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Space

First Ever Radar Images Of Main-Belt Asteroid 111

Posted by timothy from the looks-like-a-scooby-snack dept.
Phrogman writes: "NASA and astronomers at Cornell have collected the first ever radar images of a main-belt asteroid, a metallic, dog-bone shaped rock the size of New Jersey named Asteroid 216 Kleopatra. There is an article here with more information and a small image."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

First Ever Radar Images Of Main-Belt Asteroid More

First Ever Radar Images Of Main-Belt Asteroid

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  • Yes but, (Score:3)

    by canny ( 146634 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @05:58PM (#1090609) Homepage
    Can they run linux on that satellite? Maybe all the asteroids could be combined into a beowulf cluster/planet. are these open source images? What about DeCSS? Metallica's lawyers haven't reviewed this yet but they think you violated their copyright in some way...
  • And turn that into the international space station. 135 miles long... Lots of space =-]
  • Firs question: Why are we just now getting radar images of these asteroids? Too much debris? Or are the asteroids too small to be able to record until now (arecibo)?

    Second question: Is this really that important of a discovery?

    Nothing really earth-shattering here..move along.

    ~Steve
    --
  • Couldn't resist. Slap my wrists now.
  • And now we can all fear the day when the dog remembers where it buried it.
  • seeing as their budget cuts just seem to keep coming, and they arent exactlly the most effecient when it comes to operating costs, never mind the high cost "oops". I guess pretty pictures are the only thing that keeps NASA afloat right now. "lets see, we can crash these probes into Mars and hope those airbags that GM sold us inflate. Hell, even if they dont, we'll just snap some pretty pictures of some rocks, stir up public interest about them, cry about russia not pulling its weight on that wizz-bang new space station, and viola, back in the green again"

    ...and the geek shall inherit the earth...

  • Re:Twofold (Score:3)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @06:07PM (#1090616) Homepage
    IANAA (I am not an astronomer) but the technique they described was more than passive telescopy. Instead of looking really hard they bounced radar waves off the thing. This would require a lot of processing power to decode and a lot of signal strength to receive. Also, it mentions that the telescope was recently upgraded to be able to image distant objects.
    Try reading the article instead of trying to get an early post.
    --Shoeboy
    (former microserf)

  • how? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i dont know if anyone else is, but i am extremely impressed by things like this. can someone(who knows what they are talking about) explain just how the hell this is done? I mean its 135 miles long and 106 MILLION MILES AWAY!!! how can you possibly point a relatively tiny radio telescope projecting a thin beam of radio waves, at something THAT far away and get a sense of its shape.

  • Re:Twofold (Score:3)

    by Tony Hammitt ( 73675 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @06:13PM (#1090618)
    I think it is an important discovery, not necessarily the asteroid, the radar imaging technique. I'm pretty impressed that they could do this with a _ground_based_ radar dish. That is completely amazing. 135 miles long may seem big but this thing is 200 million miles away. That kind of imaging quality from a single dish is almost unheard of.

    Secondly, this is an interesting discovery since a lot can be guessed about how this thing formed from its shape. Femur shaped asteroids would have to be formed by stretching the material while it was cooling. Maybe a molten lump of material flew past a bigger asteroid and got pulled apart, then managed to cool without going back into a ball.

    Let's hope it's not Earth shattering. If this was on a collision course with us, we'd all have to move...
  • Personally, I don't see much wrong with NASA benifiting from some pretty pictures. People want pretty pictures, they like them. If that's what it takes to keep interest in an organization that makes some great scientific discoveries for the world, then so be it. NASA needs to make up for it's few recent blunders and prove to Congress, who supplies much needed budget, that the organization is still popular with more than just scientists - hence projects that have scientific purpose but also appeal to the general public.

    Proxima

    "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan

  • Danger! This thing could attract aliens! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If the bone is of the size of New Jersey, imagine the size of the dog!! Let's just hope that if cosmic dog ever comes, big puppy won't wanna play with the big blue ball...
  • Actually, I did read the article..(as much as was possible with the free-subscription). My point was that this isn't the first time they've bounced radar waves off of things to get a picture.

    ~Steve
    --

  • A big duh... (Score:5)

    by MadDreamer ( 143443 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @06:21PM (#1090622)
    And MSNBC gets the award for stupidest headline with their report on this story, entitled 'Telescope spots huge space bone' [msnbc.com].

    Was it wrong that it took me five minutes to stop laughing at this?


