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I think I know why: it's where the weapons of mass destruction are! Hey, what do you want-I'm awake at 4:30am to watch the Moon get, well, mooned...
Looked like a dud to me. You heard it here first.
The thing that depresses me about this story is how much ignorance has been displayed. But then that happens with every space-related story that rises to the level of the mass media.
Some days I wish more people were informed of what's going on, but other days I think everything space-related should be done on the q.t.
I think the reaction to Deep Impact was much less ignorant and not at all angry, but it also seems to me it had a lower public profile -- e.g. I don't remember it drawing joke from Dave Letterman. It probably makes a difference that everybody feels ownership of the Moon, whereas nobody had heard of Tempel 1 before the Deep Impact mission smacked into it.
It's hard to anticipate these things, but in the future, NASA probably ought to consider hiring a PR firm to sit on hundreds of forums and correct the (mis)information about what's happening and why. The common description became "bombing the moon" even though no explosives were used. It contributed to the misimpression that this was wanton violence vs. a carefully designed science experiment.
I noticed Neil Cavuto interviewed both Buzz Aldrin and Michio Kaku on the impact, but just couldn’t seem to understand the importance of it although both kept trying to explain it to him. Instead Cavuto kept repeating how stupid it was that NASA was wasting money bombing the Moon, and kept it as a running gag of waste during the program. It really showed Cavuto’s ignorance of science and space exploration.
Cavuto=Fox News.
Do I have to say more?
Unfortunately, a lot of the ignorance is a rehash of what was on display for Deep Impact. That was often called bombing a comet.
My all time favorite display of ignorance was after the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the center of M87. One of the local stations had a short news story about it, which is good, but they felt it necessary to reassure their viewers that it was no threat to Earth!
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Excellent! Looks like everything is go for impact. The weather isn't working out for me to try to watch first hand (it probably would have been too bright out anyway), but I'll be following it on NASA TV.