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Space Science

Cassini's First Glimpse of Saturn 160

Posted by chrisd from the radioactive-power-sources-are-okay dept.
EccentricAnomaly writes "The Cassini spacecraft has snapped its first picture of Saturn from 177 million miles away. Cassini is due to arrive at Saturn in July 2004, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn (Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 just did quick flybys of Saturn). Cassini carries the Huygens probe which will land on Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005."
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Cassini's First Glimpse of Saturn More

Cassini's First Glimpse of Saturn

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  • WOO HOO! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rhinobird ( 151521 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @10:24AM (#4583601) Homepage
    Woo Hoo! Those 72 pounds of plutonium have almost reached their destination. Those thrice accursed Satunians won't know what hit them! And we also have a little surprise for those shifty little Titans too...

  • Why (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Pussy Is Money ( 527357 )
    I know this is cool and all... but still... we have so many problems on our own earth... shouldn't we solve those first? I mean i have no prolbem with a bunch of scientists playing with taxpayer money but shouldn't the common men get seomthing out of it as well??
    • Isn't that enough?

    • Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02, 2002 @10:30AM (#4583623)
      I don't know Columbus, this new world thing is cool and all, but, we have so many problems here in Spain...Shouldn't we solve those first? I mean I have no problem with explorer playing with the crown's money(peoples' taxes), but shouldn't the aristocrocy (and the people) get something out of it as well??
      • But you get this cool webpage for your tax dollars!

        http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

      • Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @01:10PM (#4584199)
        I don't know Columbus, this new world thing is cool and all, but, we have so many problems here in Spain...Shouldn't we solve those first? I mean I have no problem with explorer playing with the crown's money(peoples' taxes), but shouldn't the aristocrocy (and the people) get something out of it as well?

        Columbus's trip actually had a justifiable business purpose - he was looking for a more economical trade route to India (hence the whole "indians" misnomer that's plagued us ever since). My understanding - which may be incorrect on a few points - is that it was well-known by the aristocracy that the earth was round (and so that such a trip was theoretically possible), but it was thought that the ships of the time wouldn't be able to make such a long trip (and they might have been right; Columbus only had to make it part way around before finding the New World).

        Space exploration is blue-sky research. It does not have a strong business case for it. That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen; it just means that it's unlikely to ever be directly profitable.

        Possible justifications include:
        • It stimulates high tech R&D, and spreads money around the high tech industries, which has direct and indirect spinoff benefits for the rest of the economy.

        • It will provide unforseen payoffs down the road (blue-sky research often does; remember the laser?).

        • People like it. If enough people think it's cool, it's worth spending money on even without a direct payback mechanism (it's the cultural equivalent of playing an arcade game).

        I personally feel that it is in our best interests as a species to have a good understanding of space and to exist on multiple worlds (as our outlook for surviving in geologic time at any single location is not so good). This, in addition to it being cool and stimulating R&D, justifies it as far as I'm concerned. YMMV.
        • Columbus's trip actually had a justifiable business purpose - he was looking for a more economical trade route to India (hence the whole "indians" misnomer that's plagued us ever since). My understanding - which may be incorrect on a few points - is that it was well-known by the aristocracy that the earth was round (and so that such a trip was theoretically possible), but it was thought that the ships of the time wouldn't be able to make such a long trip (and they might have been right; Columbus only had to make it part way around before finding the New World).

          Yes, it is true that it is well known that the world was a sphere at the time that Columbus sailed and that the distance was considered too great to sail.

          What made Columbus sure that he could sail to India was that he thought that the world was smaller than it actually is. He accepted a figure of 15,000 miles for the circumference of the Earth rather than the correct 25,000 mile value(The value accepted by just about everyone else).

          He made such a nuisance of himself pushing his plan to Sail to India that he was finally given three broken down ships and a crew of convicts and sent on his way. It was a win win situation. If by some fluke, he was right, a new trade route was established; If he was wrong, at least they were rid of him.

          As it turned out, He was wrong, but had the good luck of running into the Americas.

          To his dying day, Columbus would not accept that he did not sail to India.
        • Space exploration is blue-sky research. It does not have a strong business case for it.

          I don't know what you mean. Once we build the trillions of dollars of equipment and launch a number of billion-dollar missions, we will be able to bring back millions of dollars worth of ore from celestial bodies. The VCs should be waiting to jump all over this.
        • You could make the space program immediately profitable by putting up a real space station. This requires mining asteroids, and can be helped along by not discarding space shuttle main tanks, but instead parking them - where else? - at the new space station. You can recycle them and use their metal, you can use them as is and use them to store something other than fuel, perhaps just slag from manufacturing to provide more shielding from particles of both a subatomic and sizable nature. Like all those now-(or is that soon-to-be-?)untracked paint chips, ha ha.

