Hugh Hewitt devoted yesterday's first hour to NASA's Deep Impact project. What fun! He had a guest from JPL (didn't catch his name and couldn't find it on Hugh's website) who was involved in the trajectory part of the project. The guy (I'll call him Dave) is a rocket scientist who has a sense of humor.
Hugh threw straight questions at Dave, as well as throwing curves, and Dave handled both equally well. The interesting part for me (straight question) was when Dave explained that they couldn't calculate the exact trajectory until they got close to the comet, because the comet's core was hidden from view. So the calculations were done on/by the mother ship at close range.
And they didn't send a bomb. It was a big copper ball that they lobbed at the comet. The force of the impact caused the comet's surface to vaporize and eject the vapor and surface particles. It makes sense that they'd get pure comet materials by using a copper ball, rather than exploding a bomb and having bomb residue potentially corrupt the results of the impact.
Hugh asked if NASA had been concerned about the chance of releasing General Zod from the comet, and Dave answered it just as seriously as he answered Hugh's other questions. They didn't expect any repercussions.
Hugh also speculated about the effect of dropping a ball on Cleveland, but I don't think that's in NASA's plans at the moment.
After the show, Hugh posted a link to Point Five Step, where he has a most excellent post on Science's immediate future (do you recognize the photo from somewhere???).
I could stand this NASA/Hugh stuff for a long time. But the Supreme Court and the Senate and the War in Iraq won't cool their heels (sigh).
No comments:
Post a Comment