Shooting at God`s Snowball
Herb Meyer make some excellent points over at The American Thinker about NASA`s latest project-the destruction of a comet. He points out that our ability to hit such an object proves we can build an effective missile defense.
I would like to add one thing to this; comets have notoriously fickle orbits because they are composed of frozen gas and rocks, and as they near the sun they heat up, causing pockets of gas to explode out from the comet. This outgassing is random, and acts as a type of rocket propulsion, moving the comet hither and yon. As a result, it is extraordinarily difficult to compute a comets orbit exactly, so hitting a comet with a bullet is a shockingly impressive feat. If we can hit a wiggling target millions of miles away moving at, well, cometary speed, surely we can hit a missile moving in a predictable, Newtonian manner at suborbital speeds.
Anyone who claims missile defense is impossible should visit JPL or Nasa.
I would like to add one thing to this; comets have notoriously fickle orbits because they are composed of frozen gas and rocks, and as they near the sun they heat up, causing pockets of gas to explode out from the comet. This outgassing is random, and acts as a type of rocket propulsion, moving the comet hither and yon. As a result, it is extraordinarily difficult to compute a comets orbit exactly, so hitting a comet with a bullet is a shockingly impressive feat. If we can hit a wiggling target millions of miles away moving at, well, cometary speed, surely we can hit a missile moving in a predictable, Newtonian manner at suborbital speeds.
Anyone who claims missile defense is impossible should visit JPL or Nasa.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 8:25 AM
4 Comments:
I sure hope you're right...cause I have a feeling we're going to need to perfect that skill.... sooner rather than later.
Very interesting. It would also mean that we could shoot a missile at a comet and destroy any of these that might be approaching us that could do damage.
Maybe the word about the capabilities of our defense system will serve as a deterrent. Just blasting that comet proves that the United States can build an effective missile-defense system.
And if such a system is not deterrent enough, we should have the guts to fire on any incoming threat, or on any threat which threatens U.S. interests.
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