          In order to have a really useful space station, something that doesn't have an insanely high operating cost, it must be large. NASA, stop throwing away booster tanks; Take them to the ISS and duct tape them together if you have to. They're useful.

          • Re:Why (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 )
            You could make the space program immediately profitable by putting up a real space station.

            How?

            Such a station could certainly be built, but how would it generate enough revenue to even pay for its day to day operating and resupply costs, let alone its construction?

            All proposals for large-scale space projects that are supposed to be profitable assume that there's a very large market for space-based facilities (large enough to make the amortized cost of the construction and upkeep lower than the cost of providing the needed services from the ground).

            Given that industry has no pressing need to send anything more than a few satellites into space, where's the demand? You're not going to get enough tourists to pay for a $10 trillion "real" station.

            In order to have a really useful space station, something that doesn't have an insanely high operating cost, it must be large.

            Anything smaller than a million tonnes won't be self-sufficient. Any large station we'd build any time soon would be *more* expensive than a small station.

            NASA, stop throwing away booster tanks; Take them to the ISS and duct tape them together if you have to. They're useful.

            They also have mass, which means significantly less payload if you spend the extra effort to lift them to orbit instead of letting them drop. Some of the effort's already been spent by jettison time, but not all of it by a long shot.

            In summary, lifting the tanks isn't free. You might as well lift something more useful instead.
            • You could make the space program immediately profitable by putting up a real space station.
              How? Such a station could certainly be built, but how would it generate enough revenue to even pay for its day to day operating and resupply costs, let alone its construction?

              First of all, it doesn't have to be completely self-sufficient, it only has to be more self-sufficient. Anything it can do to reduce the amount of mass you have to lift is good.

              Second; industry. We should be (for example) actually building things in space instead of lifting them. Satellites are the prime example, since a fair number of them are launched now. Building them in orbit obviously saves money, all you have to do is maneuver them into position. You seem to assume that industry would not put up more satellites if the cost decreased; I disagree.

              Also...

              In summary, lifting the tanks isn't free. You might as well lift something more useful instead.

              It's not free but you've already paid a considerable amount to take it most of the way. It wouldn't cost that much more to lift it the rest of the way, and mass in orbit is expensive. Again, even if all you used it for was to hold shielding, it would be worth it.

              It is not cost-effective to build large structures in space (including the ISS) without actually doing the mining in space. We should be taking up only things which cannot reasonably be built in orbit.

              • First of all, it doesn't have to be completely self-sufficient, it only has to be more self-sufficient. Anything it can do to reduce the amount of mass you have to lift is good.

                This does not "make the space program profitable". This doesn't even make the space station you propose to build profitable. Cut supply costs by some small amount on a station that costs twice as much to build, or by a factor of two on a station that costs a hundred times as much? Either way, you're still paying *more*.

                Second; industry. We should be (for example) actually building things in space instead of lifting them. Satellites are the prime example, since a fair number of them are launched now. Building them in orbit obviously saves money, all you have to do is maneuver them into position. You seem to assume that industry would not put up more satellites if the cost decreased; I disagree.

                A satellite is a complex, specialized piece of equipment. It draws on a truly vast and diverse set of industries to build. You can't put all of those into space without needing a million tonne station, and putting only some of them into space gains nothing - you still have to supply most of your material from earth.

                Secondly, if anything, industry demand for satellites has _decreased_. All of the constellation projects from the 1990s flopped spectacularly from the twin onslaught of cellular service proliferation (providing voice and data connections to most of the moving-user market) and improvements in fiber technology (we have network of fiber with a ludicrously high bandwidth linking all continents; the limiting factor is the routing electronics, not the linkages). There is no economic reason to route communications through satellites for anything but niche markets. The money is in ground-based communication.

                The other main satellite use is remote sensing. I'd argue that the market for this is saturated already.

                What satellites would companies put _up_?

                It is not cost-effective to build large structures in space (including the ISS) without actually doing the mining in space. We should be taking up only things which cannot reasonably be built in orbit.

                You are overlooking the cost of building the mining and manufacturing facilities needed to supply space construction. These are _huge_. Unless you _know_ you'll be building million tonne space stations, a mining facility costs more than just lifting materials from Earth.

                You are also still assuming that an economic reason for large space construction exists at all. There is no industrial process for which there is significant demand that can be done in space that cannot be done more cheaply on earth (if you disagree - find one). There is no other profitable venture that anyone's been able to think of and make a good business case for that requires large-scale orbital construction. Vague noise has been made about ultra-pure crystals, exotic alloys, and so forth, but nobody's been able to produce a business case for these. Towing in an asteroid sounds like a great idea, but would only be useful if you needed the material in orbit - which we don't, at the moment. Selling to earth would be unlikely to be profitable vs. terrestrial mining operations, when you factor in the costs of towing the asteroid back.

