Paul Spudis says that the public is justified in being disappointed in LCROSS, to the degree that they are. he seems to be.
4 thoughts on “LCROSS Overhyped”
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Paul Spudis says that the public is justified in being disappointed in LCROSS, to the degree that they are. he seems to be.
Comments are closed.
You know when I first saw that they were gonna use a Centaur stage I have to admit I didn’t expect too big of a bang. I just thought the whole thing would crush in on itself like a big 2 1/2 ton coke can and dissipate a lot of energy or spread out it too much over the surface to really lift a lot of material up. Compare that to the Deep Impact mission where they used a copper slug. That slug had some penetrating power.
Reading the article, his argument is that NASA should not have built a small, inexpensive spacecraft. Instead, they should have built a more complex, expensive bunch of spacecraft. Presumably his proposal. So Pete Worden was wrong?
his argument is that NASA should not have built a small, inexpensive spacecraft. Instead, they should have built a more complex, expensive bunch of spacecraft.
No, my argument is that if you’re going to spend money on the question of lunar polar ice at all, you should spend the money on missions that provide answers.
Presumably his proposal.
Wrong again. It was the considered opinion of the robotic program study. Over 200 people involved.
So Pete Worden was wrong?
About what? LCROSS was conceived and selected before he became ARC center director.
It’s not that NASA should have selected a hopper or other kind of hard lander (those had their own issues) — it’s that they chose to fly a mission that basically adds nothing to our strategic knowledge of the polar deposits while discarding entirely the robotic flight program that would have given us such information. They didn’t have to fly a secondary payload at all, so the LRO launch date (which was over a year late anyway) was not a constraint.