It’s just an innocent space rock, didn’t do anyone any harm, but NASA is getting ready to practice its marksmanship and shoot at it from a distance of 7 million miles. It’s getting hit tonight, so you can watch the livestream of the sniper shot right now.
IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD
— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2022
Not the view you want to see through your windshield.
Whap!
I have to ask a stupid question, though. They know the mass of the probe, it’s velocity, the mass of the rock, etc., so why do they need to test whether it will nudge the rock? Doesn’t physics already give us the answer?
Now the question of whether the technology can do it, that’s something else.
Dramatic close ups just before contact. The surface seems to be mainly loose boulders. I wonder how much solid body is under the rubble, or if it is all rubble?
@2:
What they don’t know is whether these rocks are solid bodies or just loose rubble. or something in between. Also the exact time of impact will give them a lot more precision in their measurements. Ground based observations will give us a lot of new information as well. And the pictures were pretty darned cool!
Yeah, I watched the final minutes. It loomed up so fast, then…dead screen.
Jebus, when I played that NASA live stream I got a five-minute ad about why it was crucial for NASA to stop being a government agency and become another commercial space enterprise!
Wow a direct hit right in the center of the bullseye! Some sweet bullet action right there! Go ‘merica!
Phew, now we can get back to cooking ourselves to death instead.
Also, if there are observable ejecta they will be hot enough due to the kinetic energy from the impact, to perhaps show an observable spectrum in earth based telescopes, which will tell us about the chemical compounds in the heated rocks. The more we know about these bodies the better, in my opinion.
Yeah, as others alluded, the consistency of the asteroid is really the issue. One thing we’ve been surprised by in these recent asteroid rendezvous missions is the squishiness of the asteroids in certain size ranges. They’re more like bags of rubble, loosely packed together, rather than “space rock”. And so the question here is whether the impact changed the velocity of the center of mass, or whether it just wobbled it all and rearranged its moment of inertia — like punching a bag of styrofoam peanuts or something.
And also, the son of a friend was on the optical guidance team! This was really cool.
The impactor satellite launched a small satellite before impact to take pictures of the impact. Though it’s a small satellite so we’ll have to wait to get the pictures.
P.Z., There are a couple of issues. First, as noted above, asteroids vary considerably in their consistency and coherence. Bennu turned out to be basically a giant ballpit, with rocks loosely held by gravity. Exactly how the trajectory of the asteroid changes depends on whether the collision is elastic (solid asteroid) or inelastic (probe just sinks into and becomes part of the asteroid.
In addition, hitting an object 7 million miles away ain’t easy. They are testing to see how accurate the guidance is. It’s not just whether they can hit it, but precisely where on the surface and at what angle.
Thanks to this unprovoked attack, the asteroids will now be issuing a declaration of war against Earth.
The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t have a space program.
Success! (As I guess w eallknow now but still.) ABC news coverage here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-27/nasa-launches-dart-spacecraft-into-asteroid/101476736
Space dot com has this article here : https://www.space.com/nasa-dart-asteroid-impact-celebration plus more.
NASA website for this here too : https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-test
Just got to see it myself on my mobile phone walking to work.
Now to see whether the little satellite trailing behind DART got any good images and how much if at all we’ve shifted Dimorphos’es orbit..
@14: Success!
@15: Now to see whether the little satellite trailing behind DART got any good images and how much if at all we’ve shifted Dimorphos’es orbit..
So… a qualified success. Yay!
Now wait for the online conspiracists – NASA were actually redirecting the asteroid to hit the earth (specifically, the Trumpier parts of the USA), as part of the ebil plan to reduce human (specifically, white) population!!!!
My guess would be that we don’t really know how solid / crumbly / porous etc. the thing really is, so it’s not entirely clear how much of the impact’s energy would actually transfer to altering its trajectory as opposed to crushing rubble on the surface, burying into it or breaking it apart.
Or maybe it’s just for show.
@ ^ KG : Already happened – see some comments on NASA fb pages and news threads. Sigh. Predictable – along with those claiming the whole thing is a waste of money as usual too.
@ 12. microraptor : “Thanks to this unprovoked attack, the asteroids will now be issuing a declaration of war against Earth.”
