There were rumors in the former USSR that Chernobyl plant was sabotaged in 1986 by an unknown kind of an cyber-electronic weapon from a satellite.

It would be interesting to learn if there were any leaks on that.

I always dismissed these rumors, but if there was really an attempt to sabotage the Natanz nuclear plant, then well...

It would be sort of a not nice thing to learn if it turns out to be the case. Not nice at all.

I am surprised that programmers are still coping at all. All these summer times, winter times, changing start and end dates at will.

It is like a quicksand.

The total cost of LEO MAPPING SATELLITE is much higher. Zillions times higher, because the eventual cost of cleaning the orbit from millions pieces of space junk should also be included:

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/space-debris-3-polar-orbit.jpg

A LEO satellite lasts couple of years and then it is one more piece of junk around the planet. Shall we send more and more of them into space?

An artificial satellite lasts how long? Sometimes several days, sometimes couple of years, but no longer than 10 years.

Have you seen this image?

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/space-debris-3-polar-orbit.jpg

These are hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk around the planet. This is not stupid?

Digital camera and super-computer themselves are not big, but the telescope is. So what? Expensive? Like what? Like 3 days of war?

I speak of an extended WiFi as a figure of speach. I mean that these real-time HD photos of Earth from the moon shall not be put in a drawer in some agency, but shall be available for distribution via clear API to all taxpayers, to make our world better.

A robot shall not necessarily have wheels or legs. Such an Earth telescope-digital-camera could also be a sort of a robot.

We pay by the tax money for the International Space Station, for the Space Telescopes, etc., but why not to build instead on the moon the earth imaging station.

Certainly it should be a WiFi with en extended range, but the point is the real-time HD Earth images available via API to all, for free, for the money, which we paid already, so that astronauts can make pirouettes inside the ISS. But why instead not to build something useful?

The best way to learn and explore is to do something practical and useful. It should be the solution of abundance. Abundance of free up-to-date HD earth images.

OK. 6 moon quakes per year for the whole moon. It does not mean 6 moon quakes per year at a given spot. A quake affects a particular area, the same as on earth.

Following this logic the Earth surface is unstable too, still the photographers do place tripod on the earth surface to get the photo-camera stable. No electronic stabilizer can compete with a tripod.

Plus on the moon there is no wind. On Earth one has to use a special tripod to get camera stable in windy conditions.

In short, you're trying to solve a problem that's already solved

I nearly believed. But than I opened in GoogleMaps at a place where for almost 5 years there is a huge building, and the map still shows a meadow. The current images are often obsolete. Looked at another place, still no satellite map update for years.

My vision is the large station with ndustrial scale telescope-digital-camera equipment, an international effort. And a sort of WiFi router so that anyone can log-in and use real time images of the Earth for their applications.

If this station uses a supercomputer than it can produce millions and millions of images per day. It would be another world.

A flying satellite needs fuel to stay in orbit. The moon does not.

But the moon surface is rock stable. That is why photographers use tripods to avoid camera jittering.

The issues of tiny meteors could be solved by automatically changeable upper protection glass over the lenses. Photographers also use them to protect expensive lenses from an accidental damage.

Practically it would mean delivering to the moon surface large tilt & pan camera with a huge telescopic lenses, a box. And also sort of a large WiFi router with antennas. Difficult, but doable.

This camera can work 24/7, as this side of the moon always faces the Earth. An AI application can select areas free from clouds and fog and shoot HD images constantly, directly in the map panels image format, which could be automatically transmitted and feed into the digital map.

Difficult, expensive, but useful and still better than spending billions on exploring black holes.

Privacy issues should be addressed, I agree. But there is definitely a value in having precise maps. For example, reliable navigation devices can reduce global gas consumption significantly.

Negative result is also the result. Probably they realized that they do need the knowledge of the net to perform their job.

The inventor of special forces, Russian imperial genera Suvorov used to say: "One beaten is worth two unbeaten."

There is always the next try.