Hi Stu, Alex and All,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart78
Alot of people i have have spoke to are very disgusted that Nasa bombarded the moon, now i know it wasn't really a bomb they dropped but the media had petrayed it as if Nasa dropped a bomb on the moon which seems to have upset lots of people, maybe when Nasa do these things they need to better explain exactly what they are doing so the general public don't think they are firing warheads at our moon, or Nasa is going to have alot of haters worldwide..
Stu>>
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The problem wasn't NASA's -- it was the fault of a whole heap of very silly sausages on the interweb thingy who were making all sorts of outrageous claims about what this mission was all about with almost no knowledge of the facts and prepared to make up anything they wanted to get attention and speculate about potential outcomes they wouldn't have a clue about how to actually calculate -- or even approximate.
Rewind to 1999 -- the same thing happened with Comet Lee when there was a huge alleged conspiracy about the Cassini Mission being diverted to intercept the comet and destroy it with it's on-board Plutonium before it could hit Earth.
Or the alien space-ships that were following behind Comet Hale-Bopp ...
Then of course there is the Nibiru thing ...
I did a couple of radio interviews over this LCROSS thing and the extent of the mis-information was astonishing. It wasn't spread by NASA. It wasn't NASA's fault.
Really, could NASA have made it any more plain what this was about and how they hoped to accomplish the mission:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LC...iew/index.html
I don't think so. No mention at all here about Bomb, Nuke or Weapon. Just a plain and simple explanation. Science was being done.
On the other side of the coin there were web-sites that proclaimed the mission was a "kinetic weapon". Others proclaimed that it contained a large nuclear weapon, that it was going to knock the Moon off it's axis causing it to spiral into the Earth and others that proclaimed NASA was attempting to destroy evidence of an abandoned alien moon-base at it's south pole. People were screaming out that nuclear weapons shouldn't be used on the Moon and that NASA was in breach of some sort of treaty over the use of the Moon. They virtually all had these words in common -- Bomb, Nuke and Weapon.
NASA denied that which was in turn used as evidence that they had something big to cover up -- just like Bart Sibrel silliness that is now in the final stages of being de-bunked by the LRO orbiter's images showing the artefacts from many Apollo missions on the Moon in situ
Do a web-search (as the media will do to try and get some "facts") and they look at the NASA stuff but also all the other stuff -- which always makes good 'copy".
You must remember the true purpose mainstream news-magazines, newspapers, commercial radio stations and commercial television stations exist is to sell advertising space. The price they can sell advertising space for is set by the market having regard to their circulation and ratings.
It sounds strange, but people like reading bad news stories and are more likely to believe a bad news story than a good news one. More sensational stories (copy) = higher circulation/viewer ratings = more advertising and higher rates = increased revenue for stockholders.
Stu I too spoke to quite a few that were "disgusted" at this mission but they were only became disgusted based on the mis-information and baseless hearsay being circulated as fact. Once they knew the real facts things changed. It isn't NASA's fault -- it is the fault of a bunch of silly sausages intent on criminalising everything NASA does and the media who like to sell a story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
I dont know what follow up NASA have in mind after they analyse the "cloud" but if there is nothing planned by way of a landing to quantify how much water it would seem somewhat a pointless exercise.
alex
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Isn't that putting the cart before the horse Alex?
Surely there is no point in sending an extremely expensive mission to quantify the water present, before we know whether there is any water at all in the first place?
Why would they go to all the expense of planning mission like that when there isn't any evidence yet that it's required? This was a very cheap (in context) way to find out whether Di-Hydrogen Monoxide or Hydrogen Monoxide was present.
Best,
Les D