There’s probly an actually decent SF story or two there – like what if the asteroids Dimorphos & Didymus (& others?) were porous because they are actually a hollowed out alien starships rather than just natural rubble piles.
More seriously and realistically, the danger is what Carl Sagan pointed out in his “The Marsh of Camarina” chapter (p 309 – 327 in the 1995 edition) of Pale Blue Dot noting that having the ability to move asteroids out of our way is the same thing as having the ability to move them into our path and direct them on, say, “enemy” nations with catastrophic results too. As Carl Sagan noted :
As Sagan put it (page 323 ibid) terming it the Deflection Dilemma.
@ IX-103, the ■■■■ing idiot : Yes* seems that might take a week or more apparently.* It may also be able to visit another asteroid too – remaining fuel & orbital geometry permitting.
@3 Ed Seedhouse : “The surface seems to be mainly loose boulders. I wonder how much solid body is under the rubble, or if it is all rubble?”
Seems that like Itokawa, Bennu & Ryugu among other Near Earth Asteroids, these two also loook like “rubble pile” ones. It seems like most if not all Near Earth (and smaller) Asteroids ( Eros aside) fall into this category from what we’ve seen so far although more missions to confirm or refute this would be good. See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile#Minor_planets
Plus :
https://scitechdaily.com/bennu-and-ryugu-asteroids-diamonds-in-the-sky/
It would also be interesting to find if there’s a clear dividing line in, say, mass or other properties (composition, rotation, orbital locations and history, etc..) that separates the rubble piles versus the more solid types. Plus if there’s a minimum size that such asteroids or meteoroids can be “rubble piles” and start becoming just singular rocks or chnks of material instead..
@16. John Morales : Just curious but when someone scores a century or gets five wickets or gets top marks on a test on do you consider that only a qualified success until / unless they win the Test Match / pass the subject or / & get their degree, too? Or, more pertinently here* did you think Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker had only “qualified success” when they blew up the first Death Star and weren’t actually “successful” until after they’d toppled the Empire in the original Star Wars trilogy? You do know there’s success at doing part X which then has the aftermath / leads to doing part Y right?
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICIACube#Scientific_payload Nice pairing of instrument names there.
The whole idea feels a bit like playing snooker with random rocks – they probably won’t behave much like billiard balls.
StevoR:
It’s a personal success, not a team success.
And you probably know as well as me that the typical centurian or five-forer will totally deprecate their personal contribution should they have lost when acknowledging it — though, of course, it’s also good form to do so when winning no less. C’mon, you know that.
Would you understand why I think you’re a bit of a cargo-cultist?
Probably not, I’ve become sufficiently familiar with you.
Indeed, though your phrasing is exceedingly sloppy.
So, you think it’s successful right now, though we still have to determine (and I quote you) “whether the little satellite trailing behind DART got any good images and how much if at all we’ve shifted Dimorphos’es [sic] orbit”.
It follows that you don’t think determining “whether the little satellite trailing behind DART got any good images and how much if at all we’ve shifted Dimorphos’es [sic] orbit is necessary to the mission being successful, on the basis that you’ve determined success has been achieved without those criteria having been met.
(But sure, degrees of success. Yay!)
@ John Morales
‘The fuck are you on about, man?
The mission was to impact the asteroid and measure the change in orbital parameters.
This is completely independent of whether we have pretty pictures, or what the new orbital parameters may be.
So yes the mission was a success the moment the impact occurred.
What about this do you not understand?
Just randomly picking fights again?
@2 PZ
It’s probably not “A rock”. More like a clump of gravel, loosely held together with gravity. So it’s a bunch of rocks. Sort of a floating tailing pile.
@2 PZ
It’s probably not “A rock”. More like a clump of gravel, loosely held together with gravity. So it’s a bunch of rocks. Sort of a floating tailing pile.
Silentbob:
Is it not obvious to you?
The contrast between the claims of successful success (heh) and the wait for the actual data (which apparently doesn’t contribute to the success status).
But, according to the claim I addressed (and I quote, yet again, just for you): “@15: Now to see whether the little satellite trailing behind DART got any good images and how much if at all we’ve shifted Dimorphos’es orbit..”, the new orbital parameters are yet to be determined. So the mission is not yet complete, is it?
