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NASA To Shoot Comet With Copper Projectile
Max Entropy writes: "I can't make this up, guys. NASA plans to shoot a comet with a copper missile according to this article from Reuters' Chilean bureau. It says: 'In January 2004, a rocket would launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a spacecraft that would orbit the sun. In July 2005 the spacecraft would separate from a battery-powered, copper projectile that would collide with the comet 24 hours later at a velocity of 6 miles (10 km) per second....It would produce a crater the width of a football field and up to 100 feet (30 meters) deep.' They say that using copper will help get more accurate readings."
But there's no excuse for this kind of brute force Rambo method of information gathering...
The simple fact that the universe works in such a violent manner, I think, supports this effort. Tests like these go a long way toward, not only learning about things that we know we don't know, but they help enforce the understandings that we think we know. Like it or not, if we are to survive well into the distant future, man must continue learn all we can. If we stop doing that, we become the worse virus the planet Earth has ever known.
Actually, what should a reporter write in cases like this one?
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
you are not trolling aren't you?
:)
The data gathered should be quite rich. you'll learn how the crater is formed and it's characteristics, the physical trajectery change after the impact, but most important IMHO, is how the comet is made of, and from that you can gather how the comet is formed. and after analyzing those you might have some good idea on solar system's history.
The solar system is not belong to us human only, it is part of the universe, how can you claim the solar system to be "owned" by a single life specie that only exist on 3rd rock from the sun? and We human were known to destroy the nature resource quite freely without any other consideration for the rest of the life forms on this little rock anyway.
Of course there's more expensive way of doing things, but at this age and time, COST is substantial, if not a deciding matter. I believe the predecessor of Deep Impact is Deep Space 4, which vist the same comet in the same frame of time, is canned because high project cost and high complexities(not sure which is more deciding though).
You shoot 10 men and you're a murderer.
You shoot 1000000 men and you're a god.
You shoot 1 comet and you get an article on slashdot.
Dude, that would be awesome! Remember: blowing shit up is fun!
And scissors. Eunuchs will be saved, don't you know.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Are they doing their calculations in miles, kilometres, or both?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I don't remember if this sort of thing is in 2001, but they land on Halleys in 2061, and then use some of the water vapor Halleys loses as fuel.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Don't you just love the way NASA claims it alters the comet's orbit just barely measurable
I feel really safe now.
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
NASA has been quite publically planning Deep Impact for years. It's purpose is to reveal the presumably pristine, primordial layers of stuff underneath the heavily weathered top layers of the comet.
Comets get heavily damaged from outgassing every time they pass close to the sun, so it isn't like NASA's perpetrating some sort of crime here.
Helium balloons want to be free.
Rubbish. Comet Tempel is just a freaking overgrown snowball. Deep Impact is no more an act of violence than is a geologist breaking a rock open with a hammer.
Helium balloons want to be free.
Not a corrected link, but another boring goatsex troll. When will these puppies get tired of this?
Helium balloons want to be free.
Let's just hope they don't knock the comet into
a collission c(o)urse with our favorite planet.
Funny, I claimed that blowing things up would obtain more accurate readings for my high school physics labs, but the teacher didn't give me extra credit. :(
I'm definatly with you on this one.
This comet as been orbiting for millions of years, and just because NASA wants to blow it up, we're going to fuck with it. It would be like blowing up a historic building just to see whats inside. It's a loss.
Don't ask me, it just feels wrong, but hey, I'm not the one doing it.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Didn't Arthur C Clarke describe exactly the same experiment in 2001 (or is my memory horked)?
not a bad prediction to make 30 odd years in advance.
v
In planetary mechanics, timing is everything. The earlier you push, the less force you need.
It betcha that if the same money were spent on a massive detection system and a puny deflection system versus the opposite case, the massive detection system would be x times more effective.
where x is an impressively large number. And the system could be used for scientific purposes as well. Of course, that wouldn't give us an excuse to build Really Large Nukes, so there you go.
Matter's revenge!!
notes on tempel1 here and here
Interesting notes on deep impact
- Deep Impact FAQs
- paranoia link - suggests that the project's real, unpublished goal is to "miss" Tempel1 and intercept OX4, whose course with Earth in 2014, 2038, 2044 and 2046 is "possibly" an intercept.
