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NASA Outlines Asteroid Deflection Program
An anonymous reader submitted a link to an International Herald Tribune story about NASA's answer to the movie 'Armageddon'. Specifically, they've outlined a plan to deflect a planet-killer asteroid. "In 1998, Congress gave NASA's Spaceguard Survey program a mandate of 'discovering, tracking, cataloging and characterizing' 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than one kilometer (3,200 feet) wide by 2008. An object that size would probably destroy civilization. The consensus at the conference was that the initial survey is doing fairly well although it will probably not quite meet the 2008 goal." With this tracking system in place, scientists are hopeful an intervention could be staged before any grim choices have to be made. Assuming they have the money and manpower needed for the effort, NASA has actually outlined a pair of procedures that dove-tail with each other: "First we would deflect the asteroid with kinetic impact from a missile (that is, running into it); then we would use the slight pull of a 'gravity tractor' -- a satellite that would hover near the asteroid -- to fine-tune its new trajectory to our liking. (In the case of an extremely large object, probably one in 100, the missile might have to contain a nuclear warhead.) To be effective, however, such missions would have to be launched 15 or even 30 years before a calculated impact."
With this tracking system in place, scientists are hopeful an interventions could be staged before any grim choices have to be made.
NASA has announced that they have gathered the mother, father, siblings, and close friends of asteroid YT8OJR in order to confront it about it's continued binge drinking and other self destructive behavior before it leaves more shattered lives in its wake. Unconfirmed reports show that the troubled asteroid could be close to cracking up. Hopefully the intervention will keep it from a collision course with disaster.
Can we have an accurate estimate of the probability of a specific impact 30 years in the future? What if we change the course of an asteroid such that it has a new, better chance of hitting us the year after?
CTDF (Chair Throwing Defense System) is a highly effective method of deflecting incoming, civilization-threatening asteriods which are on collision course with our blue planet. The procude is as follows:
1. Fly satellite up there
2. Make satellite paint a big-fat google logo on the asteroid
3. Let Steve Ballmer have a look through telescope
4. Provide him with practically insufficient supply of chairs
5. Wait
6. Danger avoided
Earning 4 million a day in interest should easily help pay for such a project.
Humans (in some form or other) live on earth since 4 million years, and no killer asteroid has hit this planet since. How crazy do you have to be to think that an asteroid is a real threat for humankind? *shakes head*
"cataloging and characterizing' 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than one kilometer (3,200 feet) wide by 2008."
There will always be 'unknowns' and some will also hit earth.
And, how about that yet undiscovered comet that WILL also hit earth?
Yes, this solution is better than none, but we still will not be covered.
1 km could be a civilisation killer? don't think so: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 250.00 km = 155.25 miles
Projectile Diameter: 1000.00 m = 3280.00 ft = 0.62 miles
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 40.00 km/s = 24.84 miles/s
Impact Angle: 80 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 1.26 x 1021 Joules = 3.00 x 105 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 1.8 x 106years
Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 67700 meters = 222000 ft
The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 39.8 km/s = 24.7 miles/s
The impact energy is 1.25 x 1021 Joules = 2.98 x 105MegaTons.
The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 1.1 km by 1.08 km
Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.
Crater Dimensions:
What does this mean?
Crater shape is normal in spite of atmospheric crushing; fragments are not significantly dispersed.
Transient Crater Diameter: 17.2 km = 10.7 miles
Transient Crater Depth: 6.08 km = 3.77 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 25 km = 15.5 miles
Final Crater Depth: 0.78 km = 0.484 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 10.9 km3 = 2.62 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 47.1 meters = 154 feet
Thermal Radiation:
What does this mean?
Time for maximum radiation: 0.54 seconds after impact
Visible fireball radius: 16.6 km = 10.3 miles
The fireball appears 15.1 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 6.78 x 106 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 280 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 24.2 (Flux from a burner on full at a distance of 10 cm)
Effects of Thermal Radiation:
Much of the body suffers third degree burns
Newspaper ignites
Plywood flames
Deciduous trees ignite
The same technology used to deflect asteroids away from Earth can be used to steer them towards us. Who would want to do that? Well, the military, terrorist groups, anyone with the financial backing and desire to destroy entire regions of the planet. In my estimation, we're more likely to be struck by an asteroid intentionally directed here than by chance.
It would actually be much cheaper to redirect an asteroid for this purpose than it would be to acquire and deliver nuclear weapons. Another reason this may be desirable to the military is that they can pretend they have nothing to do with it. Whenever an asteroid is detected that has the potential to strike Earth, there is no way to know whether the final trajectory was influenced artificially, as long as it stays within the predicted range. Very small changes in an asteroid's trajectory can make the difference between a near-miss and a direct hit.
