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British Company Takes Lead To Stop Asteroids
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that following the news of NASA's budget cuts impacting their ability to do things like watch the sky for asteroids, a British company has decided to create a "gravity tractor" ship that could divert asteroids away from Earth if the need should arise. Of course, a gravity tractor certainly isn't a new idea. "Dr. Cordey said the company had worked with a number of space authorities on other methods of protecting the Earth from asteroids, but this one would be able to target a wider range. He said: 'We have done quite a lot of design work on this with the European Space Agency and we believe this would work just as well on a big solid iron asteroid as well as other types.' But the high cost implications mean that before the device could be made, it would have to be commissioned by a government or a group of governments working together."
Oh, never mind then.
Smart Bomb or Hyperspace?
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We need to take care of the Yellowstone Caldera first. I think that's more likely to erupt before an asteroid hits.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
He knows something about Asteroids.
Competition, not coordination, in attempting to stop asteroids from ending all life on Earth. What could go wrong...
Meanwhile, in an East Texas courtroom...
Dr. Cordey: Your honor, I'd like to file an injunction to prevent NASA from using their gravity tractor to stop the asteroid that will impact Earth next week.
NASA: This patent is ridiculous. They don't have their own working gravity tractor. They aren't even trying to build one. All of their ideas in their patent come from working with NASA and the ESA.
Dr. Cordey: We don't have our own gravity tractor, but we are working with the ESA to build one. It should be done in a year or two.
NASA: Everyone on the planet will be killed next week. We have to be permitted to stop the asteroid.
Judge: I'm going to allow the injunction. You can appeal it within 60 days if you like. Without patents protection, all we have is chaos. We can't make an exception here just because it suits us.
1 week later: BOOOOOOOOM.
I've always thought it would be best to use some kind of propulsion system to help move the asteroid in it's same direction causing it to overshoot us. Trying to change it's current vector or trajectory seems like it would be wasting energy.
Namaste
Seems like they could make some kind of game, and have people play that game to control the missiles that shoot down asteroids threatening cities.
(Ok, so that is a combination of Ender's Game and Missile Command)
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This idea is donated to the FSF and is subject to GPL Version 2: Most ideas with dealing with asteroids attempt a form of thrust vectoring. A simpler solution than most is to add mass to the asteroid to change its orbit without blowing it apart. This can be done in various ways but one is to blast it with a water cannon from an accompanying space ship which will cause vectoring and add mass in the form of snow which will result in a change in orbit without the danger of breaking the object into a hailstorm of smaller objects.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
!Bad Science.
Works perfectly fine if you have enough lead time. Plus much cheaper than pushing. Not a 'free lunch' but still cheaper
British Company Takes Lead To Stop Asteroids
Thank God! That was such a stupid idea to base a movie on that game.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I'd angle the deflector shields, but that's just me.
Seems like they could make some kind of game, and have people play that game to control the space-ship that shoots asteroids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
99942 Apophis will make a near pass to Earth in 2029. However, if it passes within a narrow window, called the keyhole, the Earth's (and Moon's) gravity will deflect it such as to place it on a direct Earth impact in 2036. Now this isn't all that likely to happen, but it is possible. Worth having some contingency plans for at least.
All this relies on finding said asteroid years if not decades out.
I can't confirm, but I remember hearing that between NASA and all the other space agencies we track less than 20% of space inside of Jupiter's orbit. A large dark asteroid out of the Kuiper Belt could be closing on us right now and we wouldn't see it until months before impact, too late to do anything about it.
IMHO, lets work on finding and tracking large asteroids first.
Does this plan involve taking all of Britain's CCTV cameras and pointing them towards the sky?
Ah yes. As always, the random Slashdot poster is smarter and knows better than whole legions of physicists and engineers.
Works perfectly fine if you have enough lead time
We should be happy enough when we see it coming at all.. How much "lead time" do you expect to have?
what can go wrong?
Nuclear weapons would be far more entertaining; kind of a near-Earth fireworks display ("ooooh, aahhhh"). Besides, one more used up there is one less that may be used down here.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Won't matter much if we can divert an asteroid if budget cuts cost us the ability to see it coming.
I'm very curious to learn which is their business plan. Could it be "pay us a gazillion dollars or we won't use our technology against the asteroid"?
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Not a single space scientist has ever had that thought. Good research.
What's wrong with the tried and tested method? If Armageddon and Deep impact have taught us everything, it's that sending an emotionally unstable group of astronauts with a bunch of nukes will save most of the world ... not all of it, but most!
What's that 80/20 % rule?
I think the whole "search for killer asteroids" is fatally flawed. Let's see... the last one hit 200,000,000 years ago. The last time someone won my State lottery was just last week, and typically they hand-out ten of these multi-million dollars prizes a year, so 10 out of 4 million tickets sold.
I have about 500 times better odds of winning my State lottery, than getting killed by an asteroid. I'm not expecting the former to happen during my lifetime, and doubt the latter will either.
If humans do go extinct, it's probably be through suicide rather than a giant rock.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Except for, you know, the fallout from the blast.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
But the thing is you still need a store of special matter for those ion thrusters to eject, even though they're ejecting it at high velocity. And it's probably harder to store that matter than a 10T chunk of whatever you can commandeer in space, even though you might be solar powering the drive itself. What you're suggesting would be a good "first stage", useful for moving a relatively small object (perhaps there are some at the La Grange spots) into an orbit slightly different to that of the impact asteroid, so you don't have to launch that mass into space. At which point, I'd suspect there are some tricks you can use to deflect the energy of the impact asteroid into a slightly different orbit, effectively using the large weight as a "ballast" and the interception weight as a "sail", with the gravity between the objects the "mast".
ie, you might get a lot more total delta-V of the combined objects compared to the delta-V you expend with thrusters to adjust the interception vessel occasionally, due to the profile of the combined shape through the space-time slope at that point.
I think everyone would vote to go ahead and take the slight amount of radioactive dust spread over the whole planet, raising our radiation exposure rate by 0.01% or whatever, to go ahead and prevent the Earth from getting smacked by Texas. Ooooo fun:
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/calculate.html
Erm, actually, for an asteroid big enough to knock out a city, we'd probably have ten years or so notice.
How are they going to know that they need to deploy their "gravity tractor", if NASA's program to inform them is shut down? And are they going to hire Bruce Willis to drive it?
Have you read my blog lately?
