
A British-led consortium has outlined its plans to land a probe on the Moon - noneends
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30102343
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davidw
Here's an artist's conception of how the expedition might end up looking like:
[https://ahmadalikarim.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/asdfghjkl....](https://ahmadalikarim.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/asdfghjkl.png)

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badgersandjam
I signed up purely to upvote this :)

On a more serious note, there appears to be zero scientific motivation to do
this. It just appears to be a self-set challenge. Am I wrong?

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laumars
There is a proposed study, but I can't say how much of the thinking behind
that was because " _the moon is cheap so lets think up a project involving
that_ " and how much was because there's a serious gap in our knowledge that
needs investigating.

Anyhow, from the BBC article:

    
    
        > The mission will also have a scientific component. The aim is to drill and
        > analyse a sample from underneath the lunar surface, something which
        > has never been done before.
    

On the radio this morning, one of leading guys (I forget who) was also talking
about looking for data regarding the origins of life (since the moon is
believed to have been part of Earth originally). But, again, I don't know how
credible that argument.

Personally I think the reasoning behind this project feels a little reverse
engineered, however I'm going to support it regardless since it should
hopefully generate a few jobs in an industry that really needs more focus in
the UK (some days it feels like everyone here wants to be celebrities without
really thinking about any skills they might have that would be worth
celebrating)

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badgersandjam
I suspected as much. It doesn't sound like "value for money" which is my
concern. There are better scientific objectives than shooting for the moon
cold-war style to raise awareness and interest in it. Look how much attention
everyone paid to Beagle 2 which had proper scientific objectives, that was
until it tragically failed. RIP.

Couldn't agree more with your last point; this country is tragically embroiled
in celebrityism.

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toyg
I suspect part of the reasoning for going to the moon rather than elsewhere is
exactly to avoid a Beagle-like fiasco. This should be a relatively safe bet to
relaunch the sector.

I wonder how much of this initiative is a reaction to recent success at ESA.
To the layman, ESA seems politically dominated by continental interests; and a
couple of bigwigs seemed to take a swipe at "countries going alone" during
Phileas celebrations.

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noneends
For my education: why the title change? Originally submitted with the
article's actual title, which I thought was the rule.

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ommunist
The Moon constitutes a fine colony for Her Majesty. My only hope is that the
probe will be self-replicating and speaking plain English. The British are
ridiculously good at drilling.

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enraged_camel
>>Lunar Mission One aims to survey the Moon's south pole to see if a human
base can be set up in the future.

If a simple survey mission is going to cost $780 million, you have to wonder
how much a moon base will cost.

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baq
I wonder how much of that cost is the launcher, how much is R&D and how much
the actual payload hardware will cost to manufacture. A proper moon base may
not be _that_ expensive given economies of scale.

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drivingmenuts
Charles Stross will have to stop making jokes about the secret British space
program.

OR WILL HE?

