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...

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...

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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.