Hitting a comet with a washing machine.
TIMEeurope.com: Digital Europe — A Scientific Conclusion — Personally I cannot get too worked up about this but have to say that was one helluva shot!
Meanwhile, I’m thinking we can do this but we cannot find Bin-Laden?
Along with carrying years of scientific hopes, dreams and questions, Deep Impact also took along on its mission to Tempel 1 the names %u2014 burned onto a CD %u2014 of some 625,000 people from around the world who signed up for the historic destruction under NASA’s public-outreach and education program. The space agency believes that, by engaging people’s imagination in space missions, which literally open new worlds before our eyes, appreciation and knowledge of the sciences are strengthened and enhanced.
That was almost precisely my comment a few months ago when you were poking fun at this mission…
Actually I don’t think the whole purpose was to ‘learn about the origins of the Solar System’, as the PR goes. I really think what this was all about was to demonstrate the capability of intercepting a comet or asteroid with a man-made object. This may be necessary in case one of them comes in our direction and threatens life in our planet. It really sounds very farfetched and remote, but it IS a distinct possibility, and dinosaurs already died at the hands of an asteroid. A big one WILL hit Earth one day, not a question of if, only when. And we have the means to start preparing for that eventuality.
Besides doing regular backups, of course 🙂
What I don’t get is how launching a SUV to chuck a
washing machine at a comet costs $320 mil.
I mean, SUV’s are going cheap now and even a nice washing
machine is about $1k.
You already have the nav system in a “nicely equipped” SUV.
I just don’t get it.
They should be able to do this, they got a practice-shot with that Mar’s probe. 🙂
From recent reports, it looks like Richmond, CA on A Satruday nite. Another innocent bystander hurtling through space minding their own business gunned down by sensless violence. But was it?
Oh, I’m certain they know where Bin Laden is, but his capture would only bring an end to their plans for new world order. I compare it to the Cold War, which was only an excuse for the arms race.
This morning on the radio I heard that some woman in Moscow was suing the US government because the impact would divert the comet’s path. This will disturb her horoscope.
The amazing thing that I have seen many reports get wrong is that the probe was not fired into the comet. Instead, it was put on the same path traveling at 44,000 mph. The comet, traveling at 66,000 mph ran into it. So instead of hitting a bullet with bullet, the probe was run over by a train at 22,000 mph.
All movements in space are relative, so it’s kind of irrelevant to say that ‘this’ was shot into ‘that’ or that ‘that’ ran into ‘this’. You can think about it the way that pleases you most, and it won’t be incorrect!
The real goal was to gather information on the composition of comets so that we may better understand them. This gives us numerous possible benefits down the road, including the unlikely scenario of blowing one of them up to avoid a celestial confrontation with one. More interestingly it may lead to evidence for the validity of old sci-fi ideas such as comet wrangling. Likely however, it will just give us a new comet cross-section posters to be put in the physics classrooms of schools.