                To clarify once again - I love the idea of space exploration, and I hope we keep doing it. I just have no illusions about it being profitable any time in the near or medium-term future.
        • 1. sail to India directly.
          2. find new world instead.
          3. lose one ship.
          4. Another mutinies and leaves.
          5. ???
          6. profit!
          • 1. sail to India directly.
            2. find new world instead.
            3. lose one ship.
            4. Another mutinies and leaves.
            5. ???
            6. profit!

            This nicely demonstrates why even something you can make a business case for won't necessarily turn a profit ;).
      • Speaking as a native american, I would have to concur. :-)

    • Re:Why (Score:3, Insightful)

      by smd4985 ( 203677 )
      public works and government programs are defn. useful things, but to discount *knowledge* as a potential payoff from scientific discovery is shortsighted. honestly, this taxpayer would gladly see some pork barrel spending diverted to NASA (or education, or welfare to work programs).
    • >> know this is cool and all... but still... we have so many problems on our own earth... shouldn't we solve those first? In my view it's good for mankind that we do stuff like this despite all our little 'tribal warfare' related problems. Maybe, just maybe as more discoveries are made out there, Mankind will embrace a sense of wonder. ....How do I say this?? If Mankind can become enlightened enough to see that there's a whole universe out there to explore and learn about, maybe fighting over rocks(land) and colored rags(flags) and who's god is better, will take a back seat to a drive to do things for everyone's good. Like put effort into making discoveries that will cure more diseases, and educate our people further, and give us the foundation we need to jump to the next level. Can you imagine what we could accomplish if we were all pulling together instead of threatening to nuke the shit out of each other. We really need to wake up & see that there are bigger and better things than our puny little planet out there. And if we don't get our act together soon mankind will probably never have the foundation/knowledge to set foot on another planet. Myself, I feel really inspired when I see new pictures like this. It makes me want to work harder at what I do, and it makes me wish that we could all stop fighting and go outside and look at the sky.
    • >> know this is cool and all... but still... we have so many problems on our own earth... shouldn't we solve those first?

      In my view it's good for mankind that we do stuff like this despite all our little 'tribal warfare' related problems. Maybe, just maybe as more discoveries are made out there, Mankind will embrace a sense of wonder. ....How do I say this??

      If Mankind can become enlightened enough to see that there's a whole universe out there to explore and learn about, maybe fighting over rocks(land) and colored rags(flags) and who's god is better, will take a back seat to a drive to do things for everyone's good.

      Like put effort into making discoveries that will cure more diseases, and educate our people further, and give us the foundation we need to jump to the next level.

      Can you imagine what we could accomplish if we were all pulling together instead of threatening to nuke the shit out of each other?

      We really need to wake up & see that there are bigger and better things than our puny little planet out there.

      And if we don't get our act together soon mankind will probably never have the foundation/knowledge to set foot on another planet, or get a suntan from another star.

      Myself, I feel really inspired when I see new pictures like this. It makes me want to work harder at what I do, and it makes me wish that we could all stop fighting and go outside and look at the sky.

    • Re:Why (Score:1)

      by Shafe ( 72598 )
      Problems on Earth will continue as they indefinitely. If people had been so concerned with domestic problems, Columbus would never have raised the financial support to venture across the great Atlantic. Exploration is inherent in our nature, and as we have clearly seen, funding in scientific endeavors has revealed incredible amounts of knowledge about our universe (I think just the tip of the tip of the iceberg). Throwing more money at problems that can't be solved with more money -- i.e. "many problems on our own earth" that you speak of -- is just that: throwing away money.
      • Just to clarify, every scientifically informed person in 1492 knew that Columbus's plan was baloney. There is no way he could have reached Asia, and everyone else knew it. If the moron hadn't lucked into this huge continent of America lying across his path, he would have failed miserably. His wasn't some carefully planned scientific expedition, it was a crackpot sailor charging at a windmill.

        Columbus quoted the smallest diameter of the earth that he could find, and the largest extent of Asia that he could find, and even if both were true, he barely would have made it.

        The mission that Columbus sent on was pretty damn cheap, and was pretty much given to him to get rid of him.

        Similarly, every scientifically informed person knows that there are few real science experiments that can be done on the International Space Station that serve any purpose other than figuring out how things behave in space stations. But, we continue to do it as a pork-barrel subsidy for the aerospace industry, while clueless Slashdotters claim that this is a great thing for preparing for future space colonies, or some other malarkey.