Glad you support the free market!
When the cost of making this device is equal to or less than the value provided by it, it will be made.
Until then, since at the moment there would be no value provided by the creation of this that would be equal to or greater than the cost of its creation, the value expenditure won't be made.
The Free Market wins and works again!
Here's an idea...
How many tons of launch debris do we dodge daily in orbit?
Why not collect it, and use its condensed and combined mass for such a "gravity tractor?"
Just asking...
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
I'm not worried about radiation exposure from this sample. The odds of one of those atoms decaying is infinitesimal!
Ah yes. As always, the random Slashdot poster is smarter and knows better than whole legions of physicists and engineers.
Actually, he doesn't have to be smarter than legions of physicists and engineers. So far, this is in a very early planning stage. Therefore, changes are he only has to beat a board of executives who knows nothing about physics or science (on average) who have been given a high level executive summary of this great idea that they should invest in and how it can both lead to a better world (not being smashed up by said cosmic nasty) and possibly making a good deal of money based on their investment (after all, what government wouldn't be chipping in if cosmic nasty was hurtling towards their patch of Earth?) and the rest... that's for the project managers, development managers, customer representative managers and all those other managers to solve. The guy who knows his physics and engineering inside out might actually propose "Hey why don't we just stick an ion drive onto it and push it out? Will be better than a gravity tractor!" and his comments might get slowly fed up the chain of command, but likely it will hit somewhere and stop before it gets to anyhow who can make that sensible decision.
Seeing as this company has "decided to create a gravity tractor ship", I wouldn't be surprised at all if there hasn't actually been a surprisingly LACK of physicists and engineers involved at this point in time.
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That sound you hear is people laughing at you, not with you.
Except that when the "product" is the collective safety of the entire earth and there is no opportunity for profit, then the free market will let it slide, waiting for "big bad government" to fill in the gaps, as it always does, no thanks to the randites.
And if there is something headed our way that will literally destroy the entire world, "free market" and all, then so be it, huh?
FTFY
I'm curious what it being weaker than the weak and strong nuclear forces and the electromagnetic forces has to do with it. If the design works, it works. I'm curious to see your equations if you think it won't work. Also gravity is the only purely attractive force, and the one thats hardest to explain, which is why we really pay attention to it.
The advantage of a gravity tractor is that you don't have to land, because landing is a *VERY* hard problem on an asteroid. The biggest problem is that its very difficult to latch on, since you can't rely on gravity to hold you in place. Since you don't hae a good idea of the surface before you arrive, its rather difficult to design a solution thats going to work for all the different possibilities.
This leads one to consider how can you manage to deflect an asteroid without landing, and a gravity tractor is an obvious elegant solution. Note also that in this case you're still using the vaunted ion thrusters to impart the force on the asteroid. Considering the spacecraft and asteroid as two separate systems you have to use the thrust to maintain your standoff distance; considering them as one system (my preferred analysis), you have the thrusters moving the whole system, with internal gravity keeping the whole thing together. The only difference between it and landing, as far as thrust is concerned, is that you are limited to a maximum thrust by the gravity bond: the same sized ion thruster on a landed spacecraft and on a gravity tractor will have exactly the same effect.
The only time it would make sense to land is if you wanted to do a very high-thrust chemical burn (or maybe something like VASMIR, which would only be in the emergency case. Of course, in that case, the costs become irrelevant ($50B for a mission or wiping out Europe isn't a hard decision to make) and you're more likely to seek to impart a maximum impulse by doing a high-risk/high-reward method such as a kinetic impactor or nuke (and multiples as backup).
Exactly. This sounds like something based on a business plan written by the average teenage slashdotter before they learn much of anything about anything.
Or, Bill Gates.
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Erm, actually, an asteroid big enough to knock out a city is about 10m in diameter. We'd probably have no notice whatsoever. Of course the likelihood that it would hit a city is pretty small.
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I don't think lead would be effective enough. It would be very hard to fire a cannonball with enough precision to the necessary height.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
When the cost of making this device is equal to or less than the value provided by it, it will be made.
The problem with that theory is time. Free markets are highly reactive, not proactive. It takes a long time for a gravity tractor to significantly affect an asteroid. By the time the free market realizes that a gravity tractor is of value, it may be too late for it to be effective.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Will this stop the fall of brown nuggets and the flow of golden showers?
That's assuming we completely decimate the rock. If it's so big that we only break it open, the weather report could be cloudy with a chance of car-sized rocks.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I think the whole "search for killer asteroids" is fatally flawed. Let's see... the last one hit 200,000,000 years ago. The last time someone won my State lottery was just last week, and typically they hand-out ten of these multi-million dollars prizes a year, so 10 out of 4 million tickets sold.
I have about 500 times better odds of winning my State lottery, than getting killed by an asteroid.
You have a problem with your math and your numbers. Big asteroids hit about every 68 million years. If one hit tomorrow it would kill 6.8 billion people. So on average, we can expect asteroids to kill about 100 people per year. That means you are about 10 times more likely to be killed in an asteroid impact than to win the state lottery.
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I've wondered about this kind of an issue, it seems to be some kind of dilemma because the people funding it to save the earth would even helping those that aren't willing to help pay for it because those people assume that someone else will pay for it. If everyone assumes someone else will pay for it and as such, don't bother to pitch in, will the problem actually be solved? Assuming this is a problem that human civilization has to solve, this could be one of the biggest, most convoluted games of chicken one can conceive of.
"Does it drown dolphins and club baby seals to death?"
Actually, I've been thinking of a little getaway. Someplace a guy can just be himself, let his guard down, and relax. Are you selling vacations? I could enjoy clubbing a few baby seals, and roasting their little carcasses over a nice propane fire. Liberal supplies of alcohol antifreeze, maybe some Valkyrie waitresses and chambermaids . . . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
An irregular surface wouldn't be that difficult to deal with, and your own thrust would keep you on the surface. If the asteroid is really a rubble pile that could be an issue though. Or if it's rotating at a significant rate. Initially I was thinking that the gravitational link would only result in thrust limitation, but after reading parent I realize that it would overcome some significant difficulties.
Why not just send up a huge ass lens (or loads of smaller mirrors) and burn the side to propel it?
A solar melter would just be so much cooler. Why should we try kick its ass? Let the sun do it for us.
