Europe's 1st lunar mission reaches moon

Yahoo & AP ^ | September 2, 2006

[Lunatic Fringe]

DARMSTADT, Germany (AP) First European spacecraft to moon makes planned crash landing on lunar surface.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Actually, the Europeans ordered the probe to crash after it had finished its mission making many, many orbits of the Moon and taking pictures. The title is misleading.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Europeans are rather iffy on whether Russia is a part of Europe, especially culturally. The United Kingdom often excludes itself from Europe while Europe often excludes Russia from it.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

ESA (European Space Agency) has both France and the United Kingdom (and fifteen other European states) as members.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Japan is also on the decline (its population has started to drop, although the birthrate has recently rose, though it is still far from replacement level). Europe can get a few more technological inventions out, but they are still coasting from the Industrial Revolution will probably be overtaken (if the world lasts that long) in a century or so.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Why's that? Europe, nor Russia, nor Japan, nor China, nor India are particularly Christian.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

and will.....

[RightWhale]

Maybe, but the first succesful space colonies will likely be monkish. Buddhist is possible.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Isn't the first lunar colony (or outpost) supposed to be part of Bush's vision for space exploration? In that case, wouldn't the colony be somewhat a dichotomy of American ethos?

Though if the space colony is not used after sending people to Mars, the first successful lunar colonies could be people trying to get away from Earth's cultures. However, Christians are supposed to be amongst others, to witness to them. A specifically Christian colony would probably only be set up after nonChristians set up colonies. (It is true that many of the first European American settlers were Christians trying to get away from Europe though....).

Guess: the first successful lunar colony could be secular.

[RightWhale]

The first space settlement will be secular. The first successful space settlement will be religious. Could even be islamic, but that is a stretch as things stand now.

[stultorum]

Western technology and genius on the vanguard!

Great news.

[George W. Bush]

Japan is also on the decline...

I think the Nips will pull it out on the demographic slump.

Gotta admire them despite that unpleasant bit back in the Forties.

[drtom]

In the 60s the first laser was a few Watts in power, now we're building Petawatt lasers and aim for Zettawatts. The vast majority of research requires to conduct experiments at a time when the economics don't make sense yet, in order to discover unknown properties.

The beauty of the ion drive is that you can theoretically collect propulsion energy in space rather than having to heave chemicals off the planet. Second, the exit velocity of particles in the ion drive is much greater than that of conventional drives which would allow for much higher propulsion than what's currently achievable, therefore interplanetary travel could eventually depend on it.

Is it in reach? No. Will we ever get there? Not if we don't experiment with what we can do so far and develop further from that point forward.

Hats off to ESA for nudging us again a notch closer to going to the stars.

[RadioAstronomer]

Well said. :-)

[drtom]

Some rubbings are quite funny, like "did they have a white flag along?". But if they try to diminish the whole achievement itself, just because it didn't originate on this side of the Atlantic, then, yes, that ruffles my feathers.

Having worked for ESO, ESA and the Max-Planck Institutes, I am very proud for any of my domestic or international colleagues alike when they manage to again nudge science a micronotch further ahead. All we (the astrophysical community, that is) want to do is go to the stars, and whoever puts a lot of time, effort and money into that, can be assured of our gratitude.

I have no problem as an American scientist to congratulate another team when they achieve another milestone (even if it is a small one) and I don't need to poo-poo their achievement by saying, "so what, we've been there and came back".

[freedumb2003]

Now that is a good title.

Up there with "muslim solar probe to wait until night for launch."

[RadioAstronomer]

You have freepmail

[RadioAstronomer]

We at JPL whoohoo'd when ESA had a success. BIG TIME.

For a while I worked with the ESA. Ever hear of Esrange? :-)

[jmcenanly]

Actually, except for the Surveyor Landers and the Clemnentine probe , all American Lunar Missions featured a crash landing on the Moon. The apollo missions dropped the ascent module on the surface after the crew transferred back to the CSM.

[drtom]

But of course. Kirunae (sp?), right?

Not that I've ever been but during my time at the Max Planck for Extraterrestrial Physics one of my favourite colleagues did aurora borealis research and spent considerable time in Sverige.

[RadioAstronomer]

All except for apollo 10. That ascent module is in solar orbit. :-)