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Space Science

The Best Of Planetary Explorers 143

Posted by Hemos from the the-few-the-proud dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's timeline is published today on the top seventy five events in recent planetary explorations. Since June and July inaugurates three new landers going to Mars, it is curious to see their selected images: Venusian crust hot enough to melt lead, comets colliding with Jupiter, Europa's frozen ocean. But the most precious discoveries may be those chalked up as nearly free riders: the fifteen Mars rocks that annually are found among Antarctic meteors [100 grams total] and all those four and half million personal computers doing SETI@home CPU cycles."
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The Best Of Planetary Explorers More

The Best Of Planetary Explorers

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  • Number 1... (Score:5, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:07AM (#6330889) Journal
    Teaching everybody the metric system and getting them all to USE IT AT THE SAME TIME!

  • Best Planetary Explorers (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:14AM (#6330963)

    Dr. Smith from Lost in Space, of course.

    Everybody knows that.

  • Very Good Article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Talking Goat ( 645295 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:16AM (#6330974)
    Great material. I really like seeing all of these missions and scientific discoveries listed in one concise manner. Not only does it make for great reading, but it also makes for good material during those inane "how can we justify space exploration" arguments.

    • Re:Very Good Article (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      it also makes for good material during those inane "how can we justify space exploration" arguments.
      Yep - good material for the people who oppose manned space exploration. Send all the robots you like, but leave the useless people at home!

  • 1985..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by redheaded_stepchild ( 629363 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:17AM (#6330979)
    As if the universe had something bad to eat the night before, we get a moon named PUCK circling Uranus.

    • Re:1985..... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As if the universe had something bad to eat the night before, we get a moon named PUCK circling Uranus.

      I suspect that the 'funny' mods are not so much laughing with you as at you. Puck, like many of Uranus's satellites, is named after a Shakespearean character. Specifically, Puck is a character from A Midsummer Night's Dream. [wikipedia.org]

      So Puck rhymes with f*ck. Though its etymological root [m-w.com] would have been pronounced "as if the universe had [had] something bad to eat the night before."

      • Re:1985..... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @11:40AM (#6331677)
        > > As if the universe had something bad to eat the night before, we get a moon named PUCK circling 'funny' mods are not so much laughing with you as at you. Puck, like many of Uranus's satellites, is named after a Shakespearean character. Specifically, Puck is a character from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

        I dunno, I happen to think a fairy circling Uranus is pretty freakin' funny.

        But since you bring up Shakespeare, so was Oberon the Fourth Moon, and since we've already got the King of the Fairies circling Uranus, what do you have against Puck? Really, what's one more fairy between friends?

        (Now, a fairy circling my anus isn't funny at all, no sirree!)

      • I apologize for not being able to please you. Apparently I've not missed my target audience, thus the funny mod. Next time I'll try harder to be more high-handed and pompous, so you'll feel like part of the crowd.

  • SETI@Home - Best? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:18AM (#6330986) Homepage
    "and all those four and half million personal computers doing SETI@home CPU cycles."

    Perhaps I'm too demanding in my definition of "best" but I'd submit that any project, no matter how ambitious, would have to produce something before earning this kind of distinction.

    • "Perhaps I'm too demanding in my definition of "best" but I'd submit that any project, no matter how ambitious, would have to produce something before earning this kind of distinction."

      I dunno, didnt DNF get some sort of "best game" award in like, 98, 99, 00...

    • Re:SETI@Home - Best? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SnowDog_2112 ( 23900 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:25AM (#6331067) Homepage
      I think SETI@Home has been successful at something many of these other events also achieved -- capturing the imagination of the populace.

      I remember as a child, reading magazine articles about the moons of Jupiter, seeing an artist's conception of Jupiter rising behind a Volcano on Io, and being flabbergasted ... awestruck.

      Whether it was picturing running on the moon in the low gravity, or gazing out the window at Jupiter as a passenger spaceship did a loop around the gas giant on its way to an unknown destination, my imagination was completely dedicated to space travel.

