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Deep Impact Mission May Be Extended
SeaDour writes "The famous Deep Impact mission, which in 2005 launched a projectile in the path of comet Tempel 1, may be extended by NASA. The proposal is to slingshot the probe around the Earth as it passes by at the end of this year, putting it on a trajectory to reach comet Boethin in December 2008. Scientists want to see if the strange composition and behavior of Tempel 1 is more common than they had previously assumed. (The probe only had one projectile though, so we will not see another brilliant man-made explosion on this comet.) Additionally, while the probe is en route to the comet, researchers will point its on-board telescope at known exosolar planets to determine the compositions of their atmospheres."
Maybe they could hit Halley's comet in 1986.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I feel this would be a very good use of my tax dollars - getting a second mission from the same spacecraft.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Can no one do anything within the expected timeframe? :P
An asteroid is headed for us and what little money NASA has they are spending it on blowing up rocks. I'm glad you people are so calm about this plainly spelled out emergency. Fact is, NASA can't do anything against a 2 mile long rock. They should invest all that money in bomb shelters for the general population- and stop pretending to be anything more than scientific children.
Your hubris are going to cost us lives. But they'll be dead, so nothing to worry about really- huh.
Too bad the rest of the government can't follow this lead.
Just think about it for a second...
But it's out of projectiles, and won't blow up anything, so this time, many Boethins WON'T die to give us this information.
/me ducks. ;-p
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Now is the time for all good Americans to stand up and say "NO!" to the political hacks at NASA (appointed by the criminal Bush regime) who want to steal Earth's precious angular momentum. And for what? A so-called scientific mission costing millions of dollars? There are millions of starving children on Earth, and they can't eat spectroscopic data!
Using a gravitational slingshot around the Earth to accelerate this craft puts every human being on Earth at risk of falling space junk! And slowing Earth's orbit around the sun will lengthen our year - and you know what that means. Yep, more global warming, as more sunshine will reach Earth every year after this spacecraft passes.
No! We must speak up and not allow this mission to proceed! Not in our name!
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
They should have put a bitchin' bad multi-barrel probe launcher on that thing. Or maybe a machine-gun belt full of them.
See, this is why NASA should hire gamers to design their space probes.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
If wonder if they'd consider using the probe itself as the projectile and just monitoring with Spitzer...
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
...your nucwear wessels.
It was so boring. Armagedon at least had Liv Tyler.
At least this way there won't be another Russian lawsuit by some psychic over the Cosmic Consequences of beating up on comets again.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
IDKFA
'nuff said
Despite numerous observations of comets that are anomalous to the mainstream traditional theory that comets have something to do with the early formation of the planets, NASA continues to prioritize the theory over the data. We already possess all of the data we need to understand what it is that makes comets tick. The real problem is that neither NASA nor the space enthusiasts (on this forum at least) like the answer because it is a square peg in a round theory of the universe:
f
C omets
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pd
Comets are covered in great depth in Don Scott's "The Electric Sky" and Wallace Thornhill's upcoming book "The Electric Universe", as well as on their thunderbolts site at:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00subjectx.htm#
Some people will be surprised to learn that Wallace Thornhill accurately predicted the results of the Deep Impact Mission -- results which continue to confound NASA and the astrophysical community to this day. But predictions mean little these days so long as they are disconfirming to the theories we developed decades ago. And NASA continues to treat the anomalous data regarding comets as an issue that has no significant bearing upon the bigger cosmological picture.
It's clear by now that NASA's purpose is not to objectively interpret our observations of the universe, but rather to specifically find data that confirms the Big Bang and stellar evolution. They've stated as much. One thing is clear: comets will keep them very busy in this regard.
With regards to comets, the burden is no longer on the EU Theorists. They've made a prediction that came to pass. The burden is now upon the astrophysical community to read their theory of how comets work and to consider the details of the prediction and outcome of that prior mission. How is it that Thornhill could have known what would happen with Deep Impact? How could he have known about the pre-impact flash? Nobody was predicting anything like that. Can anybody really argue that this was by pure chance? Or is it possible that he's right?
