Why the Evidence of Water on the Moon is Bad News

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/semiconductors/devices/tech-talk/why-water-found-on-moon-is-bad-news

by pieceofpeace • 17 years ago

57 61 17 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

idlewords• 17 years 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• 17 years 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.

borism3• 17 years 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.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

sending people into space right now is grandstanding. the resources that go into it would be better spent preparing for true permanent habitation of other planets.

dca• 17 years ago

Manned missions involving highly trained air force pilots and school teachers on a government funded space ferry seem undesirable. Manned space flight involving random wealthy civilians seems to have taken its place.

Perhaps folks are tired of sending the typical astronaut to space on some government mission on their dime, and are ready to go themselves. If commercial space flight catches hold and the price comes down, my guess is people will get interested again real quick as it becomes a realistic candidate for the old "bucket list".

mechanical_fish3• 17 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs

juhbiu• 17 years ago

High speed trains don't capture the human imagination in the same way as steam trains. Volvos with air bags and seatbelts don't have the same response as 50s Studebakers. And tunnel boring machines aren't as picturesque as 1000s of slaves chipping away at rock with stone tools - it's called progress.

justinhj2• 17 years ago

Another long term strategy would be to live in a sustainable way on this planet. Perhaps we could crack that first. The sun is good for another 5 billion years.

alphamerik4• 17 years ago

This is only bad news if you happen to be a politically motivated person rather than a person of science.

yafujifide• 17 years 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.

mechanical_fish3• 17 years 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...

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• 17 years ago

Do you really need to sterilize something before sending it to Venus?

jerf• 17 years 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.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Yet if we are trying to visit/colonize other planets, at some point this will have to change, right?

Unless you think we're looking for livable planets with no life already on them, at some point natural evolution and propagation of the species calls for us to mix the ecosystem, right?

This is something I've always been confused about. I'm not trying to argue with you, just understand some of the premises.

senthilnayagam• 17 years 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• 17 years 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

euccastro7• 17 years 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.

Why the Evidence of Water on the Moon is Bad News

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