Are you saying that spectroscopy isn't a picture? [grin]

So what? Fake or secret?

Wouldn't a better analogy be that they shot the moon with a really large bullet, not dropped a bomb on it? This might have averted some of the public alarm about the moon breaking in half and destroying the world...

Quote: Original post by Kirl

Quote: Also, what are the current laws on land-ownership, etc on other celestial bodies?

I don't think anybody really worked it out yet, acres of moon have been on sale for years... :)

lol, yeah you can buy a worthless certificate of land ownership from some con artist's web site if you really want to. That doesn't mean that you've actually bought a piece of the moon though!

There are international treaties saying no nation can own space in space. I'm guessing space colonies would work much the same way as Antarctica though.
[edit]Here's a link.

Quote: Original post by Kirl
If you can send a rocket to the moon, you can surely send it to any place on earth. You didn't think the world united for something purely interesting and educational, did you?

We've been able to do this for nearly 40 years now, they're just a little more accurate, but not much more than they have been for the last 10 or more years.

This is nothing really new.

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
Wouldn't a better analogy be that they shot the moon with a really large bullet, not dropped a bomb on it? This might have averted some of the public alarm about the moon breaking in half and destroying the world...

Bomb the moon wasn't an analogy. The public alarm might also have been averted had the various nations of the world invested more money into their education systems. The public alarm might also have been averted if the alarmists had read the parts of the reports noting that the moon is subjected to similar impacts about four times a month, but given their attention deficit disease, I suppose we can't fault them for avoiding the great pain that not panicking causes them.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by owl
So? Is it made of cheese or what?

I mean, are any images out there worth to be seen? All the videos and pictures availabe so far look so fake.

Guess what? Most of the time science isn't entertaining!

In undergrad, I worked on a project where I collected data from a telescope. My friends pictured me looking into a lens and making pretty pictures of the stars. It didn't help that the funding came from the school's MAP program, leading them to think of stellar cartography. One time they visited and were somewhat underwhelmed by the reality: me sitting at a computer gathering plots of microwave spectra. No Hubble-esque images for me.

Yes. I think the animations predisposed the public to expect a fireworks show. I imagine that from a 100 km away the show was spectacular, but from 376,289 km away, it just wasn't visible. Maybe in a few months impact images from high resolution telescopes (like Hubble) will be made public. Until then, we've got spectra!

One don't need to be a genius to figure out that most of the "public" aren't scientist. So you can't create expectation on them publiciting your experiment and then show them practically nothing.

The video posted in youtube is escentially a bad joke however you look at it, be it scientifically or for fun.

Modern technology used in high-budget action/disaster movies can make far more exciting (and believable) realities than reality itself. Go watch 2012 if you just want to see some explosions.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
Wouldn't a better analogy be that they shot the moon with a really large bullet, not dropped a bomb on it?

Bomb the moon wasn't an analogy.

So the probe actually detonated an explosive? It didn't just impact like a big bullet?

Quote: Original post by Talroth

Quote: Original post by Kirl
If you can send a rocket to the moon, you can surely send it to any place on earth. You didn't think the world united for something purely interesting and educational, did you?

We've been able to do this for nearly 40 years now ... This is nothing really new.

Pretty sure Kirl was talking about the space race 40 years ago.