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Space Science

Asteroid Clips From NASA -- Updated 70

Posted by timothy from the no-Falcon-eating-spaceworms-yet dept.
Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit, NASA's NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker has been zeroing in on the asteroid Eros for a little while, taking pictures as well as readings with six on-board instrument systems. Four movies of Eros (QuickTime only) are also available through CNN. From the CNN article: "The performance of the other instruments should improve as well as NEAR Shoemaker moves in closer to the 21-mile-long (34-km-long) rotating space rock. Later in the year, the spacecraft could move in even closer and briefly touch down to conclude its primary mission, scientists said." [Updated 1:30GMT by timothy] Oops -- make that 119 million miles, not 199. I'm always trying to help out NASA.
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Asteroid Clips From NASA -- Updated More

Asteroid Clips From NASA -- Updated

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  • Re:Slashdot! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This has got to be the lamest post I have ever seen on /.

    people will think your jealous...

  • Re:NEAR project (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nuclear engines are supposed to deliver much better efficiency, but people will cry foul if anyone tried a launch.

    Depends on the type of reaction. Fission, you bet they will cry foul. Even most fusion reactions such as deuterium/tritium fusion produce neutrons that will gradually turn the containment vessel radioactive ( so that if the launch vehicle blows up, you get radioactive fallout ).

    However, some fusion reactions don't produce any neutrons. For that matter, some don't produce either neutrons or even gamma rays - all of the energy liberated is in the form of the kinetic energy of the products. For example, the fusion reactions of lithium-6 and boron-11

    Li-6 + H-1 -> He-3 + He-4

    B-11 + H-1 -> 3 He-4

    These reactions are much harder to ignite than the H-2/H-3 fusion reaction because of the higher electric charge on the nucleii, but I'm sure that you can see the advantage. No neutrons means no resudual radioactivity so there is no legitamite reason why the environmental movement could possibly object to a vehicle that was powered by these fusion reactions.

    You might be strangling my chicken, but you don't want to know what I'm doing to your hampster.

  • Get a Mac :) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hee (IANAT, honestly :) ), I just had quicktime play it at max screen size - Save it as source from the popup, and drop it on the QT player app -- it isn't limited to that mini-javascript box they got going... Amazing - 2 questions: (1) I was kind of amazed that such a small body could keep loose boulders attached to itself.. I guess its just gravity in the absence of any other force (2) Others have said we have tons of picks of asteroids - but I've never seen anything as remotely amazing as this close up movie... Cheers, Winton

  • News Update... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    April 28, 2000 Laurel, Maryland(BNN)-- after a lengthy investigation by a Senate subcomittee, NASA was forced to admit today that recent photos of the asteroid Eros are actually close-ups taken from Finish "scat" pornography.

    In related news, the Finish company, "hot-toilet-action.com" is filing suit against NASA for copyright violation.

    "Everybody knows NASA's space-program is crap," a hot-toilet-action.com representative stated, "but this is ridiculous."


    thank you.

  • Several things (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First of all, while this is "news for nerds", is there really a need to post something which isn't really interesting? We've seen movies of asteroids before. Hell, we've seen coverage of Shoemaker Levy slamming into Jupiter. Now THAT was cool.

    The problem I have is their wasting time examining asteroids. Asteroids can't support more than basic life. Small single cell lifeforms have actually been found on asteroids, but they are incapable of supporting more than the very basic forms of life.

    They waste time investigating this when we desperately need a way out of here. This planet is doomed, and we only have a short time before the end of the world (as is prophecized by the Great One), and I for one don't want to be here when it happens.

    Also, we all know that the story that is only second to the end of the world is the breakup of Bill Gates. Where's the coverage of that?

  • Well, in the latest literature it has been found that most asteroids above 200m don't rotate faster than a certain amount. The reason appears to be that anything larger than 200m is really just a giant pile of rubble. Rotation above this limit would cause the pile to fall apart.

    Gist of the matter, it would be very hard to shift the direction of an asteroid, let alone one that is only a giant ball of boulders. See the SciAm article about it.
  • Ack. Bloody 'ell. Yes. What I meant to say about asteroids is that they're what's left over from the accretion disk that formed our galaxy. That makes much more sense in light of the second half of that item.
  • I see your point that there haven't been many missions to asteroids, but three pictures is plent when they're all the same.

    In reality there are many types of asteroids, grouped either by composition or surface spectra, or both. I quote from Bill Arnett's excellent The Nine Planets [seds.org]:

    • C-type, includes more than 75% of known asteroids: extremely dark (albedo 0.03); similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites; approximately the same chemical composition as the Sun minus hydrogen, helium and other volatiles;
    • S-type, 17%: (Stony) relatively bright (albedo .10-.22); metallic nickel-iron mixed with iron- and magnesium-silicates;
    • M-type, most of the rest: (Metal) bright (albedo .10-.18); pure nickel-iron.
    • There are also a dozen or so other rare types.
    If you think that's not important, let me appeal to your greed. Supposing the M-type meteorites we have in collections are representative of the M-type asteroids, then most of the M asteroids are richer in platinum group metals that the ore they mine in South Africa.

    Admittedly, with launch costs as high as they are, it wouldn't matter if you could go to a type M asteroid and pick up sacks of minted gold coins. A reasonable payload wouldn't pay for launching the mission. That's where John Lewis' Mining the Sky comes in handy. Lewis has worked out how to return payloads that are entirely unreasonable by today's limited standards.