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
I know your coment is modded "Funny," but I'm not sure you're kidding. In the case that you're serious:
1) NASA has a budget less than that of the National Park Service. A total of 0.6% of the federal budget in 2006 (16 billion out of 2.4 trillion). Considering that space colonization will ensure the survival of the Human race, I don't think were wasting our money with it. Especially since the DoD spend a whopping $447 billion (24.5 times that of NASA's budget.)
2) When did NASA become the Asteriod defense force? There's really no feasible way to divert an inter-planetary body (asteriod, comet) heading right for us, without more sophisticated space exploration technology, and, well, right now NASA won't be able to put men and women into space for four years, since their budget is continually cut thanks to people like you.
Really, there are FAR better places to cut federal spending than in the 0.7% of the budget that NASA spends.
Fascinating stuff, man. I always read the "electric comets" stuff and shrugged it off as more crazy pseudoscientific nonsense, without ever delving into the actual theory. I just wish I was knowledgeable enough to make a fair comparison between this radical theory and the more traditional ones...I will have to read more....
Thats the best laugh I've had this week. Everybody knows comets were created by An Intelligent Designer exactly 6000 years ago.
Very few people are following it. This is a big problem because as time moves forward, evidence continues to mount in favor of the EU Theories. People on these boards are especially hostile and condescending towards the theory, but you shouldn't think much of it because very few of those people have actually read the materials. I've read a fair amount of it all and it's become clear to me that these people are not receiving a fair hearing. I have an electrical engineering background, which helps a little bit in understanding their theory. But the EU Theorists intentionally write for a semi-technical audience. Even if you are only partially familiar with the mainstream theories, they typically provide you with a larger historical context about how the theories have evolved than any of the traditional cosmology materials.
It's always nice to see that there are still some people out there that are willing to evaluate the data on their own. The underlying lesson people get from the current mainstream cosmologies is that cosmology is too complicated for everyday people to understand. This causes people to defer to authority and to disrespect the views of anybody who is not eminently qualified. The problem with this is that it does not take into account the possibility that the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy may have more to do with how we have educated our astrophysicists than being some legitimate physical enigma. Astrophysicists are all taught to model plasma in space with fluid-gas type equations in their magnetohydrodynamics courses. Although this makes modeling plasma far easier, it completely ignores the fact that plasma in the laboratory has electrical resistance and conducts electricity. This is a very big deal because electrical plasma acts *nothing* like a fluid. It naturally forms electrical transmission lines that are called Birkeland Currents, and these Birkeland Currents will twist tightly around one another without combining. With enough electrical energy, this twisting can pinch matter into spheres. And with enough electrical energy, these spheres can then be forced to split into two smaller spheres in spectacular explosions. We know all of this for a fact from laboratory plasma physics experiments, and yet, even though we see a never-ending stream of direct evidence that this is happening within our space observations, the astrophysicists feel no obligation to consider any cosmological theory that might threaten the ones they developed a hundred years ago. As if they have the right to cherry-pick their science, the mainstream astrophysicists opt to ignore all of this.
Hannes Alfven, who received a Nobel Physics Prize for creating the magnetohydrodynamics field, during his acceptance speech warned the astrophysics community that in light of his findings over the course of his career, he came to the realization that much of his earlier work that treated plasmas as fluids was a "pseudo-pedagogical" concept: an idea that superficially appears to be helpful, but which in fact causes great harm to our ability to understand the universe. Ironically, the man who proposed the specific mechanisms for modeling non-electrical plasmas in space ended up being the world's premier advocate for electricity in space. This was about four decades ago. He was roundly ignored. Few professionally trained astrophysicists are even aware today of the warning he made to the physics community. But the importance of his statements has only increased over time as it has become apparent that plasma permeates nearly all of space. His warning that the mainstream astrophysics community was heading towards a dead end remains prophetic to this day.
If you are interested in learning more, you can get a comprehensive treatment of the EU materials in Don Scott's "The Electric Sky". The Thunderbolts crew is about to post up a public forum to discuss the materials within the next couple of weeks. You can also download some video torrents titled "Universe -- The Cosmology Quest" (parts 1 and 2) and "Thunderbolts of the Gods" that provide a more gentle introduction to the material.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Trust me, its crap.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.