NASA Can't Pay for Killer Asteroid Hunt

CGISecurity.com writes "NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn't enough money to pay for the task so it won't get done. 'We know what to do, we just don't have the money,' said Simon 'Pete' Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center." But hey, it's just the potential end of the world, so nothing much to worry about there.

Comments

About $1 Billion

[eldavojohn]

I'm a United States citizen.

I have paid ~$50-60 for a few smoke detector and pay maybe a dollar or two a year to maintain the batteries in them.

I make an average amount of income so $50 is nothing when a fire could take my life. I've seen other people's houses destroyed by fires but never mine. I don't know if we see other planets regularly destroyed by asteroids or impacts but if you can make a case for it, then this analogy may be apt.

I also know that walking down the street in Prince George's County might result in your death. So do I hire a body guard to protect me? No. Why? Because I don't have the money for that. If I were a billionaire, I would definitely look into it and probably hire a driver too. I see people robbed and killed on TV so, again, if you can point to examples where planets have been destroyed, this analogy is apt.

Considering the war in Iraq has cost me, the taxpayer, $300 billion and I'm not sure that that is increasing my safety ... what's another billion? I mean, it's obvious NASA's not asking us to spend a significant amount of our income on "Asteroid Insurance."

In my opinion, all NASA needs to do is present congress with a scientific statistic claim with percent confidence of global destruction. If we have craters on our planet & there are bones of things that shouldn't have died lying all around, I'm guessing they could place something like a 1% chance of a decent sized asteroid hitting us within a couple thousand years. Given that information, $1 billion may not seem like a bad idea considering most of us employ smoke detectors with even less risk of harm/loss to us.

Re:About $1 Billion

[caeili draziw]

"Considering the war in Iraq has cost me, the taxpayer, $300 billion and I'm not sure that that is increasing my safety ... what's another billion?" Do you really think that if the US were not in Iraq NASA would all of the sudden have all the cash they need to run all the missions they could? Gimme a break. The Iraq adventure has cost far more than $300 billion and if we were not there that money would not have gone to NASA. That money would have gone to more government cheese for the poor or some other program.

Re:About $1 Billion

[Red Flayer]

If we have craters on our planet & there are bones of things that shouldn't have died lying all around, I'm guessing they could place something like a 1% chance of a decent sized asteroid hitting us within a couple thousand years.

B-b-b-but those craters and bones were placed there in order to test our faith!

If an asteroid is going to hit the earth, obviously that is part of the end times, and the Rapture is nigh. Who are we to disrupt God's plan?

I jest. But the scary thing is that there are plenty of people out there who would think I'm serious -- and would agree with me -- and some of those people are sitting in the House of Representatives.

all NASA needs to do is present congress with a scientific statistic claim with percent confidence of global destruction

Erm, that's not quite how the Congressional budgeting procedure works. The responses NASA might get could be:

"Well, OK, but how much of that budget is going to be spent in my state?" or
"But your budget is alreay over $16Bn. Surely you can cut some fat and some useless programs from your budget to cover this, if it is so important." or
"Surely this should fall under the aegis of the Homeland Security Department. Maybe you should go talk to them." or
"How's that moon landing coming, Bob?"

Your logic makes perfect sense. But getting money out of Congress for something seen as low-risk (even 1% over a couple thousand years) isn't so easy, particularly when tax cuts are all the rage and there is a looming federal budget crisis over the next two generations.

The end of the world as we know it,

[AltGrendel]

And I feel fine.

Seriously, the British seem to be really obsessed with this, couldn't they kick in a couple of quid? How about the Russians, or the Chinese, or...

Funding something else matters more to US gov..

[carlvlad]

like finding so called 'terrorist'..

Why would that be the case?

[Kadin2048]

There is nothing we can do about it anyway.

Seems like a questionable assumption to me. There's quite a bit we could possibly do about it, if we knew long enough in advance. It's only if we only knew about it a few weeks or months in advance, that it would probably be a bend-over-and-pucker-up moment.

There is a whole lot of ingenuity (and a whole lot of explosives) spread across the globe as a whole; assuming that people got together and decided that the continued survival of the human species is a Good Idea, I suspect we could probably figure out a way to annihilate or deflect a rock, given enough lead time.

They'll find the money

[davidwr]

If the thing is small enough to destroy, money will be found. Yeah, we may have to tell Iraq "sorry" and stop all Social Security payments but we'll find a way.

If the thing is too big or too close and it's curtains for life as we know it, well, "eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

Prioritize - Dump the space station!

