-273: 4 July 2005

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4 July 2005 - 11:09 pm

Bush has been trying for years to have a missile hit an incoming missile as part of the Missile Defense Plan that occasionally makes the news because of its repeated failures, but has never been successful at it. Yet NASA seems to have no trouble hitting a comet with an auto-navigating probe from a distance of 83 million miles from Earth. Perhaps the defense contractors working on missile defense should reach out the the NASA scientists who pulled this off for some pointers.

Posted by on 4 July 2005 at 11:07 PM

Comments

Of course NASA wouldn't have trouble hitting a comet. It's right there!! They've been able to see it! They know from the basic laws of physics where it's headed, they have had tons of time to calculate its trajectory and thus, where to shoot their probe. Now if the missile defense program had ESP or some way to predict where and when a missile is bound to shoot from somewhere on this planet, or the brains to calculate in a mere few seconds where on this good green Earth that missile is going to hit, I'm sure that the government would be able to have as good of results as NASA has had.

Posted by Amy on 4 July 2005 - 11:36 PM

The comet was also 10 miles wide. Still, the impactor was in the same problem domain as the missle interceptor because the comet wobbles due to new pockets of gas getting released, and the impactor had to account for that, in an automated fashion. With only the few millions of dollars on the line, NASA was still nervous about being able to pull this off.

It boggles me that anybody thinks we can do this reliably with a target 3.5 orders of magnitude smaller, and millions of lives and 10x the money on the line. I think we'd be better off if Bush supplied us with a Jesus-shield (tm) (pat. pend.) emanating from Texas churches.

Posted by Charlie on 5 July 2005 - 4:43 PM

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The comet was also 10 miles wide. Still, the impactor was in the same problem domain as the missle interceptor because the comet wobbles due to new pockets of gas getting released, and the impactor had to account for that, in an automated fashion. With only the few millions of dollars on the line, NASA was still nervous about being able to pull this off. It boggles me that anybody thinks we can do this reliably with a target 3.5 orders of magnitude smaller, and millions of lives and 10x the money on the line. I think we'd be better off if Bush supplied us with a Jesus-shield (tm) (pat. pend.) emanating from Texas churches. Of course NASA wouldn't have trouble hitting a comet. It's right there!! They've been able to see it! They know from the basic laws of physics where it's headed, they have had tons of time to calculate its trajectory and thus, where to shoot their probe. Now if the missile defense program had ESP or some way to predict where and when a missile is bound to shoot from somewhere on this planet, or the brains to calculate in a mere few seconds where on this good green Earth that missile is going to hit, I'm sure that the government would be able to have as good of results as NASA has had.
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