TOKYO - Japan's space agency launched its much-delayed lunar probe Friday, beginning what it calls the largest mission to the moon since the U.S. Apollo flights.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070914/ap_on_re_as/japan_moon_probe_2

*Gasp* Oh noes!


That's interesting news, though. Thanks.

OH SHI-

They're shooting a bunch of probes at the moon. Not all that new or exciting.

Might have been worth talking about if they did this when they first planned to, i.e before the US let a few probe scurry around Mars.

Don't you see!? They're establishing their moonbase there!!

didnt Bush want to establish a moonbase before the war?

No. 44 wrote:didnt Bush want to establish a moonbase before the war?

Yeah...like regan started the "Star Wars" thing...What is with american presidents and outer space?

^I blame this guy^

rival countries beginning space exploration and colonization? one step closer to a real life Gundam-verse. Sieg Zeon!

No. 44 wrote:didnt Bush want to establish a moonbase before the war?

He said he wanted America to return to the moon by 2020, and make it to Mars by like 2050 or something.

TriLink wrote:

No. 44 wrote:didnt Bush want to establish a moonbase before the war?

He said he wanted America to return to the moon by 2020, and make it to Mars by like 2050 or something.

Every president says something to that effect, and then never makes it a priority for the Congress. Our elected representatives treat NASA as a porkbarrel project, which is why it gets tragically underfunded every year. I suspect that the Space Shuttle got funded mostly because the military needed a manned heavy-lift space vehicle. The International Space Station was supposed to have been called "Space Station Freedom" and to have been built during the Reagan administration as a counterpoint to Mir (I still have books from my childhood that made me expect it to be fully operational by 1992 or so).

Also, because most people seem to think that NASA's budget is the same size as the entire Department of Defense.

If we were really planning on getting to Mars, we would be planning to land there by 2015, not 2030, and actually funding what NASA needs for human spaceflight. Twenty years from now, most of the current politicians will be out of office and won't have to answer to why we couldn't do it.

Fuck that, we need to fund some sort of killer asteroid search and destroy program.

Seriously. In the chance that a killer asteroid DOES come into a direct collision course with Earth, chances are that it will be too late before we even notice it. SPECIES SURVIVAL TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER EVERYTHING ELSE, PEOPLE.

Humans are too short-sighted and narrow-minded to care.

chee wrote:Fuck that, we need to fund some sort of killer asteroid search and destroy program.

Seriously. In the chance that a killer asteroid DOES come into a direct collision course with Earth, chances are that it will be too late before we even notice it. SPECIES SURVIVAL TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER EVERYTHING ELSE, PEOPLE.

people are actually working on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_deflection_strategies

I'm sorry, but I thought that there was already a program designed to prevent mass death and destruction from an asteroid: the human instrumentality project.

...

Ooh, now I got an idea for a discussion forum topic!

chee wrote:Seriously. In the chance that a killer asteroid DOES come into a direct collision course with Earth, chances are that it will be too late before we even notice it. SPECIES SURVIVAL TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER EVERYTHING ELSE, PEOPLE.

Getting off the planet would be a good start in preserving the species in case a giant asteroid does destroy the earth.

The Bastard King wrote:I'm sorry, but I thought that there was already a program designed to prevent mass death and destruction from an asteroid: the human instrumentality project.

You made my people I do not take seriously list real quick! Congradulations!

BrikHaus wrote:Getting off the planet would be a good start in preserving the species in case a giant asteroid does destroy the earth.

Yes it would.

Anonymous_Evafan wrote:

The Bastard King wrote:I'm sorry, but I thought that there was already a program designed to prevent mass death and destruction from an asteroid: the human instrumentality project.

You made my people I do not take seriously list real quick! Congradulations!

I'm sorry, I thought I did that when I made you cry at THAT BOARD a while back.

Sending manned mission to other planets is silly unless we are doing so to establish residence. We've already established what effects temperatures, radiation, and gravity (not o mention lack of oxygen) will have on human bodies out there. So unless this is a simple case of the Japanese being into the fake moon landing conspiracy and wanting to find out for themselves, this is simply a waste of millions of dollars so they can say "we dunnit 2, 1 stp clser 2 After Colony 1XX.

The Bastard King wrote:I'm sorry, I thought I did that when I made you cry at THAT BOARD a while back.

Different person, I don't post there...