Ric

Looking for home for this... http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2011/02/12/best-man-left-bleeding-after-being-hit-in-head-by-flying-dildo/ This thread seems suitable enough.

This popped up on my Facebook feed, so I thought I would share it... http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/27/5-sky-events-this-week-row-of-planets-summer-triangle I've not gone through it yet so can't comment on how good it is, or whether it's been written from a specifically American viewing perspective.

About 2 or 3 degrees Kelvin, round about -270'C. And we have ventured out of the Solar System (just) albeit by proxy. Edit: it should be noted that you do not need to leave the solar system to reach those sorts of temperatures.

I'm not sure what it is you are trying to say here. That the Americans didn't land on the moon or that they didn't get past the Van Allen belt?

Not necessarily. A meteor (not sure if you call it a meteor if it hits the moon's surface, or if it counts as an asteroid) hit the moon just recently and the flash was visible with the naked eye. It lasted about a second so you wouldn't have caught it unless you were specifically looking at that spot mind. I'll find a video for it... You realise just how big those craters are, right? Do I need to do the Father Ted, "close up, far away" sketch?

Wait what? There is already a reason to query the moon landings? It's "tinfoilhattery" at it's finest to suggest we didn't go...

It would effect the Earth immediately, not sure where you got the idea we'd have millions of years before it did..

I was talking to my mother about the moon landings once and she said while it was momentous it was also one of the most disappointing things she'd witnessed. The fact they got there and it was confirmed as being lifeless killed the childhood dreams of there being something else up there. There are only a few on here who were born before they landed on the moon, for everyone else we grew up knowing "little green men" were only fiction. I am not sure if we will ever realise just what an effect the landings had on people at the time, we just take it for granted.

Fair point, although I think I would rather be shot into space. At least the view would be better.

The moon is fucking massive, just how much nuclear weapons do you think we have? That said, without the moon the Earth's orbit would be massively effected changing all sorts of things. It's an odd thing the moon as without it you could argue that life would never have evolved, now we are here and we have the technology to protect ourselves it wouldn't mean we would all die but it would make our existence on this planet considerably harder. Essentially the Earth and all on it have evolved to deal with the effects the moon has on us.

If we blew the moon up with nukes (not that we could, but if we could) then it would effectively be the end of life on this planet purely from the amount of debris that would end up hitting us..

I am sure you know the quote that we know more about the moon and it's surface than we do for a large percent of the Earth's oceans.

Of course, Addie, I have no problem with discussing it. In a like for like environment, and setting aside the problem of the missing magnetosphere, the pressure from the water and it's corrosive nature causes considerably more problems than the sterile low pressure environment of the moon. In terms of 02 generation this could be handled several ways. There is water on the moon for example, considerably more than you would expect. Not only that, self contained units that generate electricity via solar power (something water dwelling doesn't offer, or offers at a much lower rate) can recycle a huge amount of what we expel. How do you think that Russian cosmonauts have managed to survive living in the Mir for over a year? The problem is, as you would expect, the difficulty of getting the equipment up there, assembling it, and to a lesser extent resupply. It all depends on the depth of the water we are talking about, but even then just a few 100 meters below the surface of the water and it's as dangerous and deadly as space. For example if you were to go up, say 3000 feet in the atmosphere with nothing but a good coat, you'd be fine. Do that in the ocean and you would be crushed like a tin can by the pressure.

The biggest problem with living on the moon, in fact the biggest problem on leaving Earth is the lack of a magnetosphere. It protects us from a huge amount of stuff we want to avoid. There is no way to generate a similar thing on the moon, so basically anyone living up there (and they would have to live in hermetically sealed units, not on the open surface) would be subjected to all sorts of nasty stuff that the body is just not capable of dealing with. For example astronauts complain of darting white lights in their eyes. That is down to cosmic rays passing through the eye, although there is a lesser supported theory that it could be cosmic rays actually passing through the part of the brain that deals with eyesight, triggering the visions that way. Technically, if you are in space, you can "see" the stars even with your eyes shut.

If anything it's easier to live on the moon than it is to live under water. So a very resounding "yes" is the answer. You couldn't (to use the sci-fi term) "terraform" it though, that would indeed be stuff of the movies.

Obviously it's a bit daft to compare like for like, but even the simplest of things like removing the out dated, energy inefficient and ridiculously poor street lighting with LED light that not only will need less servicing, will last longer, can be controlled easier, costs less to run and (most importantly for the stargazers) don't suffer from light pollution would be a good start.

The British Defence budget (and this is specifically on military spending) is ~£33 billion (the total defence budget is about ~£42 billion). British spending on space exploration? £10m some 0.03%.

I think "exasperated" is the word you are looking for. Blankly refusing to discuss a topic because they have been corrected on it then throwing a hissy fit doesn't seem entirely normal. Perhaps, then, you simply shouldn't post about stuff you know nothing about while copying and pasting from other sites pretending you do. Either that or accept when you've been corrected with grace rather than floods of tears. Monkey's with typewriters, is the phrase I think most apt here. Careful, TC, that seems to be a dangerous road you are on there...

So despite you not giving the correct answer for the question given, you are happy to claim it is the right answer and then go on a little tirade just because someone had the audacity to correct you? You don't think that is maybe over reacting a little? Edit: Seriously, why are you so enraged with me saying it? If others had corrected you, you'd have said nothing, yet because it's me you have to act all drama queen. This is an honest question, as it seems to have been going on for days now, and you seem happy to throw out random insults hand over fist to someone you've never met and know nothing about. It just seems really bizarre behaviour. Edit (2): I see you've edited your last post. The simple fact is Cowboy asked you a question, the answer you gave was simply not correct in the context, I can happily give you a full page of mathematics and articles to back that up. The universe has not been expanding at an exponential rate, the maths simply do not back that up. Trying to claim that it's pedantic to correct people is just nonsense. If I had said the moon was made of green cheese and you corrected that, would it be pedantism or simply providing the correct answer?

Yet you answer my post correcting you with this...

See what I mean?

Thanks, although a truce would suggest that there is some sort of "battle" going on, all I've done is correct one of fiddy's answers and the toys have come out of the pram. He's incorrectly interpreted tidal locking in the last post. Do I correct him and incur the wrath of both him and his girlfriend Addie, or do I let others read that and assume it's correct?

Interestingly the Milky Way has already collided with a galaxy, fairly recently too, so we have an "after" example to study. That said it was nothing the size of Andromeda.