UN Plans Asteroid Response Framework

chrb writes "The Association of Space Explorers, a non-profit group of people who have completed at least one Earth orbit in space, has presented a report to the United Nations titled Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response. The UN will now meet in February to discuss the issue and try to define a global political framework for dealing with asteroid-based threats to the Earth."

Comments

hmmm

[girlintraining]

Will this be like the original, where if you lose a city then it's gone, or the newer version where you can rebuild a city if you blow up enough asteroids? Also, how are we going to get the east and west to cooperate? Will they only shoot down asteroids that come down on their side of the screen? What if they split up and some come onto our side? Oh, the political decisions...

!brucewillis

[Anonymous Coward]

The real heroes are the guys (and gals) with the calculators.

Re:!brucewillis

[girlintraining]

The real heroes are the guys (and gals) with the calculators.

Sure, but you'll only see them in the credits just before they run the copyright notices. Hollywood is like real life -- nobody cares what it took for the star character to finish the job, because it's all about looking cool, sipping martinis, and driving aston martins. Q just got a few witty one-liners, but otherwise it was a 12 hour work day and no vacation to keep the james bonds of the world well-stocked in disposable tech.

Re:What timing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Flashblock means you don't need to worry about Youtube rickrolling.

better be careful

[ILuvRamen]

I hope it has less holes in it than the .NET Framework....ohhhhh :P No time to apply patches to that thing hehehe.

Comet protection?

[rigelstar]

I hope this will protect us against comets that have a chemical composition of less than 1.5% the normal level of cyanogen found in normal comets as well as asteroids.

If it's anything like...

[actionbastard]

Fifties and Sixties Civil Defense initiatives, 'Duck and Cover' isn't going to cut it.

That's another thing they'd screw up...

[tjstork]

It's all well and good to have a bunch of people talking together, but at the end of the day, the UN is utterly useless, and ultimately, the world's going to come looking for the USA for a way out, and then the Americans will quietly ask the British what they think, the French will chime in with their opinion whether anyone likes it or not, and after that brief bit of backchannel talking, the USA will wind up doing something that Europe hailed in private and condemned in public, except for the British, and their people will bitch about the Americans do it, not because its wrong, but they will insist that the British would have done it better had they still had their empire.

Re:That's another thing they'd screw up...

[bensafrickingenius]

And no doubt the UN will soon impanel a subcommittee which will spend millions of US dollars to generate a report condemning the US for causing this Asteroid crisis...

Re:That's another thing they'd screw up...

[Ruvim]

In result, USA solution will be using Russians, hired cheap off the Russian military, using old Soviet technology...

How will this be funded?

[HockeyPuck]

Should funding be broken down by %population of the world, or %landmass occupied? However, I see this as "make the US pay for it". If a non-planet killing asteroid is targeting a nation which has not contributed to the fund/program, should we defend it? The security system on my house doesn't protect my neighbor's, (although my tax dollars which pay for the police, do.).

Re:How will this be funded?

[trawg]

However, I see this as "make the US pay for it". If a non-planet killing asteroid is targeting a nation which has not contributed to the fund/program, should we defend it? The security system on my house doesn't protect my neighbor's, (although my tax dollars which pay for the police, do.).

Heh, I always just assumed the US government will do it under the guise of protecting the world, when really, it's just a space superiority weapons system

Re:How will this be funded?

[da cog]

We can always offer a refund if you're in the spot that got hit.

Better yet, we'll say that if we screw up and you get hit, then the next asteroid defense is free!

Re:How will this be funded?

[east coast]

This theoretical asteroid would know no man-made boundaries. It's unlikely that the overall effect that it will produce would be able to be narrowed down to a single nation or even a small group of them. The ripple such an event would cause would touch everyone's life in some fashion.

Either way, I have zero faith in the UN being able to put together anything bigger or more complex than a boy scout weekend camping trip without massive corruption, waste and/or bad blood being created between member nations.

Re:How will this be funded?

[Broken scope]

Those police don't actually protect his house you know... they just take pictures and fill out paperwork you send to the insurance company after some hoodlum ransacked your house while you were at work.

God, I hope an anti asteroid system isn't like the police, I'd prefer if it was more like the secret service. You know, everyone is pretty focused on that one important dude, and if he gets offed, a whole bunch of people get fired.

