this is it, their Impacting the Moon.

[torcher]

we're all gonna die.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2009/09-118AR.html

[Æhµ]

I think they're just wiping out an ET base. We'll be fine for now, at least until 2012 when Nibiru returns and the Annunaki ask "where the @&*# is our moon base??"

[bankraped]

I think they're just wiping out an ET base. We'll be fine for now, at least until 2012 when Nibiru returns and the Annunaki ask "where the @&*# is our moon base??"
Don't go starting that shit! :smile:

[madscientist]

Michigan: Great Lakes, lots of snow, and lots of rust. That's all there is to say.

No longer any need to click that link...

[torcher]

lol mature crater...all the other craters are talking shit and riding their skateboards.

[Abrazaderas]

it's about time we put that fucking moon in its place.

[ichosemypath]

It struck me as a subtle weapons test with a weak excuse.
All I'm saying, is launching a rocket from Earth and hitting the moon, answers questions.

[^.^]

It struck me as a subtle weapons test with a weak excuse.
All I'm saying, is launching a rocket from Earth and hitting the moon, answers questions.

What weapon would they be testing? It certainly wasn't a nuclear payload. What are the practical uses of being able to hit the moon with a weapon anyway? None that I can think of, unless you believe the whole "aliens on the moon" nonsense.

[iceniner]

Anti-asteroid weapons. A valid concern on the part of the government, for a change.

[^.^]

Anti-asteroid weapons. A valid concern on the part of the government, for a change.

Except the math for hitting an asteroid is way different than hitting the moon, also odds are that if an asteroid is headed for earth, we'll never even see it coming let alone be able to stop it.

There are also several different kinds of dangerous space objects, being able to impact it doesn't mean a weapon will be effective at all. For example, a composite asteroid is basically a large ball of dust and rocks held together by it's own gravity (not unlike the moon), there is NO weapon that can do enough damage to these things to make it's impact on Earth safe if it was large enough to be a planet killer.

In fact, the only way that's been addressed to stop any space object is using a gravity tether, which means flying a rocket right beside it and let the gravity of the rocket slowly pull the object on a new course, that process takes YEARS though, if it's as close as the moon, we're doomed anyway.

If this was a weapons test, they just hit the broad side of a barn. That's not very encouraging.

[Abrazaderas]

baby steps you fucking asshole. they just want to make sure they've got the jist of delivering a payload to something in space and detonating it down.

you think we aren't capable of creating a warhead with a payload capable of disintegrating the moon? think again. it's just a matter of scale now. weapons of apocalyptic power are no problem whatsoever, we just haven't had the need to make many... i'd guess america and russia each have or have had one or two weapons capable of literally destroying earth like a M80 destroys an anthill, unless they were smart enough to see there's really no point at all in making one. i don't know, i hope no leader ever really said, 'well fuck it, if we're gonna lose the war, we might as well take everyone down with us'.

[iceniner]

i hope no leader ever really said, 'well fuck it, if we're gonna lose the war

Tsar Bomba was pretty damn large.

There are all kinds of reasons why they would want to deliver a payload. I do think the most likely reason for them to spend the enormous cost to drop a warhead on the moon is as a test case for ground-to-high-orbit weapons. Perhaps, as you say, a baby step.

http://www.mdl4.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Tsar_Bomba.jpg

[^.^]

baby steps you fucking asshole. they just want to make sure they've got the jist of delivering a payload to something in space and detonating it down.

you think we aren't capable of creating a warhead with a payload capable of disintegrating the moon? think again. it's just a matter of scale now. weapons of apocalyptic power are no problem whatsoever, we just haven't had the need to make many... i'd guess america and russia each have or have had one or two weapons capable of literally destroying earth like a M80 destroys an anthill, unless they were smart enough to see there's really no point at all in making one. i don't know, i hope no leader ever really said, 'well fuck it, if we're gonna lose the war, we might as well take everyone down with us'.

There is NO amount of explosive power that humans can unleash that would effectively destroy a celestial body. Period. You can blow a chunk off of it, but you will not stop it. An explosive on a moving object with that much momentum means the momentum will continue regardless. In fact, you'd have to hit it with a force equal to it's own force to destroy it. In the case of asteroid, you'd both need to defeat it's momentum, AND it's gravity, which basically means impacting it at the same speed it's traveling, with something it's own mass. Even if you did that, and the particles scatter, they will still be drawn back together by their own gravity and accelerate toward the nearest large source of gravity again.

ALSO, to effectually scatter all the particles of a composite dust ball with an explosive, you'd need to place the charge in it's exact center, otherwise the mass will just spit in into 2 or more deadly pieces (in the case of a dust ball, they'd recombine pretty quickly). Take into account however that even if the explosion is large enough to stop the trailing pieces (which would still be pulled along by the gravity of the larger pieces btw), the explosion would only server to add momentum and power to the leading pieces.

