The "New Horizons" mission to Pluto; A Miracle?

[TheOldSchool]

A lot of people on this forum dismiss science as a political tool. They think that evidence of a theory is an opinion, and not something that people have worked tirelessly to find.

Is the Earth 4 billion years old? Nah some God could have created it anytime. Does the Earth orbit the Sun? Nah God made Earth the center of the universe. Does climate change matter? Nah it's snowing in Boston so screw that. Is the Earth flat? Of course it is we'd fall off otherwise right?

That brings me to the "New Horizons" mission. In 2006 Humankind launched a satellite in the hopes of interacting with an object that is 4.6 billion miles away from Earth; the dwarf planet Pluto. We calculated the EXACT orbit of that planet, which even our best telescopes can barely see as a pinprick of light, using science. Hell the guy who discovered it knew where it would be before even looking into a telescope.

So how are we getting a satellite there? Well we calculated it's launch speed and trajectory so that it would first arrive at Jupiter at a certain place and time. We needed it to get to Jupiter first because Earth's scientists had calculated a way to speed up the satellite by swinging it around Jupiter and maneuvering it using equations about gravity to aim it at where Pluto, a tiny rock, would be 7 freaking years later.

In July of 2015 the "New Horizons" satellite will beam home images of Pluto that Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto, could never have imagined. Because of scientists.

New Horizons Mission to Pluto NASA
New Horizons - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

No thanks to Buckwheat.

 

[TheOldSchool]

No thanks to Buckwheat.

Anyone else have a reasonable thought about this?

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

No thanks to Buckwheat.

Anyone else have a reasonable thought about this?

Yea, hundreds of retired senior NASA scientists, but they all share my sentiments. By the way idiot, New Horizons was launched THREE YEARS before Obama ever got into the White House. He didn't have shit to do with it.

 

[TheOldSchool]

No thanks to Buckwheat.

Anyone else have a reasonable thought about this?

Yea, hundreds of retired senior NASA scientists, but they all share my sentiments. By the way idiot, New Horizons was launched THREE YEARS before Obama ever got into the White House. He didn't have shit to do with it.

I said reasonable. Not butthurt.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Exploration and discovery is good. Though I often question our priorities. As with sending a probe to Pluto and not say Mars. A lot of science is purely for the sake of discovery, and not out of any practical goal like exploitation of resources, or scouting ahead for human colonization. I don't have a problem with that so long as things that do have practical applications don't fall by the wayside.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Thinking on it a moment, there's one application of sending something to Pluto - making sure our navigational abilities are sufficient to do so. The Europeans' probe landing ona comet proved we can "hit a comet with technology" which is useful if we ever need to blow one up to save the planet like. And if we can figure out how to successfully "hit Pluto" then that tells us how interplanetary navigation works is exactly what we thought. If we miss, that'd tell us something useful too - back to the drawing board folks.

 

[Old Rocks]

No thanks to Buckwheat.

Anyone else have a reasonable thought about this?

Yea, hundreds of retired senior NASA scientists, but they all share my sentiments. By the way idiot, New Horizons was launched THREE YEARS before Obama ever got into the White House. He didn't have shit to do with it.

Sweetie Pie, you mentioned the President, no one else. The thread is about a significant scientific achievement. An achievement by the scientists, the same people trying to warn idiots like you concerning global warming, and the resultant changing climate.

The Kuiper Belt is where some of our incoming comets originate. A lot of big chunks of ice out there, and when two of them get two close together, or collide, we can get an incoming comet. The more we know about our solar system, the more that we can see oppertunities or threats. Knowing both can be a plus for our species.