Re:How will this be funded?

[Waffle Iron]

If a non-planet killing asteroid is targeting a nation which has not contributed to the fund/program, should we defend it?

That's much less likely than the asteroid hitting an ocean. After a glance at the globe, it looks to me like most of the world's ocean area has straight shot to at least some portion of the US coastline. So if the goal is to avoid those 1000-foot high tsunamis, the US probably has more interest in ensuring that the program gets implemented than to worry about who's not paying.

Re:How will this be funded?

[Nyeerrmm]

A theoretical asteroid can be of many different sizes. An Apophis sized impactor does have global implications (though its not extinction class); however, something like what exploded above Tunguska in the early 20th century could potentially be devastating within a single country but not have an effect outside of a limited region, like a bad earthquake.

And that is an interesting question, because unlike other natural disasters you know its coming and you can do something about it, but its expensive. So if you want to send a mitigation mission, do you make the other country pay for your expenses (assuming they dont have the technology to handle it themeselves), or is it an UN (or American, or Russian) act of charity even though in many ways its the problem of a single country. Or... do you just say hey, you better get people to move out of there, they should have a few years notice at least.

And... what if you change the trajectory just enough to make it hit somewhere else, whats the liability like for something like that? Of course, this is all presuming you can get the track down to a specific impact zone that far into the future, which believe me (I've been doing a bit of work on estimating Apophis' trajectory), is not an easy thing to do.

Re:How will this be funded?

[Reziac]

Volunteer fire departments have that same problem -- what to do about people who refuse to contribute? Most have hit on a simple solution: if you don't pay your fair share to support the VFD, they *will* just stand by and let your house burn. Usually it only takes one such example.

Second, considering that asteroid hits are neither an everyday occurrance, nor something we can realistically defend against anyway, one has to wonder just exactly who benefits from the money this will suck out of the U.S.

Re:How will this be funded?

[ThunderThor53]

And how do you propose accounting for the 2/3 of Earth that is water? %landmass + %coastline? The tsunamis from an ocean landing are likely to cause more devastation than a dirt landing - and are more likely to occur.

Re:How will this be funded?

[Kagura]

As far as I'm aware, troops in South Korea are still under UN command and aren't scheduled to be switched over until 2012 or so (according to previous agreements) at the soonest.

Re:How will this be funded?

[faffod]

The US donated the troops in the 1950s to the UN for Korea. I think that you are correct that the US is still providing troops for that agreement. However, since then, any time the US has deployed troops it has been outside of the UN infrastructure.

Re:How will this be funded?

[faffod]

I agree I could have phrased it better. Also, a bit of poking around led to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacekeeping which states that the US and S. Korea took over the DMZ in 1967 I started to check on the various deployments over the years: Both gulf wars were "Coalition troops", not UN. US troops in Kosovo were under NATO. Then I found an error on my part: the US troops in Somalia were part of a UN command. So, yes the US has donated troops, I was wrong. That said, the vast majority of the UN troops are not US. Which the OP claimed. US troops in Lebanon were part of the Multinational Force. Vietnam was not a UN operation, rather is was a war.

So, going back to the OP comments about the US donating the building, the "defense budget" and the troops. Let me try my reply again.
Others have pointed out (not to the OP but in a thread above this one) that the US contribution is proportional to GDP. The EU as a block makes a similar contribution. Also note that a country does not contribute to the "defense budget" just like I don't pay the taxes that go into building the Interstate Highways (part of my taxes do, but I also pay for the military, medicare, etc).
With the rare exception, the US never contributes troops to UN operations. From the wiki link above, "About 4.5% of the troops and civilian police deployed in UN peacekeeping missions come from the European Union and less than one percent from the United States (USA)"

Re:How will this be funded?

[Captain Hook]

a whole bunch of people get fired.

Fired and crushed under a billion tons of rock

Re:How will this be funded?

[seven of five]

An asteroid big enough to wipe out a city would also set fires to surrounding area, sending black smoke into the atmosphere. Cutting incoming sunlight for everyone. Not many threats are so small as to be completely ignored on the global scale.