She used to be a silicone woman. Sheesh...
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
Yes, and NASA is recruiting Bruce Willys to fligth the ship, but he want to much money.
Thank you!
Just another coder...
...a perfectly good IDSL bridge? ;)
Then again, being stuck here on an IDSL line myself I can understand the frustration. :)
Not entirely since we can calculate the position of our planet after 70 years (ever seen RedShift? Its the perfect program for things like that) and if this comet has a static trajectory this can be easily calculated. But then again; it heavily depends on the comet itself ;)
unfortunately, asteroid!=comet, so the damage done to a comet probably won't reflect what we could do to an asteroid (iceball vs. rock)
I would think they have little choice but to blast the offending comet out of the air, lest it turn the Earth into naught but red dust and zombie cannibals. - - - - - Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich... ...did I mention I'm an atheist?
I have to strongly agree with points a through c.
This is just about the most important space mission we have ever done because it directly provides us knowledge to help us avoid our own armageddon.
You shoot a high speed projectile at a comet, a chunk of the comet evaporates, looking at the spectrum one can figure out what the comet is made of.
Also note that asteroids and comets are have very little in common.
It's nice to see that the United States is now pursuing its foreign policy in space - opting to start "shooting" objects first, and gathering data later.
I know this is for scientific purposes, but doesn't the mere concept of the idea of "shooting" an object with a "projectile" carry the notion of violence with it?
Why start exploring yet another new world the same way humans have done so in the past - through violence?
This is not a new phase. Particle Physicists have been blowing stuff (really really small stuff) up for almost a century now.
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
The problem with your ideas is as follows: the probe's mass and speed are only enough such that the change in the comet's orbit is kept to a minimum. To cause a planet sized object to change its orbit even that much would take an object of a lot more mass, or an object of equivalent mass or less travelling at much quicker speeds.
If we did somehow cause the moon's orbit to change, it could potentially leave g-lock and fly off as you have suggested. But if it did so, the moon would probably take many years to crash into another object, if its new orbit became stable.
But, of course, I learned all my astrophysics from Wesley Crusher while watching Star Trek: the Next Generation so my opinion doesn't count.
Pax Digitalia
Since Bruce Willis did so well on the last space rock, would it be possible to load him on this rocket too?
Please?
why?
13-4=54/6
The impactor is going simply going to be dropped in the path of the comet. It will have no propulsive force of its own. The main probe will watch from a safe distance, and record the impact.
Copper was chosen for the impactor because they don't believe that the emmissions from it will interfere with what they expect to see, and even if it did the interference will be minimal. (Copper is apparently not very common in comets).
I forgot to ask the mass of the impactor, but it can't be more than a few tens of kilos due to launch costs. Since the comet's velocity is about 20km/sec at the chosen impact point, the impactor doesn't have to be going very fast, and because of the "drop in place" method it also doesn't need much in the way of guidance systems of propulsion, just good ol' Newtonian mechanics.
The overall shape of the probe has changed a few times, but I think that the final form is settled now. And as a further bit of trivia, many of the engineers working on this project are women.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Perhaps they should send a team of oil drillers with a copper drill bit instead.
- Amon CMB
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
"If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is
in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day
as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before
her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizens As if
a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!"
- Henry David Thoreau "Life Without Principle," 1854, 1863 (4:457).
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But then you said: It's not an experiment to see if NASA can deflect comets
But the article says: The project also aims to see if scientists can alter the orbit of a comet to protect the Earth from falling matter. The impact would alter the comet's orbit by a ``just barely measurable'' 62 to 620 miles (100 to 1,000 km), A'Hearn said.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
August 3rd, 2005
After centuries of speculation on the existence of extraterrestrial life, first contact has been made. Unfortunately for humanity, our new visitors seem unfriendly. Thousands of comet-like spacecraft have taken up geosynchronous orbits around Earth. The craft are transmitting strange messages across a wide range of radio frequencies. Early translations seem to indicate that the alien craft are preparing to attack the planet in retaliation for an attack against one of their vessels. Government officials from all space faring nations are denying such an attack. World leaders are now scrambling to to avert war with the aliens, and quite possibly the destruction of the human race...