        Justify Cassini on scientific grounds, or on entertainment grounds, not on some nonsense like "Exploration is inherent in our nature." So is violence. Luckily, we have, to some small degree, the power of reason, so we can rationally decide when our "inherent nature" should be followed or not.
    • we have so many problems on our own earth... shouldn't we solve those first?

      Our destiny *is* out there. We better get familiar with it. The "Mores Law of Terrorism" is that the number of people a small group of terrorists can kill doubles every X years. Eventually they will be able to wipe out most of the population and perhaps all using nukes, chemicals, mad cow desease, etc.

      We can't keep all our eggs in one basket forever. We will have to colonize space and other planets to ensure survivle of the human race.
    • Oh contrare my friend! First we'll never solve our earthly issues completly. Even Jesus Christ said "... the poor you shall always have with you,..." Secondly what do we get out of it? Well we get the benifits of the techonology spin off's that were required to send the space craft to Saturn. For example, because of our 1960's space program to send a man to the moon we got - cost effective micro telemrety used by hospitals, Paramedics, and other rescue personell. Also the cam-corder was a direct spin off from the 1960's space program. The micro computer was a direct spin off of the 1960's space program - even though it only had 64k of memory (the IBM GP100 computer). How else did the Apollo astronuts get to and from the moon! How about compact avonics use in aircraft. How about your GPS receiver. All of these technologies were "birthed" in the early days of the space program. Believe me, you enjoy far too many comforts today because of prior space programs, even though there opponits questioned their cost/benefit!

    • 1 million years ago....

      Caveman Grog is sitting at the mouth of the cave. Having found some odd rocks, he is banging them together, intrigued by the sparks. The rest of the cave-people are further back in the cave, gnawing raw antelope meat from the bones of a fresh kill.

      Head-Caveman Ugg: Grog, idiot rock-banger! What are you doing up there with those stupid rocks?

      Caveman Grog: See? I bang the rocks and they make --

      Ugg: Shut up, molester of mammoths! Get back here and help us gnaw this tough meat. Caveman Snorg must have killed the toughest Antelope on the plain. You chew it for Old-Toothless-Medicine-Woman tonight!

      Grog: But Ugg, see the sparks?

      Ugg (standing up, grabbing club): What good are stupid sparks for? We have tough antelope meat to chew now! We have enough problems in this cave without you fooling around. After they are all solved, then you can beat on rocks. So quit messing around or I throw you to the cave bear.

      Grog: But the sparks might be useful. Maybe they could be used to make fi--

      Ugg swings the clug, mashing Grog's skull to a pulp before he can finish the sentence. The invention of fire is delayed another 10,000 years.

    • Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)

      by waveclaw ( 43274 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @05:02PM (#4585122) Homepage Journal
      shouldn't the common men[sic] get seomthing out of it as well??


      One of my favorite quotes:

      "Cutting the space budget really restores
      my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams,
      goals, and ideals and lets us get straight
      to the business of hate, debauchery, and
      self-annihilation."
      -- Johnny Hart

    • Dude - I would rather see some cool pictures of Saturn and fund science even for the sake or pure knowledge with my tax money that think that it might go to some welfare check for crackhead that failed out of eight grade.
    • It's been awfully hard to keep the Space Race going since the Soviet Union self-destructed and we're left with a Russia so strapped for cash that they're considering launching a boy-band's lead singer (not that shooting Lance Bass into orbit [space.com] is a Bad Thing... the Bad Thing is bringing him back).

      But I think things are about to get a lot more interesting... while the US press has been busy watching our Dubya waffle belligerently about Iraq, the Chinese have been quietly building their own manned space program [space.com]. Operating under secrecy that would have made the old Sovietskis proud, China has built a city outside Beijing and has already made three launches of human-capable spacecraft.

      Being the last superpower is like being the top dog in the pack... it's a nice place to be, but you've got a big ol' target [target.com] on your head. With Russia in complete disarray, the US busy picking fights with third-rate dictators, and the EU still finding itself, China is really the only major power still interested in becoming the top dog.

      If the Chinese manned launch rumored for next year [space.com] materializes as planned, the space race could begin again... or the US could keep its head up its butt and wait for all those grave predictions from the first space race to come true.

  • Great (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Omkar ( 618823 )
    PR, but what's the use? Detailed pics of Saturn and rings, yay, but nothing we don't have. Although, the huygens probe actually looks useful, I think NASA should be more ambitious.
    • Are you one of those guys who bitches at every probe nasa sends as not ambitious enough? Look at the whole scope of what they do and say it's not ambitious.
      What should they do.. stop sending any kind of probe anywhere and do what.... research on fusion rockets? Oh wait, they already do that... research antigravity? Oh.. they already do that too...

      You probably won't be happy until they start hollowing out the moon and then launching it into interstellar space.

    • Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @12:56PM (#4584138)
      PR, but what's the use? Detailed pics of Saturn and rings, yay, but nothing we don't have. Although, the huygens probe actually looks useful, I think NASA should be more ambitious.

      Pretty pictures of Saturn are the least of what's coming back. Go to the mission objectives page [nasa.gov] for the probe to see all of the experiments that will be done.

      What, exactly, do you _want_ them to do? Bear in mind that sending humans *anywhere* costs at least 20 times what a probe with comparable scientific capabilities costs.
      • Bear in mind that sending humans *anywhere* costs at least 20 times what a probe with comparable scientific capabilities costs.

        I mostly agree, but there are plenty of things that humans can do that it's not practical or efficient for robots to do. Humans don't need a 20-minute (or longer) timelag to make the simplest decisions, are much better able to adapt tools in novel ways, and so should be able to get a hell of a lot more work done in certain sorts of investigation than robotic systems can. For that reason, I think manned Mars missions, provided they can be done at non-suicidal risk and affordable cost, are justifiable.

    • This initial photo is pretty much an equipment check. Your comment ring s a bit like a person who sees a video white balance test and then says, "I've seen this."

      Let's let the probe get there and send back its results.
  • Anybody know if there are any planned missions to Jupiter's moon Europa? I read somewhere that there are water there and hence potential life ('Europeans' rather than 'Martians')
    • There are Europa missions on the drawing board, but none have got support yet. Hopefully this will change over the next few years. I doubt that support will come from NASA during the Bush administration however, as they only seem to be interested in Mars.
      • No support from NASA? Is this an example of the growing rift between US and Europa that people have been talking about since the presidential inauguration? Or have I misunderstood things?

    • Re:Europa (Score:3, Funny)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      Hell no!

      All these worlds are yours, except Europa... ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE!

      What are you, crazy?

    • Re:Europa (Score:3, Informative)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 )
      Anybody know if there are any planned missions to Jupiter's moon Europa? I read somewhere that there are water there and hence potential life ('Europeans' rather than 'Martians')

      There used to be plans for a whole set of Europa probes - first an orbiter, then landers to use seismographs to determing the thickness of the crust and whether there's water down there, then eventually a submarine... Sadly, this all seems to have been cancelled.

      The NASA [nasa.gov] page about the Europa project is still there, and loads - momentarily - before redirecting you to their updated site, from which all references to Europa seem to have been expunged...

      Incidentally, there might be less confusion if you call them 'Europans' rather than 'Europeans'. There are about half a billion Europeans already, and we don't live anywhere near Jupiter.

      • "Incidentally, there might be less confusion if you call them 'Europans' rather than 'Europeans'. There are about half a billion Europeans already, and we don't live anywhere near Jupiter."

        I don't know about that. Given the state of European politics, you're definitely not from this planet.

  • Does anyone know.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by malraid ( 592373 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @10:29AM (#4583619)
    ...if the Cassini already flew by Earth?

    I remember a few years ago (1997?) that there was a lot of talk about this, because it carried an atomic fuel cell, and it was sopossed to fly by the Earth in some years to gain speed due to the Earth's gravity. Ecologists were going wild because it would come so close to Earth. Well, if it's so close to Saturn it probably means it all went fine.

    • Re:Does anyone know.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yep, way back in 1999 [nasa.gov].

    • Yes, Cassini flew by Earth. No, we didn't all die (Score:5, Informative)

      by StupendousMan ( 69768 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @10:48AM (#4583672) Homepage

      The parent asks about the portion of Cassini's trajectory which passed very close to the Earth. On August 18, 1999, the spacecraft swept past the Earth at a minimum altitude of just over 700 miles. You can read about it here:

      http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/99/csearthflyby.h tml [nasa.gov]

      Why fly so close? The JPL team arranged it so that Cassini went past the "back" side of the Earth. The earth circles around the Sun at a pretty good clip (about 30 km/sec). Cassini came towards the Earth from behind in its orbit. The gravitational force of the Earth on the spacecraft pulled it forward, speeding it up as it went by. By the same token, the spacecraft slowed the Earth down a little bit, but by an insignificant amount. This is one of the two sorts of "gravitational slingshot" manuevers the celestial mechanics can use to give spacecraft more speed without using lots of fuel.

      Simple analogy: stand on a sidewalk as cars drive past at 30 mph. Just as one car is about to pass you, toss a tennis ball out in front of it. The collision will greatly increase the speed of the tennis ball in the direction of the car's motion (and only very slightly decrease the speed of the car). We can't bounce spacecraft off the Earth in the same way :-), but we can use gravity to pull spacecraft forward in a much gentler manner.

