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Japan test fires asteroid 'space cannon'


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The Japanese space agency is hoping to blast a hole in an asteroid to find out what it's made of.

The groundbreaking space weapon will be launched as part of the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft in 2014. The mission will see the probe rendezvous with asteroid 1999JU3 between Earth and Mars in 2018 before landing on it and scooping up samples to return for analysis.

Read More: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/256880/japan-test-fires-asteroid-space-cannon

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Hollrey shrit they might release KING GHIDORAH. :yes:

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Seems like a waste. We have enough meteorites on earth to know what they are made of. We have insides of them that have survived entry. I have a nine ounce piece of the rarest meteorite on earth myself.

My conspiracy mind says they are practicing attaching rockets to space rocks to have a weapon. If I were a military strategist, I would gain control of space rocks long before my competition. I would also place emp capabilities inside of all satellites and put them in geo synchronic orbit over everyone. It would be easy as pie to shut the lights off to any country with a flip of a switch because the launch happened years before. :)

Ok, im expecting my visit from the men in black soon.

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Why not better make a huge canon that would shoot stuff into space? That would be much cheaper way to send stuff into space.

Edited by promKing
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Seems like a waste. We have enough meteorites on earth to know what they are made of.

No we don't actually. Meteorites are not in pristine condition. They have suffered from re-entry into the atmosphere and may have been exposed to Earth conditions for years. Retrieving a piece of an asteroid in situ will give us material unaltered since the formation of the solar system.

My conspiracy mind says they are practicing attaching rockets to space rocks to have a weapon.

"Conspiracy mind" says it all.

If I were a military strategist, I would gain control of space rocks long before my competition.

Because using asteroids as weapons would be a cheap alternative to nuclear weapons... oh wait, it wouldn't. It would be prohibitively expensive and totally impractical as either a first strike weapon, as every nation on Earth would see what you were doing YEARS before you could launch an attack or a retaliatory weapon, as your nation would be destroyed LONG before you could fire back.

Any nation attempting to take control of all the space rocks would also be in breach of international law, as no nation make claim ownership of any celestial body.

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Why not better make a huge canon that would shoot stuff into space? That would be much cheaper way to send stuff into space.

I think it would be hard to make stuff that could tolerate that kind of acceleration.
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Why not better make a huge canon that would shoot stuff into space? That would be much cheaper way to send stuff into space.

Whilst not impossible there are problems with space guns.

The first problem is that you subject the projectile to huge g-forces, which means you would destroy any delicate electronics at launch and you certainly couldn't launch crewed vehicles that way.

The second is that you would have to achieve orbital (or near orbital) speed in the lower atmosphere. Rockets climb slowly until they are clear of much of the atmosphere and then accelerate more rapidly, this is deliberate. Travelling at 17,000 mph inside the atmosphere causes a huge amount of frictional heating and would require a large amount of heat shielding, massively reducing the useful payload.

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I think this is very interesting but the title of this thread needs to be changed slightly.

The headline should be changed from Japan test fires Asteroid "Space Cannon", to Japan test fires "Asteroid" Space Cannon.

Edited by Ugly1
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The headline should be changed from Japan test fires Asteroid "Space Cannon", to Japan test fires "Asteroid" Space Cannon.

The title is perfectly correct.

Signaling unusual usage

Quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that a word is not being used in its current commonly accepted sense:

Crystals somehow "know" which shape to grow into.

Source: wikipedia

Since the word "asteroid" is used in the usual way, but "space cannon" is an unusual usage the quotation marks are used correctly in the title. Placing the quotation marks around the word asteroid would make no sense.

Now can we get back on topic.

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