8 ms·

Why the Evidence of Water on the Moon is Bad News

57 points by pieceofpeace 17y ago

senthilnayagam 17y ago
US/USSR(Russia now) had sent probes to venus, mars and moon for last 30-40 years. but only now we have info on widespread water availability. maybe sensors have improved, computing power has increased, but ISRO did it indegeniously and using a low cost model, but needed 2 decades to achieve something great. if humans can share space technology, we could have been couple of decades ahead in space technology it would be great if we could atleast have a "2020 a space odyssey" I dont want to die a earthling
- mercurio 17y ago
  Not to belittle ISRO's achievement, but the scientific instrument responsible for this was developed by US scientists for NASA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Mineralogy_Mapper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Mineralogy_Mapper
- euccastro 17y ago
  Maybe if humans could share space technology we would be decades behind in space technology. US and USSR couldn't share technology because they were racing vs each other. If it weren't for that race, maybe they wouldn't have put the huge effort necessary to send people to space in the 20th century.
idlewords 17y ago
This is only bad news if you think that manned missions to the moon are a desirable goal. If you think of manned space flight as sucking resources away from much more interesting autonomous robotic exploration of the solar system, then you want the moon as inconvenient as possible to build a base on.
- Flankk 17y ago
  To make manned space flight seem so undesirable is disingenuous to the breathtaking reality of the first manned moon landing. It disheartens me to see that the accomplishment that once inspired a nation is widely and apathetically looked upon as a waste of resources. Stephen Hawking puts it better than I do: Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.
  - borism 17y ago
    Manned missions don't catch people's imagination anymore either. "Space-optimism" of 60-70s is long gone. Now is the time to do real work in outer space.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      It depends. We can't say for sure manned spaceflight doesn't catch people's imagination because since the early 70's we really don't send people anywhere interesting. Er can't blame people: the ISS is as exciting as camping on your backyard. It may solve some problems and help develop some technologies important for future space travelers, but it's difficult to call it space exploration when you don't explore anything. The state of science education also doesn't help either. Most people cannot appreciate how devilishly hard is to keep a presence in LEO. As for keeping a presence on the Moon, it is important because we have to perfect a lot of protocols before we can pretend to be ready for a trip to Mars and, if anything goes wrong, rescue is a week away. Even if you have to process a couple tons of rocks to get a liter of water, it would be cheaper than to send it from Earth and by landing a couple automated water factories before any humans venture there could also reduce the risks (and costs) further as they wouldn't have to carry a lot of water.
      - borism 17y ago
        But that's why we shouldn't do manned missions first!
- alphamerik 17y ago
  This is only bad news if you happen to be a politically motivated person rather than a person of science.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - yafujifide 17y ago
    What if you're a pragmatic scientist? Science is funded by the people. If they aren't excited about research, funding may drop. If we have to devote some of our resources, even a lot, into activities that keep people excited, then that's fine, so long as it's good for science (and the people) in the long run.