      Years later, I run SETI@Home for the same simple reasons. The thought of having some small part in what could arguably be the biggest discovery ever ... that's something.

      If SETI@Home never finds anything, it has still succeeded in giving me some measure of joy and excitement, that I'm doing my own small part.
      • You aren't doing anything by running SETI@home. All that childish wonder just went to waste, I would have expected you to end up an astronomer or scientist or something.

        The odds are you'll never leave this planet, ever. If you'd played your cards right you could have at least had a chance to set foot on the moon, or do a few loops on the ISS.

        I'm fine here on Earth, thank you very much. When our technical ability reaches the point of making space travel universally available, then I'll look at it with some
      • woah!

        Check out the Carl Sagan book "Contact"... or the movie, both are good enough for you to feel fine for doing your own small part... I run the SETI@Home too...

        Haha... if there's nothing out there, then there's a lot of wasted space... ;)

    • Re:SETI@Home - Best? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:40AM (#6331187) Homepage Journal
      Perhaps the strongest result to come out of SETI@home is the validation of a new means of performing research, i.e. the distributed computing model. SETI@home took that model and rolled it out into the public domain where everyday people could become a contributing part of research.

      In that sense alone, regardless of concrete results, SETI@home belongs on the list...

    • Re:SETI@Home - Best? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sixdotoh ( 584811 ) <sixdotohNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:49AM (#6331263) Homepage
      whether or not SETI@home finds anything, it has opened the door for distributed computing. i don't know any exact dates, but i do know that SETI@home was the first example of public distributed computing that i heard of. and it has since created the public interest and model for other distributed computing projects such as cures for cancer and other scientific research.

      • Re:SETI@Home - Best? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Distributed.net [distributed.net] was around years before SETI@Home.
        • Well, "Years" might be a little misleading.

          From the distributed.net home page, they were founded in 1997... Seti@Home (as a distinct project from the SETI Radio-telescope-only endeavor) was planned in 1997 and started collecting data in 1998, so at most it was about a year behind.

          Not that either group cares.

    • Re:SETI@Home - Best? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by confused one ( 671304 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:49AM (#6331267)
      It has accomplished something, in scientific terms. It showed that there are no discernable signals at the level the search was performed.

      It showed that it was possible to connect 4.5 million processors together to perform a massive calculation (takes it beyond theory)

      Not to mention that it shows, if properly motiviated, 4.5 million people can be convinced to pay Seti's electric bill :p

    • Re:SETI@Home - Best? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by isomeme ( 177414 )
      Seti@Home has produced something; thanks to this work, we can now make pretty firm statements about what kinds of ET signals are *not* present. This is a valid and extremely important scientific accomplishment. It allows us to refine models of what is out there, and saves us the trouble of looking in already well-explored experimental territory.

      By analogy, physicists tried for a decade to produce Higgs bosons before finally getting some evidence that they'd produced a few. The earlier experiments were n
    • You're just not a scientist. SETI@Home has produced a lot. Just because all it has produced is known negatives doesn't mean that the information isn't useful.
    • Actually, in science, a 'no result' can sometimes be just as interesting as a 'result'.

      The complete failure of early 20th Century scienmtists to measure the 'ether' is a case in point. Turns out it wasn't there, a nice thing to know.

  • What does it take? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:20AM (#6331019)
    What kind of energetic event does it take to break up and then hurl into space chunks of a planet that then, perhaps decades, centuries, or millenia later, arrive on another world as meteorites? The proposed big impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, was it sufficiently energetic to hurl debris free of Earth's gravity well so that there may be impacts from Earth on other of Sol's planets? What's the least energetic event that could still theoretically hurl a chunk of Earth into space?

    • Re:What does it take? (Score:2, Informative)

      by turgid ( 580780 )
      It depends how big the chunk is. Basically, the impact needs to accelerate the "chunk" form zero to escape velocity. Escape velocity is the same for everything (it only depends on the earth's mass and the distance from the centre of mass) but varies very very very slightly with height. How much of a push your chunk needs depends on its mass.
    • What kind of energetic event does it take to break up and then hurl into space chunks of a planet that

      Well, if you think about the impact in the first place; it is some rock that has fallen from very far through the Earth's gravitational field. Perhaps it had additional kinetic energy as well.

