NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon

djasbestos writes "NASA is planning to smash a spacecraft into the Moon in order to look for hydrogen deposits in the poles. More notably, it will impact with significantly greater force (100x, per the article) than previous Moon collisions, such as by the Lunar Prospector and Smart-1 probes. Admiral Ackbar was unreachable for comment as to the exact location and size of the Moon's thermal exhaust port."

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Bothans died to bring samzenpus this information...

Re:

[Dr. Cody]

Of mesotheliosis?

Re:

[The_Wilschon]

No, they are going to pilot the spacecraft.

Obligatory Revisited

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon's poles can't repel firepower of that magnitude!

That's no moon...

[rhomboid]

It's a space station...

Re:That's no moon...

[Workaphobia]

Obligatory response: http://xkcd.com/307/ [xkcd.com]
I find my lack of freedom to do otherwise disturbing.

Excellent, more activity like this is needed

[posys]

to get us to the goal... http://roboeco.com/Economia-Robotica-Sin-Salarios [roboeco.com]

Re:

[philspear]

And there it is, the last star wars quote ever on /.

Right...

[rucs_hack]

Which insensitive clod tagged this story Beagle3?

This entire thread will be kept behind until whoever did it owns up...
Come on, I can wait all day if necessary.

Re:

[powerlord]

The successor to Beagle 2 [wikipedia.org] ;)

"Beagle 2 was an unsuccessful British landing spacecraft that formed part of the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission. It is not known for certain that the lander reached the Martian surface; all contact with it was lost upon its separation from the Mars Express six days before its scheduled entry into the atmosphere. It may have missed Mars altogether, skipped off the atmosphere and entered an orbit around the sun, or burned up during its descent. If it reached the

Re:

[nebaz]

I just played a heart in every round of Hearts. Against Bill Gates. I call it "shooting the moon with a big ass spacecraft doing mach 100!"

Practising...

[PinkyDead]

...for another Mars mission, eh?

It had to be said - even if it is terribly trolly.

Re:Practising...

[martin-boundary]

Either that, or the Russians weren't impressed by the recent satellite shootdown, so the top brass want to do one more missile test with a slightly bigger satellite.

Re:

[Himring]

Don't you watch tv? We never landed on the moon. We never made it into space. We obviously didn't shoot down that satellite as it didn't exist. I say, there is no russia either. These conspiracy theorists are weak I say! Weak!!!

Time for the ObLiberalMyth

[sconeu]

The Moon, A Ridiculous Liberal Myth [slashdot.org].

In China

[rucs_hack]

Russian Spaceships Fly Yo....

Oh wait, that's actually true..

Don't knock experience...

[Dareth]

... and the Mars engineers have some of the best experience in the world with smashing objects into objects in space.

It may work better if they don't tell them it is supposed to crash into the moon, just have them plan another mission to Mars.

Re:

[elrous0]

The press may call it "Moon lander mission goes horribly wrong due to multiple system failures," but NASA calls it "retasking."

Wrong guy surely

[91degrees]

Admiral Ackbar led the attack on the second Battle Station. The thermal exhaust port weakness was on the first.

Re:Wrong guy surely

[CrazyJim1]

Heh, I'd bet all my mod points that you get modded up for this.
A: You corrected someone's error
B: It was Star Wars related
C: You made fun of someone who thought he was funny, but many people don't.
D: You dead panned it.

Re:Wrong guy surely

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

It's not going to happen now that you explained it to death, and then picked apart its corpse for good measure.

Re:Wrong guy surely

[Eagleartoo]

It's not going to happen now that you explained it to death, and then picked apart its corpse for good measure.

It's even worse, the OP didn't qoute who he was belittling so now his correction stands out there like a naked British royal, and the horsebeater who replied to that also cuts of his nose to spite his face in laughing at this guy's expense because noone knows what the first guy was talking about. You sir, however, have rightly decimated the second party. I will fall victim to your folly as well, for I am criticizing and commenting without having any context of the original idea put forth for comic value.

