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I'm not sure about the purpose of the hyperbole.

Oooh I know that one: making money.

Congratulations on your first post. That is, first rational post in this thread. Also, I wonder if nobody noticed:
- the scientific community has known this for a long time
- the solution proposed by this fine shill^H^H^H^H^Hnonprofit organization is a specific commercial product by a company it has connections with?

"asteroid strikes more common than thought" would have been interesting enough to get me here

...but it would still be dishonest and I would still take offense. "...more than thought" implicitly implies "...more than the scientific community knew about". This is false. Nothing in this story suggests that science was not aware of this frequency. An honest headline would be "frequency of asteroid strikes underappreciated by the general public". Which doesn't say all that much. Also, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the risk of large-scale loss of life is minimal. This is all fear-mongering to get a product sold. It's a bit scandalous how media fall over themselves to repost this non-story without the smallest amount of background research. BBC is this close to losing its status as my primary news source.

Ugh ....
Maryland - Goddard Space Flight Center
New Mexico - AF Research Lab - Space Vehicles, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs
Colorado - Ball, Raytheon, etc
California - JPL, Livermore Labs and way too many others to list
Virginia - Navy Research Lab, Wallops Island
Texas - UT Dallas, Texas A&M, Johnson Space Center, many more
Arizona - Orbital Sciences Corp., GD, etc
Tennessee - Oakridge
Alabama - U.S. Space and Rocket Center
Utah -Space Dynamics Laboratory, L3
Florida - Kennedy, ATK and many more
Alaska - Kodiak Island

The space industry is spread out over the entire country. This list could go on and on. Saying it is only Florida and Texas that benefit is mildly absurd. I agree with the idea, but it isn't nearly as narrow as that.

For those of you who miss it on the main web-site, Ball Aerospace developed most of the scientific instruments. They are becoming pivotal to many of today's space-based observation instruments. Details on their involvement with Deep Impact are here.

For those of you who miss it on the main web-site, Ball Aerospace developed most of the scientific instruments. They are becoming pivotal to many of today's space-based observation instruments. Details on their involvement with Deep Impact are here.

If you don't care about the entire world at once you can get 60cm, yep 0.6meter res shots by using Digital Globe's http://www.digitalglobe.com/ QuickBird satellite built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies http://www.ballaerospace.com/

Here are the specs: http://www.digitalglobe.com/product/basic_imagery. shtml/

A better article can be found at NASA. If that doesn't work check out the list of press releases.

Some cool facts. There will be no harpooning of the comet. A 1100lb (yes, 500kg) copper projectile (or impactor, as it is called here at Ball) into the comet, to measure the constituents of the debris and find out what makes up the interior of a comet. None of the copper tipped bullet, that the article aludes too. Imagine slamming a 500kg projectile into the surface of the comet!

This particular project (called Deep Impact, BTW) is about $240million. My company, Ball Aerospace, is contracted to build it. Our part I guess is $200million. This comes at just the right time when people are scrapping for work. This is the first time we will build an inter-planetary spacecraft, so it will certainly be exciting.

I don't know much about the Messenger project. Check the press release mentioned above for more.


~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"