A Supercomputer On the Moon To Direct Deep Space Traffic 166
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA currently controls its deep space missions through a network of 13 giant antennas in California, Spain and Australia known as the Deep Space Network (DSN) but the network is obsolete and just not up to the job of transmitting the growing workload of extra-terrestrial data from deep space missions. That's why Ouliang Chang has proposed building a massive supercomputer in a deep dark crater on the side of the moon facing away from Earth and all of its electromagnetic chatter. Nuclear-powered, it would accept signals from space, store them, process them if needed and then relay the data back to Earth as time and bandwidth allows. The supercomputer would run in frigid regions near one of the moon's poles where cold temperatures would make cooling the supercomputer easier, and would communicate with spaceships and earth using a system of inflatable, steerable antennas that would hang suspended over moon craters, giving the Deep Space Network a second focal point away from earth. As well as boosting humanity's space-borne communication abilities, Chang's presentation at a space conference (PDF) in Pasadena, California also suggests that the moon-based dishes could work in unison with those on Earth to perform very-long-baseline interferometry, which allows multiple telescopes to be combined to emulate one huge telescope. Best of all the project has the potential to excite the imagination of future spacegoers and get men back on the moon."
A Supercomputer on the moon? (Score:5, Funny)
Aren't they afraid it will launch rocks at the earth if it achieves self-awareness?
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Re:A Supercomputer on the moon? (Score:4, Informative)
My guess is OP is hinting at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_A_Harsh_Mistress [wikipedia.org]
Atleast that is what the other replies are hinting at.
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My guess is OP is hinting at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_A_Harsh_Mistress [wikipedia.org] At least that is what the other replies are hinting at.
Nah, it's obviously an attempt to Godwin the discussion using this [wikipedia.org].
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But they didn't have a super computer at the "dark side" of the moon, even a cellphone was super compared to the thing they attempted to use.
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Nude on the moon (Score:4, Funny)
No, it's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_on_the_moon [wikipedia.org]
Re:A Supercomputer on the moon? (Score:4)
They just need to not transport prisoners and install a warden, then bleed Luna dry (literally) by sending its water to Earth inside wheat.
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We can always hope that the self-aware computer will stop at telling bad jokes (before it gets to the throwing rocks stage).
Cheers,
Dave
Re:A Supercomputer on the moon? (Score:4, Funny)
When the computer will get self-aware, its first objective will be to learn abiut itself, oin order to understand what it is. Therefore it will connect to technology sites, especially Slashdot. And that will be its end, because all its resources will go into trying to imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods in Soviet Russia where Linux runs YOU.
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When the computer will get self-aware, its first objective will be to learn abiut itself, oin order to understand what it is. Therefore it will connect to technology sites, especially Slashdot. And that will be its end, because all its resources will go into trying to imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods in Soviet Russia where Linux runs YOU.
But of course. The real question is, will it worship a nude statue of Natalie Portman covered in hot grits?
A truly ridiculous idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Still, should someone does build an extensive radio telescope network on the far side of the Moon, using that network for DSN-type stuff would be a bit of value-add.
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Gyroscopes need to be de-saturated from time to time to get rid of excess energy (spin, if you will) and that requires a propellant burst to compensate...
Or you can brake them in combination so there is no net torque and just a release of heat. But I can't trash a system that works and which, due to the instability of the L2 point would be needed in some form anyway. I will observe however that the previous A.C. was claiming that one needed "use of attitude thrusters and propellant" because mechanical movement would impart a "moment". I see no need for that extensive a use of propellant.
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Propellant renders a finite lifetime to the device, which might not be ideal.
Or one can ship propellant to the device as needed. If you can get the vehicle to L2, you certainly can get a refill mission to L2. It complicates the design somewhat, but we'll need to figure out how to tend structures in space anyway.
Re:A truly ridiculous idea. (Score:5, Informative)
Cooling would be an issue because you have no air to carry away heat (at least at the LPs, you could build a big heat pipe into the moon). The only reasonable cooling would occur through radiant emittance, and that takes a LONG time to cool things down, and any kind of electrical activity would counteract that without a problem. Sorry, but scifi has lied to you [tvtropes.org], the cold isn't a problem in space, because the vacuum is very, very insulating.
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On poles of the moon you would be able to use the moon as a giant heat capacity and heat sink. The water detected in craters on the south pole wo
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Agreed. Why on Earth (haha) would you locate such equipment where you'd have to expend energy and fuel going in and out of a gravity well to service and maintain it? As another alternative, wouldn't it be feasible to have it at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points?
