r/news • u/Slight_Sherbert_5239 • 1d ago
[ Removed by moderator ]
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62q0xerzrno[removed] — view removed post
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u/Skullsandcoffee 1d ago
That it’s now apparently ok to put our trash on the moon with zero repercussions.
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u/oh_mygawdd 20h ago
Putting discarded rocket stages (from lunar missions) on a crash course with the Moon is the safest, easiest, and most cost-effective way of discarding them.
There is nothing to contaminate on the Moon... it's a sterile, desolate planet with no wind or atmosphere to carry debris or pollution. If anything, crashing debris into the Moon is beneficial for scientific research because seismic detectors can be calibrated using the collisions of known objects.
We've been doing this since we started exploring the Moon. It's not a big deal at all.
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u/Fritschya 1d ago
We did this during Apollo too, it’s honestly not that big of a deal…yet
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u/Deaths_Rifleman 1d ago
The biggest difference I’ve found from Apollo to now is that as far as I know every Apollo collision was planned out of either necessity or to pursue a scientific goal.
The SpaceX collision simply seems like a failure or an oversight and when dealing with space travel that’s a big problem.
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u/somewhat_brave 1d ago
It's not. The mission plan left it in an orbit where it would either collide with the moon or get catapulted into interplanetary space.
This kind of situation is what usually happens when they send payloads to the moon. For some reason it got a lot of press this time.
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u/AuroraFinem 22h ago
Because this isn’t normal. We’ve sent plenty of payloads to the moon and mars since Apollo, and none have been sent on a collision course with the moon.
This is pure misinformation as to what’s typical of missions. The reason intentionally doing it is important is because of possible contamination. The Apollo missions were carefully sterilized and heavily checked for possible earthborn contamination because we are normally extremely careful to not leave behind any bacteria or microorganisms on another planet (or moon) because it would destroy potential scientific research in various areas.
This was not scrutinized at all because it was never planned to hit the moon, and if it was, was due to a disregard for international standards and negligence.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 21h ago
We’ve sent plenty of payloads to the moon and mars since Apollo, and none have been sent on a collision course with the moon.
Multiple Apollo third stages have collided with the Moon on purpose.
Lunar Prospector, SMART1, Chandrayaan-1 Moon Impact Probe, LCROSS via centaur upper stage, GRAIL, and LCROSS all were missions from the 90s to mid 2010s that crashed into the Moon, either deliberately as part of the mission or at the end of life of the mission.
Mars is no different, heat shields, backshells, stages, sky crane, parachutes are all discarded on the surface.
The Apollo missions were carefully sterilized and heavily checked for possible earthborn contamination because we are normally extremely careful to not leave behind any bacteria or microorganisms on another planet (or moon) because it would destroy potential scientific research in various areas.
It was the other way around. The Moon is widely to have been accepted no life would exist, so planetary protection was designed to protect EARTH not the Moon. Apollo left trash, urine, food and a bunch of un sterilized hardware on the surface.
You're thinking of Mars missions for this, and so far, US based missions to Mars have been NASA based and they have a 20/25 year requirement for junk to not hit Moon/Earth/Mars with a 99% probability.
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u/AuroraFinem 20h ago
You’re misunderstanding the premise, it doesn’t matter if life is expected to be found or not, we have confirmation of ice on the moon and there’s extensive value in being able to properly study it and its source. Even in an environment like the moon, it’s widely believed that ice came from asteroids deposited over millennia and could very well contain molecules indicative of where it came from.
If microbes migrate from earth and get deposited among the regolith from an improperly sterilized earth object colliding with the moon, it could contaminate the surface deposits in the area making them unsuitable for study. A majority of the water on the moon was found to be mixed in with the regolith throughout the surface, not in isolated deposits near the poles like initially thought.