      In theory, if all that energy was captured by another particle of the same size that could be sent out in space again.

      But of course, rarely when we drop a rock does another one bounce up to about the same hig

    • In the case of Mars, (Score:3, Interesting)

      by leonbrooks ( 8043 )
      a whacking great bolt of lightning [nasa.gov] should just about do it. The characteristics match across the board. The only issue being that conventional science admits of no source for such a bolt.
    • The impact on mars was, FSCKin' HUGE (to use the technical term).

      Big enough, in fact, that a photo of Mars taken from the right angle shows the planet being a little bit 'out of round', which makes the crater about a metric kazzillion times bigger than any crater on Earth.

      If we'd taken a hit that big, it wouldn't just have wiped out the dinosaurs, it would probably have sterilized the entire planet.

  • Waiting... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:21AM (#6331024)
    I'm still waiting for a new planet to be added to our solar system. Hell, it's been a hundred odd years since the last one was found and some people are finding that one to be faulty? Come on people! NOTHING should take a century between updates!

    • Re:Waiting... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Think of the current state of the solar system like a release of Debian.

      We're currently at something like Woody. Very stable, no really contentious points.

      It will be, as with Debian, at least an aeon before another significant change is announced :D
    • I'm still waiting for a new planet to be added to our solar system.

      I am still waiting for an old planet to be deducted from our solar system.

      With more and more rocks almost the size of Pluto being found, chances are it will lose it's planethood.

      Tor
    • something called "X" that was to be the tenth planet, but they got all stopped because they didn't know if it was a planet or a planetoide (ie, too small to play in the big league 8)
    • Face it, dude. The solar system is dead.

    • Re:Waiting... (Score:5, Informative)

      by confused one ( 671304 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:52AM (#6331299)
      You've not been paying attention. There have been two (unofficially) added: Varuna and Quaoar.

      The hang up is that there is no formal definition for what constitutes "a planet" There are groups of astronomers working on this now (and this has been a subject of prior discussion on /.)

    • > Come on people! NOTHING should take a century between updates!

      --Tell that to Marcelo Tosatti, the 2.4 kernel maintainer... :b

  • My favourite: Mars Express and Beagle 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davidmb ( 213267 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:22AM (#6331041)
    I believe that this ESA project will show how a complex space mission can be carried out professionally on a (relatively) low budget without compromising quality.

    This is exactly the kind of thing NASA has been trying to do in the past, and could show them the way forward.

  • ALL Unmanned (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When are we going to get a human being off of this stinkin' rock and onto ANY other planet?? Fine. Good. We're sending probes to most of the other planets in the solar system. We're already reasonably sure that some boogeyman isn't going to kill us if we go into space. We're already reasonably sure a different boogeyman isn't going to kill us if we land on Mars. Why don't we send a human being instead of multi-million dollar paperweights?
    • Once the air runs out, the humans also become multi-million dollar paperweights!

    • Re:ALL Unmanned (Score:3, Informative)

      by confused one ( 671304 )
      Because it's cheaper to send a multi-million dollar "paperweight" than a man. It costs multi-billions of dollars (10's or even 100's) to do this. Until Congress admits to itself that (a) it wants to send men to Mars, etc. and (b) it's going to COST; then, I don't suspect it's going to happen.
  • Remember the mars probe that bounced off the atomosphere into oblivian? Or the one that crashed and burried itself into the surface? Or how about the countless explosions of commercial satellite payloads of the titan rockets?

    Not to mention losing 2 out of the 5 shuttles because engineers sorta just "guessed" a problem was okay.

    Seems to me that while there have been some noteable accomplishments there are also some major pitfalls in the nasa program. I know that space exploration is a new field, but it would be nice if simple mistakes weren't happening.

    • Re:Ummm ... they left some stuff out here ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Matrix272 ( 581458 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:35AM (#6331143)
      Not to mention losing 2 out of the 5 shuttles because engineers sorta just "guessed" a problem was okay.

