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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."
Why do I have this ominous feeling of dread when I think of some overzealous people trying to prove they can do something as destructive as messing with an asteroid. I am sorry, but I like that asteroid nice and FAR from us. Blowing things up has a habit of spreading pieces in a chaotic fashion - pieces that might fall our way. I hope there is a more practical application - like say if one day an asteroid is going to hit us they will use these techniques to divert Earth from mass devastation (would render many movies to pure fiction...oh wait)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Perhaps it's because governments have a long history of doing things inefficiently and ineffectively. I think this project is exactly the kind of innovation and ingenuity that governments lack. Best of luck to them in proving that scientific progress can thrive without government shackles.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Hmph. I would hardly call "The Andromeda Strain" a B movie!
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Maybe they can test this theory by catching one and deorbiting it over Mars just to make sure their plan is sound. We don't want to find out that it's not going to work right as it's entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic as one giant chunk. It figures we would kill ourselves off by our own stupidity. All this time the planet has been trying to keep the asteroids away with that nice moon of ours to deflect them, and we go and bring one right in.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Too many B movies.
You realize this stuff drops to Earth all the time, don't you? It doesn't get thoroughly sterilized by the heat. If you find a significant-sized meteorite immediately after it hits the Earth, it's cold! The exterior of the metorite ablates, producing a fusion crust on the outside. The inside stays cold. The light you see from meteors as they go across the sky is compressed air that can't get out of the way in time. It's not the meteor burning up or melting.
That's one of the most fascinating things about finding lunar or Martian rocks that have come to Earth as meteorites. If there were anything living on either of those bodies, they probably would have spread to the Earth. For that matter, given a couple whacks the Earth has received, there may be Earth meteorites on the Moon and Mars, and they may have carried Earth life to both places.
There are microscopic forms of life on Earth that would have survived the hundreds of thousands of years in space, along with the vacuum, the freezing cold, and the radiation - especially if they were encapsulated in the rock in question.
We may find life on Mars when we look. It may look exactly like Earth life. Did life start on Mars and get knocked to Earth? Did life start on Earth and get knocked to Mars? Did it start someplace else and wind up on both planets? Or did one of those nice probes the USA and the Soviets sent to Mars wind up infecting Mars with Earthlife?
I keep hoping for strange DNA-analogs and weird biochemistry when we get to Mars, but life there might be a big disappointment. Well, at least as disappointing as life on Mars would be.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....