If you explode a nuke outside the Van Allens, the fallout is swept away by solar wind. We've done it before. http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/hane.html However, a conventional nuke might only decimate an incoming Big Rock, leaving 90% behind. I'd rather see a pusher plate mated to the Big Rock, then detonate specially designed nukes against the plate, like in the Project Orion ship in FOOTFALL. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/OrionProj.html http://books.google.com/books?id=4S2KocYp8AkC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq="pusher+plate"+Orion&source=bl&ots=yRM2KRDRst&sig=NWZvu3gbjAAwyKva2-Jl_jlduhM&hl=en&ei=qnucSs-xCJSwsgPxwNCaDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=%22pusher%20plate%22%20Orion&f=false
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Sure you could solve each of these problems individually, but a gravity tug bypasses them all at once, at the expense of needing either
Probably the cheapest solution would be to refine a good sized nickel-iron asteroid into a compact solid metal mass and then attach a solar sail for thrust. Bonus points for compressing the metal mass into neutronium compressed by a diamond shell.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
It's short-sighted of anyone to put all this effort into asteroid defense without taking into account the waves of flying saucers that are sure to follow.
You're not supposed to inject reality into the "omg killer asteroids are coming" discussion.
In one fictional scenario, the earth governments pay for it; rather than using a "gravity tractor", they use nukes to blow the things into (relatively) small pieces.
http://www.stratos4.jp/
Erm, actually, an asteroid big enough to knock out a city is about 10m in diameter...
The only answer: Sharks with lasers.
I'm glad to see that someone is taking real threats and problems for *all of us* more seriously than petty disagreements about improvable beings/entities and hoarding shit daily.
Thanks for being the first to be serious about it.
A gravity tractor sounds good in theory, but how do you propose to move something that has enough mass to shift the path of a asteroid a significant amount?
Two 75 ton steel spheres placed an inch apart have an attractive force about the weight of a mosquito. 150 tons is about half the mass of the international space station.
So how massive would a gravity tractor have to be to deflect a small, 1 ton asteroid if it has to be even 1 foot away from the asteroid? And how much fuel would it take to place it next to a small asteroid approaching at 15,000 kph? After that, how much fuel would it take to get it back so it could be used again?
"Big asteroids hit about every 68 million years"
And the last one was 65 million years ago, so we have another 3 million years to go. If we haven't got starships by then theres something wrong.
Actually, yes he does - because this gravity tractor has been intensely studied for some time. As indicated by this link prominently provided right in the article, had you bothered to read it.
Had you bothered to read the article linked in the summary you'd have noted the scientists work for EADS Astrium - one of the worlds leading aerospace companies. (Assuming of course you are familiar enough with the world of aerospace to know the leading companies.)
I think I've adequately demonstrated that you haven't a clue what you are talking about. Your opinion are irrelevant, uninformed, and meaningless.
A 500 kg spacecraft hovering at around ~300 meters from the CM of the asteroid is sufficient to alter the trajectory if 99942 Apophis by ~50 Earth radii by 2036, if applied in the early 2020s for a period of a year. Note that Apophis is 2e10 kg, so a 1 ton asteroid would be incredibly easy to move. The force imparted is around 1/100 of a Newton. The key for getting the most out of such small forces is to use them early and use the orbital tendencies of the asteroid to magnify your result. The close flyby of Apophis in 2029 acts as a huge multiplier for any minor modification of the trajectory.
This sized spacecraft with the requisite Delta-V during the minimum energy window that corresponds with the close approach can easily be fit on board a Delta, Atlas or Falcon 9.
Obviously this isn't an option for a short-lead time object, but hopefully the NEO project funding gets worked out so we will have ample warning in the future to use these kind of long-term mitigation methods. Larger objects would require heavier, more expensive systems, but fortunately those are going to be easier to track and understand, so you wont have the huge uncertainties that make dealings with small objects like Apophis so difficult. A 10% chance of impact is a lot easier to sell to congress than a 1/30,000 chance, and a world-destroyer is likely to get plenty of funding.
Note that I pulled these numbers from numerical simulations in a project I'm currently working on, so I can't really write out the equations or cite any papers. Sorry... you'll just have to believe I have no reason to lie and am reasonably competent.
No more Brucie and Ben; now we'll have Stephen Fry, Kenneth Branagh and co. resolving emotional issues and navigating complex relationships while speeding their way toward a fateful encounter with a jolly big asteroid!
Oh I say!
...If humans do go extinct,...
I don't think that humans will go extinct, at least not before the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth and then not either. We humans of modern times have come to think that we are in charge of this world even though we did not make it. This world will be destroyed by fire some day, but not until God personally does so. (2Peter 3:7) Contrary to what most people think this day and age, we are not the bosses of this world because this is not our world.
We're discussing science in this thread, not mythology.
How are you going to deal with rotation? You have exactly two places on the rock where the thrust may be applied in one direction. Those may not be the optimal places to apply thrust, or the easiest places to obtain solar power. If it rotates like a planet, the stable spot would be like our poles and would experience long periods of darkness, so solar power is out. If the probe is not on a pole, then you have to vector thrust which is complicated on a spinning rock, and you can only thrust when it's possible to vector in an appropriate direction.
Gravity tugs are an elegant solution because it doesn't matter as much how the thing rotates. (although it probably has some impact for an irregularly shaped asteroid).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Your opinion are irrelevant, uninformed, and meaningless.
Yeah? Well, you have bad grammar or failed to hit a keystroke, so there!
Meanwhile, back in the land of the actual point here rather than being picky and pedantic - the guy promoting it does in fact work there. That doesn't mean he isn't making a huge sales pitch for a government sized order. A salesman for your local telco doesn't have to know the inside out of how the entire communications system operates.
I ain't saying that this isn't feasible, but you certainly seem to be shutting out what would appear to be a considerably simpler alternative by having an object apply some sort of direct (even if small) force to the asteroid.
I can think of a few possible hurdles, like the spin of these asteroids and therefore unsteady application of directional movement, but seeing as you clamped down on the original with nothing but a glib:
Ah yes. As always, the random Slashdot poster is smarter and knows better than whole legions of physicists and engineers.
Why don't you fill us in on why that's such a bad idea and clearly second rate to the idea in the article?
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The thrusters on this gravity tractor (another huge rock?) will have to be angled out away from the asteroid wasting a lot of fuel or the exhaust will just push it back. I'm also wondering how we are supposed to get the huge mass that is needed out to the target in time and then position it accurately. This does not seem possible with any foreseeable technology.