      What other option was there? I'm definitely not a NASA astro-physicist, but it seems pretty logical to me that there's no such thing as a rescue mission in space... yet. I do admit that the recent disaster might have been avoided if they would have fixed the broken tiles on the wing, but how would they do that? Do they have spare pieces of everything in the shuttle, just in case something happens? Eventually you have to realize that the chance that a relatively minor mishap could turn into a disaster might outweigh the time and cost of attempting an ad-hoc, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants temporary solution.
      • I'm definitely not a NASA astro-physicist, but it seems pretty logical to me that there's no such thing as a rescue mission in space... yet.

        After Apollo 13, there's no excuse not to have a resuce plan.

        A high-manuverabilty "rescue pod" to stretch the shuttle's supplies and a "quick lauch" plan to send the next shuttle in the que (sic) to bring the astronauaghts home.

        It is rocket science, but it's not miracle-work. "There's nothing we could have done" is an unacceptable answer from NASA when it comes to
        • Wow, some people are completely clueless of the situation.

          Columbia survived the same thing a half dozen times before, this was nothing different according to information available to the engineers.

          Additionally, theres no logistics for two shuttles in space. Houston cannot physically handle the information.
          • Columbia survived the same thing a half dozen times before, this was nothing different according to information available to the engineers.

            That's the acceptable answer--"we didn't know the problem was this bad."

            Additionally, theres no logistics for two shuttles in space. Houston cannot physically handle the information.

            No excuse. Isn't there a backup for Houston? Doesn't Houston have backups for its logistics system?

            There should be a rescue plan for the shuttle. There really isn't a good excuse wh
            • thank you for your comprehensive and well reasoned response, mr. armchair rocket scientist.

              having backups for something is a LOT different than using both of them at the same time to juggle simultaneous missions.

              now begone before we taunt you a second time.
      • [I]but it seems pretty logical to me that there's no such thing as a rescue mission in space[/I]

        I suspect, if they'd known, they could have organised something. Even if there was no other shuttle available, the Russians could probably have organised something. Even if they couldn't get a man-carrying beastie up there before supplies ran out, they could have diverted a military launch to re-supply while they got their act together.

        People make mistakes, the problem with manned space travel is that those mis
      • You're missing the point. Maybe there was nothing NASA could do to save the astronauts after launch but what kind of an excuse is that? Columbia wasn't the first shuttle to suffer tile damage due to falling foam (actually it was, on its maiden f-ing flight!). Maybe if NASA had recognized that it was a serious problem, instead of brushing it aside like so many other problems (*cough* o-rings *cough*), those astronauts would still be alive today (not to mention the multibillion dollar shuttle they were flying

    • Re:Ummm ... they left some stuff out here ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tony_gardner ( 533494 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @11:02AM (#6331389) Homepage
      You know, I've never really understood this sort of comment on slashdot. I mean, we're geeks, right. I mean, something like 90% of the stories on this site revolve around how perfection in automation is practically impossible to achieve. About how, a certain level of bugs is to be expected no matter how much the software is tested.

      What, exactly, makes you think that NASA has some sort of secret magic bullet that they're not telling us about? What's the reason for the space shuttles carrying astronauts? Because automation is unreliable, at best.

      The scientists at NASA don't just sorta guess. They make educated guesses. Sometimes those guesses are wrong. The stuff we don't know about flight at the kind of speeds would shock you. (Try googling for "real gas effects" or "radiation heat transfer" together with "re-entry" if you're interested.) For instance I believe that on the first shuttle flight the prediction of center of lift was off by 0.7%, necessitating doubling the flap area.

      So combine the science we don't fully understand with automation and we will have failures. It's just a fact. Would you prefer they didn't try?

  • Soviet Venera landers were nifty (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:34AM (#6331141)
    I grew up in a small, conservative USian town and so the education that we got about space exploration was exclusively about USian missions (in fact, the school board prohibited the teaching of information about Soviet successes since they deemed such information to be unpatriotic.)

