Based on what we know of comets today, imagine an artificial comet nucleus being carefully constructed. The artificial comet would contain the minerals, dust, water ice and the various gasses we have detected in actual comets, in the same proportions we theorize relative to a comet's mass and size and be stored in a special container at very low temperature. The artificial comet nucleus would by necessity be scaled down from a real comet. The container is loaded on board the Space Shuttle and in orbit the container is launched and opened by remote control, pushing the fake comet out while in Earth orbit. The questions are:Would the artificial comet form a coma and a bright tail from the solar wind just as a real comet does? If not, is it because the body is too small? Implying that there is a threshold above which a comet will visibly outgas. Or, will it outgas at any size but has to be big enough, say 40 kilometers across to form a tail that can be seen?If a tiny comet cannot form a detectable tail due to size, what if an artificial yet highly condensed small comet were made? In other words, a compressed comet nucleus with proportions of chemicals, gasses and ice in much denser and higher concentrations relative to size than a real comet. I don't know the answers to these questions but thought they'd be fun for some folks to talk about or might trigger other questions.