NASA Briefs Preliminary Plume Findings from Moon Mission |
NASA Briefs Preliminary Plume Findings from Moon Mission |
Nov 10 2009, 09:26 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 239 Joined: 18-December 07 From: New York Member No.: 3982 |
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Nov 14 2009, 03:07 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 214 Joined: 30-December 05 Member No.: 628 |
Colaprete mentioned that at the time the target was switched from Cabeus A to Cabeus proper, all the Earth-based observers knew that their prospects for seeing the plume would be much diminished. They could have made that clearer to the general public at the time - it would have avoided the disillusionment when we saw those visuals with very little going on.
Regarding the effect of the water on the cost calculus of lunar exploration (I hope this is permitted...if not, by all means kill it) a useful metric would be to estimate the number of vehicle loads of infrastructure that would be needed to get the variable cost of rendering the local water down to the point where it is no more expensive than bringing water from Earth. If it were a matter of just filling plastic bags with volatiles and dragging them to a sunny slope, you could probably be in position to do that with virtually no heavy equipment. But the implication of twelve buckets from a thirty-meter crater would be that you'd have to set up a major factory to just take an occasional bath. In this case the scientific fascination with identifying all the volatiles, while it fully justifies the present mission, is not likely to translate into any speedup of the exploration timetable. Perhaps some beverage company will be interested to bring a little of the stuff back to Earth and bottle it? http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30505 . |
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