NASA's Deep Impact

NivenMK1 writes "The Seattle Times has an interesting article on NASA's plan to nail the comet Tempel 1 with a chunk of copper the size of a bathtub on July 4 this year. This copper 'bullet' is intended to strike the comet at approximately 23,000 mph and hit with a force equivalent to 4.7 tons of TNT. Scientists hope to discover what exactly the comet is made of and what changes have occurred to the outer layers with reference to the core."

Hit when?

[ceeam]

July 4 this year?! What a coincidence - it's the date the project I'm working on now should be finished to.

Cue Warner Bros cartoon...

[Linker3000]

...where the bullet misses its target and curves back round to origin.

Don't miss guys - and watch out for Hubble!

I don't know about you...

[Ramsey-07]

....But hitting a rock on Independance day sounds like a bad idea, what if it's an Alien's rock?

We can't just keep going around the Solar system bashing things up that's not ours!

Re:I don't know about you...

[lxt]

To be honest, I think I many more people wouldn't mind the White House being destroyed by aliens this time around... :)

I'm waiting for the comethuggers...

[rseuhs]

... to step up and tell us that we can't do that and we are destroying nature.

Re:Consequences of destroying a comet

[Devalia]

Or a young race on a planet far,far away who view the comet as a sign to reproduce.

Oops

[Savage Conan]

I wonder if there is any danger of some chunks coming to Earth that would be large enough to survive the entry into our atmosphere and cause some damage at the white house? One can always hope.

Sadly

[eclectro]

Our comets are now under attack. Please join the Society for the Preservation of Comets, before it's too late.

Hopefully together we can make a difference. It's time to stop these bigoted scientists from damaging comets with bathtub size copper slugs, just "to see what will happen."

Without comets, there would be no space snowballs. This must stop.

I just know that...

[zecg]

...NASA is lying. The comet is actually heading straight for Earth and the best plan they have is to launch a copper bathtub filled with Bruce Willis.

The Original Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Was to scour the earth and gather together the meanest ex-con alcoholic drilling team humankind has to offer, and land them on the comet with a couple of nuclear warheads for this experiment.

Unfortunately, the MPAA sent a cease and desist order to NASA informing them that this would be infringing on the IP of one of their client's copyrighted movies.

Hence, plan B involves throwing a bathtub at the comet instead. Go NASA!

Why do I want to break out my atari

[Da w00t]

... and play asteroids? 8-)

> . . O

I can just see the "bullet" hitting the asteroid, but .. we've only got one bullet, so how in the heck are we going to deal with the bits of asteroid from the big one? I mean, the entire point of firing up on the asteroid in the first place was to vaporise it. They think one shot will do it? C'mon, we all know from experience that you have to break it down to advnace to the next level.

Re:Expensive launch mass?

[Mod Me God Five]

And millions of years from now the aliens invezstigating the comet will scratch their heads thinking 'why is there a piece of copper the size of a bathtub on this comet'. Far greater amusement factor.

So what does the comet think of this?

[Grey Ninja]

What happens if the comet doesn't like being shot with the world's biggest bullet, and decides to come after us? Has NASA factored this into their plans?

Re:Cue Warner Bros cartoon...

[Mod Me God Five]

No dude, its not a cartoon, its pr0n, I can see the popups now:

NASA's Deep Impact, Starring [pun] Seymour Butts and Jade Hsu; can his bronze bullet penetrate deep enough or will she blow him to kingdom cum?

Re:Expensive launch mass?

[DoraLives]

France or Hilton?

Yes.

Re:Expensive launch mass?

[Odin's Raven]

Would it not be cheaper/better to drop a lump of high explosive on it rather than a heavy lump of copper?

Given NASA's budget, copper made more sense. Finding themselves unable to afford chemical or nuclear explosives, NASA employees have spent the last four years collecting stray pennies - checking under seat cushions in taxis, keeping a watchful eye on the sidewalks and streets near their offices, and so on and so forth. Also, twice a year they held bake sales in the Vistor's Center where purchases had to be paid for entirely in pennies. Since they also lacked the budget to purchase a safe, or even a large piggy bank, one enterprising employee scrounged an old bathtub from a nearby dump, and placed it in the hall outside the Deep Impact lab for people to toss the pennies into. (Which is why the project is using the new "size of a bathtub" metric instead of the international "Volkswagon" unit of measurement.)

I'm just glad the Beagle team aren't doing this...

[myc_lykaon]

With our track record for slamming into things we should bounce off and hitting things we should miss, I'm certain that it would be one of the few missions to miss the thing we should hit...

Captains additional: Does this mean we can add 'bath tub' to the ISO weights and measures along with VW Beetle, football field and 18 wheel truck?

Re:Cue Warner Bros cartoon...

[Anonymous Coward]

ObFuturama quote:

Zapp: Then what did we just blow up?
[Kif checks the screen beside him.]
Kif: The Hubble Telescope.

Re:Consequences of destroying a comet

[lateral]

Well if we find a dump-truck sized lump of copper being thrown back at the Earth in a few days we can probably conclude that we pissed *somebody* off.

Either that or they're just trying to talk to us...

L.

Re:Expensive launch mass?

[djmurdoch]

How do we know that this hasn't already happened and that there isn't already a bathtub sized chunk of copper on it.

It'll be easy to tell them apart. Aliens are generally either tall and thin or short and squat, so their bathtubs would be quite a different shape.

Insider Perspective

[Performaman]

I once spoke to someone who works on the Deep Impact project, and he said that, after the Mars Polar Odyssey crashed, their motto became "Deep Impact: We're Supposed to Crash."

Units

[Simon Garlick]

So, the ton of TNT is now a unit of force?

Re:Expensive launch mass?

[Have Blue]

The Volkswagen standard is only for measuring large meteoroids. Please use it correctly in the future.

Uh!

[radpole]

I hope the aliens onboard the spaceship inside the comet don't mind.

Kill it!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave it to Americans to come up with a plan along the lines of: "Wonder what that's made of... lets blow it up!"

Genesis II: Should be easy for NASA

[mschaffer]

All they have to do is get the Genesis team to try to gently land the copper bullet onto the comet.

Funding by NRA, Smith&Wesson

[spineboy]

Nasa should get funding from the NRA (National Rifle Assoc.) and Smith and Wesson. This will be the largest bullet ever made!

Re:Expensive launch mass?

[forkazoo]

Just in case anybody wants to know, the international measure for a bathtub is:

1 bathtub = 3.4 decivolkwagons