[Anonymous Coward]

And mothball the shuttle as soon as hubble gets serviced and put the rest into tracking asteroids.

It's a slow slow process.

[technoextreme]

Depending on what asteroid we are talking about it would be a relatively long time frame between hitting the earth. There is one asteroid that we are tracking that if it basically passes through the certain area we know it's going to hit earth but there will be plenty of time to prepare. It had some ironic name involving some god of death. I really wish I knew the name. According to wikipedia one might hit 800 years from now.

Congress is the roadblock.

[Shivetya]

See, hunting for killer asteroids requires money, that money can serve Congress better by buying votes through some "aid" program. NASA will continue to get the short end of the stick because we as American citizens keep putting back the same aristocracy that is allowing the US to fall behind the world in science.

NASA doesn't need to justify it, we the people need to justify ourselves by putting people more concerned about advancing this nation instead of advancing their own status.

That $300 billion tab in Iraq is meaningless in this conversation as NASA's budget would still be what it is. The money would have just vanished down some vote buying program that forever indebts us.

Re:Congress is the roadblock.

[RealGrouchy]

See, hunting for killer asteroids requires money, that money can serve Congress better by buying votes through some "aid" program.

I would think that scientists are already suffering, given the current administration's bias against facts.

Therefore, we need an aid program for scientists!

- RG>

A contrarian look at it

[mi]

But hey, it's just the potential end of the world, so nothing much to worry about there.

Hey, it's only a government official asking for more funding for his agency...

Contrary to what people may think, the danger of getting hit by an asteroid has not increased over the past, uhmm, 5000 years. What increased is the frequency, with which the potential incident is mentioned in the media...

Re:A contrarian look at it

[EMeta]

Also increased:

The amount of people whom it will kill.
The capacity we have to do something about it.

Re:A contrarian look at it

[frankie]

Contrary to what people may think, the danger of getting hit by an asteroid has not increased

Contrary to what YOU may think, the danger of getting hit is (and always has been) non-trivial. A middling-sized brick hit Tunguska only 99 years ago, and did as much damage as the largest H-bombs of the cold war could. And when Comet SL9 broke up and hit Jupiter in 1994, the largest fragment had a 6 TERATON detonation with a fireball the same size as Earth. There's plenty more where they came from.

It's money worth spending, especially compared to the various rogue white elephants we've paid for in the past 5 years.

Earth-science priorities vs. Republicans on Mars

[billstewart]

The Bush Administration announced a while back that NASA's priorities should be to get us back to the moon and come up with a way to get humans to Mars, and NASA's been complaining that it's interfering significantly with the budget for earth science projects - satellites and such. They only get so much money, and if they've got to put it into planning for human missions to places that should really be handled by robots at this point, then they don't have enough to do most of the other work.

news flash

[Kohath]

News flash: Government agency asks for more funding

Re:NASA vs. UNASA

[Eunuchswear]

Oh yeah, like someone is going to give the UN the means to "protect the world".

The UN is powerless 'cos that's how the US (and others) want it to be.

That's a bit of a stretch to just say.

[Kadin2048]

Whether or not we find the asteroids, there's nothing we can do it about them if one is going to hit us.

I don't buy this for a second. In fact, I suspect that if the resources of the entire planet were committed, over a number of years, it would probably be possible to put a breeding population of humans on another planet, with at least a small chance of surviving and propagating the species. Or of digging deep subterranean caves and squirreling away some people down there, etc. Or of blowing the incoming asteroid up with nuclear weapons, deflecting it with some sort of propulsion unit / system of complex mirrors / etc.

In short, I really don't think there's any particular reason why we couldn't ensure our own survival, if we (a) really wanted to, and (b) knew about the impending problem long enough in advance. While funding NASA's search would do nothing about problem (a), it would do a whole lot about (b). Which, to me, puts us about 50% closer to surviving than if neither (a) nor (b) are true.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[jcorno]

I've got a decent chunk of change sitting in my retirement accounts that i could throw one hell of a world-ending party with.

Yeah, but why would they give it to you? As soon as we know it's coming, every bank on the planet is gonna throw hundred million dollar embezzlement parties.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[hiroller]

Well a mission to the Moon and Mars, bent on colonizing planets outside of our native planet, would be extremely beneficial and would pay off tremendously if Earth was ever faced with a crisis that we could not prevent. It would at least save our species from extinction!

Re:NASA vs. UNASA

[Applekid]

Because, all cynicism aside, at the end of the day it's the US's job to protect the US. And a global catastrophie would definitely run counter to that credo. No other space agency is stepping up to the plate. Some people are going to get a free ride, but that's the way it is when you lead.

