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."

Comments

Experiment

[zeux]

If you want to see this effect try this (a teacher told me about that 10 years ago):
on a day without wind go in a light boat with something like 300 pounds of rocks. Go in the middle of a lake and launch all the rocks in the same direction as far as possible. After a while you'll notice that the boat is moving slowly in the opposite direction (depending on the weight and speed of the launches).

Nice trick that makes lot of sense in vaccum, with hundreds of 'rock launchers' and continous launches over a very long time.

As we say in French, "toute action entraine une reaction".

How good will the system be?

[millahtime]

Will the MADMEN be good enough to stop say.... The moon gets hit by an asteroid knocking it off course and towards the earth.

So, maybe I played too much pool as a kid.

Alternative methods

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

My favorite approach that I've heard so far is to paint the asteroid while its still a long way out. You paint one half to absorb radiation and leave the other side alone. The idea is that after long enough the sun will push the asteroid off course.

What kind of goofy people come up with this stuff?

My second favorite is to put rocket engines on lots of little asteroids and crash them into the big asteroid coming for earth. Some lucky bastard would get paid to sit in his chair at NASA with a joystick and play asteroids.

Imagine the pressure!

Re:This is a boondoggle

[mikeee]

Asteroid (meteor?) strikes are more common than you'ld think; just in 1908 what was probably a comet struck Siberia with the force of a good-sized atom bomb and leveled 1200 square miles of forest. Had an inhabited area been struck, destruction would have been massive.

Our best estimates seem to be this this is likely to happen every few hundred years; given that such an event might kill millions, it seems worth a minimal effort to take out a bit of insurance, and at least as sensible as banning GMOs.

Serious Problems

[DynaSoar]

It is almost inevitable that any incoming rock will be rotating on all 3 axes. To move it efficiently would require these beasties being smart enough to know when to throw their rock. That's doable.

But how often will one of these things be in the right place at the right time? You would need hundreds if not thousands sitting and digging and waiting their turn.

How much will these things weigh? With a nuke generator, and drilling and launching equipment to handle a pound of rock at a time over and over, say 1000 pounds max.

If that thing isn't going to get the chance to launch 1000 one pound chuncks of rock, due to not being pointed in the right direction often enough, you'd do better to slam the things into the rock to try to move it.

I think the best idea yet is building a bunch of large engines and fuel tanks, going out and capturing some rocks, herding them into stable orbit at L-4, and strap on the engines. If they're ever needed they can easily fall out of L-4, slingshot around the moon, and head out towards the incoming. A properly placed kinetic swat will send it off into a safe orbit whether or not it breaks up.

Proliferation was great for the USA

[geoswan]

The non-proliferation treaty defined two kinds of proliferation. "Horizontal proliferation" was the spread of nuclear weapons to nations that hadn't had them before the treaty. This was considered a bad thing. "Vertical proliferation" was an increase in the number of nuclear weapons by nations that had already had nuclear weapons before the treaty. This was also considered a bad thing .

All the members of the nuclear club increased the size of their nuclear arsenals without regard to their treaty obligations. And the USA won. The USA is the pre-eminent super-power now because it won the Arms Race. It wouldn't be the pre-eminent super-power if the smart bombs were not backed up by a nuclear arsenal. It wouldn't be the pre-eminent super-power if the B2 wasn't backed up by a nuclear arsenal.

Oh yeah, there was another clause in the non-proliferation treaty. Part of the Quid Pro Quo was that the nations with Nuclear power were supposed to make sure the nations without Nuclear power shared in the benefits of Nuclear Power. We haven't see much of that happening, have we?