"We're doomed!" --C3P0
Abraxis
I can see the Evening News already...
"And as NASA's bullet hits, we can see the comet move back...and to the left. Back...and to the left. Back...and to the left."
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Let me give you the lowdown
I can't understand why this story originates from Santiago, Chile. Presumably because Cu is Chiles number one export; but so what? ;)
How much Cu are they planning on using anyway?
Enough that NASA has to give Chile first notice
Headlines in heaven: "Humans Shoot Arch-angel Michael in Head while on a fly-bye. Angelic hosts demand justice."
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
On the other hand, the spectacle of viewing 100,000 meteors per hour might grind society to a halt for a day or so.
I really, really, really hope that was meant as flamebait because if it wasn't, then you are just about one of the most idiotic, arrogantly ignorant people I've read on here in a while.
Educate yourself before spewing all over yourself.
This "battery operated" device is actually a "Copper Top" - another case of product placement interfering with good science. THANKS, DURACELL.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
You'd think that, but then NASA cant even land a probe on Mars right ;-)
but then what if a heareby unknown comet hit this comet in 10 years time?
So I'd bet that a lots of eyes are going to look at the poor comet when they are going to give it it's copper penny.
OTOH having a closer witness is a good idea, since you have to haul all that copper, a few more silicon should make that much of a difference.
As for the hardness of the comet, believe me, at such speed snow or granit won't make such a difference, unless you are measuring at a really high frequency, wich is unlikely with such a far-travelling device. It is merely going to help you measure the nearby gravity fields, or if some comet gases are slowing you approach.
[Pruneau
...are going to have a heyday with this. I can just imagine the responses... "Hey, you can't just go blasting rocks for something as useless as scientific discovery! Imagine if there are little space micro-organisms that might go extinct!" As if there is a shortage of comets. (asteroids? which was it...?) Well, I'm just glad that most of the environmental wackos still live in California as opposed to, say, Tennessee where I live and there are 3 nukes, 4 hydros and 4 coal-fired power plants within 45 miles of where I live. You can bet that we're going to have electricity out here for a while! 'course, maybe I should be careful, since most of the Slashdot readership is probably living in California and are therefore a bunch of liberal environmental wackos! But don't come chasing me down in Tennessee, I have a gun! Rabbit trails...
Couldn't we just send up a bunch of rowdy oil drillers to do the job for us?
admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design
I knew those Heaven's Gate people were on to something! I guess I should run out and buy some (relatively) low-cost Nikes?
no text
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
I didn't say it WOULD cause anything disasterous, and yes I know it would probably take many years before it had any significant effect, I'm just saying I'm more comfortable with them testing it on a comet that is much less likely to have any effect on us whatsoever than on Luna. It's one of those "it's possible but so highly improbable that it's probably not worth worrying about but we might as well play it somewhat safe anyway"
I didn't say it WOULD cause anything disasterous, and yes I know it would probably take many years before it had any significant effect, I'm just saying I'm more comfortable with them testing it on a comet that is much less likely to have any effect on us whatsoever than on Luna.
It's one of those "it's possible but so highly improbable that it's probably not worth worrying about but we might as well play it somewhat safe anyway"
I understand the reason for this experiment, though I still think it's pointless, but that's just me and what I belive.
But I have to say I'd rather they do it on a comet somewhere out there than on, say, the moon, which the
orbit shifting that it could potentialy cause would have unknown effects on Earth, and possibly other planets in
our solar system (somehow I'd rather not think about a slight bump that might push the moon on an intersecting
course with Mars thus causing more rock fragments than are already in our system that could suddenly wind
up destroying my home town, and possibly a wider area.)
Isn't that the same type of thing that caused the dinosaurs to die out? We could be destroying the smartest living thing in the universe that built its own "comet" and is coming to study our sun and after that, let us in on a few "secrets" of the great beyond. But why would we be concerned about anything than expanding our knowledge bank?