    -Mad Dreamer

  • I am wondering, why not? I mean, think of the challenge it would pose. We could learn as much from such a project as we did the Space Program from the 60's. This asteriod "Kleopatra" is an almost ideal shape for such an endeavor. From the JPL pictures, it appears to rotate end-over-end, which could provide some gravity from angular acceleration. The middle portion would be great for zero-g laboratories. Is transforming this asteroid into a space station really such an outrageous idea?

    Ciao

    nahtanoj

  • We all know that radar has it's limited capabilities (such as the ones listed above) and one of these is that radar likes round things.. Thus planes are built in such away (without round[ed] edges) to avoid detection from radar.

    Is it possible that we're missing anything out there (especially relatively close stuff) using radar because of the objects shape?

    Granted, we probably pick the object up on another wave length (visible light, radio, gamma, x-ray, etc), but it should be pointed out that radar does have it's negatives.

    ~Steve
    --

  • One Helluva Throw ... (Score:3)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <be&eclec,tk> on Thursday May 04, 2000 @06:30PM (#1090625) Homepage Journal
    (Serious post)

    Earth is a planet

    (/Serious post)

    Well anyways looking at the picture ... a dog bone THAT big had to take one helluva arm to throw ... I mean imagine the size of the dog ... would the earth be the size of a large beach ball in comparison?

    Guess you'd have to know the size of the dog first ... lets say it's a great dane (erm GALATICAL great dane rather). And it's name is Super Spot.

    Now if you were Super Spot wouldn't it piss you off to have to run from universe to universe to run after this thing? I mean heck I dun even like to run period, let alone at like warp 8 ...

    Let's consider there really is no dog that is bigger than jupiter (Really going out on a limb here). Then let's consider someone really likes to write with HEAVY sarcasm. And this person makes really NO sense and mentally notes the joke is going no where ....

    erm ... I'm done now :-)

  • Now that's scary... I nearly fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard...

    no... it's good for a five minute laugh... time for more Guinness [mmmmmm]

  • Tourism (Score:4)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @06:34PM (#1090627) Homepage Journal
    Reasons to choose Kassandra 216 over New Jersey: 1. The air is better for you. We may not have any, but at least it isn't a carcinogen! 2. Fewer pissed off commuters. You need more than a rusted out El Camino to make it here! 3. No chance of seeing Hillary Clinton on the Channel 3 news. 200 million miles precludes seeing any network television at all!! 4. We have only the finest quality low G accomidations! Well, since we have the ONLY low G accomidations.. 5. Tell your grandkids about it! "When I was your age, we had to hop a leaky Russian capsule for four years, then we had to eat a lump of dry poison." 6. Complimentary Continental breakfast for the first 100 visitors!
  • Pretty nifty (not real exciting) - though it *is* 5MB... glad I'ev got a cable modem. 75+K/s sustained - whoo-hoo! Not /.'d yet.

  • Mining (Score:1)

    by Noer ( 85363 )
    Well, they've spotted it... I wonder how long until asteroid mining becomes somewhat feasible? An interesting question will be which becomes more valuable to mine from space... ore, or ice? (as Earth pollutes its water supplies).

    Then there's the tantalizing possibility of heavier metals... i.e. gold... in some of those asteroids.
  • Once radar was resolved, the LAPD sprang into action and pulled the asteroid over for speeding and gave it some of their famous oldfashioned-loving with a 25-mile billy club. :-)
  • Yeah, I read Ender's Game too.
  • I know you're just trolling for a responce but I'm going to answer anyway because a lot of people seem to be thinking the same thing.

    This is news for nerds. It's news that applies a technology in ways that wasn't possible before an now is. It's news about people pressing their equipment to the edge to get results. And it's news about science and space exploration. This is the sort of thing that IS News for Nerds.
    Sure it's not important to our day-to-day lives. But who cares?
    News that effects everybody in thier day to day lives is NOT news for nerds. Recently people seem to think that this site should be about legal technicalities and stock quotes. Somehow this new "Geek Trend" has swept up people who should be reading CNN.com or News.yahoo.com.

    Ok, I'm done ranting now.
  • ...it's good to know that (at least this part) of outer space has no copyright :)

    "JPL images are available for use by the public free of charge."

    (NASA is a governmental agency, of course)

  • I think it is definitely time to start a pool

    How many posts until the first Scoobie Doo post

    Oh damn...