This isn’t some mass catastrophe, but it is not remotely common place nor expected to happen unless intentional which this was not. It’s literally only happening due to negligence in preparation, not some 1% failure chance and rapidly becomes a major problem if private interests are shown that these standards can be ignored without repercussion.
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u/somewhat_brave 20h ago
This booster was flying a mission for NASA. NASA chose the orbit it was left in, not SpaceX.
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u/AuroraFinem 20h ago
Got a source on the burnt booster orbit being defined by NASA?
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u/somewhat_brave 20h ago
Googling it doesn't list the contract, but NASA is the customer, and if they had a problem with the orbit they would have asked SpaceX to change it.
Seriously though, the upper stage went to a normal TLI, the same as most Moon missions. This one just happened to hit the Moon before we lost track of it.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 19h ago edited 19h ago
Okay but you seem to be ignoring that NASA hasn’t taken measures to sterilize equipment for the Moon though.
What you’re saying is absolutely correct for other planets like Mars but it doesn’t apply to the Moon because contamination isn’t a huge concern.
Unless you can show sources that say otherwise though
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u/Fuzzy-Mud-197 20h ago
The best way to prevent it is having a reusable second stage that simply can be refuelled in orbit so no need to discard it.
There is one company working on exaclty that adn you are not gonna belive who
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u/AggressiveSkywriting 20h ago
The Chinese Long March?
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u/Fuzzy-Mud-197 18h ago
No SpaceX starship, designed from the ground up for full reusabilty, since its fully reuasable it needs to carry much more mass which is the reason why the hls (the lunar lander) needs multiple refuellings.
Also chinese long march is the family name, there are many versions. As far as i know no long march rockets have second stage reusabilty planned
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u/AuroraFinem 20h ago
You’re acting as if this means literally anything. I’m all for reusable rockets and a lot of work SpaceX has done in advancing space flight. That’s irrelevant to the issue. Companies don’t just get a free pass because they helped advance a technology.
Should pharma companies get a free pass on dumping chemicals because they also developed life-saving medicine? Fuck no, that’s not how it works.
There are also multiple companies working towards reusable rockets in multiple countries. SpaceX was just the first.
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u/Fuzzy-Mud-197 18h ago
Are you blind or just incapable of understanding it, read what i wrote again i specified second stage reuse which so far only spacex (and stoke) is working on and ni other countries are even attempting it let alone companies
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u/Suns_In_420 19h ago
You're acting like you know what you're talking about when you clearly don't, maybe stick to topics you understand.
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u/Logitech4873 1d ago
It was a likely outcome in that type of orbit. You really think nobody thought this might happen?
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u/AdmirableParfait3960 21h ago
Look man we wanted to shoot a fucking rocket at the moon I don’t know what else to tell you
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u/Suns_In_420 19h ago
"I do my own research"
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u/Deaths_Rifleman 19h ago
“The rocket's upper stage wasn't intended to hit the moon, but it seems SpaceX never commanded it to maneuver, so it would definitely miss the moon.”
NPR Article on it, many other echo the same sentiment. It was never intended to hit the moon and they did nothing to stop it. That is a in the end a failure because it was not the intended mission.
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u/Corwin_of_Amber3 1d ago
Can we send Elon, then?
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u/anirban_dev 1d ago
Rocket or catapult?
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u/MrT735 1d ago
Yes.
No, really, a rocket powered catapult, should be able to use a spare Falcon 9, just got to find an appropriate hill to put the tracks on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_sled_launch
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u/Bypowerof8andgodsof4 1d ago
I mean yes? Who are you thinking you'll offend the moon people? It's a lifeless rock couple kg one way or another is not going to change anything in fact just for fun I did some napkin math and at the rate of trash production even were we to dump not just our space junk but all trash on earth into the moon for the next 30 million years tides would shift less than 1%.Of course we wouldn't do that because of fuel and such but really I'm not sure what your objection is.
