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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."
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".
Iraq: war to save the U
Obviously a project named after the inventors.
Who read that as Defending the Earth From MADMEN with Asteroids?
So... like... a DDOS against a chunk of rock? ... heh. Imagine a Beo... nevermind.
We cannot let there be a astronautical mineshaft gap!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Will someone please tell these companies to stop turning to local schools for names for their projects.
NASA really has beaten Congress in the stupid name department.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
On the off chance that aliens drop by for a visit, could we use the drones to try breaking their ships into little pieces too? After reading Mission Earth years ago I always thought we needed some sort of space-pointing defence system, just in case;)
Why, oh why, do they keep coming up with these silly "destory or deflect the asteroid" schemes? Such "inside the box" thinking.
When is someone going to focus on the important alternative: how about moving Earth out of the way instead?
John.
I can see it now
Russia: We pushed left, why didn't it change course?
USA: Why didn't you check first? we pushed right!
Only in Atlanta would an idea like, "Shoot it a bunch of times and see if it goes away" would such a solution be born.
Magic Eight Ball: Outlook not so good., Hmmm, how about Excel and Word?
I can see it now: "Yes, we're about to launch a large number of missiles armed with powerful explosives. All nuclear powers please remain calm. This is only a test. No, really, none of these will malfunction and visit death and destruction on somebody we're having a disagreement with. Honest."
I disagree. If we let nuclear proliferation and environmental degradation continue, our atmosphere will a perfect shield against asteroids. Any potential asteroid threat will simply burn up in the radioactive waste that is our atmosphere.
I saw it in this Simpson's episode once! It's true!
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.
Evolution or ID?
Yeah its not like Asteroids ever caused any mass extinctions in the past.. .. Oh wait, thats right, Dinosaurs.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
How would you get thousands of units all fire chunks of asteroids in the same direction if the asteroid is rotating? If you fire in all direction the net effect would be pretty much nil.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
I fully support using world leaders as ammunition to deflect asteroids.
I, for one, welcome our new Madmen-flinging overlords.
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!
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
In fact, a good sized asteriod could clear up a lot of this country's problems in a snap!
Look out congresswhores! Mama needs a new box a' cooties, and she is mad!
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.
Food for thought:
1) With such a system in place, would the United States be morally or legally bound to intervene if an asteroid was destined (for example) Cuba, or North Korea?
2) Can such as system also be used to DIVERT or even AIM such a projectile as a weapon?*
*(If it helps you sleep, you can answer this to yourself as "it saved millions of lives and cut short the war by several years". You know what I am talking about)
Posted AC, because I work for The Man sometimes.
It's a shot in a million, but if it happens we're toast. I'd like to know that there's a backup plan.
Granted, most space-based weaponry capable of taking out an asteroid would also be pretty effective against ground targets, or other countries' ballistic missiles.
...
You are correct. An asteroid impact is not very likley. If it occurs, however, the cost is very high. This research is only $75,000. Cheap insurance.
Why not use an Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator?
Are you Corn Fed?
--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.
"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."
Flashback 65 million years ago to the the late cretaceous: I'm sorry but worrying about asteroids is downright silly. Instead of spending time on something as fanicful as this, it would be much better to spend out energies on real problems: dropping stegasaurus populations, longer teeth and such.
We may as well worry about another protozoan extinction as far as issues that are likely to affect us...
He who failes to plan is dogmeat. What happens if we do nothing and say five years from now we find an asteroid coming towards us to wipe us out? You'll probably be the first to bitch and moan "why didn't we do something when we had time?"
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Does NASA (or any other US gov thing) have a special department that think up cool acronyms?
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.
I haven't seen the movie on this yet, so I'm unable to comment one way or another.
Just post a link to the asteroid on /.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
"ya but who would take credit for saving the planet ?"
You know its going to be Bush... He'll claim to have saved the planet from rogue asteroids...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
"you'ld think; just in 1908 what was probably a comet"
That was almost a million hours ago. That is a lot of time in between strikes.
Evolution or ID?