    Now on a more ontopic question how metalic is this thing? I assume that one day it will probably be cost effective to mine such a beast. Are there any visionaries out there that have an idea how much infrastructure will be needed before this sort of thing becomes remotely possible. A hollowed out rock this size would probably make a pretty nice colony. We have a choice we can sit in/on one place with all of our eggs in one basket^H^H^H^H^H^Hbullseye^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hplanet waiting for a similar rock to hit it, or we can spread our species out onto other smaller targets.

    We need a real space program. Taking pictures and firing scrap metal at Mars is OK, but, we need a space program with a real strategy to avoid joining the dinosaurs.

  • more importantly, how do we know the image is accurate? damn thing could be an oval for all we really know. the radar tells us *everything* new, so it cannot be checked against anything else.
  • First off, it means that now we're going to have yokel cops buying time on Arecibo to set up an interstellar speed trap...We clocked you going 18000 in a 25 zone.

    Second off, we now have a new thing to fear, the Interstellar Space Dog. Let's just hope the hound that this bone belongs to doesn't think that the little rock we live on isn't a ball to play fetch with.

  • More information? (Score:3)

    by Ashandare ( 123402 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @07:01PM (#1090637)

    The official release is here:
    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releas es/2000/kleopatra.html [nasa.gov]

    Another picture and an animation of the asteroid are here:
    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/kleopa tra/ [nasa.gov]

    Brief, yes. Useful, perhaps.

  • I love this argument, I really do. Here *YOU* are bitching about how much this knowledge cost. Knowlege is invaluable. Yet you bitch at the apparent cost because people are starving in the world, true, many are. Many of these starving people don't have the internet either. Perhaps we should just get rid of the net until everyone is happy and well fed?

    I know you are trolling, good job I guess, you got me. But the search for answers is a very important thing, the search for information is a very important facet of freedom.

    What good can this knowlege do us? You might add?
    I bring up this:

    When Faraday showed the Queen these sparks of "electricity" It is said that she commented:

    "Of what use is this electricity?"

    To which Faraday replied:

    "Madam, of what use is a baby?"

    So if you are trolling (as I expect you are) good job. And before you lambast me about the starving people in the world, I have been to Africa and bult some of those people a medical clinic in the middle of "nowhere" as it were, I did it with my own money. Compassion and knowlege go hand in hand I think. I fear the ignorant.
  • Some reasons why we can't just yet do that:
    -No air on asteroid
    -No feasable way to get people there ... yet
    -No water on asteroid
    -Asteroid in orbit with other asteroids

    So all we need to do is figure out some way to turn iron in oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon and we're set... at least as far as living on it. I imagine it would take several years to hollow out such a large volume of metal, not to mention getting such a large team to the asteroid (or the asteroid to the large team). I believe we don't quite have the technology needed... yet.

  • Yet Another Not-So-Witty Quip Regarding Bone-Shaped Asteroid:

    Say, isn't that the crusted-over remains of the Discovery?
    --

  • Wait... hmm. It seems that water and air won't be so much of a problem after all. The radar detected an asteroid that is supposed to be "water-rich". [nasa.gov] [http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/~ostro/KY26/index.html] I don't know how close they are, but it would seem that if there is water, air is only a step away, so this asteroid would be a better candidate for hollowing out.
  • That animation was the most boring space movie I've ever seen. At least Starship troopers had guns and stuff.
  • Well.. this is first image of a Main-belt asteroid, which means its in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. We have not had a picture of one of these before. This is the first one. Also important is its shape (which if you read the article you'd know why). The astronomers who found it said that they have no good explanation of how it could take its current shape.
  • The ground based dish is the biggest we have (305 meters/1000 feet diameter). As it is in an _asteroid belt_ it is not heading towards Earth. In fact, it is in orbit around our sun, the same as we are. The chief scientist even went so far as to say that it is not directed at Earth, which just shows you that when media mentions asteroid people automatically assume "COLLISION!". The Earth is very small. We do not have an asteroid magnet inside us. All the asteroids in the galaxy are not aimed at our planet.
  • I care. I find this very interesting. I am not an astronomer.

    As to why you are talking about radar... I dont quite see how thats relevant.
  • If you are referring the F117-A Stealth Fighter in your comment that radar likes round things, well that is not exactly true.

    The Stealth Fighter was designed using 70s technology. They had to compute out all the angles by hand, which means that all the sides are flat. The Stealth Bomber has a more rounded shape because a computer was used to design it, and the computer was much more efficient than humans and could work with curves. However, both systems work the same way. They are designed to leave a very small radar print not because they don't have round edges, but because of the way the radar bounces off of them. This, combined with a special paint, helps leave a radar image about the size of a horsefly. I do not know this because I am a researcher at Lockheed, I know this becuase I watch Wings on the Discovery Channel.
  • NASA does not exist to please you. NASA exists to learn more about space. Unlike ignorant tards, NASA doing RESEARCH does not strike me as a waste of money.
  • dateline 1:32am (EDT). According to observers stationed on the George Washington Bridge, a dog-shaped Egytian hieroglyph decended slowly over Fort Lee tonight, neatly locking itself on top of the former state of New Jersey.

