Moon question

[Soundmanred]

"Sir, we don't have any pictures of the lunar landing sites taken from above."
"Who gives a shit?"
"These people on the Internet. They think we should send a satellite to the moon to take pictures of the Apollo landing sites."
"Tell them to go screw themselves."
"But sir, it would only cost a few hundred million dollars."
"Don't you have something you should be doing? Get out of here."
"But Sir! There are people who don't believe we landed on the moon! We need pictures to prove that we landed on the moon."
"Those morons would just say the pictures were faked as well. Hell, even that crazy flat Earth guy thinks that all our satellite images that show the curvature of the Earth are faked."
"Good point sir. So, I should tell them to go screw themselves?"
"Indeed. Dismissed."

lol

 

[DirkGently1]

..Where are the pics of the moon landings?

You can send a HD camera to the Moon but you can't make it go back in time to film the moon landings.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Only in the US will you find people who think the moon landing was fake and wrestling is real

 

[Linflas]

They did that on one of the Mythbuster episodes.

Lunar Laser Ranging experiment

he ongoing Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment measures the distance between the Earth and the Moon using laser ranging. Lasers on Earth are aimed at retroreflectors planted on the Moon during the Apollo program, and the time for the reflected light to return is determined.

As to whether or not it is possible for a backyard hobbyist to replicate ala "The Big Bang Theory" I have no idea but the reflectors are definitely there.

 

[Oceanas]

Actually that's a good point. With Hubble, and other methods of getting images, it's odd that we don't have more imagery of the moon given it's fairly close compared to other stuff we have images of.

Hubble has taken shots of one of the landing sites.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/hubble_moon.html

The problem is:

The Apollo descent stages left on the lunar surface are too small to be seen by Hubble, which can see objects as small as 60-75 yards, about three-quarters the length of a soccer field. The left-behind descent stages are only about the size of a small truck.

These observations weren't easy. The moon is a difficult target for Hubble because it moves across the sky faster than Hubble can track it and is very dim in ultraviolet light. The observations required steady, precise, as well as long exposures to search for the resources. In spite of these challenges, Hubble was able to image all of its targets, and early results show that Hubble can detect ilmenite at the Apollo 17 site from 248,000 miles (400,000 km) away.

 

[ViperXX]

I never said we didn't land on the moon. That wasn't the question. It was why are there no pics of the landing sights.

And to those of you who say why waste money on a satellite to take pics of the moon? If we are planning to go back there don't you think it would be helpful to have high rez pics of the moon for the next missions?

 

[bobdole369]

I never said we didn't land on the moon. That wasn't the question. It was why are there no pics of the landing sights.

And to those of you who say why waste money on a satellite to take pics of the moon? If we are planning to go back there don't you think it would be helpful to have high rez pics of the moon for the next missions?

You probably call them "breaks" too don't you?

 

[bignateyk]

Hubble wasn't designed to look at something as close as the moon.

LOL. That would be like taking a pair of binoculars focused to a distance a half mile away and trying to look at an ant on the ground 3 inches in front of the lense.

 

[Saint Nick]

Here, page 17

Holy shit...I can't believe people read that. I just spent five minutes skimming the entirety of that publication and it is complete trash. ROFL!!!

 

[dank69]

or those satellite thingies orbiting it...

Yo dawg, we heard you like satellites, so we're gonna put satellites around our satellites so they can orbit while they orbit.

 

[Saint Nick]

http://www.google.com/mars/
http://www.google.com/moon/

Needs street view.

 

[Ichinisan]

They did that on one of the Mythbuster episodes.

That's where I learned of it.

 

[JTsyo]

Don't be an idiot. The military base is on the dark side of the moon so it can't be seen from earth. They also have kickass parties there that you're not invited to. (There really is a dark side of the moon since the moon is tidally locked to the earth!)

it's not dark ...

 

[Ichinisan]

I never said we didn't land on the moon. That wasn't the question. It was why are there no pics of the landing sights.

And to those of you who say why waste money on a satellite to take pics of the moon? If we are planning to go back there don't you think it would be helpful to have high rez pics of the moon for the next missions?

There are lots of pictures. People called them "fake."

 

[bobdole369]

Holy shit...I can't believe people read that. I just spent five minutes skimming the entirety of that publication and it is complete trash. ROFL!!!

Some people consider it "The Paper". As in the only source of readable news. I like all the crackpot ads (like the one for the pill that swells up inside your stomach LOL)

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

I never said we didn't land on the moon. That wasn't the question. It was why are there no pics of the landing sights.

And to those of you who say why waste money on a satellite to take pics of the moon? If we are planning to go back there don't you think it would be helpful to have high rez pics of the moon for the next missions?

There is just one thing they can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther.