Except for, you know, the fallout from the blast.
Except for, you know, we've already performed a couple or so nuclear tests before...
Reminds me of an old friend who one day told me he thought the US had a few dozen nuclear weapons in their arsenal...
The summary seems to imply a "British Company To Pick Up NASA's Dropped Asteroid Ball" slant. "Seems" is used here because rhetorical device is relied on because the facts themselves don't do the job.
One failure is the false dichotomy created by positioning the Near Earth Object program(s -- there's seven http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/ ) for detecting and tracking thousands of rocks against a vehicle intended to take one such rock and push it around. A tactic like this is common when the writer has little faith in the intended focus of the piece to carry the story alone, and they present a badly constructed straw man in contrast.
The second problem is in presenting NASA's possible future NEO (a currently operating and planned continued project, mind you) budget crunch as problematic, whereas this British company's announcement of what amounts to grand plans on paper that would admittedly require huge national or international funding to even begin is held up as "taking the lead".
If announcing one has plans that one considers viable is "taking the lead", the team in TFA is taking the lead behind dozens of other "programs" in equal or farther planning stages, some described in a recent Discovery/Science Channel program, many written up in popular media over the years and available to the search engine of your choice, with the Top Ten Ways listed at http://dsc.discovery.com/space/top-10/asteroid-stopping-technology/index-03.html . Harry Stamper's roughnecks and Spurgeon Tanner's shuttle crew are not among them, which didn't stop me from using them in the obligatory /. inclusion of SF references.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Send out your mom? Afterall she's so big she makes them asteroids orbit 'round her.
Not to mention that the Free Market (tm) is controlled and run by regular people off the street. Does anybody want to rely on their ability to understand and predict the need of something as complex and remote in the future as this? We are not talking about the "Random Country looking for Super Star" reality crap.
Not to mention that the Free Market (R) would kill as all due to gree: everybody will think somebody else will cough up the money because it's their lives, too.
Yeah, exactly. Cause the free market works so well at putting handguns in the purse of rape victims BEFORE they become a statistic!
I suppose any species worthy of existence will have the forsight to buy the handgun before the rape. After all: the universe is infinite: we'll just try again in another billion zillion years after starting over from scratch...
And... you were being facetious.
Hmm... ...As a Libertarian/Republican I cannot help but extend my utmost respect for yielding sarcasm with such laser precision.
How many people did the last one kill? Zero? Then we're safe!
oh good! Now I can still sell them my much cheaper plan. Strap a standard US 4th of July bottle rocket to it. I mean seriously, gravtiy? GRAVITY?! The gravity of one space vehicle? You could get more force out of a mouse sneezing at it. Is it really that much harder to put a tiny rocket on it to control the trajectory? Or hitting it with something? You know, a space cannon complete with space cannonball? This is just an idiotic way to show how advanced our knowledge of physics and calculations is when something much simpler would suffice. I bet if they find a way to use a quantum effect to move an asteroid, they'll do that instead just to seem fancy and smart. Well screw em, I'll be up there with my space cannon damn it.
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One of the biggest and most improbable is the existence of Israel against all odds, exactly as it has been foretold thousands of years ago will happen.
Firstly, it is very possible that the people who instated Israel as a state were influenced by the prophesy of it's existence.
Secondly, Asteroids have hit before and will hit again, it is only the size of the asteroid and time from now until the hit that are variable.
Third, The bible is anecdote and not a good historical record. Therefore any "prophesies" within cannot be independantly verified and "The bible is right because it says so in the bible" is very flawed logic.
Finally, the reason that Jerusalem is so contentious is because of superstitious people putting too much faith in a book. There is absolutely nothing special about Jerusalem other than the billions of people who think that it is "holy" and cry out when zoning changes are made.
Do not confuse scientific predictions with mythology, they are not the same thing.
1178161 is prime...
gravity is the only purely attractive force
Not necessarily...
/Pedant
Gravity can be repulsive at very high negative pressure (in more than one dimension) http://bustard.phys.nd.edu/Phys171/lectures/repulse.html
But for the purposes of a Gravity Tractor, you are correct, attractive only
1178161 is prime...
Fair enough. In my view \vec{f}=-(GMm)/r^3 \vec{r}... none of your fancy physics for me.
I suppose it's useful because it's fairly dense but quite soft. Are they taking it off church roofs?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Fallout is formed from irradiated earth sucked up by the fireball. You don't get significant fallout from an airburst, so you won't get it from a spaceburst.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Holy crap, decimate used with the original definition.
OK, now I've seen everything.
All of them? I don't recall seeing a seven headed dragon anywhere.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The fragments would continue on exactly the same course, at exactly the same velocity? Don't think so.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That doesn't include being killed by small asteroids. Or winning secondary prizes in the state lottery.
What if we use thousands of nukes, ie. the ones the anti-proliferation people want us to decommission?
None of those restrictions would prevent you nuking it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The concept behind a 'gravity tractor' is fatally flawed. Gravity is the weakest force in the universe, the only reason it matters to us is that there's enough mass making up Earth to make it worth paying attention to.
Instead of sitting next to asteroid, it'd be far more effective to dock the probe and push directly using the vaunted ion thrusters.
TANSTAAFL, folks.
Asteroids tumble, this makes it hard to land and worse means you can only use the vaunted ion thrusters when there pointing in the right direction
This "gravity tractor" idea isn't just a "show off fancy stuff" trick. I agree that a fixed surface-mount propulsion system or mass driver might seem simpler, but those don't work too well on something that's spinning. The gravity tractor doesn't have to worry about timing its thrust so it's pointed in the right direction, and it doesn't have to worry about landing on a spinning or irregularly-shaped object.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
You obviously never played/watched Dungeons and Dragons as a kid.. if the bible can predict that then it must be true..
... hang on a second... Tiamat only had five heads! Cancel the party and go back to your atheist lives everybody..
Erm, actually, for an asteroid big enough to knock out a city, we'd probably have ten years or so notice.
Too bad this spaceship would require a launch 15 years in advance. Don't forget production time if we haven't built one yet!
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
>>>Big asteroids hit about every 68 million years. If one hit tomorrow it would kill 6.8 billion people.
