Why did NASA launch a spacecraft into an asteroid?

Question

I’m sure they did this whole thing on paper before executing, but why did they need to actually do it?

Normally, I’m all for funding space agencies, but there doesn’t seem like a whole lot of value in doing this. If you know all of variables in concept, you should be able predict that it would work. Right?

In: 0

Answer 1

> there doesn’t seem like a whole lot of value in doing this. If you know all of variables in concept, you should be able predict that it would work. Right?

Sure. But how do you know that you know all the variables? What if you’re missing something? That’s why you test your assumptions.

We can predict that something will work, but until we know whether or not the prediction was *correct* we can’t really build on it.