[carbine7]

Yeah, I was watching the live NASA TV feed from the sheparding spacecraft when the Centuar hit. You couldn't see a thing. I wonderd if the whole thing failed, but I guess not since they said it worked as planned.

[watsisname]

Don't suppose you saved any?

Or a link

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/63766222.html

The shepard satellite did succeed in recording the impact flash with the thermal camera, but (from what I've heard at least) it appears the ejecta plume was not sighted. :/

[Liberator]

In other words, this was almost a complete waste of time...

NASA is losing it...no scratch that they lost it a long time ago...ossified fossil of a once great agency.  They lost it once they started settling.

[castor]

Well, they did learn a lot, just not on what they expected.

[newman]

In other words, this was almost a complete waste of time...

Just because you don't see some things with the naked eye on camera doesn't mean other instruments, spectrographs and whathaveyou won't. You really need to know something about the subject to be able to make a qualified statement on whether it was a waste of time or not. In the mean time, they're still going through the data, and until they make final statements on this mission I wouldn't jump to conclusions.

NASA is losing it...no scratch that they lost it a long time ago...ossified fossil of a once great agency.  They lost it once they started settling.

I'm sure the whole of NASA will mark this sad day on their calendars, the day they failed to live up to the standards of Liberator, that foremost authority on rocket engineering and space exploration.

[Colonol Dekker]

Ok people, don't lose it
 
 
So what's the next Nasa event?

[Janos]

In other words, this was almost a complete waste of time...

NASA is losing it...no scratch that they lost it a long time ago...ossified fossil of a once great agency.  They lost it once they started settling.

"From this moment on your agency has no goal except to launch shuttles. Oh and we cut some funding as well. Try to make yourself relevant somehow."

[General Battuta]

In other words, this was almost a complete waste of time...

NASA is losing it...no scratch that they lost it a long time ago...ossified fossil of a once great agency.  They lost it once they started settling.

The Mars rovers would like to have a word with you.

Oh, and Cassini.

And all there other incredible probes that have lasted well beyond design parameters.

[watsisname]

Well, disregarding the denouncing of NASA, Liberator does bring up a valid point.  One of the LCROSS mission objectives was to create an ejecta plume visible to earthbound observers, hubble, and the LRO.  Most of the observatories have either reported failure to observe said plume or have yet to make an announcement, though the LRO captured signs of it, including the signature of sodium atoms which was a surprise.

That said, LCROSS had multiple objectives and already accomplished a great deal, and much of the data regarding the impact is still being analyzed.

[karajorma]

But at this point who can claim that the objective failed because of a design flaw rather than the moon simply not being composed of what they thought it was?

Surprising results from an experiment do not automatically mean the experiment was wrong. It could simply mean your assumptions about the probable result were incorrect. In which case you've definitely learned something interesting.

[Liberator]

I don't find fault with the science they actually do, but they've lost they're vision.  Manned flights to the moon should never have stopped.

[General Battuta]

I don't find fault with the science they actually do, but they've lost they're vision.  Manned flights to the moon should never have stopped.

More like 'lost their funding'.

For better or worse the unmanned exploration of the solar system is about ten thousand times as cost-efficient.

[Blue Lion]

Do you think NASA didn't want to go anymore?

[Liberator]

Yes, Blue, I think the leadership doesn't.  They don't wanna be responsible for sending people into a situation where they might die.  Exploration is inherently unsafe, but we're lost that desire as a species I think.

Efficiency has little to do with science, if there were manned missions, you could send at least twice as many experiments to be done because you'd have a human there to collect the data and make sure the mechanisms don't break down and you don't have to worry about the data quite so much since the data will be stored in a vessel that is coming back.

[Blue Lion]

Yes, Blue, I think the leadership doesn't.  They don't wanna be responsible for sending people into a situation where they might die.  Exploration is inherently unsafe, but we're lost that desire as a species I think.

They must have spent the entire manned space program in a state of amnesia then.

