NASA’S “GRAIL” MISSION NEARS LAUNCH PREPARATIONS

NASA is preparing to send two satellites to the Moon to take extremely accurate measures of the Moon's gravity:

GRAIL moon mission in final preparations for September launch

What I cannot help but notice is that decades after we went to the Moon with Apollo, the mysteries of Lunar gravity are still being contemplated by NASA with its suggestively named "Grail" mission. The name "Grail" suggests the "holy grail" of physics, which was to find and plumb the nature of gravity and eventually to be able to control it. And by naming the mission "Grail" NASA seems to be suggesting that the Moon holds some sort of key to that mystery.

Indeed it does, and a brief review of the history of Lunar Gravity anomalies might be in order to explain why. In the heady days of early lunar exploration ending with the Apollo missions, scientists noticed first of all that there were areas on the Moon where mass seemed to be concentrated beneath the surface, causing noticeable local variations of gravitational acceleration. This led to various models being proposed for lunar formation to account for these unusual concentrations.

Then came Von Braun's statements to Time magazine about three weeks after the first Apollo landing, in which he let slip an important bit of data, namely, that the equigravisphere - the point at which gravitational attraction on an object between the Earth and the Moon was nearly equal - was approximately 43,500 miles from the surface of the Moon. For those who knew the numbers, this was a bombshell, for this meant the Moon was at least acting like an object with more mass than had hitherto been suspected, calling into question previous calculations which had placed it much closer to the surface of the Moon.

It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that NASA is aiming to probe the mysteries of the MASCONS (Mass concentrations) on the Moon with more accuracy than hithertofore, and to plumb the mysteries of the Lunar gravitational anomalies in great detail.  Whether they find what they're looking for - the "Grail" - remains to be seen, but the fact that they're looking at all says a great deal.

 

 

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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

15 Comments

  1. Tim Fonseca on September 6, 2011 at 10:27 pm

    I have a copy of John Gribbin’s new book, “In Search of the Multiverse”, but I haven’t had time to finish reading it because I received some money from my dead uncle’s will and have been unpacking boxes and rearranging my house.

    In another universe my uncle didn’t die and I am bitching about not having enough money for stuff, and I finished the book, and an old girlfriend dropped over and said she had proof that big insects live inside the moon, and then the house starts rattling as helicopters fly over…..

    Seriously, I can’t buy the Multiverse Theory. in it’s entirety. It smacks too much of an atheists desperate last ditch attempt to brush away the Godhead.
    If the Godhead or the Pleroma, exists, then all potentialities are present in it so why bother actualizing all of them at once… seems wasteful and silly.

    Another way of saying it is that all possibilities exist in the mind and imagination of God, so why actualize every one into physical reality.

    It’s possible that one universe could be nothing but vodka from one end to the other, but why actualize such a universe. Well, to please the Russians, maybe.

    Then again, if the Multiverse Theory is true, maybe the moon IS made of cheese, and the Grail mission is secretly being funded by the Secret Gourmet Cabal run by The Great Cheese who lives in a palace in the Gobi Desert.



  2. Thomas Marz on September 5, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    What about the possible multiverse reality?



  3. Jens on September 5, 2011 at 12:12 am

    “GRAIL” is nice enough, but you could even read it backward and “GRAIL” turns into “LIARG” or the “LIAR-G” G standing for Gravitiy. (^^)v
    Kind of funny and who knows, maybe even on purpose.



  4. Tim Fonseca on September 4, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    Maybe H. G. Wells speculation about Selenites living under the surface of the moon is true.
    In his novel, “First Men in the Moon”, he postulates an intelligent insect civilization livong inside the caves and tunnels of the moon.
    Is it possible that 40 years ago we got our butts kicked off the moon by a race of super bugs?
    Could those mass anomalies be machinery, cities, etc.

    Is the the GRAIL mission the beginning of a Crusade against The Bugs?

    Maybe the Nazis reached the moon and made pals with the Bugs. Maybe the Bugs are the color of goldish termites which would have made the Nazi’s happy.

    Maybe the Luna Bugs created our bodies like the Martian insects did in the Quatermass film
    “You realize what you are implying, that we owe are existence here to the, to THE INTERVETION OF INSECTS!”
    Well, Sartre believed he was being followed by giant crayfish in France… maybe they were not crayfish but Existentialist Bugs.



    • Antoine on September 5, 2011 at 1:40 am

      Being French, I have to address this…

      Apart from the fact that you’re quoting as a possibility whatever Science Fiction idea comes to mind, which is in itself entertaining so please do continue, you have to know that Jean Paul Sartre, though a genius and truly a good read, was nuts.

