictures of the Apollo mission sites.
You can't win an argument with a nutcase. He'll just say that the pics from the Japanese mission are fake, and probably create some conspiracy about the US paying the Japs to "keep the secret". Don't count on that $50.
The Soviet Union was able to view the landing site with *their* satellites in 1969. If he's not going to be persuaded by the SU's golden chance to embarass the USA if the landings were faked, I don't think this would make a difference.
Not to troll, but do you have linkable "proof" that the soviets were actually viewing our Apollo landing sites at (or around) the time of the missions? Seriously, I've never seen a reliable source indicate they had monitored our activities on the moon from lunar orbit as opposed to just tracking radio signals sent back to earth.
I don't, but it's not relevant to my point, which was that if they had any doubts, they could have looked at the spot and broadcast it to the world, and they had every reason to do so if they thought the landings were fake.
Most 'conspiracy nuts' as you call them don't question that something landed on the Moon. The issue was whether this something had humans on board instead of going all-robotic as the Russians have done.
Also, in most cases them 'nuts' are at least partially correct, in that there usually is a conspiracy where they suppose there could be.
Hmm. I've noticed the link between conspiracy theories and drugs before. There's a certain irony in some pothead insisting that pot is harmless and then launching into a conspiracy filled rant that shows strong signs of clinical paranoia. Not that they can appreciate the irony anymore of course.
I've never used pot on a regular basis, but I've noticed that (1) it helps the mind bring together seemingly unrelated facts, events, and patterns (2) when this happens, you get that strong sense of discovery or enl
We get telemetry back from the Moon. There's a mirror array up there so that we can bounce a laser off the moon and measure its distance. There's also a seismometer that beams back earthquake data.
Neither of those require a human presence to set them up.
How do you figure? In order for a seismometer to function, it must be anchored to the ground properly, be placed on level ground, and calibrated.
[tinfoil] And precisely how do you know that its actually a functioning seismometer? Instead of just a transmitter that sends out fake signals now and again. [/tinfoil] There is little you can do or show to a TrueBeliever that would "prove" that we landed humans on the moon. All can be explained away. Usually very badly, but they give a good try.
I have. My first thought was to import all of Wikipedia's computer related articles, but then I decided to do it one at a time so I could edit. Somewhere around one-third to one-half of Docforge's articles are edited Wikipedia articles (with proper attribution at the bottom). Others I chose to start from scratch because they talk more to the techies than as a general reference. And many other articles on Docforge were written by visitors before I got to importing the page. I'm still adding Wikipedia co
...is that the spacecraft is in the shape of a giant robot, and that, upon achieving lunar orbit, it will disassemble itself into three smaller robots, a moon buggy, a six-wheeler truck, and a mouse-class pokemon carrying a katana.
Actually the secret is that the craft actually will be manned by a shrine maiden and a demon sent to investigate the appearance of a fake moon, and find out where the real moon has been hidden. The rover is three metric tons thanks to the bulletproofing [pooshlmer.com] they had to add;)
Is the information from all these various probes being shared
God! Korea, we already said NO! You can't borrow our notes, God!
But seriously, I was wondering the same thing, how are there experiments gonna vary from ours (if at all) considering the near half century technology gap between automated experiment equipment then and now.
The moon is made of rock. There is no life on it. There is no liquid water on it. We have sporadic indications that there may be frozen water in some deep, dark places.
There, that about sums it up. For my next post, I'll share what the nations of earth have learned from Mars after spending billions trying to reach it. That post will be a dupe of this one.
Is the information from all these various probes being shared or is each nation building up its own little pool of data?
Well... they're certainly building up a nice pool of space junk [nationalgeographic.com] around the moon. Give us a hundred years and I'm sure we will have turned poor Luna in to a garbage dump.
About six years ago Japan tried to send a probe to Mars.
It MISSED the plant so, they sent around the solar system to try to hit Mars again.
When it finally got there, it had run out of fuel and died.
The had a little better luck with a comet probe. It made it there. I was supposed to retrieve samples. They think it might have gotten some. But the probe died on the way back to Earth.
No, it didn't die. It'll be back here in 2010. Whether it got the samples as it was supposed to do is another story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa [wikipedia.org]
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday September 14 2007, @09:05AM (#20602701)
Hate to get a weepy and jingoist, but isn't this just kinda pathetic? We sent people there almost 40 years ago, fer Christ's sake, and now we're in a "race" to send orbiters around it?
