[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

I am sorry to see the really negative reaction to this thread above but it is only being posted for honest discussion on the issue. Of course there is only a week and half left until the planned event.

I honestly have my reservations about this mission and believe there should be more scientific debate about it.

I am hitting the sack here though tonight.

All the Best to Everyone here at UM.

[TALM]

TRUEYOUTRUEME, on 30 September 2009 - 04:15 AM, said:

Believe me that I pray that NASA will abort this mission.

They have already laid out a poosible groundwork for failure to abort and have announced that a anomaly has struck causing malfunction.

LCROSS Anomaly Causes Substantial Fuel Loss

So hopefully NASA aborts this mission.

Great thread based in reality, and a damn good category to have it in.

[Saru]

Czero 101, on 30 September 2009 - 04:12 AM, said:

This really belongs in the Conspiracies section.

Cz

I would have to agree that the thread is best suited to the section it is currently in, while a conspiracy element has been included the topic and the vast majority of the opening posts are about the LCROSS mission in general.

[Hazzard]

TRUEYOUTRUEME, on 30 September 2009 - 05:05 AM, said:

I honestly have my reservations about this mission and believe there should be more scientific debate about it.

Ok, sure... First, lets stop playing with numbers to make it fit the 9-11 (minus a zero) stuff... thats just plain silly.

Why dont you start explaining why this little manmade impactor is any different from the other trillions of rocks, bigger and smaller, that have plunged into the moon in the last 100 million years?

[badeskov]

TRUEYOUTRUEME, on 29 September 2009 - 08:52 PM, said:

Can the LCROSS cause a piezoelectric siesmic catastophy to take place on the Moon and in the Earth-Moon system causing massive loss of Life on Earth?

No. What on Earth gave you that idea?

Slamming the impacter into the moon will create valuable science, yet is still smaller that a pin prick. How often do you think that the moon is hit by something far bigger and much faster? And how come the moon is still in one piece?

Cheers,
Badeskov

[Peter B]

Czero 101, on 30 September 2009 - 02:46 PM, said:

The Moon has a mass of approximately 7.3477 * 10²² kg.
That's 73,477,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.

The Centaur impactor has a mass of approximately 2.3 * 10³ kg.
That's 2,300 kg

Just to put things into context, imagine you were struck by a grain of sand.

The grain of sand is a cube 0.1 millimetres to a side, and has a density of about 3 grams per cubic centimetre. This means the grain of sand weighs about 3 micrograms. A typical 75 kilogram person weighs about 25 billion times as much.

But the Moon's mass is about 32 quintillion times the mass of the Centaur.

In other words, if the Moon were scaled down to your size, the grain of sand would be more than a billion times larger than the Centaur.

You're unlikely to feel it if a single grain of sand struck you. There's no conceivable way something a billion times smaller again would have any effect on you.

[Torgo]

The moon is getting pelted by impactors all the time. Astronomers have actually seen the flashes on the lunar farside of moderately sized impactors (up to several tens of kilograms) hitting the moon at interplanetary velocities. Its surface has been sandblasted for 4 billion years, churning up the rock and fracturing it and pulverizing it into the trademark lunar dust. The idea that the moon has not been impacted in billions of years is false. It is CERTAINLY true that the vast majority of its geological activity and large crater forming impacts were over by 3.8 billion years ago, but smaller things are hitting it all the time. The impact will only be visible as a flash through a telescope larger than 10 inches wide. If things like this could destroy or damage planets/celestial bodies, none would last more than a few thousand years. The moon gets hit with around the same population of impactors that hit the Earth, and we have had the Tunguska event a mere century ago - an object several tens of meters wide, weighing 3 million kilograms - and other examples ad nauseum.

I honestly have not a clue why someone could think that somehting hitting the moon in such a way as to blast a 25 meter (75 foot) wide 3 meter (9 foot) deep crater would be a problem in the slightest.

People do not appreciate how hard it is to "destroy" a planet or other celestial body. The energy required to work so much matter against so much gravity, not to mention the mechanical strength of the object (the moon's crust is very nearly completely solid down hundreds of kilometers if not all the way through). To cause significant changes to the moon would require at least a few percent of its gravitational binding energy, equal to (3/5)GM^2/r. This comes out to 1.25*10^29 joules - or THE ENTIRE ENERGY OUTPUT OF THE SUN for 5 and a half minutes, or all the energy that hits the Earth from the sun in 230,000 years. The kinetic energy of the impactor, assuming an unreasonably high impact velocity of 25 km/s is 7.2*10^11 joules - 18 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE lower. 18 orders of magnitude is around the same number of orders of magnitude between the width of a bacterium, and the width of a light-year. Or the volume of a bacterium, and the volume of a 4 story house. This will do nothing other than the local crater creating event, and the various seismic waves which will travel through the moon as a result (incidentally im sure whoever said "rang like a bell" hates that quote - what that refers to is the way the seismic waves were rather regular and bounced back several times, not that they were particularly odd. In fact these seismic events have shown us a good deal about the interior structure of the moon).