      For information on the risks associated with the flyby, please read

      http://a188-l009.rit.edu/richmond/answers/cassini. html [rit.edu]

      • I believe the actual concern everyone had about Cassini flying by earth is not that it woud slow the planet down, but that Cassini uses Nuclear Power and an accident would, uh, suck.

      • Experiment Results - Hypothesis Refuted!!! (Score:5, Funny)

        by lww ( 323019 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @11:23AM (#4583778)
        Results from conducting my experiment.

        stand on a sidewalk as cars drive past at 30 mph. Just as one car is about to pass you, toss a tennis ball out in front of it. The collision will greatly increase the speed of the tennis ball in the direction of the car's motion (and only very slightly decrease the speed of the car)

        07:45AM Looking for tennis balls.
        07:57AM Finished wrestling dog for three tennis balls from the backyard. They appear to have been well chewed and soaked with dog slobber. Given daily high temperatures of 18 degrees (F) over the past week, these objects more closely resemble croquet balls than tennis balls...Oh well, technically I'm within the experiment's parameters. Cool.
        08:15AM Observed six candidate cars outside of the house, but given icy road conditions none appear to be travelling at greater than 20mph.
        08:30AM The dog and I took a walk over to the state highway about a mile away. The vehicles here are definitely meeting the minimum speed threshold outlined in the experiment parameters. I can't find a sidewalk adjacent to the highway, but the overpass above it does have a sidewalk. I'll use that one.
        08:35AM Identified first candidate vehicle, a small four door passenger car. I completely mis-timed the drop from the overpass and missed the vehicle entirely. The dog is not impressed.
        08:40AM Identified more appropriate candidate vehicle - a semi-truck with a large windshield. Perfect.
        08:42AM Upon making contact, the ice laden tennis ball failed to greatly increase it's speed in the direction of the vehicle. It actually pierced the windshield of the truck (on the passenger side). The vehicle's speed was quite substantially decreased as the truck jacknifed on the highway. Additionally, over a dozen other vehicles experienced a similar high decrease in speed as they hit the now halted truck. I have obviously disproved a commonly accepted scientific principle!!!
        11:23PM The dog and I remain in the custody of the local law enforcement authorities. I now understand how the imprisoned Galileo felt when he knew his experiments disproved prevailing accepted scientific principles.

        Conclusion
        I am determined to persevere in the name of scientific accuracy. Look for me on the next overpass you drive under and help support my search for the truth!!
    • The other concern was not about the 1999 flyby, but rather the launch in 1997. People were afraid that the stress created by the launch would cause the plutonium to leak, or that the rocket would explode on launch and splatter plutonium all over Florida. Obviously, the NASA engineers did their job and properly converted meters to feet, because (as far as we know), there are no problems with the plutonium fuel cell.

  • Very cool (Score:1, Interesting)

    by David Walker ( 618902 )
    we talked about this a couple months ago in my astronomy class, they think Titan may have a suitable atmosphere to support human life
    • but that -178 Celsius surface temp sure puts a damper on things.
    • they think Titan may have a suitable atmosphere to support human life

      Would that be the same "they" who think the earth might be hollow?

      -

    • Re:Very cool (Score:3, Interesting)

      by erik_fredricks ( 446470 )
      Actually, no. Titan's atmosphere is believed to consist mostly of hydrogen and methane. It would be poisonous and unpleasant for human beings. However, both chemicals are useful organic building blocks, and Titan's surface may resemble a colder version of Earth's primordial soup, which makes it a valuable area for study.

      • Actually, no. Titan's atmosphere is believed to consist mostly of hydrogen and methane.

        Actually, no. Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and then methane.

        Any hydrogen that's there comes from methane dissociation and quickly escapes Titan's gravity. However, the hydrogen atoms can't escape Saturn's gravity and form a hydrogen torus along Titan's orbit. There should be some interactions between the torus and Saturn's magnetosphere which Cassini will observe.

    • it may not be able to support human life, BUT ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by tsadi ( 576706 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @01:02PM (#4584170)
      maybe it can support other non-carbon based life forms. that'd be really interesting.

      --- check this alien conversation out, worth the read. stolen from: http://www.setileague.org/articles/meat.htm ---

      "They're made out of meat."
      "Meat?"
      "Meat. They're made out of meat."
      "Meat?"
      "There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
      "That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."
      "They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
      "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
      "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
      "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
      "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
      "Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
      "Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?"
      "Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
      "Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
      "No brain?"
      "Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"
      "So... what does the thinking?"
      "You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."
      "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
      "Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
      "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
      "Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
      "So what does the meat have in mind?"
      "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."
      "We're supposed to talk to meat?"
      "That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
      "They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
      "Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
      "I thought you just told me they used radio."
      "They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
      "Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
      "Officially or unofficially?"
      "Both."
      "Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multi-beings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
      "I was hoping you would say that."
      "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
      "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
      "Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
      "So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
      "That's it."
      "Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
      "They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
      "A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
      "And we can mark this sector unoccupied."
      "Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
      "Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
      "They always come around."
      "And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe would be if one were all alone."

