That's what you were trying to say? You don't need to slow down you just need to say things in a way that makes sense. Yes, the sensors were functioning when it entered orbit and nearly continuously since.

No, it only means that the craft has provided data of unprecedented detail, and that it's about the lunar structure. These aren't Star Trek sensors that just "scan" the moon and somehow directly spit out all the salient details about its composition. Actually going from the raw gravity sensor data to the 3D density map you desire takes a lot of work.

The implication being that they're recording the same data over and over and should have been done after the first 'pass'. Which is hilarious; thank you for clearly explaining. These are gravity probes, not cameras looking at large regions of the surface. Every unique position over the moon is a unique data point.

I think it's perfect that you'd trot out this analogy in an instance where an army of geology majors spending their whole lives with buckets and shovels couldn't get us the data this probe has. It really does put everything you said in perspective.

So you're upset at the lack of progress in manned exploration. Understandable. What's less understandable is how this has turned your thinking on anything related to the subject of space exploration to mush.

No, the article only makes it sound like the data collection is done. And it is. Data of unprecedented detail, and about the structure of the moon. That doesn't mean you just run the data through a plotter and get a picture of what the data means about the structure of the moon. That will take time.

Sorry you're disappointed that this article is only about the successful end of the main mission, and not about the conclusions from that mission's data, but that's what it is.

...drugs, cigarettes, liquor, gambling, lottery tickets, flat screens, cell phones, junk food, etc...

Well the good news is there's already an Astrotrain that fits the bill!

The bad news is he's a Decepticon. Let's just say insuring your satellite that's being launched by malevolent robot is cost prohibitive.

Ah, sorry, but this "People thought the world was flat, and Columbus proved that it was round" thing is a myth.

Peoples of the time knew very well the "shape of the world" as roughly spherical. They also knew roughly how large it was -- this had in fact been figured out around 200 BC by Eratosthenes. It was because of this, not a belief in a flat earth, that they thought Columbus was a fool. They knew that the distance to Asia was far too great for it to make sense to take the 'back route' to India. Columbus thought the earth was much smaller than it actually is. He was wrong, they were right.

The thing that was learned was that there was an entire continent there (which had been discovered before but wasn't known to Europeans). But because Columbus was using a grossly wrong value for the earth's size, he didn't even realize what he had discovered and thought he had completed his journey to India on schedule. And so, centuries later, we're still stuck with our "dot or feather" Indians confusion. :P

Anyway, he didn't discover anything about the shape of the earth. And on his mission to find a faster trade route to Asia, he did in fact fail. Of course since the reason for that mission was to make money, you can't really say it was a complete failure from Spain's point of view.

Um... the staff monitoring the craft do know what it's doing, and how to control it. That doesn't mean they can magically turn the data acquired by the probe into meaningful conclusions without any effort.

I'm sure your post made sense to you, but it has nothing to do with anything in reality.

They don't know yet. What they have now is a crapload of data. It's going to take a long time to analyze it and figure out what it means, and what it implies about the development of other bodies.

It's like marriage in the majority of places and times throughout history, regardless of culture or religion. Sad but true.

The other alternative is not sending their girls to school at all. Since the alternative you provide is offensive to many of them, if they must choose they will choose the option the Taliban is trying to force them to choose.

Just because they're not extremists doesn't mean they've fully embraced women's lib, as I tried to explain in the other post.