Lastly, we have hit MUCH larger things into the moon in the past - several of the Saturn V third stages smacked the moon to provide an impact for the various seismographs stationed there during the previous Apollo missions to measure. The Saturn V third stage, empty, weighed several times what this stage weighs.

What does the presence of ice or piezoelectric rock or helium 3 have to do with the "safety" of an impact?

There is NO science behind these ideas. The only thing I don't like about this mission is that the impact will occur at a time such that it will be daylight at my location - otherwise I might have broken out my telescope and tried to see the flash even though my nice 10 cm reflector is probably too small. All my friends in the astronomy department are looking forward to the results of the science.

I will not even GET INTO the utter absurdities of the proposed "conspiracy" - suffice it to say they sound worse than when one of my family members was having a psychotic episode.

This post has been edited by Torgo: 30 September 2009 - 06:44 PM

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

Hazzard, on 30 September 2009 - 07:16 AM, said:

Ok, sure... First, lets stop playing with numbers to make it fit the 9-11 (minus a zero) stuff... thats just plain silly.

Why dont you start explaining why this little manmade impactor is any different from the other trillions of rocks, bigger and smaller, that have plunged into the moon in the last 100 million years?

You can think whatever you want is silly but I find it to be an eerie coincidence that “The Sphere” makes for such a clear artistic representation of the LCROSS mission. My prediction is not really a play on numbers either but is just a straight forward guess that the date of impact will be 10-11-09 so as to mirror 9-11-01. Of course both events will have used two craft to impact.

And what trillions of rocks that have slammed into the Moon? I have already sourced an article that reports all of the known rocks that have slammed into the Moon and it is only about a hundred. I also posted a timeline of all known man-made craft to have impacted the Moon.

If rocks in the past larger have impacted the Moon then we weren’t there to witness it’s effects on the Earth-Moon system and on Life. I have already posted a scientific paper that presents evidence that a impact may have completely flipped the Moon. That is deadly serious.

But if you want silly then here is silly ~

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

Peter B, on 30 September 2009 - 11:39 AM, said:

Just to put things into context, imagine you were struck by a grain of sand.

The grain of sand is a cube 0.1 millimetres to a side, and has a density of about 3 grams per cubic centimetre. This means the grain of sand weighs about 3 micrograms. A typical 75 kilogram person weighs about 25 billion times as much.

But the Moon's mass is about 32 quintillion times the mass of the Centaur.

In other words, if the Moon were scaled down to your size, the grain of sand would be more than a billion times larger than the Centaur.

You're unlikely to feel it if a single grain of sand struck you. There's no conceivable way something a billion times smaller again would have any effect on you.

Yes but a tiny little prick of the right object under the right conditions can pop even the largest balloon. Size may matter but it is not the end all on this issue. There are always other factors.

We do not fully know all of the chemical and physical composition of the Moon. We also do not know enough about planetary seismic and piezoelectric phenomena. It may be that we find a sweet spot by targeting a deep crater impact in the coldest spot in all of the Solar System. It is a possibility that it can cause pain for Life on Earth and make enough of an effect to the Earth-Moon system for us to regret it.

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

I Should Make Clear That I am NOT claiming that the LCROSS will destroy the Moon.

I am only claiming that there is a possibility that it may cause an effect to the Earth-Moon system that is NOT favorable to Life on Earth.

[MID]

TRUEYOUTRUEME, on 30 September 2009 - 08:45 PM, said:

I have already sourced an article that reports all of the known rocks that have slammed into the Moon and it is only about a hundred.

You know, this thread is blatantly ridiculous. The LCROSS mission has been completely explained in other threads.
I guess it's getting close to impact time, so we have to rehash it all again.

But the above statement is absolutely incredible.

About 100?

Then what was it that caused the over 30,000 impact craters that are visible from Earth based telescopes, and the millions that have been observed from orbital photographic missions and from lunar surface observations???

...you know we've had eyes up there...looking at the surface, and 100 craters can be observed in a 100 square foot area!

100?

Look, LCROSS is an attempt at ultra precision astronautics and has a decided scientific purpose. It repeats something we've done countless times before, many of those with greater mass impacting the surface (like the numerous Apollo Saturn 4B stages impacted on the surface of the Moon, at ~ 30,000 pounds of mass...which of course were inconspicuous and utterly ineffectual things).

There is no possible effect this LCROSS impact will have on the Moon, or anything else, save...potentially, our scientific knowledge regarding lunar resources.

I'm sure that Friday next, many of you will be watching carefully when the impact occurs, thinking armageddon will result. And you'll all feel pretty dumb when the Sun rises the next day, and the Moon the next night is exactly same as it was the night before.

Kinda like all that nonsense about the year 2000...

I guess some people just need an excuse to worry about nonsense.

[MID]

TRUEYOUTRUEME, on 30 September 2009 - 09:05 PM, said:

Yes but a tiny little prick of the right object under the right conditions can pop even the largest balloon. Size may matter but it is not the end all on this issue. There are always other factors.