So in the entire existence of not just homo sapiens, but the whole mammal kingdom, not one asteroid has ever hit. I go back to my original point- We're more likely to die of suicide than a giant rock. In fact, we'll probably evolve into creatures like Q or the Ancients* before the next big rock hits.
*
* Star Trek/Stargate reference
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>possible that the people who instated Israel as a state were influenced by the prophesy of it's existence.
There's not even that prophecy in the bible. They are making-up stuff. Furthermore the Bible claims the sun stopped moving through the sky for 3 whole days. The only way to make that happen is to make the earth stop spinning, and leave the opposite side of the world (California) in the dark. That seems extremely unlikely, which why during the Age of Reason (1600-1700s) it was concluded that the Bible is not a science book, but a religious text.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I thought the free market was being run by a secret oligarghy of bankers and gyro meat vendors?
I drank what? -- Socrates
What, no X-Ray laser pulse ships?
Am seriously jonesing to see Footfall's space battle made in to a movie.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Don't forget to divert the anti-matter particle beam and re-calibrate it to frapé.
I drank what? -- Socrates
...would be a ship that can break the big asteroid into two smaller ones, each of which can be blasted into smaller bits that can finally be pulverized into dust with one blast. While the ship would be challenging to build, we will have no shortage of pilots...
I think you need to redo your math. A 500 kg spacecraft sitting 300 meters from a asteroid's center of mass would accelerate it by (6.67*10E-11) * (500)/(300^2) = 3.7*10^-13 m/sec. Over 16 years, that allows you to move an object just 47 km - far, far less than even 1 earth radius. Also, since the acceleration due to gravity doesn't depend on the mass of the object being accelerated, you couldn't move a 1 ton object any faster than a 20 million ton object.
Something like this?
http://lh3.ggpht.com/tractorpulling.sascha/Rq3MVhNj0pI/AAAAAAAA1IA/C-zpcerQeTA/s576/IMG_6111.JPG
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
True, if you only have the two bodies interacting with each other. However, in this case, the asteroid is in a heliocentric orbit, and also has a very close flyby of the Earth in 2029, which makes the picture very different.
Whenever you propagate the equations of motion forward over multiple orbits, very small errors at the present time grow much larger errors in the future. This is what makes it so hard to know where these small object are going to be: an estimate of the current state thats accurate to within a kilometer and ~0.1 meter/second right now translates to 10s of Earth radii in 2036.
Though Apophis is as guaranteed not to impact in 2029 (all right, 1e-30 or 1e-40, or something absurdly small), the big worry is that it will pass through a gravitational 'keyhole', a set of regions in space around Earth few hundred meters wide that would cause it to return on an impact trajectory in the next 7 years. Basically, this indicates that the close flyby (within the GEO Belt) acts as a huge modifier on any minor modification and error.
The goal of the mission isn't to directly move the asteroid many Earth radii away, but to move it just enough so that the natural forces carry it away from an Earth impact. In order to move it a few hundred meters by the 2029 close approach, you only have the move the asteroid by 10-20 meters if you start modification in 2022. The hard part isn't changing the orbit so much as knowing how you want to change it. Any mitigation mission would also need to do very precise measurements to get the orbital tracking precision down to the order of around ten meters to before beginning any significant modification, because there is a danger of actually making things worse rather than better if you're not careful.
Hope that explains the confusion, I should have been more clear before.
...other than the billions of people who think that it is "holy"...
Of course all those billions are wrong, but you and your disbelief are correct. It is an undeniable fact that mankind, at least most people, are inexplicably religious and believe lots of stuff outside of the realm of science. You are saying that science is end all and be all of all reality and there is nothing outside of its grasp. That makes you a worshiper of science. Carl Sagan is now dead but now knows better than that the cosmos he was measuring through science is all there is and ever will be.
(...There is absolutely nothing special about Jerusalem...)
You're right, that outside of faith there's nothing special about Jerusalem. It doesn't have a great harbor or central location and has only a small fraction of the number of people living there, than in many other great cities of Earth. Yet, it is the only city that is daily in world headlines, being exactly what the Bible foretold it would be, a stumbling block and rock of offense for ALL nations. The last battle of the last war on earth will be fought in the valley of Armageddon, which is only about 30 miles north-west of the city. The object of that war will be that city itself.
All theory is gray
maybe its "This asteroid that wont destroy the earth but will destroy a sizable chunk of land is headed for earth. Whatever country that pays us the least amount of money (in %age of GDP) is going to get it. this will be a blind auction, cash only, upfront. (if multiple countries bit the same amount we will redirect more asteroids) Muhahahahahaha!
Cash, huh?
Isn't that sort of a problem? I mean, the government which gives you that cash is also the government whose existence gives that cash value. After you've taken payment, they could go into inflation overdrive, severely devaluing the currency they've given you (with hefty tax cuts and spending programs for their own population to ease the blow)...
It seems to me that if you're extorting money from major governments, you've got to take payment in forms that have more inherent value. Gold could be an option, simply because its value seems to be consistently and universally respected... Weapons systems would be another option (and quite valuable given that the governments will almost certainly want to flatten your little operation as soon as they find you) - nuclear fuel and reactor equipment could be a good form of payment as well, assuming you have the means to operate and defend them...
Land is another option: though the obvious problem there is that the land is worthless unless you can exploit it, and prevent them from stealing it back by force. Plus, if they give you land, they're always going to know where it is...
It seems like a significant problem to me: assuming one has the power to hold the world hostage, what terms can one set which would truly be worthy of the threat you pose? How can that value be conveyed upon you in such a way that you can retain that value over time? After all, in the end what counts is power: even if an evil genius manages to get leverage over the world governments by trickery, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to then stand against those world governments over the years following - after your existence has been revealed, after your defeat has become a true priority for an organization which holds a substantial chunk of the world's overall resources...
Bow-ties are cool.
Nuclear weapons would be far more entertaining; kind of a near-Earth fireworks display ("ooooh, aahhhh"). Besides, one more used up there is one less that may be used down here.
It wouldn't be much of a fireworks display: without an atmosphere to carry a shockwave or absorb radiation to produce light and heat, a nuclear weapon detonated in open space would just be a release of radiation, invisible to the eye. Detonated on, or within an asteroid, the blast would have some material to work with, but the blast (as well as the surviving chunks of asteroid) would dissipate quickly...
Bow-ties are cool.
.... it was concluded that the Bible is not a science book, but a religious text.....
