runouw.com

http://www.iflscience.com/space/uk-anno ... ssion-moon
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/56 ... r-everyone

Lunar Mission One is a community-funded project that plans to send an unmanned module to the moon and drill down 20 to 100 m, to gather data on the geological composition of the moon and the effects of asteroid bombarment. Kickstarters get their own spot in a time capsule thing that will be buried in the moon, where information can be uploaded. They intend to have a ton of info about Earth there, the history of mankind and whatnot.

So yeah... I commented this to my parents... and they promptly stated that they weren't ok with this. Just like that one time the US shot a missile at the moon (When was that? I forgot), they fear this might negatively affect the moon. I stated that drilling up to 100 m can't possibly damage the moon or alter its interaction with the Earth, but still, they think that it could affect the moon's orbit or something. Other things they brought up were:

>One of the astronauts who went to the moon in the Apollo stuff said that he felt a strong vibration upon landing. Apparently to my dad this means the moon might be made of metal.
>The moon might be hollow, and when drilling it they could burst the moon like a balloon or something.
>There could be aliens living inside the moon.

...if you're like me, you probably went "What?" at this.

According to what I know, because of the way the moon orbits the Earth it's impossible for it to be hollow, and there's no evidence to back this up. And I'm pretty damn sure that if I crashlanded into something on a plane I would feel a strong vibration too. -_-

So yeah, I wanted to know what you guys thought of this whole Lunar Mission thing. What are your opinions on this?

Also, can any of the most science-savvy guys around here point me to some good stuff I can use as evidence to prove my dad that the moon isn't going to be screwed up by this? *looks at Doram and Venexis*

I do think there are risks (not quite the same risks your parents had in mind), but I think it would be interesting for research purposes to see what they discover.

Also, might wanna tell your parents that the moon originally separated from the Earth, so its highly unlikely that its made of metal.

I'm ok with this, knoweledge is power. Sure it may alter the moon, but think about what we can find out a lot of things.
Hollow moon? Aliens inside? Sound like somebody watched too much Dexter's Laboratory, but even if any of these are true, we wouldn't know if we don't go and find out, no?
On a funny note, there was a romanian comic about 5 years or more in which humans claimed "lands" on the moon and put martian slaves to dig for gold. In the end they did nothing but leave a big ♥♥♥ hole in the moon (and no martian was paid that day), but that won't be the case, no?

NanTheDark wrote:they fear this might negatively affect the moon. I stated that drilling up to 100 m can't possibly damage the moon or alter its interaction with the Earth, but still, they think that it could affect the moon's orbit or something

Are you serious?

The moon gets pelted by asteroids all the time, there are plenty of craters that are over 100m deep. In fact, the deepest crater known is about 6 kilometers deep and the moon is still orbiting just fine.

The moon is estimated to weigh over 7.3e+22 kg (that's 74 thousand million million million kilograms) and orbits earth at a little over 1 kilometer per second. If you wanted to change up it's orbit by a thousandth of it's current velocity (~1 meter per second), it would take an amount of energy equal to 8.8 trillion megatons of TNT and that would barely even change it's orbit!

yes

please leave David Cameron up there while he takes a time out after his temper tantrums

*Emelia Kaylee wrote:yes

please leave David Cameron up there while he takes a time out after his temper tantrums

Can like, ALL BRITISH PEOPLE just thumb up this post

Ok, apparently my dad just doesn't trust these people and thinks that they want to explore the moon for military reasons or whatever. Wanting to set up a base, or a thing to spy, or turn it into the Death Star I don't freaking know. Why can't people just be curious about the moon? He said, and I quote, "All you need to mess up something is putting a human there". That's some real pessimism right there.

Also my mom thinks the moon was placed there by aliens.

I'm seriously starting to get slightly pissed off at the fact they think stuff is going to go wrong. xD

Maybe they just hate Galileo :c

I highly doubt aliens or otherwordly species have the capacity to terraform planets and moons at this age though.

Harmless wrote:I highly doubt aliens or otherwordly species have the capacity to terraform planets and moons at this age though.

What do you mean by "at this age"? If aliens do exist (which I think is very likely), then any given alien race could have existed for any length of time up to however long ago it was that life was first capable of existing in this universe. If terraforming is possible, an alien race could very well have the capacity to do it.

I still think it's more likely that the moon just broke off of the Earth, though.

Yes, and the Earth is 6000 years old, and dinosaur bones were put there by "God" as pure decoration, and they have no meaning beyond that. Of course, by the same token, I'm not so sure that a shadow organization behind all the world's governments is trying to keep humanity subjugated, and needs the moon as a base to rule over us all. Look. I'm an intelligent guy, and I can certainly see that there is a perspective behind all of these things where it all seems to line up as these people say, but I also know that the theories that tend to work (a.k.a. are correct), tend to be the ones that make sense no matter which way you look at them.

Everyone has heard the phrase "When you assume, you make an ♥♥♥ out of u (you) and me." Every time you have to make an assumption of something - say something is a certain way, without proof, because you cannot get proof - in the process of trying to structure a theory, you introduce a weakness in it, and crackpot conspiracy theories are exactly that, purely because of the huge amount of assumptions they require.

