small rings

[Plane]

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/first-ever-asteroid-rings-knocks-astronomers-loop-n62266


Wow, this deserves a probe with a good camera.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is interesting, for sure.  A probe to travel that far is unlikely.

[Plane]

  I don't think it is unlikely , but it would definitely take a long time .

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is unlikely because of the cost more than the technology. It would be interesting to know how an asteroid can have rings, but it has no real practical value, and as such, I think it is doubtful that any government would be willing to spend millions on a probe.

You could prevent the death and/or suffering of thousands of people with the same money.

[Plane]

It is unlikely because of the cost more than the technology. It would be interesting to know how an asteroid can have rings, but it has no real practical value, and as such, I think it is doubtful that any government would be willing to spend millions on a probe.

You could prevent the death and/or suffering of thousands of people with the same money.

  New knowledge is often useful in unexpected ways.

   I really hope that better knowledge of cosmology will eventually give a great number of people new places to live without having to rob any previous residents.

    But what else might be produced cannot be guessed. Lives are saved and enhanced a lot already from satellite communication and navigation.

      I am old enough to remember satellite communication being new, we got along without it before and few of us knew what a great difference it would make now.

     Arthur  C. Clarke is generally credited with the origin of the idea of the communication satellite.....,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

Who was wont to say.......


1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

[Plane]

   Although visiting a very distant corner of our solar system is certain to cost a lot, there are ways to economize,  chiefly miniaturizing the spacecraft and using the boost of planetary gravity slingshot to reduce the necessary fuel load.


Check out what the Japanese did...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

 http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/violent-collisions-preserved-in-hayabusas-asteroid-grains-120229.htm

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/hayabusa.html

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't doubt that they COULD investigate this asteroid, just that it is probably too expensive to be likely for any government do now.

Sending probes was no big deal for Capt. Picard or even Capt. Kirk. But we have not reached that level.

[Plane]

I don't doubt that they COULD investigate this asteroid, just that it is probably too expensive to be likely for any government do now.

Sending probes was no big deal for Capt. Picard or even Capt. Kirk. But we have not reached that level.

Depends on what you mean by expensive.

Food stamps cost many times the budget of NASA, and the whole program solves no problem but for the month it is used, next month the same problem is always the same in scale.

By increasing the budget of NASA to 1% of the national budget , it could spend twice as much on space exploration.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's get the entire country to live on oatmeal gruel for one month, and send the rest to investigate rings around an asteroid.

Feeding hungry people is more important than investigating asteroid rings. Perhaps not as interesting to you, though.

I am not opposed to NASA exploration, but I don't think that we should starve people to fund it.

[Plane]

Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's get the entire country to live on oatmeal gruel for one month, and send the rest to investigate rings around an asteroid.

Feeding hungry people is more important than investigating asteroid rings. Perhaps not as interesting to you, though.

I am not opposed to NASA exploration, but I don't think that we should starve people to fund it.

Without either the expansion of resources , or the contraction of consumers, the starvation is inevitable.

You think that a 1% change in the national budget would put us all on gruel?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't think the expense is justified. 

Feeding hungry children is a better use of promoting the "general welfare" than investigating ring around an asteroid.

You guys are always so worshipful of the Constitution. I shall hereby note that the Founding Fathers made no mention of space exploration as a duty of the federal government.

[Plane]

Would you have been against funding the Lewis and Clark expedition?

Jefferson thought it was worthwhile to explore , he didn't really know if there was anything there worth trying to claim or not when it started.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Yes, of course, because it cost comparatively little and the US just bought the territory, and stood to gain a lot from it. I do not think we will be profiting as much from an expedition to the ringed asteroid. Certainly not anytime soon. This country did not just buy the asteroid belt, after all. I am all for funding NASA, but unless the discovery of this asteroid has some conceivable benefit to science, the same money could probably be spent on some other facet of exploration.

I think depriving poor people of food to investigate a ring around an asteroid would be simply wrong.

Human resources will always be limited. Human desires will always be infinite.

[Plane]

I think you have a tremendous overestimate on what we are spending on the space program.

Human life without a space program is as safe as dinosaurs ever were.


I think it likely also that you are underestimating what is already spent on social services.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I do not think that human life is threatened by ring around an asteroid.