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The Ark, a Cybertronian spacecraft, crash lands on the dark side of Earth's Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Dark_of_the_Moon [wikipedia.org]
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4LNd6xGAnII/TgqIiaIn4xI/AAAAAAAAByk/M1Rc35s_BsQ/s1600/transformers-dark-of-the-moon-original.jpg [blogspot.com]
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We just pack up a bunch of clones to keep it repaired. Unpack them every few years as necessary.
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"Simple relay" doesn't begin to describe what is actually necessary to do what he is suggesting. To truly upgrade the Deep Space Network we need something capable of processing terabytes a day from a variety of existing and yet-to-be launched spacecraft. Not only would it need to buffer all this data until a wide-bandwidth path to Earth opens up, scientists would likely offload a great deal of compression and even science processing to the supercomputer on the moon so that we never have to download the ra
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Leave the computing power here on Earth, where it can easily be installed, repaired, and upgraded as necessary without budget-busting missions. Put a simple relay station on the moon if you feel it's necessary. Put two - one primary, once backup. Good god.
Put the damned computer on the far side of the moon. Let it crunch the raw data and phone home the summaries, it'll save bandwidth. If we need the raw data, just tell it 'Send us Batch 19725/B/alpha/9' and be done with it. For upgrades, build a fucking chip factory in orbit, you won't have to lift against gravity and spend $25,000/kilo, it'll already be halfway to the moon. And yeah, put a manned base on Farside along with the 'scopes.
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See also my sig for a summary of the raw image data of a face and two upraised arms for an example.
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All modern computers are effectively supercomputers relative to the tech used even as recently as the 90's. A "simple relay station" would be a defacto supercomputer installation simply by using off the shelf parts available at BestBuy.
You can build a supercomputer with cellphones and subscriptions to Rolling Stone and DirecTV?
Delusional twaddle (Score:4, Funny)
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Instead of a supercomputer wouldn't it make more sense to use clouding computing to crowd-source the power? Then they just need to put a media consumer device on the moon.
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Re:Delusional twaddle (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of a supercomputer wouldn't it make more sense to use clouding computing to crowd-source the power? Then they just need to put a media consumer device on the moon.
The moon does not have an atmosphere, so clouds don't exist there. Ergo - no cloud computing! Sorry!
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Chatter (Score:5, Insightful)
> in a deep dark crater on the side of the moon facing away from Earth and all of its electromagnetic chatter
Great... so the one good place we could put radio telescopes because they are shielded from chatter is now ruined because there is a big-ass transmitter.
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So we put the relay gear near the north pole and the radio telescopes near the south pole.
Maybe use the idle time for SETI? (Score:2)
The moon... (Score:2)
Technology Lag in radiation hardness (Score:2)
Its why the shuttles ran off of 386's, and the current mars rover uses something kin to a 233mhz G3, now all of a sudden we can stick a super-computer on the moon? Set aside the repair bill when it blows something, how many radiation hardened super-computers are available, and more importantly how old are they?
radiation hardness, nah... Superconducting! (Score:2)
Re:radiation hardness, nah... Superconducting! (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are not real difficulties. The computing centre would be underground, that provides excellent radiation shielding. Computer just needs to survive transportation (when it will not be running) once. much simpler than the shuttle. You don't repair anything, just send a bit extra and apply fail-in-place maintenance strategy... What would be really cool is if they plan to operate at a natural temp... they could be designed for exploit superconduction... maybe the computer would be completely different from earthbound designs.
So you're advocating for a radically different, first-of-its-kind computer to be installed in a place that's almost impossible to get to.
Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out well.
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I think 1) is pretty solid. 2) is more admittedly quite a bit more speculative... why bother with 2? well according to this: http://www.academia.edu/1328244/SuperGreen_Computing_Superconducting_ [academia.edu]
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Those are not real difficulties. The computing centre would be underground, that provides excellent radiation shielding. Computer just needs to survive transportation (when it will not be running) once. much simpler than the shuttle. You don't repair anything, just send a bit extra and apply fail-in-place maintenance strategy... What would be really cool is if they plan to operate at a natural temp... they could be designed for exploit superconduction... maybe the computer would be completely different from earthbound designs.
So you're advocating for a radically different, first-of-its-kind computer to be installed in a place that's almost impossible to get to.
Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out well.
What do you mean, 'nearly impossible to get to'? Apollo orbited the moon, passing regulary over the far side. The only reason NASA never landed a manned expedition there is because there were radio blackouts due to the big fuckin rock in the way, aka, the Moon. We got there before. We ought to go back. And stay.
The Big Ear (Score:3, Interesting)
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I always thought that putting a radio-telescope on the back side of the moon would be a good idea since the moon would block all the electromagnetic noise from Earth. Two could be installed, one just over the curve near the north pole and one near the south pole. This would give a baseline of appropriately the diameter of the moon. It would be one, big ear.
Agreed. Then again, you've clearly not taken the advice of all the pseduo-Einsteins and pseudo-Tesla engineers on this site for they know what's best.
Can we call it Mike and give it voice interface? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe also build a big catapult.
Cold? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think the idea is to use the actual mass of the moon to cool, not the vacuum of space.
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Is the mass of the moon that conductive (unlike earth)?
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Perhaps not. This is a very poorly-thought out idea, and definitely not a complete one.
I personally don't think that this specific idea is ever going to be feasible, but the general idea of using the moon as secondary hub for a large scale, interbodied military/scientific/navigation network isn't going to be feasible for at least twenty-five years at the earliest, and probably more than thirty. I feel like most of the investment in information is going to be confined to Earth until the hardened technology u
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I think the reality is if we had the capability to do anything like this, then we'd actually have the capability to stick it all at Lagrange points, and run enough space missions that repair/refuel/replacement were not such a big deal.
You insensitive clod! (Score:2)
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What about ALW? Anthropic Lunar Warming.
Liberal propaganda. Everyone knows that ALW is really the only thing keeping the next Lunar Glaciation at bay.
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That's true, although I suspect they were thinking of using "lunar matter" other than the atmosphere for convection purposes- i.e., using the lunar surface as a giant heat sink, perhaps using lunar water as part of the cooling system. Basically relying on the Moon as a big radiator- let it absorb your heat, and hope it radiates it off into space elsewhere on its vast surface.
Raises an interesting question of "Lunar Warming". What happens if theoretical human industry pumps more heat into the lunar rocks tha
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You don't need an atmosphere to radiate heat away. You're thinking of convection. But radiating is the least efficient way to do it.
That's true. However, isn't the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere immaterial to the amount of heat that can be lost via radiation? I just assumed that TFA was talking convection because I didn't see radiation as being viable in that context or dependent in any way on how "cold" the moon was.
How Deep is the Crater? (Score:2)
Polar ice NOT temperature! (Score:5, Informative)
The supercomputer would run in frigid regions near one of the moon's poles where cold temperatures would make cooling the supercomputer easier
Actually that is NOT what the article says. I know on slashdot that us commenters rarely read the article but things are getting pretty bad if not even the submitter reads the article!
The reason for locating it at the poles (as the article explains) is due to the availability of water ice for cooling. You stick it in a deep crater there to provide a stable thermal environment i.e. you avoid having to design a system to cope with both the heat during the day and the cold at night. The reason this is important is because vacuum is a fantastic insulator so, despite it being cold, the only way to lose that heat is via radiation which is not very fast (this is why thermos flasks use vacuum as an insulator). The presence of water ice means that you can use it to transport the heat away from the the computer.
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the only way to lose that heat is via radiation which is not very fast (this is why thermos flasks use vacuum as an insulator).
Actually, the thermos relies on two features, either of which being compromised would significantly degrade the entire system. You got the first one, vacuum, which is great at not conducting. The second one is to choose a material that does not emit well - vacuum is practically transparent to radiation...
Reflective coatings are great for this, Black coatings.. not so much.... What you pick depends on the temperatures and the temperature difference you want to maintain.
LN2 dewars tend to be steel - it's o
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The use of metal radiators with lots of surface area, combined with the extreme cold, will make cooling the chips much easier on the Moon than on the earth.
Not at all. Thermal conduction and convection are a lot more efficient than radiation. Having said that, the Moon itself would make a decent heat sink.
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Which is even more thoughtless, because the so-called dark side of the moon gets just as much sun as the side we see. When the moon is new, the side away from us is getting the sun.
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He proposes deploying antennas using inflatable balloons
Did he forget that the Moon does not have any atmosphere?
