Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for October 02, 2011

Another great one!

“You’re not ignoring the science stuff hard enough.” The true answer is “establish a hyperbolic vector that preserves angular velocity at Vesta approach, while maximizing camera hold time at dx=0.” Tweak those partial differentials until they squeal.

Do not try and orbit the asteroid. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.

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There is no asteroid.

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Then you’ll see, that it is not the asteroid that orbits, it is only yourself.

Eat a cookie. Nothing else matters.

The answer is pi…preferably blueberry

Ask NASAVoyager2.

“What’s the best way to design a flight plan…?”Carefully!!

Just don’t forget it’s metric again.

Chaos.

Winky wasted a perfectly good spleen on those bozos at NASA. They can’t even get a man off the ground! What’s the world coming to? (Never mind the asteroid.)

So when do we get to buy Brewster T-shirts?

The subtle effects of Vesta’s gravity field will cause deviations from the planned trajectory. NASA navigators should get repeated fixes on Dawn’s position and speed as it spirals closer. That should allow them to precisely point the thrusters, despite their being mounted on their own gimbals.Dr. Marc should know this . . . especially since he wrote it!

ummm duh?

Damn the asteroid! Full speed ahead!

Pam looks like she could be a Bond Girl, although they might not want one called “P.M.S.”

I think you should forget Vesta and plot an orbit around Pluto. It deserves that much at least, after the way we’ve humiliated it.

In other words, I’m sayin’, “Throw Pluto a bone.”

Quotes from the newest Congressmen/women and Senators.

So who had the best answer? Fry, (I mean Brewster) Leela, (I mean Pam) Professor Farnsworth, (I mean Dr Mel Practice) Bender (I mean Oldbot) or the rest of the Galaxy Express crew ( I mean Cliff)?

Given that Vesta is an irregular shape, I would definitely plan to orbit elliptically around the longest axis while honking the horn, hoping to flush out the aliens who use Vesta as a rest stop. Then I would suck their brains out with a straw, sell the widows and orphans, and go into South American Zinc.

Once you design a flight plan, don’t forget to file it with the FAA.

Might be kind of fun to hear Dirk Raider’s crew answer a similar question?

RayC— New Horizons is still on its way to Pluto, should arrive in about 2015, by which time there may be nobody left working at JPL to receive its signals…

45 spleens!