A winner!!
European scientists hail successful moon mission
With this sort of bullshit success, I cannot understand why more Europeans are not on board with our Iraq war.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) unmanned SMART-1 spacecraft ended its three-year mission to test new propulsion technology and explore the lunar surface by crashing into the near side of the moon on Sunday.
China will open a Chinese restaurant on the moon before the European Space Agency can get a shoe-size robotic device up there. What’s the point guys. Give up!
It was supposed to crash into the lunar surface to emit a plume of dust so they can analyse it… just hope it didn’t knock it out of orbit…
whoa John – ease up! The probe was always going to crash, due to the deliberatly low orbit they put it in! They decided to control that crash so they could study the ejecta given off from the collision. This is the same principle used in NASA’s Deep Impact probe (http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/), so it’s not a new way of studying the material makeup of an astronomical body.
The two comments above are correct – the crash was done on purpose, after around three years in space. The mission was to mainly test new technologies like the ion thruster that was solar powered, and to gather information about the moon using an x-ray instrument.
God forbid John C. Dvorak do some research before ranting how something sucks, right? I mean, his Google must be broken.
*cough*
Mr. Dvorak even though every nation who has explored space has made it into a competition does not mean that is right. The amount of things that we found out and gained from as a result of sheer dumb luck are astounding. That whole unintended consequences thing sometimes leads to positive results. Also as has been mentioned they meant to do that. A better picture would be of cars being crashed to test car safety equipment. Even with current computer modeling we still end up needing to actually physically testing things to prove that what we modeled in the computer actually did occur in real life experiments.
“What’s the point guys. Give up!”. Sounds like if you can’t win don’t try. When they said that on The Simpsons they were being sarcastic. I find such defetist talk from Mr. Dvorak very dissapointing. 😉
John
the first five comments say it all. and by the way: most of us europeans are not in iraq cause we got some brains and over here the companys don’t make all the politics.
good thing 1 though 4 never made a mistake. If they did its a good thing that no one ever jumped on them and berated them. Mistakes happen, point them out and show the correction and prove your correction. THEN move on. is there a point to raking him across the coals? damn i knew he was wrong also but i am not going to blast him for it. Jesus grow up
Mr. Dvorak, easy does it! The first US probes sent to the moon in the 60s were also crashers – they were called the Ranger series. The Rangers only took photos, this was indeed meant to crash onto the surface for the plume to be observed from earth.
Now, in reality, and in my very humble opinion, the ones who are giving up are the USA, and NASA. This is most unfortunate. I’ve said before in several comments that NASA should push forward with some derivative of the shuttle, maybe smaller and safer for astronauts, instead of chickening out and going back to what they (NASA) think they can do well, which is 60’s era Apollo-like ships…
WHAT’S THE POINT? DON’T GIVE UP!!!
If I didn’t know JCD, I would resent this. He is just stirring the pot…
There’s an old saying here:
“The dogs bark and the caravan passes” (sorry, not calling you literally a dog…).
USA also talked loud about the Arianne project… and now it’s the most effective and secure way to put satellites in space.
Just because your nations combined are, at best, the third most powerful force in the world is no reason to get pissy.
I certainly agree with John’s assessment about China – I believe they are the only nation on Earth with both the economic strength and the authoritarian rule necessary to do *real* space exploration and expansion. All other so-called “space-faring” nations have to compromise their space technologies so badly (late-60’s tech-shuttles, “new” Apollo-esque moon rockets in 2006??) that they are just running to stand still. I see some hope in private efforts like the recent X-prize entrants, but it will ultimately fall to China to spearhead these efforts toward something truly revolutionary and useful.
Rob, you’re absolutely right in your comment that only China, by being a dicatatorship, can soon start doing REAL space exploration. America, and to a lesser degree Europe, are too tied down by politics. I’m reading an article in this month’s Discover magazine, where NASA’s administrator Mike Griffin says something like “we did not retreat from the Moon because of technical difficulties, we didn’t fail to go to Mars because of technical problems, and we haven’t taken 20 years to put a space station in orbit because of technical matters (…) In each case the issues are matters of politics and leadership”. He said this to Congress in 2003! Which means, if you don’t get politics out of the way, or you don’t show politicians everyone will gain from space exploration (as is happening a bit in Europe + Russia), you’ll just be standing where you were in 1972…
And whatever NASA does now, it may already be too late. To paraphrase Mr. Griffin, the shuttle didn’t blow up twice because of technical issues – JUST READ THE ACCIDENT REPORTS! It was mismanaged. So this backmaneuvering is, once again, just to please politicians… I doubt there will be no horrendous accidents with the new CEVs…
And of course, Mr. Dvorak is just stirring the waters, what’s wrong with that?
Weren’t those Europeans (Russians) who started it all? The Yankees got into the game after getting scared shitless?
So, since the probe was an unqualified success, we are to interpret JCD’s comments as he understands why so many Europeans are supporting the Iraq war, not to mention his own support of the US in Afghanistan.
RBG
> Rob, you’re absolutely right in your comment that only China, by
> being a dicatatorship, can soon start doing REAL space
> exploration.
> (…)
>Comment by Miguel — 9/5/2006 @ 8:40 am
Well, from this POV, the USA are on their way to make a really big comeback on space exploration. Lets just wait after the Dubya mob will had pocketed even the 2008 presidential elections… 😀
European, and darn proud to be!
#10, First, maybe our leaders do, but we really don’t care about being the most powerful force in the world. As for being pissy, well, it seems JCD was being pissy here in the first place. Well, I usually respect his opinions, but no one is always right, not even me. lol
JoaoPT, nice translation “os cães ladram e a caravana passa”; bem tuga! 🙂
#16 – Brigado…
Correct me if I’m wrong… This is the 3rd space project reaching the moon, right? First were the Soviets (I was to say the Russians, but they were soviets at the time…) with robotic vehicles, then the Americans, in that was to be the most fantastic and expensive marketing campaign known as the Apollo missions, and then this European suicide mission.
And there are what? How many space agencies? 5, 6 in the world?
Not so bad IMHO.
With the New World Order in place, am surprised that ANY rocket is allowed lift-off. Too bad, I can’t say the same for that ill-fated Japanese moon attempt a few years back. So under the circumstances, any successful lift-off is a success. Huzzah!