Science often starts out crude, and at first it isn’t necessarily apparent what the dollars and cents return on the investment will be. However, a given avenue of research gets more and more refined as time goes on, and often the spinoff benefits FAR outweigh the initial research costs. That clever technology you mention is very much a result of the space program. Miniaturization of electronics, computer technology, improved weather forecasting, GPS navigation, teflon, high temperature ceramics and countless other convenient and life saving developments have come about because we were willing to take the first crude steps.
Sorry if I implied you were afraid of the probe. I guess I got my signals crossed with an interview I heard on the radio yesterday with a woman who was indeed terrified about this thing.
(PS-- cool harmonica site!)
I figured your question was rhetorical (in both senses of the word), that you were trying to suggest something based on the fact that it’s funded by federal money.
I’m not out to knock the space program generally. I just had an inchoate feeling that this particular endeavour wasn’t right. I do find it hard to see how firing a copper chunk at a comet is going to lead to any beneficial spinoffs other than showing what good shots we are (am I being unkind to suggest that there might just have been a bit of that in it?)
Steve
Humans are inquisitive by nature. The ages old question of “Where do we come from?” is not going to go away anytime soon. Just out of curiosity, would you tell the kids in a particular area that their school wasn’t able to buy new textbooks that year updated with current knowledge of the world around them, because the scientists were told that all their funding had been pulled to go to some better cause?
There have been a myriad of discoveries that came about and directly benefit every one of us on a daily basis from medicine, to transportation and energy etc. - and many of them may likely never have happened if someone at some point hadn’t asked" What, When Where or Why?
This isn’t about celestial marksmanship - that’s actually the easy part. It’s figuring out the orbital mechanics, the gravatational pulls of the given objects, and a best guess at the true composition of the intended object that are more difficult. And the knowledge gained here may in a very real sense help scientists to understand ourselves that much better. For anyone who’s every questioned the world around them, and it’s origins, this information is well beyond price.
Best.
direct benefit for me? Well, if someone can finally produce a mass spec that is capable of going several million miles, and smacking into a comet or planet, and still work, then maybe I’ll finally get one in the lab that doesn’t have to be “tweaked” constantly!!!
So far neither has happened…
The point of smacking a comet with a copper slug was not to prove our marksmanship. We’ve gotten pretty good at dropping probes on targets half way across the solar system. The debris kicked up by the impact is being analyzed so as to reveal its composition. The theory is that comets are leftovers from the original “stuff” which coalesced into the planets, meteors, etc. Hopefully, this will provide information regarding the pimordial composition. It may also shed light on the question of whether the water on our own blue space marble might have come from a comet.
Is it worth the cost? Hard to say in terms of financial payback, but as a scientist type I think knowledge of celestial origins is of great value in itself.
BTW, the fact that you and many other intelligent and educated people are asking questions like this suggests that NASA should probably expend more effort to explain why they do what they do with our money. Strolling about the moon has its glamour aspects, but reaching into the human need to know about our roots as deep as those roots may go just doesn’t have that sex appeal.
Roger
And it would be better to tell those same kids that you can’t buy new textbooks with the updated information because the money that was supposed to go toward education went instead toward target practice that cost $330 million?
I suppose in a way it was. I just have a really hard time justifying spending this kind of money that may come up totally empty, when we have a national debt that’s in the trillions of dollars. I know that most people here think it was necessary…based on many factors (poverty rate, no money for education, etc.), I just can’t agree.
Water’s H2O wherever it is in the universe, so this is one answer we’re not going to get. I think it might have taken more than one comet as well… 
Steve
Izzy I think you’ve missed the point here. Without people willing to take the risk to ask and explore our world (or space as is the case here) the world would still be flat, the plauge might still be rampant, you’d likely be driving a horse and buggy to work, and have very little if any communication with the rest of the world. This is a human drive that will always be there.
