'Stop NASA bombing the Moon!' Campaigners have launched a petition intended to "stop NASA from bombing the Moon!". The organisers of the petition claim that the space agency is turning unspoiled lunar wilderness into a "firing range" for space weapons, and that US "imperialists" intend to colonise the moon "without regard for ecosystems or indigenous …
It's amazing how these mental cases barely have a half-hour of physics education between them.
Made from stardust is far more apt: the sun is a second generation star (yes, I'm preaching to the choir here...), it and its system being made from the remnants of an older star which went nova.
This is just proof of why sensible people shouldn't engage in arguments with idiots on the internet: they drag you down to their own deranged level and pummel you with experience.
The moon is female? How do we know?? Other than making itself TOTALLY noticeable every month that is*.
Really, it's just a lump of rock. Let's use it as a big space dustbin and put all our rubbish on it. eventually Earth will get so light it'll escape the Sun's gravitational field, while the Moon will get so heavy it'll plummet into Earth. Job done.
Paris, 'cos, well, heavenly bodies and all that...
*Cue feminist flames.
There was just enough in the message to appeal to some conspiracy nuts. Can we please try and be a little more surreal please, otherwise the nutters will take it seriously. (Of course the missile could always go astray and hit the site where Apollo 11 supposedly landed, thereby obliterating the lack of evidence and covering up the original coverup). This conspiracy stuff is fun!
fucking up Earth the Yanks are turning their attention to celestial bodies further afield over which their property rights are even more dubious than they are in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan. Hope they get their math hopelessly wrong and the thing drops on Kansas,
I, for one, do not welcome the gun-slinging wannabe overlords.
Fuck off.
I'd like to see how they propose to actually stop the LCROSS mission at this stage, even with NASA's full compliance. Even if we had a Saturn 5 prepped and on the launch pad and the ability to fire it into LCROSS before it collides with the Moon, it'd still get there about three days too late.
Some people.
"Thus far the Care2 petition has only 560 digi-signatures,..." Presently is the petition closed concealing Smart Support from Space and ITs Satellite Networks of Virtualised Controllers Seconded to NSA and NASA via ESA and Bletchley . The Blighty Element in Advanced IntelAIgent Virtual Defence Initiatives with dDutch CyberIntelAIgents.
Of course it's entirely possible that they are surrealists and the purpose of this could merely be to wax their moustaches while having a good giggle at how many complete berks take them and their surreal petition seriously.
"Chicago Surrealist Movement"? It's not like they didn't put a clue in there for the seriously hard of thinking. The only way it could have been more obvious is if they'd asked NASA not to chuck fish and apples at the moon as it could soften their watches.
Mine's the one with the pipe in the pocket that isn't a pipe.
"...our closest and dearest celestial neighbor."
Actually, although I've always held the moon in particularly high esteem and do profess a certain adoration (aw, shucks... I love that moon!) I would suggest that the sun might perhaps be a little dearer to our hearts purely for reasons of survival - regular tidal systems, NASA budgets and pretty night skies notwithstanding.
I was wondering if AManFromMars had an opinion on preferred celestial bodies but, predictably, I haven't a clue what he's just said...
...what you're saying there is that they're basically Internet trolls?
I mean, I'm sorry, maybe it's just because I am an uncultured rube. But there is a significant difference between "this is not a pipe" and the dumb shit we're discussing today -- "this is not a pipe" actually has a *point* to make: this is not a pipe, but a picture of a pipe; don't confuse the menu with the meal. I fail to see what similarly useful point exists in the ignorant garbage currently under discussion.
Bloody lazy it what it is.
Why can' t NASA go for deep excavations to get at the cheese instead of ripping the surface apart? We'll have dangerous slag heaps of Tesco Value cheese and poor Martians bussed in to live in appaling conditions and mine the open cheese face.
Exploitation of the masses!
The moon is considered female in just about every mythology for precisely that reason. The lunar cycle is almost exactly the same period as, well... some women even synch to it.
Feminist flames that arising from said observation? Now that's amusing.
...mine's the fur (and claws, and teeth) that sprouts once a month.
But not because of "indigenous" peoples or whatever, but because it doesn't belong to the US of A (where I was born and still live).
What gives us the right to blow a hole in the moon? This is a piece of international real estate with a real possibility of being colonized within the next century.
