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NASA Making Plans To Save the Earth

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the deep-armageddon dept.

aluminumangel writes, "Taking a page out of a Michael Bay movie, NASA is considering a manned mission to land on an asteroid, 'poke one with a stick,' and see how feasible it would be to deflect it from its course. Obviously, the application would be valuable in a doomsday situation and hopefully could keep us from going wherever the dinosaurs went." The article makes oblique reference to another goal such a mission could serve: giving us something to do in space, something to engage the paying public, between the time we return to the Moon and the time we get to Mars.

3 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. This could be useful... by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If we can good at altering asteroid's paths, we could use near earth asteroids as ramming tools. We should ram a few into the same spot on Mars and get a nice deep crater. We get practice diverting asteroids and learn more about deeper martain soil.

    --
    Demented But Determined.
  2. Armageddon wouldn't even be close. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As an exercise for my high-school physics students studying energy and momentum conservation, I had them run the numbers on the scenario from the movie "Armageddon" for an asteroid "the size of Texas", taking this to mean in separate cases the area of Texas with a range of densities, etc.

    Giving the astronauts every benefit of the doubt (able to intercept it twice as far out as they did in the movie, bomb able to be placed at the center of mass, the bomb having ten times the yield of largest nuke ever exploded by man, perfectly elastic explosion, etc. etc. etc.) they not only couldn't make the asteroid miss the Earth, they would only have changed impact points by about a meter!

    I love sci-fi movies and like to give my students problems from popular films that illustrate the absurdity of Hollywood stories.

  3. Re:Don't comets obey the laws of physics??? by guardiangod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Scientific method -

    1. Define the question
    2. Gather information and resources
    3. Form hypothesis
    4. Perform experiment and collect data
    5. Analyze data
    6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses
    7. Publish results

    Without collecting data, all you get is something akin to String Theory - could be true, could be false, no one knows.