NASA should simply send an unmanned probe to Mars containing a well-sealed, well-protected capsule containing a check for $1,000,000,[insert your favorite number of zeroes here], payable to bearer. The first person who manages to get there and collect it gets to keep it. Simple

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hubble has taken shots of one of the landing sites.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/hubble_moon.html

The problem is:

That's pretty cool. Makes sense that it was hard to get though, never considered how hard it is to aim considering the moon is always moving, and moving fast to consider it's distance.

I did figure we had satellites around the moon, mars, and other nearby planets though, but I just assumed, and assumed wrong.

That said, if I build a giant solenoid and launch an old microwave oven or something to the moon and get it stuck in it's orbit, will I be the first one to get a satellite around the moon?

Seriously though, I have always considered of how cool it would be to launch a probe of some sort into space, but that would require quite a lot of dedication and knowledge, and money.

 

[JSt0rm]

This is the next step in space telescopes and its funding is threatened

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

So I doubt we will see one just to look at the moon if this awesome piece of technology cant get off the ground.

 

[JSt0rm]

That thing is going to orbit 1 million miles from earth. Sick.

 

[Aluvus]

My bad then, but don't we have tons of other telescopes up there rotating around earth, mars, the moon etc? At least that's what I thought. With all the incredible imagery we do get, it just surprises me they can't get the moon, or maybe it's just too boring to explore or something.

NASA provides a full list of all current missions here. The short answer is that we have a few spacecraft orbiting the moon (including the LRO, linked above), a few orbiting Mars, a handful orbiting other planets (ex Cassini around Saturn, MESSENGER around Mercury), and Dawn orbiting the very large asteroid Vesta. Not all of them can do imagery (ex GRAIL is intended to study the moon's gravitational field). Launching these missions is even more expensive than launching to Earth orbit, because you need a beefier launch vehicle and you have to deal with more of the hostile aspects of space travel.

By comparison, we have many, many satellites in orbit around Earth. Even if you were only to include NASA satellites it would be a slam-dunk. But there are also lots of other private- and government-owned imagery satellites orbiting the Earth. Tools like Google Earth rely on imagery from private-owned imagery satellites (in low Earth orbit) as well as aircraft.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: in order to get high-resolution imagery, you need to be relatively close (by astronomical scales) to the body you want to image. Or have uncannily good optics. The moon is simply too far away for LEO spacecraft, for instance, to image at high resolution.

 

[Aluvus]

Don't be an idiot. The military base is on the dark side of the moon so it can't be seen from earth. They also have kickass parties there that you're not invited to. (There really is a dark side of the moon since the moon is tidally locked to the earth!)

There is a far side of the moon (from Earth), but there is not a consistently dark side of the moon.

 

[CZroe]

NASA provides a full list of all current missions here. The short answer is that we have a few spacecraft orbiting the moon (including the LRO, linked above), a few orbiting Mars, a handful orbiting other planets (ex Cassini around Saturn, MESSENGER around Mercury), and Dawn orbiting the very large asteroid Vesta. Not all of them can do imagery (ex GRAIL is intended to study the moon's gravitational field). Launching these missions is even more expensive than launching to Earth orbit, because you need a beefier launch vehicle and you have to deal with more of the hostile aspects of space travel.

By comparison, we have many, many satellites in orbit around Earth. Even if you were only to include NASA satellites it would be a slam-dunk. But there are also lots of other private- and government-owned imagery satellites orbiting the Earth. Tools like Google Earth rely on imagery from private-owned imagery satellites (in low Earth orbit) as well as aircraft.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: in order to get high-resolution imagery, you need to be relatively close (by astronomical scales) to the body you want to image. Or have uncannily good optics. The moon is simply too far away for LEO spacecraft, for instance, to image at high resolution.

Yep, and it's pretty obvious that the HiRez imagery Red Squirrel expects is too expensive outside of population centers on THIS planet and yet he expects similar maps of an uninhabited body of that size. Google can't give even a single relevant location-sensitive advertisement. Who's going to pay for it?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Yep, and it's pretty obvious that the HiRez imagery Red Squirrel expects is too expensive outside of population centers on THIS planet and yet he expects similar maps of an uninhabited body of that size. Google can't give even a single relevant location-sensitive advertisement. Who's going to pay for it?

Forget about it. Even if you got the high-resolution photos, he'd say they were photoshopped.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Forget about it. Even if you got the high-resolution photos, he'd say they were photoshopped.

I never said I did not believe they went on the moon. I just expected that by now we'd have more images. I find it completely silly that people do not believe that man went on the moon. There is no reason to "not believe". Why would they make it up?

 

[CZroe]

I never said I did not believe they went on the moon. I just expected that by now we'd have more images. I find it completely silly that people do not believe that man went on the moon. There is no reason to "not believe". Why would they make it up?

Umm... the conspiracy theorists have an answer for that question so asking it isn't the best way to affirm our belief. If you didn't already know, you might wanna read up on the Cold War and all the militaristic and technological posturing we and the Russians did toward each other.