Let's think what happens if this pisses of Moonians .

I hope we have enough cadres prepared in Ufo:enemy unknown :D

To reiterate what others have already said, this was the cheapest way to see if the moon's craters have ice in them.

Anybody who is afraid of 'consequences' of this doesnt understand physics.

Why not launch an ICBM with a conventional warhead? I'd think that would have been cheaper.

Can ICBM get away from earth gravity pull ?

In other words are ICBM capable of reaching Escape velocity ?

And are we really sure they cost less than 80M $ ? because afaik  single long range air-to-air missile from Tomcat fighter is around one million USD.

It was a failure which is a shame. The plume that was created was nowhere near big enough to detect if water ice exists. I say manned mission within 5 years please.

We've been to the moon already. Why didn't we just plan to do it then when we were there?

Also what is the point of this? I just don't get the purpose of NASA anymore. The dick measuring contest with the Soviet Union is over.

The point of it is to analyze the impact and resulting debris to ascertain the amount of water that can be found on the moon.

The point of finding out that information is for planning a lunar base.

What's the point of the lunar base?

Its mankinds first step to becoming a space-faring civilization.  Earth wont last forever, and we cant put all our eggs in one basket.

What do you mean by Earth won't last forever? It's lasted an awfully long time already. Is something happening in the next couple hundred or thousand years to change this?