Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Deep Impact Comet-Smashing Video

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jun 26, 2005 09:32 AM
from the mmm-delicious-space-porn dept.
Graphics Software Science
DynaSoar writes "Dan Maas is the animation expert who produced NASA's Mars Rover animation which was subsequently used in the PBS Nova episodes 'Mars, Dead or Alive' and 'Welcome to Mars,' the majority of which was done while he was a Cornell student on a summer internship at NASA. His most recent release is NASA's best 'artist's conception' of the Tempel 1 Deep Impact mission. Nobody knows what will happen when 820 pounds of metal slams into the comet with 5 kilotons of force, but whatever happens, Maas's digital precreation is probably way more entertaining than NASA's imagery is likely to be. Two versions of the Deep Impact QuickTime video are available. A couple notes of interest: the original Mars video was produced as a music video, using Lenny Kravitz and Holst as soundtracks. This is available only to K-12 educators. Also, in the interview in the first link, when asked for an inspirational quote, he quotes John Carmack."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Deep Impact Comet-Smashing Video 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • We need more missions like this. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Musteval (817324) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:34AM (#12914004)
    Then NASA can make a TV show. It'd increase funding, at least. Heck, make a reality show. Send people to Venus and see how long it takes them to realize they're going to die.

    • Re:We need more missions like this. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Eric Coleman (833730) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:43AM (#12914043) Homepage
      NASA already has a TV channel. You can watch rocket launches, which are cool, and watch people work in mission control, which is boring. Reality TV doesn't get much more real than the NASA TV channel.

      • NASA TV (Score:4, Funny)

        by jspoon (585173) on Sunday June 26 2005, @10:13AM (#12914170)
        What they need is to put up a mission with an ordinary guy on board, someone the people can relate to. Just send up plenty of carbon rods and they'll be perfectly safe.
        • This is Big Brother.

          jspoon, you have been voted out of the Big Brother spaceship.
          You have 30 seconds to go to the airlock.
        • Yes, inanimate carbon rods shall save the day!

          Quote:

          Tom: Uh, how'd you solve the door dilemma?
          Buzz: Homer Simpson was the real hero here. He jury-rigged the door closed using this.
          Man 1: Hey, what is that?
          Man 2: It's an inanimate carbon rod!
          Everyone: Yay!
        • You mean like Christa McAuliffe? She was the grade school teacher who was on board the Challenger in 1986.
    • The Discovery channel already does this crap. "What would evolution be like in 40,000 years on Earth?" or "How we Explored a new world in the future". Honestly, it's nausiating enough that we don't need NASA throwring in as well.
      • I thought the animations of the Mars Rover landings were quite satisfactory, and were a genuine aid in conveying the critical and unusual sequence of events (unusual because of the beach ball landing scheme.). Of course, I wasn't expecting to be entertained by these videos; I was expecting to be educated. Entertainment is Lucas' job, and education is (part of) NASA's.

        Consider the adjacent Slashdot article about Lucas's new studio,
        http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/26/133217 &tid=186&tid=101 [slashdot.org], which is nicely and expensively appointed to generate additional cinematic circuses. I'm sure that Lucas et al. could provide a splendid animation of the comet impact. But:
        1. Would you pay $10 to see it once?
        2. Do you expect NASA to produce it for "free"?
        3. Do you expect NASA to subcontract the video to a "real" CG house?
        The box office from the Star Wars movies, and related paraphernalia licensing, sufficed to pay for several Shuttle missions, or perhaps ten major satellite programs, or a century's worth of space science at NSF. It may be that these films have inspired a few people to go into science and engineering, But these films are, of course, pure fantasy in their depiction of space and space travel. I don't mean to diminish the splendid entertainment that Lucas offers, but I can't help the following comparison:
        The Star Wars movies are, to the perception of space travel, what pornography is to the perception of sex.


        Items 2 and 3 above will strongly impact NASA's budget; high quality CG added to a documentary structure could easily run in the mid seven figures for a single film. For a tenth that amount you can get Pretty Good results, and keep a hundred grad students in beer and chips for a year.

        Those hundred grad students will get you to Mars in twenty years. Or, you could help George Lucas buy a spare yacht today.
      • I'd rather a hundred million dollars get spent on nerdish boondoggles than an hour and a half of military. And at least on these videos, when stuff blows up there won't be some moron in the background screaming "take that you camel jockeys!"
        • You miss the point, Slashdaughter.

          It doesn't matter what you think: It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what a million pissed-off voters think.

          Any schmuck can get elected with this. It's a free pass to Congress. Campaigning against the nerds is a cheap and easy way to get elected, especially when the housing bubble starts to deflate and foreign governments start buying Eurobonds instead of US treasury bills.

          All they have to do is stand up and start yapping about 'Welfare for the nerd
          • These science missions, and US space and military research, can be traced to almost all of the great technological advancements of our time. Spending money on these costs less than the worldwide blockbuster movie budget and greatly increases our technological prowess.