ALSO, deadly celestial objects are not always big enough to see anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event A relatively small meteor can do as much damage as some of out biggest weapons, and you'll NEVER see them coming. This burst was 10-15MT, the Tsar Bomba was 50MT.

There is no such thing as a doomsday weapon that can destroy the earth, that best that could be accomplished is an ice age caused by a nuclear winter. The Earth has been here a VERY long time, and will be here LONG after humans are gone. In fact, that same reactions used in atomic weapons, happen inside the earth naturally anyway if you go deep enough...

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_will_it_take_to_destroy_the_ world
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/DeathStar.html : 53 quadrillion megatons are required to actually destroy earth btw. All the remaining nukes on earth have a combined power of about 5000.

From a foum page that no longer exists but was was cashed by Goolge:
This page has some calculations of the amount of energy that would be needed to "destroy" a planet, and they offer an online calculator here where you can plug in the size and surface gravity of a planet to see the minimum energy needed to destroy it (they assume the planet is of uniform density, so the actual energy would be somewhat higher). The moon's mean radius is given as 1737.1 km (for a diameter of 3474.2 km) here, and its surface gravity is 1.62 m/s^2 which is 0.165 the surface gravity on Earth (9.81 m/s^2)...using these numbers, the calculator gives a lower limit for the energy as 1.234 * 10^29 Joules. This page says a megaton of TNT would release an energy of 4.184 * 10^15 Joules, so ignoring details like how the bombs would be distributed, you'd need around 30 trillion megatons of explosives to destroy the moon...the page above says the biggest nuclear bombs currently in the US arsenal are about 3 megatons, and the Soviet Union once developed a prototype bomb with 50-100 megatons. Anyway, the number of nuclear bombs never exceeded 100,000 at any point during the cold war, so it definitely falls short of the trillions you'd theoretically need to destroy the moon.

I know, I know, it looks great on TV and it comic books, but stuff like that is pure arrogant fantasy. Baby steps to impossible, it's still impossible. They impacted the moon, because they were looking for water inside a crater, they needed to throw up a dust cloud so they could detect the water from earth.

[iceniner]

There is no such thing as a doomsday weapon that can destroy the earth

I don't think that anyone has ever claimed that the earth could be physically destroyed by nuclear weapons, as in smashed to pieces. When they say "destroy the earth" they mean "destroy all human habitation on the earth," a distinction which is obvious to all but the most Asperger's-afflicted semantics sticklers.

they needed to throw up a dust cloud so they could detect the water from earth.
That's right, I remember that now. I also recently read that they supposedly found a huge cave on the moon, something like a kilometer and a half long. I am very skeptical about those findings but it was very interesting nonetheless.

[^.^]

you think we aren't capable of creating a warhead with a payload capable of disintegrating the moon? think again. it's just a matter of scale now. weapons of apocalyptic power are no problem whatsoever, we just haven't had the need to make many...

That was my point behind the whole object destroying thing.

I don't recall hearing anything about the cave, but I know the dust was was thrown up was only about 1% water, but they were hoping that there were larger cashes of water in other places. I think the main idea of the whole endeavor is to find water so they can land a long-term manned outpost there.

[iceniner]

That was my point behind the whole object destroying thing.

I sort of agree with him about that, to an extent. Once again this is a thread and discussion from 2009. What's your agenda and why are you arguing about everything? It looks like you arrived here and started lashing out in every direction. Why is that?

And once again, we weren't originally talking about celestial bodies the size of the moon, but threat asteroids which are often around 5 miles across and much more plausible targets for nuclear demolition, especially by repeated impacts... Nuclear "shaped charges" of sorts, using various types of blast lensing, were around in the 1980s.

Again, why so aggressive about such a geeky, esoteric subject?

[^.^]

I sort of agree with him about that, to an extent. Once again this is a thread and discussion from 2009. What's your agenda and why are you arguing about everything? It looks like you arrived here and started lashing out in every direction. Why is that?

And once again, we weren't originally talking about celestial bodies the size of the moon, but threat asteroids which are often around 5 miles across and much more plausible targets for nuclear demolition, especially by repeated impacts... Nuclear "shaped charges" of sorts, using various types of blast lensing, were around in the 1980s.

Again, why so aggressive about such a geeky, esoteric subject?

I'm not arguing about "everything" only things I disagree with, if I agree with what someone has to say, I probably wouldn't post. Funny how that works, eh?

Many of the objects in space cannot be destroyed by explosions at all, that is why I specifically mentioned dust balls. It is WIDELY accepted that if a dust ball is about to hit us, no amount of nuclear explosions, shaped or otherwise, would save us, it's that simple.

When it comes to incoming meteors and such, the ONLY hope we have is seeing an object while it's still several years away from us, by the time is close enough that we could intercept it with a rocket, it's already way too late. It's also accepted that threatening objects may well be too small to see from a distance and therefore not possible to prepare for.

I'm aggressive, because I find it somewhat annoying that someone who seems as intelligent as Abrazaderas would be that arrogant about the amount of power humans have over nature. Disintegrating the moon is quite a claim.