    "It was the darndest thing I ever saw," said one distant relative of Elian Gonsalez, who identified himself only as "Mark Anthony." "A dog-like figure came down at exit 68, then a cat a 70, a dancing girl with braids at 71, and then whoosh, all of Jersey was covered, in one big farting sound!"

    Officials in the Guiliani administration did not return our requests for comment, but insiders in City goverment have informed us that the Major intends to reveal that is a direct descendent of Caesar at a press conference tomorrow, as well as that he called on Kleopatra to help him initiate his new "Clean Up New York -- and the rest of the World!" campaign. "In one fell swoop, he's eliminated the armpit of America -- no more chemical dumps, no more girls with big hair and nasal lisps. And wait 'till you see what he has planned for Connecticut."

    In other News, officials at zoos in New York City and Long Island today reported a series of lion disappearances...

  • I don't know if i'd call him Super Spot; when i think of a gigantic dog that would have a dog bone that big, I visualize somthing along the lines of Clifford the Big Red Dog-hell, Granddaddy Clifford the big red dog.

    Maybe we should name the "galactical great danes" after our heroic space pioneering doggies? You know, the ones they sent out into space before risking anything with a human? Any thoughts anybody?

  • I like how you think.
  • With some exceptions (really metal-rich asteroids, like ones formed from the nickel-iron cores of their parent bodies, excepted) lots of asteroids seem to be "rubble piles", loosely aggregated heaps of debris held together only by their gravitational attraction. This also gives them protection against being shattered by impacts; the spaces between the pieces just reflect and absorb the shocks, leaving a slightly different configuration of the chunks.
    From the JPL pictures, it appears to rotate end-over-end, which could provide some gravity from angular acceleration. The middle portion would be great for zero-g laboratories.
    If the object was spinning faster than the speed of an object in orbit around it, there wouldn't be any loose material on its surface (it would have flown off into space). Even if there was a solid chunk of nickel-iron forming the core, you probably wouldn't want to try spinning the whole body fast enough to give you significant G's even if you had the ability; would you trust your welfare to a single piece of an unknown alloy with who-knows-what kind of damage and stress history? One crack growing from a trace flaw....

    On the other hand, if the layer of loose stuff on the surface is thick enough, you could just dig a trench in it big enough to spin a wheel-type space station built of nickel-iron pipe (if it's metal-rich, you should have plenty to play with). Unless you want to hollow out a whole disk you have to forget about spokes... then you put a lid on the trench with enough clearance for a bit of wobble and cover it with the material you removed, forming a cosmic-ray shield. Spin up the wheel, artificial gravity.
    --
    This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic

  • That's no asteroid... (Score:3)

    by planet_hoth ( 3049 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @07:46PM (#1090652)
    ...it's a space station!!

    Click below for proof:
    "asteroid" [spaceref.com]
    Satellite of Love (of MST3K fame) [scifi.com]

  • Does MSNBC have a sense of humor or are they complete idiots?
  • I believe you mean Kleopatra 216.
  • Be a man. 2400 baud! The way the internet was supposed to be. (Viva slashdot light mode.)
  • We all know that radar has it's limited capabilities (such as the ones listed above) and one of these is that radar likes round things.. Thus planes are built in such away (without round[ed] edges) to avoid detection from radar.

    Uh... no. The reason the F117A [photovault.com] is angular is because the computer systems used at the time it was designed couldn't practically compute the radar profile for anything but objects that have only planar surfaces. If you look at pictures of the B2 stealth bomber [photovault.com], you can see that it's actually got quite a few smooth curves. It was developed after the F117A, and computers had advanced enough that it was practical for them to compute the radar profile of curved surfaces. That's very useful, because angular shapes like that of the F177A aren't very stable aerodynamically.
  • Before asteroid mining will be feasible, the price must drop below that of mining on Earth. That wont be for quite some time.
  • Congratulations on repeating almost exactly what I said on the post above yours.
  • I agree! That is a spaceship! I suggest we launch an investigation team from NASA to discover all new technology that it wields which probably will solve our current problems all around the third stone.
  • Those were some heavy trailer-homes if they were made out of cinder blocks! :-p

  • Metallica's lawyers haven't reviewed this yet but they think you violated their copyright in some way...

