Posted on 10/27/2010 3:28:53 PM PDT by neverdem
A FEW weeks ago, an asteroid almost 30 feet across and zipping along at 38,000 miles per hour flew 28,000 miles above Singapore. Why, you might reasonably ask, should non-astronomy buffs care about a near miss from such a tiny rock? Well, I can give you one very good reason: asteroids don’t always miss. If even a relatively little object was to strike a city, millions of people could be wiped out.
Thanks to telescopes that can see ever smaller objects at ever greater distances, we can now predict dangerous asteroid impacts decades ahead of time. We can even use current space technology and fairly simple spacecraft to alter an asteroid’s orbit enough to avoid a collision. We simply need to get this detection-and-deflection program up and running.
President Obama has already announced a goal of landing astronauts on an asteroid by 2025 as a precursor to a human mission to Mars. Asteroids are deep-space bodies, orbiting the Sun, not the Earth, and traveling to one would mean sending humans into solar orbit for the very first time. Facing those challenges of radiation, navigation and life support on a months-long trip millions of miles from home would be a perfect learning journey before a Mars trip.
Near-Earth objects like asteroids and comets — mineral-rich bodies bathed in a continuous flood of sunlight — may also be the ultimate resource depots for the long-term exploration of space. It is fantastic to think that one day we may be able to access fuel, materials and even water in space instead of digging deeper and deeper into our planet for what we need and then dragging it all up into orbit, against Earth’s gravity.
Most important, our asteroid efforts may be the key to the survival of millions, if not our species...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Who knew? Wonder how long there have been Moslems on asteroids.
Apollo 13 Schweickart?
You guys seeing a pattern here with the asteroid stories?
Barrack o Crap is full of it
kip to comments.
Historic KSC Launch Pad 39-B Dismantled
WESH 2 Orlando ^ | October 27, 2010
Posted on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 3:41:40 PM by greatdefender
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Forty years of space history is being demolished at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral as crews worked to begin dismantling historic launch pad 39-B.
It is not yet clear when launch pad 39-B will make history again. The pad is one of two used for both the Apollo and Shuttle programs.
Shuttle Discovery is prepared for its next flight on the only remaining pad, 39-A, where it is set to launch Monday.
The last time pad 30-B was used it launched an Aries 1X, which was to be the rocket to launch astronauts to the moon again. The Aries program has since been canceled.
The director of the space center said the future for NASA is bright.
“We have been directed to build a heavy-lift rocket ... that allows us to go anywhere,” director Bob Cabana said during a news conference.
Pad 39-B saw the return to flight after the Challenger accident and 53 other shuttle launches.
TOPICS: Education; History; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: ksc; launchpad; shuttle; space; Click to Add Keyword
Wikipedia says Apollo 9.
Apollo 9
Perfect journey to prep for a Mars trip? No, a stunt as opposed to setting up a moon base and training a new generation of engineers and astronauts, making real gains.
What's the problem? It will be launching from Mecca.
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I TOTALLY agree! We should have started on a mission to build a Moon base way back in the 70s. We literally defied the American spirit and human nature by simply going to the Moon, and not building and advancing upon it. Instead, we just went to our newest horizon, and stopped. We would have probably only recently started building it had we done it. Our 51st state could have been on the Moon!
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