    But the fact of the matter is that the Venera landers were a marvel of human engineering. They were able to touch down on the planet's surface, take instrument readings, and even return pictures of the planet's surface and skyline .. all of this in an environment where the temperature is 900 degrees (Fahrenheit), the atmospheric pressure is 100 times what it is on Earth, and it rains sulfuric acid. The Venera landers only operated for a few minutes each, but it's a wonder that they were ever able to operate at all! Mars looks like a cakewalk by comparison.

    A lot of what we know about conditions on Venus comes from the Russian missions, and it's unfortunate that more schoolchildren (at least here in the US) are not taught about it because of some skewed nationalistic agenda.

  • Star Trek (Score:4, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:38AM (#6331169) Homepage Journal
    Even fewer may recognize that international teams have flown a balloon in the clouds on Venus, or touched down on an asteroid. Missions have intentionally crashed a spacecraft into the moon, in hopes of observing from Earth an ejected spray of lunar ice.

    ta da da .. ta da da ta da da
    *opening star trek music plays*
    Space-- the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission--
    to explore strange new worlds...to seek out new life and new civilizations...to boldly go where no man has gone before.

    Captain's Log, Stardate 2948.5.
    Starship Enterprise remains stranded on the moon. We have been through a trying time. As per Starbase 11's orders, we have intentionally crashed the Enterprise into the moon, in hopes of allowing scientists on earth to observe an ejected spray of lunar ice. Our next mission is to boldly fly a balloon in the clouds of Venus.

    Mr. Spock: I must say, Captain, the human mind is infinitely illogical. I am amazed at it's unconventional approach to science.*superior smile*

    Dr. McCoy: Was that a smile Mr. Spock? I must say that was a definite display of human emotion.

    *spock raises suspicious eyebrow*

    Coming up next week: The crew of the Starship Enterprise tries to seek out new life and new civilizations by launching the SETI@HOME project.

  • Planet Colony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matrix272 ( 581458 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:41AM (#6331190)
    I think it's about time we looked seriously at starting a colony on Mars. It's fairly obvious that space travel in general is still pretty risky business, so why not go for the gold, in a manner of speaking?

    As long as the astronauts are risking their lives (and spending MY tax dollars), do something I'll be able to tell my grandchildren about. I don't give a rat's ass about "mapping to outer solar system cometary fields and Kuiper Belt" or looking "for water-ice on the closest planet to the Sun". Whether there's water on Mercury doesn't affect me, or my children, or their children is any discernible way. Building a city on Mars does. Let's get to it.

    • Re:Planet Colony (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bigjnsa500 ( 575392 )
      But first we need a point to start the journey. This is why I think we need a moon base FIRST. Use the minerals and materials from the moon to manufacture a big spaceship to carry us there. There is no way we can build something big enough and launch it into orbit. It would be simply too expensive.
      • Good call! I can have one for you by next Thursday!

        No, but seriously, I absolutely agree. At first, I thought that the ISS [nasa.gov] was supposed to be that starting point, but either I misunderstood, or NASA got sidetracked... again. I just want them to do SOMETHING worthwhile. It seems like forever since any good news from them.

        What are the main requirements for a manned space flight to Mars? Oxygen, fuel, and (duh) people (if I'm missing any, let me know). Oxygen seems like a no-brainer. Just have a bunch of
        • The ISS was a good plan, but its just not big enough to hold all the materials and people necessary to pull it off. When the low gravity of the Moon, it would be perfect building and launching facility.

          The only problem we have to solve is HOW do we hold enough air, water and fuel for the entire trip. Do we somehow make water as we traverse along? Make the fuel from Mars?

          • I forgot about water... it could be tricky. I don't think Hydrogen would be hard to come by, but Oxygen might be. Perhaps we could construct oxygen molecules from carbon? Given that we can produce artificial molecules, can we actually make an oxygen molecule fairly easily? If so, I've got the easiest solution... build the machine to create oxygen molecules on Mars' surface. Turn it on, and let it crank away. If we can make oxygen molecules, it couldn't be too hard to make water molecules... one oxygen, and
            • I didn't think of this. Do they still say there is ice on Mars? If so there is our water and propulsion solution.