    It is a metallic asteroid...

    It may be in the direction of Orion...

  • More information on radar asteroid astronomy. (Score:3)

    by egnor ( 14038 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @08:11PM (#1090662) Homepage
    <a href="http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/">This site at
    JPL</a> has more information on imaging asteroids
    with radar. This has only become practical
    relatively recently with newly installed equipment
    at Arecibo and (to a lesser extent) NASA's
    Goldstone radar telescope.

    It looks like asteroids come in two shapes: "long
    and thin" (a la the "dog bone" Kleopatra or "shoe"
    Eros), or the more classic lumpy-round-thing look.
    They seem to be about equally common, at least
    among the asteroids we've imaged.

    I think game designers and movie special-effects
    people may need to make some revisions! But what
    radio telescopes can't tell us is what happens to
    a long-thin asteroid when you blast it; does it
    turn into smaller long-thin rocks, or fragment
    into roughly spherical chunks? I demand accuracy
    in my arcade games!
  • so long is it's not chickens ... I mean ... the whole ordeal with the feathers and eggs and such ... it's just too much of a PR stunt for nasa to risk ...

  • Here's a real link [nasa.gov] for your clicking pleasure. Sorry about that! (I swear I selected "HTML Formatted"...)
  • They aren't sending spacecraft for $h@ts and giggles. They are testing theories and technologies that could save thousands of lives. As for starving people, timid, stupid people starve. Children of those people starve, which is tragic, but they are genetically similar to their poor provider parents, which makes it not as bad. All lives are equal, but the end of the life of a person who refuses to care for themself should not make anyone sad. Smart, bold people and their children don't wait for handouts when they exhaust their food source. They move on. They survive. If I, although I am very dumb, had to make a choice between dumb people and science, I would choose science. Starving people starve because they don't steal, grow, or catch what they need to survive. When they can't, it is tragic. When they won't it is dumb. The latter happens much more than the former. You can tell by watching any Christian's Children's Fund commercial. They all just sit there. Perhaps there is some reason they sit there waiting to die. If so many die, then there is plenty of food. Lots of corpses=lots of food. Sure there are health risks, but certain death is worse than potential death. If they refuse to eat the dead because of religion, then when they die, they go to a better place. There is no reason for them to fear death, and there is no reason for us to mourn them. While they live they endure pain. So do most people. Considering their short lives, they probably suffer less than most. There is another reason not to feel sorry for them.

    In summary: I hope you are kidding, lots of stuff, summary, sig file.

    I'm sorry.

  • The latest issue of Scientific America discuss this subject in their cover story: whether asteroids are solid-core or rubble piles. You can't miss it, it's the one with the black and white picture of an asteroid (Eros?) on the cover. They conclude that most are probably rubble piles based on a variety of evidence, particularly rotational speed.

    IMO, the best reasons for an asteroid as a space station are protection from radiation and not having to haul the raw material out of a gravity well. I agree with the above poster that you probably wouldn't want to spin it up to create gravity.
  • If you follow the JPL links you can read:

    "The Arecibo telescope underwent major upgrades in the 1990s, which dramatically improved its sensitivity and made it feasible to image more distant objects."

  • Why? (Score:4)

    by Ertai ( 134811 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @08:22PM (#1090668)
    A number of people have posted comments to the effect of "who cares?", "this isn't important".

    This is really interesting stuff to me because of a couple of things that radar measurements can do that optical either can't or has difficulty doing.

    1) Radar can penetrate clouds. Witness Magellan. [nasa.gov]

    2) Since radar can do this, ground based radar doesn't suffer nearly as much atmospheric distortion as a normal telescope does.

    3) Radar is an active system, so a radar observer does not have to worry about reflected sunlight providing illumination.

    4) Radar observations can easily provide lots of info like rotation rate, etc. See here [nasa.gov] for examples.

    5) Radar can also, given sufficient info, provde 3D maps. For an optical 3D map, you either need a laser altimeter [nasa.gov] or a stereo imager [nasa.gov]

    Also check out this quote from a NASA press release [nasa.gov] about radar imaging of asteroid 1999 JM8:

    ""Our finest resolution is 15 meters (49 feet) per pixel, which is finer than that obtained for any other asteroid, even for spacecraft" said Dr. Jean-Luc Margot, one of the team members from Arecibo Observatory. "To get that kind of resolution with an optical telescope, you'd need a mirror several hundred meters across. Radar certainly is the least expensive way of imaging Earth-approaching objects.""