Although I think it's important for us to be prepared for a potential collision with an asteroid, we must also ensure that the technology does not fall into the wrong hands. If NASA indeed gains the capability to deflect an asteroid, there should be no excuse for one that somehow "falls through" the system. I think that any organization with this capability must be accountable for any future impact, regardless of where it occurs and who it affects.
I've seen Armageddon and it just isn't possible unless you bring in the world's best deep core oil drillers, ok?
okinawa japan
Since launching materials in space costs money, why not mine these potential resources and milk them for all they are worth? Lots of iron, water, and other useful minerals can be extracted. Need a radiation and particle shield for the space station? Tow that rock on over there and latch onto it! Those rocks are floating gold mines in space.
This post comes up every once in a while. I always find it really amusing. Slashdot is essentially a trade magazine; it targets and draws IT professionals, usually a very high-paid group of people and not a group likely to live in their parent's basements. Then there is somebody who takes the time to sit around late Friday night/Saturday morning, and hit the refresh button over and over until he can get the first post (ie, somebody without a job, a girlfriend, or probably many friends) and uses it to accuse a community of well paid professionals of living in their parents basements.
I've always wondered if we could create a device that does the following:
1. Go into a position above the plane on which the planets rotate around the sun so it looks "down" on the solar system.
2. flash a bright light of a specified color every day at a certain time.
3. read back the ping signature of the solar system's objects with a light sensitive camera.
4. plug the changes into a computer.
5. calculate trajectories of all objects.
6. determine exactly which ones are on a bee-line for earth.
7. continue to monitor for any surprises.
8. focus on those objects that show they will come close to earth for deflection.
Is this possible to do? Or am I missing a fundamental something-or-other? Thanks.
Crashing into things is their speciality. However this gravity satellite is a bit fluffy. Since they seem to place money into the equasion, I say let the managers sit on the surface and count the pennies since thats obviously way more important than their asses.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
...with the budget they're using, they could probably buy at least one cup of coffee for everyone in the world. Now how can you justify it?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Are we going to stop it _BEFORE_ or _AFTER_ it destroys Paris? Also, 15-30 years is a bit longer than usual, it normally only takes 112 minutes or so..
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Who's going to fund this, and does that organization immediately become the supreme planetary overlords for having successfully saved the entire planet from complete destruction?
Come on, all we need is 3 weeks and Bruce Willis and his drilling buddies to defeat any asteroid. Geez, don't any of you watch the historical videos?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Are they ignoring potential threats less than 1km in diameter? Are we to believe that an asteroid 999 meters in diameter will be harmless? Such folly! Perhaps NASA will make a meters / feet conversion error and we'll all be screwed.
It's called `insurance' or `risk management.' While it's true that insurance companies tend to get cast in a negative light because, well, their accountability and complexities are terrible and they tend to screw people over, the having of insurance is still important. Just because the odds of something occuring are small doesn't mean that you shouldn't plan for the possibility of disaster. We had the dinosaur extinction, and we've had near-earth impacts that have wiped out hundreds of thousands of square miles of life. Planning for the possibility of a disaster before it happens--especially if it's one that doesn't trumpet its impending arrival--can save countless lives at a reduced cost. It's worth it to save civilization.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be smart about it, though. Reasonable standards. Accountability. Intelligent Auditing.
NASA has to make it more difficult than it has to be...
a plausable idea would be to use a nuclear bomb, not to destroy the asteroid or meteor but to detonate the bomb before it gets too close leaving the asteroid or meteor mostly intact, the blast wave from the bomb can be strong enough to push it out of the way...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
In the case of an extremely large object, probably one in 100, the missile might have to contain a nuclear warhead.
On earth, a nuclear weapon causes damage via its atmospheric shock wave - it's the motion of the air that causes buildings to fall down [or implode, or whatever].
Do we even know how a hunk of rock would react to the introduction of a bunch of alpha particles/gamma rays/x-rays/infrared radiation/etc? How would the the crystalline structure of the rock be affected? What models do we have that indicate the rock would shatter from an internal heat differential, rather than merely glowing very bright red for a while [assuming the rock even chose to absorb the heat energy in the first place, rather than just deflecting it off into the void of outer space]?
By contrast, underground detonations of nuclear devices are very benign events, and release vastly less energy than a small earthquake or a small volcanic event.