      I mean, for Christ Sake’s, he was high on Amphetamine for the latter part of his days pretty much all the time. It was public knowledge. So yeah, you get to hallucinate a bit here and there. Crayfish, sure. No problem.

      Also, what he wrote was mostly bullshit akin “To be or not to be” etc. Stuff that intrinsically has no meaning, stuff that PEOPLE tag a meaning on. I had to study his shit a lot in school, and though I got good grades, I still maintain that he was full of it.

      Today he’d probably have been the one who invented “The Secret”. Yeah, the fucking secret. Believe it will happen and it will. That’s the God Damn Tooth Fairy’s job and now Adults are buying that horseshit?

      Okay, enough said I’ll give myself a heart attack over that pompous ass Sartre.



  5. Antoine on September 4, 2011 at 6:23 pm

    Perhaps they wanna take a peak under the covers?



  6. Gary Hunter on September 4, 2011 at 6:06 pm

    One of my mental musings over the years has been that since I have been convinced that anti-gravity technology has been around for some time, and that it is in the family of electromagnetic fields, that pro-gravity (reinforcement or amplification) has been around a similar amount of time. To me, this would be a logical approach to anyone who would want or need to inhabit a “planetoid” that lacked sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere. Could the moon still have functional installations of gravity enhancing technology from a previous (or current) spacefaring group?



  7. Citizen Quasar on September 4, 2011 at 1:59 pm

    I too find it very unusual that after all these years, 42 and counting, plus a number of well calculated flight trajectories to places like oh…Titan for example (where there were surely extraterrestrial dinosaurs because there be natural gas on Titan), that NASA is all of a sudden interested in lunar gravitational anomalies that should have been resolved decades ago. I suspect that quite a bit is already known about these from N(ever)A(a)S(traight)A(nswer)’s ‘secret’ space program that has been purposely kept from the public.

    If I had to bet something of value on it, I would say that the G.R.A.I.L. mission, if that is even it’s true purpose, is only collecting data already well-documented by N(ever)A(a)S(traight)A(nswer)’s ‘secret’ space program so that it can be, well, aired on the History Channel if nowhere else to make it known that we live in a universe much more misunderstood than previously govern-mentally acknowledged and that, by golly, space aliens ARE on their way headed here…with the worst of intentions.

    “Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.”



  8. Nordman on September 4, 2011 at 11:27 am

    Here some tech info:
    Space to Earth transmission at S-Band.
    http://www.uhf-satcom.com/sband/

    Satellite Radio Frequencies
    http://www.zarya.info/Frequencies/FrequenciesSband.php

    NASAs DEEP SPACE NETWORK
    http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/index.html

    GRAIL will, in essence, peer deep inside the Moon to reveal its internal structure and thermal history.
    Included on the spacecraft is an “E/PO MoonKam” assembly that provides images and video of the lunar surface.



  9. Thomas Marz on September 4, 2011 at 11:24 am

    I always did love the acronym for this mission “GRAIL” 🙂



  10. Jon Norris on September 4, 2011 at 10:36 am

    I wonder if all this sudden activity with the Moon doesn’t herald the end of some restriction, or possibly means we have the power to resist the folks who set that restriction. Sure seems interesting after all these years of only minimal interest in the Moon all kinds of countries are suddenly talking about going back to the Moon and even on to Mars.

    Something is sure going on, and you can bet it ISN”T what they’re saying it is.



  11. carlee on September 4, 2011 at 7:57 am

    http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/ Goro wrote a brief statement about this Grail which I read before coming here it was like sync Joseph is talking about this too.



  12. alex e. ellinson on September 4, 2011 at 5:41 am

    Glad you`re aware of Dr. Paul LaViolette-got to love that man….I don`t believe in the “BIG BANG”-either….my respect for your ” work- in- progress” just when`t up another notch (albeit in my mind)…….a fellow bloodhound………………..



    • Joseph P. Farrell on September 4, 2011 at 1:04 pm

      I have never believed the Big Bang because it is an artifact or deduction from relativity, and as LaViolette and others have pointed out, there are a few detailed flaws in the assumptions of that model…tired light, darkmatter, darkenergy, etc etc…



      • Bill on September 6, 2011 at 8:45 am

        The alternative might be, me thinks, some variation of Sir Fred Hoyle’s “steady-state” universe with no beginning nor ending of any sort. Paul LaViolette seems to make a pretty good case for his continuous matter creation at the core of galaxies. His idea of “galactic superwave” energy and matter explosions within galactic cores might give one pause, if it turns out he’s spot-on with that! At least if there is enough energy produced to make stars like our sun behave rather badly from our perspective when such “galactic superwaves” reach our environs!



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