US flags from the 1970s SEEN ON MOON A NASA probe craft in orbit around the moon has confirmed that most of the US flags planted on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts of yesteryear are still flying, despite some scientists' having theorised that their fragile materials would have failed to survive extremes of temperature and radiation over the decades. …
"The moon is a difficult target for Hubble because it moves across the sky faster than Hubble can track it and is very dim in ultraviolet light."
That's a quote from this interesting page. - http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/hubble_moon.html
Fantastic resource, the internet.
This isn't right: the moon is effectively at infinity for hubble, as for other telescopes. Even if you're not convinced by this, you should be convinced by one of the earlier links, which is to a picture of the Moon's surface taken by Hubble.
In fact the reason they can't see the Apollo sites is because they can't resolve them. For a telescope with radius D, using light of wavelength lambda, then its angular resolution is approximately theta = lambda/D. Equivalently D = lambda/theta. To resolve something on the moon 1m across, where the moon is about 370x10^6m away, then theta is approximately sin(theta) is 1/(370*10^6). The wavelength of visible light is around 500*10^(-9)m.
So plugging all this in you get D = 185m or for an object of 4m (lunar module is about 4m across) D=46m.
Hubble's mirror is 2.4m, and it's effectively on the surface of the earth (orbit around 600*10^3m). It can work in UV so can gain something there, but it's nowhere near being able to resolve an Apollo site (and neither is an earth-based telescope)
Of course, one of these might do the job:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/05/military_gives_telescopes_to_nasa/
as they have adjustable focal length optics, what with being originally designed for spying. Might cost you $500M or so to fit it out and launch it. Or you could just try asking the NRO nicely - I'm sure they probably already have a couple of similar/better models in orbit. Wouldn't surprise me if they can actively track a fast-moving object in orbit too - I can't see the US not having spent the extra cash to have the ability to image other countries' space assets as well as their ground assets...
"we can't take a fu****ing picture of the damned thing"
Engineering is hard. This is because physics is hard. Who knew?
But lets get to the crux of the issue, which is "how much money should we have to spend to satisfy a bunch of grumpy crackpots"? To my mind, we should spend none at all. They will never be convinced (the new photos are faked too!) and our space programs get little enough cash as it is. The evidence ain't going anywhere in the meantime; you'll get your high res pictures one day. Patience.
Well said AC @30th July 2012 18:12 GMT, though the question
"how much money should we have to spend to satisfy a bunch of grumpy crackpots"?
should be rephrased as:
"how much money should we have to spend to to send a bunch of grumpy crackpots to the Moon to prove it can be done"?
Then, of course, we can boot the "grumpy crackpots" out of the lander without a space suit (also paid for by aforementioned money) and laugh as they suffocate! Then they might be posthumously convinced!
Colin
Alien icon, just in case they got there first :-)
""how much money should we have to spend to satisfy a bunch of grumpy crackpots"? To my mind, we should spend none at all."
Douglas Adams had the right idea: a one-way exit ticket. Send the bunch of grumpy Doubting-Thomas Crackpots to the moon to see for themselves then dump 'em there permanently.
Earth would be a much better place rid of its Golgafrincham influence (for a while at least--until we'd bred another generation of 'em).
<<This seems so unbelievable that we can "send a man to the moon">>
We can't, not any more. The Apollo project was compartmentalized and produced under the rules governing department of defense contracts, and after a certain number of years years any paperwork held by a company on such a project has to be destroyed by law. No-one thought the information worth archiving at the time and, well, there y'go. All that research, in the shredder.
OMNI did an article on it some years ago. Rarely has my ghast been so utterly flabbered.
If we could muster the public will to do it again, most of the key research would have to be done over just to get back to where we were. The costs will be ... interesting to contemplate. I imagine we'll measure them in Investment Bank Officer Bonuses to keep the numbers manageable.
Cool article. It's about time we had some decent snaps of the landing sites. I was beginning to think we'd have to wait until Playmobil made a camera small enough for The Register to send.
'NASA faked the moon landings so completely they sent men to the moon to plant evidence the missions happened!'
Not quite, but rest assured, as soon as NASA feel amateurs are within reach of sending reconnaissance vehicles of their own to investigate the moon, they will send a probe to 'plant' the evidence first.
So, basically, on our nearest natural neighbour, once visited and long since deserted by man, we have several flags which, if they are still standing, have likely been bleached white to kingdom come by UV.
So one of the first thing any ET's will be a bunch of white flags, next to deserted equipment and territory, signalling our unconditional surrender!
I'm off back to my bunker now....
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