    The first asteroid "gold strike" will probably be dirt. If you sent a robot probe out to the asteroid that has the cheapest return fuel cost. (It used to be Nereus, but I believe that an even cheaper one was discovered.) Have the robot scrape up some dust from the surface, bag it, then return to low Earth orbit. Sell the dirt to NASA as shielding for the space station. If the asteroid has enough metal in the dirt, extract it and charge extra for that. If the asteroid was a carbonaceous chondrite, roast the dirt in a solar oven and condense out the water and other volatiles released. Sell those seperately at a premium price. Sell the slag for radiation shielding.

    Lewis claims that you could return from Nereus 20 to 50 kg of dirt for every kg you launch. That's not quite good enough to be profitable today, but with cheaper launchers....

    Oh, and as everyone else has probably pointed out, we need to know what asteroids are made of in case we ever have to nudge one away from Earth. (Bruce Willis can go only if it is a one-way trip. 8-)
    --

  • I see your point that there haven't been many missions to asteroids, but three pictures is plent when they're all the same.

  • I think I see a face on that asteroid. Also there seem to be some pyramids to the lower left of the face. I think that NASA needs to send another probe to investigate. Also Hollywood needs to make a Mission to Eros movie.
  • For those of you who tend to look past the obvious (sorry Chairboy, but you are one of them) there is an even easier solution to the potential depletion of earth's resources:


    stop friggin using them

    The cheapest and easiest solution to conserving mother earth is to use what we have here already in a more responsible manner. People are naive is they simply think that we are just going to move to another planet when we burn this one out. You slashdot people need to put down the lame Science Fiction crap and put you big heads together and look for smarter solutions Here on our planet.

    "This land is mine
    This land is free
    I do what I want
    but irresponsibly"
    -Pearl Jam
    --------------------------------------------
  • Well, on top of the Ida/Gaspra/2685 pictures, there's also Phobos and Deimos (moons of Mars), of which there's some pretty extensive data. The Viking orbiters took a gander at them way back when, and MGS also returned some data on them recently (apparently there's some pretty thick regolith on the two of them, which is kind of cool). The Soviet Union even sent two probes (Phobos 1 and 2) to check out the bigger moon. Both moons display enough spectroscopic, structural, and just general visual similarities to asteroids that we can pretty safely say that they're captured asteroids. Kinda tough to say how they got there, though; Mars ain't no big player gravitationally in the solar system... Phobos, especially, is pretty cool. Lots of grooves and huge craters that we're really not sure how they got there.

    There's also Dactyl, a moonlet orbiting Ida. *Really* cool stuff - before Galileo saw that, the idea of an asteroid having anything major orbiting it was kind of a "well, I suppose it could theoretically" thought. So the Galileo encounters weren't worthless by any means.
  • Same thing, pretty much. Comets have a whole lot more volatiles since they formed (we think) farther out in the solar system, around Uranus/Neptune-type orbits, and then the lot of them migrated out to the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud (not nearly enough material out there to form anything, not in the amounts that we see/predict) On top of that, their orbits are a bit different, but one of the things that the '86 Halley probes told us is was that there's really not a lot of difference between comets and asteroids, just a lot more light elements on the former and *substantially* more eccentric orbits, although some of the near-earth-objects have some pretty stretched-out ones themselves. Heck, astronomers have a nasty habit of mistaking comets far from the sun (far enough that there's not much, if any, gas venting) for rogue asteroids. But there's a *lot* more carbon in comets than we used to think - it's more a rocky/chondritic asteroid with water pockets frozen in it than anything else.
  • Well, the original plan was to land the little guy at end-mission, lift off a bit, and look at the imprint that we leave. We're still fairly unsure what the surface composition is like, and sometimes the oldest tricks are best....unfortunately, the way things went last year with the whoopsie and the probe going into safe mode and the spinning and the losing lots of propellant stabilizing the craft, we don't know about that now. We don't know if we could get down into an orbit that tight with what little fuel we have left and keep the orbit controllable, for one - we might just smack into a boulder or something and that would suck. There's no problems with the spacecraft outright crashing into the asteroid Ranger-kinetic-death-style; the relative velocities are too low for anything that spectacular. But we might not be able to control the orbit if we start going down. On top of that, some of the mission scientists are complaining that they want to keep getting data as long as possible since the probe is only funded for so long, and they don't want to drop the sucker into the asteroid within that period if there's the risk of losing the craft. I think it'd be cool, though...if it works and we can lift off again, we'd get to see what the regolith is like (can't tell how thick it is right now, just have to do it the-Eagle-has-landed-like), and the image resolution would be *obscene*...the camera can stay focused on objects that are as close in as a few centimeters.
  • "Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit, "

    How does he know where I'm sitting?
  • But it's not the just case we're talking about. It's the actual meaning of the words. NEAR is a NASA program. "Near" describes something that is not "far".
  • NEAR isn't a recursive actonym.

    The "N" in NEAR stands for "near". What does the 'n' in "near" stand for?
    It's only recursive if the First letter stands for the acronym itself.
  • > Oops -- make that 119 million miles, not 199.
    > I'm always trying to help out NASA.