Re:

[dzfoo]

You are right. We should try contacting General Antilles, who's in charge of the small rebellion planning an attack run on the battle station. I heard he just received some secret plans to it.

          -dZ.

Re:

[tcolberg]

Lieutenant Porkins never gets any credit!

Re:Wrong guy surely

[QuantumG]

Actually the weakness was on both, that's why they went after the second one.. and it was a trap. In fact, the weakness was on all the big craft of the era. Star Destroyers were just as vulnerable to "Trench Run Syndrome" as the Death Stars. Snub starfighters were so successful at taking out large ships using TRS that the Imperial tactic of leaving small ships to planetary defenses had to be changed, thus creating the Lancer-class ships. Kuat Drive Yards designed and developed the first Lancer-class frigate with twenty quad-laser cannon batteries designed specifically for starfighter hunting. Ironically, the Imperial Starfleet found the Lancer-class too expensive for full fleet deployment. A few frigates made it into various fleets, but most admirals preferred to use, and subsequently lose, their TIE starfighters as anti-starfighter options. As a result, most Lancer-class frigates, like smaller ships before them, were assigned to rear guard operations and planetary defense after all.

Re:Wrong guy surely

[MSZ]

Life, get you should.

Re:

[QuantumG]

Gotta read something when the code is compiling.

Re:

[aproposofwhat]

Gentoo user, huh?

Re:

[manifoldronin]

Yeah, sure [xkcd.com].

Re:Wrong guy surely

[Oktober Sunset]

I think the main weakness of the second death star was the huge 'half is missing' hole on one side.

Re:

[QuantumG]

Umm.. did you miss the part where the Emperor said the second Death Star *wasn't* under construction and that it was all an elaborate trap? I can understand, seeing as he talks like this [insomnia.org] all the time, but it was kind of a big plot point. The second Death Star was identical to the first.. it was built at the same time as the first.. the Emperor just wanted the Rebels to think it was built in response to the first being destroyed.

Re:

[mr_matticus]

Umm.. did you miss the part where the Emperor said the second Death Star *wasn't* under construction and that it was all an elaborate trap?

Yes, because that never happened.

http://blogs.starwars.com/static/img/image-selector/full/original-trilogy/episode-vi/02.jpg [starwars.com]

Clearly either under construction or not identical to the first.

"Rather than rely on thermal exhaust ports to vent the reactor's incredible excess heat, the second Death Star would instead funnel the waste energy through a series of millimeter-wide heat dispersion ducts."
-Starwars.com, http://www.starwars.com/databank/location/deathstarii/ [starwars.com]

Sucks to be you.

Re:Wrong guy surely

[ozbird]

Admiral Ackbar led the attack on the second Battle Station.

Allah'u to his friends.

The thermal exhaust port weakness was on the first.

If someone shot a proton torpedo up your exhaust port, you'd have a moment of weakness too.

Pop-up Video--little known fact about ROTJ

[Phoenix666]

Lucas saved a ton of money on makeup costs by casting Tori Spelling to play Admiral Ackbar. It's a fact--look it up.

How long...

[Lifyre]

before someone tries to blame high tide, beached whales, and global warming on us crashing shit into the moon?

Re:How long...

[roguetrick]

I blame lunacy.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No. This... Is... NASAAAAAAA!
(kicks probe into gravity well)

I didn't know planned failure was okay...

[philspear]

I am planning on failing my midterms. I expect to fail this midterm by significantly more points (100x per my plans) than previous failures. I am doing this in search of hydrogen deposits in the poles.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote sensors indicate methane around Uranus

zzzz

[apodyopsis]

well now, lets hope they have better luck looking for hydrogen deposits then the Beagle Martian impacter of a few years ago...!

I mean, seriously, we can get two robotic rover probes on Mars for >3 years but are reduced to slinging a dumb mass to the moon?

Re:

[philspear]

Why go to all the trouble to put a rover on the moon? Get some binoculars, you'll be able to see everything a multi-million dollar robot on the surface would.

Re:

[Thanshin]

I'd so like to have binoculars that allowed me to see the moon as well as a microscope a hundredth of an inch away from the spot...