  • Saturn gets the firs glimpse of Cassini (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @10:49AM (#4583675) Journal
    Today the Kronos observatory managed to snap its first picture of Cassini. Cassini is a piece junkyard which Earthlings call "spacecraft". It will be their first attempt to orbit our planet, after their surreptical flybys almost an year ago. According to sources they will attempt to crash a small probe in Titan. Official sources at Titan colony consider a very remote possibility that this thing will fall on someone and call the mass media to stop the hype about this:

    "The most probable is that this thing will burn up in the atmosphere. Besides there is some assurance that Earthlings will buzz around a little, make some fuss out of it and calm down for the next years, or centuries in Earth's terms. So we decided not to interfere on this things a get them a little happy for having a glimpse of our homeland... Anyway, I may assure you that we will not see tourists storming our beautiful landscape and poisoning our nature... However these guys have some sickening curiosity and if we stop them right now, we can see something similar to our Mars cousins were they frequently crash one or two probes every year. We surely don't want to see this happening every month here..."

  • Ahem. (Score:4, Funny)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Saturday November 02, 2002 @10:52AM (#4583685) Homepage Journal
    Cassini will enter orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. It will release a piggybacked probe, Huygens, which will descend through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005.

    OK, so how come we can't get a train or bus to arrive in time? It's a much shorter distance and scaled down, we should be able to get millisecond accuracy across town. Do we need rocket engineers designing buses and astronauts driving them?

    • You do realize the date for Huyden's decent has been pushed back by 7 weeks, don't you?

      • Re:Ahem. (Score:3, Funny)

        by richie2000 ( 159732 )
        I realize that I never let minor facts stand in the way of a perfectly good argument. Nyah and the pox on you, good Sir!

    • Re:Ahem. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by blibbleblobble ( 526872 )
      OK, so how come we can't get a train or bus to arrive in time? It's a much shorter distance and scaled down, we should be able to get millisecond accuracy across town.

      "Please close the doors, this satellite is ready to depart."

      "We are sorry to announce that the Cassini Saturn service will be delayed by ... fifty ... eight ... minutes, due to ... the delay of an incoming satellite."

      "Would the driver of Cassini 2002 please report to launchpad 2, where your satellite is waiting."

      (p.s. yes it's a satellite (of saturn) and not a probe this time)
    • Do we need rocket engineers designing buses and astronauts driving them?

      That will sound like a good idea until the #10 cross town bus fires up it's solid rocket boosters and vaporizes 4 city blocks.

    • OK, so how come we can't get a train or bus to arrive in time? It's a much shorter distance and scaled down, we should be able to get millisecond accuracy across town. Do we need rocket engineers designing buses and astronauts driving them?

      Sure, now how much is a ride on cassini again? $3.2 billion?

      Having said that, saturn is nearly a billion miles away - you wouldnt get millisecond accuracy for $3 a mile.

  • awesome (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Awesome. I love seeing stuff like this. One day people on earth are going to need to put "Earth" on the last line of their addresses. And we'll have a planet code for earth to dial before the rest of the phone number. Maybe then earth will become more harmonious as people feel there is more to life than their own little world, literally. One day I tells ya!

  • A bit of FYI on Huygens and Cassini (Score:5, Informative)

    by Devil's BSD ( 562630 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @11:05AM (#4583727) Homepage
    Huygens (Christiaan thereof) was the Dutch physicist/astronomer who came up with the wave theory of light. He also used a telescope to study Saturn's rings and also discovered one of Saturn's many moons. He lived in the 17th century, although I'm not exactly sure of his DOB and DOD, because I'm too lazy to look.
    Giovanni Cassini was another who studied the rings of Saturn. He found a division between the rings, aptly named the Cassini Division, and also discovered several (four, I believe) new Saturnian moons.
    I'm sure this will help connect Huygens, Cassini, and Saturn.
    • ``Huygens (Christiaan thereof) ... not exactly sure of his DOB and DOD'':

      Here is some bio information on Christiaan Huygens for whom the Cassini probe is named after.

      Christiaan Huygens, born on 14 April, 1629, discovered Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in 1655. He died on 8 July, 1695.

      For more details, see the Bio of Christiaan [rice.edu] .

    • and also discovered one of Saturn's many moons.

      He discovered Titan, the moon in the picture, the moon that the Huygens probe is going to 'land' on.

      Haven't seen the story on APOD [nasa.gov] yet in the comments, so here it is.

