Ignorance About Space Exploration

The world is called dark, James Mitchner wrote in his novel "Space" not because the sun fails to shine-but because people fail to see the light....

Many of the commentors are just plain ignorant about everything though. They can't even write coherent english, much less hold informed opinions about complex subjects... sad.

There are some pretty incredible comments there. Sadly, I don't find myself surprised at all.

There will always be the inconsolable griefers and YouTube comment trolls that try their underinformed best to undermine space exploration. I can't help but believe that there is another, less boisterous middle-ground group, "undecideds" if you will, that the space exploration supporters would be more effective in targeting.

It is one thing to always be on the defensive, needing to explain all the real-world scientific, technological, medical, etc. advances space brings us. Perhaps it would be best to take the counter-offensive "Why not?" approach.

Does this really surprise anyone?

It's very upsetting and frustrating, but not surprising.

Hopefully in the coming years, information about the Moon will be taught in schools, as well as nuts and bolts reporting to educate the general public.

I wonder how informed people in China, India, Russia and Japan are about the Moon.

I bet school kids can rattle off all kinds of global warming fears while falling flat on scientific understanding in general.

It's all about what they're being taught and what they're not being taught.

Too bad students aren't taught HOW to think.

I agree that some of the comments are somewhat ignorant - but I think questioning spending on the space program, this mission especially, is perfectly valid. It is frustrating to the public, myself included, that space crafts are not more reusable - and hearing about NASA launching one deliberately into the Moon is unnerving.

Compounding the economics of this mission, there is an environmental impact (no pun intended) aspect of this opposition.

Good luck with the interview - I personally welcome this space endeavor. I have already set my DVR!

NASA is a government program. So what? Its one of the few good government programs out there, IMO. This just shows you how extreme the anti-government rhetoric can get!

Marcel F. Williams

Hey Keith, be sure to mention that NASA recently released a list of the 100 experiments performed on the $100 billion dollar ISS. Maybe you could mention a few titles and, in case the CNN viewers are so ignorant they can't do division, point out that each and every single ISS experiment cost over a billion dollars of taxes apiece to perform. Be sure to note too that each and every ISS experiment cost more than TEN LCROSS missions....

The probe impacts will be transitory and nothing out of the ordinary in the billions of years of lunar history.

The real question is the actual environmental impacts of continued human occupation.

And if humans go there to stay then there will definitely be environmental impacts.

... so perhaps it would be wise to figure out just how fast any excavated ice mass is actually replaced before allowing it to be shipped offworld in kiloton lots...

"Twenty-eighty-two is the year I expect food riots. Cannibalism should not occur for at least two years thereafter." -- ubercomputer Mike in Robert A. Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

Sorry, Spacejunk-e, but you are missing alot of the same things the commentors on the article were, like

-It would cost many millions more to return an unmanned probe to Earth than simply turn it off. By 'crashing' LRO, NASA is trying to wring every last drop of value out it, something I for one *appreciate*. NASA has a long history of doing exactly this with end-of-mission space probes: Magellan... NEAR... Galileo....

-LCROSS used to be LRO. When LRO finished it's useful mission in orbit NASA *COULD* just shut it down and let it go. But WHY waste the opportunity do some more excellent science with it, for very little more money?

-LCROSS was NOT, I repeat NOT! simply sent to crash into the Moon! It has mapped and probed the Moon with several advanced instruments, completing its very successful primary mission. The quoted price tag on the thing is for the whole mission, not just LCROSS.

-Consider the relative scales of the Moon and LCROSS before believing in any meaningful environmental impact . . .

Ultimately, relying on the sound-bite mass media almost always leaves totally wrong impressions on people about these missions. (See the cartoon Keith posted with this item, for example.)

Hmmm... perhaps another old story concept with current application: remember the windtraps of Dune?

How about coldtraps designed for the Moon?

They'd have to be huge, like giant slit trenches with hoods over them maybe, but should be fairly static... but would they be low enough maintenance to be worthwhile?

... benefits over permanently shadowed craters would be choice of location, ease of access... and the fact that the hydroxyl would be immediately be directed away from the surface into storage underground...

... could you seed the regolith in front of the traps with high-O content dust?...

... or would it just be easier to skip lunar entrapment and try to trap the incoming solar H directly?

JC:
LCROSS is not (and never was) LRO! LRO's mission has actually just started, and it will remain in orbit long after the upcoming impacts. LCROSS is an entirely separate spacecraft. And, in fact, it WAS simply sent to crash into the moon... after it observes the results of the primary impactor, the Centaur upper stage.

Two non-obvious messages aren't getting out there:
(a) because of the current cost per pound to launch, water found at the moon can be much more valuable than water brought from earth;
(b) similarly, the cost of returning, retrieving, and refurbishing a spacecraft to be ready for another trip to space, reliably carrying humans, can be greater than the cost of making a second one from scratch.

Perhaps the class-clown factor triggers some of the comments, i.e. trying to one-up each other with outrageous statements. But others are simply prodded and emboldened by ignorant bombastic commentators on talk TV and radio - who have nothing useful to say but very big mouths and lots of airtime to fill. We're probably seeing a lot of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly comments feeding back into these forums. Something like, "Anything Obama does must be wrong, therefore NASA is stupid to be doing whatever they're doing."

I agree NASA and space advocates have not been convincing as to why we should spend a dollar on this stuff vs. somehow improving the economy. Three reasons I can think of:
(a) it's a good bargain for this data;
(b) if Obama decides to embrace a spacefaring future and support Moon and Mars exploration, we really need that water;
(c) the aerospace sector is part of the US economy too, and as good a way as any to stimulate the economy while accomplishing something that moves us toward the future. (Conversely, if you zero out all space missions of this kind for the next three years, it'll wipe out maybe 20,000-100,000 jobs.)

Deep Impact did the same experiment on comet Tempel 1, and barely raised a squeak of protest or ridicule. It was patently obvious that the mission was designed to crash into the comet and measure what came out. Somehow the public is missing that message here.

I will post here one comment I put on the Newsvine site.

Perhaps Keith can use it during the CNN interview.

"Just to put this money in perspective:

How much do you think it is going to cost to rebuild the I-35 bridge that collapsed in Miss.????

250 Million dollars.

So........ ONE BRIDGE = $250,000,000, but whiners on this forum complain about NASA and $80 million???

Give me a break!!"

Hi All,

It is funny to see all this fuss as if this was the first time NASA hardware has impacted on the Moon for the purpose of science. There were nine impact experiments during Project Apollo. The goal was to use the impact energy to map the lunar interior using the seismograph network created by Apollo. Below is a list of the locations

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_impact.html

Just a though, but I wonder what evidence the LRO images would show of these impacts. It would be interesting to do a before and after using the restored Lunar Orbiter data and the LRO images.

anytime you hear MSM declare that NASA is "bombing" the moon...........

well, they are getting the reaction they wanted by making such a ridiculous statement in the first place.