    Well, 119 miles times 1.6 km/mile is getting close to 199 km (+- 5 %). Lots of people make conversion error nowadays...

  • Jinx put Max in space. Jinx can get Max back. Jinx put Max in space. Jinx can get Max back! Yeah, that was a fun show.

  • Direct link to movies at NASA website [jhuapl.edu] Enjoy!
    Chief Prosecutor
    Advocacy Department
  • Bringing it down to Earth is totally counterproductive, since in space energy is abundant ( courtesy of the sun ) and materials are scarce.

    At least in the beginning, though, you'd have to finance it by selling things on Earth. Dropping rocks of varying composition is easy. Want a ton of gold? Just give us a large enough target area with nothing you want to keep, and a large enough check...
  • Every living thing has one goal, period. To survive in 2 senses; to survive as an individual and to survive and proliferate as a species. No organism alive, is alive to die and become extinct. There is no arguing that.

    If we can colonize somewhere in space then when we eventually make earth uninhabitable we can survive as a species, which is much more important than finding some damn micro organism. The earth cannot support humans for much longer; 300 years at the most positive estimate, and 100 years at the least estimate.

  • i'm pretty drunk right now too.. and timothy is still the dumbest poster by far.... hell .. even signal11 would be better than timothy.. at least signall 11 has one or two braincells...

    beer rulz
  • I'm sure it would look really cool, if they didn't use a stupid Javascript download form, so that i can't just download the QuickTime and use RealProducer to convert it to something that i can actually view. Bah.
  • NASA was going to call it Satelite Near Orbit Target (SNOT).

  • Asteroids can't support more than basic life. Small single cell lifeforms have actually been found on asteroids, but they are incapable of supporting more than the very basic forms of life.

    Really? have they? Finding microrganisims on an astroid in space would be a big deal, and I haven't heard of it. Now, if you are talking about the Mars rock in the Arctic, well... there is a good chance that those might be from Earth (I like to believe that they arn't because I am a hopeless space romantic).

    If you think that we are going to find anything but microrganisims, you are sadly mistaken. We know that there are no whales in the oceans of Europa just as we know that there are no gnu grazing on the planes of Mars. When we are serching for live in the solar system, we are looking for tiny single cell organisims. Finding one on an astroid will be just as amazing (possibly more so) than finding one on Europa. Remember that live is predominatly these organisims, even on earth. Multicelluar organisims are in the minority and are much younger than their single cell counterparts.

    What the finding of these organisims on another planet will do for us is prove that there is life elsewhere in the Universe. We are NOT looking for some place to colonize. The most likely place in the solar system continues to be Mars, and it has its problems.

  • Rocket technology has practically not advanced since the 60s. Same with aerospace in general. The F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-117 fighters were all started during the 60s and are still the front line jets. Sure they have more high tech electronics and software on board nowadays but probes still crash (Mars orbiter, lander anyone?). Going to orbit is still donre using brute force and this is probably not going to change any time soon. Nuclear engines are supposed to deliver much better efficiency, but people will cry foul if anyone tried a launch. But then again nuclear boosters are also 60s tech. As is the SR-71 -- the fastest plane and a lot of other cool stuff.
  • In Greek Eros means Love, of-course Philosophos means the Lover of Wisdom but Eros is a little bit different shade of love.
    So what did you think Eros is about, pr0n?
  • Be *carefull* Pets.com will sue YOU!

    YOU ARE SO DEAD!

  • Why are people interested in what is effectively a big chunk of rock? I mean don't get me wrong, examining planets and galaxies is cool, but why bother with an asteroid? It's just a lump of rock. The only reason we should be paying any attention to asteroids is if one is headed toward us right now ready to end all life. Not that that would be a bad thing really.

    HHH will retain at Backlash.

  • WOAH! (said in canoe reeves voice) thats one big honkin' rock


    My Home: Apartment6 [apartment6.org]
  • I really don't see the benefit of trying to land NEAR on Eros. Is it simply for the 'jee look what complicated maneuvers it took to do THAT' satisfaction that it would provide or what? As soon as it touches (or smashes) down, assuming that it actually survives the impact, since it DEFINITLY wasn't designed to land at all in the first place, you will almost immediately lose contact with it since its high gain antenna is in a FIXED position. And since the asteroid itself is rotating in more than one direction (tumbling) you'd probably have to wait years before the HGA was pointed at earth (by chance) with sufficient accuracy to allow a short data x-fer again. maybe i'm missing something but obviously there's no atmosphere around Eros and therefore no danger of orbit decay, so why not just let it orbit forever and get as much science as we can out of it?
  • Just like you shouldn't worry about fire safety until your house is on fire and you don't know what to do...

    --
  • No! We are the knights that say:
  • Well, seems to me that before they start trying to practice blowing things up, ala Armagedon, they need to practice landings! Lets just see if this one can avoid any crevices or what ever they didn't find on Mars...

    -Earthman

  • he "N" in NEAR stands for "near".
    Everybody knows the N in NEAR stands for NI! NI! NI! NI! NI! Now get us a shrubbery!
  • Asteroids brought all the early water to a fledgling planet called Earth. It's where we came from, dammit.
    Don't you mean comets?
  • Thats actually funny! :) Maybe not PG-13, but it is funny...
  • I tried to view the Eros movies, but all I got was a close-up of a baked potato rolling around on a table top. Should I upgrade to Window$2K??
  • "I'm always trying to help out NASA." - Timothy

    This reminds me of that helpful, silly robot from "Space Camp" (THE best space film, EVER) that launches the shuttle. Whoops.