  • What the hey! (Score:5, Funny)

    by back_pages ( 600753 ) <back_pagesNO@SPAMcox.net> on Saturday November 02, 2002 @11:22AM (#4583772) Journal
    I like how Saturn in the image is relatively large and clear, yet the quotes are of the "This is an emotional moment, we now have our destination in our sights." It gives me the impression that for months, mission control was playing Minesweeper or Mah Jong [stevens-bradfield.com] until someone glanced at the monitor, uttered a timeless, "What in da hey?!?!" and there was Saturn filling 30% of the satelite's field of view.

    I'm sure it didn't really happen like that, but this would be a funnier account of history, and that's what matters to me.

    • I'm no... what... aeronautical engineer? Astronomer? Whatever the relevant profession would be, I'm not it.

      However, I know that space probes are all about conserving resources. Fuel to steer, energy to run the components, the ability to withstand a certain amount of mechanical wear before falling apart, etc. I'm sure that Cassini's controllers haven't been watching a live feed of (mostly) empty space since launch; these are, in fact, the first pictures from Cassini, simply because it's the first time it was worth it to power up the camera.
    • This is an emotional moment, we now have our destination in our sights." It gives me the impression that for months, mission control was playing Minesweeper

      Actually they have been running tests, and working on cleaning up a fogged camera that has been giving them problems. Besides, they probably move teams around depending on the active mission schedules of various probes rather than have a "Saturn-only" team.

  • Mars Attacks (Score:4, Funny)

    by Superpaz ( 445451 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @11:36AM (#4583832)
    Eventually we'll be able to send nanobots to Saturn's moon at which point the bots can reconstruct whatever we want.

    Of course NASA will fail to run a virus scan before launch and we'll end up with a huge robot the size of Saturn's moon heading towards earth for its next meal.
  • I wonder when this thing reaches uranus

    *ducks* *runs*

  • A one legged robot floating in the rings.

    (Resolve that obscure reference, I dare you!)

  • Wow, those look almost as cool as the last pictures I saw of Saturn.

  • Setting the Bar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HawaiianGeek ( 619452 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @01:01PM (#4584161)
    Cassini reminds me of a time that many slashdotters may never have experienced. (I am almost 40)

    As a young person in K-12 school NASA projects implied an expectation level of what was possible and expected of engineers. Seeing the results of Apollo, Voyager, and Viking on every magazine and nightly newscast caused me and my friends to assume that every engineering meeting in the USA went something like this...

    ProductGuy : Lets put two fully functional chemical analysis and weather observatories on the surface of Mars and send back the data to Earth. We don't have a map of Mars and we will not know where to land them on Mars until we get in orbit.
    Engineering Team: OK, lets do it.

    It was subtly drilled into our adolescent minds that American Engineering could accomplish anything. And we always noticed the US flag that was in most pictures of the spacecraft and landers.

    Today I write software the exact way that Bill Gates wants me to but I am amazed at how everyday I hear from young coders is whining words like "That's hard", "I don't want to", "That will make me have to think." If I had ever responded like that when I was younger the comeback answer was always "We put a man on the moon, surely you can do (insert trivialized task here)".

    Cassini reminds me of that 1970's NASA for some reason. Not the NASA that sent a small tinkertoy to Mars in 97 for a few photographs of rocks.
  • What the government doesn't want you to know is that the hazardous nuclear materials in the Cassini space probe pose a serious threat to the environment! What if the launch failed and the rocket crashed back to earth, spreading radioactive plutonium out over a... uh, what's that you said? Cassini is in space already? Oh. Uhhhh.... never mind. :)

  • Movies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zeugma-amp ( 139862 ) on Saturday November 02, 2002 @01:54PM (#4584403) Homepage

    It looks to be a fairly small image, which makes sense as the spacecraft is 177 million miles away from the planet. I think it would be interesting for the spacecraft to take one such picture a day, then put them all together some years later to produce a movie of the spacecraft's mission.

    I'm sure it would beat the cgi movies that have been produced of similar journeys.

  • ...says we're to cease and desist photographing the "bad side". Wants per-shot contract pay for autographed stills and publication rights, (was fishing for some 'bad pub' to make the trades).

    Titan still in negotiation for close-up fees, (is off getting demabrasion). Other moons may band together and boycott for better 'extra' fees.
  • I would suggest everyone to run filters on the picture. In particular, you should run edge detect and sharpen filter on it. Gets nice detail on it.
  • How come I can't get Celestia [shatters.net] to show the correct phase and ring shadow at the same time, to look the same as this photo?

    And: How phreaking kewl is it that we can view recent probe photos and have FREE (as in beer) software to simulate those photos? Wow.

    M@

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