[ ]
Is anybody else worried that the title of this project relates so closely to another Deep Impact?
I think they said something about a BB. I seem to recall them using the word "daisy". .188 caliber.....if I remember correctly.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
"Come on! You're NASA for Christ's sake! You're the ones who come up with this shit! Why I bet you have a bunch of guys sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up, and somebody backing them up."
They did this before with the moon back in the 60's, and possibly even Mars a couple of years back.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
Of course, if they screw up and totally obliterate the comet, it'll still be cool. We'd just be the last generation to see this thing ever again.
Come on, planets, moons, comets small countries - they're all targets. Basically, everything outside the US borders is fair game. If you complain we're just gonna launch the next one at you. Particularly you Canadians. We know what you're up to with your space-sky-diving. Don't think we don't.
Why?
Fantastic! Galactic Bowling! Only I can't help wondering how they plan on actually obtaining the data... Won't an explosion of this magnitude completely destroy the sensor- and communication-equipment? Hell, NASA wasn't even succesful when they tried "cushion"-landing their gear on Mars! Or are they planning on examining the comet from a distance, after impact? In that case they'd better make some pretty accurate calculations on the trajectory, or else they will only know for a fact that "there's one enormous dented rock out there, somewhere"! No, this is just targetpractice for triggerhappy NASA.
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Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Talk about showing the russians, imagine the geek chats , hey russia got no cash to keep mir going , we have to much cash , to prove it and rub our succesfull capitalism in your faces we will hoop shot $6 million of copper into a comet , oh yawn what next ? ( before you go all nutts i made $ 6 million , dont reply with a exact math breakdown of the cost , i dont care , and im sure you could have spent the 10 seconds it took you to work out the correct price to do something better like make toast )
NASA representatives were reluctant to give many details about the projectile itself, but they hinted that it was roughly statue-of-liberty-shaped. Later, NASA scientists were overheard muttering about the 'lousy French', and 'all those damned immigrants.'
---- Just another spud server.
And I am ignorant how?
Educate yourself before spewing all over yourself.
Bite me.
Oh yeah, my original post was not meant as flamebait.
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Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
That's actually one of my biggest beefs with environmentalists. The way they'd have us run the world would be to send us back into the Stone Ages. Forget fire, we'll eat raw lion meat - assuming the lions don't eat us for dinner first.
If the environmentalists were practicing what they preached, they wouldn't eat, since killing animals is wrong, and eating vegetation would affect CO2 levels; they wouldn't drink water, since it would cause them to urinate, polluting water sources all around; they wouldn't breathe, since they'd be spewing forth CO2; in fact, they couldn't die either, since decomposition releases all the baddies that have been stored in their bodies. They should just jettison their cold, dead bodies into space - oh wait, they can't because they'd have to burn fuel, and they'd be leaving junk in space.
Fools, the lot of them. Environmentalism is a contradiction within itself.
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Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
I have to agree with option d. :-)
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
Taking a look at NASA's leading mathematician's success rates....is anyone other than myself a smidge worried about this?
Its most definitely a brilliant idea. It is impossible to build a drilling rig that drills a 30m deep hole into a comet with 500kg, let alone all the equipment for decelerating from 6km/s and a soft landing.
A 500kg copper ball on the other hand is cheap as dirt to build and can not break like other fragile nasa equipment (remember mars polar lander?). And contrary to popular belief, by far the most expensive part of a scientific mission is building the probe, not launching it (Scientific probes are not buildt in series).
So I think that this mission is a remarkably good idea. Maybe NASA should build these things in series: Wanna find out if there is water on the mars or some moon? Just blow a hole into its surface and measure the composition of the output plume.
And for all those wackos that think that blowing a hole into a comet or whatever is immoral: The solar system is huge, there are millions of comets, asteroids etc. and each and every one of them is capable of destroying civilisation as we know it. So finding out stuff about their density, structural strength and composition is vital if humankind wants to survive. Still not convinced? Better commit suicide right now!
greetings,
MrRight
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
Methinks NASA folks have been watching too many Hollywood movies.
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The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
I think sending a 500-kilo copper weight to space is waste of money. How much science would you do with 500 kg instruments? A lot. At first sight, this seems to have more PR value and less scientific output.