    Maybe someday you'll get your chance.
  • As one who has abused moderation, you should no the problem is not anonymity. More likely, it is kharma whores that post at a +2 advantage.

    OK, OK so it's the admins that created the flawed system, but you, Sig, should know better.
  • Of course, I'll have to figure a way to bring that 30 mile hunk of rock to me where I can work it with my mine-0-bots. If it is aimed just right, it could land safely on a worthless hunk of land.

    A simple parachute attached to the back, combined with an inflatable landing pad cushion should do the work. I love it when a plan comes together.
  • Jim Thompson is also known by the handle "kzinti" on Slashdot.

    Note: The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily those of 32BitsOnline.

    ------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------

    A dialog in two parts.

    Dorothy is sitting in front of her PC, staring at the screen when her friend Kordell drops by to visit.

    K: Hello, Dorothy.

    D: Hi, Kordell.

    K: Say, you look pretty bummed. Hacking some more nasty perl?

    D: No... I've just been reading Slashdot.

    K: Slashdot? That Internet site where you geeks and techheads hang out to talk about computer stuff?

    D: We talk about more than that, but yeah, that's the place: www.slashdot.org.

    K: Hey, I heard someone at the computer lab today talking about a huge brouhaha over there. What happened?

    D: You remember Jon Katz's Hellmouth series last year?

    K: About the Littleton shootings?

    D: It wasn't about the shootings themselves, but about what happened around the country afterward. He spoke of how fears of "trenchcoat mafias" ignited irrational fears. That geeks and goths and other "misfits" became the subject of much unwanted attention just because they weren't popular or athletic, and about the difficulties of being a teen who just doesn't fit it. Jon Katz wrote some Slashdot articles about what was happening, and he got a ton of e-mail from people all over the country experiencing similar persecution.

    K: Sure, I remember -- you made me read those articles . . . but that was last year.

    D: Right, well, the Slashdot guys took Katz's articles and many of the Hellmouth posts and compiled them all into a new book called Voices from the Hellmouth. They announced it Thursday -- the anniversary of Littleton.

    K: So what's the problem?

    D: Well, it's about the posts they published... they published them anonymously and without the permission of the posters.

    K: Anonymously?

    D: They stripped the posters' names off the posts when they compiled them -- but what I'm upset about is that the posts were published without permission.

    K: You mean that they didn't ask author's permission to republish their posts?

    D: That's right.

    Kordell makes some extremely rude noises.

    K: So what? Slashdot's a public forum. Anything anyone says there is in the public domain. Slashdot can take the posts, publish all the books they want to, and nobody can say anything.

    D: Not exactly. Just making statements in public doesn't make them public domain. Remember that Pumpkins concert last year? They performed in public, but that doesn't make the performance public domain. If we'd recorded it and sold the MP3 on the 'net, their lawyers would have been all over us.

    K: But people used to record Grateful Dead concerts...

    D: Because the Dead gave them permission to. They voluntarily gave up some of their copyrights to encourage people to spread their music.

    K: And they probably gave up lots of record sales in the process. I bet their label loved that... So people are upset because Slashdot is going to get rich off their posts? I guess I can understand that.

    D: Slashdot is going to donate all the proceeds to charity. No one is going to get rich.

    K: Then what are the whiners complaining about? Their work is going to support charity; they should be glad.

    D: What happens to the money isn't the issue. It's irrelevant.

    K: How is it irrelevant? No one's getting rich off their work... so why should they care?

    D: Look, Kordell, what if I took that old beater of yours, drove it down to the Salvation Army, and donated it to them.

    Kordell laughs.

    K: You wouldn't get much for it!

    D: So it would be OK with you, then? The money would be going to charity, so you wouldn't mind that I didn't *ask* first?

    K: OK, I see your point. I'd be pissed. My old car isn't the same as a bunch of Slashdot posts, though; it's an entirely different issue. I mean, doesn't the subject matter count for anything?

    D: You mean of Hellmouth?

    K: Exactly! I read most of those articles. There were some deeply profound and compelling stories there... life-altering and life-defining experiences. The kind of stories that should be shared and retold.

    D: Actually, I agree with you... they *are* stories that should be shared and retold.

    K: Then what's the problem?

    D: I also think Jon Katz's last book is a story that should be retold too. But if I scanned it into my PC and redistributed the scans on the Internet, how long do you think it would be before I heard from Katz's lawyers? Or his publisher's lawyers?

    K: But Katz owns the copyright to his books.

    D: And the Slashdot posters don't own copyright to their comments?

    K: No. Not if you post to a public forum like Slashdot. That puts the comments into the public domain.

    D: That's funny, because Slashdot doesn't seem to agree with you.

    K: Now you've really lost me. Isn't it Slashdot that's taking all the heat for republishing without permission?

    D: Yes, but... well, have you ever read the fine print on the bottom of a Slashdot page?

    K: You know I don't read Slashdot, and you know *nobody* reads the fine print.

    D: Well, some people do. Here, let me show you what I mean...

