Expect Fireworks when NASA blows up comet

[SunfallE]

I was reading this in the newspaper the other day??.

Scientists hope the July 4th collision between the Deep Impact spacecraft and Tempel 1 will gouge a crater in the comet surface while an impactor and mother ship collect near real-time data. If the $333 million mission is successful, Deep Impact will be the first spacecraft to touch the surface of a comet.

The force of the collision is equal to about 5 tons of dynamite. The resulting crater could range from the size of a house to a football stadium. Impact is expected around 1:52 am EDT on July 4, 2005.

If you want the full details here?s the article:
[URL=http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58315&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0]Deep Impact[/URL]

I was a bit surprised when I read this article, as I don?t recall seeing anything about it in the news when the ship was launched back in mid-January. Perhaps I missed seeing or reading about it.

What I am curious about is what all of you think about it? Personally I think blowing things up or at least trying to blow them up isn?t a good method of investigation. I have to wonder what was going through their minds when they came up with this idea. I find it appalling that so much money was spent just to try and blow up part of a comet.

I was especially offended by the statement: NASA guarantees that its experiment will not significantly change the comet?s orbit nor will the smashup put the comet or any remnants of it on a collision course with Earth. I think such a statement is quite arrogant. How can you possibly guarantee such a thing? I guess we will all find out in just a few days.

[Frankie]

Unfortunatly we here on earth wont see anything unless we have telescopes. I heard the guy on the news yesterday explain how far away it is. Even with a telescope seeingit wont be easy. It will mostly be a darkend mass that may "light up" with impact. I beleive blowing a crator into a comet just to figure out how they are made what they are made of and other things like that is quite silly in my opinon.

Also though... I agree with you. How do they know their plan isnt going to knock that thing into a different path. Send it straight into earth. Hey it could be the movie Armageddon all over again (or deep impact if you like seeing part of the world drowned)

Either way what i think they are doing isnt really necessary at the moment considering all the money that went into this project.

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]Discovering the composition and nature of comet's could be quite a significant discovery. They can't land anything on the surface, so really, what is so wrong about crashing something into it? It's not even the space shuttle itself that they're crashing into it, but rather a probe the size of a barrel. The $333 million price tag is not merely for the impactor. It covers everything from wages to launching, to technology etc. This thing orbits between Mars and Jupiter, so it is a long way away. If you somehow think that they're just going to stick something in it's path without examining all the possible ramifications and outcomes, then you need to wake up and smell the coffee. They can say that it won't hit Earth, because they would have studied all the outcomes meticulously.

I think that this operation has tremendously important possibilities, and is a worthwhile effort.[/size]

[Frankie]

Just a note: Coffee puts me to sleep.

Anyways I agree partially to you. But I just dont see why we really need to KNOW what a damn rock is made of. Rice, dust, space slime... Honestly i dont see why anyone cares. What use would that info give us?

"Look a comets gonna crash into earth!" - Some dude

Another dude- "At least we know what its made of. Id hate to die and not know what made up the thing that killed us."

[Baron Samedi]

[quote=Straight From The Fricking Article] -Scientists hope the July 4 collision will gouge a crater in the comet's surface large enough to reveal its pristine core and perhaps yield cosmic clues to the origin of the solar system.

-Comets -- frozen balls of dirty ice, rocks and dust -- are leftover building blocks of the solar system after a cloud of gas and dust condensed to form the sun and planets 4 1/2 billion years ago. As comets arc around the sun, their surfaces heat up so that only their frozen interiors possess original space material.

-This suggests that the comet's inside holds some of the pristine material of the early solar system.[/quote]
[size=1]Any words you don't understand, just ask.[/size]

[Frankie]

You know those words dont bother me. I can easily get what they THINK they know its made of and what they THINK made up the univarse.

The following comment has little to do with this topic but im saying it for a reason.

I was in class one day meditating like i always do. I was also in the classroom with several other people. They were there for the weekly school forum. Their topic was... Creation vs Evolution.

