This will be the first time we've ever landed on the moon?

right?

Are you sure it's not from a couple of school kids with a ripped off copy of 3DS Max?

Where's the disaster teaser? Where's the token sex-interest? Where's the gravelly voice-over? Where's Bruce Willis??

Crap CGI too. Apollo 13 was better.

The hypocrasy of NASA never fails to astound. That organisation has done more to inhibit the manned exploration of space than any Proxmiring national administration ever did. Now when they realise the gravy-train funding for military and research projects might be running out due to increased competition, and that some of them might actually lose their cosy jobs, suddenly they're the 'avatars of the pioneering spirit' again?? Twats.

It's an old Robert A. Heinlein book, written in the 50's I think, in which an intrepid bunch of American kids head to the moon in a homemade rocket only to find a Nazi missile base. Lots of the early NASA guys claimed they were influenced by that book.

So I figure better the Chinese than the Germans, more current-eventy and all. ;-)

All fine to make people dream and hence support NASA with tax dollars, but it's an infinite waste: human space exploration is ridiculously inefficient and kills people as an extra. The underlying supposition is that humanity needs a dream and that dream has to be moving to other planet --- the Bush space pitch --- and NASA calculates that this is the only way they can justify/keep their *astronomical* budget.

Robots are far cheaper and easier to design --- they sleep until needed, so no air supply, no food except electricity, no waste production, no entertainment needs. And if one fails, or crashes, its a few million wasted as opposed to human lives and many more millions (compare crashes of mars landers and columbia and challenger etc etc). Hence you can calculate on this, and to things `on the edge'. Also they do useful things for small budgets, as opposed to the ISS albatross which is scientifically useless --- unfinished, it already falls apart, and there's a lack of things to do as their science budget was cut. Oh yes, and most interesting and cheapo space exploration plans have been scrapped to pay for... human space flight and ISS maintenance. See also Hubble which they refused to repair for a long time.

Tragedy in point: the `science' experiments the Columbia was carrying were literally proposed by school children ("how do spider's webs differ when grown in microgravity?" I recall), and people died for it. To send a robot in space with the same experiment would have cost 1/100th of the price, and you could have planned to let it burn up on reentry for all I care.

Frankly there are plenty of people who're willing to take the risk, and good on them. Every new frontier has had deaths, but you never get anywhere without breaking a few eggs. And it's hardly an "infinite waste" when once you've established viable space colonies then you can pull in resources from the rest of the solar system with minimal extra effort. Many minerals are becoming harder to find here, for instance the precious metals of high tech for instance. Without those the general economies of the world would have some serious trouble.

who?

They did a similar campaign back in '02 for the Mars Rover mission.

I just love the space sound effects. If this stinkin' piece of brownware is really made by some dude/dudes at NASA, he/they should all go search for God on the orbit.

I'm not sure it makes sense to land on the Moon again. The Apollo program was impressive and economically and technologically beneficial the first time, but what would we learn from doing it again?

I agree with Thomas Friedman, that the next national science initiative should be aimed at Energy Independence.

As for finding the Chinese on the Moon, their program is a lot of hot air. Where are their accomplishments? Where is their giant Moon rocket? At least one can take NASA somewhat seriously when they say they will go to the Moon, since they actually did it once.

Again NASA (or a governmeent FRONT for space travel / technology) shows how they can waste money better than anyone else. If these guys only gave $1 million in R+D for this guy (see link below), we would not be going to the moon, we would be looking at visiting all the planets, oh and creating free energy too...BUT thats not what the American government wants is it ? OIL OIL OIL...is the only answer. IDIOTS.

try this guy

www.searlsolution.com

www.swallowcommand.com

its a shame we have such bad world leaders.

Jon.