Duh, of course the Bible is a religious text, but it is much more than that. Science can tell us only of this world, and even so our understanding of it is only very small. Why is humanity so arrogant and thinks that science is the only way to discover what is real and true and what isn't?
(...The only way to make that happen...)
It is according to the laws of nature as we understand them. The problem is that we think we understand them, but could it be that there is a side to nature that is beyond science? For example, we know that gravity holds us to the earth, but even so nobody really knows what gravity is or what causes it. So all you can really say, is according to our limited understanding, what the Bible says does not make sense. You cannot state it in absolute terms such that it never happened.
The Bible also states that God came up with the laws of nature, in fact everything there is. He is the great lawgiver, both the physical and moral law. As such he would be able to modify or suspend the laws of nature as we know them, in order to accomplish his purposes.
All theory is gray
Amateur.
Everybody knows you've got to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
Bow-ties are cool.
I've seen the same head seven times. Does that count?
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Why don't you first re-read Jules Verne's
La Chasse aux Météors
Clint Eastwood is rumored to be negotiating a new movie.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
The fallout would be negligible.
If the asteroid is inside earth's gravity well, it's already too late to do anything. Nukes or otherwise.
We could identify a dangerous asteroid around a decade before it strikes earth. The orbits (around the sun) of the asteroid and earth would be close several times before impact. We would nudge the asteroid on one of these occasions.
If however it's a comet, then we wont know its going to impact the earth until we can see it. Which will already be way too late.
It's never cloudy when asteroids are falling. Haven't you ever seen an apocolyptic movie?
never was that impressed with europe
Of course not. But at least the last two complications, and probably all three, seriously limit the chances that the effect of nuking it will be controllable and useful. But hey we've got plenty of nukes available so if you want to waste a few go for it. Keep in mind that you'll be basically salting a big rock with radioactives that, if you don't manage to deflect the rock out of an impact trajectory, will act as fallout poisoning on the re-entry and impact area. Some people might get upset over turning a 2 year dead zone into one that has to be abandoned for decades.
Or to put it another way, real world problems are rarely amenable to the explosion-filled solutions preferred by Hollywood screen writers.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
They've hired Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell? They need to bolster the team with Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman (and throw in Robert Loggia to deal with the politicians...)
So in the entire existence of not just homo sapiens, but the whole mammal kingdom, not one asteroid has ever hit.
Back in 1490, an asteroid supposedly broke apart over a Chinese city called Chiling-yang in Shanxi Province, resulting in a meteor shower that killed 10,000 people. In 1908, an asteroid about 50m across broke apart over Tunguska, Siberia, killing over a thousand reindeer and blowing down about 2,000 square kilometers of forest. In 1937, Asteroid Hermes got uncomfortably close. The problem with Hermes as I understand it is that it has a very chaotic orbit, and repeatedly visits us, sometimes getting really close to Venus as well.
There are numerous other documented meteor strikes that resulted in injuries and deaths. Obviously, asteroids are much bigger, but the point is still made: meteors and asteroids are not a fantastic threat.
But that would overload the flux capacitor conduit thereby inducing a catalytic tachyon space-time channel, and that has nothing to do with HBO.
there is a non-zero probability that anything can happen.....
"Big asteroids hit about every 68 million years"
And the last one was 65 million years ago, so we have another 3 million years to go. If we haven't got starships by then theres something wrong.
Please tell me you were kidding or trolling...
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
READ THE CONTEXT of the post/thread. I was talking about extinction-level impacts, like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In the entire existence of not just human beings, but the mammal kingdom, not one has hit. We're wasting resources on an unlikely problem when there are more pressing concerns... like self-annihilation, or starvation, or overpopulation.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I read it within the context, and thus my response. The fact remains, within the last several hundred years, asteroids have entered the earth, broken up, and killed large numbers of animals and humans as well as destroyed whole areas of land. The events I cited were obviously the most severe cases. Most of the time, a meteor strike only injures or kills a couple of people in a single area. But it's not a great leap to say that if smaller asteroids have been a threat before then large asteroids could be a threat later. And wouldn't it be nice to have *some* protection other than an early warning system and a Hollywood movie type response?
What does it matter what we think anyway? "We're" not wasting resources. I assure you, any contribution you and I personally make to the effort is infinitesimal and would have gone to NASA regardless And that money would have ending up funding other activities your against or running the NASA bureaucracy.
I applaud that you care about self-annihilation, starvation, and overpopulation. Guess what, the government does not. The last politician to seriously give a damn was Reagan, and if you remember both Republicans and Democrats did all they could to prevent him from meeting with the Soviet Premier on any open terms.
Of course all those billions are wrong, but you and your disbelief are correct.
It is an undeniable fact that mankind, at least most people, are inexplicably religious and believe lots of stuff outside of the realm of science.
Having more people beleive a particular thing has no influence on how true or untrue it is.
I beleive what I can observe, or what others observe and describe to me as long as it meets the scientific method. That is, is the experience repeatable? Can it be explained in a way that does not invalidate other verified observations (which themselves have been explained in a scientific way)? etc...
That makes you a worshiper of science.
Science is not a "thing". You can't worship science any more than you can worship art or engineering. In any case, what good would worshipping science be since science won't gain anything from my worship and I won't gain anything from my worship?
Carl Sagan is now dead but now knows better than that the cosmos he was measuring through science is all there is and ever will be.
The first five words were enough. Surely you realise that saying that Carl Sagan is more knowledgeable as a corpse (or was he cremated?) sounds ridiculous to those who don't beleive in an "afterlife"? It's like me trying to convince you that Jesus has now completely decomposed and doesn't exist at all (well, the atoms that made up his body do, but not in anything near the same form) outside the minds of those who "worship" him?
The object of that war will be that city itself
Sadly, that city and the surrounding area are already the subject of wars. And the people fighting those wars are following their beleifs so blindly that they can't see the futility.
1178161 is prime...
.....Having more people beleive a particular thing has no influence on how true or untrue it is,,,,
That means of course that you believe that there is no afterlife is also something you merely believe that you do not know. You believe only what your senses tell you, but it has been shown that your senses can be fooled and are highly subjective. Do you really only believe what your senses tell you?
(...You can't worship science...)
You worship anything that you value very highly and it does not have to be a particular object or even an object at all. Any philosophy or world view that seeks to explain life or that which will bring a measure of fulfillment to a person can be worshiped.