Re:

[Darfeld]

For the same reason we send rover to Mars instead of just looking at the planet from above with satellites I suppose...

I bet it wouldn't cost a single million dollar to build the rover (sending it to the moon could be an other matter thought. And I mean sending it so it can work once arrived. Craters don't count here... But maybe you can group some stuff in the rocket to divide the cost.)

Anyway, if the hydrogen is under the surface, rover won't do the job. The Dumb mass can do it and is much cheaper so...

Bu

Has to be done

[FoolsGold]

This is Slashdot, so I better get a good old tradition out of the way before someone else does I suppose...

NASA officials has released a press statement saying the spacecraft will not require any special programming to direct it towards a collision with the Moon. They simply plan to install Windows Vista on the craft and let nature take its course.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

And the bidding begins

[n3tcat]

NASA needs funds right? So they should sell the right to name the new crater on ebay.

Unfortunately

[TummyX]

Unfortunately, due to a failure to perform a metric/imperial conversion, the mission failed when the probe performed a perfect soft landing on the moon's surface.

Re:

[mpe]

Unfortunately, due to a failure to perform a metric/imperial conversion, the mission failed when the probe performed a perfect soft landing on the moon's surface.

Be even more embarrasing it it missed completly. Most ammusing though if it orbited the moon once and crashed back onto the launch pad...

Re:Unfortunately

[Thanshin]

Even more embarrassing would be to fail so miserably that the probe landed on the sea and they spent a year reporting having found water and living organisms on the moon.

Re:

[bob_jordan]

That would be preferable to missing entirely, slingshotting around and smacking into earth on the way back.

Bob.

Since a certain Mars mission has been mentioned

[hyades1]

may I suggest that NASA replace their somewhat embarrassing "Faster, better, cheaper" motto with "Closer, cheaper, deeper"?

Re:Since a certain Mars mission has been mentioned

[SeaFox]

replace their somewhat embarrassing "Faster, better, cheaper" motto with "Closer, cheaper, deeper"?

That's even worse. It sounds like the tagline for a porn movie.

Re:

[Ranger]

Actually, no. "Harder, faster, deeper." sounds like the tagline for a porn movie. Yeah, NASA.

Re:

[ArAgost]

Why not "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"? It already has some connections with space flight [youtube.com]

Gamma ray telescopes? Feh.

[Wilson_6500]

If there's anything that would get the public interested in space, it would be something like this. Why aren't they soliciting the public to name THIS noble craft? But I shouldn't kid myself: to really capture general interest, it would be needed to launch many crafts to bore holes such that, viewed from Earth, a person's name were to be spelled out. "Come," we could shout, "be the person to be remembered forever as having put the first and surely forever largest man-made eyesore upon the moon!"

Mooninites

[roguetrick]

This is what happens when you screw with boston. [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Dachannien]

That ol' Gorgatron's gonna get what's coming to him.

unmannedihope tag

[dwater]

So, this spacecraft is going to be built by Apple? Funny name. I don't predict a good future for it.

In other news...

[Thanshin]

NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon

Following NASA's new trend of sincerity, Burger King releases a new set of products under the name "Die fat bastard! Die" and NIKE presents the new AirSlave collection.

Not green

[TropicalCoder]

The overall energy of the impact will ... kick up 1,102 tons of debris and dust.

...and suppose water is a limited resource, and they just blew away/polluted a significant proportion of that reserve?

Re:

[todd1000]

Sometimes, we're just not too bright...

Re:

[Peeteriz]

On the scale of moon size (or the size of the area), and for any 'reserve' amounts, 1102 tons means 'insignificant quantity far less than estimation error', not 'significant proportion'.

Re:

[east coast]

If this impact contaminates a significant proportion of the water reserves on the moon than they're not worth the trouble anyway. But in all reality that would be like me saying that if we did a test in Pittsburgh would it contaminate the waters in Dallas? It simply of such a small scale effect against such a massive landscape that it's pretty much unthinkable.

Re:

[TropicalCoder]

It simply of such a small scale effect against such a massive landscape that it's pretty much unthinkable.

