Watch Japanese go Lunar in HD TV

[Buraku]

[Greji]

I'm ready to call this one a success. They built it, it launched, nothing exploded...!? and Japan will soon be on its way to the Moon.

A bit early yet. Remember the old well used official statement, "... have lost contact with the....technicians are attempting to re-boot the computer..."

(Anyone here old enough to remember Apollo or any of NASA's other great missions?)

You're jesting of course? I remember German V-1s and I think Taro rode one of them to Matsushima. Actually I was sitting in a bar in Fuchu when I first saw the broadcast of the "one step for mankind" broadcast.

[Takechanpoo]

If we Japanese do its best, we can achive everything.

[Typhoon]

If we Japanese do its best, we can achive everything.

How about starting with syntax and spelling.

[Greji]

But that is the sad part, because even though it will cost a GAZILLION YEN of taxpayer's money and not mean much of anything, they will do it. Righto?:spin:

Your post is a bit incomplete there Rob Roy! That should be Gazillions of OUR yen cause we're tax payers as well. So each time they lose contact with the latest "probe", or make the routine H-2 blow-up, that is our money as well.

[IkemenTommy]

or make the routine H-2 blow-up

Perfectly well said.

[Tsuru]

So is this the first H-2 that didn't blow up?

[Buraku]

The H-2 rocket isn't that bad, they just a string of failures lately which makes its record look terrible. I've a feeling that typically the rocket launches about 7/8 times without a hitch with 1/8 failures.

However if you consider the high success rate need for expensive space launches the H-2 record isn't great either and the Japanese once had a desire to put people into space with this thing!

If NASA had been using a H-2 type rocket to launch astronauts into space it would have destroyed 15 space shuttles instead of the 2/5 that have been destroyed.

[Buraku]

I reckon we should see Lunar orbital insertion in 4 days (aprox 96 hrs)

Here's a pic to illustrate

http://www.schaft.net/n00bs/diary_img/JAXA_SELENE_2.jpg

[Greji]

If NASA had been using a H-2 type rocket to launch astronauts into space it would have destroyed 15 space shuttles instead of the 2/5 that have been destroyed.

If it weren't for certain eviro wackos, they wouldn't have foam on the Shuttles and there would be a few astonauts that wouldn't have been killed.

(incidentally there is a new report coming out that there might not have been an effect to the ozone layer afterall and all of that foam required on the shuttle rockets may not have been necessary in the first place. I'm sure if that is correct it will make the families of those incinerated feel so much better).

[Buraku]

I'm not sure how much can be blamed on the Environmental Loons, its kinda like blaming those Greenpeace loons for the rise in homeless people or drunken bicycle accidents. Yes Greenpeace can be lunatics, they are stupid greeny nuts but is it right to blame all this stuff on them ? Before the late 90s long before NASA started using that green-friendly, recyclable foam they still had trouble with Shuttle (Shuttle is a enormously complex and over-ambitious spacecraft which never lived up to its name).
Lots of little Non-Environmentally friendly bits were falling off the Shuttle, but foam strikes were never seen as a threat to the spaceship, even using the old dirty freon a degree of foam loss would be still inevitable. During the 80s good sized 40 cm chunks were falling off Shuttle. The old dirty freon foam wasn't really about heat-resistance, it was about using a type of foam that could resist cold, a foam that would cover a shuttle's external tank to prevent ice building up and later breaking off and damaging shuttle.
Basically Shuttle never lived up to its design with costs running into billions and NASA management resorted to outright falsification to say the spacecraft was much better and safer than what was factually reported by insiders. Russians, which never gave a fuck about the environment, also reported tile damage on its version of the Soviet Shuttle called 'Buran'. They abandoned their Shuttle in the 80s because the old Soyuz was still cheaper and safer.

Anyway, going back to this JAXA moon thing

Japan has just released a High Definition Television pic of Earth as seen from its robotic Lunar prove
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/10/20071001_kaguya_e.html

[Buraku]

Pic of the day

Lunar Looking
http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/image_of_day_071102.html
" This self-taken photo shows some of Kaguya's onboard equipment at the ready to start exploration duties."



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[Buraku]

Japan successfully launches high-speed Internet satellite

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Japan_successfully_launches_high-speed_Internet_satellite_999.html

[kurohinge1]

[Ketou]

[quote="kurohinge1"]
And that 30 years after owning a Smash-Up-Derby set, it's still fun sometimes to smash things up . . .



]

Ahh man that brought back some memories........

[Mike Oxlong]

I watch their YouTube channel from time to time...

http://www.youtube.com/user/jaxachannel

They have 31 English vids.

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[kurohinge1]

. . . The Japanese lunar orbiter Kaguya . . . [was] slammed into the moon's surface at about 2:25 p.m. EDT (18:25 UT) Wednesday [10 June 2009]. . .

And now they're firing back !

[SIZE="4"]

Teenager survives meteor hit

[/SIZE]

A 14-YEAR-OLD boy has survived being struck by a red-hot meteorite the size of a pea as he walked to school.

Gerrit Blank saw a "ball of light" hurtling towards him from the sky in his home town of Essen, Germany.

The tiny meteorite (pictured) hit his hand, causing a seven-centimetre-long gash, before bouncing off and causing a 30-centimetre-wide crater in the ground.

"At first I just saw a large ball of light and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand," he told Britain's Daily Telegraph. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.

"The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road."

Scientists are studying the small piece of rock. Chemical tests have already proved it came from space.

The only other time a person survived a meteor strike was in 1954 in the US state of Alabama when a tennis-ball-sized chunk of rock crashed through the roof of a house and landed on a sleeping woman.