There are four questions that every THINKING person should ask at one time or another in their life. Science cannot answer any of these but they are most important, more important than any other.
1) Where did I come from?
Answers from Bible: You are a special creation by the almighty God, made in His image.
2) Who am I really:
A: You are a living, eternal spirit being, temporally inhabiting a mortal body.
3) What, if any is the purpose of my existence?
A: You are made for an eternal purpose. You are here on Earth to learn how to believe, love and trust, especially in the face of trials and adversity.
4) What will happen to me after I die?
A: It depends on choices you make every day. Nothing goes out of existence, only changes form. So will you. Your mortal body will return to the elements of which it is made. Your eternal self will be with God, if you are living in His presence now. Otherwise you will be in "outer darkness", whatever Jesus meant by that.
Of course, those who do not believe in God will answer these questions differently, maybe something like this:
1. All living things evolved from the primordial ooze over vast amounts of time. Finally, humans came into this world also.
2. A human being is nothing but a bag of protoplasm, being composed of the elements of the earth.
3. There is no purpose to mine or anybody else's existence except to survive and reproduce.
4. There is nothing after death except possibly extinction. The human consciousness lives and dies with the body which is dissolved into its constituent components.
(...It's like me trying to convince you that Jesus has now completely decomposed and doesn't exist at all...)
There have been many who have tried to refute the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but have subsequently been convinced that it really happened. Of all the religious leaders and teachers that have come and gone in human history, only Jesus even makes a claim of resurrection. Jesus body never decomposed, but it was transformed and resurrected to a new life form which we know very little about, other than from the Biblical accounts. It was the resurrection that transformed a band of scared timid disciples into the kind of people that had a message of hope that transformed the Roman Empire and subsequently the world.
All theory is gray
Do you really only believe what your senses tell you?
My senses, and the senses of my (and the rest of humanity's) equipment. I'd believe your senses too if you can describe an objective way for me to repeat your experiences.
There are four questions that every THINKING person should ask at one time or another in their life.
And where did you get these questions from? Why are these questions important? Personally, I think these questions are flawed, allow me to elaborate...
1) Where did I come from?
I came from my parents. They came from their parents, who came from their parents and so on. All the way back to the common ancestor between humans and all other animals, and even back further than that to the common ancestor of all life on earth. I don't know exactly how that particular organism came about, but I don't really see why it's important for me to know the specifics.*
2) Who am I really:
Who else could I be than the person that I am while alive? This question implies that I could be something other than what I am now. This is absurd.
3) What, if any is the purpose of my existence?
The purpose of my existence is to propagate the genes that made me. This is also the purpose of my ancestors and descendants.
Why should my life have a "greater" purpose than this? This question implies that everything (or at least humans) has a purpose, whereas our observations show that there isn't really any (deliberate) purpose in the (non-manmade) universe.
4) What will happen to me after I die?
The electrical signals that keep your brain active will stop. Your consciousness will cease to exist and nothing will happen. Why does something have to happen? What did you experience before you were born? Before you were conceived and before your brain began to function, you experienced nothing, so why should death be any different?
Of all the religious leaders and teachers that have come and gone in human history, only Jesus even makes a claim of resurrection.
I think you'll find that there have been many others. Why exactly do you think that Jesus is special in this regard?
Remember won't you that the deities listed in the article all had their backing in a book or mythology of some kind, this means that your bible is also not special.
You worship anything that you value very highly
Does this mean that I also worship my house, my computer, my girlfriend? I don't pray to science. I don't make offerings to science and I don't think any part of science is beyond being questioned. Other things that are worshiped are not treated the same by their worshipers. Hence, I still disagree with your statement about worshiping science.
*: The exception here (ie, the reason we would need to know this) is when determining the existence or probability of existence of life on other planets
1178161 is prime...
... Why exactly do you think that Jesus is special in this regard? ....
There are a lot of people who have examined the resurrection claims of Jesus Christ with the aim to refute them once and for all. One of these was Frank Morrison and he wrote a whole book about it which you can read if you are interested. It is available from Amazon or other booksellers at the ISBN: 978-1850786740. One of the strongest reasons why I believe that the resurrection actually took place, that is Jesus became physically alive again after he was dead, is the change in his disciples who proclaimed this message in the hostile Roman empire. Another one of the things in the account of the resurrection is the fact that it was first announced to women. This is entirely contrary to how that society viewed women, because the woman's testimony was worthless in those days. The message these women brought was so incredible, that Peter and John ran to the grave to verify the women's report. They found an empty grave and the Roman guard had disappeared.
All of the founders of the major world religions are still in their graves, but Jesus was not in the grave anymore and he is alive today. All this is a matter of faith because none of us were there. This is true of all of history, because none of us can go back to check it out to see if it really happened that way.
Life is lived more by faith than we realize. Every time you get on an airplane or into an automobile you have a certain amount of faith in the technology and people behind it. Every time you open a package of food, such as a cereal or a loaf of bread, you have to believe, because you do not know for sure, that it is not tainted or poisoned. Every time you go to a restaurant, you have to trust that the food is reasonably disease-free, such as salmonella for example. Sometimes, fortunately seldom, food has been tainted or contaminated and people have become sick. Sometimes planes and cars do crash.
Life is based on trust and faith and Jesus Christ is asking nothing more of you than to also have faith in him. He promises eternal life to anyone who does so. He said because I live, you shall live also. I have so trusted him and believe him, that indeed, I believe I will live again with him.
All theory is gray
I think you'll find that there have been many others [link]. Why exactly do you think that Jesus is special in this regard?
In addition to the fact that you didn't try to back up your claim that Jesus was the only one who claimed to be resurrected, you also missed the next important part:
Remember won't you that the deities listed in the article all had their backing in a book or mythology of some kind, this means that your bible is also not special.
If you discount the Christian bible, the first two paragraphs of your response are meaningless.
One of the strongest reasons why I believe that the resurrection actually took place,... ...is the change in his disciples who proclaimed this message in the hostile Roman empire.
Another one of the things in the account of the resurrection is the fact that it was first announced to women.
They found an empty grave and the Roman guard had disappeared.
Jesus was not in the grave anymore and he is alive today
None of these assertions have any evidence for them. They are all anecdotal evidence from a book that has been translated and manipulated over centuries.
All this is a matter of faith because none of us were there. This is true of all of history, because none of us can go back to check it out to see if it really happened that way.