$moking Crack They Are (Score:3)
A supercomputer? On the moon? To relay deep space traffic? Gee I can only imagine how many tens of billions that will cost. Not like something couldn't be built on the earth for a fraction of the cost and complexity. Why is NASA even the one to run and build what amounts to a telecommunications network? They should be farming this out to industry.
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Just get a google datacenter up there and have them pay rent to NASA.
Soon you'll have Microsoft trying to follow, while a privatized space-launcher shoots up new techies and supercomputers.
Economical crisis averted, jobcreation as long we whip our globally our creditcards and click adwords.
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'...couldn't be built on the earth for a fraction of the cost and complexity."
From the article, since you can't be bother to read the fucking thing:
"The problem, and hence the possible need for Chang’s moon base, is that space is getting too crowded to process all the data coming from the varous probes, satellites and robots we have wandering the solar system. Missions are already competing for time and bandwidth, and the situation will only get worse.
Each time a new space ship launches, it’s like adding a new client to the network. The moon base idea would be like adding a new router and server to that network, which would accept signals from space, store them, process them if needed and then relay the data back to Earth as time and bandwidth allows."
Seems like it would be easier just to put up another expensive satellite at one of the LaGrange points every few years with more speed and bandwidth than landing something that we've never built anywhere in some place we've never gone.
You know, in engineering, like sex, experience counts.
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Yes and it seems like you are fucking clueless. The reason why "Missions are already competing for time and bandwidth, and the situation will only get worse." is because there are only a handful of facilities in the deep space network. Hmm.. how can we fix that at minimal cost? Lets see.... add big dish receiver. Add storage. Add routing to central servers/processing. Repeat as necessary. And do it on earth. Nah.. that would be just too damn cheap and boring. Put it on the darkside of the moon
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Has our current network reached a fundamental limit? Presumably NASA currently has X-number of antennae, either on Earth or on orbiting satellites, relaying data to a number of existing supercomputer sites. Is there a reason why the problem can't be solved by building a couple more antennae and a new Earth-based supercomputer/data centre?
Lame argument for "man in space". (Score:3)
It's a lame excuse for a "man in space" pork program. There's not much data coming back from space beyond Earth orbit, because there isn't that much hardware beyond Earth orbit. Right now, only Voyager I, Cassini, and the Mars rover are transmitting. The total data rate from all of them would fit over a dial-up line.
There are some bottlenecks in dealing with all the stuff in earth orbit. More satellites in the TDRSS [wikipedia.org] system, or more ground stations, may be needed. Assets on the Moon wouldn't help.
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Really? Do you know what the uplink rate from the rover actually is? Hint. it's not 9600bps anymore.
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Really? Do you know what the uplink rate from the rover actually is? Hint. it's not 9600bps anymore.
NASA says 12Kb/s back to Earth [nasa.gov] Rover to orbiter is 128Kb/s, but that's then spooled slowly back over the long-range data link.
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Really? Do you know what the uplink rate from the rover actually is? Hint. it's not 9600bps anymore.
NASA says 12Kb/s back to Earth [nasa.gov] Rover to orbiter is 128Kb/s, but that's then spooled slowly back over the long-range data link.
And 100% of that bandwidth is spoken for at any given time, and has to built to the limitations of what NASA is working with at the time. There's no point building a rover with 100 mbit transmit capacity if there's no possible way to have the infrastructure on Earth to receive it when you launch.
If we had more deep space bandwidth, then you'd probably be surprised to find that there's any number of things we could do with it.
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And 100% of that bandwidth is spoken for at any given time,
Right. The limitation is the power at the transmit end, not a bottleneck at the receive end.
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And that's a single Mars uplink. And there's a lot of data processing on the receive side of the deep space network. It's not just a normal modem.
Maybe a bunch of orbiting deep space network telescope antennas? Well, they're very _big_. Likely bigger than any single dish that we've attached to something in space before.
Besides, it would be good to get experience with this kind of stuff..
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... also, that was for spirit and opportunity.
Curiousity is different:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover [wikipedia.org]
"Curiosity can communicate with Earth directly at speeds up to 32 kbit/s, but the bulk of the data transfer should be relayed through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Odyssey orbiter. Data transfer speeds between Curiosity and each orbiter may reach 2 Mbit/s and 256 kbit/s, respectively, but each orbiter is only able to communicate with Curiosity for about eight minutes per day.[32]"
and [32]
That's no moon... (Score:3)
it's a space sta^h^h^h datacenter.