    Certainly seems to me that radar is a very useful tool for observing near-Earth and even belt asteroids which could lead to later exploration and exploitation.

  • I disagree that the only possibility for this shape is by streching the material while it cools. It could be made of two solid chunks pushed together by gravity and the gap between filled by the dust from the collision. The shape of Eros is not completely dissimilar from that of this recently imaged picture of Kleo, and the current consensus leans towards the idea that Eros is a rubble pile - not a solid-core asteroid.

    The April issue of Scientific American has a great article on the subject.

  • Oops. May issue (the current one), not April.

    Here's a summary of the article from the sciam.com website:

    The Small Planets
    Erik Asphaug

    New space probe images offer the first close-ups of asteroids, the minute worlds that carry clues to how theplanets formed. Surprisingly, many asteroids are more like gravel piles than solid rock.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • ...but it took me ten minutes to stop crying.

    (Yeah, right. As if I read MSNBC.)
    More
    Stupid
    Nincompoops
    Broadcasting
    Crap

  • No, he meant Cleopatra:2525.

    /me begins humming annoying rip-off theme song
  • Yeah, and then we can put an AI on it to control all the station functions. Of course, in a few hundred years it'll go rampant and make radio contact with a race of aliens that it will then come to Earth to wipe out the human race.

    .... or has that been done already?
  • .. but this made me think of the word "Vortigons" for some reason. Hmmm....

  • Greg Bear's Eon featured a very large hollowed out asteroid. He used one of the largest known asteroids, I'm sorry I don't remember the name. Wasn't Kleopatra, but it was even bigger. It's a great book, my favorite work by Bear.

    And as one person already pointed out, Ender's Game had a hollowed out asteroid, but it didn't go into nearly so much detail.

    Interestingly, Both books were published in 1985.

    Anyone know of more giant hollow asteroid stories?

  • Good thing you caught that.
    I hate it when my HTML is showing and I don't notice. Everyone starring at you and all.
  • So, of course, someone has to bring this up...

    Sounds like a job for distributed computing. What will get finished first? Imaging all the main belt asteroids, or RC5-64? My money is on the asteroids.

  • I'm serious. We should hollow some asteroids out and make a kick-ass space station.

    Solar power out there is about as good as on the surface of the Earth. Enough of it and we could melt some holes. Heck, by then we may have better nuclear power like a working cold or warm fusion.

    Even an M type asteroid has some silicates in it, so that's where we get the oxygen, if we don't get it from an ice asteroid. Carbon is easy, we have too much of it in Earth's atmosphere anyway, CO + O2 makes an OK rocket fuel. We just take extra fuel along and have fuel cells producing CO2 for our plant life. Humans don't really need all that much nitrogen, just for amino acids and some less reactive component of the atmosphere. It doesn't take much.

    I'm not proposing hollowing the ENTIRE thing out, just start hollowing... We'd have to pick a good spot, but that thing has thousands of miles of surface area. I'd worry about digging in and finding radioactive metals, I wouldn't want to build a colony near any uranium deposits.

    It sure sounds like good thing to do in the 21st century. What else is there to do?

  • Re:how? (Score:3)

    by muldrake ( 171275 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @09:46PM (#1090680) Homepage Journal
    The astronomers used the telescope to bounce radar signals off Kleopatra. With sophisticated computer-analysis techniques, they decoded the echoes, transformed them into images, and assembled a computer model of the asteroid's shape. The Arecibo telescope underwent major upgrades in the 1990s, which dramatically improved its sensitivity and made it feasible to image more distant objects. These new radar images were obtained when Kleopatra was about 106 million miles (171 million kilometers) from Earth. Travelling at the speed of light, the transmitted signal took about 19 minutes to make the round trip to Kleopatra and back. "Getting images of Kleopatra from Arecibo was like using a Los Angeles telescope the size of the human eye's lens to image a car in New York," Ostro said. From the article [spaceref.com] at JPL. Sounds fun--apologies if my link is broken, I'm still messing around with this.

  • Recent findings indicate (Score:3)

    by dragonfly_blue ( 101697 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @09:55PM (#1090681) Homepage
    Recent findings of mine indicate that this asteroid actually came from the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius.

  • So if you troll and no one feeds the troll, is it your fault if you starve?

