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Originally posted by peacejet
These are all amazing wonders of our technological capability. It is only that we fail to appreciate these wonders.
Originally posted by SvenTheBerserK
What.....Flinging stuff at the moon?
Wow thats advanced stuff what a joke.
We can send a probe to mars to look for life and water yet we feel the need to vandalize the moon by throwing rockets at it.
As you can see i think this mission is immature and unnecessary.
And if there are aliens out there what sort of message would this send about us?
Originally posted by peacejet
reply to post by heineken
During space missions, some missions are designed in such a way that the space craft doesnt leave the earth directly and travel towards the moon. Instead they launch into space with elliptical orbit. The elliptical orbit has an apogee and perigee. Perigee is the closest approach with respect to earth and apogee is the farthest distance with respect to earth.
So, over the days the space craft will adjust its orbit to increase its apogee steadily and eventually get captured by the moons orbit.
The Shepherding Spacecraft and Centaur rocket are launched together with another spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). All three are connected to each other for launch, but then the LRO separates one hour after launch. The Shepherding Spacecraft guides the Centaur rocket through multiple Earth orbits, each taking about 38 days. The rocket then separates from the Shepherding Spacecraft and impacts the Moon at more than twice the speed of a bullet, causing an impact that results in a big plume or cloud of lunar debris, and possibly water.
Take a look at the earth orbit movie in the web page.
Mission
These are all amazing wonders of our technological capability. It is only that we fail to appreciate these wonders.
Originally posted by iwannaseethisshipgodown
i just thought about the web bot prediction 'global coastal event, lots of finger pointing'. do you think this could effect our oceans or is the blast to small?
either way i really dont agree with this and am quite angry now.
Originally posted by ngchunter
Originally posted by iwannaseethisshipgodown
i just thought about the web bot prediction 'global coastal event, lots of finger pointing'. do you think this could effect our oceans or is the blast to small?
As I posted on another copy of this thread, the moon has a mass of 7.3477×10^22 kg and an orbital speed of 1.022 km/s. P(inertia) = mv, therefore the moon's inertia = 75093494000000000000000 kg km/sec or
75093494000000000000000000 Newtons
The upper stage that will strike the moon is 2000 kg and the impact velocity will be 2.5km/sec. Assuming they directly targeted it to hit along the axis of the moon's orbital motion (they aren't, it's going to hit the pole and could never cause the moon's orbital period to change) the energy it would impart to the moon's orbital motion is a mere 5000 kg km/sec or 5000000 Newtons. That's 6.658x10^-18 % of the moon's orbital energy, in other words, completely insignificant.
either way i really dont agree with this and am quite angry now.
Why are you angry? We slammed a probe headlong into comet Tempel 1, did that make you angry? We slammed 5 S-IVB stages into the moon during the Apollo program, so how is this any different (let me guess, everyone here thinks that was fake)?
[edit on 18-6-2009 by ngchunter]
Originally posted by iwannaseethisshipgodown
well you know some long numbers so you must be a maths genius here to educate us all.
it makes me angry that they think they own the moon and can do what ever they like to it.
its like another person said if any far eastern country want to do this there would be uproar,
and there are many other ways to find out if theres water up there other than shooting a rocket at it.
if this ok where does it stop.
as for it being fake, i dont know, but i have an open mind and dont reach conclusions or answers because theres always more to find out.
do you really beleive everything you read in the papers or the news tells us?
Originally posted by amongus
Unless I've missed this in the various stories, when exactly is it expected to hit the moon?
Day, time? I know its set to launch today around 5pm EST here in the states. But when exactly should we be looking UP?
Originally posted by KSPigpen
Why would anyone be looking for water on the moon?
They're trying to keep us from seeing something by blowing it up.