Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, July 04, 2005
Nubile Projectile vs The Penetrator
"Right now we're minus one spacecraft," said Rick Grammier, Deep Impackt project manager at JPL. "It's been totally vaporized... as planned."At last our knowledge of comets is more than skin deep. In a split seconds the Penetrator blasted off the Nubile Projectile's clothes, revealing what space weathering had obscured. She ain't pretty (but a billion years will do that to a gal), but now we know a bit more about her history than we could learn by passively watching a telescope... I wonder about the little jet on the right of the first picture - secondary explosion or a previously existing jet? A photographic artifact? Still the point to doing more! impactor based missions is that, as scientists put it:
- we still do not understand the physics of space weathering well enough to [italics mine]confidently assay mineralogy of diverse asteroids by remote-sensing...
For the last decade it's been "fear the stranger, hate the stranger" - now some think we're at "kill the stranger" stage - but to me, this little bump in the sky at 23000 mph was filled with love. No-one was hurt in this smashup that didn't know what they were getting into...
Of course, the ultimate collision didn't quite live up to artistic expectations, but it did turn out that Tempel 1 was a great deal more firm than previously believed. If it weren't for their long periods, comets may turn out to be a great place for men to live.Some wonder if Deep Impact has
anti-ballistic missile applications? Of course it does. Clementine-2 - the first designed impactor mission - was canceled in '93 because of it's association with SDI.
The problem is: hitting objects at long distances is a useful skill to have - whether you're a baseball player, or a nation worried about national defense, or a frustrated engineer that wants to know - quickly and cheaply - just what M and S class asteroids are made of. Still my favorite twinned body is Toutatis, shown here, passing by only a few lunar distances away last september. I'm not the only one reaching for sexual analogies - the new scotsman calls this The big prang theory...
Labels: comets, deep impact, humor, space, space sports, space05
¶ 10:32 AM 0 comments
Friday, July 01, 2005
the Nubile Projectile gets no respect
What the heck is Deep Impact, anyway?National Geographic:
- Scientists, who know very little about the interior of comets, hope the trash can-size projectile will smash a hole deep enough in the comet's icy exterior to reveal what lies inside it.
No, actually - It's a table, and a washing machine!.
JPL calls Deep Impact an "Impactor" - which is about as sexless a term that NASA could come up with, which much have been chosen with great deliberation and forethought.
So, anyway, as Deep Impact is a washer, a dryer, a trashcan, a table, and an impactor, I know what it is now.
it's absolutely everything a 50s woman could use in space.
It's a washing machine:
Great. And what 2050s woman would want to do laundry? Let's hurl our appliances at the stars. What if we actually did start - purposefully - flinging our malfunctioning gear to immolate itself against various comets, asteroids, and worlds?
- "Little Magee Mae, of Chicago, Illinois, smashed her 1975 gremlin against Phobos today, to great scientific result and satisfaction. Magee, who is a grandmother of 3, clapped her hands and twirled with glee. 'That'll teach that old stinker', she said. 'I been afraid to drive that for 65 years'."
"Bill Smith, of East Clinton, Texas, hit Toutatis with his Xbox 780 today. 'It made a better explosion in space than it ever did on the TV', he said."
"A group of internet enthusasists coated asteroid MN2004 today with a full spread of AOL subscription CDs. They note that the dramatic increase in reflectivity will help in tracking it when it passes by again in 2029. Some scientists expressed concerns about the Yorp Effect, but a spokesman for the group, tapping lightly against a map of Washington, said 'oh, no - we calculated for that precisely...'"
And 625,000 names on a mini-cd are getting smashed against it:
- We don’t know what level of satisfaction the 625,000 will get knowing their name is going to be vapourised in space hitting a traditional symbol of woe and misfortune. However it is nice to know that they are involved in the highest smashing of a record ever recorded. Now why didn’t they include some Boyzone singles and some Bulgarian Popfolk while they were at it?
After the spectrographic analysis is performed (I have to stop reading these NASA press releases, it's making me overuse passive voice!), we'll be able to calculate the comet's value on earth, in dollars. It's liable to be a big number - but an even simpler number, if we could use the cometary materials IN space (in-situ), is easy to calculate. Launch costs from earth are well over 100,000.00 $/lb, and estimates for the comet's mass range from .1x10
Comet Tempel 1 worth 2.2 million trillion dollars in earth orbit!
Now look. That's a really big number. It's hard to cope with.
I wish it was possible to do a fantasy plot of this asset vs google's assets on some fictional stock exchange, and I remember how hard people tried to open new routes to India, Japan and the Americas.
It's easy to repeat this mission for other objects that are equally interesting - and closer. I am so tired about endless talk of defending against asteroids and never talk about using them. I'd go on - by I have written about it too many times before.
Labels: comets, deep impact, humor, space, space sports, space05
¶ 2:50 PM 0 comments