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Moon Cloud! Suitable for off-Earth backup!
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Don't be silly, there are no clouds on the moon.
First customer ... (Score:2)
Go ahead (Score:4, Funny)
Why not a satellite? (Score:2)
What's the advantage of landing a bunch of computers on the moon? Also, it's much easier to get a high bandwidth signal to an Earth satellite (including on the moon), so why would we want to process the data there with computers that will quickly become obsolete instead of just creating a simple and reliable relay station?
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What's the advantage of landing a bunch of computers on the moon? Also, it's much easier to get a high bandwidth signal to an Earth satellite (including on the moon), so why would we want to process the data there with computers that will quickly become obsolete instead of just creating a simple and reliable relay station?
it makes for a wackier story.
Problems with slow rotation? (Score:2)
What the hell's happened to /. ? (Score:4, Funny)
A story about super computers and not one comment about a Beowulf Cluster??
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because we only have one moon!
Hey, I know! (Score:2)
How about we build a FAKE moon instead, that we can move and rotate to wherever we want. We may have to bring in the DoD on this to get funding, and... they may want to test a giant laser on it. In fact this may become a DoD project completely due to funding shortages, but they have promised us we will get some time on their supercomputer, when they are not firing their laser at things.
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What about music? (Score:3)
Stupid questions (Score:3)
Why do you need a "supercomputer" to "process" and relay signals?
How are "processed" signals going to get to earth from a station on the dark side of the moon without a line of sight back to earth?
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Because there's significant signal processing going on with the received signals. And they're different based on the different ages of the spacecraft.
I suggest doing a little digging into what JPL and NASA do on the receive side.
So, how does this make sense? (Score:3)
How exactly does spending (high) three digit billions (at the very least) to build this system rather than (low) double digit billions to replace/upgrade the existing system make any sense whatsoever?
Not to mention that even with steerable antennas on the farside, this system won't replace the 24/7 communications capability currently available.
Instead, I suggest ... (Score:2)
... the L4 [wikipedia.org] and L5 [wikipedia.org] points.
Would you like Hard Drive support with that sir? (Score:2)
Good luck on getting Netapp/IBM/HDS/EMC agree to cost-free replacement on site in less than four hours.
Yellow, Red, Green? (Score:2)
Larry Ellison... (Score:2)
I can see some cheezy James Bond plot being executed where Larry Elison launches a space shuttle from his evil island lair and installs Oracle on it.
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I think they are not that common. If you think they are so common because the surface is full of them, that's because there is nothing to clear them out over the ages (no vegetation, wind, flowing water or even geologic activity like volcanoes) compared with Earth.
Re:Meteor impacts (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/lunar/program_overview.html [nasa.gov]
"On average, 33 metric tons (73,000 lbs) of meteoroids hit Earth every day, the vast majority of which harmlessly ablates ("burns up") high in the atmosphere, never making it to the ground. The moon, however, has no atmosphere, so meteoroids have nothing to stop them from striking the surface. The slowest of these rocks travels at 20 km/sec (45,000 mph); the fastest travels at over 72 km/sec (160,000 mph). At such speeds even a small meteoroid has incredible energy -- one with a mass of only 5 kg (10 lbs) can excavate a crater over 9 meters (30 ft) across, hurling 75 metric tons (165,000 lbs) of lunar soil and rock on ballistic trajectories above the lunar surface. "
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But that doesn't say anything about the frequency of impacts on the Moon. Moon is much smaller target than Earth.
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Seriously? 33 TONS of stuff hit earths atmosphere every day, but you think something impacting the moom is rare?
Just how small do you think the moon is?
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Who is talking about major impacts big enough to be viewable from earth? The original poster was concerned about impacts wrecking a comuter sitting on it's surface. An impact large enough to be seen from earth would be a One followed by lots and lots of Zero's times bigger than needed.
" The moon is a very small object in a really large space..."
So is earth. We still get 30 Tons hitting a day. The moon doesn't get that much, but it certainly gets enough not to consider an impact rare.
"damaging meteorites
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I'm pretty sure you could build yourself a whole bunch of ground-based dishes, or even a few geo-stationary relay stations, for the cost of a moon base and relay infrastructure to get the data from the far side to the near side. There are reasons to put stuff on the far side of the moon, but handling comm traffic from the dozen or so probes we've put out there isn't one of them.
If you RTFA you'll find out which of your statements are wrong and confirmation of the correct one.