Ok, so the topic of the week is that NASA is planning on "bombing" the moon to try and find water on the south pole... Now, there are two trains of thought here: One is that we could create a minor crator within a crator (that's where they're aiming) and we get some useful data (for WHAT exactly I'm not sure at this point). The other is that it could affect more than just making another simple crator on the moon.
So I'll tackle the second option first, since it's the side of many non-scientific people as well as the initial reaction to most before hearing the information completely:
There are a couple of potential effects that would affect all of us here on Earth. One of which would be the potential affect on the actual moon itself and its orbit around our planet. Now, I'm sure some high-end scientist would likely say "That's highly unlikely."; however, even if its a little bit could not speed up the already distancing of the orbit of the moon? I mean, yes the moon is already moving away from the Earth at about 3.8 cm a year, but do we really need to increase this momentum whatsoever? We have no real idea of what this could do (until we actually do it). Nothing of this scale has been done like this before.
The second potential effect is the backlash of citizens of the planet towards NASA taking it upon themselves to do something that could affect those who have nothing to do with (nor had a choice in) this experiment. For some reason, I think that this is likely to be higher in chance to occur than the first... I'm amazed that more people haven't stepped in and asked NASA "Who the hell do you think you are to just do something like this that could affect the whole planet without getting agreement from the rest of the populous of the planet?"
Now to address the positive side of the event: It's supposed to be pretty cheap (as far as space missions are concerned) and a lot more feasible than spending exponentially more money to send a manned mission back up there. Here's the thing: If it returns ANYTHING, they'll likely send a manned mission up there. Why not send a rover (I mean, we can send one to Mars and that's good enough but it's not good enough to send to the moon?) instead of an empty satellite to crash into the surface? Could a rover not do the work in a less destructive manner?
Anyways, back to the positive... We can find out if there is water within the moon's soil. Now, "Why does this matter?" you might ask. Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that if there is a water source, it would make creating an established "space station" on the surface as there would be a source of water to make use of. If we can establish a space station on the moon to launch further exploration missions from, we can use much smaller rockets to obtain the same distance from the Earth. Earth has a nice little bubble we call the atmosphere that makes it actually quite difficult to break free of (not to mention the gravity) using rockets. This saves money in the long run as far as space exploration is concerned. My question to this would be: If the moon is bombarded with various debris ranging from the size "from smaller than a grain of sand to a basketball" and with no atmosphere to shield this space station from how can they even plan whatsoever to defend against these objects should they strike the moon at the location of the space station? Wouldn't anything man-made just be absolutely destroyed by these objects?
I'll leave you with that thought.
Take care,
B
(For more information on the mission, visit NASA's website at http://www.nasa.gov. For the FAQ on the mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/FAQs/index.html)
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