So THAT's where they're putting the West Side Stadium

[friedo]

Per Yahoo:

Not all dazzling fireworks displays will be on Earth this Independence Day. NASA hopes to shoot off its own celestial sparks in an audacious mission that will blast a stadium-sized hole in a comet half the size of Manhattan.

It all makes sense now.

[Cunctator]

Why does NASA want to do this?

[friedo]

Wouldn’t you?

[Tuckerfan]

@Cunctator

Why does NASA want to do this?

To try and figure out what it’s made of.

In early July, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft will deploy a tiny impactor to smash into the nucleus of a small comet. The idea is to excavate a sizable crater and provide valuable insight into the true nature of comets.

Of course, Queen member, Brian May’s not happy about the idea.

Thanks Noah … yes, I realize that it is HOPED that the whole comet will not be affected, but I am 99 per cent sure that there is no guarantee of this. Who could be that sure, when no-one even knows the interior morphology of the object. Suppose it were one giant crystalline structure ? What an irreversible mess the projectile would make in this situation.

Sorry, I am not convinced. I think it’s a rotten idea, and should be shelved at least until we have exhausted all NON-invasive techniques.

The very uncertainty of the crater size (“somewhere between a house and a football stadium”) indicates to me an indication that the experimenters have as much idea of what effect they’re going to have as a man with an ice-pick approaching an egg. My only question to the team behind this is … “Are you really sure you are behaving responsibly here ? Can’t you wait until we know more ? Until we can be a bit more clever and attempt a landing ?” I’m really personally outraged by this. There are those who think that even life on the Earth may have originated from micro-organisms on such a comet …