And here we go launching rockets at it and beating it up.
The fact that NASA hasn't had to talk to any other countries with a stake (such as China, India, etc) is pretty sad.
It is like they are saying, "We can get there first, so we get to do whatever the hell we want."
It is arrogance.
..their rantings do pose an interesting question - should we not start any colonisation of the moon somewhat better than our planet-destroying colonisation of Earth? That would include not shooting chunks out of it - I'm sure there's a less destructive way of testing for water, etc, on the moon but they've obviously gone with the 'meh, no-one lives there so lets just blow a chunk out of it' approach.
This can't really be any kind of test, since the moon has a different gravity, lacks any atmosphere and has no Magnetosphere. Why is this important? Because the orbit used to crash the expended rocket, would result in it's utter evaporation on contact with the Earth's atmosphere. For Earth you would have to have a different system with a much more controlled angle of attack, an autonomous system capable of surviving the passage through the Van Allen magnetic belt and with aerodynamic command, like a transcontinental missile, thank you very much.
Not trolls, artists.
The pipe reference was deliberate, it's the same thing. Using something that at first glance seems like an idiotic nonsense to provoke a reaction and/or thought. The pipe picture is just that, a fairly ordinary picture of a pipe and the words are just words. The actual art occurs in the mind of the viewer. Thus in this case, the content of the "petition" is in itself unimportant bar its provocative nature. It's the effect on those seeing it, from sycophantic agreement to abuse from those that "know better" and all points between that's the clever bit.
I'll freely admit that I could be reading too much into what they call themselves and they may well just be a bunch of perfectly ordinary utter loons, but you never know.
John Kerry will testify to Congress that the imperialist white protestant US military are raping Moonian babies and beheading Lunar women! Al Gore will testify we are ruining the lunar atmosphere with our nitrogen and hydrogen rockets pollution! This is without question, the debate is over, scientists and Hollywood celebrites have formed a consensus. There will be regulation and more taxes to help starving Moonian children!
The moons surface is regularly hit by meteors and to date, there hasn't been one significant enough to alter it's rotation but what if a perfectly placed bomb can do what no meteor can?NASA will not just be sending an object to the moon with the resulting force of a collision. It will be sending a device that not only collides but "explodes" at ground level. The laws, constraints and physics that apply to Earth don't necessarily apply to the moon. Even the slightest, most temporary alteration of the moons path could have devastating ramifications for us. This could be the biggest "Ooooops" of all time but there won't be a human alive to utter the word.
Picture the scene: it's Defcon 5, the top brass have all gathered in the war room under Cheyenne mountain. A solemn faced aide brings in a note.
Brass1: Gentlemen, I'm afraid it's true. This message confirms it; the Soviets have launched a massive nuclear strike against continental USA.
Brass2: Thank God we set up a military base on the moon! We'll rain unstoppable nuclear death down on them from space! Quick, launch all the warheads.
Aide: <relaying the order> Missiles away sir. Estimated time to target <pause, listens>.... about three and a half days.
Brass2: How soon did you say those Soviet missiles were going to be here?
Aide: Four minutes, sir.
Brass2: Oh...... <twiddles thumbs> ....... Anyone for a soft-boiled egg?
PS: And yep. All the killjoys here just don't "get" surrealism and magic, neither what they're for nor how they work. I thought it was pretty good myself.
Could it not be that the surrealists who were responsible for this petition are, perhaps, not making a serious protest against what they (very mistakenly!) see as a serious danger, but are instead making a jest? The political jests do exist; for example, there is in Canada the Rhinoceros party.
The world needs more full-scale nuts to outflank the semi-nutcases on their loony side. And some of the writing is priceless
'We as surrealists or lunatics or astrologers or naturalists or anarcho-primitivists or Greens or werewolves or pagans or psychics or UFO groupies or other concerned members of the general public ...'
There are members of the concerned general public who are not werewolves, pagans or anarcho-primitives? Gosh!
I suspect that somebody forgot to take their meds, and made the mistake of taking some DRUGS!
The previous poster quoting Kirk:
"Oh, him? He's harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties. I think he did a little too much LDS"
got it right on the money!
Those poor bastards, thought illegal drugs were safe.
The asylum waits.
...but a quick google got me interested - have you seen the abuse planets can take? Aitken Basin on the moon? Herschel Crater on Mimas(Saturn moon I think - no expert)?
