Look at what google have done for the moon landing anniversary.


http://moon.google.com/

Make sure you zoom ALL the way in

Doug

Hehe, makin' me hungry.

Recall the short story:

"A Report on the Nature of the Lunar Surface", by (i believe) John Brunner. :-)

Yup. Many years ago, I had a good laugh with him about it - I quoted it to him as a great 'short-short' SF story, unaware that he'd written it, and he had the delicious (to coin a phrase) experience of being able to say 'Well, actually, *I* wrote that!'. I think it was Limburger, so the amount quoted in the story might have been a bit more than, er, delicious! Sadly, he died in Glasgow ten years ago at the first SF WorldCon to be held here. John Brunner was a giant of his time, but for some reason was barely published after the 1970s, despite being a thoroughly modern author. He was also, in the early 1970s 'Shockwave Rider', the first person to popularise the concept of computer worms.

Also "Stand on Zanzibar," a fabulous book.

reminds me of a commercial from a few years ago
"for hundreds of years man believed the moon was made of cheese,
36 years ago we landed on the moon and discovered it was made of rock,
we haven't gone back:
behold the power of cheese"

There is yet more humor within this Google project. It appears to be a campaign to attract new recruits. See http://www.google.com/help/faq_moon.html, where they introduce the Copernicus initiative, and provide an additional link to a presentation on their planned lunar hosting and research center.

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

It's a pretty humorous read, but from what I have seen of Google's R&D philosophy, it may not be meant totally in jest.

Believe it or not, in early 1970 "Science" published -- completely deadpan, with no advance hint of its unusual nature, and smack in the middle of a set of legitimate papers -- a piece comparing the physical properties of the Apollo 11 and 12 lunar samples with those of several varieties of cheese. It ended by explaining the differences on the grounds of "how much better aged the lunar samples are." (I can't remember how close the issue date was to April 1.) I wonder how many other people did a double-take after they started to read that thing?

I wonder how the whole 'Moon is made of cheese' thing got started.. Why not 'Mars is made of beef' or 'Venus is made of curried rice'? The ocean is made of whiskey, the dirt is made of chocolate.. The clouds are made of wisps of sugar, and the air is made of glass.

Uh... "More Cheese, Grommit?"

Bruce Moomaw recalled:

"Believe it or not, in early 1970 "Science" published -- completely deadpan, with no advance hint of its unusual nature, and smack in the middle of a set of legitimate papers -- a piece comparing the physical properties of the Apollo 11 and 12 lunar samples with those of several varieties of cheese. It ended by explaining the differences on the grounds of "how much better aged the lunar samples are." (I can't remember how close the issue date was to April 1.) I wonder how many other people did a double-take after they started to read that thing? "

"Properties and Composition of Lunar Materials: Earth Anologies", Science, 26 June, 1970, pg. 1579-1580.

"Abstract: The sound velocity data for the lunar rocks were compared to numerous terrestrial rock types and were found to deviate wildly from them. A group of terrestrial materials were found which have velocities comparable to those of the lunar rocks, but they do obey velocity-density relations proposed for earth rocks."

(from a yellowing envelope containing rather ratty and not very good to begin with xeroxes).

Regarding John Brunner. He had a rather complex career as a science fiction writer. Up to the mid 60's, he was a good second-rank author mostly known for intelligently written but essentially generic "Ace DoubleBacks" and the like. He broke out as a major author with Stand on Zanzibar and other distinctive work through much of the 70's and beyond.

These works tend to split between rather overtly political diatribes like "The Sheep Look Up" and "Stand on Zanzibar" and more conventional but imaginative and distinctive science fiction and fantasy. Zanzibar got the Hugo Award for Best Novel the year after it was published, in the midst of the over-the-top political climate of the time. A lot of people loved it and a lot of people loathed it, with rather few in between.

His other, less politicized work, including "Shockwave Rider", a fore-runner of cyberpunk, have fallin into underserved obscurity. His output, or at least fandom in general's awareness of it, fell off in amount during the 80's and beyond and had less influence. His early death from a stroke was shocking and utterly unanticipated. After an author dies, unless there is a continuing demand for his work (like Heinlein's), without a family member or a sympatico editor to champion the author's work, reprinting tends to dry up and an author tends to fade into market invisibility and ultimate obscurity.

