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Comment by d_burfoot | Hacker News Reader

Paging Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, et al: the next time one of these objects appears, we should try to capture it somehow, or at least divert its trajectory enough that it stays in the solar system and we can study it further. Nabbing one of these things would be a spectacular achievement, comparable to the moon landings, and would likely be of significant scientific value.

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Capturing this object would have required the effort of multiple Apollo prgrams in a timeframe that is shorter by orders of magnitude. It’s far beyond the capabilities of Musk, Bezos and anyone alive today. Pulling it off would make the Moon landing look like parallel parking.

But I wonder if it would have been possible to just do a fly-by of it...

Musk missed, and his car is headed for the asteroid belt instead of Mars.

Based on my understanding of the Falcon Heavy launch and objectives this is an unfair characterization. The plan was never to put the car in orbit around Mars or hit the planet directly. The plan was to prove that Falcon Heavy can move a payload with the weight of the car at least as far as Mars. Shooting it into the asteroid belt demonstrates the capability of the rocket.

Your comment demonstrates absolute cluelessness with regards to the goals of the FH launch / second stage trajectory.

Please do not take HN threads on off-topic flamey tangents. They lead to off-topic flamewars, the last thing we want here.

Sorry

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