The Axis Drop. The climax of Char’s Counterattack, as a massive asteroid, plucked from the asteroid belt and repurposed into a huge colony, is intentionally hurled towards the Earth. Could we redirect such a thing? Well, there are a lot of problems with such a scenario. For one, it’s really better to try way, WAY sooner than they did in that movie. Also Axis had maneuvering thrusters to counteract any counter-counterattack.
BUT. Let’s ignore those objections for a moment. If it’s just an asteroid headed for the Earth? Noooo problem. We can throw that off course. Why do I know this? Because we DID. It wasn’t exactly headed towards us, but the DART program from John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory demonstrated a month ago today that we can redirect asteroids with a simple probe impact. That’s just one APL project, a group with history dating back to the end of World War II. And who better to guide us through their history than current APL employee Space Instrumentation Electrical Engineer Nick Seese.
Yes, THAT Nick Seese. The duality of man, folks.
This episode has a lot of images that are tricky to find- there’s no Wikia for space probes! Here’s a link to the folder of images.
If you want to find us on Twitter, Nick is @_uraniumheart and Six is @sixdettmar. Our opening theme is the Hangar Theme from Gundam Breaker 3, and our ending theme for this episode is Jupiter by Gustav Holst from The Planets. Our podcast art is a fantastic piece of work from Twitter artist @fenfelt. Want to see a list of every unit we’ve covered from every episode, including variants and tangents? It’s right here.
Units discussed:
V-2 sounding rocket
Aggregat 4 (A4) V-2 rocket
Department of Defense Gravitational Experiment (DODGE)
Titan IIIC
Titan 3 Small
Titan 3 LV
Transit/NAVSAT/NSS
New Horizons
Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI)
Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI)
Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera (DRACO)
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)
Parker Solar Probe
Europa Clipper
Europa Imaging System Narrow Angle Camera (EIS NAC)
Europa Imaging System Wide Angle Camera (EIS WAC)
Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS)