    Dorothy brings up www.slashdot.org in her browser and scrolls to the very bottom of the page. She points to a line of text.

    D: Can you read that?

    K: "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest Copyright 1997-2000 Andover.Net."

    D: So now tell me... what is Slashdot's position on ownership of posted comments?

    K: Well, according to this, the poster owns their comments.

    D: Then, O Enlightened One, how can Slashdot claim that they are justified in republishing posted comments without the permission of the owner?

    K: Maybe their concept of ownership doesn't extend to copyright?

    Dorothy snorts in exasperated contempt.

    D: Well if "ownership" doesn't mean copyright, then what could it possibly mean? I mean, what's left?

    K: Maybe it's just a liability disclaimer. You know, so that if someone posts something incredibly insulting to the President or the Pope, Slashdot can just point to the disclaimer and say "We don't own that comment -- the poster does."

    D: That would be hugely disingenuous on their part. And, if it ever got out that that's what they meant by ownership, it would alienate most of their readers.

    K: It's no worse than what many web sites do.

    D: But Slashdot isn't just any web site; they portray themselves as being different -- "News for Nerds" and all that.

    K: I'm not sure I follow you.

    D: It's like this: Slashdot often champions the cause of the Little Guy, especially against the Government or Big Corporation. It's part of their identity. When a large corporation's lawyers try to take away the web site of some little nonprofit or Mom-and-Pop, Slashdot publicizes the conflict.

    K: You mean like the Etoy fiasco last year?

    D: Exactly. When etoys.com sued etoy.org and tried to take their domain name, Slashdot published several articles. Likewise, when Colgate/Palmolive went after ajax.org, and Archie Comics went after veronica.org. There were others too...

    K: And Slashdot always takes the side of the little guy? They use their editorial voice to assert this position?

    D: What "editorial voice"? This is *Slashdot* we're talking about. But yeah, their editors say things like "Nice to see the little guys win one..." or "Perhaps we can help Veronica..." And one time Rob Malda said "I'm willing to buy one of those Rios just to make a statement against the RIAA goobers...."

    K: So it's not just domain-name disputes where they side with the little guy?

    D: Oh no, there are much bigger battles being fought like mp3/Napster/Gnutella vs. the RIAA, the DeCSS vs. the MPAA, Linux vs. Microsoft, and Echelon vs... well, most *everybody*.

    K: OK, I see the pattern, but what does all that have to do ownership of posted comments?

    D: It sets up certain expectations. People expect them to behave differently than all those big organizations they constantly criticize. People expect them to behave, well, *better*.

    K: That's stretching things a bit, don't you think?

    D: I have one more example. You remember GeoCities?

    K: Yeah, they were bought out by Yahoo last year.

    D: Yup, and when Yahoo bought them out, Yahoo's lawyers tried to change the terms of service under which people could post their pages. Yahoo tried to claim that they *owned* anything posted to their site, regardless of who created the content.

    K: Stop right there. A blind man could see where you're going with this.

    D: Right. But there's a peculiar irony here... Yahoo eventually capitulated and changed their terms of service. When Slashdot posted a story announcing the change, they quoted the guy who submitted the story to summarize Yahoo's new position. He said: "So while they don't own your web page, they can still do whatever they want to with it."

    K: Whoa. And Slashdot's position is "You own your comment, but we can still do whatever we want to with it."

    D: Seems to be. Eerie, huh?

    K: Yeah, but so what? I still don't see how that's going to hurt Slashdot. So they've given people ownership of their postings, then disregarded that onership? I still doubt you could build much of a legal case out of that.

    D: Look, you're just not getting it. This is not a legal issue; it's a moral issue. It's not a question of whether it was *legal* for Slashdot to repost all those comments, it's a question of whether it was right for them to do so.

    K: Oh come on, you can't convince me that all those geeks care about a question of morals.

    D: That's exactly what I've been trying to tell you. They do care, many of them. Go read the posts. They care about whether it's right for some big corporation to take away baby Veronica's web site. They care about whether it's right for the MPAA to quash the DeCSS software. They care about whether it's right for the NSA to eavesdrop on their e-mail.

    K: And you think they'll care about whether it's right for Slashdot to do what they've done with user comments?

    D: I do. Furthermore, I think many Slashdot posters are going to feel at least somewhat betrayed. Slashdot has always tried to take the high ground... and yet now they're behaving like another Yahoo.

    K: How many of *your* posts did they appropriate?

    D: Of mine? Well... none.

    K: *None*? Then why all your bitching and moaning?

    D: Because I've made posts on lots of other topics at Slashdot. I made those posts under the promise of Slashdot's copyright notice - that my posts belonged to me. But maybe some day Slashdot will decide that one of those other topics is at the center of another moral imperative that requires them to publish my posts in another book... without my permission.

    K: Would it really harm you if they did?

    D: Not in the sense that it would cost me money, but there's more at stake here than money. What about my reputation? What if I don't approve of their moral imperative? My right to decide how my words are used, what reputation I earn, and what causes I'm associated with is *very* important to me.

    K: OK, OK... So you and a few others have created an uproar. Has Slashdot responded?

    D: Jon Katz and Rob Malda posted a long and rather eloquent defense of the book. They made great points about the significance of the Hellmouth stories, about what Jon Katz called their "moral imperative". But the essence of their argument was that their cause was so important that it didn't matter whether they acquired the permission of the posters. They barely addressed the issue of posting without permission, and where they did, the gist of their statement was that seeking permission was too inconvenient, so they wouldn't do it.