Yay! Fuck it, it was a success when it was launched.
Hell, it was a success when it was conceived!
(I get you)
Not something you’d know from first-hand experience, apparently.
(When you pick fights, it’s never random, is it?)
Those last photos before impact do look like it was a loose agglomeration of rocks.
So if an asteroid of mass M was making a bee-line for Earth at speed V, and we smacked it sideways with an object of mass m and speed v, at distance D from Earth, I reckon (roughly) by the time it made its nearest approach to Earth, it would be deflected by about
(mvD)/MV
If that’s a couple of Earth diameters, we’d be OK I guess. And the deflection would be greater if the asteroid was ‘looser’.
Well, how loose is “loose”? It’s also the size of a football stadium and has been collecting such impacts naturally for who knows how long, so shattering it completely is probably not as easy as that word might suggest.
Via twitter, footage of the impact from a Hawaiian ground telescope. There’s not much detail and I’m sure isn’t as good as the close-up images will be (eventually, whenever those come), but you can definitely see a nice big wave of dust rising from it.
@21. & #25. John Morales : “It’s a personal success, not a team success.”
Actually its both -mor epersonal but also a success for the team as well since y’know batting and bowling pairs work in combination and together and got there through teamwork and indiviudal effort as well. Both / & not either or. Same here with DART.
Maybe not but feel free to try. I’m certainly open to feedback on what you think I’m doing wrong and how I can do things better even though we see a lot of things differently.
NB. Initials & comment numbers added for clarity.
So then why your remarks in #16? If you got that & understand how the impact was a success even though we don’t yet know how much the orbit has changed why say it was only a qualified success. One part of the mission success, tick, next stage of the mission, question mark looking forward to seeing.. You seemed to think this was some sort of problematic contradictary issue because _______? (I don’t get why.)
If that isn’t the possessive form of Dimorphos then what is?
Yes, I think the impact was clearly a success and now we see what the results of the successful impact are and how much of an impact the impact has had on the orbit and whether the LICIACube has also suceedes in it’s separate mission of photographing the aftermath and so on. (Like how in cricket scoring a run is a success and scoring another run is also a success and setting a good innings target is a success as is then bowling out the opposition for less runs than your XI got a success, etc .. Words; how do they work again?)
It follows? Does it?
I don’t think so. I’d say it follows that one part of the mission has suceeded and there are other aprts that can also suceed further. I guess we can say of theoverall mission it was successfully launched, successfullyreached the target, successfully impacted the target and so is succesfful so far with further results to determine the extent of its success but if theItalian cube sat fails or the orbit hasnt chanegd then we’ll still have learnt from those.
Would it be disappointing if the Cube Sat fails? Yes but its not that important so, I guess yeah? But I don’t think it detracts too much from the successful impact so.. nah? The DART misison has suceeded now and is over, the LICIACube is there to monitor it so its now a question over whether or not LICIACube is successful which is a separate thing.
If the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymus hasn’t changed, OTOH, then we’ll have extra knowledge and extra intresting questions raised over why that is and what explains it rather than it being the fault of the DART team. So that I think isn’t necessary even though it was sort of the goal depending on how you look at it.
I’d have thought this was all pretty straightforward and obvious & not sure what part of it you don’t get John Morales but still.
Again, the impact was a success, the spacecraft did what its meant to do. The data coming back will be intresting in assessing the results of this success and what impact the impact has had. To return to the cricketing analogy like winning a Test and then deciding based on assessing the players who was the person of the match.
DART was a success when it was lauched – because an actual spacecraft that people worked on for years and put a lot of effort into launched was launched successfully. It was a successful launch because it got into space in nominal condfition and on the right trajectroy etc…
However, it was NOT yet a success when it was concieved because it hadn’t yet been launched let alone completed its mission and was just an idea that they hoped would come to fruition and suceed. I guess you could say DART suceeded when it began construction and passed the NASA misison review to become an official program and spacecraft that was actually built and going ahead if you really want. The first of many successes it would succed at achieving.
Pedantic but then.. (shrug.)
Dimorphos’
-es is trying to make it plural, which it is not.
You’re always such an enthusiastic apologist (for things you like), which you don’t even seem to realize is not a reliable method for answering questions of success or failure.
