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Getting it into orbit is harder than not getting it into orbit and accidentally the apocalypse.
by astrodust 10y ago
Getting it into orbit is harder than not getting it into orbit and accidentally the apocalypse.
- sova 10y agoThat is a fantastic parable for greed and endless hunger if I ever imagined one: that tasty asteroid looks so good, let's just bring it a little closer.
- averagewall 10y agoYou seem to imply that there's something bad or dangerous about greed and endless hunger. Without those, there would be no life. You could almost say they're the meaning of life. Perhaps a more direct parable would be "A poor person starves to death by not trying hard enough to find food."
- throwawaymaroon 10y agoweird pointless logic argument you got there you're feeling bad about desires I guess
- geezerjay 10y agoRecognising the usefulness of something is not the same thing as greed.
- Dylan16807 10y agoIt's not. The math is simple and the amount of fuel needed is huge, with hitting earth taking significantly more fuel than getting into orbit.
- astrodust 10y agoIf it was that hard to hit things we'd never accidentally crash orbital landers, and yet this happens all the time. The amount of fuel needed to park it in a perfect orbit is more than to park it in a sloppy, potentially decaying one.
- Dylan16807 10y agoWhat's an orbital lander? Landing is very hard. Getting into a medium-high orbit is not. Such an orbit might be sloppy, but it won't decay. Yes I know about the mars climate orbiter, but that was a very low orbit because of the use of aerobraking, and it was small enough that extra fuel would more easily go unnoticed.
- astrodust 10y agoIf you're already in orbit around something (Earth, Sun, etc.) then it's pretty expensive and hard to crash into the thing you're orbiting, but if you're trying to go from one body to another there's lots of ways you could drive straight into the thing by accident. A minor miscalculation on a slingshot approach sends you straight into the planet instead. That we hit Mars with the lander by accident should demonstrate it's not only possible, it's actually not that hard.