talk.politics.misc

3779 Dead wrote:

> /worldlatest/story/0,,-6920349,
>
>Japan Launches Moon Probe
>Friday September 14, 2007 2:46 AM
>
>TOKYO (AP) - Japan's space agency launched its much-delayed lunar
>probe Friday, beginning what it calls the largest mission to the moon
>since the . Apollo flight.

What ? They actually got something off the ground ???! :-)

Anytime we were embarassed by NASA failures we could always
look at the Japanese program and feel better about ourselves.
For all their tech-centric repuation, they just couldn't seem
to build a reliable large rocket.

>The Selenological and Engineering Explorer - or SELENE - probe was
>launched aboard one of the space program's mainstay H-2A rockets from
>its launch-pad on Tanegashima, the remote island where the agency's
>space center is located.
>
>Footage of the launch carried live over the Internet showed the rocket
>racing upward through slightly hazy skies to the southeast.

So ... will we wake up five years from now to see a giant
rising sun, or giant red star, painted on the face of the
moon ? Won't be red-white & blue, that's for sure.