Monday, July 04, 2005

NASA Probe Hits Comet Target





"The successful strike 83 million miles away from Earth occurred just before 11 p.m. PDT, according to mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which is managing the $333 million mission.

"Scientists at mission control erupted in applause and gave each other hugs as news of the impact spread.

"It was a milestone for the U.S. space agency, which hopes the $333 million experiment will answer basic questions about the origins of the solar system."

At least there's something worth celebrating today.

11 comments:

razorsmile said...

From BBC Science and Nature:
"Sixty-five million years ago, one of these things took out the dinosaurs," said Faulkes Telescope director Paul Roche, before the collision. Now, he said, "we're going to get our own back".

Unless I'm really misunderstanding evolution, I would think the dinosaur-killer did us a favour.

Mac said...

I'd certainly call it a "favor"!

Mac said...

BTW, I noticed that this very brief article tells us the price of the mission *twice* for some reason. It seems I encounter this a lot when reading about NASA, while W can spend billions raping the planet and the mainstream scarcely bats an eye.

razorsmile said...

A pox on your American truncations; I write the Queen's English and nought else!

:D

Mac said...

Yeah, I'm a sell-out.

razorsmile said...

I was talking about "favor" vs "favour" actually, hehheh. Incidentally though, I have no problem with IMO and BTW (and OMG is hella funny!) but I never use "lol".

Mac said...

"LOL" is downright vulgar.

razorsmile said...

And this just in:

Russian astrologist sues NASA over comet crash
.

You know you're irreversibly infected with Americaitis when ...

Kyle said...

I think the comment was intended to mean..."We can defend ourselves", unlike the dinosaurs.

"We've got our own back" since we now know we can hit big space rocks and presumably move them our of collision course. The dinosaurs couldn't do that, but now we've "got our own back".

Just my interpretation...

Kyle
UFOreflections.blogspot.com

Kyle said...

WM Bear -

Not a UK expression, but a typical cop or soldier line...like "I got your back", or "you got my back?". The scientists was attempting, I think, to wax "cultural lingo".

But in this case...against space-borne impact threats..."we got our own back".

Kyle
UFOreflections.blogspot.com

razorsmile said...

Speaking of the dinosaurs ...

Now you know what really happened.