[QUOTE=only_human;362733]Why not throw Moon rocks at the Moon? That would accomplish your seismographic tomography goal and offer a test-bed for the development of a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator"]Lunar space elevator[/URL] that could afford to misdeliver a few loads:Instead of LEO to Moon, just get loads from the Moon and then drop them at trajectories that will land them back there. That way the Moon won't be too polluted with terrestrial sources. Then the need for refined, lighter loads that hit at high velocity may not as necessary if we have plenty of (albeit lower velocity) mass to sling around. If some of all that material gets piled up for building material or shielding: bonus.One thing I would like all the Google cars that run around with Call of Duty game playing minders scarfing up rocks on the Moon to do is be on the lookout for Earth rocks that may have landed on the Moon in the past.
[URL="http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/18oct_earthrocks/"]Earth rocks on the Moon[/URL][/QUOTE]Wouldn't meet the original mission requirements, specifically the financial constraint and, almost certainly, the <= 2 launches constraint.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;362730] Thinking off the cuff, why not leave them in the highly eccentric orbit that is a result of the orbital transfer? Taking the slow boat over there should leave them in an orbit that almost touches L1. From there, the nudge to make it an impactor might be much smaller than from a circular high orbit.[/QUOTE]Who said anything about a circular orbit?

[QUOTE=xilman;362794]Wouldn't meet the original mission requirements, specifically the financial constraint and, almost certainly, the <= 2 launches constraint.[/QUOTE]Yeah, I know. Eventually we (for some definitions of we) are going to {do,build,exploit} things on the Moon and will have *-ologists vitally interested in the resources and costs of extracting or delivering them from here to there or there to there or elsewhere to there. So I subsumed the survey into the controlled chaos of getting things done with all those deliveries happening. All the products that get delivered by terminal velocity Amazon delivery drones provide seismic data points worth observing.

[url]http://howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/[/url]

[url]http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/goodnight-earth-goodnight-humanity-chinas-jade-rabbit-rover-tweets-its-own-death-9103864.html[/url]

This makes me very sad. Yutu was a great step forward by the Chinese.

That's a real shame.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;362730]"Back side" we must eliminate that other term for the sake of scientific literacy.[/QUOTE]... or "far side". ("Farside" is used in some sci-fi.)

Pro: sounds enough like "dark side" so as to make switching ones terminology habit easy

Con: sounds enough like "dark side" so as to let "dark side" habitués think they heard one say "dark side" instead of "far side"

Pro: sounds like an extremely funny comic.

sad sad sad robot...
This call for a nice song...called sad sad robot

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Dg3LrhmIY[/url]

I've seen some headlines lately that might be relevant to this.

If you can get your budget down by several orders of magnitude, and can fit it in a small package, [url=https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=ec040a31b16194f877d1034ccefdda40&tab=core&_cview=0]NASA might fund your mission[/url]!

If you can't, maybe [url=https://experiment.com/]you can get the public to fund your mission[/url]. :wink:

A bit off-topic, but I highly recommend [URL="http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir-ebook/dp/B00EMXBDMA"]The Martian [/URL]by[URL="http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html"] Andy Weir[/URL]

Hard SF, pro space exploration, pro science, it has an in-your-face writing style that takes some getting used to, but in the end Andy Weir is a steely-eyed missile man.

[URL="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/853252895"]My review.[/URL]

[URL="http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=153828&fpart=1"]Dan Simmons review.[/URL]