Wouldn't it be esasier to build a large rail gun on the moon that could shoot projectiles into the asteroid instead? This would save the trouble of having to deal with the problems with what would be the equivilant of thousands of Mars landers.
when a country song is written about not only loosing the girl, house, truck and dog but the whole damn planet.
Evolution or ID?
No, wait, that's what the RNC is calling this year's election campaign.
Aren't a LOT of nations already producing thousands of mad men already? Do we really need any more?
Still though, this would make a great plot device for a James Bond movie.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Hey, goddist filth!
The only thing you're supposed to do when a heavenly object is about to obliterate you is to pray. PRAY!
What?
Don't you believe in the tennets of your fairy tales? You're supposed to welcome the end of all the unbelievers with the faith and understanding that only the devout will make it to paradise. You're devout and you will be saved.
Riiiight?
That asteroid is nothing short of the HAND OF THE ALMIGHTY/STARK FIST OF REMOVAL.
You should accept it willingly, lovingingly. Even before it becomes a visible-eye object there should be enough songs and stories about it that the armies of the anointed will leave no dry-earth unshadowed as the seas surge and the sky darkens with its approach.
This whole "playing god" thing will just interfere with the destiny issue.
What happens when humanity does avert a disaster which is supposed to render all human life null-o-void-o?!
Why, would anyone want to interfere with that!?
Virgins for everyone?
Constant bliss that makes orgasm seem like a hangnail?
If anything you'd think humanity would just use a laser to sky-write
"SO LONG AND THANKS FOR THE TEMPTATION" moments before impact.
My guess is, a Sky-writing laser is much less expensive than a bunch of godless toys. Whoops, there goes my common sense again...if there's a buck to be made the more expensive option will be selected.
Stupid meat monkeys, you were put here to suffer, to suffer tempation and vice, shucks, you're all tainted...ahahahah! I've got your original sin RIGHT HERE and I'm wearing a fashionable red bow on it.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Its like buying SCO licences, they may do nothing at all but someone somewhere will gain some peace of mind from it.
Daryl? Is that you?
Consider instead a high power microwave source ionizing the mass that would have previously been cut into golf ball pieces, then using a particle accelerator instead of a mass driver. If the ion temperature is kept high enough, you'll only have pure ions to deal with, nice and conductive, and easier to control. You can then ship them out along the thrust vector of your choice, without the headaches of mechanical processing of materials.
Electrohydrodynamic accelleration of mass can be studied in labs on the ground, thus reducing R&D costs. It also offers the advantage of being throttled to any desired rate. In the hard vacuum of space, it should be feasible to keep the ions from contacting, and thus eroding the accelerator.
The mass will eventually condense back to solid matter, but will be quite dispersed by the time that happens, thus creating dust, instead of solid projectiles.
--Mike--
MADMEN diverts a disaster by knocking an asteroid off course.
2 years later, Aliens invade because we "attacked" their home planet with an asteroid.
That's a way to initiate first contact!
Honestly, I'd rather be incenerated by an asteroid collision than be dissected by thousands of Alien Hordes angry because we threw rocks at them.
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.
The other half of China will shoot them while they are in the air.
Hammer of Truth
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
Even a small impact of a cometary fragment such as that that happened over Tunguska would be devastating if it happened in a populated area.
Question: Suppose such an event happened over a populated area today. How long would the authorities of that nation wait before retaliating against their enemies for what looks, to a layperson's eye, an awful lot like a nuclear strike?
And is that time longer or shorter than the time it would take the scientific community to conclude that it wasn't a nuclear strike and convey that information to the leaders of the rocksmacked nation?
And would the population of the nation actually believe what the scientists were saying?
That's if the world's lucky enough that the rock in question lands in a nation that even has scientists.
What would the world be like had the Tunguska event occurred in 1968 instead of 1908?
Whats worse is it does nothing but give a slight piece of mind.
It's not about piece of mind, it's about the survival of our species. Besides, I'd rather that 5% of the DOD's money go to stopping asteroids then be spent on tanks.
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
There is someone here on slashdot that has a sig that sums it up
"The moon is covered with astronomical odds".
