Why NASA Should Bomb the Moon to Find Water: Analysis
September 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under In the News, Latest News
Should this not be a worldly decision… and not just one of the United States NASA…?
The American Peoples need to eliminate NASA $17.6 Billion Budget. In doing so the United States could enhance the lives of many , such as adequately taking care of the elderly, providing quality health care for all American citizens. Housing for the homeless. Perhaps we need to mend our relationship with the earth before raping another planet.
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is now traveling to the moon at 5592 mph and will crash-land on Oct. 9 in order to gather data from the 6-mile-high impact cloud it will create. Today, as NASA announced the crater where LCROSS will land (Cabeus-A), the mission continues to drum up controversy. Is crash-landing on the moon really necessary for science? Will it be worth the damage done to the moon? To both these questions, PM answers a resounding, Yes. Here’s why we’re rooting for NASA’s October mission to bombard the moon.
Published on: September 11, 2009
REF: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4317333.html
NASA today announced the site of a mission that aims to send an empty fuel tank into a lunar crater to assess the amount of frozen water that is kicked up by the impact. On October 9, a kamikaze spacecraft will crash into the moon’s Cabeus-A crater, kicking up a 6-mile-high debris cloud that a follow-on craft will surf through, using infrared spectrometers and video cameras
to determine how much—if any—water ice exists. A series of space-based and terrestrial telescopes will also examine the plume.
So it appears the mission is on track, but it’s been a tough summer for LCROSS. For several weeks in August, the spacecraft suffered from a strange software malfunction that caused it to consume too much fuel. After two weeks spent in an emergency mode, mission planners last week returned operations to normal. While this 240,000-mile reprogramming was underway, a chorus of online readers of mainstream science websites were rooting for the mission’s failure. These armchair space critics call LCROSS crude, violent and silly. But even a cursory look at the mission reveals a clever, scrappy mission that should be cheered instead. Here’s why we like LCROSS, and are looking forward to its date with Cabeus-A.
1) It’s a cheap, creative and scrappy mission. This is what many people want NASA projects to look like in the future.
LCROSS is a Class D mission, denoting one with the highest risk of failure. Once-in-a-lifetime missions and those with human passengers are considered Class A missions, and carry a high cost in time and money to ensure that the equipment won’t fail. The extra testing, custom-built gear and redundant equipment drives up costs to levels that give even members of Congress pause. NASA could launch more risky missions like LCROSS instead of just a handful of marquee ones, and reap more rewards even if some fail.
The cost of LCROSS is about $79 million—cheap in the spaceflight world—and its planners delivered it on budget and on time. The engineers adapted available parts and technology for their craft: commandeering an empty fuel tank for its mass, crafting an internal fuel tank from a communications satellite and copying avionics from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is to be delivered into the lunar orbit on the same ride as LCROSS. (The impactor mission is hitching a ride on the Lunar Reconnaissance Obriter’s launch.) LCROSS’s skeleton, an aluminum ring that looks like a section of sewer pipe with six portholes, is leftover from an Air Force project designed to release multiple satellites from a single rocket. The moon-bombing engineers cobbled these parts together to make a cheap spaceship in just two years. Some risks are worth taking: LCROSS is one of them.
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2) It will have conclusive results.
So many space missions leave people scratching their heads. Sometimes the science is obscure, or simply a preparation for some other event that may or may not occur in some future decade. For example, LRO will provide ground-breaking images of the moon, and will support any return by America, but people can rightfully ask, “Don’t we have images of the moon? And are people really going to return in 2020?” LCROSS has a specific scientific mission and a payoff that is almost immediate. In 1998 a probe called Lunar Prospector spotted tantalizing signs of hydrogen in craters at the lunar poles. But no one’s entirely sure if the hydrogen is the chemical signature of water ice, possibly deposited by comets and meteors. LCROSS should not only confirm that water-ice is on the moon, but in what quantities. Any future moon base would rely on this water, so love or hate lunar aspirations, the information will be useful.