It's only the gaseous shock wave of an atmospheric detonation that causes damage to humans & their metropolitan areas - in the vacuum of outer space, with no atmosphere [i.e. with no gas, hence no gaseous shock wave], a nuclear detonation might not be that big of a deal.
Ooops - wrong direction.....
It's hard to find 90% of >1km asteroids without finding a sizeable fraction of >500m too, so by setting this one goal they actually achieve a lot more.
A few more ideas....
:-D
;-) into an astral plane where it would not have a physical impact to the Earth.
1) Assuming at least some of these asteroids will be passing Earth before they come back 100+ years from now (or however long) and then actually hit the Earth. Why not, as they are passing by, specifically as they have *passed* the Earth, nuke them from behind?
2) Same idea as #1, but instead get some modified HUGE rockets with robotic modifications to fly up to the asteroid, and then auto-magically grapple onto the 'Earth/rock' base of the asteroid, and then tilt to a different direction & fire the engines in a different direction, thereby 'flying' the asteroid in a different path... even if only by 0.002 degrees or whatever, that might make all the difference. Depending on the size of the asteroid, you might of course, need anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred or even thousands of these rockets.
3) Implement a Tesla death ray machine on a satellite above Earth's atmosphere (or "Star Wars" defense system). Possibly even a few of these around every planet or moon in the planets around our Galaxy (yeah I know this is not an overnight implementation plan), and then as asteroids are on their way towards or away from Earth - BLAST 'EM! Related links:
Tesla Death Ray: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_wendwar.html
Star Wars Defense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Ini tiative
4) How about instead of wasting all those nukes in disarming strategies, hand them all over to the UN, and have the UN work with NASA to ship them all into some outer space orbiting satellites on the moon or better yet, Mars, and then aim them at ASteroids for anti-Armagedon purposes? I suggest Mars, because if that system ever gets hacked and somebody points a missel towards Earth, at least we'll have time to counter-Skud the Nukes.
5) Ship into outer space a few million tonnes of SOLID rock & position it in our own sweet time such that any asteroids coming towards Earth hit that first with the idea of slowing down, possibly shattering or deviating the asteroid (depending on density of rock, shape (i.e. cone with point on end facing asteroid), etc).
6) Same as #5, but attach some propulsion system behind the conned shape rock. Maybe even melt several meters of metal on the tip of the cone to re-enforce it & ensure asteroid gets split in half... then propulsion system slowly but surely accelerates the cone towards the asteroid thereby having an even greater impact and minimize asteroid's success in hitting or hurting the Earth as much.
7) Create about 10,000 solar powered spider like robots (I forget the movie reference now) with drill-heads. Ship said spider robots in a few rockets & have the rockets dump the payload onto the asteroid. Then over the period of however long before it hits Earth, the robots with AI and heat and/or solar power or something-powered will have the mission to drill the astroid into a thousand pieces.
8) Learn how to make little black holes. Create one in the trajectory of the asteroid... and POOF... asteroid gone!
9) Ask our Area 51 alien 'friends' for assistance & more ideas
9.5) Carve out HUGE multi-million or billion tonne stone or ice chunks out of Mars or some future uneeded planet, and propel these chunks in a somewhat controlled fashion BY the asteroid, such that it will distort the trajectory path simply with its own gravitational pull.
10) Get the scientists to hurry the hell up and understand how to project solid matter into Astral planes, and then either with advanced human minds or with machines with the physics to do this, teleport the asteroid out of thin vaccuum (can't be air
11) Send rockets up to dump payloads of corrosive acid onto the asteroid such that it deteriorates into a thin mist before hitti
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Slow it down so it ends up in our orbit
That megatonnage is equivalent to a few thousand Trident submarines. Granted that most of it is wasted making ground zero even more incandescent, but a lot of the ejecta and the smoke from incinerated cities will stay in the atmosphere and create a non-nuclear "nuclear winter". Plus odds are 2-1 that it will hit an ocean, and remember that most of the world's population lives near coastlines. Ocean strikes are also more effective at coupling impact energy into the atmosphere.
At least we'd have spectacular sunsets for a while.
Does NASA even have a rocket capable of intercepting an asteroid with something as heavy as a gravity tractor? They have some spare Saturn V rockets sitting around?
The thing about space is that small pushes over long times can work better than splashy big short ones.
Why bomb the asteroid when you could keep ion engines running for decades instead? Or maybe find some point in its orbit where it's going between two heavy bodies and a small change will tip it one way or the other and make a big difference?
So now I don't know exactly what to think.
