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B612 Foundation and 2004 YD5 Asteroid Capture?
aisnota writes "The B612 Foundation hopes to alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015 and seems ready to do the obvious and capture 2004 YD5. Slice it up, put the pieces into aerobrake containers like a simplified version of the Mars landers. Then just sell the pieces on EBay to fund more ambitious projects."
That B612 is a 501(c)(3)
A five meter asteroid, should it impact the Earth, would do little damage. Yeah, if it hit someone, that would suck, but the odds of that are small. This is the perfect size to practice on - especially if you're carving it up into parts for recovery.
We need the practice in case we have to do it on a much larger asteroid to prevent it striking the Earth.
The scientific benefit from the pieces of the asteroid would be immense. As a meteorite collector, I know I'd be bidding on chunks of it on eBay just to add to my collection.
The piece of a Mars rock I've got is pathetically small. Having a 10kg rock in the collection would be fun.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
You can assuage your fears to a great extent by the not-often-used practice of actually reading the linked web site. They've already ruled out nuclear devices in any use, and their intent is not to smash an asteroid at all, but just alter its trajectory.
Virg
You forget the proportions: The shuttles are in a low altitude orbit. A few 100km height is neglectable compared to the diameter of the earth. Its like 2cm above the surface of a soccerball. If anything is THAT close, you would need to change its direction by 90degrees... which is way harder than just change it by a few arcseconds a month ahead...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
The only accurate part of the submission is "The B612 Foundation hopes to alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015".
Reading the B612 site reveals that everything else was made up by the submittor. The B12 foundation has not picked the specific asteroid, and they have no intention to either "slice it up" nor return any of it to earth.
We have a hard time hitting Mars with a rocket whose every vector change we control when we're trying. Not to mention that, if they did somehow put it in an orbit that would strike Earth, they also of necessity have the ability to alter its orbit again so it wouldn't.
As far as blowing up the asteroid causing a "scattershot" effect which would threaten the planet...well, I'll just say it's not a reasonable concern. The rock's got its vector already, breaking it up into pieces won't change the vector of any individual piece any more than the total energy of the device used to break it up can contribute. And even if you did have a Death Star-style weapon to blow it apart, for every order of mangitude you increase the odds of a randomly ejected bit hitting the planet by increasing the number of independent vectors, you decrease the mass of the bit which will hit the planet by an order of magnitude.
Not to mention that farther != safer...the moon is pretty damn close and pretty damn massive, but we don't worry about whether it's going to hit the planet or not. On the other hand, there are pieces of ice and rock in the Kuiper pelt that are pretty damn far away, and which may well intersect our orbit catastrophically at some point.
Your argument pretty much boils down to "leave well enough alone," but that attitude prevents all progress.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
If you look at the website, B612 never says that they are going after that asteroid, the OP apparently pulled that out of thin air to create a better story.
Caution - poster has no actual knowledge. Read at your own risk.
Why do I have this ominous feeling of dread
May be because you are stupid? You comment about diverting Earth instead of divering an asteroid certainly suggests that...
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