Enough of that - are these hippies running scared cause NASA found their lentil and herb stash? Dark side of the moon? Or is it the end of the world again?OMG!
An english translated quote from Ancient Hinu, Bhagavad Gita.. "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
Human-kind will always and forever change the face of the universe and beyond. It is our nature. Entropy is the one of the basic laws of the universe. We cannot escape it. No matter how hard we try.
;)
From all the Appolo-era and other lunar satellite remains that have plowed into the moon's surface? By my count there are 8 new (geologically speaking) lunar craters just from the LEMs which impacted the lunar surface after their departure orbits decayed.
Paris--because, well, she's a hell of a lot better looking than the Ballmer, Gates and the troll doll icons.
Funny that them yanks lost interested in the moon till various 'foreigners' started sending kit up there snooping around....
So now the hysterical race to get there and install the barbed wire fences and brand all the moon rock has started again.
Plucky Brits will probably send some bloke with big sideburns to measure everything in a suitably pompous and pointless Victorian fashion.
Clearly the guy's nuttier than a Toblerone, but then on the other hand, if you believe the U.S. isn't interested in space-based weapon systems you've got approximately the same level of contact with reality, I suspect. baldusi's points make it fairly clear that this isn't that, though. It's probably a distraction while they're *really* testing the weapons on Mars...
Jason DePriest: thought experiment: how much actual damage would it cause to anyone's interests if someone dropped a sodding great bomb on the desert in Nevada somewhere? Answer: naff all. Bombs do damage to a) living things and b) artificial structures. If you drop a bomb on a large expanse of sand and rocks, you end up with very slightly more sand and very slightly fewer rocks, in a slightly different configuration. Big frickin' deal. That's all that's going to happen in this case.
Happened in "Thundarr the Barbarian," too. Well, except that it was a runaway planet which caused the moon to split, and thus Man's civilization is cast in ruin, to give birth to a strange new world 2,000 years later, full of savagery, super-science, and sorcery.
Paris, full of savagery and super-science. Not so much sorcery, though.
It is a tremendously bad thing to shoot holes in the moon's face when what she really needs is tender loving care. I vote we take a billion tons of dolphin-safe cosmetic cream and send it up there to heal her badly bruised complexion.
This may introduce a question as to how we send a giant space trowel to smooth it over all those craters, but (to quote Jack Welsh) strategy is simple; pick a direction and implement like hell.
There is no question but that to the surreal at heart a peach pit is equally donkey.
Moon Base Alpha, we've had plenty of warning about the nuclear waste dump on the far side of the moon. If we start bombing it, it might result in an explosion forcing the moon out of orbit! (Despite the fact that the explosive forces required to de-orbit the moon would actually blow it apart)
The poor inhabitants of the moon will encounter many new species and pick up various interstellar travellers who will invariably attempt to kill John Koenig for no discernible reason. That is all...
Mine is the bright orange one with the yellow helmet......
The Apollo missions have already 'bombed' the moon.
A number of the spent LEMs were ditched after returning to dock with the CM.
These were often directed to deliberately impact the moon.
This allowed seismic data to be collected.
Additional: 3 golf balls have also impacted the moon...
"NASA will not just be sending an object to the moon with the resulting force of a collision."
Yes they are.
Its just a bog standard "upper stage".
An upper stage is big dumb rocket that's responsible for "throwing" a probe beyond Low Earth Orbit.
This one just has a special flightplan.
Thousands of upper stages have flown during the space age. Most of them ran into something sooner or later.
Another way to think of an upper stage is as a one-time-use "space tug".
Upper stages have been flying for almost 50 years.
You wouldn't use one as a weapon because once you order one, you also have to order a launch vehicle, and all that takes many many months to get it all together, and tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars per shot.
Better to just use the Standard Missile 3 which can pop a sat from any AEGIS cruiser for a fraction of the price.
The government absolutely has anti-sat weapons, but that doesn't mean you can point at any space thing that goes bang and cry foul. If anything, they were quite open about the last one, even going so far as to show it popping a sat on TV.
You can also find pictures of an F-15 firing an anti-sat missile in the '80s. Look up ASM-135.
Seems a few of the posters have understood what's being said, but most seem to have adopted a predictable, "Who gives a fuck? Bomb the fucker!", approach. Quite a reflection on human nature that.
