A fabulous post over at XKCD’s What if? BTW: We already knew the answer to this – we just asked ESA’s flight dynamics experts!

Astrophysicists are always saying things like “This mission to this comet is equivalent to throwing a baseball from New York and hitting a particular window in San Francisco.” Are they really equivalent?

Rosetta route

The comet-visiting spacecraft Tom’s astrophysicists are referring to is probably Rosetta, which is about to orbit the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and send a lander down to its surface.

Note: 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is a mouthful, so for the rest of this article I’m just going to call the comet “Kevin”.

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