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They found water on the moon!

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Remember the LCROSS mission? Well, I didn't. In fact, I forgot about it until today, when I saw a whole bunch of news stories that shouted "THERE'S WATER ON THE MOON!"
Yay! It's neat because I actually got up at 5 in the morning to watch the live broadcast of it crashing in the moon. (Which had rather disappointing footage.) Glad to hear the mission was successful. I wonder how the fishing would be. ;)

I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?
I've heard that there are resources that can be harvested on the Moon. Several companies are interested in sending missions to get them.

i doubt that there is water because water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.
You know, light has a different signature as it passes through different substances. I'm sure oxygen has a very different signature then water does. If a recipe for cake asked for a half cup of water, (not sure if it would ask for water, but bare with me anyway) do you think you have a cake in the end? ;) (If it oxygen was able to stay liquid at room temperature that is ;))

There's clearly not enough water on the moon or Mars to sustain any kind of colony or expedition of humans, so for me its existence is a mere curiosity.
The first link Nukoca posted says:
The 5,600-miles-per-hour impact carved out a hole 60 to 100 feet wide and kicked up at least 26 gallons of water.
It kicked up 26 gallons of water. I don't think that was only water on the moon. If they were able to find that much from just one impact, there's GOT to be a lot more!
 
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Zane_C

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Well, In my opinion, they should continue with moon projects. It's good to understand the universe we live in.
You can get pretty good stuff just out of water.
1. water
2. Oxygen-fuel oxydizer
3. Hydrogen for fuel.
Moon isn't as boring as it may appear.
Astronomical research is SWEET!
~Leonid meteor shower on 17th November :)
 
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Yay, a science thread!
..The moon is exciting but before we go off living there we should put plans in order so that we don't wreck the moon as much as we have wrecked earth!

@ qqwref: You can't put a price on knowledge.
You cannot predict what these experiments may uncover, it could be beyond anyones wildest dreams, and if not, we still have a better understanding of our universe. If there was water on the moon, this could lead to a resolution to poverty, war over resources, etc. This may seem far fetched but it is all possible.
I see where you are coming from and can agree with you in a way, but to me knowing about our planet and where we are from is very important.. It is almost the ultimate human goal to solve the mystery of where we came from. And this knowledge may fix other things, so the billions of dollars already spent on them can go to better use.
Money isn't everything, and can be lost.. Knowledge cannot.
 

ChrisBird

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I think this discovery is a great discovery for a multitude of reasons.

First: Knowledge is power, we know that.
Second: The fact that there is water on the moon, indicates its possibility of supporting human (and possibly other) life.

Setting aside the fact that we have 'damaged/destroyed' earth, the earth will undoubtly end. It will, don't be optimistic here, NOTHING lasts forever. If it was made, it can be destroyed simple as that.
SO, with that being said, regardless of the fact that we may or may not cause the ultimate death of our planet, the moon being able to allow life to continue is an escape route for the human race.

Ok, so there is a homeless person, he has no way of getting food, no one will give anything to him (don't try to find loopholes in this, this is an analogy.)
So he will die of starvation if he does not get food.

So someone comes along and offers him a sandwich, which will keep him alive.
IF he does not take the sandwich, he dies. If he does, he lives.

How does this enter into this conversation?
We are the homeless person, starvation is the end of the earth (which could be soon or in a million years, who knows), and the moon is the sandwich.

If water is on the moon, and therefore has the potential to hold human life, we will be able to colonize it (take the sandwich) and save humanity from dying with the earth.

This is why I believe it is a great discovery that we found water.

And another reason it's a good thing we did, is it shows that there are other plants other then the earth that can be inhabited, which means there could be other creatures/things out there. Much like the earth, that do not know of our existence yet.

Please do not try to say we should not colonize the moon because we will pollute it, this argument does nothing in a life or death of humanity question.
 

4Chan

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Hurr.

Even if we colonize the moon.
Entropy will be the end of all of us. Billions of years from now.

Unless there's a way around thermodynamics.

EDIT: I sound too pessimistic, I think this is an interesting discovery.
 
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qqwref

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the earth will undoubtly end. It will, don't be optimistic here, NOTHING lasts forever. If it was made, it can be destroyed simple as that.
SO, with that being said, regardless of the fact that we may or may not cause the ultimate death of our planet, the moon being able to allow life to continue is an escape route for the human race.

This is a pretty ridiculous argument. You know how they've been looking for water on the moon (and mars, too) for a while now and haven't found anything until now? Yeah. They had to look in a 'permanently shadowed' crater, and even then, "one ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water". As a point of reference we're told we need about 8 cups (64 ounces) of water a day. There may be water on the moon, but it's not gonna be enough to support human life.

