Water On The Moon!

[sheepdog 10]

In case any of you missed the news last night, they have discovered water on the moon! How cool is that? After all these years of thinking it was just one big hunk of rock!

[rob86 2]

Hey! I thought I was was the resident NASA LCROSS Spokesperson! I posted about the LCROSS Mission earlier.. and had been regularly checking for updates to report. I'm just kidding, you can have this headline. I guess I missed the news though. I was beginning to think the mission was a flop and they were too disappointed to tell the press. It is cool news! I'm very happy to hear that this wasn't just another disappointment in Man's search for something 'out there'. Well.. see you on Moon Golf Resort Alpha everyone.. this new knowledge will help the USA in their steps to colonize the good 'ol Moon.. (is that a good thing?)

[Echo_of_thunder 1]

In case any of you missed the news last night, they have discovered water on the moon! How cool is that? After all these years of thinking it was just one big hunk of rock!

Just another way to spend tax money that the American people do not have to spend. Don't get me wrong there is a time and place to go looking for that stuff but right now is NOT that time. a waste of OUR Tax dollars. Use it to get people back to work. not crashing some milti billion dollar rocket into the moon. Besides that could be dangerous I feel anyways. It could throw off its orbit and cause crazy tides here on hearth.

[anwiii 17]

hunk of rock? you mean a hunk of cheese, don't ya? anyway, this is somewhat old news. they say they found a significant amount. to me, 25 buckets full of water is less than significant. but why does it even matter when obama right now isn't even budgeting for a moon expedition? and anyway, why should he? so we can put up another flag? it's an amazing feat, we proved we can get there. let's leave the moon alone now and spend money where it's most needed.

In case any of you missed the news last night, they have discovered water on the moon! How cool is that? After all these years of thinking it was just one big hunk of rock!

[rob86 2]

NASA scrimped and saved to do that mission, they definitely did not have an abundance of cash thrown to it. NASA's research discovers many things that are very useful outside of space missions. What they do is very important not a waste of money. Check out some webpages on what NASA has contributed to the world outside of the obvious. Plus, what they do is interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a lot to do with advancements in weather monitoring!Compare NASA's budget.. Budget: $17.3 billion. The LCROSS mission was a mere 79 million. A mere bag of shells to the US GOVT!to Military spending.. total for defense spending to between $925 billion and $1.14 trillion in 2009.Money spent on defense might not be completely useless, but come on.. NASA's budget is nothing compared to the money the US spends. Canada's military budget was like 18billion and we're doing okay. Billions just seem like a lot to us..

Edited November 14, 2009 by rob86 (see edit history)

[anwiii 17]

no doubt what nasa does is interesting....but interesting doesn't equal usefull. we are talking about the moon here with 25 buckets of water. it's been over 40 years now since we walked on the moon. let me ask you....throughout those 40 years, how usefull was that?

your damn tootin' bilions of dollars is a lot of money to the general public! so i stand by what i said about putting the money to better use. and you're right. 17 billion really isn't a lot....but wow....it's helping us find water on the moon that we will not be able to touch for another 40 years

big deal. i would rather hear about how money can save a family's life because the economy took away their jobs. or how the money could be used for new clothes for the homeless so they don't freeze to death in the winter. or hearing about when a certain area goes through a natural disaster and the area is declared a natural disaster area, that there is enough money to go around so the people who lost their homes and their livelihoods, are able to get it back.

those are the stories i want to hear. not finding 25 buckets full of water

maybe one day, armageddon wont just be a movie and nasa WILL find a way to save millions of lives. that would be a story i would want to hear. maybe nasa should start budgeting their own money for something more usefull. saving it and pumping it in to a real project that can have a little more significance to the world population

sad part is, the "water" is probably not even drinkable without some form of fliteration. i mean come on...if someone handed you a glass of newly found moon water, would you drink it without it even being tested? they say there is a bunch of moon dust mixed in. i wouldn't drink it.

NASA scrimped and saved to do that mission, they definitely did not have an abundance of cash thrown to it. NASA's research discovers many things that are very useful outside of space missions. What they do is very important not a waste of money. Check out some webpages on what NASA has contributed to the world outside of the obvious. Plus, what they do is interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a lot to do with advancements in weather monitoring!
Compare NASA's budget.. Budget: $17.3 billion

to Military spending.. total for defense spending to between $925 billion and $1.14 trillion in 2009.

Money spent on defense might not be completely useless, but come on.. NASA's budget is nothing compared to the money the US spends. Canada's military budget was like 18billion and we're doing okay. Billions just seem like a lot to us..

[Quatrux 4]

It's funny for me that people who aren't interested in space exploration say that it needs to be stopped, I think that science should go forward and the projects should be going forward and in a world wide way.By giving more money to ordinary people, they will just buy more stuff in a supermarket and buy a better house and spend that money on luxury, what's the point of that?Also what's the point to not give any money to NASA and feed all of the Africa? Even though someone can tell that I'm talking bad, but it's the same with NASA, people work there, they get their salary for that work, their budget for some years now aren't as good as earlier, some projects just succeed with minimal budget.I find much bigger problem of the budget in the world for military.Or for me even a much bigger problem is all the jobs of security guards, all the world pays them so much for what? In my opinion security guards and all that security for buildings, people are useless, security guards doesn't do anything for the world, nor with their brain nor with their hands They are the most useless labor power in the world. They protect us from whom? If people would be normal no such a waste of money would be needed around the world :(Little understands that space exploration is a good thing, with time we will need extra resources from other planets too if we or our future people will want to survive. Most of people live thinking that after their death earth could blow up, they don't care about anything, just about money and spending it in a supermarket to make them happy.

[Baniboy 3]

Waste of money?

Chandrayaan-1, India's first-ever moon probe, was aimed at mapping the lunar surface and determining its mineral composition (the orbiter's mission ended 14 months prematurely in August after an abrupt malfunction). While the probe was still active, its NASA-built Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) detected wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen the telltale sign of either water or hydroxyl.

Cassini, which passed by the moon in 1999 on its way to Saturn, provides confirmation of this signal with its own slightly stronger detection of the water/hydroxyl signal. The water would have to be absorbed or trapped in the glass and minerals at the lunar surface, wrote Roger Clark of the U.S. Geological Survey in the study detailing Cassini's findings.

Finally, the Deep Impact spacecraft, as part of its extended EPOXI mission and at the request of the M3 team, made infrared detections of water and hydroxyl as part of a calibration exercise during several close approaches of the Earth-Moon system en route to its planned flyby of comet 103P/Hartley 2 in November 2010.

These were spacecrafts that did this as a "side-job" or as a practice. So don't rant about how your government is wasting money, find things out yourself.
And these were all detected with wave-length technology, which means there are 25 buckets of water only on the surface, nobody knows how much there's when you go deeper than 3-5 millimeters.

Don't judge on the first sight. It's like I'm driving to a shop and I see a snake and take a photo of it = waste of fuel and causing of global warming. See, I was already going shopping, and although I had my engine running for a while, it isn't of that harm, I got the nice photo, didn't I?

[deadmad7 4]

I'm curious, how would we best harvest the diffuse water formed daily on the moon? You could have like a few acre wide field with a cat box like scraper that scoops up the top inch or two for heating and extraction. Would the soil get 'used up' or can it be sprinkled back out?