Not to say that United States of America is a leader, but a leader would definitely take on the challenge, or at least a nation that wants to bill itself as a "world leader".

Think out side the BOX

[Anon-Admin]

All they really need to do is develop an automated identification software and telescope computer interface. Then sell them for about $200 each. It would only take a 12" scope to ID 99% of the objects!

Then set up a registry and offer the Discovery announcement, naming rights, and mineral rights to anyone that ID's them.

Hell, I would spend all night ID'ing them for the mineral rights alone :)

There is a real concern

[s31523]

NASA is tracking an asteroid, that could hit the earth in 2036. OF course by "could" NASA means 1:45,000. Still, why is the US the only country tasked with worrying about this. Hopefully the members of the UN wake up and smell the asteroid!

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be funded by the nations of the world, not just one country.

The fatalism in this thread is bizarre

[rbanzai]

The number of people in this thread saying "Oh well, there's nothing we can do about it anyway" is just bizarre. It's one thing to think the threat is not worth the money, it's another to think there's no point in even trying to defend against it. Weird.

essential human nature

[circletimessquare]

we all fail this: we underestimate threats until they hit us, then we overreact

look at 9/11 for example, or the 2004 tsunami

the problem is, it's emotional. the emotions are hooked up to some other issue before the catalclysm hits us, then when it hits us, it becomes very emotional, and we start doing all sorts of crazy stuff, including stuff we don't have to do/ shouldn't do for our own good

and don't poopoo this fact about "other" people: you do the same thing, don't lie to yourself. like you can't find an example of what i just described above somewhere in your personal life history. it's essential human nature, and that includes your behavior, human

the lesson?

we better be hit with a big asteroid that takes out a country or a continent before we get hit with the one that takes out the planet

only in the former case will humanity's response be effective at saving itself

but if we get hit with the planet-killer first? we're flat out doomed. we won't be prepared. simple human nature dictates this fact

so the history of humanity is wrapped up in this coin flip: planet-killer or country killer. combine this random chance with essential human natue, and whichever hits us first determines whether or not humanity surivives

Terrists in Spaaaaaaace

[RyoShin]

Someone just tell Bush/Congress that the terrorists have achieved a presence in orbit (thanks to Iran!), and we need to be able to keep an eye on the entire atmosphere and beyond to be able to defend against this new threat. Push out the same idea to the media, and the general American public will rally and cry for it (well, a few concerned citizens with too much time and too little intelligence will send some e-mails to their congressmen) causing congress to back the plan (well, some interns will get a few minutes with their congressperson to mention some odd e-mails about this, and the congressperson will back the plan without doing any sort of research), and it's practically guaranteed!

Oh, and will you look at that, the same technology used to protect us from terrorists can also detect killer asteroids and potentially habitable planets in a galaxy far, far away.

Well, ain't that a coincidence. TWAT succeeds yet again!

Bathtub drowning

[Catbeller]

Grover Norquist, neocon "think tanker" and propogandist extraordinaire, once eludicated that he wanted to shrink government down to the point where one could drown it in a bathtub. Huzzah, cheer, all that from his audience.

Budget cuts are effectively impossible now, as discretionary spending, defined as non-obligatory, is now a tiny percentage of the Federal budget and essentially irrelevant in cost cutting.

How does one cut then? Apparently the neocons are using a new trick: spend like maniacs. Eventually discretionary funding, like NASA, becomes impossible because so much of the budget has gone towards military and privatization expenses. So much was spent that they had to borrow trillions to keep spending more.

Effect is that the government owes so much that the largest non-discretionary line item, outside of the military, is simply paying yearly interest on the debt. So the two biggest expenditures are now the military and paying out national treasure to service the debt of the money lent to us to cut taxes and spend like fools.

End game: government has three purposes: spending on military, spending on now-privatized government services, and debt service on monies borrowed to spend in the 2000's (and the Reagan 80's) on tax cuts. Government becomes a military contractor, a corporate contractor, and a welfare fountain for the very wealthy, while never actually paying off the debt incurred to give tax cuts to those same very wealthy.