    - alphamerik 17y ago
      A pragmatic scientist might realize that a discovery in itself is neither good nor bad, and would fight for the public interest of doing science for the purpose of discovery, rather than politicizing what they feel the public is interested in discovering.
      - anigbrowl 17y ago
        That's being pragmatic about science, not about the public. The wisdom of crowds has proved useful in all kinds of areas - collectively, human intuition is surprisingly good. A bit of crowd-pleasing might not be a bad thing; after all, nobody thinks of Christopher Columbus as 'the man who failed to discover a westerly trade route to India'.
        alphamerik 17y ago
        Yes... I would expect a pragmatic scientist to be pragmatic about science, and a pragmatic politician to be pragmatic about public issues, ie politics. I fail to see how Columbus holds any credence in the conversation, Columbus sought the favors of royalty for the purpose of creating wealth for royalty, the public interest was of no concern and never was to him. Nobody may think of Columbus as 'the man who failed to discover a westerly trade route to India', however some may think of him as foreshadowing the European colonization of the "New World"- thereby destroying and exploiting many indigenous people, or others may think of Columbus as the man who brought Syphilis back to Europe. Those would be pragmatic historical perspectives of Columbus...
mechanical_fish 17y ago
Apparently apropos of human, rather than robot, exploration, this article says: Frankly, the chance of finding evidence of life on Mars will always make it a more attractive destination than our close, but definitely dead, satellite. So it looks like everyone has conveniently forgotten all about Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 short story Before Eden. http://books.google.com/books?id=iL2-iRGDjScC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=summary+on,+before+eden+by+arthur+c+clarke+&source=web&ots=ItlNCQIJk_&sig=t8dQ_GzRVLXILtspyX6iyLpJuh8&hl=en#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=iL2-iRGDjScC&pg=PA60&#3... That's the one where the humans visit Venus, discover life, high-five each other, and leave. The next trip discovers that all the Venusian life is extinct, having been contaminated by the humans that had discovered it. Back in the 1960s people remembered this story. Probes to Mars and Venus were deliberately sterilized before they landed. So far as I know that practice continues today. The last thing you want to do to a planet that might contain life is to send living things from Earth to visit it. Their residue will screw up every experiment forever after. Even now, when all we send are sterilized robot probes, avoiding contamination by Earth-derived biomolecules is a major struggle.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Do you really need to sterilize something before sending it to Venus?
  - jerf 17y ago
    In real life, no, but before it was discovered that under the clouds of Venus lies a surface where tin is a liquid, Venus was home to tropical jungles full of large, dangerous critters, and enormous swamp-based civilizations. Venus was also strangely prone to generating aliens with telepathy. Just as science cost us Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars, science cost us fantastic Venusian civilizations. Blasted science.
    - mechanical_fish 17y ago
      On the plus side, we now have the green light to land humans on Venus without fear of contaminating any telepathic swamp-dwelling aliens. The argument still holds for Mars, though. It is fun to watch the SF writers relocate the dragons as the edges of the map get filled in. Europa is the new Venus. Clarke shifted the stage in 2010 without missing a beat.

