November 21, 2009
What's Inside:
The 'final frontier' isn't as exciting as it used to be
OK, let’s take a quick survey: How many of you got up early last Friday morning to watch NASA shoot an SUV-sized rocket booster into the moon? Raise your hands.
Yeah, me too.
Unfortunately, we saw nothing. No light plume just after impact. No dust cloud rising six miles from the lunar surface. No loud “thud” coming from space. Talk about a solar system buzz kill.
ABC’s Good Morning America interrupted its wall-to-wall coverage of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize and showed images from NASA cameras. The video footage showed only static or colored infrared blotches. The black-and-white photos showed what appeared to be gray dryer lint.
In fact, the only clear video came from inside a NASA control room, where mission control operators were shown clapping. Nobody is really sure why they were applauding. It could be that a panicked television producer stuck his head in the room and said, “Hey, we’re gonna show you guys in a minute, so when the red light comes on, smile and start clapping.”
As public relations stunts go, this was a miserable failure by NASA. The concept might have been promising. “Hey, let’s shoot a big piece of space junk at the moon and see what happens.” And, dangling the prospect of violent collisions has worked for NASCAR.
But we saw nothing. It was as disappointing as going to a hockey game and actually seeing guys play hockey.
The reason for the mission was that some scientists believe that the moon has water lying beneath the surface dust, deposited there by meteors that strike the moon on a regular basis, then frozen in the eternal cold and darkness. Other scientists dispute the “wet moon” theory, no doubt by saying: “Water on the moon? Ha! That’s about as likely as dividing a prime number by two!”
Anyway, NASA has been talking big lately about revisiting the moon, and water is supposed to be a valuable resource if we ever want to establish a base there. Of course, a lunar base would cost a trillion dollars and, in this economy, there’s little support for further space exploration.
So, NASA bigwigs must have thought, what better way to whip up support than bomb a moon crater and discover water at the same time? Imagine the egghead excitement the day they spitballed this idea. This had to be better than opening a UPS package and seeing Klingon admission badges to a Trekkie convention.
A few years back, Geraldo Rivera learned a valuable lesson when he opened Al Capone’s secret vault on national television and discovered, to his embarrassment, that it was empty. Viewers and critics hooted and jeered. The moral here is: Don’t show anything on TV unless you know beforehand what it looks like.
Possibly NASA should have test-fired other projectiles at the lunar surface before this mission. Or maybe scientists should have devised a way to make the collision more visual and dramatic. Anything would have helped.
Instead of inspiring Americans to dream about advancing into space, last week’s news coverage showed that our lone satellite is about as exciting as North Dakota on Saturday night.
After Friday’s fiasco, about the only thing that could give the moon any notoriety is if it were rumored that a reality TV show was to be filmed there and the star would be an Osborne or a Kardashian.
Maybe water will be discovered on the moon and maybe it won’t. But let’s take another survey. Show of hands, how many of you just don’t care?
Yeah, me too.
Steve Booher’s column runs on Monday. He can be reached at steveb@npgco.com.
This story has 16 comments. Click here to join in on the discussion.
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Your article hits the nail on the head. Here you have NASA doing again what it did in the 60's - going back to the moon. The propeller heads at NASA know that Mars is where they should be headed. The Presidential committee zeroed in on the fact that NASA is so badly under-funded they'll be lucky to get to the moon by 2050. So, what can they do besides a stunt to get people interested in going back to the moon? Not much. Come on people - in the next 50 years there will probably be a piece of space debris hitting the earth and imperiling mankind. We need to get to other worlds that can be converted to an earth-like environ. It will be too late when that piece of space debris is discovered to be headed for us. Some vision, please. We need to have a properly funded Mars program underway now.
Steve:
Debris was expected from the impact, whether or not there was water. That it did not materialize at all tells us that some of our assumptions are wrong. This is what scientific discovery is all about.
For instance, if there was a thick layer of ice, it could have swaollowed the impact like a small plane crashing into the greenland ice sheet.
I suspect that your sentiments reflect the values of much of our nation.
Personally, I couldn't care less about sports ;-)
Cheers,
Nelson
It wasn't anti-climactic - it simply didn't happen.
Maybe Mr. Bridwell could elaborate why such a mission was so important?
Liberty....
Really? It didn't happen?? I'm just wondering....how would YOU know? Were YOU standing on the moon, at the impact point, and never saw the booster hit? Were you in Mission Control and head the "scuttlebut" about how the entire mission was a fake? Perhaps you are an employee of NASA and you have firsthand knowledge of the launch, and that it was actually scrubbed???
