The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole.
Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning into an uncontrolled orbit, officials say.
The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering issues as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on Monday to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.
Roskosmos, Russia's state space corporation, said it lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after running into difficulties.
Yeah between all the other alternatives I think strip mining the moon is pretty OK. It's not as good as doing nothing - but I'd rather do it on a body with no ecosphere instead of destroying habitats
Why is it not as good as doing nothing? What benefit is there to not doing it? I mean, I could get surface preservation and keeping the moon pretty for the sake of humanity... But it sounds like there's any inherent value in not doing it?
Yeah, that's true. We would be talking about terraforming projects on an enormous scale, unlike anything we've seen before.
What I'm saying is just that, if it came to that, I can understand wanting to preserve the surface of the moon, for sentimental and/or historical, human reasons, even though preserving the surface also doesn't provide any real, practical benefit.
Why? I can point out reason why preserving some wetlands is a good thing by pointing to plants and animals and humans. Something is only good because something benefits from it. Nothing is intrinsically good or bad.
It is a dead lifeless airless rock in space. Who suffers if a billionth of a percent of it is used for something?
okay how about this.. we develop terraforming tech in the near future, but something we're doing to the surface water there now (for example), spoils this process forever on our own Moon.. because WE weren't careful and polluted the environment for them.. i think that sounds like something we could accomplish..