We should already have moon-based lasers to shoot down them godless foreign spy satellites before they enter orbit. We should own that goddamned moon, complete with a Disneyland! And blackjack! And hookers!
We should already have moon-based lasers to shoot down them godless foreign spy satellites before they enter orbit. We should own that goddamned moon, complete with a Disneyland! And blackjack! And hookers!
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday September 14 2007, @09:29AM (#20602977)
This mission is just a warmup. Japan's future plans include a lunar mission in 2022 in which gigantic teflon and mylar sheets will be installed at strategic locations extending upward perpendicular to the surface. Upon completion of the complex in 2024, observers on Earth will see that the moon has been transformed into a giant Hello Kitty.
The difference between the two tons (or tonnes if you must) is so small that
to qualify whether you're using one or the other is nit-picking[1]. As it is, unless the weight of the
spacecraft is an exact number of tons, the journalistic rounding-off of the weight
far exceeds this small difference in definitions.
[1]unless of course you're using the weight in orbital mechanics calculations, in which case you'll need better accruacy than the 1 significant digit reported here.
OK, call me no fun at all, but why the hell is anyone committing major resources to getting to the moon? As far as I understand, we're pretty confident it's a big lump of sand. No real advantage of being there vs being in orbit. Nice place for telescopes maybe, but so is high Earth orbit or a Legrange point. Other than a playpen for new technology, what's the draw? Mars at least has some interesting geology and the whole maybe-there's-microbes thing. But the moon? Lunacy!
Why doesn't Google give an X-prize
Perhaps we should be more concerned with how they misspelled "second" (as "first"). From Red Orbit [redorbit.com]:
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had previously launched HITEN in 1990, delivering the small lunar orbiter HAGOMORO. Kaguya is said to be the largest lunar mission since NASA's Apollo programme.
Despite several news services saying this is Japan's first lunar probe, lunar orbiter, etc., it is not. It is the largest one, and the first in over a decade, but it is not it's first.
In my day, we didn't even have paper and pencils. We had to solve long division by carving our work into our own arms with broken shards of glass. Now get off my lawn!
You do, of course, have some sort of data that backs up your statement that "Solar panels on or orbiting the moon could send enough energy back to the Earth to power everything we do"? Because I don't believe that for a second.
The Sun lands over 1.3KW:m^2 [wikipedia.org] on the Moon's surface. The Moon's surface is 3.8E7Km^2 [wikipedia.org], or 3.8E13m^2 [google.com]. The world consumes about 15TW [wikipedia.org]. 15TW is 3 hundredths of a percent [google.com] of the Lunar insolation. Even at 10% efficiency, only 0.3% of the Lunar surface would power the Earth. Since the US consumes only about 3.3TW [wikipedia.org], we'd need only about 0.075% of the Lunar surface.
No, I didn't discuss costs at all. I just said there is enough power. You denied that. Now you're moving the goalposts to talk about costs. Besides, it's not even necessary to travel back and forth repeatedly. We could send a robot that manufactures the solar panels and other infrastructure on site, as has already been demonstrated. Your idea about storage and "conversion" costs is similarly hairsplitting. They're more than matched by the longterm political (eg. war) and materials costs of our current energy
W. is not pushing the moon because of legacy. He is pushing for it to be able to place nukes and/or weapons on it. But, it is doubtful that it will happen. The truth is that we are shooting for the moon at least a decade ahead of any other nation. And with private enterprise pushing it, we will be on the moon by 2015. And how will they make their money back? Via solar energy. There is a LOT of evidence that indicates that we really have hit peak oil and that future issues will come about. Assuming that W. d
Lasers to platforms floating at sea, then cables to land. The laser need send only 10x sunlight or so, not enough to cause real damage in any mishap, even though they should be in a looped interlock "dead man's switch" (ie. transistor). Just as long as they steadily transmit, unlike sunlight subject to weather, night and seasons. This part of the technology was demo'ed to me and the Planetary Society by Grumman as long as 17 years ago. And they were pitching the Society (at Columbia U) on backing their going
Of course, extension cords that long would probably be pretty heavy, and impractical, so we'll make them out of something with negligible or zero mass -- like photons. Like microwaves, or lasers.
