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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.
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
So one US government administration is trying to save civilisaiton, and the other US administration seems hell bent on destroying it.
It'd be better to invest more in that than to play Armageddon. That's what the dinosaurs thought, and look where it got them.
Oh come on - how crazy do you have to be to think this is true? Everyone knows there were no dinosaurs! Fossils are merely artifacts put there by God to test our faith. Don't you "scientist" types know *anything*?
I've seen Armageddon and it just isn't possible unless you bring in the world's best deep core oil drillers, ok?
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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.