I still find it completely humourous that a few get riled up over a mission of $330 million when there are much bigger and more blatant reasons for our countries deficits. This one’s been pointed out before if I recall, but you may want to look again: [u]Cost of War[/u]
As an interesting aside, one site makes mention that: “The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.64 billion per day since September 30, 2004.” Now in doing the simple math, if our current deficit is anything close to the estimated $7,835,275,987,827.00, the cost of this mission is less than 0.00004% of that amount. Pretty insignificant! (Although, my calculation may be off a decimal place or two…feel free to correct the math there if so…but even at a hundreth or a thousandth of that amount, come on!)
Well, without communication with the rest of the world there’d be no plague (rats…ships…if I remember rightly). And I rather like the idea of driving a horse and buggy to work. Feel the fresh air on your face, hear the birds singing, be able to converse cheerily with the other folks in their buggies, having no alternative but to take your time - now THAT’S what I call civilised! And with your limited means of travel (with no pollution resulting), I doubt whether anyone would give a damn whether the earth was flat or not!
Steve
:roll:
I’m sure they wouldn’t.
(Brian said :roll: )
…Oops, sorry Brian…I’ve just snapped out of my little reverie (pity really - I was quite enjoying it!). Funny though, when you’re eulogising about simpler times how, paradoxically, the response can be puzzlement.
Steve
I’m not sure where you thought I was saying anything about the past being better than the present - true it was simpler, but disease was also rampant, transportation horridly slow and dangerous, and the spread of higher knowledge (meaning schooling or formal education) non-existant except to a privileged few given the growing size of the world’s population.
What I DID say, was that if it weren’t for the perserverence of great thinkers - and more importantly those willing to question the world around them, willing to explore, to experement and then to examine the results - the human creature would be FAR less advanced both in skill, and in knowledge than we are today. Of course, the most important thing any scientist or institution can do is to SHARE their knowledge with as many people as are willing to learn it. As the team at JPL and NASA are graciously doing - and in laymans terms as well, so that the general public learns almost as fast as the scientists do. Great times we live in today!
Interestingly, there is no evidence to support dinosaurs discovering or understanding anything such as DNA, the mechanics of powered flight, or a cure for cancer. Neither did they know (as far as we can tell) about the comet or meteor that would inevitably be the demise for most of them…or more importantly, what they might have done (if they had the brain power to work it out) to try and find a solution.
I’m off to go return to my hunter/gatherer existance in my cave, and watch all the Planet of the Apes movies back to back. UGH!
The first one or two were less movies than a series of philosophical speeches, but after about the second one, then things start to get amusing.
Any movie with talking monkeys is cool in my book. Reminds me of Congress.
Be that as it may, it’s exactly why I find this so facinating. I don’t really care why they claim to have done it or their goals.
Their scientific “results” will be as much conjecture as the notion of giant black holes at the center of the galaxy and that a prehistoric tooth “proves” dinasours were vegatarians. What amazes me is the idea of hitting a fast moving target from a fast moving platform at a distance of ~500Km with a washing machine sized bullet. Wow. Good shot Bob!
Was it worth the cost? As a curiosity yes but scientifically? I don’t see how this can compare with advancements in medicine or transportation. These egg heads are trying to find out the “origin of the solar system”. Good grief. Who cares? It’s fine as an academic exercise but it has no practical value whatever.
How about figuring out ways to build orbiting factories and mining resources from asteroids and moons? How about studying how to alieviate the growing energy crisis? Why not use the space program to profoundly effect how we live on Earth?
A bit like the debates over evolution. Dogged determined to push ideas about how things came to be, yet most of science that can really be observed has more to do with demonstrable current porocesses and classification. Even palæontology is more about classification than about some origins myth. Oh well… that’s a debate that’s well over a century old and going nowhere… oh yeah… that was my point! Sorry. Carry on.
Absolutely. Or is that another thread.
Amazing - just amazing.
Funny though, you mention the space program being used to profoundly effect how we live here? Uh…all I can say is do some homework. :roll: As for mining resources from celestial bodies - it helps to know what those resources might be, and in what sort of concentrations don’t you think? Something this type of experiment also shows us…and not indirectly. There is no conjecture about the cloud of particles the probe sent up from the comet surface, the main probe is flying through it taking direct measurements. But of course, there’s no practical value there either.