    K: And that's what you're pissed off about?

    D: What I'm pissed about is the implication that by raising questions about ownerships and permissions, I and people like me are trying to prevent the publication of the book. In doing so, Jon Katz compared us to the "journalists, administrators, and parents" who have tried to silence the Hellmouth posters.

    K: But aren't you trying to do just that? If the Slashdot people have to stop publication while they try to track down all the Hellmount posters, it *would* effectively shut down the book. Perhaps indefinitely.

    D: I don't want to stop the book, or even to delay it. Let them publish. But, at the same time, they should acknowledge that they violated their own copyright policy, and that they made a mistake in doing so. Not in the sense that it was wrong to publish the Hellmouth articles, but that it was wrong to ignore their copyright promises to their users. And more importantly, they should define for future reference *exactly* what it means that a person "owns" their comments. They should write down that policy in detail, and they should stick by their policy.

    K: And you feel strongly about that?

    D: This is Stuff That Matters.

  • Why take pictures of "space rocks"? Because if one is going to come whizzing at us some day, wouldn't it be good idea to know what it is made out of and what might happen should we decide to shoot the thing?

    In the scheme of things we may be just a bunch of smelly monkeys, but I'd prefer to keep on smelling from just as long as I can.
  • The Saturn V is really a huge expense. There several far less expensive propositions. For example, the early prototype of the Single Stage to Orbit was a great success. Until the budget got axed by congress and one tiny winy little accident. The RAMP engine looks to be the most useful alternative to the shuttle, particularily if it used on a hybrid vehicle that flys on conventional jets until it reaches altitude and then boost from there into LEO. Once in LEO we should seriously consider building space only vehicles that use low G engines with tremendous efficiency, like ION propulsion or Solar Sail.

    While an ION engine could get us anywhere in the solar system, it would do so slowly, but what is to stop us from using a big rock as a counter weight and spinning the habitation module for G's? Then the low G ION engine could run all the way to turn over, and then all the way to insertion.

    While we're on the topic, Closed Circuit Sewage Treatment systems would allow us to build a system that could produce significant fish (talapia) and green stuff. This would also greatly reduce the cost of the mission. Particularily since the Hab section could be spun up to a near earth G by using a long tether between the hab and its counter weight rock.

    No, I think that the Saturn Rockets are properly dead and gone. But I also think that the shuttle has really seen its day as well. Now, if congress would only vote for enough money to actually build a few replacements . . .
  • there is an even easier solution to the potential depletion of earth's resources: stop friggin using them

    Wonderful. And for all the people (you're almost certainly one of them) whose survival depends on large quantities of air-conditioned, truck-delivered food grown from chemical fertilizers with factory-machined farming equipment, should they be euthanized or allowed to starve naturally?

    And we're just talking human survival, here; man does not live by bread alone. Why not do us and mother earth a favor and turn off your computer first?

    You slashdot people need to put down the lame Science Fiction crap and put you big heads together and look for smarter solutions Here on our planet.

    Shouldn't this be part of a rant at some latte-sipping poetry reading or hippie protest group somewhere? Sending your technophobia across a world-girdling computer network is riskier; someone might notice your hypocrisy showing.

    People are naive is they simply think that we are just going to move to another planet

    No, not move, expand to another planet. We've got a nice one right here that's worth keeping.

    And who said anything about planets? This is an asteroid discussion, remember? The sun releases more energy every millisecond than humanity has used throughout history, and most of it never goes anywhere near a planet.

    when we burn this one out.

    Apocalyptic environmentalism is so much safer than apocalyptic religion; there's so much less pressure to set a date for that rapidly approaching doom, so you don't get disappointed when said dates pass you by.
  • I'd like to see NASA devoting more time and money to real Science, like the NEAR probe, or the mars missions, instead of having committed most of it's budget to the space plane, err, I mean shuttle.

    If it wasn't for the shuttle, the program of large rockets (i.e. Saturn V) probably wouldn't have been mothballed, and we'd perhaps have gone to Mars by now. And for those that point out that the Shuttle came around in the late 70's/early 80's -- there is a design around that uses the Saturn V bottom stage as a booster for a shuttle orbiter, so it was definitely on the minds of those responsible at the time of the Saturn series cancellation, since they considered using the Saturn booster for it.

    --
  • Err, that should have read:

    I'd like to see NASA devoting more time and money to real Science, like the NEAR probe, or the mars missions, instead of having committed most of it's budget to the space plane, err, I mean shuttle.

    If it wasn't for the shuttle, the program of large rockets (i.e. Saturn V) probably wouldn't have been mothballed, and we'd perhaps have gone to Mars by now. And for those that point out that the Shuttle came around in the late 70's/early 80's -- there is a concept drawing done at NASA around that uses the Saturn V bottom stage as a booster for a shuttle orbiter, so it was definitely on the minds of those responsible at the time of the Saturn series cancellation, since they considered using the Saturn booster for it at the time.
    --
  • "Sulu, launch shuttlecraft with ambassador Vilhelmits to planet surface, mark 324.7923, range 199 million miles..."