Nobody wants nuclear proliferation and global degradation (other than GWB). However at the same time, it'll all be mute if suddenly an astronomer goes "Oh Shit, were gonna get slammed with a texas sized rock in 10 years" and we have no plan in place to deal with it. The problem is that nobody will take this kind of threat seriously until our feet are in the fire...
I'm of the mind set that we should ensure humanities survival by sprending ourselves out and working towards colonizing other planets and working on longterm off earth space colonies. Part of that strategy would be that every offworld establishment would have a complete copy of the earths data (world history / theorethical / medical / scientific / mechanical / etc) Basically, everything you'd need to build anything and the knowlege stored so it could be taught.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
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.
Ever consider that the dinosaurs might still rule the Earth if they had MADMEN?
Anything even remotely on the scale of another Alvarez event will make any of those "real problems" seem trivial by comparison...
Besides, the Earth has been hit many times in it's history, ample evidence exists. The moon and our other neighbours in the inner system all show evidence of repeated strikes from comets/meteors through their history. The number of nuclear weapons detonated through the last 60 years doesn't even come close to being significant in view of the number of strikes the Earth has taken from other celestial bodies.
Bottom line, it's a fact that we've been struck before, and it is a statistical certainty that we will be struck again. Ever seen shooting stars? How often do those small items come to Earth? pretty common event really. Consider the damage that man made items not even a billionth of the mass of a medium sized asteroid have caused coming down...
I'm not marginalizing the other issues you bring up. Environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation are issues which demand our attention, but they aren't justification to marginalize this issue. Nor would an increase in our presence and utilization of space have anything but a positive effect on those issues.
Moving polluting industries to space is the single best way of keeping those polluting industries that our society depends on, while minimizing the environment they can damage. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is less tangible, but still a positive effect. If you are an emerging nation, which is going to be a bigger return for you on the world stage, possessing nuclear weapons or being part of the exploitation of space? Nuclear weapons may intimidate your neighbours, but have never positively impacted any society's material prosperity. Further, history bears out that those nations which partake in colonization outstrip their contemporaries which do not, and in pretty short order. So if the choice is colonize space, and reap the awards, or garner nuclear weapons, and reap some unproductive holes in the ground...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
I thought he was a Miserable Failure
I can't believe people would be as short sighted as to say 'the chances are so slim' blah blah blah.
If you had RTFA, they address those odds pretty well. The odds of getting another Tunguska sized impact are roughly 1 per 1000 years. That's an *average* people. To break it down, it could theoretically happen tomorrow. Further, if you had RTFA, you would note that an object of roughly the same size as the estimated Tunguska object (150 meters across) which was first discovered this year just passed within 3.8 million miles of our planet. That's roughly 16 times (two bytes) the distance from us to the moon....or pretty damn close.
These are ideas. If they sit around and come up with 1000 bad ideas for every good one, I still don't care. That one good idea might save my ass...or my family's collective ass.
There's always people who won't believe it can happen to them, though. Look at all the folks who insisted that, because of the SF quake in 1906, that they would be safe 'for their lifetime' since it couldn't happen again. Whoops. Tell that to the folks smashed in their cars when the elevated roadway collapsed. Or, 'Well, we know Mt. St. Helens is a Volcano, but it hasn't erupted since we've been keeping track...so it'll be safe as long as I'm alive.' Tell that to those folks who chose to stay and whose bodies will never be found underneath 100's of feet of mud.
Hell, the odds of being struck by lightning are VERY slim...but plenty of research goes into preventing that, and no one complains. The odds of being shot and killed are miniscule...but look how much money we spend on prevention. But as soon as you begin researching something that could, quite literally, kill millions of people in an instant, you're branded a 'waste of time and money'.
Tell you what. Give me back the taxes I spent that went to teaching your children, and I'll gladly redirect them to fund this type of research.
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.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Now we can get rid of that freakin moon that hogs all the good sky. ;)
Are they really going to launch Howard Dean up there?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I thought that was supposed to go "if you aren't a conservative when you are old, you have no money."
You sir, are an idiot.
