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Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back did some horrible things to a lot of people's conceptions about asteroid belts. The asteroid belt is so unbelievably sparse,
by vbtemp 14y ago
Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back did some horrible things to a lot of people's conceptions about asteroid belts.
The asteroid belt is so unbelievably sparse, you would never even know you are flying through it. Absolutely no concern was given to the prospect of a collision.
To give you some perspective, as a test they flew one of the pioneer spacecraft through the rings of saturn, even the rings of saturn are so sparse that the spacecraft flew through completely untouched.
- thebigshane 14y agoWhile I get your point, this surely isn't true though, right? Absolutely no concern was given to the prospect of a collision. Doesn't NASA have to constantly deal with and prepare for one-in-a-million chance scenarios? It seems reasonable to have a collision detector and "auto-route-arounder" that help here (among many other scenarios).
- jerf 14y agoIt might be more accurate to say that thought has been given to the prospect of a "generic" collision with a space object, but that no thought was spared for asteroids in the asteroid belt in particular. Twice nearly nothing per cubic megameter is still nearly nothing.