3) The scar will be very small.
LCROSS will create a 6-foot-deep crater inside another crater on the south pole. The moon has suffered much worse from the cosmos, and this latest gouge pales in comparison. Note that there are no explosives on board—the mass of the impactor alone is enough to create a plume. Also, the craft will be empty of all fuel before impact, to keep results uncluttered.
4) Humans have been crashing things into the moon—not to mention leaving trash behind—for a long time, so what’s one more if it actually gleans some data?
There is nothing pristine about the moon. It’s lifeless surface is cluttered with spent probes, landing craft, seismic sensors and moon buggies. Every time an Apollo mission took off, the crew threw out all unneeded equipment to save weight on the return. The idea that the moon will somehow be ruined by LCROSS is bizarre. Besides, even if a fraction of previous impacts hit the moon in the future, any human traces will in time be pulverized. So the moon will recover, you thumb-sucking Luddites!
FBI Investigating Ads Offering Indian Scalps
September 4, 2009 by admin
Filed under In the News
Note: The United States government can evidently track a single Bovine (Cow) location within over 100, 000 farms, to protect the cattle industry, but yet are incapable of finding this diseased racial menace to the American Indian peoples.
By Clarke Canfield of the Associated Press
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The FBI is trying to find the person who posted online advertisements saying he had two-century-old “Maine Indian scalps” that he wanted to sell to white people.
The FBI executed a search warrant last month at Yahoo Inc. for information related to two e-mail addresses linked to the Craigslist postings, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Portland.
It is illegal to traffic in Native American remains. Kirk Francis, chief of the Penobscot Indian Nation, had reported the ads to state and federal officials and said he has reason to believe they were real.
The seller offered six scalps and related artifacts from a private family collection said to have been obtained by bounty hunters in the 1700s. Back then, bounties were offered for Penobscot Indians or for their scalps, Francis said. One proclamation, dated 1755, offered 50 pounds in British currency for every male Penobscot above the age of 12 and 40 pounds for their scalps.
Ads Ran Twice in June, Says Affadavit
If the scalps exist, Francis said they should be returned to the Penobscot reservation in Maine and given a proper burial.
“These are human beings that were murdered under genocidal policies, so we’re concerned that in 2009 the effects of that policy are still here and there are still people who look at these pieces as nothing more than some kind of conquering piece of art,” he said.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the agency’s policy of not commenting on or confirming ongoing cases.
The ads, which are no longer accessible, ran twice in June, according to the FBI affidavit. The ads, which included a Maine cell phone number, said the scalps and other artifacts were part of a privately owned museum and were being sold because of a recent death among the owners.
A 1990 federal law makes it illegal for museums to have Native American remains and requires institutions to return remains to their rightful tribes, said Jason Brown, spokesman at Bar Harbor’s Abbe Museum, which is devoted to Maine’s Native American heritage.
Brown said he has never heard of people keeping scalps in private collections, but said it is hard to know exactly what is out there.
“Once they go into a private collection, it’s hard to know unless they rear their head,” he said.
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BY TREVOR MAXWELL
Portland Press Herald
PORTLAND –– The FBI is investigating recent posts on craigslist that offered to sell “Maine Indian scalps” to “white people only,” according to court documents and the leader of the Penobscot Indian Nation, who reported the situation to state and federal officials.
The person who posted the items claimed to have six scalps and related artifacts that were obtained by bounty hunters in the 1700s and came into his possession through a private family collection.
The posts included a Maine cell phone number and the contact name “Whitely Bradford.” The phone was not accepting calls this week, and the posts are no longer accessible on craigslist, a popular Web site that allows people to sell, buy and trade goods and services.
It is unclear whether the scalps exist, or whether the person who posted the ad was trying to carry out an elaborate hoax. But based on dates and other details in the posts, federal investigators and Penobscot leaders have proceeded under the assumption that they are legitimate.