What a moron!!
Pops, I've already been approached about a position at NASA. I respectfully turned it down mostly for the fact that the most advanced findings are kept from the American public; the very people who fund it.
I still can't get a respectable answer to my questions.
Pops, how would YOU know? Were YOU standing on the moon, at the impact point, and seen the booster hit? Were you in Mission Control?
You see how I did that. I pointed out your absurd notions that I am less qualified to make the claim than you are to claim that it DID happen.
Admit it, you don't know anymore than I do that it did or didn't happen. You're simply spewing what you've been told to believe. Think for yourself once in a while. Ask your own questions and question everything.
Why wouldn't you? Because here on Earth we have such a fantastic track record of telling the subservants the truth? You are not a shot caller, you do not know squat. At least I know enough to say that it could go either way.
My first question is what is the agenda - not whether it happened or not. This entire country and government is one big crime scene, treat it as such.
O.K, I confess.
It was done in my garage. My grand kids made a cardboard rocket and scientific probe looking thing and we dropped them from a ladder one after the other. We forgot that it was cold out and our fake moonscape was frozen solid. The cardboard rocket didn't have enough mass to break the ice on the garage floor. My apologies for not preheating the garage floor so there would have been a big splash. I'll try again when I get my next round of funding or we buy a new stove again, that's where the cardboard came from to make the rocket body. Maybe I'll put a brick in the front of the rocket next time................
Truck drivers don't know the first thing about rocket science, silly.
Generally speaking, the quest for knowledge isn't really very exciting or sexy. Sometimes, it's dull and hard work. Sorry if exploration and learning about our solar system doesn't meet with the approval of those of you who worship at the altar of "instant gratification".....
***** We need to get to other worlds that can be converted to an earth-like environ****
LMAO. Somebody has been watching to much Star Trek. Mars and the moon are both uninhabitable, (wait....did Obama tell you he was going to raise the temp of the planet from 80 below to 75 degrees and sunny?) If you leave earth as an infant, by the time you reached the closest planet that they THINK might be similar to ours, you would be 90. Scotty is dead, so beaming you there is out of the question.
The space agency is needed, smashing crap into the moon or even thinking of going there again is not.
man has always had a thirst for the unknown. i have no problem with space expolration. i do have to question the money spent at this time. and for what results,was it worth it? seems the older i get, the more skeptical i get.
maybe we should've sent a man to mars as rep. sheila jackson of texas suggested and bring our flag back.
just a little monday am humor to start the week. maybe someone at nasa can give her a little history lesson and remind her it was the moon. sad and this is one of our menbers of congress. oh well.
I THINK, considering how cold it is on Mars and the Moon, if we were to send a bunch of the gas guzzlers up there, and leave them all running, the pollution would cause global warming on both planets, and warm them sufficiently to sustain life!! See....problem solved, even WITHOUT LibertyOrDeath working for NASA!!!
what do you mean it isn't exciting??! if i had a good telescope, i would have been on my roof watching the entire thing go down. but i'm something of a nerd... either way, nasa doesn't exist to entertain us, they exist to discover.
btw, libertyordeath, your dan brown conspiracy theories are amusing.
NASA did oversell the visual aspect of the event but exploration is just that - going somewhere for the first time - doing something like an intentional, monitored impact in a lunar crater with unknown results. The error was in the pretty animation of what they thought would happen but knowledge was gained when their anticipated plume did not develop - there a question: why not? And the scientific team always knew the real results would come from the spectographic data still being digested.
The mission was a reasonably inexpensive one on the scale of space exploration. To me it's amazing and rather telling that we got to the moon with manned missions 40 years ago and our new "state of the art" is a controlled impact. For most people now living on this planet the Apollo missions took place before they were born. We need to explore our planet and the solar system - to become jaded and cynical about exploration is a sad testimony to the overall cynicism and emphasis on self and a certain malaise of this era.
Back to the moon again in my lifetime! I'm 65 so we best get going. Then on to Mars.
You buying? I watched them walk on the moon in black and white. They hit golf balls and drove a car and brought back some neat rocks that were worthless. There is nothing there, and the same goes for Mars. You can piss away all the billions you want ..and that is not going to change.
Who the hell is Dan Brown and why because I have a different perspective then I must be his follower?
I assume I'm also a FOX news guy since I think Obama is an idiot, right?
One last thing TORG - news flash!!! It didn't matter how big your telescope was - NO ONE SAW SQUAT!
Not even NASA. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.