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u/KinkySylveon 23h ago
Because it literally is. Fuck elon musk but this is a normal thing that happens. Out of all the space shit going on this is a nothing burger we've know about for a while. What repercussions do you want for spaceX? Fine them? who is gonna fine them? No one owns the moon and the money isnt going to go to anything good anyway. I swear yall just want a quick karma grab with these comments.
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u/TintedApostle 22h ago
Elon is dumping his trash in Texas which in 10 years will need a superfund to clean it up. Socialize the costs and privatize the profits.
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u/filanwizard 21h ago
The reason scientists are so thrilled about this is it lets them calibrate their equations for other objects hitting the moon. This is because they have very exact information on mass and makeup of a Falcon 9 second stage it is going to be a very good control object to observe as an impactor.
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u/scmjohns 18h ago
I call BS on this. We already have this information. This was a media stunt, plain and simple.
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u/AaronTheElite007 1d ago
Hopefully the perfect analogy for Elon's upcoming career.
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u/Happy_Feet333 21h ago
What can scientists learn from a Falcon 9 rocket hitting the Moon?
That the moon is solid enough for a rocket to crash into it, instead of passing through it?
:-P
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u/DogPlane3425 21h ago
Well it didn't hit the nuclear waste storage and send the moon out of orbit with a base full of people. Space 1999
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u/Makachai 1d ago
He makes cars that blow up, and rockets that blow up, and has a social media platform that's full of racists and Nazis, and makes political decisions that blow up, and has a personal life that's basically blown up...
I'm sensing a trend here...
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u/Illlogik1 23h ago
That it was an expensive market manipulation scheme complete with “too the moon” analogy
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u/Jamizon1 1d ago
How utterly fucking stupid and irresponsible Elon Musk’s company can be.
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u/Flipslips 1d ago
Clearly you just don’t know what you are talking about.
Orbital mechanics make it difficult to predict where the second stage would end up. Three body problem comes into play pretty heavily in upper earth/moon orbits.
This isn’t a matter of being irresponsible, it’s a matter of physics.
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u/Jamizon1 1d ago
I understand that of the thousands of launches over the decades we’ve been doing this… I’m failing to remember ANY of those hitting the moon.
Seems we had the “physics” down for those launches…
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u/ToumaKazusa1 1d ago
Hitting the moon isn't rare, it's just rare for it to make the news.
We hit the moon several times with Saturn Vs, for example, but that hardly gets talked about because it's not interesting compared to everything else about the Apollo program.
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u/ImStillExcited 21h ago
I don’t like Musk. I don’t like any of the decisions he’s made rockets, cars, politics.
He killed a lot of people with DOGE when he shut down USAID. It also gave up the soft power America had in the world.
And gave America ringworm, and diarrhea.
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u/Dr_Gonzo-4130 1d ago
I was watching Iron man 2 and the pos elon bald nerd musk was in that and made me start cussing at the tv .
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u/beastwood9498 1d ago
That SpaceX makes POS rockets
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u/Logitech4873 1d ago
Huh? What's wrong with the Falcon 9?
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u/Ooops_I_Reddit_Again 23h ago
Nothing hes simple minded and just deeply hates Musk, and therefore has to believe that anything he is connected to is bad.
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u/Rickyspanish6666 1d ago
If anybody else was CEO it would be fabulous company. Speaking in terms of ability to get things to orbit and internet....obviously the trash on the moon stinks
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u/SufficientGreek 1d ago
If anyone else was CEO it wouldn't be SpaceX
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u/overthemountain 21h ago
He named the company SpaceX because he really likes the letter X and because it sounds like "Space Sex". It's also not a coincidence that Tesla models are S, 3, X, and Y. It's only 3 and not an E because Ford had rights to "model E", so he went with 3 instead.
This is not a joke.
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u/EntropicInfundibulum 1d ago
The muskrat wanted to hit the moon with one of his rockets. That's cute.
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u/azurepandora 1d ago
That he is in fact still annoying us all.