tech

NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test

10 Comments
By MARCIA DUNN

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It's on live TV now. The impact should be at about 8:15am (Tokyo time).

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Watch. They're going to accidentally send meteor fragments hurtling toward Earth. I know. I've seen the movie.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Watched live on BBC. The ground crew was ecstatic with joy.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Seems like a giant waste of recourses and money. Pretty sure all the space junk we’ve left up there is a bigger immediate threat.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

I don't know - sounds controversy to me. NASA claims its inception 10 months ago when we all were facing peril moments with the pandemic at large. I for one never heard of this "program" till now.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

“ Earlier in the day, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reminded people via Twitter that, “No, this is not a movie plot.” He added in a prerecorded video: ”We’ve all seen it on movies like ‘Armageddon,’ but the real-life stakes are high." “

heheh

Armageddon, there it is (!)

Complain all you want, you son of a b***. “

heheh

..

Good job, NASA.

:)

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Nudging space rocks one way or another could be used as an ultimate weapon against a foe here on Earth.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

“What an amazing thing. We've never had that capability before," Glaze noted.

Indeed another example of the amazing things that have become a reality thanks to scientific discoveries, lots of people are now waiting very exited the data produced by this experiment and what the scientists will tell about how likely this kind of procedure can alter the orbit of asteroids.

Nudging space rocks one way or another could be used as an ultimate weapon against a foe here on Earth.

Waiting for who knows how many decades (or centuries) for a rock to be already in a collision course with the planet so a nudge could direct it against an specific place? it would be anything but an efficient use of resources, nor exactly something that could be done in secrecy. In that case it would be just better to direct the attack directly towards the real objective in the first place.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Waiting for who knows how many decades (or centuries) for a rock to be already in a collision course with the planet so a nudge could direct it against an specific place? 

As the scientists know, there is no need to wait decades (or centuries):

“There are about 2,000 or so near-Earth asteroids which are these asteroids which are defined as getting close to Earth,” Cushing said. “They pass by us on a relatively frequent basis.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/asteroids-passing-close-to-earth-in-upcoming-weeks/ar-AAPzNm8#:~:text=“There%20are%20about%202%2C000%20or%20so%20near-Earth%20asteroids,in%20the%20night%20sky%20without%20a%20good%20telescope.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

As the scientists know, there is no need to wait decades (or centuries):

"close to Earth" do not mean human could nudge them to a direct hit with the planet, nor that they could do any damage because of their size, as the article mentions explicitly, "It’s passing very, very far away from the Earth from a human perspective..." which means it is not possible to use them as weapons as described, much less in a practical way.

Why offer a reference that clearly contradicts your point?

3 ( +4 / -1 )

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