Slashdot Mirror
Mission to Harpoon Comet is Back on Track
An anonymous reader writes "The Rosetta mission planners have announced today that after an indefinite launch delay earlier this year, their goal of landing on a comet is back on track. Their new baseline target is a rendezvous with the comet, Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in November 2014. En route to the comet, Rosetta will inspect two asteroids (Otawara and Siwa) at close quarters."
... and send the comet crashing into the earth, Lori Petty will rescue Naomi Watts, and they will fight against Malcolm McDowell and save us all from Water and Power!
I think I need to turn off the TV and go outside now...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As long as Homer Simpson is right, comets could never hurt us, since they will ALWAYS burn up in the atmosphere.
But just in case we need to shoot it down, we'll use Springfield as a calibration target for all global missile systems...
is the main reason for this project. The "Dirty Snowball" theory of Biological beginnings could be given a comprehensive shot (in the arm or in the head), depending upon the results of this mission.
*sighs*
Only 11 years to wait for the data to come back, we could have been to Mars and back 3 times by then (and I hope we will have)
The sooner we get ourselves (and more importantly, all our heavy, polluting industry) off this planet, the better.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
one foot is 0.3049m
Comets coming from the Oort cloud contain the least contaminated matter from the start of the solar system. Exploring and sampling material from them actually answer a wide variety of questions including matters about the origin of life. Finding amino acids in the sample would imply that life on Earth was not self-generating.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
What?
The Earth is ACELLERATING at 1,500 kmh^2?
Are you absolutely sure about that? What force is acting upon teh Earth to cause it to accellerate so, pray tell?
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Rosetta project involve orbiting a satelite around the comet, and not harpooning a comet with a landbased object?
Now that I think about it, how do you "harpoon" an asteroid anyways. Are we going to use a thick rope and a spear? Or is Moby Dicking it the wrong way to go?
Vonal Declosion
uh, gravity man.
Remember, acceleration is a vector. Thus, it's a direction and speed. The direction the earth is traveling through space is always changing, thus it's always accelerating.
Although, yes it's speed (which is a scalar) is pretty much constant.
High School Physics: Anything traveling in a circular pattern in always accelerating, although it's speed may be constant.
There was a documentry about the old technique, but it didn't work well.
If the Armegedon crew had used harpoons instead of that fancy jet thruster stuff everybody may have gotten back safely. Well, if they hadn't landed on that plate of iron too.
Progress will not wait for you my friend.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Yes. Centripetal force. The Earth is constantly changing direction (as it orbits), which means its velocity (speed with direction) is constantly changing. Change in velocity / time = acceleration. The direction of acceleraton is towards the sun.
It's called gravity.
If we weren't accelerating, we'd be going in a straight line. Acceleration is a change in velocity, velocity is speed AND direction, so a change in direction counts. I.e. a circular orbit requires constant acceleration.
Here is a bit of Higher perspective: The US government spends more than 10 times as much money on its military budget than on its science budget. This comet project could tell us important things about genetics, solar interference and mutation, and Evolution. This could lead to radical medical advances.
Maybe the US should do some demilitarisation, because at the moment the US has the largest armed forces proportional to its total population of any country. It is unnecessary.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Rosetta will inspect two asteroids (Otawara and Siwa) at close quarters."
It's about time that us humans started doing the probing to the aliens!
Second chance for any Heaven's Gate folks that got left behind!
The coolest voice ever.
If you take this line of reasoning to it's logical conclusion I would expect you to sell your computer tomorrow and send a couple of bucks to the aid agency of your choice. Now *why* don't you do that? Think about it; then scale up 6 orders of magnitude - and there's your answer why we do things like this.
Last time people tried to meet up with a comet, they ended up dead, and covered with purple cloth.
The "harpoon an asteroid" idea is old as stone. Think it was Verne himself who cooked it up at one time.
I'm not a hundred percent sure if it's doable, but I imagine you would need a cord with an extremely high tensile strength. Think space elevator material.