    "Aye Sir"

    [smash, crash, ka-bleuie]

    "Uh, make that 119 million miles"

    "Are those nautical or English miles, sir?"
  • A search of the Astronomy Picture Of the Day site [nasa.gov] has a binch more images and a few .gif movies of flybys.
    Hmm I think we need an APOD slashbox...

  • Asteroids brought all the early water to a fledgling planet called Earth. It's where we came from, dammit.

    Their mineral content and low gravity make them ideal for mining expeditions -- no sense in wasting lots of fuel to get the stuff back.

    The moon, after all, was just another lump of rock, albeit a little bigger. Half the fun is seeing NASA pull this one off. Trust me, it'll come in handy when they try to do some missions you'll actually appreciate, like to Mars or to Mars' moons, which are really just captured asteroids, after all.

    I'm sure viewers at home can come up with lots more reasons.

  • While progress and research into space is beneficial to the human race, I have to wonder what the purpose is of taking more pictures of asteroids. There already exist many pictures of asteroids, and I don't see what further study would yield. I'm just wondering if there aren't better ways to spend governement money on space. Even if there were valuable resources to be gotten from the asteroid, they would be far to expensive to remove. The article states nothing of how we can benefit from this study. While it is cool that we have the technology to do this, I just can't see the point. Wouldn't it be even more interesting if probes were sent to Europa in search of life? A Europa probe would expand our knowledge of our solar system and perhaps uncover clues to the development of life, the NEAR probe will send us pictures (which look much like the moon, big surpise there) of a dead rock hurtling through space. This certainly doesn't make NASA look like they are doing anything productive. Don't get me wrong, I love space and believe in space exploration, but aren't there better activites to engage in than this?

  • Well, in the latest literature it has been found that most asteroids above 200m don't rotate faster than a certain amount. The reason appears to be that anything larger than 200m is really just a giant pile of rubble. Rotation above this limit would cause the pile to fall apart.
    Yes, that is one of several arguments given for (large) asteroids being rubble piles. The SciAm article also discusses simulation results that predict that large asteroids involved in collisions will tend to turn into rubble piles (fragments fall back together due to gravitational attraction), whereas smaller asteroids will fly apart due to weaker gravitational pull. Observed shapes and densities also tend to support this conjecture but, again, we really need a closer look to know for sure.
    Gist of the matter, it would be very hard to shift the direction of an asteroid, let alone one that is only a giant ball of boulders.
    Exactly right. Imagine kicking a bean bag chair. Doesn't go anywhere, does it? A rubble-pile asteroid would behave in the same way, absorbing much of the energy of your kick. That doesn't mean moving it is impossible, but it's much harder, and certainly something we should know about well in advance of any attempt to stop a killer asteroid.
  • The Saturn V was replaced (I use the term loosely) by the Shuttle because it was expected the Shuttle would lower launch costs significantly.

    Unfortunately, due to incorrect assumptions at design time, the Shuttle now has costs very similar to the Saturn V, but boosts less cargo.

    The Saturn V derivatives, such as the Saturn V-D [friends-partners.org] could have carried 326,500 kg to orbit! And some of the Nova series boosters could have boosted over a million lbs into orbit in one shot!

    Unfortunately, Congress decided to shut down the Saturn line. To avoid any conflict, they ordered the tooling and dies used the create these incredible vehicles destroyed and sold as scrap. Scrap metal!

    Now, we have an expensive white elephant (in a distinctly non-elephant like Delta configuration) in the form of the space shuttle. It costs over $500 million to launch, and carries about half of what the original expected payload capacity was supposed to be. It requires extensive refitting between missions, too. The motors need to be pulled and rebuilt each time, and the re-usable solid boosters get so contaminated by salt water, they need to be extensive refurbished before re-use, and that gets rid of almost any benefit from re-usabillity.

    The future is Rotary Rocket [rotaryrocket.com] with their SSTO manned vehicle (small payload, smaller price) or the Energia w/ their succesful Proton heavy lift launcher and their new Fregat stages and Zenit.

    I hope that one day nanotechnology realizes the potential we all think it has. If so, maybe hobbyists will use nanosites to construct a new generation of Saturn V boosters from reconstructed blueprints (a set still exists in the Library of Congress) and launch them from the beaches of America.

    I hope I live to see that day, so I can see that huge booster my grandparents helped design lift off the pad like my parents and the rest of the generation before me did, and then, maybe, I'll know that our day in space is truly here.

  • Okay, okay, nobody panic!
    I know things don't look good. I know we're close to the point of no return. In but a few scant hours, we'll all be dead, or wish we were. But goddamit, we're going to die proudly! Come on, Slashdot! Let's show the rest of the world that we're truly superior people, and die with dignity.
    Now is the time to forgive old wounds, to make amends for past wrongs. It's now that we come to terms with everything that life has dealt to us, and with humanity's final end!
    Goodbye, Slashdot! Of all the people I could spend my last living moments with, I'm glad I spent it with all of you.


    Wait, the article said that the asteroid was 62 miles from the sattelite ?

    Oh.

  • There already exist many pictures of asteroids

    um, where?

    I could be wrong but unless there's been a sudden increase of spacecraft visiting asteroids, I think there are only about 3 asteroids that we have any close up pictures of.