57 points by pieceofpeace 17y ago

US/USSR(Russia now) had sent probes to venus, mars and moon for last 30-40 years. but only now we have info on widespread water availability. maybe sensors have improved, computing power has increased, but ISRO did it indegeniously and using a low cost model, but needed 2 decades to achieve something great. if humans can share space technology, we could have been couple of decades ahead in space technology it would be great if we could atleast have a "2020 a space odyssey" I dont want to die a earthling

mercurio 17y ago
Not to belittle ISRO's achievement, but the scientific instrument responsible for this was developed by US scientists for NASA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Mineralogy_Mapper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Mineralogy_Mapper
euccastro 17y ago
Maybe if humans could share space technology we would be decades behind in space technology. US and USSR couldn't share technology because they were racing vs each other. If it weren't for that race, maybe they wouldn't have put the huge effort necessary to send people to space in the 20th century.

idlewords 17y ago

This is only bad news if you think that manned missions to the moon are a desirable goal. If you think of manned space flight as sucking resources away from much more interesting autonomous robotic exploration of the solar system, then you want the moon as inconvenient as possible to build a base on.

Flankk 17y ago
To make manned space flight seem so undesirable is disingenuous to the breathtaking reality of the first manned moon landing. It disheartens me to see that the accomplishment that once inspired a nation is widely and apathetically looked upon as a waste of resources. Stephen Hawking puts it better than I do: Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.
- borism 17y ago
  Manned missions don't catch people's imagination anymore either. "Space-optimism" of 60-70s is long gone. Now is the time to do real work in outer space.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    It depends. We can't say for sure manned spaceflight doesn't catch people's imagination because since the early 70's we really don't send people anywhere interesting. Er can't blame people: the ISS is as exciting as camping on your backyard. It may solve some problems and help develop some technologies important for future space travelers, but it's difficult to call it space exploration when you don't explore anything. The state of science education also doesn't help either. Most people cannot appreciate how devilishly hard is to keep a presence in LEO. As for keeping a presence on the Moon, it is important because we have to perfect a lot of protocols before we can pretend to be ready for a trip to Mars and, if anything goes wrong, rescue is a week away. Even if you have to process a couple tons of rocks to get a liter of water, it would be cheaper than to send it from Earth and by landing a couple automated water factories before any humans venture there could also reduce the risks (and costs) further as they wouldn't have to carry a lot of water.
    - borism 17y ago
      But that's why we shouldn't do manned missions first!
alphamerik 17y ago
This is only bad news if you happen to be a politically motivated person rather than a person of science.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- yafujifide 17y ago
  What if you're a pragmatic scientist? Science is funded by the people. If they aren't excited about research, funding may drop. If we have to devote some of our resources, even a lot, into activities that keep people excited, then that's fine, so long as it's good for science (and the people) in the long run.
  - alphamerik 17y ago
    A pragmatic scientist might realize that a discovery in itself is neither good nor bad, and would fight for the public interest of doing science for the purpose of discovery, rather than politicizing what they feel the public is interested in discovering.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      That's being pragmatic about science, not about the public. The wisdom of crowds has proved useful in all kinds of areas - collectively, human intuition is surprisingly good. A bit of crowd-pleasing might not be a bad thing; after all, nobody thinks of Christopher Columbus as 'the man who failed to discover a westerly trade route to India'.
      - alphamerik 17y ago
        Yes... I would expect a pragmatic scientist to be pragmatic about science, and a pragmatic politician to be pragmatic about public issues, ie politics. I fail to see how Columbus holds any credence in the conversation, Columbus sought the favors of royalty for the purpose of creating wealth for royalty, the public interest was of no concern and never was to him. Nobody may think of Columbus as 'the man who failed to discover a westerly trade route to India', however some may think of him as foreshadowing the European colonization of the "New World"- thereby destroying and exploiting many indigenous people, or others may think of Columbus as the man who brought Syphilis back to Europe. Those would be pragmatic historical perspectives of Columbus...

mechanical_fish 17y ago

Apparently apropos of human, rather than robot, exploration, this article says: Frankly, the chance of finding evidence of life on Mars will always make it a more attractive destination than our close, but definitely dead, satellite. So it looks like everyone has conveniently forgotten all about Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 short story Before Eden. http://books.google.com/books?id=iL2-iRGDjScC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=summary+on,+before+eden+by+arthur+c+clarke+&source=web&ots=ItlNCQIJk_&sig=t8dQ_GzRVLXILtspyX6iyLpJuh8&hl=en#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=iL2-iRGDjScC&pg=PA60&#3... That's the one where the humans visit Venus, discover life, high-five each other, and leave. The next trip discovers that all the Venusian life is extinct, having been contaminated by the humans that had discovered it. Back in the 1960s people remembered this story. Probes to Mars and Venus were deliberately sterilized before they landed. So far as I know that practice continues today. The last thing you want to do to a planet that might contain life is to send living things from Earth to visit it. Their residue will screw up every experiment forever after. Even now, when all we send are sterilized robot probes, avoiding contamination by Earth-derived biomolecules is a major struggle.

chrischen 17y ago
Do you really need to sterilize something before sending it to Venus?
- jerf 17y ago
  In real life, no, but before it was discovered that under the clouds of Venus lies a surface where tin is a liquid, Venus was home to tropical jungles full of large, dangerous critters, and enormous swamp-based civilizations. Venus was also strangely prone to generating aliens with telepathy. Just as science cost us Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars, science cost us fantastic Venusian civilizations. Blasted science.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    On the plus side, we now have the green light to land humans on Venus without fear of contaminating any telepathic swamp-dwelling aliens. The argument still holds for Mars, though. It is fun to watch the SF writers relocate the dragons as the edges of the map get filled in. Europa is the new Venus. Clarke shifted the stage in 2010 without missing a beat.