Japan's Hayabusa Spacecraft Lands Successfully on Asteroid

Space.com ^ | 11/23/2005 | Chisaki Watanabe

[Romish_Papist]

I just want to strip mine as many asteroids as we can to piss off the enviro-nazi's. :) Poor mother universe... or whatever.

[Tijeras_Slim]

The Hayabusa has landed and the natives are friendly!

[martin_fierro]

LOL

Oh STFU

[martin_fierro]

Ooooh. Talent.

[reagan_fanatic]

Wow! That's can-tastic!

[Long Distance Rider]

Suzuki Motorcycles has a model they call the Hayabusa. Fastest production motorcycle in the world. 187MPH out of the box. I think I read that a Hayabusa is a Japanese hawk.

[Erasmus]

They probably said "30 meters" and the journo did the conversion to feet.

[Southack]

Cool!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

3.28 * 30 = 98.4. Why not 98? When you are quoting to one decimal place, retain the same precision, in which case 98.4 rounds to 100.

30 +/- 10 is one decimal place of accuracy, presumably. It is assumed only the first decimal place, MSD, is significant... 35 is either two (35 +/-1) or one and a half (35 +/- 5) decimal places. 30.00 is four decimal places of purported accuracy, i.e. 30.00 +/- 0.005. The number of decimal places accuracy ~ log10(value/ uncertainty)+0.5

[Erasmus]

For some reason, it is common to convert meters to fee using the facto 3.3. For instance, when I buy a European mike cable, they give its length as 66 feet when it is really 20 meters.

Admittedly, it is odd. The exact conversion I calculate, taking the meter as 39.1 inches, is 3.25833..., in which case they really should call it 65-and-one-sixth feet.

< ]B^)

[Erasmus]

Hmmm...

Maybe those Japanese rocket scientists messed up somewhere in the feet-to-meters thing.

It's happened before.

[phantomworker]

Ping

[operation clinton cleanup]

There was a time when the Egyptians were only interested in stacking stone blocks and not drilling for oil.... not sure what that means, but I'm sure it will be understood in the far future.

[KevinDavis]

[phantomworker]

Okay, looks like they're on! Hopefully they can collect material and bring it back.

There is just something totally ridiculous about this! Space ship landing on an asteroid. (Even though it will probably be very useful, of course.)

[operation clinton cleanup]

My neighbor has one of those... and he plans to buy a bike someday to.

[Eagle Eye]

Nice asteroid.

[chilepepper]

daijobu desho ne!

[Hank Rearden]

How about strapping a rocket on an asteroid and pushing it into low earth orbit?

Yeah, but what about one of those English/Metric errors like the one that pranged Mars Observer? Suppose a tiny off-course push sent it heading straight for Tehran, or Mecca instead of into orbit?

Let's do it!

We can always say "oops, sorry" later.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

You make a good point about the use of 3.3 feet per meter.

The exact conversion factor between "statute feet" and meters is 3.28 feet per meter. The older conversion factor between "survey feet" and meters was 39.37/12 survey feet per meter, i.e., 39.37 survey inches per meter. Survey feet are about 0.025% longer than statute feet.

The right feild line in Sky Dome in Toronto is 328 feet, or if you will, 100 meters. Both values are displayed on the right field wall. (Notice I did not characterize that measurement as being exact, precise or rough. I do not know.)

When the U.S. adopted the value of 3.28 feet per meter by international agreement sometime last century, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey already had over a century of accurate surveys using the older value. Rather than having to carry two values and introduce ackward notations on all its maps and surveys, they decided to continue the use of the older foot for the purpose of surveying.