The UN shouldn't be screwing around with Astroids

[spike2131]

.... everybody knows that killer robots are the real menace.

Asteroid 2.0

[Freaky Spook]

I hope it has less holes in it than the .NET Framework

By the time the UN establishes it's framework, the Asteroid will have been upgraded to version 2.0 and then the UN will have to go back and do a whole re-write.

Artist's Rendition of the Framework

[Dahamma]

http://homepage.mac.com/lyford/4umsf/asteroids.jpg

Re:I truly do not

[Dripdry]

It is also a natural occurrence that we are here, able to perceive a threat to our species, and eliminate that threat.

Act of god...

[Skiron]

No insurance pays out for an 'act of god' (whatever that means), so why bother anyway? - we would lose it all with no pay-back.

Re:I truly do not

[BlackusDiamondus]

believe we should be messing with the natural occurances of the solar system. Asteroid collisions are how we got here, how we will end, and how a new smarter, more capable species will come again. Let it happen naturally. End of story.

Tell you what, next time you get critically ill or injured, we should just let you die a natural death so that a new smarter and more capable person can take your place. I say let it happen naturally, End of story.

Good DAY, Sir!

[Star Particle]

At least we can count on the UN sending that asteroid a strongly-worded letter!

Re:Geez...

[flyingfsck]

Of course. We can use Ruby on Railguns...

The UN can build consensus.

[symbolset]

I'm sure that if an asteroid wiped out the capital of some tinpot dictator that the UN would respond. They would have no trouble building enough consensus to write the Oort cloud a stern letter.

Offsite backups

[symbolset]

For true disaster preparedness the only solution is a backup hot site. Mars would be nice.

Re:Offsite backups

[icebrain]

For true disaster preparedness the only solution is a backup hot site. Mars would be nice.

You may speak in jest, sir, but your statement holds a lot of truth. Establishing self-sustaining colonies throughout the solar system (and eventually the stars) should be the primary goal of any space program, not watching earthworms in zero-g. Get yourself established on other planets and moons, and that technology will feed directly back into asteroid defense and "green" efforts.

Plus, it provides jobs and incentive for people to stay in school. It's a win all around. And as John Young said, the dinosaurs died because they didn't have a space program.

I wish it said which part of the UN.

[Shag]

I don't think this is going to be the UN General Assembly.

I doubt it'll even be the UN Security Council.

I'd half expect it to be the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs, which handles the treaty on the peaceable use of outer space, and does things that are actually useful, like maintaining the registry of what's been launched and is whizzing around up there... but this sort of thing is a bit different than what UNOOSA has been doing.

My Christmas-vacation homework will thus be:
1. Ask friend at UNOOSA whether they're involved, and
2. Ask Dave Tholen (Apophis discoverer) whether he knows anything.
Optionally:
3. Report back.

Re:I wish it said which part of the UN.

[Shag]

Okay, I poked around a bit... looks like the Working Group on Near-Earth Objects (mentioned in the BBC piece) isn't (as I had initially thought) the IAU WGNEO, but an occasionally-convened body under the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Evidently UN HQ in NY has hosted a couple lil' conferences on the subject of NEOs in the past decade or so. Dunno whether this next gig in February will be there, or in Vienna, but I'm gonna start asking around. Might be an interesting thing to check out.

Re:Oh, great

[HertzaHaeon]

No, there are many things the UN does well. Also, the Oil For Food Program did accomplish its humanitarian goal, despite the corruption. The UN had no authority or the resources to stop smuggling, although it did warn about it. The nations responsible for it, among them the US and UK, didn't do much about it at the time, however.

I'm not sure that I'd like men in blue helmets watching the skies, but their incompetence and corrupion is exaggerated.

Re:I truly do not

[marleyboy]

What exactly does 'perceive a threat to our species' and 'eliminate that threat' mean? In your context, it means asteroids. However, the greatest threat to our species isn't from space, it's the way we treat each other. So why the hell are we more worried about random rocks from space, when it's exactly that mentality that leads to all the wars and conflict on earth? Perhaps instead of trying to dominate, crush and otherwise cause further separation, we need to be figuring out how to live co-operatively on earth.

True elimination is digging out the seeds that grow ideas of conflict. Otherwise the weedwhacker of war is just spreading more.