Strudel asks
So after the recent White House response about Death Stars (well only one) we were talking in the office about how powerful it would need to be to destroy Jupiter (obviously just the power of one Death Star to destroy Earth, right?) and also, if a puny laser won’t work against Jupiter, what effect would deflecting our moon into Jupiter have?
Ah, an easy one.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars a few weeks back. To do this it went through a complicated atmospheric entry procedure to slow down from orbital velocity before deploying a very large parachute capable of providing an effective drag force in the thin Martian atmosphere. Curiosity made it to the surface safely, and did so largely because it’s the beneficiary of about forty years of experience in successfully – and not so successfully – landing stuff on Mars. But probe landings were not always so refined.
And now, the thing that indirectly led to last week’s post on Race Into Space: the Kerbal Space Program.