            Hell, if it wasn't for DARPA, we wouldn't even be posting here.

            Those million pissed off voters need to start understanding where their standard of living comes from.

  • What would really suck (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Transcendent (204992) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:41AM (#12914035)
    Is if running this damn thing into the comet puts it on a trajectory to hit Earth down the line...

    Talk about one of the biggest "oops" of all time...

    • Re:What would really suck (Score:4, Informative)

      by ytm (892332) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:47AM (#12914056) Homepage
      From TFA:
      The kinetic energy that will be released by the collision is estimated to be the equivalent of nearly 5 tons of TNT. However, this will only change the comet's velocity by about 0.0001 millimeters per second (0.014 inches per hour). The collision will not appreciably modify the orbital path of Tempel 1, which poses no threat to Earth now or in the foreseeable future.
      You would need much heavier (or faster) probe to change comet's path significantly.
        • Uh. Space is a near vaccum. What turbulence are you going to experience?

          F=MA is the driving force of the cosmos. This comet isn't going to make a u-turn towards earth because a 800lb projectile hits it.

          Why not look at the actual orbit of the comet, vs earths orbit and compute the DV required for the 2 orbits to intersect.

          Tempel-1 isn't even a NEA. The orbit doesn't even cross the orbit of the earth.
          • Tempel-1 isn't even a NEA. The orbit doesn't even cross the orbit of the earth.

            However, the orbit does occasionally pass near Jupiter. This makes its orbit chaotic and unpredictable over the very long term.

            One day, its orbit may get significantly altered by one or more close encounters to planets. It might end up being ejected from the solar system, sent into the sun, put into an earth-intersecting orbit, or countless other possibilities. It's unlikely that it will stay in its current orbit indefinite

    • This would be roughly equivilent to trying to hit your house with a dead elephant by giving it a push with your hands. . .from thirty miles away.

      KFG
    • Actually what few people know is that the impact is supposed to knock it off it's current trajectory to avoid a collision with earth. Obviously they don't want to announce the possible collision to the public as it would cause panic.

  • haha (Score:4, Funny)

    by pHatidic (163975) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:44AM (#12914045) Homepage
    I clicked to watch the short version, and it just said "done." Well that sure was short.

    PS top floor of the NASA building was ranked as one of the top ten places to have sex in public on Cornell campus. Not that I'd know or anything.

  • we're wasting our taxpayers money on a comet that's not even going to hit on Earth? I find that incredibly silly.

    Why else would we fund billions of dollars to build a spaceship designed to hit a comet that's not going to hit us?
    • Obviously you haven't read anything about this mission at all. The goal of this mission is to blast debris out from inside of the comet so that we can understand what it is actually composed of. Notice how the spacecraft launches a projectile at the comet, and then slows down to stay out of the way so that it can scan the particles that spew out of the crater?

      Anyway, I'm pretty sure we don't have the means currently to deflect a large comet or asteroid like they did in Armageddon or something like that.
    • I'd rather we tried this out on a comet that definately *isn't* going to hit us, than on one that is. If it doesn't work we at least get the chance of another go.
      • I remember hearing that the stated purpose of the mission was to analyze the composition of the comet, which may yield some insight as to the origins of the solar system.

        I imagine it can also be a proof of concept.

  • Coral Links Just in case (Score:5, Informative)

    by OverlordQ (264228) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:49AM (#12914063) Journal
    Site was sluggish and can't remember if we've ever slashdotted NASA before :)

    Long [nyud.net]
    Short [nyud.net]

    and what the hell Torrent Too [thedarkcitadel.com]

  • A make believe space (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sittingnut (88521) <Unga_m.yahoo@com> on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:51AM (#12914074) Homepage
    We are now so used to manipulated or visualized eye candy of space and planets, that when the real images etc. are released (as with Titan) its very anticlimactic and boring.

  • I'm just glad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DanielMarkham (765899) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:52AM (#12914078) Homepage
    I'm just glad that NASA is finally blowing something up. Enough of these silly robots and picutres, send in some TNT! (I think they call this "active science")

    Blowing things up is always more interesting to the public than plain science missions. Perhaps next we can send some of those old ICMS to the moon. That would be a good show.

    Seriously, NASA has been politicized so much over its entire history. Perhaps publicity impact should be a key factor in planning missions. It certainly couldn't hurt, and it could lead to a lot more funding for them

  • Nobody knows what will happen when 820 pounds of metal slams into the comet with 5 kilotons of force

    ...Largely due to the fact that nobody knows what the hell the phrase "5 kilotons of force" means in an impact situation, even if we forgive the use of tons as a force unit.

    Or are we talking about an amount of energy equivalent to that released by 5 kilotons of TNT (probable)? Then say so. This is bad science, people. The kind that gets Ariane rockets blown up.