It is peculated that only creators at the south pole who's depths are in permanent shadow may contain water ice. How many creators would that be, anyhow? - after this test - one less - whatever the count!

Re:

[TropicalCoder]

I don't know if to mod this funny for a typo so reversing the meaning of the post

Look it up - Peculate: verb; meaning to both speculate and postulate at the same time.

Re:

[TropicalCoder]

Re: creators at the south pole

your homework assignment crater (krtr) 1. A bowl-shaped depression at the top of a volcano or at the mouth of a geyser

Who's to say there aren't any creators at the south pole of the moon, anyhow? Ever been there, wise guy? :-)

(Geez - I never even noticed that one! I can't spell any more - and the spelling checking doesn't flag it when I use the wrong word.)

Re:

[east coast]

Perculate: verb; to brew coffee.

har har... I'll be here all week!

Re:

[justthinkit]

One thousand, one hundred and two tons of debris and dust.

Plus or minus 500 tons.

Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[Wowsers]

Smash a probe, NASA's done it before. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/686674.stm [bbc.co.uk]

The disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander in December concluded a year of major failures for Nasa. The lander vanished less than three months after Nasa lost its sister spacecraft, the Mars Climate Orbiter, in highly-embarrassing circumstances. The $125m craft, which was to study the Red Planet's climate, went missing on 23 September after a mix-up between imperial and metric measurements

Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[mr100percent]

You may laugh, but NASA did do it before. During the final Apollo missions, they allowed the (abandoned) lunar module to crash into the moon in order to test seismic readings on the instruments left behind.

Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[mbone]

They also smashed the third stage of the Saturn V into the Moon for every Apollo after 13 IIRC, also as seismic probes. That had
considerably more kinetic energy than either the LEM upper stages or any of the recent impacts.

It wasn't just to test the seismometers, it was to map the interior of the Moon, once they found out that the Moon is seismically pretty quiet and doesn't have much in the way of Moonquakes. It was thus a very large scale example of the seismic prospecting that is done frequently in oil exploration.

Re:

[maotx]

Yes, for surely the moon is rich with oil ...

Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[joeljkp]

It's actually a relatively common thing to do.

A short list of missions intended to impact the Moon:

1. Luna 2 [wikipedia.org]
2. Ranger 3 [wikipedia.org]
3. Ranger 4 [wikipedia.org]
4. Ranger 5 [wikipedia.org]
5. Ranger 6 [wikipedia.org]
6. Ranger 7 [wikipedia.org]
7. Ranger 8 [wikipedia.org]
8. Ranger 9 [wikipedia.org]

A short list of missions with other goals, but were eventually intentionally impacted with the Moon:

1. every lunar orbiter ever

Re:

[Walruzoar]

The clangers http://www.clangers.co.uk/ [clangers.co.uk] ate that one, they will eat this one too...

NASA turns into drunken driver

[k33l0r]

So we've gone from landing on the moon to crashing into it? Truly the mark of progress...

Poor moon

[jgoemat]

More notably, it will impact with significantly greater force (100x, per the article) than previous Moon collisions

The moon cannot repel a force of that magnitude!

Hotblack Desiato is auditioning

[duzbin]

Are you sure this isn't an audition for Disaster Area.

they are just doing their job as they know ..

[freaker_TuC]

This will be very cheap research, they already had their extensive results of crashing stuff upon the moon.. ...so they'll hardly have to change any parameters for this mission!

If this was 1st of April

[Bromskloss]

I would have thought it was a (slightly tasteless) joke. This guy "Admiral Ackbar" sounds an awful lot like "Allahu Akbar", which some people, I imagine, might be shouting as they crash flying machines in to things.

We have the technology

[jcmoonraker]

We have the technology, the time is now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpX5aa5Lz4 [youtube.com]

where have we heard that one before?

[jollyreaper]

Metric vs. customary? Oh shit... -er, we meant to do that!

I'D LIKE TO SEE...

[sm62704]

TWO BRICKS BEING SMASHED TOGETHER!

I'm sorry sir, but that's offtopic. Try Again, please.

