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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."
Yes, I read TFA. I know that there is no danger. But those crazy scientists in the movies always think they are safe too.
Photography, technology, and my dog Scout - http://mattstratton.com
What if the comets retaliate by impacting Earth?
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
The NASA project was *not* named after the movie. Read http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/01/comet.bus ter.ap/index.html
for the real story.
From a previous slashdot article.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Maybe the technology could be used to take a comet off-course when it's about to hit something we don't want it to (eg Earth)?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
IMO, why waste money to see the content of a comet? There are so many better things to learn and explore in this great cosmos of ours.
I bet there's a tootsie pop in the middle and we'll still be left pondering that eternal question: how many licks does it take to get to the middle of a tootsie pop?
course with earth and we have to figure out how to nudge it off course, the data this mission gathers will be invaluable.
The ass we save may be our own.
--Rob
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?
Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
NASA should have considered planning this mission to be a near-flyby. Given their record of hitting what they aim to miss and missing what they aim to hit...
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
I think you are thinking about it the wrong way. NASA doesn't like to spend more money to send crafts over 1000 times the distance or greater (where other comets might be) but rather would spend money on analyzing a comet right near by. It saves them money actually and because they have never seen the comet up close its possible that its something besides just a big rock. NASA is full of optimists who think that something amazing to learn could be anywhere in the cosmos so they will take the time to look at anything they can. Waste of time, I don't think so.
Wheras the pioneer spacecraft carried media of human genome, voices, sounds, animals, how the world workewd, this mission needed to crater a giant comet.
Therefore, the media stored on board consists of Gigli, Ishtar, Hudson hawk, Battlefield Earth, and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Can the editors get a clue, as said in other articles else where on the net, the name DEEP IMPACT was determined about the same time as the movie title was, but was 100% a coincedence and not chosen because of a movie.
Yes a small anal point, but jeez, you guys fail basic Journalism 101 class dudes.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Why do people still insist that there is a difference between "BIG BUSINESS" and the "government" that we currently have in this and many other countries?
Are we not being currently run like a company, wasn't that touted when we elected (selected if you like) the first "CEO" president/Harvard Business school graduate? Do you ACTUALLY think that the "government" is building and running these programs? Those government workers are actually getting the bloated paychecks? It's BIG BUSINESS! And, the last time I checked, the two largest government run agencies or programs made a profit last year - the good ole' U.S. Post Office (THEY want to privatize it, darn, if it could only lose money for a while) and Social Security, which never missed a payment, has enough money to maintain solvency to 2052 (and then would still be able to meet obligations up to 80% of it's current payments) and has been the most successful GOVERNMENT program in history (ask all the presidents from LBJ to Baby Bush who have "borrowed" and left IOUs and continued to borrow from the system). Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the argument is that it is a part of the general fund, therefore the money can be use for any purpose. But tell me this, how can we use the money for the General Fund when it's there, yet not help out the program FROM the general Fund when it needs it? Why does it then have to stand alone as a self-funding program?) To continue, both these programs are genuinely for the greater good of society. And both are being targeted for privatization. Along with all the overgrown, hazardous trees that are causing all the fire hazards in our National Parks. Yes, BIG BUSINESS would run it better. And before you go point to the example of the Millau bridge in France being built with "private" funds and for only an estimated 394m euros ($524 U.S.), instead of the billions that that the erstwhile Bay Bridge is costing in San Francisco. Remember your fables: "The devil WILL get is due!" The company(s) that built the bridge have a contract for 75 years to collect fees. How many times will this private corporation raise fees? What happens when it can't meet its obligation to repair the bridge, because their calculated fees aren't high enough or the public balks at paying them? Will the "government" then simply close the bridge? No, they will come in and "bail" out this private "BIG BUSINESS" to keep the bridge safe and operating. Instead of letting this private sector enterprise simply fail. Just ask the "private, BIG BUSINESS" airlines in the U.S.
Sorry for the rant, but of course business is a part of the success of the U.S. and the world, not the end-all and be-all. It has always been thought of as a partnership. That is why the founders of this "democracy" put such constraints on commerce; they saw the dangers as well as the reward. Unfortunately, BIG BUSINESS as risen to such heights, that more than likely, it will choke on it's own greed and take the rest of us with it.
Regards, A small business owner!
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!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Send an I-pod instead. That might survive. If it doesn't get stolen en-route.
Meta will eat itself
She thinks that the NASA is just hiding the fact that the comet is about to hit us and is dangerous so they decided to blow it up but masked the attempt as a scientific experiment.
:)
(and before you, smartasses, ask me, yes, she is a girl
You can't handle the truth.
the nanotech civilization living on the comet wipes Earth off the Solar System...
With luck, they'll be more precise about it and just wipe out the US government.
Well, we can hope...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Incidentally, most misery on earth is caused by war (eg, famines are often caused by long wars causing farmers to stop cultivating the land).
No. War is a symptom. It exacerbates the problem, but it is not the problem.
Most misery on earth is caused by selfishness. Uncontrolled selfishness between two humans will often lead to either a fistfight or exclusion of the other person.
War is either a fistfight (WWII) or a hissy fit (cold war and its multiple unofficial wars) fought for leaders of nations who are pissed off at each other for verious reasons (some unjust, some just).
I'm glad we're finally doing something about these damned comets.
Kill 'em all!
at band camp, we converted my flute into a rocket. We had a launch and it intercepted an asteroid. We steered the asteroid into a collision path with the earth. It was all very politically motivated of course. You see we wanted to bring in the new world order with a bang.
NASA's Deep Impact, a spacecraft named after the 1998 movie why would anybody want to remember that movie let alone name something after it. The only reason it was made was because celestial objects destroying the planet was in that year. I mean remember that one fad where volcanoes destroying stuff was in. But i dont think NASA would be that connected into hollywood-movie-pop-fopa to name something after a movie because movies are so fake. I mean hell no one would name a fusion generator the octavious because a guy in spiderman2 created the most bullshit fusion reaction ever. Just my feeling.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
You completely miss the point of NASAs existence.
Of course things cost more when NASA does it because the purpose of NASA is to take government money and spread it out to as many other companies as possible. Without this, companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and numerous other aerospace companies big and small would never exist (or be radically different).
This is a method to keep engineers, scientists, average joe workers, and the thousands of other workers that provide related services and materials to them employed. Doing something interesting with that money is completely secondary.
Some other countries choose to give direct subsidies to their high tech companies. Americans seem to frown or this so the government chooses to get NASA to do it indirectly.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
How is that going to cost effective?
It will be, just not anytime soon. Don't get caught in the trap of always thinking what is here and now is all there is.
Spend a moment and think on the scale technology has driven forward in the past 200 years. We have gone from living in the dark at night, without climate control, to sending people to the moon and mechanical drones to Mars.
Quantum computing and nanotech are going to hit eventually. If not one of those, then it is likely someone will stumble on something completely missed by the entire mass of humanity and change the world again. Or, of course, we could just all die out due to a disaster at any given moment...
Deep Impact, by contrast, will provide "instant gratification," says Grammier. The entire $330 million mission should be wrapped up a month after impact.
So, the Europeans are going to geeeently land their little rover (Beagle III?), putter around, and delicately inspect rocks and dust. Boooriiiinng! :-)
NASA, in typical American fashion...
KA-BLOOIEE! Blow it up! Blow it up! I'm so glad I'm an American. This is a country that combines science, space explosions, and patriotism into one very cool bundle. And we can take pictures of it from Mars.I. Love. This. Countryyy! Yeeeeeeaaah! *does Bush/Ballmer monkey dance*