Well, I've still got the original bowling ball as well as several other smaller balls of varying sizes and densities. And the folks at Seabase are still willing to let us use them as ground zero again. Ann, are you up for a flight or would you care to pass the bombardier torch on to someone else? patrick (next time we'll make a strewn field) On 09 Feb 2012, at 08:50, Kim wrote:
The whole point of the original "proposal" was to determine what happens to space rocks that might impact the hard, dense salt crust of the Salt Flats. I did not realize just how hard the salt is until I first went to the Flats to hunt for meteorites, and I wondered whether small rocks might just ricochet or if they would penetrate the salt and essentially disappear. Other questions arose: What size/velocity would an impactor have to achieve to punch through the crust? Could we model this somehow at the Salt Flats? Would a low-angle trajectory cause an object to skip across the salt? (Images of WW2 Dambusters here.) One night at advanced training a number of us were discussing this, and the rest is history.
So, now I think I might be ready to try this again. If we can find a salt pan or a portion thereof that is not on federally-owned land, it would be a lot easier to pull off. Does anyone know of such a place? I think that north of the racetrack area there might be some salt pans that could work. We need to find salt at least a few inches thick so that we are indeed modeling the effects of an impact on the salt itself, and not the mud. Now that I know a thing or two about getting permission to do anything on federal land, I'd be willing to pursue this further.
Ann, you should still plan on being bombardier. I have a genuine A1 flight jacket for you to wear. ;-)
Kim