The European Rosetta mission makes much more sense. It tries to land on a comet. How much can we learn if the 1st idea is to everything we do not understand?
I thought that one of the reasons for the launch was to create a controled collision with a comet-like object. This way, since one of the object's properties are known, the comet could be analyzed more thoroughly. Another reason for the experiment is that the comet could be similar to Shoemaker-Levy 9. If so, it would probably help sort through the data they collected from the Jupiter collision. For example, if they did a spectral analysis of Jupiter's plume and included the Deep Impact data, they could tell the difference with what in the plume was Jupiter and what was the comet. Also, if there was a lot of a specific element, they could estimate what percentage belonged to each object.
I took a class taught by A'Hearn in which he discussed his project and some of the others that were scheduled to go up (like the mission to Pluto to see if there is an atmosphere there when it is in perihelion). He was bummed out that Congress was cutting a lot of other projects that either had more experiments packed into them, that were testing new satellite technology or that were cheep. Here's the University of Maryland College Park web page about Deep Impact:
http://www.ss.astro.umd.edu/deepimpact
$witty_sig
Okay, so it's gonna cost a lot of money, and maybe not return a whole lot of data, but why is everybody scared of NASA doing some research? Surely there are better things to be paranoid about. There are plenty of other agencies spending more money on even less worthwhile projects.
Anyway, the spectral lines of the vapourized material can be analyzed to deterime the chemical composition of the interior of the comet.
It's not an experiment to see if NASA can deflect comets. If it was, it would be extremely limited because it would only consider the "solid" comets; not the ones that are just big piles of loose matter (of which there are many).
And the comet would probably lose all that matter anyway on it's trip around the run. When it goes back in the other direction, you likely wouldn't be able to see the football-field crater due to solar "erosion".
Helloooooooo.........
See what happens, we have these health issues after the Balkans from using depleted uranium there. Now even NASA is being limiting to less effective projectiles, i'm sure they could do a lot more damage than that if they were allowed to use some real firepower. Show those commie comets a thing or two.
They use copper because it's an unlikely element in the makeup of the commet and can be easily separated out of the spectrums produced. There are other choices but what would people say if it was solid gold? 8^)
Reminds me of an archeologist from about a hundred years ago that went around Egypt studying ancient pyrimids with dynamite. He drilled a hole in the side of the head of the Sphyinx looking to see if there was a chamber inside, and dammaged it a bit with one blast.
Of course, this is quite different, but it still seems funny how the old ways come back.
Recent NASA press briefings have also hinted at the possibility that in the coming decade one or more NASA scientists will make a journey to the Empire State Building to drop pennies on passersby.
Current research is exploring various exit strategies to ensure a safe return home. The estimated expenditure for this project is $50,000,000.04 and is expected to launch in 2008
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
And scissors. Eunuchs will be saved, don't you know.
Dude, he said UNIX, not eunuchs.
Hope it's not too lake with those scissors.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
It has been Cape Canaveral for many years. It was renamed Cape Kennedy back in the 60's, but had it's original name returned a number of years ago. The space center is still called the Kennedy Space Center.
-- Error: Cannot find file REALITY.SYS - Universe halted, please reboot!
I'm surprised this didn't get modded up as "Funny". What? You mean you're serious?
Besides, if NASA learns something from this little exercise, I'm sure they would share the information with all of humanity. If someone else wants the comet so much, they should say so.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
News flash!
A copper missile initially intended to strike a comet has missed it's target NASA has revealed. It was subsequently caught in a nearby planets gravitational field and slingshotted onto a direct heading with Earth and is expected to wipe out most of the life in the northern hemisphere. NASA is taking a very scientific stance with this quote: "Ooops!".
The copper cylinder will weigh 500kg / 1,100 pounds, and will carry a camera and an infrared spectrometer. The targetted comet is Comet 9P/Tempel 1.
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From Uni Maryland's FAQ (they're working with NASA on this project):
- Q: If the impactor split the comet, would any debris head towards earth?