One girl went on about how evolution. Says a comet strickes earth and life begins. One boy asks her where her comet comes from. She says perhaps energy. I say in my head" whered your energy come from"

The class debaded where things were created or whether things evolved.

Yet there i sat shocked that not ONE of them thought about this: The world nay everything that exists was created.... to evolve. I bugged me the rest of the day.

MY honest question here is. So what if we find ou t the origin of this or the origin of that... What use will that info be. aside from proving once and for all what perhaps madkes up all existing things. then we have a little more useless ingformation to carry around in our heads.

----
Now judge me all you want. Say im stupid nieve and arrogant. I dont really care. I may not be very smart but i honestly dont care. I like where I am.

[James]

[color=#332e1d][font=franklin gothic medium]Joyce Meyer once scoffed at the idea of studying salmon who swim upstream to mate. She said something like "why do we waste money studying that? No need to study it - it happens because God made it that way!"

Does that strike anyone else as dangerously ignorant? lol

Obviously, if life were that simple, well...we'd have no technology to speak of. Studying things (whether you're studying an animal or something in space), provides knowledge. And that knowledge is usually translated into something functional. Experiments in space have indirectly led to advancements in medical technology, for example.

And obviously, researchers will "think" something and they'll experiment to find out the truth. People "thought" that there might have been water on Mars and only recently, evidence of long-gone water was actually discovered there.

So, I never understand the mindset that says "why bother?" Well, okay, let's just live in a dark little box and never attempt to learn/discover anything about the universe. I just don't know how so many advances can be taken for granted in such a way.

As Baron accurately said, the article itself states the reasons why the mission is being undertaken.[/font][/color]

[Corey]

[quote name='Frankie']I may not be very smart but i honestly dont care. I like where I am.[/quote]
[size=1]Well...
At least you're happy.

Like James said, if no one bothered to figure out how things worked, we'd still be living in caves. Some ancestor to humans, at one point, probably asked himself how fire works. Then they wondered if it could be made. Bingo, you have one of the first major discoveries of man.

I'm actually pretty excited about this. Granted, I wish they'd try and explore a comet outside of the solar system. I'd rather have more info on the Universe than Sol's realm.[/size]

[Retribution]

[SIZE=1]I for one believe that the probe will completely miss the comet. There's plenty of variables to keep track of, and a very small target to hit. Making this a waste of NASA dollars. How deep does the probe have to gouge into the comet to find the pristine matter within? Is it even possible to go that deep with such a small probe? **shrug**

As stated by others, it could possibley yield useful information, so I'll keep my mind open about the usefuleness of such an operation.[/SIZE]

[James]

[color=#332E1D][font=franklin gothic medium]Do not forget that NASA landed [i]two[/i] probes at opposite sides of Mars. They said it was akin to "threading a needle from a mile away".

If they can do that, they can probably hit a comet. They've done it before, anyway - they've flown a probe into the tail of a specific comet. So it's not unreasonable.[/color][/font]

[Delta]

[COLOR=#95005E][SIZE=1]Also, at point of impact, the probe will be travelling at some 10 km/s. Add to that the fact that Tempel 1's about the same volume as a sphere 6 km in diameter and has a density reportedly lower than that of water (and is probably porous) and that's probably enough.

As for the possiblity of the impactor pushing the comet off its course:
"If Tempel 1 were a Boeing 747, the impactor would be the size of a mosquito. "
[RIGHT]-http://www.planetary.org/deepimpact/tempel1.html[/RIGHT]

[QUOTE]-Comets -- frozen balls of dirty ice, rocks and dust -- are leftover building blocks of the solar system after a cloud of gas and dust condensed to form the sun and planets 4 1/2 billion years ago. As comets arc around the sun, their surfaces heat up so that only their frozen interiors possess original space material.
-This suggests that the comet's inside holds some of the [b]pristine material[/b] of the early solar system.[/QUOTE] Moon rocks and rocks from outer space are believed to contain assemblages that date back to the creation of the solar system because their enviroment "lacks earth-style weathering and erosion processes." The closest thing you get are *really* ancient episodes of bombardment and collisions, which makes them excellent material to study the SS's history with.

