Crashing into the Moon

There was a time when only government agencies had the ability to blast rockets into space, or send missions to worlds beyond our own. These days, countries around the world are preparing to send missions to the Moon. They are joined by a rash of private ventures.

Their interest goes beyond exploration. They see a chance to make money, by supplying launch or human transport services, including tourism. Some hope to begin exploiting space resources like energy, or rare minerals.

Over 30 private robotics teams are now vying for the 30 million dollar Google Lunar X-Prize, a contest designed to spur the building and launching of rovers equipped to explore the lunar surface.

It was inspired by the Orteig prize that sent Charles Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic Ocean more than 80 years ago. That feat helped launch the civil aviation industry. The sponsors of this prize hope it will unleash the entrepreneurial spirit into space.

To many, lunar exploration is the first step in fulfilling one of the great promises of the space age: to send humans to the moon and beyond to permanently live and work in space.

Preparations for that day are taking place right now aboard the international space station, where astronauts are developing a whole new way of living. To stay healthy, for example, they are working out routines for exercise and nutrition to keep muscles and bones from weakening and thinning in zero gravity.

Just as important, they are developing technologies that ensure clean air and water, shelter from solar radiation, and flexible space suits to work and explore in hostile environments like the moon.

Our fascination with the moon, Earth's traveling companion, goes back to the dawn of humankind. Its true nature began to come into focus four centuries ago. Galileo Galilei had heard of an instrument built by Dutch opticians that was capable of "seeing faraway things as though nearby."

In many ways the first modern scientist, Galileo saw this new instrument as a tool to help settle a long standing question. What was the nature of the heavens, and how did the world of men fit within it? To some philosophers, the moon was a perfect, crystalline sphere of divine substance, free of Earth's imperfections.

Galileo, with his telescope, saw a more familiar reality. He noted mountains and valleys on the moon, features like those of Earth.

• Category

  • Science & Tech
  • Documentary
  • Nature

• Directed by:

  • Thomas Lucas

• Produced by:

  • Thomas Lucas

[n0p4in]

I love watching these cosmic journeys before i go to sleep :D

[halomunch]

YOU ARE AN UNDER AGED BOY

[campbpar]

o srs

[MadHighway]

What was lost were the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes--the stuff downlinked from the (now obsolete) spacecraft computers. It's not a big deal, really, because nobody really needs to know 170s-tech anymore like what the lunar module coolant temperature was or how much drinking water the CSM fuel cells were producing.

If you're suggesting the footage of Armstrong coming down the ladder in July '69 was lost soon after the mission ended, what is your (reputable) source?

[MadHighway]

Hah, are you a Flat Earth Society member? They came up with that baloney notion about Kubrick.

[womanbeater3]

they said people borrowed and never returned the rocks

[48mmwatch]

lets see the flag , from that LRO

[KingChrist ofEarth]

They did NOT lose them All! DO THE RESEARCH!!!

[KingChrist ofEarth]

Correction! If You do the research You will find that NASA lost the very first video of Man, (Neil Armstrong), setting first foot on the Moon! Everything You see these days are reproductions of that first recording which went missing just after the moonshot! DO THE RESEARCH!!!

[KingChrist ofEarth]

THIS says that their came a Man from Earth, Trespassing on the Moon and Stealing some Rocks and Dirt, taking them to an undisclosed place on Earth, and all the while, planting a flag on the Moon, in a ceremony that claims the Moon for someone other than its Creator, the US of A! WTF, Human Race? Are We territorial or what? Not to mention Violent, Arrogant and Selfish! Mostly INSANE, but Insanity looks at Sanity as Insane, so I will probably just be ignored! I count on it for Now! Roflmmfgdao!!!

[campbpar]

it was directed by Kubrick, the whole landing.

[MadHighway]

There were a couple of people who stole some samples. The vast bulk of the 1,000+ kg of lunar samples are safely in storage.

Please learn how to read and interpret information properly. Nobody anywhere states that the entire collection of lunar samples has vanished.

Yahoo's writers are terrible.