By this standard, the Mars Climate Orbiter mission was a success merely because it was launched. It’s too bad you didn’t work for Lockheed Martin or NASA. They could’ve used somebody to turn their huge failure into a success with bullshitting.
@28. consciousness razor : Cheers for that ATLAS footage link. A very dramatic brightening from a very loo-onng way away indeed. Thanks.
The whole point of the “hit it with a rock” asteroid deflection idea is that a very slight change in momentum can make a really big difference in position if you wait long enough. The plan is to identify a likely impact a century or two before the event. Then all it takes is a very slight change in momentum if you hit it a century or so before it would otherwise impact our planet.
@30. consciousness razor : Ouch.
Mind you, the Mars Climate Orbiter actually was launched successfully. It then failed afterwards but the launch worked & wasn’t the problem there.
DART, OTOH, both launched successfully and completed its mission successfully.
Fair enough. Thanks. I stand corrected.
You think I should be an apologist for things I dislike?
Do I have my biases and things that I love and will argue for? Sure. Who doesn’t? Does thatmake me incapable of telling successes from failures? I don’t think so. Why would you think so?
Do you agree with John Morales here and, if so, why?
You think those organisations are failures? You think alI I do is bullshit? Why so?
Have both NASA and Lockheed Martin had failures? Yes. Have they also had a lot of successes including in NASA’s case this latest mission? Also yes. What exactly is your problem with them & me here?
LICIACube’s imaging of the asteroid is a critical part of the mission. So, it is simply not the case that the mission is completed, successfully or otherwise. Until it is, you should let them finish doing their jobs and not imply that they should all go home.
It’s incredible that you think I’m saying that. The option of not being such a wanker apologist is right there for the taking, but it’s as if you don’t even see it.
I didn’t say that.
I didn’t say that.
Why do you sincerely believe that I say things that I clearly didn’t say? Are those honest mistake? That’s not credible.
If do you not actually believe it, then why would you argue like this? That’s bullshitting, no?
@ ^ consciousness razor :
You really think I was implying that? I wasn’t.
It was a queston based on your (albeit bracketed) assertion there. Who do you think I’m being an apologist for here? NASA? Yes, I’m a fan of theirs and this mission and why wouldn’t I be? Why not wish them success and applaud them when they achieve it?
Not in those words exactly which is why I was asking but you did day in your #30 :
Which kinda implies that does it not?
No but again it was kinda implied I think? Looks to me awfully like you called me a bullshitter which, yeah, as you’d expect I neither agree with nor appreciate. Understatement.
Because I can read between the lines and tell what you are implying and I think most others here can too. Do you really think you are being fair to me here?
Also its not “sincere belief” on my part more a case of “What the Fuck!? Why?”
Aagin, a question youdidn;t answer from #33 :
What exactly is your problem with them & me here?
About the science(fiction) of this, we have a great video that touches on a number of subjects mentioned above:
http://omnigma.org/heroicheretic/alienreport.mp4
Thanks, in advance, for viewing and sharing
StevoR:
Whether or not you intended it, that is the implication of “completed its mission successfully.”
No. A mission failure does not imply the organizations themselves are failures. That mission did not succeed, according to any reasonable set of criteria (unlike the one you had offered for DART).
Lockheed Martin at least has been doing fine at generating profits for shareholders, which is its only purpose. NASA has certainly seen better days, but anyway, I’m just not making an evaluation about that sort of thing when I say that mission failed due to the fact that it actually did fail and is of course widely acknowledged as a failure for that reason.
Implied by what? Point to it or stop making shit up.
Do you mean something by “kinda implied I think” that I’m not supposed to take too seriously? And if that’s the sort of thing you mean, then why would you take it so seriously?
It’s funny/sad that you just don’t even bother to distinguish between reading between the lines (which may be an entirely illusory experience for you) and reasoning about what logically implies what. It’s all the same shit.
If an asteroid is solid rock, fragments will fly off in the opposite direction and add to the tiny change of delta-v.
If it is a rubble pile, it will absorb the impact energy more easily and the fragments will not be slung around with great speed.
. . . .
Mmm … quite OT, but I love a good debunking made by good comedians.
It might help you chili out.