As far as the effect on the orbit goes... well, the copper cylinder weighs 500kg and will be going 20,000 mph at the time of impact (source). And I guess I don't know the inertia of the comet, or the angle of impact. But from this picture, it looks like the comet will be pushed away from earth. But I guess if that brings it much closer to some other body, the orbit could change further?The orbit of Tempel 1 is at least 0.5 AU (about 46 million miles) from Earth's orbit at their closest points. There is absolutely no possibility of Tempel 1, the Deep Impact comet, getting near the earth. When comets fragment, the pieces also stay in orbits very similar to the orbit of the parent comet. Danger to the earth is from asteroids and comets whose orbits cross the earth's orbit. Tempel 1 never crosses the earth's orbit. The two orbits are totally separate and never cross each other. Tempel 1 can never be pulled into the earth's gravitational field at any time.
The Deep Impact impactor will just scratch the surface of the comet making a relatively small crater compared to the size of the comet. Even if the comet were to be extremely fragile and break apart, the pieces would still be in the same orbit and would never come close to the earth's orbit.
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Does anybody know what is the size (weight) of the copper projectile ?
That info was missing.
Just another coder...
I'm specially curious about its new orbit; any chance that these scientists can knock it into a new trajectory which will collide with earth in about 70 years? Has anyone calculated this risk as well?
Well ... why not? By all accounts, Mars is just a really big chunk of rock, and nobody's using it at the moment. One crater won't make much of a difference.
It's the same thing we always go through with environmentalists. There's no reason to be afraid of using natural resources. If we always hold off, afraid that we might damage something, we'll never get anything done. As long as the good (scientific data) outweighs the bad (nothing, as far as we know), we should consider it fair game.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Rosetta will send probes to land softly on the surface of a comet. I've got a few friends on that project.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
"IANASBLF (silicon based lifeform).."
between your sig here, the story & comments at hand and my crazy pre-workday grogginess, a wonderful notion has popped into my head- shooting the comet could be actual murder!
I've often suspected that the Oort cloud and the comets would be an ideal place for microbial life to develop. if you think about the materials involved and the history of the solar system, it isn't completely out of the question. picture an asteroid impact on earth during the 2 billion years of pre-cambrian-ness here on earth, causing a cloud of organics kicked up into orbit, which is subsquently passed through by a comet. the comet is 'moist' for its proximity to the sun (the outer shell is melting). perhaps inbound comets would simply shed the earth-dust as they approach the sun, but an outbound comet would keep whatever it picks up. this is how they grow.
After reading this article, I am convinced (not by anything directly mentioned- more by way of intuition) that a comet could in fact be some sort of higher order organism. after billions of years to evolve in a relatively stable envoronment. the entire comet could be an agglomeration of these rugged microbes, acting in unison much like a colony organism (jellyfish, sea anemone, fungusses) or even better, a multicelled creature like you or I. imagine for a moment that each comet is an entire creature, bobbing around in their oort cloud, communicating via vibratory radio fluctuations in their water/carbon/metal selves... mating == collision, and the sun's gravity well is the grim reaper. perhaps there are even predators/prey! we could 'domesticate' predatory comets for orbital protection from asteroids.
I am off to the stationary store to buy a new quill.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
The Reuters story is short on details. Full details of the Deep Impact mission can be found at http://www.ss.astro.umd.edu/deepimpact/
I'm quite frankly amazed at the hubris that NASA are showing with this ill-conceived plan! I mean, who in the hell are they do decide that it's alright to blast a 100 foot deep hole in a comet just to gather a little bit of data? The Solar System is supposed to be a common resource for all humanity, not just a load of targets for America to test its fancy guidance systems on, even in the name of science.
There are better, if more expensive, ways to obtain this data if it is really needed. But there's no excuse for this kind of brute force Rambo method of information gathering, and I'd hate to think that it marks the start of a new phase of "science" whereby we obtain data by blowing things up. What's next, making a chemical analysis of Martian rock composition from debris thrown up by a nuclear strike on its surface?
Somewhere some Aliens have found earth on their scanner. By now they know quite a lot about the surface, and now they're sending comets to collide with the earth for some extra readings...
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Privacy is terrorism.