[quote name='Frankie']MY honest question here is. So what if we find ou t the origin of this or the origin of that... What use will that info be. aside from proving once and for all what perhaps madkes up all existing things. then we have a little more useless ingformation to carry around in our heads.[/quote]Reminds me of Titan A.E. *chuckles* We all know what it's about, the search for the spacecraft that can create another planet for the human space colonies. Farfetched, yes, but anything's possible.

The way I see it, we're collecting all these information so that we can find out what makes everything in the SS tick. Once you know how it formed and how things moved about, man-made planets (or solar systems, if your imagination can handle it) may be within reach. Also, the data may help us in the search for other Earth-like planets (knowing the conditions in the time this planet formed) and possibly extraterrestrial intelligence. [/SIZE][/COLOR]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]I don't imagine firing a 350kg copper probe directly into the path of a comet half the size of Manhattan [b]and hitting it[/b] will pose much of a problem, to be honest. If you don't think that they can accurately predict the trajectory of both parties, then you're in denial. Vectors, anyone?

But I'd like to run with what Frankie said for a minute. What use is there in finding out stuff? What use is there in researching phenomena or facts that you are unaware of...

Penicillin, nuclear reactors, atomic structure, computers, magnetic fields, chemical reactions, electricity, plastic. Just a couple of obviously useful things that research has discovered.

Maybe it doesn't worry you, or doesn't interest you, as to where we came from and how the solar system originated. But the fact is, it is an important and worthwhile discovery. Closing your eyes and blocking your ears does not make the rest of the world cease to exist .[/size]

[RioLaskand]

[quote]Penicillin, nuclear reactors, atomic structure, computers, magnetic fields, chemical reactions, electricity, plastic. Just a couple of obviously useful things that research has discovered.[/quote]

All of those are very important technological advances, but what if this new material also sparks the creation of an even more powerful weapon than the Atomic bomb?

Also, I am sure all of you have taken Pre-Calculus/Calculus, and you know how complicated and easy to mess up Vectors are. Everything has to be perfect, and while these minds are the most brilliant of anyone on Earth, there still could be one slight miscalculation that could screw us totally.

That is just IMHO, and I am all for learning about the secrets of the universe through new material, but instead of searching for something to potentially leave our planet, how about fixing it? Anyone noticed the 2.30 dollars/gallon price tag (well up in here)? How about cleaner transportation first?

Okey dokey. Rant over. Resume discussion.

That's just my two cents.

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]Fortunately, these guys are professionals who have nice big computers to help, and have probably checked their calculations a dozen times from scratch.

As for the atomic bomb thing, they want to examine the material to see if it contains information about how the solar system was formed. Not only will it be composed of elements we already know about, but the extraction progress is rather difficult...don't you think?

And thankfully there is more than one group of scientists performing research into things ~_^[/size]

[TheShinje]

Seriously, $333 million to blow a crater in a space rock millions of miles away? How many mouths would that cash feed?

It's not necessarily a bad thing to go out exploring all the space God has given us, but I think that getting our earth in order and aiding those less fortunate than ourselves should take precedence over stargazing.

But, that's not nearly as galmorous as another possible "big-bang-theory-prover"...

[Tsurigane]

[FONT=Comic Sans MS]So....they're really gonna blow up a freakin' comet?! :animeblus :animeblus Cool..... :D :p [/FONT]

[RioLaskand]

Yeah, with $333 million, people could actually help the starving children in Africa. Live 8 anyone? Change the budget spending?

[James]

[color=#332e1d][font=franklin gothic medium]I always hear that argument. But I think it's a total cop-out.

I mean, why should Toyota spend billions of dollars engineering new cars? Couldn't they just hand that money over to Africa?

Don't buy those new shoes. Give the money to Africa.