Funny thing is, that at least some ppl here are busy trying to calculate the copper that will be required for an extension cord that runs from the moon to the earth. And they will still not get it.
SELENE (Score:5, Informative)
Not to be confused with (Score:2)
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Yo, what's up?
Thank God! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Thank God! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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You can't win an argument with a nutcase. He'll just say that the pics from the Japanese mission are fake, and probably create some conspiracy about the US paying the Japs to "keep the secret". Don't count on that $50.
Re:Thank God! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Thank God! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Also, in most cases them 'nuts' are at least partially correct, in that there usually is a conspiracy where they suppose there could be.
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I've never used pot on a regular basis, but I've noticed that (1) it helps the mind bring together seemingly unrelated facts, events, and patterns (2) when this happens, you get that strong sense of discovery or enl
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Neither of those require a human presence to set them up.
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[tinfoil]
And precisely how do you know that its actually a functioning seismometer? Instead of just a transmitter that sends out fake signals now and again.
[/tinfoil]
There is little you can do or show to a TrueBeliever that would "prove" that we landed humans on the moon. All can be explained away. Usually very badly, but they give a good try.
Three metric tons (Score:4, Funny)
Are you sure about that? [slashdot.org]
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What The Article Does Not Say... (Score:5, Funny)
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Luna 2 anniversary (Score:2)
It was a great feat back then [wikipedia.org] and it is a great feat today.
Kudos to japanese space team!
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All your base are belong to us! [wikipedia.org]
The fools!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Kaguya (Score:2, Informative)
Coincidence?
I think not.
Is everyone playing nice? (Score:4, Interesting)
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But seriously, I was wondering the same thing, how are there experiments gonna vary from ours (if at all) considering the near half century technology gap between automated experiment equipment then and now.
Service To World: Shared Info In This Post (Score:2)
There, that about sums it up. For my next post, I'll share what the nations of earth have learned from Mars after spending billions trying to reach it. That post will be a dupe of this one.
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Well
very high Japan probe failure rate (Score:4, Informative)
The had a little better luck with a comet probe. It made it there. I was supposed to retrieve samples. They think it might have gotten some. But the probe died on the way back to Earth.
Good luck next time!
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Isn't this kinda sad? (Score:5, Interesting)
We should already have moon-based lasers to shoot down them godless foreign spy satellites before they enter orbit. We should own that goddamned moon, complete with a Disneyland! And blackjack! And hookers!
In fact, forget the moon!
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In fact, forget the moon!
Thats pretty much what happend.
Upcoming missions ... (Score:4, Funny)
Tiny? (Score:2, Informative)
tons are tons are tonnes (info) (Score:3, Informative)
The difference between the two tons (or tonnes if you must) is so small that to qualify whether you're using one or the other is nit-picking[1]. As it is, unless the weight of the spacecraft is an exact number of tons, the journalistic rounding-off of the weight far exceeds this small difference in definitions.
[1]unless of course you're using the weight in orbital mechanics calculations, in which case you'll need better accruacy than the 1 significant digit reported here.
Why the moon-crazy? (Score:2, Interesting)
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If we're going to get picky... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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The Sun lands over 1.3KW:m^2 [wikipedia.org] on the Moon's surface. The Moon's surface is 3.8E7Km^2 [wikipedia.org], or 3.8E13m^2 [google.com]. The world consumes about 15TW [wikipedia.org]. 15TW is 3 hundredths of a percent [google.com] of the Lunar insolation. Even at 10% efficiency, only 0.3% of the Lunar surface would power the Earth. Since the US consumes only about 3.3TW [wikipedia.org], we'd need only about 0.075% of the Lunar surface.
Facty enough for you?
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Besides, it's not even necessary to travel back and forth repeatedly. We could send a robot that manufactures the solar panels and other infrastructure on site, as has already been demonstrated. Your idea about storage and "conversion" costs is similarly hairsplitting. They're more than matched by the longterm political (eg. war) and materials costs of our current energy
That is why W. is pushing the moon. (Score:2)
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This part of the technology was demo'ed to me and the Planetary Society by Grumman as long as 17 years ago. And they were pitching the Society (at Columbia U) on backing their going
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Really, really long extension cords.
Of course, extension cords that long would probably be pretty heavy, and impractical, so we'll make them out of something with negligible or zero mass -- like photons. Like microwaves, or lasers.
See Doc Ruby's post above for details.
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