NASA Moon Bombing: Is It Worth It?

NASA will be crashing two spacecraft into the moon at 7:31 a.m. EDT on Friday in hopes of finding evidence of water. The LCROSS mission promises to produce a spectacle that will be able to be viewed live on NASA TV .

But is it really a good idea? Some are voicing their opinions against the mission. In a piece called "Help Save The Moon" on the Huffington Post , Amy Ephron writes, "I'm not a big fan of explosions, anyway. In Iraq or Afghanistan or the South Pole of the Moon. But who does have a territorial prerogative there? Who has jurisdiction? Who has the right to say that it's okay to blow up a crater on the moon?" She even set up a Twitter page to rally support.

A petition has been posted on Care2 by the Chicago Surrealist Movement asking President Obama to stop NASA from bombing the moon. "This so-called 'NASA experiment' is a hostile act of aggression and a violent intrusion upon our closest and dearest celestial neighbor that will also have far reaching effects here on earth. Who knows how this will effect ocean tides and weather patterns, to say the least," the petition states. As of Thursday evening, the petition had 560 signers.

But scientists said the LCROSS mission is merely replicating activity that happens on the moon on a daily basis. "The image of this impact, what we're doing with the moon, is something that occurs naturally four times a month on the moon, whether we're there or not," LCROSS principal investigator Tony Colaprete told reporters Thursday, according to LiveScience.com .

Others aren't debating the intention of the mission, but rather whether the bombing will destroy evidence of the water that NASA is hoping to uncover. But NASA allayed those concerns as well. LiveScience cites researchers who said that there is plenty of hydrogen-bearing material within the Cabeus crater, which is where LCROSS will be aiming directly at. Hydrogen is a key component of water. The impact of the two spacecraft into the crater should send a plume rising from the moon that can be observed for signs of water.

And while the $79 million price tag might sound like a pretty penny, in the grand scheme of NASA projects, it's actually one of the most inexpensive. Popular Mechanics writes that while the mission has the highest chance of failing, the materials used to create the two spacecraft were salvaged from other NASA and Air Force projects.

"The moon-bombing engineers cobbled these parts together to make a cheap spaceship in just two years. Some risks are worth taking: LCROSS is one of them," writes Joe Pappalardo of Popular Mechanics.