            • Re:Planet Colony (Score:2, Informative)

              by dwhitman ( 105201 )
              I don't think Hydrogen would be hard to come by, but Oxygen might be. Perhaps we could construct oxygen molecules from carbon?

              This is so far out in the weeds it reminds me of that quote from Pauli - "This is not right. It's not even wrong."

              Let's see:

              1. Unless you're going to dip into the sun or one of the gas giants, water is going to be a lot easier to find than hydrogen.

              2. Oxygen is easy to find on the moon, albeit tied up as aluminosilicates. Energy is cheap on the moon (lots of sunlight) so

          • You really need to ... (Score:2, Informative)

            by torpor ( 458 )
            ... read this:

            http://www.nw.net/mars/

            What you don't seem to realize is that building a base on moon capable of producing inter-planetary vehicles is just as difficult as building a base on mars, producing inter-planetary vehicles. The *only* difference is the distances involved - in terms of energy/resources, we may as well just go straight to Mars and do it, and skip the moon entirely.

            In fact, its easier for us to get to Mars than the moon, and back again. Why? Because Mars has an atmosphere - we can
      • That's exactly what Bush Sr. was told by NASA in the early 90's when he told them to draw up a plan to get us to Mars. Price tag? About $300 billion. Their mistake, and yours, lies in assuming we need "a big spaceship to carry us there". That's just ridiculous. You don't send a bunch of people over at once. You send them in groups of 5 or 6. Build 12 small ships and put them on a continuous unmanned loop around the inner solar system. There'll always be a ship close by ready to take some more coloni
    • The problem is that, if you look at history, the impetus for colonizing mars just isn't there. Sure, the people who went wanted to go "because it was there," but the finances were for other reasons.

      "Because it's there" doesn't cut it.

      There were a few basic reasons why governments and people ponied up enormous amounts of cash for colonization efforts:

      - They could make money off of resources to be found there.
      - They could exploit people there. And probably make money off of them.
      - Religious / political fre

  • Universe is flipping the bird. (Score:3, Funny)

    by rodney dill ( 631059 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:49AM (#6331266) Journal
    Probably off topic, so Mod me as you will,

    However, there is a great picture on the
    Astronomy Picture of the Day [nasa.gov] that looks like its flipping you off.
    • Flipping you off or getting ready for that prostate exam?

    • NASA:This Carina sub-cloud is particularly striking partly because it's clear definition stimulates the human imagination (e.g. it could be perceived as a superhero flying through a cloud, arm up, with a saved person in tow below).

      Rodney Dill:However, there is a great picture on the Astronomy Picture of the Day that looks like its flipping you off.

      Tomato, to-mah-to? I don't think so. It's da bird, nasa. Since it is a gas cloud that is being 'boiled' away by neighboring stars, that old 'Last Act of [wsu.edu]

  • Nevada (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by berkeleyjunk ( 250251 )
    What about the moon landing scene shot in Nevada?

    • Re:Nevada (Score:3, Funny)

      by sixdotoh ( 584811 )
      Nevada? i thought it was in some studio either at NASA or some hollywood joint. moonmovie.com [moonmovie.com]

      lol, why the guy doesn't write a book instead of selling a movie is my big hang up ;)

      • Re:Nevada (Score:1, Insightful)

        by eclectic4 ( 665330 )
        There are even MORE books and even MORE links to web-sites proving the contrary. The proof offerered as to the moon landing's reality far, FAR outweigh those of the skeptics. This is a no brainer.

        I have researched every single claim of the "faked moon landing" people, and have not found ONE that wasn't explained rather simply. In fact, there are dozens of things that show this was done on the low gravity surface of the moon that CANNOT be explained by any artificial means. Look at the moon dust fly up from
        • OMG!

          ;-P

          Now, who in the hell is going to flame someone for arguing the moon landings were real?!?!

          Flamebait...oh that's cracking us up here...thank you!

