>> ^misterwight:
This conflict is like watching a fight between a professional boxer and a cripple. Whatever their reasons for hating each other, it is inherently wrong that the boxer not hold back when trading blows, even if the cripple threw the first punch.
To do something like this in the name of peace-keeping is just disingenuous. Everybody knows that causing fear, destruction and death in a populace will only embolden the more radical elements of society to strike back. It seems clear that Israel would rather reignite conflict than work toward a solution.


Um, what gives you the impression that Israel isn't holding back? It is easily within the power of the Israeli army to kill every last person in Gaza with a conventional attack alone, and with limited casualties to themselves. Even that would be holding back because if they really wanted to make a statement they could always just turn Gaza into a giant glass crater.

Sorry, but your comment just seems terribly ignorant. Israeli attacks like these try very hard to minimize civilian casualties, witness the percentage of dead that really are militants compared to the attacks made by Hamas. Hamas kills 3 civilians for every soldier they hit, Israel hits 3 militants for every civilian, that's not nothing. There is also the fact that Hamas' stated intent is the elimination of Israel, and Israel's intent is to simply stop the rocket attacks on itself.

Now even though I clearly think there is no possible way to declare that Israel is bad by comparison to Hamas, please remember how LOW that bar is. There is still plenty of room to criticize Israeli policy. Just don't ignorantly leap to trying to point them out as even worse than Hamas, that's just fighting stupid with more stupid.

Though I in no way truly understand the specifics of what's going on with this current economic crisis, I do know this: That where in a bad place that's going to get worse before it gets better and has the potential to "crater".

WHAT really scares me is that this bailout, to borrow an early analogy, is a only a band aid, BUT is being presented as a definitive treatment to the general public. So that whenever this bill/bailout is passed, those involved will immediately cliam "LOOK at me and how I just saved the economy" and then have no Real plan to fix what's going on.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'letterman, late show, crater, couric, date, economy, crisis, show, cancelled' to 'letterman, mccain, crater, couric, date, economy, crisis, show, cancelled' - edited by kronosposeidon

dupe of:

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Darvanza-flaming-crater-burning-since-the-1950s

Seems to me that the problem is that you might think that the moon is made completely of soft dust that would actually create a crater instead of a ball of rock with a thin layer of dust on it. In which said dust would be blown off by the thruster before the lander landed, and thus, not actually create a skidmark of any sort.

But then, I'm drunk right now, and this argument is ridiculous (not mine, yours), so I've got no more time for it.

>> ^Duckman33:
I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures


You want to check those pictures again professor, on pictures 2 and 4 you can clearly see the scorch marks under the lander. The engine at approach was not powerful enough to create any big crater in the surface of tightly packed regolith, neither is it expected to.

badastronomy.com sums it up rather nicely:

"Bad: In the pictures taken of the lunar lander by the astronauts, the TV show continues, there is no blast crater. A rocket capable of landing on the Moon should have burned out a huge crater on the surface, yet there is nothing there.

Good: When someone driving a car pulls into a parking spot, do they do it at 100 kilometers per hour? Of course not. They slow down first, easing off the accelerator. The astronauts did the same thing. Sure, the rocket on the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.

Now here comes a little bit of math: the engine nozzle was about 54 inches across (from the Encyclopaedia Astronautica), which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch! That's not a lot of pressure. Moreover, in a vacuum, the exhaust from a rocket spreads out very rapidly. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. In a vacuum, no air means the exhaust spreads out even more, lowering the pressure. That's why there's no blast crater! Three thousand pounds of thrust sounds like a lot, but it was so spread out it was actually rather gentle."

>> ^Duckman33:
I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures:
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5864.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5872.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5873.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5927.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5931.jpg
The first linked picture pretty much sums up my point. I suppose they moved the lander to a different spot then took the pictures because the blast crater created by the thruster was unsightly? I'm not saying it was fake or not. But there are many discrepancies in NASA's own pictures that need to be answered.


What does disturbed dust look like as opposed to undisturbed dust? What does a blast crater in a bunch of craters look like? Even more so, this isn't earth dust, most of it is very ridged and doesn't behave in the same manor as the rounded dust you and I are exposed to everyday. You are using your experiences of unlike conditions on earth to equate to the entirely different conditions on the moon and trying to pass that as a reasonable.

I tell you who doesn't doubt the moon landing; radio telescope operators who traced its decent and ascent to and from the moons surface. Not to mention that the government couldn't keep the Manhattan project a secret and NASA is 20 times as large as. The Russians would have been the first ones to call our bluff.

I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures:

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5864.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5872.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5873.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5927.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5931.jpg

The first linked picture pretty much sums up my point. I suppose they moved the lander to a different spot then took the pictures because the blast crater created by the thruster was unsightly? I'm not saying it was fake or not. But there are many discrepancies in NASA's own pictures that need to be answered.

Still doesn't explain how the Lunar Lander touched down on the face of the moon without it's thruster both creating a crater, or disturbing one single iota of moon dust underneath it....

There, I said it!!

You REALLY sure it's a dupe???
I kid! No worries.

In reply to this comment by kulpims:
*discard dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Darvanza-flaming-crater-burning-since-the-1950s
PS: sorry, Issy

*discard dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Darvanza-flaming-crater-burning-since-the-1950s
PS: sorry, Issy

>> ^nibiyabi:
>> ^Ghostly:
Sorry, but it's a dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Darvanza-flaming-crater-burning-since-the-1950s

Quoting this for more visibility.


yup. 100% dupealisious.

>> ^Ghostly:
Sorry, but it's a dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Darvanza-flaming-crater-b
urning-since-the-1950s


Quoting this for more visibility.

Sorry, but it's a dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Darvanza-flaming-crater-burning-since-the-1950s

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
Thanks for the advice. We didn't have quite enough time to make it to Devil's Tower, which is too bad since Close Encounters is one of my favorite films.


I only ever went once, back in 1990? 91, maybe? Anyways, if you take Rt 14 up from I-90, you'll actually go by the dirt mound where they did the infamous crane shot. You know, Roy slams on his brakes and they both get out of the car and climb that little hill. I was actually driving with my mom at the time and did the same thing (ie. the slamming on of the brakes) Scare the crap out of her! Anyways, if you ever get the chance, very cool to go see. Also, you could hit Meteor Crater in Winslow, AZ if you haven't. Also, very impressive.