Also... I've been drinking tonight, that effects my level of aggressiveness.

And, I'm a nerd who's into all this space stuff, so it's something I know quite a bit about.

[Abrazaderas]

so i'm not a nuclear physicist and you may be right, you little cockknocker.

but you may be wrong. i really don't see why we couldn't come up with a weapon large enough to provide 53 quadrillion megatons. i'm sure no ones seen the point of such a thing. but should we need to, what's stopping us from making a warhead the size of a skyscraper, or larger? we have the materials and engineering prowess to design the casing; i'm sure if our best physicists got together they could find a way to generate that amount of energy, especially if they had all the money and plutonium and deuterium and whatnotium they needed.

[iceniner]

Let's not feed this guy anymore, he just came out of nowhere and seems to want to act like a total ass. If he's going to be such a prick about something as geeky as this he's got a serious problem of some sort.

what's stopping us from making a warhead the size of a skyscraper, or larger?
Part of the problem would be launching such a thing. I still think that for comparatively small asteroids they could fragment them using existing munitions, possibly numerous MIRV missiles or something like that.

[^.^]

so i'm not a nuclear physicist and you may be right, you little cockknocker.

but you may be wrong. i really don't see why we couldn't come up with a weapon large enough to provide 53 quadrillion megatons. i'm sure no ones seen the point of such a thing. but should we need to, what's stopping us from making a warhead the size of a skyscraper, or larger? we have the materials and engineering prowess to design the casing; i'm sure if our best physicists got together they could find a way to generate that amount of energy, especially if they had all the money and plutonium and deuterium and whatnotium they needed.

The Tsar Bomba was 60,000 lb, 26ft long. I can't find a number for how much fissile material was used in that bomb, but what I can tell you is a bomb that's 53 quadrillion megatons would be roughly the same size as the moon, would have to be assembled in small pieces inside the molten core of the earth itself, take decades to build, and there probably isn't that much fissile material on earth anyway.

Tsar Boma: 50MT
Earth Cracker: 53 000 000 000 000 000MT

The difference in scale is huge, not only that, the Tsar Boma was also a fusion bomb, which means it had heavy water to supercharge the reaction, we'd be talking about placing an something the size of an ocean in the center of a bomb that big, and even if we did, the larger you make the bomb, the less efficient it gets... And then there's timing issues, in order to make a nuclear reaction happen, all the shaped explosive charges need to do at the same time, doing that for a bomb that large will be a challenge itself, the speed of light would even cause too much difference for all the charges to be detonated by one trigger. So it would have to be independently timed at all the explosive points. If you time them, then relativity becomes a problem: clocks moving faster, have time drift compared to clocks moving slower. If you built this thing in a planet, gradient changes of the molten metals around it would effect the gravity around it and mess up the clocks, humans still have no idea about how the center of the earth rotates, only that at it's very core, the pressure is so great that dispite the heat, the molten metal is solid.

I'm not trying to crap on your idea Abrazaderas, it's just a huge scaling issue, I really don't think it's possible.

As for Iceniner: You're an :asshole: I've posted helpful material too, you seen to be the only one acting like a troll.

[Abrazaderas]

i have faith in human kind, that we could dream up a way to destroy celestial bodies. maybe, as you say, not now; but someday, some glorious day, we will be BLOTTING THE STARS FROM THE SKY!

[^.^]

i have faith in human kind, that we could dream up a way to destroy celestial bodies. maybe, as you say, not now; but someday, some glorious day, we will be BLOTTING THE STARS FROM THE SKY!

Well, one crazy guy did come up with an idea for a giant mirror that would reflect enough sunlight to slowly destroy the moon, but it was so big that it would have taken most of the Earth resources to build. :yup:

There are no doubt levels of physics that humans have no grasp of, we know that things like black holes might be able to be crated artificially. That would be the best way of destroying a celestial object that I can think of. On that note, a large supercollider on the moon might well be doable if people cared enough, it would be much safer than building it in Europe.

I believe in your faith man, humans are the most destructive species ever to grace the planet Earth, I'm sure well find a way of ruining the majesty of space someday too.

[iceniner]

i have faith in human kind, that we could dream up a way to destroy celestial bodies.
Since when was destroying stuff ever a problem for us? We spend more money on destructive power than on any other single cause. By a long shot.

[Abrazaderas]

i know man! i actually think - i hope - if we ever get warp technology, so we can travel the stars and be part of the intergalactic community, that we'll be the warrior race that crushes and subjugates all other intelligent life; spreading from galaxy to galaxy like an unstoppable plague, obliterating civilization after civilization of more 'developed' life-forms which unfortunately for their survival never learned how to be evil and greedy, maybe they don't even know about war and weaponry, though i doubt it.

but, sadly, it's just as possible some aliens that are big and mean and smart would kill us with their death rays, and that would just be humiliating on our part.

[iceniner]

My guess is we weren't the first to come up with the whole "evil and greedy" shtick.

But what do I know?