Why Mars?

I'm pretty sure this belongs here but if I'm wrong mods please move it appropriately.

I was looking through various threads and I can see many photos of Mars, the landscape and the atmosphere. I can see rocks, what looks like water, and a rover.


Now this is the "problem" I have:

If we can (supposedly) send a probe to a planet millions of miles away and beam back high definition photos, why don't we have a rover on the Moon?

And if they claim we do, then where are all the Mars-like photos?

Originally posted by realeyes
I can see rocks, what looks like water, and a rover.

That's not water in that picture.. It was covered extensively on here.

Originally posted by realeyes

If we can (supposedly) send a probe to a planet millions of miles away and beam back high definition photos, why don't we have a rover on the Moon

We need to "move on". America landed there, Japan HD mapped it.. No need to spend billions to send a rover there....

Pretty simple. Mars is the next landing zone.

reply to post by CanadianDream420


But didn't we find , I think it was H3 on the Moon...

Supposedly well worth mining for enery??

With what was spent on the Mars photo/sample mission, could we have done something usefull by way of setting up a trial mine on the Moon??

Or do we find out Mars also has good minerals but move on to venus instead???

I too don't understand exploring these places if we don't follow up and use the information..

While I am also intrigued by our lack of physical interaction with our own satellite, I will expect the reasoning to be as mundane as the next reason. Why spend billions on something we can see already.

I think our - as in us, mere mortals - fascination with things like this is we want to know.

We aren't content with those mundane explanations.

One day, as we're now sending recreational craft into orbit for a large sum, I think we'll see mere mortals sending up armatrons gaffa taped to an rc battle tank, sent up with a conventional craft and deployed in orbit, with a nokia positioning app bunged to it to keep track of where it's gone.

Why not.. hah, no different to those guys who sent up a balloon into orbit with a camera and a phone to track it.

Might need a super boost in sending the rc signal et al (I'm making it all up as I go along, come with me!) but... whos to say in 10-50 years this wont be doable.

It won't be NASA or the govt who do what us mere mortals want. It will be US. Branson just happens to be a rich one of us. Well, on face value of course

reply to post by realeyes


The US landed on the Moon 11 times - 5 unmanned and 6 manned - and three of the latter had rovers.
The USSR landed two unmanned rovers that operated for months.
High-quality photos are not difficult to find.

Originally posted by CynicalM
I too don't understand exploring these places if we don't follow up and use the information..

Say hello to something called "politics".

Originally posted by Saint Exupery
reply to post by realeyes

 

The US landed on the Moon 11 times - 5 unmanned and 6 manned - and three of the latter had rovers.
The USSR landed two unmanned rovers that operated for months.
High-quality photos are not difficult to find.

Originally posted by CynicalM
I too don't understand exploring these places if we don't follow up and use the information..

Say hello to something called "politics".

I can't seem to find any hi-res photos using multiple search engines. Do you know where they might be?

reply to post by Saint Exupery

The US landed on the Moon 11 times - 5 unmanned and 6 manned - and three of the latter had rovers.
The USSR landed two unmanned rovers that operated for months.
High-quality photos are not difficult to find.

Be interesting to see whats on the Dark Side.

That is not water you are seeing in the photos
However, there is water on mars -confirmed- Its just underground and at best, it would be little more than sludge at surface level...no big vast blue oceans sadly...well, not yet anyhow...couple decades of terraforming may make a difference.

Why do we not have any (public) rovers on the moon? actually, that concept would be interesting overall, but overall a bit pointless. We know what the moon looks like, the astronauts brought back samples, etc...so ultimately...whats the point?

the H3 thing is a interesting new development, and perhaps it might be a good idea to toss a few dozen probes back on the moon and do extensive soil samples all around the ball to get a better composition sample than the limited samples we have today to test.

I would like to see hi-def photos of the moon as well.

However, I doubt that will ever happen.

It seems to me, like there is something on the moon they are trying to hide. There have been enough missions to the moon, manned and unmanned, to take some great pics, yet, no good ones have been released. Obviously, they don't want people looking.

Originally posted by CanadianDream420

Originally posted by realeyes
I can see rocks, what looks like water, and a rover.