By all means, I support helping out Africa, but you've got to get serious here. We can't let the world stop spinning at the same time - and the issues in Africa are far, far more complex than just giving them millions of dollars. In fact, throwing money at the problem hasn't worked terribly well for many years.

Instead of throwing money at it, leaders should smarten up and spend more time trying to understand the problems and listen to the various groups there. In the meantime, I see nothing wrong with the quaint and unimportant pursuits, like trying to understand the birth of our solar system and species.[/font][/color]

[Roxie Faye]

[color=#9933ff]I, too, would like to speak up and say that I don't give a damn if we crash into that thing or not, or what we learn from it. The money doesn't even bother me. According to The one campaign (I'm sure you've all heard of "make poverty history" - the One campaign is the American equivalent-ish), that's not even one percent of our budget. (And I'm not going to even launch in on a rant about Africa because that's not what this thread is about.)

We spend trillions of dollars every year - the gov't collects taxes, distributes money to gov't programs, invests it, trades it, throws it away on rediculous things; $333 million is like a sliver of pie. NASA gets very little of the government's money.

We already have theories on how the solar system was born, and what comets are made of; all this is doing is backing it up with some facts. Astronomy has grown as much as possible in the theories department - everything is confirmation from here on out. Let the NASA scientists go back up their facts, but it's not all that important to me.

BTW, one quick thing I noticed on page 1: Baron was listing a bunch of discoveries, etc. Penicillin was not researched - I'm sure you all know that it was quite an accidental discovery. ^_~ [/color]

[Retribution]

[QUOTE=MistressRoxie][color=#9933ff]I, too, would like to speak up and say that I don't give a damn if we crash into that thing or not, or what we learn from it. The money doesn't even bother me. According to The one campaign (I'm sure you've all heard of "make poverty history" - the One campaign is the American equivalent-ish), that's not even one percent of our budget. (And I'm not going to even launch in on a rant about Africa because that's not what this thread is about.)

We spend trillions of dollars every year - the gov't collects taxes, distributes money to gov't programs, invests it, trades it, throws it away on rediculous things; $333 million is like a sliver of pie. NASA gets very little of the government's money.

We already have theories on how the solar system was born, and what comets are made of; all this is doing is backing it up with some facts. Astronomy has grown as much as possible in the theories department - everything is confirmation from here on out. Let the NASA scientists go back up their facts, but it's not all that important to me. [/color][/QUOTE]
[SIZE=1]I must say it doesn't bother me much what happens with this experiment, but it [I]does in fact[/I] matter on a larger scale, whether we care or not.

As for the 'everything is just confirmation now' arguement you brought up, that's completely blind. We may never know everything, and who's to say that these 'confirmations' don't bring up even more questions and theories about the universe? The universe is vast, and we know comparitively nothing about it, I'd venture to say. So whatever we can find out is helping out humanity develop new technology, advance our lives farther, making living for future generations easier.[/SIZE]

[James]

[QUOTE=MistressRoxie][color=#9933ff]

We already have theories on how the solar system was born, and what comets are made of; all this is doing is backing it up with some facts. Astronomy has grown as much as possible in the theories department - everything is confirmation from here on out. Let the NASA scientists go back up their facts, but it's not all that important to me.

[/color][/QUOTE]
[color=#332E1D][font=franklin gothic medium]That's "all" it's doing? Whether it interests you or not, supporting theories through evidence and research is incredibly important. Many of the benefits may not be immediately apparent to you, but a great deal of this research trickles down into our everyday lives.

