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Deep Impact Comet-Smashing Video

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the mmm-delicious-space-porn dept.

DynaSoar writes "Dan Maas is the animation expert who produced NASA's Mars Rover animation which was subsequently used in the PBS Nova episodes 'Mars, Dead or Alive' and 'Welcome to Mars,' the majority of which was done while he was a Cornell student on a summer internship at NASA. His most recent release is NASA's best 'artist's conception' of the Tempel 1 Deep Impact mission. Nobody knows what will happen when 820 pounds of metal slams into the comet with 5 kilotons of force, but whatever happens, Maas's digital precreation is probably way more entertaining than NASA's imagery is likely to be. Two versions of the Deep Impact QuickTime video are available. A couple notes of interest: the original Mars video was produced as a music video, using Lenny Kravitz and Holst as soundtracks. This is available only to K-12 educators. Also, in the interview in the first link, when asked for an inspirational quote, he quotes John Carmack."

2 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. What would really suck by Transcendent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is if running this damn thing into the comet puts it on a trajectory to hit Earth down the line...

    Talk about one of the biggest "oops" of all time...

  2. Re:We need more missions like this. - Yea, right. by Inspector+Lopez · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I thought the animations of the Mars Rover landings were quite satisfactory, and were a genuine aid in conveying the critical and unusual sequence of events (unusual because of the beach ball landing scheme.). Of course, I wasn't expecting to be entertained by these videos; I was expecting to be educated. Entertainment is Lucas' job, and education is (part of) NASA's.

    Consider the adjacent Slashdot article about Lucas's new studio,
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/26/133217 &tid=186&tid=101, which is nicely and expensively appointed to generate additional cinematic circuses. I'm sure that Lucas et al. could provide a splendid animation of the comet impact. But:
    1. Would you pay $10 to see it once?
    2. Do you expect NASA to produce it for "free"?
    3. Do you expect NASA to subcontract the video to a "real" CG house?
    The box office from the Star Wars movies, and related paraphernalia licensing, sufficed to pay for several Shuttle missions, or perhaps ten major satellite programs, or a century's worth of space science at NSF. It may be that these films have inspired a few people to go into science and engineering, But these films are, of course, pure fantasy in their depiction of space and space travel. I don't mean to diminish the splendid entertainment that Lucas offers, but I can't help the following comparison:
    The Star Wars movies are, to the perception of space travel, what pornography is to the perception of sex.


    Items 2 and 3 above will strongly impact NASA's budget; high quality CG added to a documentary structure could easily run in the mid seven figures for a single film. For a tenth that amount you can get Pretty Good results, and keep a hundred grad students in beer and chips for a year.

    Those hundred grad students will get you to Mars in twenty years. Or, you could help George Lucas buy a spare yacht today.