    • What are you talking about? tons IS a force unit.
      2,000 pound force = 8,896.44323 newtons (from google)

      [siderant]
      You might think we imperal units people are crazy because we have pounds force and pounds mass, but we think you metric people are crazy because although you have kgs mass and newtons force, you seem to prefer to use kgs force and ignore the concept of mass altogether.[siderant off]

  • 5 tons (Score:4, Informative)

    by Karamchand (607798) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:53AM (#12914089)
    It would be really cool if at least the submitters of new stories read their linked articles; the page clearly states that there won't be 5 kilotons, but the equivalent of 5 tons of TNT.

  • May I be the first to say (Score:4, Funny)

    by varmittang (849469) on Sunday June 26 2005, @09:55AM (#12914099) Homepage
    We hope the mission is a Smashing success.

  • The impactor will hit the comet with a force equivalent to five tons of tnt. It will probably produce a crater anywhere from a few yards across to the size of a football stadium.

  • Who's got a remix of all the amazing CG from movies like _Deep Impact_, _Independence Day_, _Godzilla 2000_, _The Day After Tomorrow_, and every other blockbuster wherein huge landmark cities are convincingly destroyed? I'd love to see a clever montage of all the "money shots". That would beat all the original movies, even if just by editing out the dialog, characters and plots.

  • More Videos For The Interested. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by szyzyg (7313) on Sunday June 26 2005, @10:25AM (#12914236)
    From the days when I was still an astronomer
    Impact video [arm.ac.uk] mostly fragments, looking kinda dated now. Of course I must include my essential link to the most complete map [arm.ac.uk] of the inner solar system.


    And I recently re-did some density visualizations [djsnm.com], a lot. more abstract, but cool in a trippy visuals kinda way.


    And finally - the most relevant - is an old movie I made to visualize a comet diverting mission, it's about 10 minutes and if shows a spacecraft [djsnm.com] flying through space with a nuke intended to give a nidge to an incoming comet. It's not great resolution, but I can't find the high definition versions that were used in a couple of TV shows. There are some ultra high definition stills in a book by Duncan Steel.

  • What the hell man there's no sound in that video! What a cheap production. I mean come on, do they think there's no sound in space or something???

    .....wait a minute...
  • If the telescope defect was detectable before launch, whomever was responsible for making that check should have lost their job due to the telescope being out of focus. [nasa.gov]

    The press release is a masterpiece of indirection. It takes them 5 paragraphs to admit they have a problem and then this little gem:

    "This in no way will affect our ability to impact the comet on July 4," said Rick Grammier, Deep Impact project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. "Everyone on the science and

    • Although they may be "very excited and looking forward to the encounter", they won't be able to see the results very well.

      Well... actually, it depends on how you define "they." And if "they" are "everyone on the science and engineering teams," that includes a lot of people who aren't hunkered down over screens at JPL. In fact, academics outnumber NASA folks on the science team [nasa.gov].

      I only know the whereabouts of one science team member on that fateful night - my colleague at U. of Hawaii's Institute

      • If I recall correctly from an earlier release about Deep Impact's camera, it was incorrectly calibrated which lead to it being out of focus. This probably wasn't the result of a hardware defect but over a miscommunication; if it were a hardware defect, can you justify firing someone over something like this?

        Yes you can. The people who designed the machine were paid to get it done right. Had the error been due to something unpredictable, that's one thing. But if it was due to a screwup like one team talking

  • Deep Impact is scheduled to occur on Jul 3rd at around 7:20 or so (my notes are not right handy at the moment). Luckly, here in Hawai'i the impact will be overhead, after the sun has gone down, with the impact side facing us.

    A number of the observatories on Mauna Kea are planning on turning their telescopes to watch and record the event. I'm fairly sure that Keck, Gemini and Subaru domes will be observing and recording the event (The Subaru primary mirror is 27 feet in diameter, should make for a good vi

  • I'm sure all of the insensitive clods out there have Quicktime installed, but for the rest of us who don't want bloatware, can somebody please convert it to some other format and post a link?

    And can someone please write a .mov codec and winamp plugin? That'd be great, thanks.

  • Mars Rover IMAX (Score:3, Interesting)

    by captaineo (87164) on Sunday June 26 2005, @08:41PM (#12917293)
    Hah pretty funny to wake up and see myself on the front page :).

    Three other artists and I are currently working on an IMAX film about the Mars Rover mission, to be released sometime next year. The image quality will be much better than my old NASA animation. We are re-creating the Rovers' actual environments on Mars using returned images and terrain data.
    • Because they don't want to blow it into pieces. They just want to blow a hole in part of it to see what it's made of and how solidly it is held togeather. A 5 ton charge is plenty for that.

      If they were to send up a vehicle capable of hitting it with 5 megatons, that would either require launching a vehicle of~ 1,000,000 times greather mass (and launching heavy stuff into space is expensive enough, let alone increasig the mass 1 million x), or you would have to send a nuclear bomb rather than a kenetic/

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.