Anyway, the benefits from asteroid harpooning would be enormous. Right now, we're running out of important elements here on earth at an alarming rate (things like platinum used in exhaust cleaning systems, and diamonds used in drilling rigs). Think of all the resources we could get from mining asteroids.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Yes people die. 32000 people die from preventable diseases every day. However, advances in space exploration is an imparative not an option. The ability to colonise the moon, mars, and space, mine comets, and extract resources is what is going to keep the human race around for thousands of years to come. So no, the comet cannot wait.
RIDE THE LIGHTNING!
I thought we were going to pull the comet into the Earth... *breathes a sigh of relief*
No "radical medical advnaces" from this mission. The most interesting thing we oculd find would be amino acids, which we already have here on Earth. Nothing that will affect your daily way of life will come from this mission.
The US space program doesn't look a lot better: a reusable launch vehicle that is more expensive per launch than disposable launch vehicles, two shuttles that have blown up, Mars probes that just disappear, and on and on.
Over the last couple of decades, the European space program doesn't seem to have screwed up any more than the US space program. OTOH, it seems to be a bit more cost-effective and fewer people die in it.
Your favorite
Your favorite
why would there be diamonds in comets? afaik plants -> oil -> coal -> diamonds.
i'd like to see where you get plants on a comet..
fewer people die in it.
Maybe because all of their launches have been UNMANNED!!!!
Sorry my parent post was truncated.
A perfectly cromulent conclusion.
Hey don't worry about it. This is the ESA we're talking about. These people would be lucky to launch a potato gun without blowing themselves up.
Without having the actual numbers, I feel ready to bet that "not screwing more", when launching several times less is not a great advantage...
Anyway, it may be true that Ariane had fewer "problems", but that doesn't m33n they're less spectacular;o))))....
Btw, I'm European so no offense... simply enough, when I first read the floating point register explanation for some lanch accident... it was far too much to not lol.....
Damn, it's hard to finish those phrases at 2am....;o)
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Don't underestimate the amount of important science has come out of R&D for the military. And your fact about the US government spending 10x more on military then science is probably false, maybe if you are only talking about the federal government. I know lots of states pour hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars into science in form of public. If you include the amount of research being done by private instutions (private universities and corporations) I would bet the amount of money spent on sciene in the US is alot more then what is spent on the military. The main job of the US federal government is to protect the citizens not fund research.
"... and fewer people die in it."
When was the last manned European space flight?
--
lds
me thinks thats the point. Is it really truely necessary to shoot 7 people into space to see who worms are effected by 0-g enviroment, or is it more of a PR stunt since footage of astronauts drinking fruit punch out of the air is neato.
Personally, I fail to see why 7 lives are risked to study worms.
My point exactly.
Now that I think about it, how do you "harpoon" an asteroid anyways. Are we going to use a thick rope and a spear? Or is Moby Dicking it the wrong way to go?
That is pretty old-fashioned. Today, they use an explosive grenade that explodes on impact. The explosion either knocks the asteroid unconsious or kills it. Then, NASA can pull it into Earth and fire a frickin' laser beam into it to make sure it's dead.
Asteroid conservation organisations are against the harpooning, but have no tangible arguments left. Since asteroids are extremely numerous, and modern catch methods are within animal welfare standards, the conservationists now claim that asteroids have intrinsic rights, Asteroid Rights. Namely:
The right to have their orbital characteristics un-affected other bodies.
The right not to be used as hiding places for space ships or telepaths.
The right to not be blasted by Star Destroyers.
The right to control their own resources, and grant their own mining rights to whoever they choose.
When pressed on who should represent the asteroids and work as mining rights proxies, the conservation organisations said "us".
Suddenly, most space mining companies had changed their status to non-profit organisations.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
No. The velocity is constant, curved space/time is, depending on nearby mass.
v/t=a only applies to Euclidian space.
preach it, brother!
No, I'm in favour of Orbital industry (it makes no sense to put industry at the bottom of a gravity well, when most of where the results of that industry will be needed is in space anyway.
Production of bulk items in space is only economically viable _if_ they are to be used mostly in space. In practice, they'll be used wherever most of the population is. For the forseeable future, this is on earth.