I call on all slashdotters to join the protest against the unjust targeting of high speed probes against such innocent planatery bodies as mars, and this commet. On the other hand its nice to see nasa planning a mission where they _deliberatly_ crash probes as opposed to what usually happens..
NASA Comet News:
Due to outdated computer systems and relying upon Microsoft programs we failed to calculate that shooting the comet will result in a shifting of the orbit so that the comet impacts earth. Unfortunately this was discovered several hours after launch, and we have no way to abort. We apologize for any inconvenience.
~Ken
I suggested a similar mission element to the "Pluto Express" project several years ago. If you slam a heavy material into a solid body fast enough, you vaporize the surface and immediate subsurface layers, and heat them enough to radiate briefly as a black body. This radiation can be captured by a spectrograph, and provide an assay of the materal present.
I doubt this really has much to do with the art of deflecting comets, but certainly that could be a side benefit of the real experiment.
A comet, being an active body, is not a good target for an automated lander. Too much can go wrong in an automated descent and the rount trip light time is generally too long to do anything about issues which arise.
A passive impactor is much more likely to succeed.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Many reasons for this experiment... but the most obvious one is this:
NASA is run by men.
I mean, come on! What guy reading this article didn't get a hard-on at the idea of, basically, slamming a volkswagon beetle travelling 20 000mph into solid rock? This is way fucking better than dropping old computer monitors from the top of a building, shooting old hard drives with armour-piercing bullets or taking a sledgehammer to the laser printer!
Now, if *women* were running NASA, we'd have all sorts of namby-pamby cuddling stuff. Blast hell out of a comet? Dear, no, let's capture it and bring it back to earth! Smash a comet that's going to strike the earth? My, my, no! Let's attach booster rockets to it, and redirect the poor thing!
Rock on, NASA! Beat shit outta stuff for us -- just make sure you take lotsa pictures!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
First, just to make sure we all know this: The primary purpose of this mission is to determine the interior composition of the comet. Any ballistics experiments are just useful side effects.
For the environmentalists - remember that this comet is going to boil away into nothingness in a few million years anyways.
Secondly, this is important to The Rest Of Us because we hope to be *mining* objects like this some day. Small objects in the solar system tend to fall into one of only a handful of composition categories, and this probe will let us get good prospecting data on one such category.
After testing it on the comet, Nasa plans on using this technology to properly remove Janet Reno from office.
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" from the cupid-should-be-so-equipped dept "
Um ... yes ... I'm sure he would want to shoot a crater the size of a football field where two people were a moment ago.
"Darling, it felt like the earth moved..."
"It did."
I call on all slashdotters to join the protest against the unjust targeting of high speed probes against such innocent planatery bodies as mars, and this commet.
On the other hand its nice to see nasa planning a mission where they _deliberatly_ crash probes as opposed to what usually happens..
Official GOD FAQ.
The most obvious one is pretty simple: There are a lot of near-earth asteroids, and a armageddon-like one is actually not all that improbable. By playing with a comet like this, NASA can determine a few things
a) Can we shoot a comet with a rocket
b) what kind of damage can we expect the rocket to do
c) weither or not firing a nuke at an asteroid is a viable option in a armageddon senario
d) how much money we can spend on weird crap and get away with it
I'm only partially joking about d.
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Desperation is a stinky cologne
Nuclear physicists quite routinely ask the government for extremely large amounts of money to build an accelerator out of exotic materials, just to smash something. Sounds like NASA wants to get into that game. 8-)
Seriously, they want to see what's inside the comet. The surface doesn't seem stable enough to land a drilling rig, and it's probably not safe to even fly near the comet (pieces keep breaking off). So instead, you shoot a hole in it from a safe distance.
Why copper? The projectile materials are going to show up in the readings, so you use something that is quite unlikely to actually be in there to start with. Not iron, that's a common component of rocks. You don't use platinum or uranium because their presence in the comet even in minute quantities would be quite interesting. You don't use lead because sometimes lead traces are a product of the radioactive decay of uranium, and so you need to measure the ratio of lead to uranium if possible. Copper is the most reasonably priced dense metal left.