    I think it is based on your argument, because you obviously didn't troll well enough

  • he is probably thinking about those 2 ppl who wrote those 2 dumb comments before him
    as soon as someone writes "does it run linux?" or "can we run beowulf" it gets moderated up as funny. those comments should be moderated down as offtopic and not up.
  • according to the article its sed that the is a result of a collision. let say, a big planet collided with a mother of a comet made of iron, the collision causes one of the 2 objects to shatter, the "bone astroid" would be a result , but what sort of structure made it fragment it into the shape its in?
  • It was not my intention to troll. If I have, then I beg forgiveness. I am unfortunately unaware of the definition of trolling. If you wouldn't mind, please lift the 18 wheel TIP Systems(TM) truck of ignorance from my nasal bridge and allow me to see the truth. This also is not meant as a troll, though it may look like it is. I can't tell. In conclusion, it would be an excruciating amount of help if someone could fill me in on what trolling is. Thanks.
  • 200 million miles precludes seeing any network television at all!!

    In fact (insert tounge in cheek) we could probably watch all kinds of TV... Even my relatives on another planet (it seems that way sometimes, anyway!) could watch the superbowl:

    Television signals are some of the more powerful signals and could be received by other civilizations. They would not, however, be watching the latest episode of the Simpsons.

    Robert Dixon, a SETI authority from OSU, illustrated how far our televisions signals have traveled. "Super Bowl I, which was broadcast about 30 years ago, reached the closest star in 1974, and it has now reached about 1000 stars," said Dixon.

    That quoted from http://www.lehigh.edu/~injrl/scop e/vol1_2txt.html [lehigh.edu] (I am not a regular reader of this site, in fact I never saw it before, I just searched for SETI and television... suprisingly, no pornography turned up in the search results!)

    :)

  • All of that, and you didn't even claim first post.
    Get with the program! :)

    -Restil
  • Heh.

    I think you'll find subtelty has no place here :-)

    For those who want to know, Sirius is called the 'dog star'.

    See also:
    http://www.physics.purdue.edu/astr263l/forum/Sir ius.html

  • Well, it gives astronomers a new bone to chew on...

    --
    Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]

  • Seriously, when do they send a couple of big ol' shuttles up there and convert this useless space rock into valuable space station materials?

    Kintanon
  • A number of years ago, somebody suggested the following trick:
    • Find a solid metal asteroid.
    • Drill a hole down the length of it.
    • Fill the hole with water.
    • Plug the hole.
    • Slowly heat the asteroid with solar mirrors.
    • Eventually, the metal will be very plastic but not yet molten. At some point, the heat will reach the water.
    • The water will boil, and the expanding steam will force the metal to expand like a balloon.
    • If you were lucky, you'd end up with a very large metal ball-shaped shell. POOF! Space Station!
    • Patch leaks.
    • Pump full of atmosphere.
    • Move in.
    Yes, there's be lots of engineering challenges, but it's still a neat idea.


    ...phil
  • That's not totally accurate. The price would have to drop below the cost of mining it on earth, sticking it on a shuttle, and finally moving it out into space.

    Compared to that cost, asteroid mining is pretty damn cheap. And either way, getting it back down from orbit is nowhere near as bad is getting it up in the first place.

    Remember, Eros has more metal in its volume than the human race has used in it's entire lifetime.

    Dyolf Knip

  • Anyone know of more giant hollow asteroid stories?

    Larry Niven discusses hollowed asteroids at great length in the Known Space series, particularly the Belter stories.

    Oh yeah, and in Protector the Brennan Monster has hollows in his asteroid, IIRC.

    Then Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye talks about old hollowed out asteroids, filed with mummified Moties.

    Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series talks about hollowing out Phobos, which may have been an asteroid at one time before it was captured by Mars.

    Arthur C. Clarke's Earthlight is about a war between Earth and the other planets, I think they mention asteroids in it.

    Bester's The Stars My Destination has Joseph and the Scientific People holed up in some sort of asteroid.

    George

  • It sure sounds like good thing to do in the 21st century. What else is there to do?

    Oh, I can think of a few things...
    - Find alternative fuel source(s)
    - Find cure for cancer, diabetes, alzheimer's, etc.
    - Figure out a way to bring government back to the people
    - Promote the free trade of ideas
    I could go on if you still need suggestions. If you are ever bored on a Sunday afternoon, gimme a call. :-)

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • Remember when the ape throws the bone into the
    air and it changes into a spaceship?
    Well thats the bone!

  • I wonder how "metallic" this asteroid is. How easy would metal extraction be? How expensive would it be to "ship" packets down the gravity well to Earth?

    Small packets, of course.