Further, most pollution is from three areas - chemical processing (be it smelting, the plastics industry, or what-have-you), growing crops (fertilizer runoff), and supporting population and industry power consumption (generating electricity, running cars).
If you're planning to move either of the first two into space, you'll have to make them closed-loop processes due to shortage of materials (hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen are hard to come by in the inner solar system; the belt is far enough away to present *serious* transport problems). If you're making these processes closed-loop, you might as well build the same factories on earth, as they will no longer pollute.
The last is tied in considerable part to where your population is (as it's what uses power). That's mostly on earth, due to the difficulty moving the earth's population off-planet.
In summary, unless the population is primarily based in space, I don't believe it would be beneficial to move industry there. Focus on making industry less polluting down here (and on closing the other end of the loop by using landfills as chemical feedstock for manufacturing).
Diamonds form in the throats of rapidly erupting volcanoes, from carbon deep in the Earth. If the carbon does not flow up a volcano, it's carbon->bacteria->methane->bacteria->oil->bacteria ->coal. (although I don't know how often the coal forms within rock layers, and how often oil/tar flow reaches the surface and is later buried).
As carbon is in rocks, it is possible that diamonds could form during impacts. There also are some odd things that happen to carbon dust under extreme cold.
Coal and diamonds are just forms of carbon.
The force known as "Gravity". Specifically, the gravitational attraction between the earth and sun causes the earth to accelerate. That's how fast everything at this distance from the sun accelerates towards the sun.... which the earth is doing continuously.
foot 0.3048
US survey foot 0.3048006096012
modified American foot 0.3048122529845
Clarke's foot 0.3047972651151
Indian foot (Clarke) 0.3047995102481
foot (Sears) 0.3047994715387
...is such a waste of resources, when there's so much here on Earth to harpoon.
Why don't you sell YOUR Volvo, Birkenstocks, and your collection of Negro CDs, bub? YOU send the proceeds to Ethiopia. YOU can make a difference with YOUR own assets. Lead and maybe some of those candy ass democrat friends of yours will follow. But keep your friggin' tofu pickin' hands out of MY pocket!
(P.S. those Ethiopian burr heads have been in a perpetual state of starvation for hundreds of years. Their bodies can deal with it. Put them on a normal diet and they would look like those ugly fat Mexican cows who waddle around L.A. in a perpetual state of pregnancy.)
From what I've read the Ariane-4 had a very good track record. The Ariane-5, OTOH, well, *BOOM* ;)
Except that asteriods probably aren't big enough to have an internal source of heat, in other words their insides are as solid and cold as their outsides. Therefor, no diamonds from lava flowing to the surface (because there wouldn't be any lava, nor any heat).
This would leave large impacts as the only possible source of heat. There probably aren't very many impacts big enough to create the necessary heat and pressure without completely destroying the asteroid, making asteroid diamond deposits that are large enough to be worth the time and expense to harvest them very rare.
Besides, doesn't it take heat and pressure over and extended period of time to create a diamond? Meaning that one asteroid hitting another would be over too quickly for diamonds to form?
Or am I completely 100% off-base on this?
Maybe they mean harpoon in the sense of what happens when you harpoon something much larger and faster than you...
I posted this idea half-jokingly a few days ago, I can't believe someone is actually gonna do this. But I got the idea from watching Armaggedon too many times, I can't believe someone is actually investing time and energy into this kooky idea.
No, gravity is the force, it happens to be centripital in nature.
Why are hemorrhoids called "hemorrhoids" instead of "asteroids"?
... you start calling the moon, "Luna," in idle conversation.
Come to think of it... the moon is one place where I wouldn't mind living close to work.
*honks*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
How is that relevant? More people die on the ground in such projects than in space. Because way more are working on the ground. Only they often get a little less news coverage.
No, no, you've got it all wrong. They're going to look for the Harpoon UFO, which you can also already get here on Earth.
They are not trying to 'harpoon' an asteriod....they are going to an asteriod named 'Harpoon'...after that famous asteriod explorer, Harpoon Dimwitty.
Besides, everyone knows you don't harpoon asteriods. You either use gill nets or C-5 for concussion.