As a matter of fact, some related research also directly benefits third world countries. This is particularly true in areas like energy production. I see a lot of people dismissing things like this so easily, but I don't think they are thinking further down the line. I don't think they are recognizing how interconnected many of these things really are.[/color][/font]

[Roxie Faye]

[quote name='Retribution][SIZE=1']As for the 'everything is just confirmation now' arguement you brought up, that's completely blind. We may never know everything, and who's to say that these 'confirmations' don't bring up even more questions and theories about the universe? The universe is vast, and we know comparitively nothing about it, I'd venture to say. So whatever we can find out is helping out humanity develop new technology, advance our lives farther, making living for future generations easier.[/SIZE][/quote]
[color=#9933ff]Retri - we know a lot about the universe. Trust me. I've studied Astronomy extensively this past year to know that we know a [b]lot[/b]. What we have are theories; tons and tons of theories. Einstein's theories; Hubble's theories & calculations; etc. What is needed now is facts, figures, and data for confirmation. [b]You're right[/b] - if we find a discrepancy we will have to change our theories, but we've theoriezed enough times - I think we're pretty close.

[QUOTE=Retribution][SIZE=1]I must say it doesn't bother me much what happens with this experiment, but it [I]does in fact[/I] matter on a larger scale, whether we care or not.

As for the 'everything is just confirmation now' arguement you brought up, that's completely blind. We may never know everything, and who's to say that these 'confirmations' don't bring up even more questions and theories about the universe? The universe is vast, and we know comparitively nothing about it, I'd venture to say. So whatever we can find out is helping out humanity develop new technology, advance our lives farther, making living for future generations easier.[/SIZE][/QUOTE][QUOTE=James][color=#332E1D][font=franklin gothic medium]That's "all" it's doing? Whether it interests you or not, supporting theories through evidence and research is incredibly important. Many of the benefits may not be immediately apparent to you, but a great deal of this research trickles down into our everyday lives.

As a matter of fact, some related research also directly benefits third world countries. This is particularly true in areas like energy production. I see a lot of people dismissing things like this so easily, but I don't think they are thinking further down the line. I don't think they are recognizing how interconnected many of these things really are.[/color][/font][/QUOTE]

This is where [b]I agree with you[/b], Retri - that I don't care what happens with this experiment, but experiments and research in general [i]do[/i] matter.

I don't believe I've ever said that they don't matter; I said I didn't care what happened with [i]this[/i] comet experiment. I perfectly well understand the importance of researching things and having evidence for theories; it is practically the foundation of modern science.

Let me reiterate my position one more time; it has not changed, but before, [i]perhaps[/i] because of unclear writing, it's obvious you didn't see its intention so I'll reword the best I can and hope that it is enough.

I understand that research and knowledge is important for the advancement of science and [b]technology[/b], but I do not particularly care in this [b][i]one incident[/i][/b] whether we find out what the Solar System is made of; it is not something that interests me particularly. We all choose what holds our interest and what we are interested in. You choose to be interested in what this comet has to say about what elements the solar system was made of; I do not. I did say [b]Let the NASA scientists go back up their facts[/b] but this very particular incident does not intrigue me.[/color]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]I know it was accidental Roxie ~_^ But the development of the information and further discovery and investigation as to [b]why[/b] and [b]how[/b] it works was what I was referring to. And I'd like to further support what James said about throwing money at the problem. The $100 million that was raised by the initial Live Aid cleared Africa's debt for... a month, I believe. It covered their costs for a [b]month[/b]. Simply raising money and sending it to them is not enough to have any real impact. The problem is with the structure and corruption in many third-world countries. They need the help to be able to start from scratch and build up their economies, rather than being sent transfers with which they can only consume, instead of produce.[/size]

[RioLaskand]

Alright. I think retracting my little rant is in order in light of new ideas. However, I am still pretty nervous about the whole ordeal, even though it has already happened. Maybe it's because I have seen too many of those bad Sci-fi movies where something ALWAYS goes wrong.

[Aaryanna]

Well I kind of agree with SunfallE that $333 is quite a bit of money just to attempt to blow up a comet. Or rather a tiny part of one.

Yet I also think it's a good idea to try and learn about how things work. We can speculate that a comet is made of this and that, but until we actually look and see we will never know for sure.

I haven't seen anything on the news so I don't know if it succeeded or not. It will be interesting to see if it actually worked. ^_^