Congratulations to NASA for their successful Deep Impact mission, as reported by Scientific American. You have to feel good for the engineers there who have the biggest playground in the universe (because it literally IS the universe) and who finally get the chance to blow something up. The Mars Lander was very cool in an intellectual sort of way, but there is something about whapping a comet up side of its head that really appeals at a gut level.

Yes, I know, the primary mission of NASA is science. There was certainly a generous helping of that involved in the mission, since the resulting explosion exposed matter the composition of which dates back to the early days of our solar system. The complexity of the mission had at least the normal level of complexity for these projects as well. It's easy to underestimate just how hard it is to get such a project off the ground, so to speak.

Again, good job, guys.

Larry Mittag