Mike:

Have you been talking to Ustrax?

Bob Shaw

Perversely, in the UK John Brunner *wasn't* known for his 1960s hack Ace output, Kelly Freas covers notwithstanding. Here, at that time, the opportunities to buy US SF paperbacks were very limited indeed - the UK's first SF bookshop only opened in Soho in the late 60s (Derek Stokes' 'Dark They Were And Golden Eyed') and so he was far better known for his magazine pieces and UK book reprints of short stories.

He was a fairly remarkable individual, starting his published writing career while still a teenager, and embracing a number of radical (and liberal) causes (he was a lifelong CND supporter, attended the Aldermaston marches, and wrote many CND folk songs). He was urbane, erudite, studiously well-mannered and got right up the nose of certain of his peers, for whom his aristocratic personal style was anathema.

He wasn't very happy towards the end of his life, feeling paranoid and excluded, but was reportedly very pleased to be visiting WorldCon. His sudden death cast a pall over the event, with even his many detractors rallying round to assist his young widow and generally to speak well of him.

One of my friends referred to Brunner as the "London Fop". I had a better impression of him at least as a writer if very much not of his politics. He wrote too many pretty damn good books to dismiss for his style or politics.

Regarding the origin of the Cheese bit... The Science article xerox includes in it's references the following:

"Erasmus: "With this pleasant merry toy, he ..... made his friends to believe the moon to be made of green cheese," Adagia, 1542, Udall translation".

Betcha some translation is online.

I thought the google moon thing was pretty shabby.

There is lots of real mapping and imagery they could have used, but they were lazy.

Also in the 'more info' page they say:

"Google Moon only has as much data as NASA was able to give us, so there are limitations (for now) on how close to the surface we can zoom."

But the map is from the USGS, not NASA. They could have done much better than this. I suppose they thought nobody really cared.

Phil

I would even say that Google only put up the Moon map so that they could have that 'moon is swiss cheese' joke. Eh. Maybe the interest they get from the little bit they put up will inspire them to replace it with something more interesting yet..

There was a serious theory in the 1950s that Venus had oceans of seltzer, because they would be heavily carbonated under pressure.

And I was disappointed; I just looked at google Earth for the first time and was impressed. I had seen this thread and thought, "wow, this will be really great for the moon". And then... blah. It isn't THAT funny.

Venus was also conjectured to be covered in oil. Bet we would have had plenty of manned missions to Venus by 1980 if that theory had been true. Sponsored by Exxon, Shell, Mobil, and others of course.

Hey, wait, I just realized that Venus IS covered in oil (super-mega-ultra-great oil that is worth $1 billion a barrel)! Go crazy, capitalists!

Boah, did you-all say there's OLL on VENICE? Thay-ut eye-taliban place with them theyur caynals? Ah think they could-all do with suy-am militaruh 'advisuhs', capiche? An' ley-uts heah no moah about none of them theyah manned flights to that doggone place, you heah? We don't want no humanes theyah nohow, theys'll jes be wantin' theyur humane raights, an' thayut jes gits in the way of the oll biziness...!

Thet ain't "oil bizness", boy. It's "AWL bidness".

Bruce:

LOL! Ah stands currrectud!

Bob Shaw

Zoom into the Moon and see all the known landing sites using the National Geographic Lunar Map from 1968:

http://www.ngmapstore.com/shopping/product...?iProductID=111


Trivia Time: This same map was the one on the wall in Lou Grant's office on the Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS-TV, 1970 - 1978).

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/...marytylermo.htm

[quote=ljk4-1,Oct 13 2005, 08:04 PM]
Zoom into the Moon and see all the known landing sites using the National Geographic Lunar Map from 1968:

For its time the National Geographic Lunar chart was a pretty good map. The artist, Tiber Toth, went to the USGS Flagstaff center and learned from the masters (Patricia Bridges and Jay Inge, who also taught me that technique) the art of using a precision airbrush to paint shaded relief. The Feb. 1969 issue containing the map has an article showing how they tried to independently work out the farside feature positions, which were notoriously uncertain back then. They used a large gridded wooden globe with nearside locations indicated and photographed it from viewing geometries similar to that of numarous Lunar Orbiter photographs, reistering the known locations with coorisponding ones in the farside LO omages and extrapolating from those for 'deeper' farside features. I have not checked the wall map with recent data but it would be interesting to make a comparison on its positional accuracy. The Apollo 8 crew discovered that the ACIC farside maps of the time were as much as 10 degrees in error on some farside locations!
I still have an early ACIC map which shows only partial farside data, with rather indefinite regions filled in with Zond photos.