The underlying question is; who gave us the right to casually vandalise things and the right to act so unilaterally ? Are we not better than that ?
"We choose to bomb the moon. We choose to bomb the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are hard, but because it is so easy".
... but as one of your resident pagans, can I just take a moment to say that I'm not remotely bothered about someone firing a lump of metal into the Moon.
In comparison to what nature's already thrown at it - and will continue to throw at it for millennia to come - the issue really isn't worth the energy being expended typing about it.
The Moon is a religious or spiritual symbol for those who see it that way, be it as a representation of Diana, Selene, Luna, or just 'the Goddess', or whoever or whatever else you might associate with it. But it's also a lifeless ball of rock swinging in a stable(ish) orbit around the Earth. NASA, frankly, aren't obliged to operate according to anything I might believe or not believe about the Moon: their responsibility is to the USA and to space exploration, not to my hippy sentiment. It's possible that these protesters are for real, in which case, to be honest, they're an embarrassment.
But are they for real? My guess is probably no. Aside the fairly telling name for their group as already highlighted by other commenty people, this all bears a little too much resemblance to the "werewolves protest plan to blow up the Moon" spoof article that appeared in the Weekly World News in March 2002. Sounds to me as though someone thought the LCROSS mission would be a good chance to squeeze a few more laughs out of an old joke.
Dearest Surrealist, Lunatic, Werewolf, Pagan, Psychic, UFO Groupie (or other beloved weirdo).
Please Join: Amnesty for Soup Dragons
In these troubled celestial times, now more than ever, your help is needed in fighting the evil capitalist, space-colonisers. Everyday, "Amnesty for Soup Dragons" representatives are fighting, all over the cosmos, to protect our beloved Lunar Creatures and the delicate ecosystems within which they struggle to survive. We would ask only that you give what you can to help....
We are in desperate need of your used:
Auras
Dreams (day dreams are fine but no erotic ones please)
Old or tired imaginary friends
Religious deities
Magnetic bracelets, Rabbits feet, Horseshoes, etc
If you have received a cerebral-carrier-bag, please fill it with whatever you can and leave it in your thoughts where one of our agents will be able to collect it.
Otherwise, please send all you can to:
Moonbase Alpha
Just to the left and up a bit from:
Sea Of Tranquility
The MOON
May pixie dust and moonbeams fill your days.
Yours in faith,
The Right Reverend L. Ron. Cupboard
As an American, I find anti-colonial views from other American's preposterous. It seems equivalent to resenting the sweaty act of procreation that lead to your existence, and insisting that it be banned. How appropriate that these are people from Chicago, a place that could use a good orbital bombardment.
"Magnetic bracelets, Rabbits feet, Horseshoes, etc"
I have several 55 gallon drums full of used horseshoes, and the Whippets can supply you any number of rabbit's feet. Where would you like me to send them? You pay shipping ... but you can have 'em for free. In fact, PLEASE take them off my hands! :-)
Think of the planets in terms of forming a sentence. The Earth is a noun. The moon is a verb. Its very existance creates action in the tides, the weather, and possibly human mood. It's perfection of rotation sets into play all the components that make it possible for life here to exist and yet no life exists there. How is that possible? Wouldn't it seem logical for the earth to have a reciprocal effect on the moon - but it doesn't. The laws of symbiosis don't apply. If the moon is nothing more than a big rock then it can be cleaved like a big rock. Laws of mass and density don't apply nor do they offer us protection from the idiots at NASA who have never watched a diamond cutter. They are big boys with BIG toys and brains the size of a TRex AND are running the risk of making us all extinct.
These rants are so soothing to the rational mind. It is always reassuring that however wrong I get things in my scientific endeavours or general understanding of the world around us, I will never get anything as willfully, mind-bogglingly, even cerebrum-wrenchingly wrong as these people achieve without any discernible effort .
Greenstar: I salute you
The surrealist petition is a gem, and the rants above indeed a beautiful example of Poe's law.
This impact will slow or speed up the moon's orbit.
Our lunar mother may fly away or come crashing down upon us. What about the celestial debris that may crash into the earth.
To late now but this is something we should have been concerned with!!
MyHeadIsSpinning will have nothing to sing to, how can he control his lycanthropic visions?
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