NASA Briefs Preliminary Plume Findings from Moon Mission |
NASA Briefs Preliminary Plume Findings from Moon Mission |
Nov 10 2009, 09:26 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 239 Joined: 18-December 07 From: New York Member No.: 3982 |
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Nov 17 2009, 01:29 AM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10227 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
There is also a lot of doubt about how a manufactured object behaves in an impact. A rock hitting the Moon at several km per second behaves in ways we understand fairly well, but how does an impacting rocket stage behave? Some of its kinetic energy is used up bending metal. The top end of the impactor may not hit the surface at the same speed the bottom end did due to the complex behaviour of the structure. It's not as simple as a shock wave moving through a rock. I am not so sure that a bundle of insulated wires is going to be vaporized. We don't know a lot about this situation. I think these kinds of uncertainty generally act to reduce contamination of the type discussed here, but I expect we'll see more experiments on the ground to try to get a better handle on it.
Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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