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Defending Earth From Asteroids With MADMEN
jolomo writes "A partner of Atlanta-based NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts is working on a concept they call MADMEN (Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Nodes), which would launch a distributed attack against large Earth-bound objects. Thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations and when launched, each would land on the object, drill into its surface and remove enough material to change its course."
I'm sorry but worrying about asteroids is downright silly. Instead of spending money on something as fanciful as this, it would be much better to spend our energies on real problems: enviromental degradation, nuclear proliferation and such.
We may as well worry about the boogyman as far as issues that are likely to affect us.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
How many nations have put rockets (with significant payloads) successfully into orbit? Right, I can count them on one hand too. So where do the other 995+ nations come in and what makes us think that any rouge nation that can lauch a rocket into space has the ability to aim it, much less land it on the surface of the asteriod?
And finally, are we suggesting that we want thousands of nations to have the ability to launch rockets with payloads into outer space (or at least orbit)? I'm not being elitist here, but I think most of use agree that nuclear proliferation wasn't quite the boon we all thought it was going to be.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
--Mike--
I think that Carl Sagan made a very good point, saying that the chance of an astroid hitting earth is increased when one develops a technology to deflect astroids from their path, not decreased.
it's not the explosion pushing the gun backwards, it's conservation of linear momentum.
if you could have an explosion that was only forwards, you'd still get recoil.
I can imagine the uproar by every earth friendly freak out there. Lets have hundreds of nuclear powered machines all over the planet. What if one malfunctions? Would it not create a dirty bomb? Being that the ammount of nuclear energy would be to o small to create a massive blast. If you are using nuclear power for energy, can it just be stored dormant??
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
Maybe I've watched too many movies, but if an asteroid were on direct path to hit the Earth and would likely cause the extinction of mankind, do you think the government(s) would let us know about it before they took a crack at pushing it off course? Or do you think due to civil unrest that they would wait until the problem was solved to tell everyone?
Perhaps the scientific community would let it out first.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations and when launched
We couldn't even cooperate on the International Space Station (still not done). How would many nations work together on a defense system?
www.thejulingtoncreekplantaion.com
Right, cos they don't have anything like that attitude in South Central LA. Or any other large city.
Put your South-hatred back up your ass.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but why wouldn't the explosion push the gun backwards?
Has any time been spent calculating the odds of a killer maniac (or group thereof) wiping out all life on Earth?
As an rough estimate, with the Doomsday Clock as a reference, I humbly propose that the odds of a maniac killing us all are massively higher than the rogue asteroid issue.
Maybe we should be putting available cash towards world peace as a slightly higher priority.
Playing pool would be a good aid to getting a handle on asteroids bumping into each other, except for two things. First, collisions in pool are mostly elastic, so there isn't that much loss of momentum. You can't expect that from asteroids or the moon. Second, pool balls are, in an honest game, all roughly the same mass. The moon is much bigger than an asteroid, and the forces keeping in in balance with the earth are probably enough to absorb a little asteroid collision easily.
Sorry, but no amount of money will buy peace.
People will fight and kill for what they want. Peace always takes a back seat to anger, greed, ideology and a belief in inevitable victory.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Wrong, Wrong and, Wrong. Please Play again.
The trick is you paint the rock white, not black (i.e. you increase its albedo). The act of reflecting light imparts double the momentum of the act of absorbing it, thereby changing its orbit. Further, it doesn't matter that the asteroid rotates as you paint the whole asteroid. And actually, surprisingly, some of the guys at JPL have calculated that the area is actually enough - provided that the paint is applied early enough (several years prior to the predicted impact). The Yarkovsky effect is pretty small, but if you give it long enough, it will change the asteroid's orbit.