“The big thing for us is to be able to deal with those remains properly,” said Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis. “It is a hard period of time to look back on anyway. To have the tribe reminded of that in such a blatant fashion, and then trying to have someone profit on it, that just doesn’t sit well.
“To have parts of dead Native people and to be selling them, this obviously is not acceptable,” Francis said.
The posts were brought to Francis’ attention by an anonymous e-mail. After reviewing them with members of the Penobscot Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Francis reported them to the U.S. Department of Justice and the state Attorney General’s Office.
Last month, the FBI obtained e-mails and other computer evidence affiliated with two Yahoo e-mail addresses that were linked to craigslist posts on June 4 and June 6.
In a five-page affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, FBI Special Agent James Lechner said the posts gave him probable cause to investigate a possible violation of federal law: trafficking in Native American remains.
That specific offense was created in 1990 as part of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and is punishable by as much as one year in prison.
Todd DiFede, the FBI’s supervisory agent in Maine, said Wednesday that he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. Halsey Frank, an assistant U.S. attorney who has been involved with the case, also declined to comment.
Francis said he and other tribal leaders initially doubted the craigslist posts.
“We said, ‘Well, maybe someone is just trying to get our hair up here,’” he said. “It started to become more and more credible.”
The posts claim that the scalps were obtained for bounties between 1700 and 1760.
Francis said that during that time, British colonists offered bounties for the capture or killing of Penobscot men, women and children. One formal proclamation was made in 1755 by Spencer Phips, the lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
If the scalps do exist, Francis said, he will do whatever it takes to retrieve them and provide a proper burial on Penobscot land. Francis said he is confident that the FBI investigation will uncover the truth.
“It has been three months, so of course we would like things to be moving a lot quicker,” he said. “At this point, we are getting a little impatient, but we are also trying to let them focus on what they need to do.
“This really is on a whole new level,” Francis said. “Something like this is not representative of Maine. It has no place here.”
One craigslist post appeared on June 4, offering “a rare collection of museum quality Maine Indian scalps. Included is two squaws, two children and two ‘noble indigenous savages.’”
The post said the items –– including “beads, tattoos and leather tags to identify the sex and approximate age” –– were in shadow boxes and were part of a “private Fesseden museum.”
“There was a recent death in the ownership,” the post said. “The family were among Maine’s earliest settlers and will discriminate in selling to white people only.”
Another post appeared on June 6, with much of the same information. It said the scalps were from the “Fesseden-Avery collection which was a privately owned museum.
Julia Clark, collections manager at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, said private collections of Native items do exist in Maine but she has never heard of anyone possessing human remains.
She said she has never heard of a “Fesseden” or “Fesseden-Avery” collection. Clark said there are no known examples in New England of Native American scalps preserved from the era of bounty hunting.
The Abbe Museum offers exhibitions and programs on Maine’s Wabanaki heritage. The Wabanaki people include Maine’s four Indian tribes: Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy.
Clark does not believe that anyone has ever been prosecuted in Maine for trafficking in Native American artifacts or remains. She said the posts deserve the full attention of law enforcement agencies, even if they turn out to be a hoax.
“The cultural insensitivity in the posts, that alone is distressing,” Clark said.
John Bear Mitchell said it is hard for him to understand how human remains could be so devalued. Mitchell is a member of the Penobscot Nation who teaches at the University of Maine and is associate director of the school’s Wabanaki Center.
“Even if it is hair, with a little bit of flesh on it, that is human remains. That could be one of our ancestors,” Mitchell said. “This doesn’t just affect people in the past. It affects us today, people who are living.”
A few years ago, it came to Mitchell’s attention that someone was trying to sell a “Penobscot Indian skull” on eBay. He helped inform Penobscot leaders, who contacted representatives of the Internet auction site. The posting was immediately removed.
“Things that are taken from graves, that is bad enough because those are human objects,” Mitchell said. “But to take a scalp or a skull, to say this was on our family shelf for 100 years and we don’t have use for it anymore. To turn them into money, that is perversion.”