Don

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060401.html

Hubble Resolves Expiration Date For Green Cheese Moon

Credit: Ranger Project, NASA

Explanation: Using the new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to confirm that the Moon is made of green cheese. The telling clue was the resolution of a marked date after which the Moon may go bad. Controversy still exists, however, over whether the date resolved is truly an expiration date or just a "sell by" date. "To be cautious, we should completely devour the Moon by tomorrow," a spokesperson advised. Happy April Fool's Day from the folks at APOD. The above image (slightly altered) was actually taken in 1965 by the Ranger 9 probe minutes before impact. The popular Moon is made of Green Cheese myth can be traced back almost 500 years. It has been used historically in context to indicate a claim so clearly false that no one -- not even April Fools -- will believe it.

I just read this thread from the beginning and it inspired me to dig up the following very important table from Schreiber and Anderson (1970).

Click to view attachment

Many astronauts reported that moon dust smells like 'spent gunpowder'. They all clearly had some experience with firearms. I wonder if any knew enough about cheese to make a reasonable comparison. Maybe it was really more of a 'smoked' gouda.

Back in early 1970, while thumbing through an issue of "Science", I was thunderstruck to find -- smack in the middle of the other reports, with no warning or indication at all -- a study comparing the physical properties of Apollo 11 and 12 samples to those of various types of cheese, and concluding that their higher density and other different properties could be explained by noting "how much better aged the lunar samples are". I don't even think it was an Apr. 1, 1970 issue!

Some of this happy lunacy goes back to John Brunner's ?delicious? short story: "A Report on the Nature of the Lunar Surface", where the most unhappy first astronauts to land on the moon find its primordial pristine organics rich surface has been transformed by biologic contamination on a crash-landed unmanned probe..... a technician's LIMBURGER CHEESE sandwich....

Pass the crackers.

Bob 'Grommit' Shaw

The table in post #28 is from that very Science paper by Schreiber and Anderson.

Does anyone have a digital version of the very first Lunar Farside Chart,
LFC-1, issued in August 1967? This is the one that utilized images from Zond 3
to fill in coverage gaps of the Farside from the first 4 Lunar Orbiters.

This first Farside Chart made a big impression on me. I was pretty young
in 1967, but I was still amazed when this chart was published. Here was the
face of the Farside of the Moon, hidden from mankind until our generation.
Here was detail, not the fuzzy photos from Luna 3.

According to info from the LPI, the LFC-1 was re-issued in October 1967
using the recent photos from Lunar Orbiter 5.


Another Phil

[quote name='PhilHorzempa' date='Jun 7 2006, 04:53 AM' post='57354']


Does anyone have a digital version of the very first Lunar Farside Chart,
LFC-1, issued in August 1967? This is the one that utilized images from Zond 3
to fill in coverage gaps of the Farside from the first 4 Lunar Orbiters.

This first Farside Chart made a big impression on me. I was pretty young
in 1967, but I was still amazed when this chart was published. Here was the
face of the Farside of the Moon, hidden from mankind until our generation.
Here was detail, not the fuzzy photos from Luna 3.

Yes, I recently made a detailed scan of it and I will share it when I get around to preparing the scans. It is a snapshot of the unknown becoming known.

According to info from the LPI, the LFC-1 was re-issued in October 1967
using the recent photos from Lunar Orbiter 5.
Another Phil

I have 2 copies of this, the first good lunar farside chart, from my USGS Apollo era days. One is the original edition with the beautiful greenish printed airbrush art, the other a later edition with ugly red grid lines printed atop the map.

