I love science!  NASA has confirmed that the projectile launched into the moon's surface that offered a less than Hollywood spectacular boom uncovered 24 gallons of water.  That is so awesome!  Water on the moon has many benefits.  First, astronauts can drink it.  They can also breath the oxygen, once the water molecule is broken apart.  Finally, the hydrogen can be used for rocket fuel.  Since all these essential resources do not need to be taken to the hypothetical future moon base, a ton of money can be saved!

But with every bit of good news, seems to come a lot of bad, these days.  NASA's Ares rocket system (part of the Constellation program) is apparently over budget and the Obama administration is trying to figure out what to do about this.  This is sad.  After health care and jobs, science is a top priority in my book.  And highly visible, highly inspirational science like the space program should be a huge priority.

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This morning, NASA crashed a probe into the moon in order to stir up debris to figure out what that part of the moon is made of.  The best (or worse, based on your perspective) case scenario of the impact was for the probe to be slightly less powerful than the usual meteors that crash into the moon dozens of times per year.  The result was not the giant plume of debris the scientists had expected or hoped for, but it still yielded a lot of useful information.

So, this afternoon, a coworker of mine absolutely went batshit crazy on this issue.  "What right do we have to crash a rocket into the moon?" he cried.  "What if there was some underground gas that was flammable and it caused some sort of explosion?!"

Wow.  Just, wow.  This is a perfect example of why the USA needs massive science education reform.  I argued with him for a little while, but he just kept throwing logical fallacies at me.  In particular, he seemed to favor arguments from personal incredulity.  When I confronted him with the fact that the moon gets battered worse than that regularly nearly every week, he actually exclaimed, "but that's nature!  This wasn't!"

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