ESA Plans Test of Asteroid Defense System

vinlud writes "It has been announced by Dutch television ESA has chosen the Don Quijote programme to investigate the possibilities of altering the collision course of asteroids heading for Earth. The program, selected among five other studies, contains two spacecraft: Hidalgo and Sancho. Hidalgo will impact an asteroid of approximately 500 m diameter at a relative speed of at least 10 km/s while Sancho will retreat to a safe distance to observe the impact. An animation of the mission sequence (6.49 Mb) can be downloaded from here."

Comments

It's All in the name

[Count of Montecristo]

While there will be incessant puns about the characters that this project is named after; given the fact that in the book, Don Quixote was out of his mind, I feel it is very appropriate, since it describes excactly what it does.

Perhaps the most famous part of this book is when Don Quixote gallantly charged at windmills, while Sancho watched. In his troubled mind, The windmills were evil Giants, which he sought to destroy to win the favors of his sweethart Dulcinea, wich is a very accurate depiction of what the program is supposed to do.

I find that the depiction, regardless of the obvious fact that in the book it was a hopeless cause; is a romantic metaphore, rather than an endorsement of failure, poor engineering or idealistic but unreachable goals.

As a side note, this book (El ingenioso Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha) is to the Spanish Language as The Count of Montecristo is to French, Luther's New testament translation is to German, and the works of Shakespeare are to English.