Deep Impact, post impact video

NASA's film of the impact are incredible. One from the impactor and one from the fly-by craft. Look here: http://www.nasa.gov/mov/121530main_its_approach_x4.mov http://www.nasa.gov/mov/121527main_MRI_impact.mov

Watch the one from the impactor. Early in the film, the camera seems to aquire a target, as it was probably supposed to do by design. Keep watching frame by frame. You will see two large craters come into clear view at the center section of the frame. As it gets closer, it seems to target a spot just below the upper crater. Just south south west of the craters looks like a frozen lake. It is very much smoother than anything around. The target spot looks like a mound of ice and dust. The impactor draws a good bead on this feature. At one point its track varies from target but then re-aquires its target. This mound is about 1/13th the diameter of the crater above it. My question is: What are the dimensions of the mound in target and what is the diameter of the upper large crater above target. It seems to me to be pretty damn amazing to hit this object from millions of miles away goimg about 28,000 miles per hour. I sent a letter to NASA to get this info. If anyone else has it please send it in. I am also excepting guesses of the size of thet target. My guess is in the 500-2000 foot high range.

First couple of thoughts on seeing this - why did they aim for a glancing blow and not a head-on shot?

We're talking about hitting an object half the size of Manhattan with something the size of a steamer trunk from 83 million miles away. If our weapons are as accurate as our space probes, we can hit hit a fly with a BB around the world a week from now. Asking why the fly was shot through the wing instead of the head seems to be expecting a bit much.

Also, I never would have suspected that there would be so much cratering on a comet. We keep hearing that they are "dirty snowballs" but this 0looked just like one of the moons of Mars or an asteroid.

Yeah, that struck me, too. The crater was deeper and the debris cloud larger than any of NASA's animations predicted. All of the best guesses at comets' compositions were pretty vague -- so I don't know whether there was more dust or more vapor than expected. That's pretty much what this mission was supposed to find out.

The flyby and impactor were each designed to navigate autonomously in the last part of the mission, when they couldn't be flown from Earth because of more than seven minutes' lag in communications. If a spacecraft can maneuver itself into the path of a fast-moving object without guidance from the ground, that could have interesting implications for ballistic missile defense.

The basic technology is the same. Trajectory isn't a real problem, the real problem is countermeasures and debris. We actually do have months and years to plan for an attack, the trajectories available to an attacker are constrainted by the laws of physics.

Part of the "game" is to place as much doubt in the mind of a potential attacker as possible. A ballistic missile fired at the United States would result in awesome retaliation regardless of the outcome (assuming no one named Clinton is president). A suicidial (think Japan 1945) or fanatical (too many to list: Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Tojo's Japan, Iran, the Taleban ...) regime might think twice if they thought the attack might be unsuccessful.

>Naturally Hoagland is jumping into the gap with exploding planets. Since all we hear so far is exploding planets, exploding planets it is.

In the tin-foil world,
Hoagland is conservative
next to the Zetas:
-----------------------------------------------------

"Billed as an opportunity to learn more about the early days of the solar system, when comets were presumably formed, this collision with a comet is anything but what the public is being told. Planned almost a decade ago, this was and remains an alternate means of nuking Planet X out of its approach toward Earth, to hopefully lessen the impact of the passage. The first attempt on Sep 21, 2003 was disguised as the death of Galileo into Jupiter, billed as potentially lighting the sky up, but a dud as it was disabled by benign aliens. The rules governing worlds such as Earth, in the early stages of their spiritual growth, are that they are not allowed to destroy one another. Despite being so warned, the US set out to attempt to nuke Planet X with a loaded probe, and failed. This second attempt scheduled for July 4 is a test, as the probe is not being sent toward Planet X, but to the Earth's dark twin, which shares its orbit and arrived over a year ago to ride the orbit just behind the stalled Earth. As the Earth stalled in her orbit in Dec 2003, and the dark twin arrived behind her by mid-2004, their locations were known for the launch date of this newest probe in Dec 2004. The dark twin, a black hunk of rock that is invisible unless positioned to reflect some light in the blue and yellow spectrum toward the viewer as it was in early 2004 [photos], is in a location that matches the Temple1 location given on diagrams. The dark twin is in sight just after sunset, to the West, and this is where Earthlings are being told to gaze for the Deep Impact fireworks.

"This test is testing the feasibility of this type of planetary nudge via nukes, the theory. It is expected to be allowed because the dark twin is known to be dead, no water, no vegetation, no life, no atmosphere, and thus, presumably, not under the rule whereby inhabited planets are not allowed to destroy each other. Should the dark twin be nudged, computations can be run on what would be needed to nudge Planet X. Meanwhile, so those who assume they rule Earth and resent any other rules being imposed on them, they will work on negotiations, or so they assume. They regularly give the Call to any aliens who will respond, who make all manner of promises to this crowd because they are calling the wrong folks. A Call given for selfish reasons is a call to the Service-to-Self, who lie, promise anything, and in their counsel try to encourage more back stabbing, shattered hopes, and behavior in humans that might ensure them of more recruits when the dust settles. The Council of Worlds, who make and enforce the rules, are attended in the main by Service-to-Other, the 95% of the Universe that treats their criminal element, the Service-to-Self, like pariah. The Council of Worlds most certainly does not listen to those in the Service-to-Self, nor empower them to act on their behalf.

"Chance of some fireworks on July 4th? Possible, in the hands of man. Chance of nuking Planet X out of its trajectory? Zero."

[ZetaTalk: Deep Impact]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.