China Lands Rover On The Moon

[Starlord]

Pretty historic achievement

[Tom Cowan]

it is landing on the dark side (thou it is not dark just the side that faces away from the earth) that is the big thing in my book

[Ranxerox]

I doubt that it being on the "dark side" will add much scientific knowledge.  Though the rover may have scientific instruments not included in previous rovers and that could be valuable. In any event, I tend to view space explorations as not a national aspiration but a human aspirations, and as such news of the landing made me happy.

[Hermit]

YES! I was too young to jump in on the 'it never happened' conspiracy nut thing for the man on the moon, but this one I can make.

 

Ahem "They totally recorded this in a studio and CGIed it"

 

 

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

What did Rover ever do to the Chinese that compelled them to send him on a one-way trip to the Moon? Rover's a Good Dog!

[Bazza]

So is Pluto and he was sent far away, then got demoted. 

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Ranxerox said:

I doubt that it being on the "dark side" will add much scientific knowledge.  Though the rover may have scientific instruments not included in previous rovers and that could be valuable. In any event, I tend to view space explorations as not a national aspiration but a human aspirations, and as such news of the landing made me happy.

 

Well, what I've been hearing scientists discuss sounds quite exciting. For one, the topography of the far side (more appropriate than "dark side") is notably different from the near side -- no large flat "seas" -- and scientists don't know why. For another, the area the rover landed in looks like it could contain matter ejected from the Moon's core in the past, quite different from the samples collected during the manned moon landings. The bulk of the Moon also shields instruments from the radio chatter flooding off Earth these days, making radio astronomy more effective. The lander also contains plant seeds and silk-worm cocoons. We've studied how such organisms grow in zero gravity, but never in low gravity as on the Moon.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Hermit said:

YES! I was too young to jump in on the 'it never happened' conspiracy nut thing for the man on the moon, but this one I can make.

 

Ahem "They totally recorded this in a studio and CGIed it"

 

I'm old enough to have watched the first manned moon landing on live television. The prospect of human beings physically returning to the Moon in my lifetime pleases me. If I can just live to see our people land on Mars, I'll pass on a little more gladly.

[Ranxerox]

21 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Well, what I've been hearing scientists discuss sounds quite exciting. For one, the topography of the far side (more appropriate than "dark side") is notably different from the near side -- no large flat "seas" -- and scientists don't know why. For another, the area the rover landed in looks like it could contain matter ejected from the Moon's core in the past, quite different from the samples collected during the manned moon landings. The bulk of the Moon also shields instruments from the radio chatter flooding off Earth these days, making radio astronomy more effective. The lander also contains plant seeds and silk-worm cocoons. We've studied how such organisms grow in zero gravity, but never in low gravity as on the Moon.

 

Well, I certainly hope they discover all sorts of new things.  Knowing more about low gravity plant growth would be very helpful once we reach Mars, and if they find rocks from the moon's core that would be very cool.

[Hermit]

21 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I'm old enough to have watched the first manned moon landing on live television. The prospect of human beings physically returning to the Moon in my lifetime pleases me. If I can just live to see our people land on Mars, I'll pass on a little more gladly.

 

It's all fake...

the Moon ? Fake.

that big orb is just advanced shadow puppetry

[Pariah]

This is very cool! I was just talking to my students a few days ago about the history of space exploration. Now I have another chapter to add!

[Zeropoint]

On 1/3/2019 at 8:05 AM, Ranxerox said:

In any event, I tend to view space explorations as not a national aspiration but a human aspirations, and as such news of the landing made me happy.

 

As far as I'm concerned, national borders only go up to the Karman Line. Beyond that, we're all just Terrans.

[Pariah]

1 hour ago, Zeropoint said:

As far as I'm concerned, national borders only go up to the Karman Line. Beyond that, we're all just Terrans.

 

Carl Sagan agrees.

 

[Starlord]

Is that the earth from the edge of the solar system?

[Pariah]

It's from a photograph taken by Voyager 1 from about 40 AU out (well beyond the orbit of Neptune). It's called The Pale Blue Dot.

 

Quote

That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

 

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

— Carl Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

On 1/4/2019 at 11:32 PM, Starlord said:

Is that the earth from the edge of the solar system?

Close. I believe it was taken by one of the Voyager probes from the vicinity of Jupiter or Saturn. Not the edge of the solar system (we wouldn't reach that until decades later), but far enough that Earth looks as insignificant as it is. From that distance, it's hardly recognizable as a planet, and I imagine that if you go to much farther out you wouldn't see it at all.

 

As Carl Sagan so eloquently put it, "It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

[Cancer]

On January 3, 2019 at 10:38 AM, Lord Liaden said:

 

I'm old enough to have watched the first manned moon landing on live television. The prospect of human beings physically returning to the Moon in my lifetime pleases me. If I can just live to see our people land on Mars, I'll pass on a little more gladly.

 

I'm old enough to have watched it, but I didn't, being asleep in my bunk at a Boy Scout camp in Germany at the time of the landing.

 

I don't expect to see humans return to the Moon in my lifetime, or living humans to Mars this century.  The effort of maintaining Earth's habitability has to take precedence.