      • Oh please don't give any more pointers to this guy's site, he doesn't need the publicity. What an attention-craving boob. I can't wait to meet him in person so's I can give him a Buzz Aldrin (nice square punch in the jaw).
  • <insert joke linking Planetary Explorer and SCO here>

  • Ah, ah, ah! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by c0d3fu ( 594060 ) <james@macrohub.com> on Monday June 30, 2003 @10:54AM (#6331313) Homepage
    Oh dear, I hear some criticism of both NASA and the SETI project. Though most space exploration is driven by military-industrial interests (lots of pork; forget projects like "Star Wars" - think space-based offensive nuclear capabilities to ensure a quick-strike), SETI is interested in a more noble pursuit: are we alone? Absence of evidence is not evidence for absence (to quote Ellie from the movie Contact, "You know, there are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If only one out of a million of those had planets, all right, and if just one out of a million of those had life, and if just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there.."). Think about the dramatic changes that the discovery of intelligent alien life might bring about. Isn't that justification enough? Humanity might even be mature enough to handle the enormous cultural differences that typically lead to conflict whenever societies foreign to each other meet. Maybe. All of this doesn't even take into account the technological improvements that result from us rising to the complex problem of space exploration. For instance, SETI@home is a model example for distributed data processing if I ever saw one. Money spent here has some positive feedback for the economy, whereas money spent on long-term welfare provides little to none (not to mention sustaining unhealthy behavior on the part of the citizens). Plus, I want to know if aliens talk and look like the stuffed ones from Toy Story, or breathe methane gas and communicate using olfactory stimulus. Talk about a hard language to decipher. ;)

  • The Best is Yet to Come (Score:5, Informative)

    by eutychus_awakes ( 607787 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @11:02AM (#6331387)
    In the next decade we will see the first of a totally new class of orbiting space telescopes - large arrays of sensors spanning many tens of miles across. These will be true orbiting interferometers [space.com] which will bring amazing optical resolution to "near-earth" explorers.

    The ramifications for earth-based planetary exploration are huge. Currently, work is being performed on how to keep such a satellite array in perfect alignment. Low-thrust ion engines and tide-stabilizing configurations are flying as we speak.

    NASA has plans to launch the first Space-Based Interferometer [nasa.gov] in 2009. Taking into account the inevitable schedule slide, we should start seeing some really cool pictures in about 2012. AND, since the array will live relatively close to our "Big Blue Marble," it might also be a reason to keep the ISS and the manned space program in general running for another decade. All it takes is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

  • Voyager... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Biff Stu ( 654099 )
    Because all know that it will return with some really advanced technology from a race of robots.
  • They have the major tradegy of the Challenger in '86, but they don't have Columbia of 2003. Wonder why?
  • Surely, one of the greatest events of the last quarter century of planetary exploration was the launch of the first element of the International Space Station. It's the next logical step to the rest of the solar system.

    NASA says it, so it must be true.

  • Good stuff (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CaptainPhong ( 83963 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @12:11PM (#6331934) Homepage
    There's some good stuff listed there, and some sad failures too.

    I remember hearing about Shoemaker-Levy 9 and thinking "oh, that's gonna be so frickin' cool." When the time came, I was watching TV, and one of the NASA people was handling a press conference. Someone asked a question about what we should expect to see. Her answer was along the lines of "well, a lot of predictions have been made; some simulations suggest could see quite a spectacular plume, but it could be more subdued, me might not get to see much..." Before she got a chance to finish, an astronomer came out with a couple of bottles of champagne grinning from ear to ear. When the first pictures started showing up, my hair stood on end.

    [OTRANT]
    It makes me sad that so few people can appreciate magic moments like this in science. Instead they turn to pseudoscientific herbal bullshit about holistic medicine, astrology, dowsing, planet X, moon hoaxes, remote psyhic viewing or past-life regression. There are a lot of good people out there working hard to bring real knowledge about the universe to all of humanity. Nothing good has ever come from a snake-oil salesman.
    [/OTRANT]
  • 1986
    - Voyager 2 flies past Uranus

    And you haven't unclenched your cheeks since!

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