Europe's moon mission blasts off

CNN.com ^ | September 28, 2003

[HAL9000]

KOUROU, French Guiana -- Europe's first mission to the moon has successfully blasted off aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.

The rocket, carrying the unmanned SMART-1 lunar exploration probe and two other commercial satellites, took off at 8.14 p.m. (2314 GMT) Saturday from the European Space Agency (ESA) launch centre at Kourou, on the northeast coast of South America.

[GeronL]

The proble carries 2 tiny frenchmen..

[exit82]

Ariane 5? Should have been Arianna Huffington.

[Bobby777]

interesting ... and the Chinese want to go to the moon now ...

[gg188]

Hooray! They are only 35 years behind the USA!

[GeronL]

something is out there

and it probably has a concession stand

[Bobby777]

we should have had a bumper sticker on the Apollo 11 lander ...

"IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU'RE TOO LATE!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

(how very un-PC of me!)

[socal_parrot]

I'm thinkin' the Moon will be ruder and smellier after this mission.

[GeronL]

The euro-peons just want the cheese and the Chinese want to rule something

[HAL9000]

Or a sign - "Hey France! You get the hell off our moon!"

[12B]

This is bad news. We can't allow them to dominate the market for green cheese. Send in the fembots.

[Prodigal Son]

Hooray! They are only 35 years behind the USA!

This doesn't, of course, mean they shouldn't do it. After all, out of all the nations on Earth, practically all of them are decades behind the accomplishments of the Russians and the US concerning space (but important to note other nations are not 35 yrs behind us in other fields).

Personally, I'm glad the Europeans are launching missions like this and I wish this particular one luck. Hopefully they can take some pictures of our landing site while they're at it so we can show them to the Moon Landing Hoax nuts...

[Prodigal Son]

"IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU'RE TOO LATE!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

LOL. It would've only made sense if it were in Russian.

[Bobby777]

or we could just leave a DVD copy of "Capricorn One" on the moon ... just to trick the French into thinking we tricked people that we went to Mars ... (or something like that!)

sorry, was trying to figure out how to mention that movie ... which has the greatest chase scene between a crop duster and two Hughes 369 helicopters ... very cool ...

[Bobby777]

hehe ... did their lunar lander manage to sample some of the rocks? ... I thought it went in 1974 but it's been toooo long so I don't remember exactly ...

[gorebegone]

Check this out.

http://spaceflightnow.com/cluster2/000714feature/ariane501_qt.html"

This is what happens when you use guidance software from Ariane 4 for an Ariane 5.

[Prodigal Son]

Luckily that was unmanned, huh?

[jocon307]

"Or a sign - "Hey France! You get the hell off our moon!"

LOL, good one!

[RightWhale]

This is great! Good luck to the crew. The ship may be slow, but it will get there before ours.