And NASA doesn't get funds, the NSF gets defunded, a chain reaction of penury resulting from this spending NOW. The neocons get their new, streamlined government which looks a lot like a classic fascism, with direct-to-corporation payments, with no spending on things not deemed necessary to fund guns or debt. Bankruptcy.
Both financial and cultural. Other nations without ideological madness spend less on military and tax cuts, keep government services cheap by using civil service, and keep debt low or nonexistent, as Canada or Norway does. Neocon ideology will cripple the future of the U.S., as we are consuming our present and future human capital to enrich the wealthy of today.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[ProppaT]

Sorry to break the news to you, but the second the "world ending" asteroid is announced, all your money becomes null and void. At that point, you'd better hope you have a buddy who owns or works at a liquor store, cause it's going to be chaos. Heck, I know if I knew the world was going to end in a year, I'd just go home from work right now. I'd probably start biking to places I haven't been and find ways to eat off the land. I hate to say it, but there's not going to be much of a demand for technical writers if the products I'm writing manuals for would never even see the light of day.

Re:Earth-science priorities vs. Republicans on Mar

[sadler121]

...and if they've got to put it into planning for human missions to places that should really be handled by robots...

Eventually we are going to become extinct if not by an asteroid, then by the sun expanding into a red giant and gobbling up the Earth. The only way to eliminate extinction is to get our collective asses off this rock, into space and on as many planetoid surfaces as possible. That way at least a small part of humanity will survive.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[Ngarrang]

Personally, I would not want the world to know that The Killer was on its way to hitting us. Can you imagine the mass hysteria and panic such information would cause? Lawlessness and chaos would reign. People wouldn't care to do their jobs anymore. And worse, Slashdot might go offline!

I fully intend to be reading and sending e-mail up to the last day of my existence, thank you very much. And, doubtless, someone will find a way to blame Micro$oft or SCO, causing a flood of responses for me to have to read...and then ignore.

So, no, let us NOT look for them. We are better off.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you (or anyone else) actually think that we will be able to live on Mars? We can't fix the problems here, and it will be no different on Mars. The USA will claim some of it, Russia another part, and China some more, and then they will just fight each other like they do here. Terra-forming is a pipe dream, and the only thing we can get from Mars is precious elements, which will have so much radioactivity that we would not be able to use them.

This is real life, not BSG or some other Sci-fi where they just ignore the shit that doesn't fit the plot.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[general scruff]

If spotting and tracking these things is the issue, I wonder if a SETI@HOME type setup would help. Use the collective resources of thousands of PCs to do the number crunching for a lot less money. I'm sure you could set it up to track all incoming asteroids, and check the trajectory of each to see which ones we should worry about.

I'm curious is this approach has been looked at before...

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[interiot]

If there's an asteroid that's big enough to strip off Earth's crust, a trivial thing like the atmosphere is going to be a rather trivial defense.

you're an idiot

[circletimessquare]

given enough tracking and preparation, even a small explosion far enough way will alter the trajectory of a large asteroid to buzz the earth rather than slam it. of course, not done carefully enough, and you could make things worse. so therefore, we shouldn't try at all, right?

you go ahead and lay down and die. apparently, according to you, it's superior not to try and just accept death. what an ultranegative loser you are

There is no such thing as "spending on tax cuts"

[cascadingstylesheet]

on monies borrowed to spend in the 2000's (and the Reagan 80's) on tax cuts

Look, I've grown much less libertarian over the years. I'm now OK with money being taken from people (including me) by force and spent on "good things".

However, I'm still not OK with pretending that we're not doing that. The money is ours, the government takes some away by force and spends it. Them's the facts.

There's no such thing as "spending on tax cuts". That would be like my wife wanting to buy something, me objecting, and then her saying "well, you would just 'spend' the money on savings or paying off debt if I don't spend it!". The one thing is spending, and the other isn't.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[ArcherB]

Wasn't the UN supposed to be taking this on? Why is that those that don't want the US to be the world's policeman are suddenly crying for the US to be the world's defender? This is a global problem that requires a global response!

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[Rei]

Do you have any clue how horribly difficult a truly independent colony will be to establish? I'll demonstrate. Let's just pick one task that will be essential -- just one. Say, mining. Now, let's pick just one aspect of mining -- say, a loader. Let's just pick one thing that that loader will consume over time (ignoring what it takes to make more of them or replacement parts) -- say, lubricant. What do we need for this?