Don Davis

I have this map as well. It went through several variations, with (as you say) the Orbiter 5 detail added, grids, names etc. One version had the Apollo 10 farside crater/basin numbering scheme before names were added. (For Apollo 8 they made up names like Gilruth, Texas, Houston, Armstrong for craters). Then at the 1970 IAU meeting a version with proposed real names in purple overprint was circulated. That's what I would like, I've seen it but I don't own it - a tragedy for any collector. The whole relief was redrawn a ywar or two later, as well.

Phil

Bob:

Seems like you're in need of a good hug...

Ustrax:

You're too kind - but have a word with Phil Stooke first, though, he's getting a bit 'enthusiastic' about his olde mappes again...

Bob Shaw

Perhaps linked to the competition, Google Moon has had a big upgrade

From: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=23559

"Updates include new content from the Apollo missions, including dozens of embedded panoramic images, links to audio clips and videos, and descriptions of the astronauts' activities during the missions. The new content is overlaid on updated, higher-resolution lunar maps. Also added are detailed charts of different regions of the moon suitable for use by anyone simulating a lunar mission. "

see for yourself here: http://moon.google.com

Cheers

Brian

I originally posted this topic at the end of the Lunar X prize thread but thought on reflection perhaps it might be best here.

see full description and links here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=100189

cheers

Brian

Or even here. -- J

what would be really nice is an application like google earth for roaming the moon, and maybe more planets.

Also, i wish there were more space exploration type games, where you could explore space and then set down on a planet and explore the flora and fauna.

Hell, if i ever win the lottery, i'm even gonna hire a team and devolop one myself.

Google has actually implemented Google Mars which contains many new images from MGS, MO and MRO. I would love to see Google Europa, Google Enceladus and Google Titan

You might want to check out these URLs:
http://www.gelib.com/moon-overlays.htm
http://www.gearthhacks.com/downloads/country.php?country=32

There are a number of different overlays here for Google Earth, including the Moon, Titan, Mercury, Venus, and others. None of these are official Google products however, and they do have some quality issues to be sure. One big drawback is that they are not selectable from the "Planets" menu; they are Earth overlays, and therefore all measurements and distances will be incorrect.

Still, you might find them useful. At the very least you can kill some otherwise productive work hours doing something slightly more enjoyable. And if you're so inclined, they could possibly serve as a jumping off point for building your own enhancements.

Click to view attachment

A real Google Moon will have to wait for good topography, from LRO's altimeter (supplemented by other new altimetry data) combined with a new dataset being created from Apollo stereo and introduced at LPSC last week.

Phil

If you have Google Earth v. 5, you can now check out Google Moon from the 'planet' menu button... ! It's a nice start, and when more high resolution images can be added it will be a very nice tool. One or two bugs here and there but not very serious... primarily in the way images from the ASU website have been added. But the Apollo LROC images are there, and look good in 3D.

Phil

Oh well, that's it then. I'll never get ANY writing done now they've done that.

In Google Earth do like Phil says and push the little saturn planet button, but in Layers, a panel on the left, select the Guided Tours directory and then Apollo 11. Andy Chaikin narrates with Buzz the landing and lunar walks. The trajectory and inside cockpit view were generated by John Knoll (Oscar winning Visual Effects Supervisor) and are extremely accurate. I've superimposed the LRO image of the landing area (semi transparently) and it looks really cool. The better data will make it so we can just hang out on the surface!

Downloaded it last night...vey coooool...and not that bad. A few hiccups with some camera options, as mentioned, however, overall, the 3D interactivity does give one a bigger picture.

See this YouTube vid that accompanies the Google Earth link to see what's on offer, or see small, newsie-bithere.

John

I love almost getting airsick on Google's fly tool. What a bunch of fun!

One of my faves - flying along the floor of Hadley Rille, looking up at the walls above me. The topo must be from Apollo stereo, and it's pretty good all along the strip of Apollo 15 metric camera images.

Phil

Some new additions to the Moon part of Google Earth. The topographic map has been replaced with Kaguya's map, and it gives low-res relief when viewed obliquely. And some new Kaguya images have been added - Tycho was there a while ago, but now Mare Moscoviense has been added, plus the Kaguya mosaic of the Cabeus area. These are very nice high resolution images.

Phil