This is about how Nostradamus predicted Archduke Ferdinand would be shot by Elmer Fudd. The gods are sending Cesar Millan to overthrow Communism.
“GAM 371 The Terrifying Prophesies of Nostradamus ”
https://youtu.be/WQ9uHxLx2IU
(U Is not Y but my eyesight is crap)
https://youtu.be/ WQ9uHxLx2IU
https://youtu.be/WQ9uHxLx2IU
I need to get some sleep.
You know, delete my previous comments. I hAve not haD enouGh sleeP, and it shows.
https://youtu.be/WQ9uHxLx2IY
By the time NASA has collected all data and are ready to publish conclusions, I hope they are ready to finally launch Artemis 1.
(by that time the elections will be scary close, so my insomnia will get even worse)
@41
According to this film, nukes can hurt gods. Much more useful than blowing up the odd asteroid. What are we waiting for?
The attacks on StevoR for calling this wildly successful effort a success are bizarre and ridiculous. (I mean, cr is an apologist for a fascistic regime waging a genocidal war and so doesn’t warrant engagement on any subject, but still.)
The ATLAS video may have come from Hawaii, but given that it was daytime in HI at time of impact, I would guess that the imaging in fact occurred at one of the other ATLAS observatories. Amazingly impressive as it is — and way more so if I’m wrong.
Correction to #44!: cr, for some reason I confused you with jrkrideau momentarily!
@consciousness razor #30
Dimorphos’s would also be correct, (and arguably more so as Dimorphos’ can also refer to something belonging to two or more things that are all named Dimorpho).
Dimorphos’es is solidly wrong in either case.
I am interested in an estimate of how much materia got blown off in the opposite direction. Depending on mass and speed, it could add to the total delta-v.
In regard to altering orbits, the distance to the sun is best altered at aphelion or perihelion.
I do not know the most effective points for altering the angle to the ecliptic.
If you want to pump up the eccentricity of the orbit, you might try to get the asteroid into ‘orbital resonance’ with some planet.
If you are wondering about astronomy spelling, don’t look up how the brightest stars like Betelgeuse got their current names.
birgerjohansson @48: The orbit in question is not the one around the sun, but around its binary partner 6583 Didymos (with a period of about 12 hours), which has roughly five times the diameter of Dimorphos. And the orbit is quite close to circular.
BTW the larger asteroid Ryugu had a lot of fine dust on the surface, something that seems absent on this tiny moon.
During impacts fine dust is apparently ejected at higher velocities than boulders, overcoming the weak gravity.
The discussion of whether DART was a “success” has an objective answer. NASA missions have well defined requirements that must be fulfilled for the mission to succeed. Smallsats deployed by a NASA mission (e.g. LICIA) are usually considered as separate missions, and so the only requirements NASA would have had wrt LICIA would be to provide whatever the interface demanded and to deploy the satellite as required. LICIA would have been considered a Class D mission or even a do-no-harm payload (e.g. “hope it works, but as long as it doesn’t break anything, I don’t really care”). So, while a success for LICIA enhances the capabilities of DART, it is not required for DART’s success.
Moreover, DART was a demonstration mission–all it was meant to do was show that you could hit such a small target from 7 million miles away. So, DART was an unqualified success.
Usually, the mission requirements for success are rather modest. Often, a mission will also have goals that exceed the requirements. These are desirable, but not required for success. Sometimes, a mission will so far exceed even its goals that it effectively takes on an entirely different mission. This has been the case with the Mars helicopter Ingenuity and the first 2 Mars rovers. It was also the case for the two Voyager probes. This happens often enough that the public becomes jaded and is disappointed when all a mission does is fulfill its requirements. James Webb is only required to last 5 years, but I guarantee that if it fails at that time, people will be claiming NASA failed.
John Morales @ #16:
Even setting aside the points snarkrates makes @ #52, the references to a “qualified success” or “degrees of success” made no sense. I think it’s generally understood that these should refer to a mission that’s fully ended such that the success of the different portions, however much weight is being assigned to each, can be assessed. But these comments came in response to “Now to see whether the little satellite trailing behind DART got any good images and how much if at all we’ve shifted Dimorphos’es orbit.” On John’s terms, “the mission is not yet complete, is it?” So, even on these terms, you could say the mission has been a complete success so far with the success of the remaining portions yet to be determined. That’s very different from calling the mission on Monday a “qualified success.”