The Moon is not a balloon. Millions upon millions of impacts, over 30,000 of them by large boulders that produced craters in excess of a kilometer in diameter, have slammed every surface of that world--including the South Pole (We're going to target one of them with LCROSS...it'll be impacting where something millions of times it's mass impacted previously!) So...

Quote

It may be that we find a sweet spot by targeting a deep crater impact in the coldest spot in all of the Solar System. It is a possibility that it can cause pain for Life on Earth and make enough of an effect to the Earth-Moon system for us to regret it.

...how's that, when a huge boulder slammed into the very spot we intend to make our pin prick in...and it didn't find a "sweet spot"???


...We're going to make a tiny crater inside one that is 60 miles in diameter...and we're going to cause a problem by doing that???

Honestly...this Moon nonsense is really going overboard.

This post has been edited by MID: 01 October 2009 - 01:29 AM

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

MID, on 30 September 2009 - 09:17 PM, said:

You know, this thread is blatantly ridiculous. The LCROSS mission has been completely explained in other threads.
I guess it's getting close to impact time, so we have to rehash it all again.

But the above statement is absolutely incredible.

About 100?

Then what was it that caused the over 30,000 impact craters that are visible from Earth based telescopes, and the millions that have been observed from orbital photographic missions and from lunar surface observations???

...you know we've had eyes up there...looking at the surface, and 100 craters can be observed in a 100 square foot area!

100?

Look, LCROSS is an attempt at ultra precision astronautics and has a decided scientific purpose. It repeats something we've done countless times before, many of those with greater mass impacting the surface (like the numerous Apollo Saturn 4B stages impacted on the surface of the Moon, at ~ 30,000 pounds of mass...which of course were inconspicuous and utterly ineffectual things).

There is no possible effect this LCROSS impact will have on the Moon, or anything else, save...potentially, our scientific knowledge regarding lunar resources.

I'm sure that Friday next, many of you will be watching carefully when the impact occurs, thinking armageddon will result. And you'll all feel pretty dumb when the Sun rises the next day, and the Moon the next night is exactly same as it was the night before.

Kinda like all that nonsense about the year 2000...

I guess some people just need an excuse to worry about nonsense.

Call it nonsense if you want but you are not posting anything at all convincing that it is.

We have not impacted the Moon countless times as you claim. Less then 20 even. And all of the results were not that promising as well.

And if you believe that the Moon has been slammed around like a ragdoll or something in the past then good for you but there is no witnessed impact that we can prove what the effects were in the past to the Earth-Moon system for impacts we never witnessed. In the distant past there may have been impacts on the Moon that have caused great death and catastrophe to Life on Earth.

So your point about there being craters that look like impact craters on the Moon from the past is mute. For all you know these impacts killed off much of Life on the Earth.

Claim all you want that the science is settled but it is not. There is a risk we are taking with the LCROSS mission.

This post has been edited by TRUEYOUTRUEME: 01 October 2009 - 01:31 AM

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

MID, on 30 September 2009 - 09:23 PM, said:

The Moon is not a balloon. Millions upon millions of impacts, over 30,000 of them by large boulders that produced craters in excess of a kilometer in diameter, have slammed every surface of that world--including the South Pole (We're going to target one of them with LCROSS...it'll be impacting where something millions of times it's mass impacted previously!) So...




...how's that, when a huge boulder slammed into the very spot we intend to make our pin prick in...and it didn't find a "sweet spot"???


...We're going to make a tiny crater inside one that is 60 miles in diameter...and we're going to cause a problem by doing that???

Honestly...this Moon nonsense is really going overboard.

If you believe that a huge boulder already slammed into this very same spot on the Moon that the LCROSS is targeting then why dont you post me a source that tells me all about it and how it effected the Earth-Moon system and Life on Earth at the time.

What was the year of this impact that you are claiming even?

I wont hold my breath though for you to provide a source that proves your claim. Because there is no proof of your claims.

This post has been edited by TRUEYOUTRUEME: 01 October 2009 - 01:43 AM

[TRUEYOUTRUEME]

There is a new article breaking tonight that supports my hypothesis about possible danger that could be caused by the LCROSS mission.

Quakes can weaken seismic faults across the Earth

More news about how fluid (water) can effect seismic activity across the entire surface and body of a planet even as large as the Earth. So ofcourse picking a target specifically for it's water or fluid content can do the same on the Moon.

The deeper (and more watery) the area of seismic acitivity the more it may effect the planetary body as a whole.

From the article:

Quote

The monitors found that areas of fluid-filled fractures lie within this section of the fault.

Driven by seismic pressure, the fluid migrates along the fault like spidery veins in marble, acting as a lubricant that enables shocks to pry open the rock, they believe.

Proof of this suspicion came with the finding that repetitive background quakes became smaller and smaller during periods of fluid shift -- in other words, as the fault slowly weakened, less energy was needed to shake it.

This scientific paper indicates that less of an impact is needed to create seismic activity the more there is fluid (water ice) that is present in the fault line or point of impact (seismic activity) to effect the entire planetary body.