They want to study the sun not the moon.

Well actually at night the Sun is called the Moon.

In Morgan's "Land Fit For Heroes" trilogy, Ringil does talk about the "pale sun" in the Grey Places, which people there call the "Muhn". But he'd just never heard of the Moon.

Because it had been destroyed, and became a ring, home of the Sky Dwellers. Or perhaps an orbital ring, as Stephenson has it in Seveneves. But there's nothing about a bombardment in Morgan's "Land Fit For Heroes". And that brings up the question about how a Moon breakup would really go.

If the Moon just broke up and did not blow up, the piece might not have been given much momentum towards Earth. In such a case they would slowly spread out in a ring. Their orbits would be stable and would decay outwards ever so slowly, as Earth seeps off their angular momentum.

funny... I knew a guy that had a penpal in another country, who asked him if it was the same moon that he saw when he looked up at night, as the one she saw...

Which is a totally legitimate question (albeit, one already answered long ago, but not everybody has gone to school, especially in developing countries).

the solar arrays on the probe would stop working.

Because they wont be able to observe anything useful ?

The 'dark side of the sun' sounds pretty interesting to me...

It's cancer. The dark side of the sun is cancer.

Cancer, the constellation?

Or cancer, the disease?

Damn it. I read this twice.

Nice one. It just didn't process. Good for a chuckle

OK, could you please explain it to me.

Maybe my limited English skills. Or maybe too tired.

Since the sun is too hot to visit during the day, we'll go at night when it's turned off.

Since we're already off topic, check out Karl Schroeder's Virga novels about a world where space has air and the sun does turn off at night.

But dude, that's not funny. Or maybe, funny because it's not funny. But then, anything is funny. And why not, I guess?

It is funny, you're just not getting the joke.

Which is not about understanding the mechanics of the joke (what it's supposed to say) but getting the feeling that it should invoke.

What? As in "Bro, that's totally stupid"?

I guess that I'm more into cleverness and subtlety. Humor that directly or indirectly makes fun of people strikes me as sad, not funny.

>I guess that I'm more into cleverness and subtlety. Humor that directly or indirectly makes fun of people strikes me as sad, not funny.

The parent's joke (about the probe going to the sun at night, since during the day the sun is hot) is both clever (though not original, it's old), and in no conceivable way "directly or indirectly makes fun of people".

The sun does not appear round. This is a flat sun joke. We know it is round, this comment is not about that. It is just goofy humor.

My comment has the wrong parent too. On mobile, thought I was actually replying to the "go at night?" smart ass comment. That one was just so basic... good grief.

Normally, we are more serious here, and I read it, drew a blank, again, then chuckled.

You did reply to the "go at night" comment.

I don't know. I mean, even if you went "at night" -- aka directly away from the Sun, always keeping the Earth in between -- you'd never get near the Sun. Unless you set out to circumnavigate the Universe. And in any case, once you got farther than the Moon's orbit, it wouldn't be night anymore, because you'd see the Sun.

So OK, approach the Sun edge-on. So is this a riff on flat-Earthers? I suppose that they might also have the Sun being flat. I can't quite imagine the geometry.

given that the sun is a flat disk cant they just fly along the thin edge?