You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
How much crap NASA is taking for sending a rocket into the moon.
It’s not like they went down the street for potato chips! It’s not like a hampster running inside a mirrored wheel. It’s not as simple as a blogger spilling a jar of mustard on his fat hairy chest.
We sent a rocket to the moon, predicted when it would strike a frozen crater, and then followed up the first crash with a 2nd observation probe designed to scoop up all the interstellar fallout.
Can you say, Einstein where are you?
This is off the charts science, but you read some headlines and you would think we were hanging socks on the line to dry.
DATE LINE: WASHINGTON DC.
This on line headline by the AP: Moon crash: Public yawns, scientists celebrate
By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer
NASA’s great lunar fireworks finale fizzled. After gearing up for the space agency’s much-hyped mission to hurl two spacecraft into the moon, the public turned away from the sky Friday anything but dazzled. Photos and video of the impact showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.
OK, compared to Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon, this was a fingerpainting done by a chimp.
I was talking to a co-worker who is the most internet savy dude I know. He has his own 1 hour talk show on line every morning, called the Morning Browser. He was following this historic event live, taking in the NASA feed. He didn’t know what was coming next, so he was talking over the pictures, which were mostly dark. Somewhere in the soup of technology a mission control guy was telling us that there was like a minute to go. The camera pixelated and then went to an infrared photograph that looked like a close up of a lanced boil.
My friend then says something to the effect of, you know NASA has a bunch of smart guys so you know their 2nd spacecraft, following the rocket will be manned with cameras. His assertion is that smart guys will use smart technology to illuminate the mysteries of the universe for us to see from a 240,000 miles high.
That was not the case. As it turns out, my co-worker has more technological savy than the physicists mired in time space continium theorm at NASA.
According to Mr. Borenstein, scientists involved in the project were more excited than a librarian at a SHOOSHING festival. The AP reports these slide rule toting geeks weren’t looking for bombs bursting in air. The NASA boys were seeking chemical signatures in light waves, whatever the hell that is.
The problem is NASA is huring for public support, especially for controversial 79 million dollar projects like blowing up a crater on the moon. This is a tax payer funded spectacle that has many people who are on unemployment lines scratching their heads wondering “you took 79 million dollars of what essentially could be my bailout money, to crash two perfectly good rocket ships into a frozen crater on the moon? I can’t even sit at home in my underpants reading the want ads and see my tax payer dollars at work?”
NOPE. And Mission Control probably should have told us that up front. They probably should have told us that a rocket the size of a Ford Expedition is going to be hard to find a 1/4 million miles up. Why would we think otherwise.
Imagine parking your SUV in the super market parking lot. Now imagine standing on the shopping center roof and looking down. That same SUV is going to be hard to spot. It’s going to start blending into the landscape of the other vehicles. Now get in a hot air balloon that is tethered to the super market. Go up 500 feet. Look down and try and find your SUV. Good luck. Now get in a jet and look out your window and look for your SUV. You’d have better luck finding your arm rest under that fat ladies arm. Now go to the orbit of the moon, 240,000 miles away and look for that same SUV. The cameras saw the moon, but you really think they were going to see your SUV parked illegally on some crater colder than Bobby Knight’s glare.
That’s the reality of the technology. The problem is NASA either lied trying to drum up pulbic support for an agency that needs to score some public relations touch downs or the networks needed something to yell about in the morning to bolster ratings.
Either way, the end result was about as satisfying as drinking warm Coke.
The AP writes: The mission was executed for “a scientific purpose, not to put on a fireworks display for the public,” said space consultant Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator for science.
Scientists said the public expected too much. The public groused as if NASA delivered too little. The divide was as big as a crater.
“We’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood to expect the money shot, like ‘Deep Impact’ or when Bruce Willis saves us from a comet,” said physicist and television host Michio Kaku, who was not part of the mission. “Science is not done that way.”
But TV is done that way. The public woke up early, grabbed their telescopes or went to observatories to watch. They were told to watch for the plume of impact and a blast of debris that could travel 6 miles into the lunar sky.
What we saw was the equivalent of a NASA test pattern. Tone and Bars from the Lunar surface.
Was it a giant let down? Or an incredible leap in scientific knowledge?
Probably both.
But the way it unfolded was still plain ass crazy!