NASA Prepares to Launch Comet-Buster

Chessphoon writes "NASA's Deep Impact, a spacecraft named after the 1998 movie, is scheduled to launch on January 12. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will collide with Comet Tempel 1 six months later on July 4, and create a crater so that the inside of the comet can be analyzed."

Comments

Re:What a waste of money

[albn]

Why did we go to the moon? It was a political "mine is bigger than yours" game. Also, we want to send miners up there to compensate for dwindling natural resources. How is that going to cost effective?

you must be a jock

[cheekyboy]

Because if all comets are NOT ice, but just normal asteroids that generate massive plasma/electric charges, then that changes *ALL* theories on how the earth/solar system was evolved, and that throws out other derived theories, and then it makes more new ones, which would lead to more discoveries and finally allowing you to get your anti-gravity device to get to the moon. OK.

Re:What a waste of money

[Mr2cents]

I have a better idea: why don't you divert money meant for the military to that worthy cause and stop whining about some millions spent on a space probe? Billions and billions are spent each day developing and building weapons. Incidentally, most misery on earth is caused by war (eg, famines are often caused by long wars causing farmers to stop cultivating the land).

You could also split it 50/50 between humanitary aid and space programs, you could still solve most if not all diseases and famine, while launching a mission like the two mars rovers EVERY DAY!