[General Battuta]

Yes, Blue, I think the leadership doesn't.  They don't wanna be responsible for sending people into a situation where they might die.  Exploration is inherently unsafe, but we're lost that desire as a species I think.

Then why does NASA keep throwing out ideas for manned returns to the moon and just never gets the funding for them?

Efficiency has little to do with science, if there were manned missions, you could send at least twice as many experiments to be done because you'd have a human there to collect the data and make sure the mechanisms don't break down and you don't have to worry about the data quite so much since the data will be stored in a vessel that is coming back.

No, if there were manned missions, you could send a quarter as many experiments because you'd be wasting all this weight on life support and crew areas and water and all this **** like people that adds nothing to the mission.

Don't get me wrong, I love manned space exploration, but it's not done for science.

[Kosh]

I don't find fault with the science they actually do, but they've lost they're vision.  Manned flights to the moon should never have stopped.

That was because the country couldn't care less once we reached our goal. Ultimately it was a problem with our political leadership as well as the electorate itself. A lot of Americans don't really know how much we even spend on NASA (which is a fraction of 1% of the total federal budget), or even what NASA is doing. A couple of good articles worth reading.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/11/21/nasas-budget-as-far-as-americans-think/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/05/08/whence-nasa/

[watsisname]

But at this point who can claim that the objective failed because of a design flaw rather than the moon simply not being composed of what they thought it was?

Surprising results from an experiment do not automatically mean the experiment was wrong. It could simply mean your assumptions about the probable result were incorrect. In which case you've definitely learned something interesting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that the unexpected results are a bad thing.  And in any experiment a lack of observation is still an important observation in itself.  Also a major consideration is that this was the first time we've attempted such a mission, so there were a lot of uncertainties involved.  But on the other hand, it seems to me a great deal of effort was spent in hopes of recording and analyzing the plume from multiple observatories, so that there'd be multiple data sets for either the detection or lack of detection of water or other materials.  With the plume not being as prominent as expected, it is harder to make such a determination.

[Janos]

Yes, Blue, I think the leadership doesn't.  They don't wanna be responsible for sending people into a situation where they might die.  Exploration is inherently unsafe, but we're lost that desire as a species I think.

They have outright stated their willingness to send people to Mars. This was quite a big point in recent Augustine commission as well. The problem is that they don't have the funding to do so!

Efficiency has little to do with science, if there were manned missions, you could send at least twice as many experiments to be done because you'd have a human there to collect the data and make sure the mechanisms don't break down and you don't have to worry about the data quite so much since the data will be stored in a vessel that is coming back.

Efficiency has a lot to do with science. Robots and unmanned probes are simply, safe and cheap to send around the solar system. Their only limitation is that they can only perform tasks they have been programmed to do - a surprising situation means that the control team has to come up with ingenious plans or risk failure, or to lose potentially useful data because the collecting equipment does not suit that one part.

I am in favour of sending a team of scientists to Mars; they would probably discover stuff unmanned rovers can't. But that

[Liberator]

I don't give a fig about going to Mars at this point in our technological development.  All the design and development should be done in Earthspace with an eye toward colonization of the moon and perfecting the technologies required to go to Mars safely.

Basically, I don't want a repeat of Apollo, which is what they have on the board right now.  I want the development of actual inter-orbit space craft and not some catchall ground to orbit hunk that tries to do everything and is actually reusable.  Something that can go to the moon with 4 or 5 people in relative comfort and have a modular decent vehicle that would allow the EVA crew to go down and do things and then come back to the vessel and return to Earth.

And speaking of efficiency, the vast cost of spaceflight isn't from doing things in space, it's from getting there.  So if you have a vehicle that operates exclusively in space you eliminate at least a portion of the cost of operation by leaving the tools and support systems in orbit instead of having to haul them up and down for every trip.

We have the technology, or are very close, to be able to operate in space without spending half a persons life making plans about it.  We lack only the will and the drive to use it as it needs to be used.