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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."
Whether taking the matter into their own hands, privately funded B612 will have an uphill battle to begin the process with such limited funding. Perhaps they would be better suited as an international scientific lobby, making the case and such apologetics as to attract attention to the issue.
Also, in case you're wondering, B612 is the asteroid home of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's protagonist in The Little Prince.
Sigs cause cancer.
This is hardly going to work. They put the pieces into (expensive, once you make enough and thet them up there) containers, then drop them to Earth. How the heck do they expect to get them back? A container like this is not a very controlled re-entry device. Do they just expect anyone who comes across one, or anyone who's property it lands on to return it to them? What of the liability of hurling this at someone's property or home or body? It's not a problem on Mars, since Mars is free of pesky lawyers so far, but on Earth - big problem due to the lawyer infestation.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm curious how they plan to "slice it up." The technology for deflecting an asteroid is generally understood, as it's the same that we use to move satellites around. The "docking" or attachment mechanism still needs research, but it doesn't seen insurmountable.
On the other hand, after gracefully flying this big space rock into Earth orbit, then intend to, what, cut on it with high-powered lasers? Try getting any government to allow civilians control of a high-powered laser, meant for cutting through whatever you point it at, to be orbiting the Earth. And, even if they cleared that hurdle, what keeps them from accidentally shooting down some randomly passing communications satellite while they're cutting through an arbitrarily-sized rock?
I laud these people's desire to actually go do something like this, and I'd love to work on a project like this. But the idea of slicing it up and dumping it dirtside seems to be a little bold based on things we know now. How about bagging it, grinding it up, and processing the ore for resources (iron, nickel, oxygen, water, etc.) that can be used in space. Heck, it would be way more amazing to put a package of ground-up asteroid in a tug and deliver it to the space station for examination than it would to wrap it in airbags and deliver it to a bunch of glam junkies down here. And scientists would probably pay more per kilo of ore than consumers would, particularly if it had never come in contact with our atmosphere.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
It seems that if they can capture it into earth orbit, it would be more valuable where it is. It costs a lot of money to launch heavy things into space, it may be more valuable as a source of raw materials already in orbit.
It might eventually even be useful as a counterweight for a space elevator.
-jim
Why sell something like this on eBay and give them profit for practically nothing?
Obviously this would generate massive publicity, and anyone wanting to buy a piece of this asteroid would go to the project website first. In other words, the people buying these chunks would not be people randomly browsing eBay and looking for something to burn money on. In fact I bet most of them would have to sign up to eBay just to bid on these pieces.
IMO, eBay is simply comprised of an infrastructure to handle auctions (which implementation-wise isn't that much of a task), and a pool of sellers and buyers. The latter is where eBay dominates and is the sole reason they are successful. However when it comes to something like selling these asteroid pieces, having a large seller / bidder user base is a moot point. In fact it is a detriment because it hurts the signal to noise ratio of legitimate bidders.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
In terms of mass collected per mission, it's a fairly impressive goal. Compare the size of this rock with how much moon rock was brought back by the Apollo missions.
Sure, if you're expecting a Hollywood nuke-the-rock scenario, it's not nearly as grand. But it has novelty that can be appreciated in terms of engineering/mission objectives.
Yea, we just altered the orbit of a large asteroid! 6 months later: The change in orbit of asteroid B612 has in turn altered the orbit of asteroid C257 which has in turn altered the orbit of asteroid B191. Asteroid B191 is now on a collision course with the Earth and will hit in 4 years!
Suppose that tomorrow I oversleep by 15 minutes. As I bike to work, 15 minutes later than I normally would, I run into a bank robber attempting to make his getaway. The robber's partner gets spooked, and fires his weapon at me, but misses and ends up killing an innocent bystander.
Is the death of the bystander my fault because I slept in? If I had only woken up at the normal time, I wouldn't have been in the area at the precise moment the robber ran out into the street, and he wouldn't have fallen, and therefore never would have fired his gun. When I missed my alarm clock I certainly became a part of a chain of events which lead to somebody's death, but it hardly means that I caused it.
Similarly, if we manipulated an asteroid and that eventually lead to some catastrophe elsewhere, it's hardly correct to say that our manipulations caused that event, even though it might not have happened had we not done so. It is pointless from both a scientific and moral perspective to even attempt to assign responsibility in such a case.
I'm curious as to why this bullshit was posted, since NOWHERE ON THEIR SITE does the foundation mention this. I think the submitter just made it up to get a catchy tag line.