It is not an american spacecraft. NASA is not involved.
Enough conjecture. Can you (or anyone) quote actual statistics?
You ever heard the term 'cosmonaut'? :)
> asteriods probably aren't big enough to have an internal source of heat
Very true, but where did the asteroid come from? Could it have been at the center of an exploded planet (or debris from 2 colliding planets, whatever)? In that case, it would have had internal heat before and then was sent off into space. In that scenario, it would be more likely to have important metals/minerals, since it was at the center of a planet. Of course, it could have just as easily been a chunk right from the surface, but this is all speculation anyway.
> Maybe they mean harpoon in the sense of what happens when you harpoon something much larger and faster than you...
You start hurtling (sp?) along through space being tugged by a rock? That's what I thought of as I was reading the comments.
> The US government spends more than 10 times as much money on its military budget than on its science budget
From raw figures, that may be true, but a whole lot of military funds go to developing "science things," whatever that would be, especially aerospace engineering.
Therefore, I agree with your conclusion, but not your reasoning.
> The ability to [...good list of reasons...] is what is going to keep the human race around for thousands of years to come.
There are many, many species that have lived for many thousand years without the need to colonize other planets. I don't think it is necessary for Human survival. Granted, that might help ensure an even longer existence, but also mutations. Don't seriously think Humans can move to another planet and expect the next hundred generations to be exactly the same.
What if people living on Mars mutate and are later considered lower-class citizens because of it? Then their religions will teach Earthlings that they are superior supermen who will take over and rule Mars with an iron fist! God no, sir, I will NOT be responsible for that kind of opression!
Woah... I just got Deja Vu. And the last time I thought it happened, I wrote this exact line. Wow.
> is it more of a PR stunt since footage of astronauts drinking fruit punch out of the air is neato
:( All in the name of science^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hre-election.
> Personally, I fail to see why 7 lives are risked to study worms.
Hmm, well, it looks like you DO see why seven lives are risked...
> > When was the last manned European space flight
> You ever heard the term 'cosmonaut'
You ever heard of Russians? I don't believe they are a big part of ESA.
>>> When was the last manned European space flight :)
>> You ever heard the term 'cosmonaut'?
> You ever heard of Russians? I don't believe they are a big part of ESA.
European space flight != ESA
Russia = Eastern Europe
> European space flight != ESA
Well, let's see. This is an ESA launch, which the Russians are not a part of? Therefore the only meaningful data would be that which applies to the people involved, i.e. the Europeans who are not Russia.
I think about 7 kosmonauts died in space (or during their return from space). However, much more than one hundred people have died in ground accidents there.
In China, thousands died on the ground in a big launch accident.
You can probably find info about US and European accidents on space websites.
Notice how you're a troll but the grandparent is +Informative?
Offtopic rants about whats wrong with the USA: Informative.
Offtopic rants rebutting same, Flamebait.
See how it works here in pinko commie bullshit land?
I've seen some pretty nice looking Mexican heifers around L.A. If that were a waddle, it gives the term a whold new meaning. Democrats may not be hypocrites, and besides, we need them because they will do what conservatives don't want to do... namely, take care of people and things which need help or protection. Just don't call on them to confront "evil".
Ought... implemented...nice....
"Rosetta will inspect two asteroids (Otawara and Siwa) at close quarters."
I didn't know that Canada's Capitol was an asteroid...
You learn something new everday!
See the forbiden post Here
Fuck you, Phil Genera. You're an asshole. You ban people from #ti just because they want to talk about calculators. How about you get busy sucking on my huge cock while you take it up the ass from nickd. Suck it down, bitch. And unban me, too. Faggot.
Look, faggot, stop banning people from your fucking lousy ass channel on EFnet. Let people talk about calculators in #ti. Grow up and get a fucking life. You don't have to ban every fucking person who wants to talk about calculators or that has a question. Just because your butt buddy, nickd, doesn't like ticalc.org anymore doesn't mean you have to fucking ban people for talking about calculators. Now get busy sucking on my dick, you piece of shit.
Acceleration can be represented by a vector. That means that it has a direction and a magnitude.