    Because there's so much space between them, we know almost nothing detailed about the asteroid belt except what other missions have scooped up in flyby's and with the exception of Galileo zooming past Ida and Gaspra, and (very recently) Cassini flying past 2685 Masursky. Neither of them were intended or to look specifically at the asteroid belt.

    I'm not qualified to say what scientific benefit it could offer or if anyone should spend any money on it, but generally knowing more about what's in the asteroid belt could help a lot towards working out how the Solar System began. Theres only so much information you can get from a few fuzzy photographs.

    A Europa probe would expand our knowledge of our solar system and perhaps uncover clues to the development of life

    Plans for a couple of missions to Europa are underway [nasa.gov].

  • For those of you who want to keep up with the mission, check out the NEAR Image of the Day [jhuapl.edu]. There's an update each day as well as an archive in case you missed a few days :-)
  • I find it absoltely remarkable that NASA can make something 200 million miles away hit a target 21 mile wide that's rotating in a somewhat chaotic manner and traveling in an orbit that's influenced by pretty much every nearby object. I will be very impressed if they can actually land on this thing. These guys are really good. And you have to love recursive acronyms...

  • The movies are clearly closeups of a rotating Planters peanut. This is no more real than those moon landings filmed in the desert

  • Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit... (Score:3)

    by Zoyd ( 13778 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @03:25PM (#1102873)
    Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit...

    Whoa there, pardner! How could you know where I'm sitting?

  • Don't need NASA for this... (Score:3)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @03:33PM (#1102874)
    I can't down load movies of Eros all over the Internet...

    (only funny to those who know Greek)
    --
    Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?

  • Movie location at NASA.gov (Score:3)

    by Woil ( 25266 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @03:26PM (#1102875) Homepage
    You'll find these movies over at http://near.jhuapl.edu/Images/.Anim.html on NASA's website. Several of them. [jhuapl.edu]

    -Will

  • Re:Taking pictures of a rock... (Score:3)

    by mouseman ( 54425 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @06:04PM (#1102876) Homepage
    Actually, we have a lot to learn about the asteroids. Since they are both small and far away, telescopes can't tell us all that much, and even their basic composition is not well understood.

    Why should we care? Well, for one thing, they can tell us a lot about the origins of the solar system. The sun and all the planets are believed to have acreted from a vast cloud of gas and dust. The asteroids could not coalesce into a planet due to the gravitational effects of Jupiter, thus were halted at the planetesimal stage. They can give us insight into the early process of planet formation.

    Also, one day one of these suckers could crash into our planet. If we want to have any hope of preventing that, we will need to understand something about their composition. For example, are they solid bodies or are they composed of small rocks held together by gravitational attraction? makes a big difference if we want to try to deflect one heading our way. There is an excellent article in the May issue of Scientific American (no link, since it doesn't seem to be in the online version) that makes a compelling argument for the rubble pile theory.

  • Instead of Robot Ships and Satellites (Score:3)

    by BigTed ( 78942 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @03:54PM (#1102877)
    Shouldn't NASA be spending it's time training up deep sea oil drillers in preparation for the big one.

    I'm also seeing a decent soundtrack and a hot young starlet to keep us all interested - probably wouldn't hurt their funding either.

  • The article said... (Score:3)

    by Formula_409 ( 82791 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @03:26PM (#1102878)
    they were going to attempt to land on Eros to complete the mission. Hmmm...
    I wonder if they are going to try to blow it up, maybe that Armageddon movie got them NASA people thinking, hey, if something like that did happen, we really would have to send up some clueless oil workers.

    Sorry, I forgot to take my medication today.

  • JPL description of NEAR mission (Score:3)

    by zog78 ( 90787 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @03:28PM (#1102879)
    There's a JPL writeup/description of the NEAR mission here [nasa.gov].

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @04:44PM (#1102880)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Movie location in several formats (Score:4)

    by tesserae ( 156984 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @04:23PM (#1102881)
    You can also find them at the official NEAR website [jhuapl.edu], where they come in MPG, animiated GIF and both compressed and uncompressed QuickTime formats. Look in the Image of the Day Archive.

    There are plenty of good stills and movies here.

    ---

  • Re:Taking pictures of a rock... (Score:5)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @04:08PM (#1102882) Homepage
    First of all, all of our pictures of asteroids are from tens of thousands of miles away. The Eros expedition is the first close up inspection of an Asteroid, and it's a necessary next step in freeing ourselves from the danger of exceeding our resources on Earth.

    Asteroid mining can be a reality. For a good book, read 'Mining the Sky'. It discusses the obstacles that need to be overcome, and also illustrates the immense effect asteroid mining can have on our world.

    New advances in ultrasonic drilling is reducing the complexity of asteroid sampling devices, and vaccuum smelting processes are being actively pursued. These, plus the scientific observations afforded by the Shoemaker-NEAR spacecraft will make it possible to avoid paying $10,000+ a lb to carry the materials needed to build tomorrows space colonies and industrial space presence.

    The types of missions people pay the most attention to are the warm and fuzzy ones like J. Glenn's return to space and the Mars Pathfinder. The missions that will provide the best return on our investment in the future are the Cassini's, the SOHOs, and the Shoemaker-NEAR. They may not be as flashy as a remote control car driving a few feet on Mars, but they provide the type of rock-hard scientific data that's needed to get us into space for keeps. ...and being in space for keeps means removing eggs from the basket, which helps our chances at survival.

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