To maximize the power of their assumptions, any good crackpot conspiracy theory needs a boogey man - someone mysterious and unpredictable to blame it all on. Aliens make great boogey men, simply because we are guaranteed to not have ANY concrete proof of ANYTHING about them (because, as far as any of us know, humankind has never made proper global contact with an alien species). Shadowy organizations that do not follow the law, or ethics, or any other obvious set of rules, are great for the exact same reason. Adding an element of pure and absolute unpredictability allows your theory to justify anything at all. From a pure logic point of view, I cannot prove that aliens did not abduct people because I cannot prove that aliens did abduct people. I cannot ask an alien if they did it. I cannot follow a trail of concrete physical evidence leading directly to the laboratory of a known alien. I cannot even prove that aliens exist. The lack of proof is not proof of lack. That is simply not how logic works, and without logical proof, you technically have nothing.

To contrast, consider this. Gravity exists. I know a great number of ways to prove it. And anyone who wants to run the tests I use to prove that it exists, can run the exact same tests, and they will get the same answers. The equations that we use to measure and describe gravity work no matter who is doing the math, and no matter the scale or materials involved. Most importantly of this is the fact that we all agree. In fact, it is impossible to DISAGREE, if you understand how this all works.

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All that being said, let's look at what we've got.
What we DO know:
We know what size the Moon is. (We have been there, proving that we have correctly identified how far away it is, and knowing how far away it is, we can easily work out how big it is with simple geometry.)
We know how much the Moon "weighs" (how much mass it has). (Similarly, using equations for gravity that we have proven here on the surface of the Earth, and including calculations that we have done for how much the Earth weighs, we can easily work out how much the Moon must weigh to generate the gravity it needs to stay in orbit.)

What we DO NOT know:
We do not know WHAT the moon is made of (what the density of that mass is, which is affected by what materials make it up, and the quantities of each kind of material involved), all the way through to the center. You can take a 2 kilogram weight, a 3 kilogram weight weight, and a 4 kilogram weight on a scale, and they will weigh 9 kilograms. You can also take a 1 kilogram weight, a 2 kilogram weight, and a 6 kilogram weight and come up with the same 9 kilograms (there are 7 possible combinations of 3 weights in whole number amounts that add up to 9, in fact - 1-1-7, 1-2-6, 1-3-5, 1-4-4, 2-2-5, 2-3-4, 3-3-3). There's no way to tell exactly what the moon is made of until we go there and drill a hole to see. Could it be a fair amount of fairly light rock and a bit of heavier rock in the middle? Yes. Could it be a really thin layer of light rock on top of a heavy and empty sphere of really dense metal? Yes. We have no way of telling from here. BUT. If it is made of different kinds of rock, we only need to assume that everything solid in the solar system is made out of rock (not an assumption - proven - we have rocks from the moon and other places), and that it formed in a similar way as the Earth due to gravity (not an assumption, if EVERYTHING else we have learned about our solar system is true), so 0 assumptions required there. SO. If it is indeed a hollow metal sphere, you would have to assume that A) someone made it (hollow spheres do not form naturally on that scale, according to what we know of physics and astronomy), B) someone put it there (once it was made, it could not be there, unless put there - manufactured is manufactured), C) someone would BENEFIT from having done all this (otherwise why do it), and D) anyone who would participate in conspiracies surrounding such a thing would benefit from THAT (again, otherwise why do it), and I cannot get proof of A, B, C, or D, so my only possible course is to assume. At least 4 assumptions there. See above.

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EDIT: After rereading your first post, there are a few other things I can say, from a scientific point of view.
A) If the Moon is made of metal (through natural means), then drilling into it will not "pop it like a balloon". Balloons are not made of metal, they are made of rubber or rubberized plastics. That's why they explode when their pressure is equalized. The stress on the material is such that it catastrophically contracts in a split second, back to some approximation of its original size, which is usually several orders of magnitude smaller. Metal does not work this way (its size with and without pressure is pretty much the same, so no contraction for the most part), and can hold its shape, even if a hole is drilled in it. Even if the metal sphere is pressurized inside, drilling the hole will merely provide an avenue for the pressure inside to release, and it will lose what atmosphere it has contained inside until it is equal to the atmospheric pressure outside (a.k.a. the pressures will equalize, which is basic physics, and the pressure outside is nothing, since the moon does not have an atmosphere, so, it will empty out to a vacuum inside as well). Technically, were this to be the case, the scientific value of the exact composition of that air would be priceless (as I said earlier, our current theories do not cover the creation of such a thing), and it would be to the benefit of the probe team to be able to sample it as it escaped, or better yet, seal the hole again to keep the system as pristine as possible for further analysis, in an effort to discover how it came to be. Also, if it was naturally formed as a hollow metal sphere, there's no telling how thick that sphere is in general, much less at any given spot, and drilling a mere 100 meters might not fully penetrate the inner surface.
B) If the Moon is both metal and artificial, frankly, the designers would have to be certifiably retarded to NOT have isolated chambers all around the outside surface of the sphere (called bulkheads), so that a loss in integrity of the surface (a.k.a. we put a hole in it) only depressurizes one section, and not the entire sphere. So, no explosion again, though the possible scientific loss of depressurization is lessened. Also, considering the rocky bombardment, and the probability of bulkheads, we may be drilling into a compartment that was already depressurized and not even know it.
C) If the moon were made of something that could pop, it could have done so from any of the immense number of rocks that have crashed into it over the millennia (making this possibility HIGHLY unlikely), and furthermore, would have been like landing on the surface of an inflatable bouncy house when we went there (which was not the case).
D) The affects of removing 100 meters of core sample (which tends to not be a very large diameter) would not significantly alter the gravity or orbit of the Moon. Frankly, the pressures involved in both landing, and taking off will have more of an effect, and even that is negligible. Unless you can remove a significant number of tons of material (probably on the order of thousands to millions of tons), you cannot affect the Moon in that way.