I'D LIKE TO SEE... A ROCKET SMASHING INTO THE MOON!

That's more like it. And now for something completely different...

Earth-on-moon violence

[aplusjimages]

Can't we all just get along. Too soon, too soon

Dr Banner Approves....

[LittleGuy]

One Small Step for Man,

One Big *SMASH* for Hulk!

Oblig. West Wing Quotes

[787style]

Toby Ziegler: They know it was on course traveling at a rate of 15,400 miles per hour, which it was supposed to. Somewhere during its descent it was also supposed to release two probes - each about the size of a basketball - firing them deep into the ground as part of the mission's search for evidence of water under surface.

Josh Lyman: We think if we hit the ground hard enough, we can make it to the center of the planet and find water?

Toby Ziegler: Yeah.

Josh Lyman: That's not a theory of physics pretty much disproved by Wile E. Coyote?

Stop the Warmongers!

[Eyeball97]

Bastards. It's all a cover story. They've declared war on The Clangers.

Venus envy

[smartfart]

Is NASA so angry at not being able to visit for 30+ years that they're lashing out at their mistress now? Or is this just a game of interplanetary darts? NASA's so rusty at this game, the Chinese ought to watch out that their manned expedition isn't hit by mistake.

Bah... NASA bores me. I'm looking forward to commercial lunar colonization, hopefully in the next decade.

whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Goaway]

All right then, Slashdot taggers, do tell us:

What could possibly go wrong?

What possible reason is there to use this crypto-Luddite tag?

why not just land there again?

[DragonTHC]

oh wait!

They should be looking for Helium-3

[Stavr0]

It's really useful fuel for fusion reactors.

After the Moon strike

[Ranger]

"My God! It's full of cheese!"

Calvin and Hobbes

[greyhueofdoubt]

A small red spacecraft breaks through the cloud cover of Mysterio system planet 6! At the controls, it's none other than our fearless hero, Spaceman Spiff! Piloting over the lifeless world, he reflects on his unusual mission...

QUIZ
1. 6+5= ...to somehoe crash planets 6 and 5 together!

In a scientific mission to discover what happens when two planets collide, Spaceman Spiff drops anchor! The anchor catches on a hillside! Spiff downshifts and guns the motor! Imperceptibly at first, the planet slowly moves, towe

Obligatory Mr. Show Reference

[ubergrits]

"On July 4th of this year, America will blow up the moon."

"We have the technology; the time is now; science can wait no longer; children are our future. America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon."

"Yes, and we'll be doing it during a full moon, so we make sure we get it all."

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kHpX5aa5Lz4 [youtube.com]

heckuva job, NASA. but you did that with Mars.

[swschrad]

oops, I'm sorry, they didn't mean to.

my bad.

It rings like a bell

[rdawson]

Too bad we turned off the Apollo ALSEP package, the seismometer experiments. I had the joy of working with the data team, and on one of the lunar missions they crashed the Apollo S4-B stage into the moon. The seismic event lasted for an hour. The moon is a homogeneous sphere, no core.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

So... They want to deal with starting and flying but not landing? Oh my god, call the DHS!

Re:cheese

[Overzeetop]

Wensleydale, I think.

Re:

[Kagura]

[On their spaceship, about to leave Earth] Wallace: No crackers Gromit! We've forgotten the crackers!

Re:

[east coast]

The distance from the moon to the earth is so astronomical (no pun intended) that this is a fairly mild concern. The real problem arises when debris is in orbit, otherwise it's just another shooting star. Kicking rock out with such force that it makes it to earth makes it unlikely that it could maintain an orbit. These kinds of collisions have been going on for eons and we're still not surrounded with rocks from the moon. The difference is that this one is man made.

And we know a ton about the moon's geogr

Re:

[greyhueofdoubt]

I used to live near a mine where much, much more than a thousand tons of rock was blasted in one shot. That is miniscule compared to the moon's total mass. The moon is bigger than you think, maybe.

The moon is also much farther away than you think, maybe, and its gravity is maybe stronger than you think. Maybe.

-b