  • We have not had RADAR pictures. Hubble was recently aimed at the asteroid 4 Vesta , which is by far the most interesting main belt asteroid. You can easily find the pictures, just type "Vesta asteroid" in google. It was also done by Cornell scientists.
  • The Arecibo telescope is owned by Cornell University and was built about 30 years ago. NASA has spent practically no money on those pictures, because the telescope would still be there even if the images were not made. So shut up, troll.
  • Well, You get up a nuclear power plant there, use it to produce aluminum by electrolysis. Then, also using the power plant, decompose water ice into hydrogen and oxygen. So now you have aluminum, hydrogen and oxygen. You make yourself a rocket from these and you shoot back to earth whatever materials you want as the payload of the rocket. And since you don't have to escape a lot of gravity at launch, the rocket would be able to bring ridiculous amounts of material to Earth. Also note that since the temperature is so low there, your power plant will operate at an insane efficiency, that can never be achieved on Earth (it's all in the delta T of the Carnot cycle).
  • Yeah! Hollywood is going to have to top those cheezy asteroid special effects (think Armageddon) somehow...

  • It looks like the NAIC [naic.edu] which runs the Arecibo observatory received approximately 10 million dollars in grants this fiscal year. These grants helped fund not only this research, but research by more than 150 scientists who use the observatory each year. So if you assume that each scientist uses the same portion of resources, as a first approximation, this project cost about $67,000. Now compare that to NASA satellite missions which typically cost several hundred million dollars, and I think that this research has been very cost effective.

    I would also keep in mind that much of that money goes to the staff which keeps the observatory, and other facilities operational. I count about 147 people on the directory, though I admit some are listed twice, this includes a scientific staff of about 24 research scientists, but most of the staff is made up of mechanics, electical workers, cooks, janitors, security, and staff for the visitor's center. So though it's true that many people are starving in the world, this observatory is giving people jobs so they can put food on the table.

    So maybe it's better to view astronomical observatories in this way: We learn about the composition, physical processes, and origins of the Universe around us, and at the same time provide jobs for a lot of people.

  • If it was not your intention to troll then I too am sorry for two reasons. One, I went after you unfairly if you really didn't mean to troll. Two, you actually believe everything you said.

    While I can agree with you in some situations, there actualy are some highly intelligent people born in to the situations you describe who have no chance of getting away from them. These people also do not always bring thier situations on themselves. The fact that it hasn't rained in some areas of the world for years is not the fault of these people, nor is the fact that they can't leave. For you to suggest that the smart ones should eat the other weak people only highlights your ignorance on the topic. People who are malnourished and have no muscle mass like the ones you see, sitting around doing nothing, won't provide nutrition to someone else. In fact it would likely cost the person eating the other more energy to digest the other person then any energy they would gain from the nutrients in that person.

    That is my take IIRC from what I have read. If I am wrong someone else please enlighten me.

  • The press release says "Kleopatra's interior arrangement of solid metal fragments and loose metallic rubble, and the geometry of fractures within any solid components, are unknown."

    Note also that no actual photos are available - just computer reconstructions of radar echoes.

    Suspending disbelief for a moment, this could as well be a generation-type starship... drive at one end, cargo/living space at the other end, a narrower structure holding both apart. And, of course, this would show up on radar as hollow spaces, smaller metallic "fragments", a metallic skin, and patterns which would be misinterpreted as "fractured" by anyone convinced that this must be a naturally-formed object.

  • That is my take IIRC from what I have read. If I am wrong someone else please enlighten me.

    Actually no, you are quite correct.
    Again having been to Africa your summation that they cannot escape their fate is correct. The problem is the opressive governments that rule these people. Since these people only have access to (limited) government education, all they know is propaganda, they are ignorant because they don't have the access to better education. Not that they would be able to exploit it anyhow: they are too busy trying not to die.

    As per your comments on nutrition, those might be correct, it reminds me of "rabbit starvation". Still, I would hardly call canabalism a solution..
  • The rule is that if you are registered and you make those stupid comments you are generally ignored or moderated up. Downward moderation should be eliminated as a useless waste of moderation points. In a stupidity arms race, the stupidest often win.
  • This clearly isn't the picture of an "asteroid" or any other such thing...

    It's quite obviously the bone thrown up into space at the beginning of 2001!

  • The shuttle can't go above 300 km altitude or so, let along to the asteroid belt.

    --
  • Did anyone else boggle at the thought that this sucker is 135 miles long & 58 miles wide, and mainly METAL? Would it be cost effective to go mine this sucker?

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