That's not water in that picture.. It was covered extensively on here.

Originally posted by realeyes

If we can (supposedly) send a probe to a planet millions of miles away and beam back high definition photos, why don't we have a rover on the Moon

We need to "move on". America landed there, Japan HD mapped it.. No need to spend billions to send a rover there....

Pretty simple. Mars is the next landing zone.

Yes I finally finished reading the thread where I found the pic and I can now see that it isn't water.

reply to post by xxshadowfaxx

I would like to see hi-def photos of the moon as well.

You have, or you haven't been paying attention.
This is an image of Rio De Janeiro at .8 meters/pixel (it's big and copyrighted so you have to click the link).


This is an image from the LROC at .5 meters/pixel (higher resolution than Rio).
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ee3db231adad.png[/atsimg]


See those cars on the streets of Rio? You're seeing boulders smaller than them. There are craters smaller than the footprints of the buildings. What exactly do you want? Yeah, it's kind of boring but you can find more interesting ones here, and there are more added all the time. Not full coverage yet but there will be. At this resolution it will take a while. No moon bases yet though.
wms.lroc.asu.edu...

Here's a thread on the topic from a while ago:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Phage

This is an image from the LROC at .5 meters/pixel (higher resolution than Rio).

Wow, 2pixels/meter..
I saw a thread on Mars coin like objects..They were only 10mm wide but nice clear pics..

How many meters/pixel do you think they were shot at??

I don't really think 0.5 meters/pixel shows the kind of detail people are requesting..
The average man would show as 4 x .5 pixels at best...

reply to post by CynicalM


OK, here is a photo of the lunar surface with a resolution of 80 microns (0.00008 meters), taken by the Apollo Lunar Surface Close-Up Camera. The frame is 7.6 × 8.3 cm. Here are the rest of the 4-dozen or so stereo pairs taken at this resolution.

Happy now, or do you need the entire Moon to be mapped at this level?

reply to post by Saint Exupery

Happy now, or do you need the entire Moon to be mapped at this level?

How about just getting google to do street view type resolution?

reply to post by CynicalM


Well, that's pretty much what the LROC is doing. However, the Moon has roughly the same surface area as Africa, and we don't have that continent mapped at that level either.

Originally posted by CynicalM
reply to post by Phage

 

This is an image from the LROC at .5 meters/pixel (higher resolution than Rio).

Wow, 2pixels/meter..
I saw a thread on Mars coin like objects..They were only 10mm wide but nice clear pics..

How many meters/pixel do you think they were shot at??

I don't really think 0.5 meters/pixel shows the kind of detail people are requesting..
The average man would show as 4 x .5 pixels at best...

Here's one....
www.hq.nasa.gov...

and another:
www.hq.nasa.gov...

and a third:
www.hq.nasa.gov...

...and there are plenty more where that came from.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by xxshadowfaxx

 

I would like to see hi-def photos of the moon as well.

You have, or you haven't been paying attention.
This is an image of Rio De Janeiro at .8 meters/pixel (it's big and copyrighted so you have to click the link).


This is an image from the LROC at .5 meters/pixel (higher resolution than Rio).
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ee3db231adad.png[/atsimg]


See those cars on the streets of Rio? You're seeing boulders smaller than them. There are craters smaller than the footprints of the buildings. What exactly do you want? Yeah, it's kind of boring but you can find more interesting ones here, and there are more added all the time. Not full coverage yet but there will be. At this resolution it will take a while. No moon bases yet though.
wms.lroc.asu.edu...

Here's a thread on the topic from a while ago:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Can you, or your office, provide then same High Resolution image of Tycho Crater, or Anassagora Cater, or Zeeman Crater, or... or... and not a little flat moon field?
Thanks in advance!

reply to post by Arken


Here is a strip taken of Tycho crater. The is a "zoomable" image. Resolution is about 60 cm per pixel.
wms.lroc.asu.edu...

Here are some descriptions of what is visible in the long strip image:
Tycho Region

reply to post by realeyes


The moon is a sensitive tpoic and if what is up there is shared it may cause panic... From what I have learned.
2nd