Deep Impact Comet-Smashing Video

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."

Comments

We need more missions like this.

[Musteval]

Then NASA can make a TV show. It'd increase funding, at least. Heck, make a reality show. Send people to Venus and see how long it takes them to realize they're going to die.

Re:We need more missions like this.

[Eric Coleman]

NASA already has a TV channel. You can watch rocket launches, which are cool, and watch people work in mission control, which is boring. Reality TV doesn't get much more real than the NASA TV channel.

What would really suck

[Transcendent]

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...

Re:What would really suck

[ytm]

From TFA:

The kinetic energy that will be released by the collision is estimated to be the equivalent of nearly 5 tons of TNT. However, this will only change the comet's velocity by about 0.0001 millimeters per second (0.014 inches per hour). The collision will not appreciably modify the orbital path of Tempel 1, which poses no threat to Earth now or in the foreseeable future.

You would need much heavier (or faster) probe to change comet's path significantly.

Re:What would really suck

[starbird]

Uh. Space is a near vaccum. What turbulence are you going to experience?

F=MA is the driving force of the cosmos. This comet isn't going to make a u-turn towards earth because a 800lb projectile hits it.

Why not look at the actual orbit of the comet, vs earths orbit and compute the DV required for the 2 orbits to intersect.

Tempel-1 isn't even a NEA. The orbit doesn't even cross the orbit of the earth.

haha

[pHatidic]

I clicked to watch the short version, and it just said "done." Well that sure was short.

PS top floor of the NASA building was ranked as one of the top ten places to have sex in public on Cornell campus. Not that I'd know or anything.

Coral Links Just in case

[OverlordQ]

Site was sluggish and can't remember if we've ever slashdotted NASA before :)

Long
Short

and what the hell Torrent Too

A make believe space

[sittingnut]

We are now so used to manipulated or visualized eye candy of space and planets, that when the real images etc. are released (as with Titan) its very anticlimactic and boring.

I'm just glad

[DanielMarkham]

I'm just glad that NASA is finally blowing something up. Enough of these silly robots and picutres, send in some TNT! (I think they call this "active science")

Blowing things up is always more interesting to the public than plain science missions. Perhaps next we can send some of those old ICMS to the moon. That would be a good show.

Seriously, NASA has been politicized so much over its entire history. Perhaps publicity impact should be a key factor in planning missions. It certainly couldn't hurt, and it could lead to a lot more funding for them

5 tons

[Karamchand]

It would be really cool if at least the submitters of new stories read their linked articles; the page clearly states that there won't be 5 kilotons, but the equivalent of 5 tons of TNT.

May I be the first to say

[varmittang]

We hope the mission is a Smashing success.

Re:deep impact?

[PoitNarf]

Obviously you haven't read anything about this mission at all. The goal of this mission is to blast debris out from inside of the comet so that we can understand what it is actually composed of. Notice how the spacecraft launches a projectile at the comet, and then slows down to stay out of the way so that it can scan the particles that spew out of the crater?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we don't have the means currently to deflect a large comet or asteroid like they did in Armageddon or something like that. Perhaps the impact data from this experiment will help us in a similar situation as in the movies sometime in the future.

NASA TV

[jspoon]

What they need is to put up a mission with an ordinary guy on board, someone the people can relate to. Just send up plenty of carbon rods and they'll be perfectly safe.

Re:NASA TV

[LiquidCoooled]

This is Big Brother.

jspoon, you have been voted out of the Big Brother spaceship.
You have 30 seconds to go to the airlock.

Re:We need more missions like this. - Yea, right.

[Inspector Lopez]

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.