CFC stands for Chlorofluorocarbons, which are manmade organic molecules produced at petroleum refineries for various uses. They do not exist naturally in any significant amount, and most definitely do not come from volcanos.
Disclaimer: I am a geologist
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
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?
Look, it's this simple: Asteroids ROTATE, in wildly different ways and have a miniscule amount of local gravity.
How on earth is your loauncher supposed to touch down, let alone anchor itself? Then, if that can be achieved, how does it know which direction and when to chuck a load? Unless ALL units are completely sorted out, randonly chucking stuff off a rock is a waste of time - the combined effects will cancel eacg other out.
Look, this isn't rock(et) science - this is Laser Science. :P
The best and ONLY viable way to divert asteroids is to hit them with light pressure. Nuclear bombs and rock-chucking bots are the legacy thinking from military minds, and not logical thinking.
Here's how to divert a rock:
Launch a 500 Megawatt Nuclear reactor into orbit, and attach it to a giant "Laser Beam". Use a high power ION drive to get the system into a position where it leads the asteroid by a few thousand klicks. It then positions itself such that it can place 500 Megawatts of laser power onto the surface of the asteroid, pushing in one direction only.
It sits there for a few years pushing on the asteroid, while using the ION engine to hold it's position (Newton says action = reaction!). We send several missions to refuel the ION engines and tend the reactor.
You only need to adjust an asteroids speed by 2 cm/s to effectively make it miss the Earth - and we'd want even less than that, because we'd want to actually snatch the thing into a highly elliptical Earth Orbit. Say 2,000,000 x 450 Kilometres.
Then we'd not only save the Earth, but snag a trillion tons of raw materials which can gradually be mined and used by the burgeoning space manufacturing and orbital processing facilities which will bound to develop if that much "free" material is just sitting there asking to be used.
Alternatively, and arguably easier is to use Gigawatt class lasers (which perform multiple duties: launching payloads into LEO, illuminating search and rescue efforts at night, light battlefields, accelerate interstellar probesm send data into the cosmos, a Ballistic Missile defence syste, providing light in the Luna night, satelite killer, surgical strike weapon par-excellence, space junk de-orbiter and asteroid diverter!) based on Earth to deflect incoming NEOs.
Earth based is preferable because it's cheaper and has many other uses. Plus, you can build 50+ Gigawatt class lasers and combine the power which would deflect objects the sizes of Ceres.
1x Gigawatt is the power required to launch a 1 metre diameter, 1 ton payload into Low Earth Orbit. Check out http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ This from Liek Mayabo the CEO.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I don't have the answer to this. Scenarios I consider: 1. An asteroid whose path through space is essentially tangent to the Earth's orbit, and is coming head on. How many days warning might we have? How could we get anything to it an appreciable distance from Earth? 2. An Asteroid whose path is perpendicular to the plane of Earth's orbit. Same questions. In either of these two scenarios, unless you could get a year or more's worth of warning you could never position a defender. Accelerating to high speed to get into position kinda prevents landing on one of these bodies- you'd have to decelerate, then reverse direction and accelerate up to the body's speed. Even worse, you're coming from a bad angle - if the body is going to hit you in three months, you have to launch a defender to essentially where the earth will be in three months - that's a lot of distance. Given a few minutes with google, you could work out the distance the defender would have to cover (thus it's speed), and the acceleration it would have to accomplish to match it's speed and path to that of the incoming asteroid. Seems to me the only scenario this works with is asteroids more-or-less in earth's orbit that get bumped into a collision course, or comet-like bodies with a predictable period where we can pre-position defenders.
And the worms ate into his brain.
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"
Ever consider that the dinosaurs might still rule the Earth if they had MADMEN?
That's an interesting point you bring up. It makes me wonder, how would today's Earth have evolved if the dinosaurs had never been wiped? Would the planet be ruled by huge, smart reptiles? Or perhaps dumb ones?
Perhaps the occasional cataclysm is beneficial to the planet in the long run, by wiping out species that have hit (or are approaching) some sort of evolutionary wall. If humans were similarly wiped by an asteroid, would something still more advanced evolve in our absence?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.