Re: Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth of July with Deep Space Fireworks



Eric Chomko wrote:
> spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>
> : Paul F. Dietz wrote:
> : > spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> : >
> : > > What the HELL is this destructive STUNT doing?
> : >
> : >
> : > Obtaining data on the less-altered material inside a comet.
> : >
> : > What, you're too lazy or stupid to read the copious
> : > PR material that explained this?
>
> : I read the PR material and also accessed the science, which consists of
> : uncertainty about deep space objects, hence of the consequences of
> : destructive interference with such objects.
>
> : PR material isn't scientific material, it is designed to mislead, or at
> : best have people believe things advantageous to organizational
> : survival.
>
> : It's clear to me that YOU haven't read Diane Vaughan's THE CHALLENGER
> : LAUNCH DECISION: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA (Univ
> : of Chicago, 1997). Nor have you read physicist Feynman's angry
> : post-script to the official report on the 1986 disaster. Nor do you
> : even seem to be aware of the 2003 crash and the conclusions of a
> : post-crash commission (including Ms. Vaughan) which concluded that
> : NASA, almost 20 years after Challenger, still has what the commission
> : called a "broken" safety culture, which focuses on pr and ignores the
> : concerns of highly educated and dedicated engineers and scientists.
>
> : Nor have you in any spirit, scientific or critical, connected the dots.
> : Columbia 2003 made it clear, to members of the official enquiry, that
> : NASA was simply not interested in repairing its broken safety culture
> : but REMAINS in search of funds, therefore it decided on a destructive
> : fourth of July stunt, designed for Karl Rove's idiot "base": ignorant,
> : drunken suburban men applauding wanton destruction in the night sky.
>
> : The claims that it was research are shown to be bogus by the de-funding
> : of the Hubble space telescope because it was Hubble that in recent
> : years truly, and nondestructively, created new knowledge including the
> : discovery of planets beyond the solar system.
>
> : A scientific and humanistic would reason as did Hippocrates on
> : medicine. BECAUSE the human body was obviously complex to Hippocrates
> : and remains so today, medicine's first rule is "do no deliberate harm",
> : both for reasons of compassion and because of the recognition that at a
> : certain level of organization, systems actively self-defend under
> : physical law.
>
> : Since 1930, it has been found that at a minimum the asteroid belt,
> : under simple laws of gravity, throws off at least two types of objects
> : capable of damaging life on earth, both single asteroids and clumps
> : gravitationally attracted. It has been concluded that Buck Rogers
> : attempts to intervene with an asteroid headed for Earth makes the
> : problem only worse by creating a new, and unpredictable before the
> : fact, series of objects, some of which probably remain on an Earth
> : trajectory.
>
> : The same reasoning applies to "deep impact". Using Newtonian physics we
> : can predict trajectories with near-perfect accuracies but only after
> : the fact of an explosive impact, which begins the Newtonian process in
> : an undetermined way, which means that the Newtonian process is itself
> : undetermined, and could in the case of Deep Impact create ejecta which
> : combine and impact larger objects, ultimately sending them on an earth
> : trajectory.
>
> : The destructive "science" is in fact just as irresponsible, no matter
> : its physical results, as the 1945 explosion of the first test atomic
> : bomb by the United States in New Mexico, for the team did not at the
> : time know whether the chain reaction at Alamogordo would self-limit.
>
> : It is also as irresponsible as Truman's rejection of a demonstration at
> : a time when the peace party in Japan was in the ascendant, and the
> : murder of millions of Japanese and Western POWs at Hiroshima and
> : Nagasaki.
>
> : Hippocrates' principle is in fact generalizable and useful in dealing
> : with large systems. Competent computer programmers (all two of them, me
> : and John Forbes Nash) for example use do-no-harm in the form of minimal
> : effective changes and testing, while clowns who call themselves
> : programmers prefer risky and destructive hacking.
>
> : A politician unlike Bush, in dealing with the large domestic and
> : international system would have adhered to TRUE conservative
> : principles, which preach in fact a form of "do no harm" in the form of
> : Robert Nozick's ideal minimal state (cf. Anarchy, State and Utopia) by
> : neither passing a locked tax cut for the rich nor by invading Iraq, as
> : it turns out without provocation.
>
> : Self-serving scientific public relations written by ignorant people who
> : have been shown in Vaughan's study to ignore REAL scientists and REAL
> : engineers in a classist and in certain cases sexist and racist manner,
> : silencing them with phrases such as "think like a manager and not an
> : engineer" (to which the only apposite reply is "I didn't know that
> : managers think) are JUNK SCIENCE.
>
> I'd almost believe this, except that the goal was not to try and blow the
> comet to bits, but to loosen the surface layers of the comet in order to
> examine what is underneath it and what it is composed of. Think of a
> geologist breaking open a rock to see what the inside is made of.

The impact was of larger scale and I find it hard to believe that a
noninvasive method could not get equal data.
>
> Maybe some military types got their jollies watching the impact and others
> got off on the "direct hit", etc.; but don't lose sight of the scientific
> benefit of breaking open a rock and seeing the inside of it.
> Astro-geology, if you will...
>
> Also, we should know what it take to deflect an object like a comet or
> asteroid in case one eventually does head our way one day.

We already know. Shooting things at it in Bruce Willis' style makes one
object, headed towards Earth, many objects, headed towards Earth or the
Moon (which from the tidal standpoint alone is almost as bad).

In fact, only the gentlest of actions will work but such doesn't occur
to thugs in NASA and the White House.


>
> Eric
>
>
> : >
> : > [ lunatic rant deleted ]
> : >
> : > Paul

.

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