This is true, but usually when we have more than one record, we take these records to be a little more credible (as long as they agree with each other). Even if we completely ignore the internal inconsistency of the bible, there are no third-party sources that could not have been influenced by the bible. For example, if god had stopped the Sun in the sky for three days, don't you think the Aztecs and American Indians would have recorded an unusually long night (and the Chinese an unusually long twilight, and possibly the Icelanders/Greenlanders a long morning)?
The bible is NOT EVIDENCE.
Life is lived more by faith than we realize.
This is a total non-sequitur. Of course we live putting our trust in others. But religious faith is not the same as trusting that your cereal is not infected with salmonella. The main reason for this is that companies that provide us with these goods exist today. I can actually go and visit their factories and find out what food handling procedures they have in place. No one can actually visit god, or the people who wrote the bible and thus no trust should be put in them. I know the science behind why planes fly and it is not faith that keeps them up there.
I believe I will live again with him.
Well, you believe whatever you want to believe. But when you come into a discussion saying that meteorites are myths and that we as a species have nothing to fear from them because humans won't go extinct "at least not before the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth and then not either", you should expect to be modded down.
1178161 is prime...
....None of these assertions have any evidence for them....
I guess it all depends on what you except for evidence. There are other extra biblical references to Jesus, such as by Jewish historian Flavius and others. We have more ancient manuscripts for the Bible than any other historical documents of ancient times. Historical evidence is not the same as physical evidence. We have no physical evidence that Nero ever lived, but we do have historical writings about him and all the other Roman emperors. It is the same with Jesus, although most of the details are found in the Bible. It has been found time and time again by archaeological excavations, that the Bible is historically accurate.
(....don't you think the Aztecs and American Indians...)
You assume the body of scientific reasonings that God must have used is confined to natural laws and natural methods, what you call the laws of science or physics in order to accomplish his work. We are talking about supernatural things, that is outside the natural realm where God dwells. God is not limited to the laws of physics since he invented them and can modify or suspend them at any time. Therefor your arguments about the aspects of the Chinese are meaningless because they are predicated on the observable natural law.
(....Of course we live putting our trust in others...)
So then if you can put your faith in fallible mortal humans, why is it that you cannot put your faith in an infallible, eternal God? What do you have anyway, that was not given to you? Don't answer that you worked for everything a your life, because who gave you the ability and the intelligence to be able to work? The Bible tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the only mechanism that God might use that is universal. Everybody, without exception can BELIEVE, but not everybody is intelligent, physically strong, agile, educated, beautiful, handsome and so forth. Maybe you can tell me of another human ability OTHER than faith, that God could use to determine whether a person is acceptable or rejected. Your acceptance by God is solely and only dependent on belief in him and on his word for Bible. That is why Jesus said we must come to God like little children who tend to believe until they have been lied to a few times. That is why the Bible says that all liars go straight to hell.
(.... But when you come into a discussion saying that meteorites are myths...)
I did not say that meteorites are a myth, only that the earth is not likely to destroyed by one, although the Bible does say that the whole universe shall be dissolved by fire. You appear to be of the firm belief that man controls its own destiny and there is nothing outside the reality that presents itself to our senses. I happen to believe that this world is related to the other world in the same way that your shadow is related to you. The world we live in right now is the shadow, bound up in the limits of time, but the real world is eternal, timeless. Jesus by his life and teaching gave us a small glimpse into this. God and his reality control this world and he has told us in advance how it will end and how there will be a new, perfect creation to replace this messed up, fallen old one.
All theory is gray
I did not say that meteorites are a myth
Actually, you did:
An asteroid hitting the Earth is a myth
I guess it all depends on what you accept for evidence.
Of course. If you take a thousands of years old, massively inconsistent and largely edited book to be a 100% true version of events, then so be it. For the majority of the scientific world, you'll find that it takes a lot more.
they are predicated on the observable natural law.
Of course they are, not only is there no evidence for anything existing outside of the observable natural world, is it the consistency of the universe that allows us to survive. This comes back to why planes stay in the air. If the universe's laws for physics were variable, we'd have no way of building planes. Today they work, tomorrow airfoils have to be reversed to match the changing rules. Today the petrol in your car is just flammable enough to run the engine, tomorrow your engine explodes and the day after, petrol is as reactive as water.
why is it that you cannot put your faith in an infallible, eternal God
This question assumes that a god exists. Since there is no evidence for a god, why would I believe in one?
If there was evidence for a god, I'd believe. If god was performing miracles left right and center now (like the bible says he was thousands of years ago), I'd be more inclined to believe. This isn't a "god exists and people don't believe in him" game, this is a "god may or may not exist, and the only evidence for his existence is the bible" game.
Maybe you can tell me of another human ability OTHER than faith, that God could use to determine whether a person is acceptable or rejected
With no god, this point is moot, but perhaps we could look to other religions for your answer? Muslims need to uphold the 5 pillars, 4 of which are physical actions. In the case of Islam, faith alone is not enough to garner "acceptance" or "rejection".
You appear to be of the firm belief that man controls its own destiny
There are things that are out of man's control (such as meteorites, for now), but other than natural events, there is no reason to believe that man's "destiny" is controlled or even influenced by external factors. With this being the case, why would anyone trust in a source that says that man's "destiny" is controlled by supernatural factors? The reason is that they were raised to believe so, or were convinced by someone.
1178161 is prime...
...Since there is no evidence for a god, why would I believe in one?...
For me, the entire world, both living and non-living, is evidence for a Creator God. I cannot believe that the entire created order, especially living things, did not have the input of tremendous intelligence and planning and just developed by blind natural processes.
For me science and technology were created by human intelligence which was given to man by God. Science is not the be-all and end-all of all existence, but as I said before, this world is but a shadow of a greater reality that can right now only be grasped by faith. After we both leave this life through death, we will find out who was right. Either all the promises that God makes in the Bible come true for me, or we both go out of existence. Of course, since you believe in science, you should know that nothing goes out of existence but only changes form.
The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and after that comes judgment. You cannot argue with the first part of that sentence, but you will certainly dispute the second half.
In our world, we generally operate by the principle: "show me, and I will believe", while God says in this word the Bible: " believe and I will show you". That is what God has done for me and Jesus is real and alive in my life. Amidst the turmoil of the world, Jesus Christ has fulfilled his word for me, in that he has given me his peace, which passes all human understanding.
All theory is gray