Crash Masters

I am a huge space junkie, with education electives from Mechanical to Quantum Physics, from Professional Remote Sensing to backyard telescope enthusiast. That said, some words about The latest in the world of NASA. Dang, NASA is good at crashing things. This July 4th, Deep Impact a NASA probe crashed (on purpose) into a comet in hopes of getting a glimps into the "star stuff" of the Universe. The problem is, we hit it so well, that the plume clouded any hope of the parent craft from seeing what's inside. Hopefully ground telescopes over the weeks to come can get a better look.

My point, I'm trying to think when the last time NASA actually successfully landed something. The last three Mars rovers used the air bag technique...aka...."Controlled" crash landing. Humans would not survive such a landing. Then the Mars polar Lander, err, landed a bit too hard, make that pieces. Survivors again would equal zero. The last Space Shuttle landing, again unpleasant landing. The Genesis mission that was to collect Star Stuff from a the Suns particles and return it to Earth: Picture says it all. Yes, the list goes on...Galileo, crashed into Jupiter to prevent accidental contamination of Europa. The last Moon orbiter, crashed on moon in attempts to find water on the moon.

True many of these were intentional crashes to decomission the projects, but come on folks...minus the Space Shuttles, have we actually landed anything in the "Computer Age"? Let's see, last Moon landing (Apollo 17) was 1972. Last Mars landing (Viking 2) was 1976. True, the NEAR satellite landed on Eros in 2000, but it wasn't design to land, since it was an orbiter!

To NASA, the Crash Masters!