Crashing On The Moon…On Purpose
SpaceExploration Thursday, April 24, 2003 . This is a SciScoop post by Ricky James
Crashing on the Moon seems to be all the rage these days. In addition to Polar Night, the Japanese are expected to launch their first lunar mission, named appropriately enough Lunar-A, later this year. Lunar A has two probes also destined to crash into the moon and survive. This mission aims to study the lunar interior using seismometers and heat-flow probes installed in the penetrators. Two penetrators will be deployed on the lunar surface; one on the nearside, and another on the farside. There’s still a lot to learn about the moon.
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10 Responses to Crashing On The Moon…On Purpose
apsmith
April 25th, 2003 at 6:34 am
Hey Ricky, a lunar mission wasn’t aware of! Very nice, thanks for the link – we definitely need something like this to directly sample the polar regions – though they did try something like this with Lunar Prospector (crashing it into the poles in the hope of raising a cloud that would include some water ice) so actually getting something useful out of an impact seems to be a matter of luck.
By the way, where’s Drog? On vacation this week?
rickyjames
April 25th, 2003 at 6:52 am
Wow, I really DO feel like a budding journalist if I’m bringing something lunar to YOUR attention, AP! I checked out your bio (that IS you, isn’t it?) a few days ago and I’m impressed, especially since you are into innovative-science-journalism-thru-the-web, too.
You know what gets me, Slashdot runs a story on this too, and I’m pretty convinced from the times and links presented besides the BBC one that they probably got their story idea from here. Yet Slashdot gets hundreds of comments over there and SFT gets only a trickle. I don’t MIND, really, it’s an honor to actually be the wellspring for discussion…but how do you break Slashdot’s stranglehold on comments, and convince people they could post 5X the science stories here that slashdot ever would with their open-source-computing emphasis?
Drog’s been on deadline at his real job. He’ll be back soon, with plenty to say.
apsmith
April 25th, 2003 at 7:29 am
Well, obviously you need people motivated to get the “First Post” here :-)
Actually, it’s really one of those network effect things. Just keep up the good work and we’ll keep mentioning sft in other posts, and “they will come” – well, we can hope anyway!
apsmith
April 25th, 2003 at 7:30 am
Yup, that is me :-) Now do I have to track down your photo somehow?!
Sweetwind
April 25th, 2003 at 7:44 am
I always shut my eyes when they take the picture too :-)
rickyjames
April 25th, 2003 at 7:56 am
Seriously, to a 90-95 % fidelity level, here’s a photo and action figure of what I’m really like in real life. Except I wear these in black…
apsmith
April 25th, 2003 at 10:55 am
I’m betting it’s one of the images on here, or maybe here or possibly here…
Sweetwind
April 25th, 2003 at 11:13 am
Don’t you have a real one out there somewhere? Here’s mine!
rickyjames
April 25th, 2003 at 11:48 am
…are out there, believe it or not. I was the 1999 National Monopoly Championship rep from Alabama, and for a long time there were a couple of good ones of me in Vegas on the Parker Bros site, but they vanished when Hasbro redid it. (I placed 8th out of 50 and if I’d had another 90 seconds in my second qualifying game before the bell I’d have made it to the final four to play for the national champ. Aurgh.) We recently had a family photo done for birthdays last month, I’ll scan that and get it up someplace…eventually…
AP, your selections were all good ones, but I still think I look like an old, overweight Riker. With glasses.
diamonddavej
April 30th, 2003 at 12:14 pm
If a space probe can withstand 1200 G’s of de-acceleration, then one could withstand 1200 G’s of acceleration.
Remember Gerald Bull? They said he was a crack-pot. He wanted to launch satellites by firing them into space. He was sacked over it, so worked for Sadam Hussain and built the Super Gun, that could (in theory) fire sub-orbital 0.6 tonne warheads at Isreal.
http://www.islandone.org/LEOBiblio/SPBI1GU.HTM
and
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/other/supergun.htm