Did my title get your attention? What if I said "The United States Declares War on the Moon" or "All your Horoscopes to be Destroyed by NASA?" In the news industry an exciting pitch in your title can mean the difference in readership in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands, so there is big business in coaxing you to read with an exciting, but not quite true title.

Everywhere you look today in the mainstream media you see "NASA to Bomb the Moon." For months now I have seen the media and anti-science bloggers putting an edgy spin on the NASA LCROSS mission to bring out people's most negative views of a vital and exciting Space Science experiment. There are a lot of people with very self-interested motives creating a nasty spin of mis-information about this event. I'm happy to say today there are some terrific space journalists and educators doing their best to help get the truth out.

My new Twitter friend, Dr. Jeff Goldstein at Dr' Jeff's Blog on the Universe has a terrific debunking of the impact where he asks the question "How many Atlas V Centaur upper stages would we need to hurl at the moon to slow its rotation by just 1mph?" It's a lot more than you think!

@doctorjeff is one of the most passionate and enthusiastic space educators I have had the pleasure to meet. He injects humor and sensibility into his mini-experiments designed to engage teachers and classrooms in the exploration of outer space. By using demonstrations of math and physics he helps thinking people uncover the truth for themselves. When I begged him for a mini-proof to help quell the tide of fear-mongering he came through for us all with this little gem.

Tarik Malik at Space.com has a wonderful article up reassuring readers that the LCROSS spacecraft will not hurt the moon, and summarizing some concrete facts about the relative scale of the impact, the regularity with which the moon is hit by objects that leave craters by totally natural processes, and the importance of the research being performed. Reassure yourself, read the facts!

CNN's Jeanne Moos provides humerous coverage of the "lunacy" in her short piece "Bomb the Moon Follies" 

Here's the spin these journalists and educators are trying to counteract. There is a cadre of determined, but scientifically limited individuals who believe that the Moon is a military base for aliens. These folks believe, (or maybe they actually don't, as with most things like this there is always the desire to sell books and gain readership without regard for the need for actual facts.) that NASA is deliberately bombing the Moon to anger these aliens, and by tomorrow we will be at war with them. Even a brief read through the over 300 comments on this scare-mongering post proves that the dis-information campaign over the benign and exciting water search experiment has been successful.

Starting a War with space aliens? Why would we do that? Even if they did exist, what would be gained by deliberately angering them? It doesn't wash, but this persuasively worded article created a wave of fear.

This conspiracy theorist makes a series of wild claims, that the impact of LCROSS will disrupt the moon's orbit, that NASA either knows this, or suspects this, or doesn't care one way or the other. That the "experiment" will fail because water will sublimate instantly in the vacuum of space and/or be consumed by the fiery explosion. Also, keeping in mind a 'truth' which scientists worldwide have thus-far refused to believe, the Moon does not possess nearly the mass attributed to it, the fact that it can chime like a bell clearly proves that the Moon is actually hollow and will thus be pounded right out of its orbital alignment by the LCROSS impact.

"Disturbing the Moon's orbit may cause tidal waves and quite possibly Earthquakes in many zones around the Earth where edges of tectonic plates are already at or near the breaking point of sliding." Oh the Horror! The fact that there is no scientific evidence for any of this fantasy does not faze conspeorists.

The NASA moon-hoaxers have taken a confusing stance, at first positing that the impact, if successful will be proof that the moon landings were faked, vis-a-vis, if water is found then the astronauts were lying about their research at the time of the "landings" where they claimed no water was found! "AHA! Gotcha!"  they say!

Later, as LRO sent back images of the moon landing sites, they switched tack to proclaim that NASA is either trying to erase evidence of alien beings, start a war, send a threat message, distract the human population from their true objectives with a media spectacle, experiment with orbital targeting technologies and finally, deliberately trying to destabilize the moon's orbit in order to create global turmoil in support of the colonialization agenda of the Illuminati or some such. Does this nonsense have an impact on the actual politics of the US and world?

In July, Former United Nations Ambassador and Fox News analyst John Bolton delivered a prepared statement to the annual 4th of July Kiwanis Club meeting in Havre de Grace, MD. In it he blasted the Obama administration for being "dangerously naive and weak on lunar issues" and derided NASA's current mission to bomb the Moon as "too little, too late." "Nearly every night, Americans awaken to a silver spectre in the sky above," Bolton proclaimed, "never knowing when the Moon will rain hot death upon our great nation." His conclusion? Bomb the moon, not just with one "weapon" but with all of America's thermonuclear arsenal as a means to pre-empt an inevitable collision caused by the Moon's deteriorating orbit around the Earth, caused by the angry aliens controlling it. Was he serious?

However, all of these dire portents pale in the face of the most galvanizing potential consequence of the NASA impact tomorrow morning. Amy Ephron yesterday voiced the terrifying fear that LCROSS might render astrology inaccurate! She's even started a Twitter support group to garner attention to stop the mission before it's too late for your daily Horoscope. http://twitter.com/helpsavethemoon. Of course there is an equal chance that the LCROSS impact will actually improve the accuracy of astrology, as it wouldn't take much, but she didn't think of that.

A big thanks to all the voices of reason who are pushing for a genuine understanding of our solar system and a strong human future in space!