#22
“So… a qualified success. Yay!” picks a fight? I think there’s some projection going on.
#17 “Now wait for the online conspiracists”
From most of what I’ve seen they claim it’s CGI.
P.S. I think the responses to JM have been cogent, and I don’t think he picked a fight with his comment in #16 (although he certainly ended up in one).
Also, the possessive of “Dimorphos” is “Dimorphos’s” (https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/whats-the-rule-for-doing-a-possessive-after-the-word-s/)
#47
It’s the only correct form.
No it can’t … that too would be referred to as, e.g., “the Dimorphos’s fates”
That’s true.
“Yay!” was arguably fight-picking.
Anything can “arguably” be anything if the argument is bad enough, but “Yay!” was approving of success.
Anyway, S…n, I have deep personal reasons not to engage with you, so this will be the last time.
I read it as sarcastic.
Works for me!
[FWIW]
First usage, it was a more a parenthetical nod to StevoR’s exuberant enthusiasm for all space-related things following the slightly snarky “aren’t you being a bit premature?” intimation.
Second usage, I can’t deny some sarcasm.
Shouldn’t have become (nor should it now be) a biggie. Just an aside.
“I didn’t base my career on making hits
I have hits because I formed the basis
I have nothin’ else to say
And it takes a lot of class to say that”
FWIW, the cricket tangent was very amusing (if not really analogous :)). I have no idea what any of it means, but it’s a whole world.
SC, [cricket:baseball::chess:checkers]
Scott Manley has an excellent new video on the aftermath of the DART impact here which is just under 9 minutes long.
Also on the question of what happens next, we have this article here :
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-asteroid-collision-europe-hera-probe.html
Whilst meanwhile even further out in our solar system :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-09-29/nasa-juno-spacecraft-flyby-europa-ocean-moon/101477320
Juno is flying by Europa in what is the closest & most scientifically significant encounter for over 20 years very soon now.
@ 65 StevoR
Apparently the first close up pictures have just come through and there’s a message scrawled on the ice… NASA/JPL have deciphered as, “all these words are yours except this one.. attempt no landing here”.
;-)
John Morales @ #64, sounds about right.
Smithsonian magazine – “The History of Cricket in the United States”: “The game is both very British and, to Americans, very confusing. But it was once our national pastime, and its [sic] gaining fans on these shores…”
(From 2006, which shows in sentences like “Today, many Americans dismiss cricket as an elitist game played by girlie-men.”)
“many Americans dismiss cricket as an elitist game played by girlie-men.”
When I first came to Canada and saw baseball fielders wearing gloves, I thought that was kind of “girly”.
@68. SC (Salty Current) : Did not know that thanks. What a stupidly self- destructive thing to do..
.***
The new space telescope and the Hubble have both imaged the Didymos impact now as space dot com notes here :
https://www.space.com/webb-hubble-observe-dart-didymos-asteroid-crash
With more science and images, of course, still to come from the Italian cubeSat and others..
@44. SC (Salty Current) : Thankyou.
@ 61. John Morales : “Shouldn’t have become (nor should it now be) a biggie. Just an aside.”
On that we both agree!
Well, I do indeed love my astronomy and space exploration stuff. Nothing wrong with that I think. Yes, I’m a fan of NASA and SpaceX and space exploration and astronomy generally. In case folks may not have noticed! ;-)
@ 37. consciousness razor : Maybe try rereading your response #30 to my # 29 and imagining it from my POV.. Maybe I over-reacted and was over-sensitive there? However, I still feel you were pretty unexpectedly abusive and unfair to me and that hurt me. Specifically your comment :
.* Link removed in formatting.quote.
Yes, I am a passionate fan of NASA and space exploration – human and robotic – but no, I don’t use that love as any sort of answer as to whether something suceeded or not. Nor do I “bullshit” which does seem pretty strongly implied by your last couple of sentences there. Obviously I strongly disagree with your assessment here and I’m baffled at what seems like a personal attack on me in your paragraph cited above.. Anyhow. Worse things happen on Jupiter so I’ll leave this there.