Well, unfortunately, I think the GP is not the only crazy that would think like this. There are a lot of extremists out there that think the Earth needs a good cleansing and are not afraid to die themselves. Whether they could ever get their hands on an asteroid steering system is another question.
Crazies aside, there is a good reason to steer an NEO closer to Earth. It would make a great resource if it could be coaxed into orbit, especially if it contained smeltable metals or was big enough to serve as a platform for a space station. Lifting materials into orbit is hellishly expensive. If we have to redirect an asteroid, figuring out how to do it with precision could be worth quite a lot. Start by forcing it into an elliptical orbit and adjust from there.
My suspicion is that you would want to detonate the bomb some distance above the asteroid; the heat would cause the surface of the asteroid to vaporize, and the gas jetted from the surface would shove the asteroid off course.
Empty space varies as R-cubed, and the spherical effects tend to degrade as 1 over R-squared.
It doesn't take much of an R to make that asteroid look like a tiny, insignificant needle in the vast, overwhelming haystack of empty space.
Cf Derbyshire's critique of Whedon & the "nest of Reavers".
I thought NASA was just complaining that it didn't have funding to do something like this.
Was that just a build up to make them look more important when this got released or did they find funding from their Doom and Gloom apropriations aproach?
OR maybe all the discusion NASA not being able to fund this exact program was sparked because someone didn't know what was going on? The government doesn't work this fast in approving funding so how could it be possible for them to all the sudden have it now? Especialy when the government has been fixated on losing the Iraq war one way or another?
You bring up a valid point, but it actually raises more questions than answers, IMO.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
They're going for 90% of all bodies 1 km across. They don't ignore smaller bodies (indeed, many have been found), it's just that a) smaller bodies are harder to see and b) there's way, way more of them. So for example, you might have 90% of 1 km bodies, 60% of all 900 m bodies, 30% of all 800 m bodies, and so on. Whatever the actual numbers are (I just made those up to illustrate the point), the goal is to locate the civilization-enders first, with progressively less threatening bodies being located later.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I think the real question on every one's mind is
by the time we actually discover one of these things on course with the earth
will sean connery still be alive to save the day?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(film)
Interestingly, the movie Armageddon also came out in 1998...
Pardon me, but I'm skeptical. Earth had no civilization-killing encounters for thousands of years — no, the Tunguska-meteorite does not qualify, not even if it landed in Paris (the center of civilization at the time). The only suspected such encounter is blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs — a while ago...
Yes, it would be nice to not have this threat (especially now, that we almost can), but we must realize, that we perceive it as a much larger one, than it really is. All of the readers of this message (in 2007) have a much higher risk of dying from a new strain of flu, or a spectacular terrorist attack, for example. Or even from getting hit by a truck or choking on a pretzel...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Mod this off topic if you want, but I just wanted to make a point regarding asteroids and global warming. It seems to me that many people are perfectly willing to accept the idea of trying to intercept and destroy an asteroid to prevent it from smashing into the earth. Fine. On the other hand, when it comes to a conversation about global warming, people want to endlessly bicker about whether it's really happening and, if so, what's causing it, and is that a bad thing. If you can simply accept the first proposition, that global warming is occurring, then, in the end, it really doesn't matter whether humans are causing global warming or not. We simply need to do whatever we can to stop it, just like in the case of an asteroid hitting the planet.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but I envision the following coming out of this...
We succeed in diverting it, and 15 years later we all sigh in relief as the asteroid passes by. The same year, we experience first contact, and realize where the asteroid is now headed.
First message: "You assholes."
A kinetic missile filled with a dense enough quantity of titanium delivered at a sufficiently high velocity could vaporize a large quantity of matter into thin air. If enough of these were fired at the asteroid in a volley, it would essentially vanish. The number of missiles and the quantity of material is mind boggling though.
Having these weapons ready in time for such an event seems unlikely though. There will be no sense of urgency until its too late. Whereas we've readied ourselves to destroy one another on this planet already, far ahead of time.
Of note, Nikolai Tesla suggested using particle weapons to destroy asteroids. Also, he suggested the Earth itself could be sheared in half with a large enough tuning fork as an example of how one could prevent an asteroid strike. But, people took his suggestion literally and thought he was a madman.
What we need is Chuck Norris; he wouldn't even have to karate kick it... A single 'stare of death' and the astroid would change its own trajectory and tell its friends not to 'come around these parts' of the solar system.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Haven't ALL the scientists for the last 10 years since the first asteroid destruction movie that came out been screaming and yelling that nukes will never work? What the hell changed between now and then?