Cool. I just imagined a poor astronaut, me if I was up there being clumsy all, falling down a crater four times deeper than the Grand Canyon. O_o OUCH! Heh

I hope this re interest in the moon takes us into the solar system soon.

I dunno...the moon has A LOT of craters on it. I'm not sure I'd wanna live somewhere with that much evidence of large rocks pounding it.

It's hard to believe that the moon is so small, yet has such extreme variations in elevation.

This almost depresses me. If I was alive in 1969 I would have had no doubt by the year 1980 we would have a human on Mars. Instead 31 years the moon landing we get Val Kilmer in Mission to Mars.

Also if you would have told me in 1981 that 27 years later we were still going to be using the Space Shuttle I would have cried. Then again considering I was 6 years old at the time a lot of things would have made me cry.

good luck. interest rates on moon homes are killer

@Midwesterner in NYC:
It all comes down to funding.

Val Kilmer was in Red Planet

sorry, I just can't help it...

I think I just had a vision. When I first read the headline I saw "Future Site of the Moon's First Doomed City." I know that it can sometimes be boring when Sci-Fi takes a needlessly pessimistic viewpoint, but I think the article would be just that much more interesting if we talked about the inevitable under-funding and eventual dilapidation of this vision.

@Midwesterner in NYC: Can't they even glue fake laser guns to the outside of the shuttle? Or maybe some stickers like you could put on the old Star Wars toys to make them look "Battle Damaged". Its just so dated. Yawn.. been there.

NASA... shit or get off the pot already.

@Midwesterner in NYC: Now you know how we who are old enough feel.

Sigh. I was SURE I'd be living on (or at least vacationing) on the moon by now.

@SunZhiQian: That all ended (for the most part) over a billion years ago. The moon should, statistically, get hit every once in awhile; but not the pounding that it (and every other terrestrial planet) took during the Late Bombardment period.

Probably the next President will kill the 'Lunar Return' program.

Oh, well.
-Kle.

"Here is some water. You can drink it or breathe."
"That's kind of a crappy choice."

It's strange, they usually do this sort of thing using Arecibo to transmit (a 300 m dish) and the Green Bank Telescope to receive (a 100 m telescope). In fact I know they did a radar map of the moon with just that configuration - the pictures are up in the GBT control room. But I don't think Arecibo can track sources for ninety minutes, so the new dish probably gives them better results.

@92BuickLeSabre: "I didn't come here for water... I came for cheese!"

@Garrison Dean: "Here's your salty cheese....Now do you want some water?"

@SunZhiQian: I don't know, this lady looks like she has held up pretty well after being pounded by a large Rock...

[z.about.com]

@92BuickLeSabre: "DAMMIT!! Why would you invite me to the moon only to be a dick? You Lunars are all the same."

@Garrison Dean: Our favorite past time is "mooning" people. What did you expect?

@92BuickLeSabre: I didn't expect such childish behavior. I always heard there was a Man in the Moon.

@Garrison Dean: Our mooning is excellent. On the moon nerds get their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moon rocks!

As for your infinitely boring insults, I hope you can see this. I'm doing it as hard as I can.

@Woland:

I had the exact same thing happen.

It's a good science fiction idea, which might amount to something one day. I say that gravity wells are bad; stick to space with environments that can be moved. Besides, you don't want people living in lunar gravity; we're better off with our 1g.

@Midwesterner in NYC: Let's remember that Apollo was strictly a demo of military technology right from the start. Sputnik scared the daylights out Washington DC back in '57 and nearly everything that followed until space technology was built to show those pesky Reds who was boss. The space race was over by the time Apollo 11 returned from their brief camping trip on the moon.

I think what we've learned over 50 years is that space colonization is very, very, very hard. Weirdo, heinlein-esque, Libertarian free marketeers may have had wonderful fantasies about hotels on Titan by 2001 but they were fooling themselves.

I believe the long term survival of our culture (For we'll probably have engineered ourselves into several species by then.) requires that we colonize the stars. We'll get out there--permanently--one day but, make no mistake, it will be a slow, expensive process taking centuries. It will be the hardest thing we've ever done.

Yeah right. They can't even take a photo of the Apollo 11 landing site to prove once and for all IT REALLY HAPPENED let alone colonize the joint.

@Jeff-Minor: Yea. Ever see the Zone of the Enders anime movie? Mars bred/born people were tiny and a peak strength martin is a 10th as strong as an average Human. Mars has .32g's (32% of earth's gravity, natch). Luna is a measly .166g's. Muscle decay ftl...

@Jeff-Minor: But we would be better off in slightly higher gravity, as long as we arn't born there (for a couple of generations). 2~3gs would be like having permanent weight training. Push ups would be 2 to 3 times as effective, walking around would make you have a higher leg strength/mass and overall stamina.

It would be the perfect pre-olympics training spot.

(Okay, 2~3 might be excessive. At 130lbs, I would weight 328lbs on Jupiter [Only planet with a greater then 1.5g gravity. Neptune is close next closest with 1.09 and Saturn with 1.06]. Jupiter is 2.53g's] I know I couldn't handle that, especially 24/7. I doubt many could. There is no suitable place in the Sol System for 1.5 or 2g weight training, unless you start to get close to Jupiter in orbit, or the Sun.)

Now that brings an interesting question. If we were to travel close to the sun, would we, as frail humans, die from the heat first, or from the 270g gravity first?

@cde:

Physics works... differently than that. As long as you're in orbit, you're free-falling. You only feel the gravity once you start fighting it.
-Kle.

CDE, The problem with bringing 1g Earthakins into a space environment that has 1.5 or 2 gs is that it's going to be a hard to adjust. And even though we would be stronger, our realitive strength wouldn't be realized until we go back to Earth. I'm thinking that it might be easier just to stick to what we're used to. IMHO.

Kelbert, I was assuming that anything in orbit would be spun to produce 1g. I remember some sf movie where a ring had been built around the moon, which could be be spun to produce one g.