Well, there are three kinds of lubricants that would be reasonable for different tasks on Mars: petroleum, plant, and silicone. Plant, probably the easiest, wouldn't work for this task. Even processed plant oils, like soybean polyol esters, are not suited for high loading tasks. Plant-derived lubricants are only for mild conditions. They're also much more prone to degradation. Really wouldn't work. So, that leaves petroleum and silicone. Petroleum, you'd need long chain fuel oils -- saturated and unsatured hydrocarbons, linear and/or cyclic. Your base could also be phosphate esters, although they'd be low viscosity. Diesters might be good, as could short chain polyglycols. Silicone oils can be good by themselves or as additives. So, we have a few options for bases. But is that good enough? Not really, unless you want to wear through parts and oil like there's no tomorrow. What additives do we need? Anti-foaming agents (silicone is good for this). EP additives allow the lubricant to work in higher stress conditions (like mining), so that's things like sulfur, phosphorus, and chlorine compounds. You're still going to be getting particles in solution, though -- how to keep them there to prevent them from abrading the surfaces? Detergents: sulfates, phosphonates, thiophosphonates, phenates, or salicylates of barium, calcium, or magnesium. And/or dispersants. And heck, if this lubricant is to be used where there's combustion, you may need emulsifiers as well to allow it to mix with some water.

Now, let's chain back just one of those chemicals -- let's say a fuel oil. What do we need to produce a fuel oil on Mars? We need to use something like the Fischer-Tropsh process or Sabatier synthesis to turn CO2 + H2 into hydrocarbons. H2 comes from energy-intensive cracking of water. CO2 will have to be frozen out of the uberthin atmosphere in a huge facility. Of course, we'll get mostly methane from our hydrocarbon synthesis. Let's just assume that this tech advances enough that appropriate catalyst packs can be gotten to selectively make heavier hydrocarbons. You'll still need a whole distilling facility to process the hydrocarbons (picture a small oil refinery) to seperate. All of this power? Well, if it comes from nuclear, you better have a way to make nuclear fuel (and you don't even want to see the dependency chain on that one). Solar? Solar panels have an even bigger dependency chain. Solar thermal? Ignoring initial launch costs for that much mass, even if you can make the mirrors locally, you still need to make the heliostats. Once again, depenency chains. See where this is going?

Note how much I had to narrow the subject down just to get into this one set of resource dependencies. The simple fact is that modern technology spawns *huge* dependency chains, and on another planet, you simply can't live/expand a colony without modern technology. You can make some simplifying assumptions -- say, substitute HDPE for LDPE in a plastics task. But you couldn't generally, say, substitute HDPE for neoprene, teflon, polycarbonate, or nylon. Even simplified dependency trees will still be monstrous.

This assumes that everything we need *can* be found on Mars. What if it can't? What if we can't find, say, fluorspar? No aluminium industry (not only will that hurt construction and refining, but also would be a double-whammy for rocketry; you'd have to use titanium alloys (more expensive) for structural integiry and would have much weaker solid rocket engines). No hydrofluoric acid (needed by many industrial processes -- including the most realistic uran

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[Rei]

It's not about "not understanding probability". It's about weighting risk with consequences. Just from one known asteroid, we have a 1 in 45,000 chance of impact. It's energy on impact would be about 880 MT. The Tungustka explosion? 10-20 MT. The largest atomic bomb ever detonated? ~50MT. Krakatoa? ~200 MT. We're talking about a *huge* release of energy. 2 in 3 odds, it lands in an ocean. Which means collosal tsunamis all around the ocean's rim. Which means that coastal cities all around the ocean are hit with an energy that makes the Indian Ocean tsunami look tiny. Trillions of dollars in damage. Even an impact on land would be catastrophic.

One in 45,000 chance suddenly doesn't sound so little, does it? Say the expected damage was 2 trillion dollars. Ignore the cost in human lives. This one NEO would justify a ~50 million program (assuming no other benefits from the program). Yet we're just talking about *one NEO* here. There are many thousands of NEOs. Most aren't as risky as Apophis. But it is important that we know about them, and refine their orbits as soon as possible. We're talking about very small odds, but very huge consequences. Each year that you don't look for them is a year that you're taking an unjustified (economically) risk. We can, and will, stop an asteroid if it is likely to hit us. But we need to know years in advance.

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[nasch]

You're right, that sounds *really* hard. So.... we shouldn't try?

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[GodInHell]

Well, there are three kinds of lubricants that would be reasonable for different tasks on Mars: petroleum, plant, and silicone ..and water ..and super smooth surfaces.. and magnetic bearings... and whatever solution NASA will develope to use in the place of your options. Before the first moon mission, "plastics" would not be on any ley-man's list of materials options, "computers" were mainly people with a calculator, and "rockets" were things you fired blindly at the enemy with minimal steerage.

Here's a question.. if we don't start developing the technologies we need for long-distance space travel.. what will you do when NASA ids a killer asteroid on a collision course... wish it gone?

-GiH

Re:Lets assume they had the funding

[Anonymous Coward]

But by then we should have figured out ways of doing it.

Not if we keep procrastinating. If we don't take the first steps (i.e. actually going to Mars), it will never happen.