Also: When is the earth going to "end"? We're actually doing a lot better than people say, so I can't see it happening within the next two or three hundred years even in the worst case, unless some kind of global thermonuclear war breaks out, in which case we clearly don't have time to send people to another planet. But if the planet does end... why the moon? Do you really think this is gonna be the best option when it took them 40 years to find any water at all, and when we would have to mine through TWO TONS of the moon's surface per day per inhabitant? How about Europa, which we already know is covered with a huge layer of water ice, and which might even have a layer of liquid ocean underneath? That's not the only so-called "icy moon" in our solar system either. Water may exist on our moon, but if you want to support humans, that's not where we are going to be setting up camp.
 

Nukoca

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This is a pretty ridiculous argument. You know how they've been looking for water on the moon (and mars, too) for a while now and haven't found anything until now? Yeah. They had to look in a 'permanently shadowed' crater, and even then, "one ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water". As a point of reference we're told we need about 8 cups (64 ounces) of water a day. There may be water on the moon, but it's not gonna be enough to support human life.

Of course we can't set up a colony on the moon with that amount of water. If the Earth comes to an end, the Moon probably will too anyway. The magnitude of this discovery isn't that we'll be able to live on the Moon without any additional resources... it's that it brings up the question that if there's water on the moon, where else could it be? As you mentioned, there's already plenty of water on Europa. And if there's water in this kind of abundance in the universe, couldn't life also be at least fairly common?
 
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ChrisBird

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How does this enter into this conversation?
We are the homeless person, starvation is the end of the earth (which could be soon or in a million years, who knows), and the moon is the sandwich.

If water is on the moon, and therefore has the potential to hold human life, we will be able to colonize it (take the sandwich) and save humanity from dying with the earth.

This is why I believe it is a great discovery that we found water.

the earth will undoubtly end. It will, don't be optimistic here, NOTHING lasts forever. If it was made, it can be destroyed simple as that.
SO, with that being said, regardless of the fact that we may or may not cause the ultimate death of our planet, the moon being able to allow life to continue is an escape route for the human race.

This is a pretty ridiculous argument. You know how they've been looking for water on the moon (and mars, too) for a while now and haven't found anything until now? Yeah. They had to look in a 'permanently shadowed' crater, and even then, "one ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water". As a point of reference we're told we need about 8 cups (64 ounces) of water a day. There may be water on the moon, but it's not gonna be enough to support human life.

Also: When is the earth going to "end"? We're actually doing a lot better than people say, so I can't see it happening within the next two or three hundred years even in the worst case, unless some kind of global thermonuclear war breaks out, in which case we clearly don't have time to send people to another planet. But if the planet does end... why the moon? Do you really think this is gonna be the best option when it took them 40 years to find any water at all, and when we would have to mine through TWO TONS of the moon's surface per day per inhabitant? How about Europa, which we already know is covered with a huge layer of water ice, and which might even have a layer of liquid ocean underneath? That's not the only so-called "icy moon" in our solar system either. Water may exist on our moon, but if you want to support humans, that's not where we are going to be setting up camp.

Please refer to my bolded statements in my previous posts in order to see the answer to your questions.

Potential means it is a possibility, not 'for sure'.
The world will end, that is all I know, not when, how, or why. But it will. It's a given fact.

I never said the moon was the best possibility, I merely said it IS a possibility.
 
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Chuberchuckee

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yayayay water on the moon
who cares

If you read the whole thread, you will see...
it just doesnt bother me because if you know how the moon was created then youd expect there to be water

Yes, this was probably in the back of the minds of NASA scientists and engineers when they orchestrated the LRO/LCROSS mission.

LCROSS was designed to check for water in a particular crater in the south pole of the moon. This crater has not seen any light for eons. The south pole area is a candidate for the site of the next moon landings because of almost constant bright sunlight (for solar power). The discovery of water nearby strengthens the choice of the south polar area.

Also, water can be used to create not only drinking water, but rocket fuel and maybe breathable oxygen. The lunar outpost can be used as a stopping point for further missions, both manned and unmanned, to other heavenly bodies within our solar system. The weak gravity (gravity of the moon = 1/6 of the earth) and lack of an atmosphere on the moon makes it easy to launch rockets from the lunar surface. Astronauts heading to Mars in the future could make a stopover at a lunar outpost to refuel or gather supplies before making the long journey to Mars. Unmanned missions to, say, Europa could stop at the moon to be assembled/tested/supplied/fueled before heading off.
 
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