Why the Moon ?? The Artemis Base Camp on the Moon

[Rikki Gins]

Remember when Art said the Martians shot down one of the early rovers?  They tried to tell us there was some confusion between the metric system and real measurement s.

I remember that.  I also have a vague memory of some guest telling Art that the Martians had a sophisticated, crane like structure that could reach out and grab the landers as they floated down. 

[Up All Night]

Announcing "Life Alert" for Lunar Landers...
(Response times may vary.)

[Zetaspeak]

The coverage I saw showed silhouetted people in a control room standing about looking at monitors, etc.  When the landing occurred, we were warned of a two minute grace period before a verification-of-landing signal was to be received.  Five plus minutes later a single, weak signal was received from the lander, leading many of us to believe that there had been a problem with the landing.  The two commentators I was watching mentioned the signal and a company bigwig's voice came on, congratulating all the workers for a job well done.  There was much clapping and shoulder slapping and then the coverage was rapidly ended.  The whole thing seemed kind of phony to me, but, the last info I read says that the first picture on the moon is being transmitted to earth, so I guess it was a successful landing after all. 

I think your first suspicion might be right

NASA explained that this was a relativity low cost mission by design. NASA said they could fund 10 of these low cost mission for the price one major mission, like one of the ones to Mars for example.

What led to the current lander having a bad landing was simple human error on this relatively low cost mission. The safety covers on the laser navigation devices were not removed before sending the lander for launch.

Oooooops

I would be a little concerned if a spokesperson keep reminding us how low cost it was 

[Up All Night]

[JUAN]

If I were setting up a base on the moon, I'd be sure to set up air defenses first.  You can never tell when those Nazi Messerschmitts might show up.

[Up All Night]