[X] My Assistant

[mchan]

The video and text of Sir Clarke's greeting on the Cassini website. Clarke's books were more "hard science" than most of the other sci-fi I read in my youth, and were a good influence on my early and continuing interest in space exploration. Watching the video and listening to his greeting added a nice touch to the Iapetus flyby.

In the video, Clarke quotes from 2001 (the novel) a paragraph on the spaceship Discovery entering orbit around Iapetus (the text doesn't use the Japetus spelling). The orbit height was 50 miles (~80 Km). Carrying that forth to what we know today, either an equatorial orbit following the ridge or a polar one repeatedly approaching the ridge broadside would provide some spectacular views!

[dvandorn]

If any Saturnian moon is going to be lumpy, it would be Iapetus. However, it's possible to maintain an orbit around even a very gravitationally lumpy body, if you pay attention on every rev to what your dispersions are. Just like our Moon, it's not possible to maintain such a low orbit for long unattended, but attended (i.e., with constant adjustments) you can orbit such a body indefinitely.

-the other Doug