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."

Comments

anonymous coward takes lead to FIRST POST

[Anonymous Coward]

you take the lead to eat my asshole.

The Free Market fixes another intractable problem!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Bad science

[Chairboy]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

!Bad Science.

Works perfectly fine if you have enough lead time. Plus much cheaper than pushing. Not a 'free lunch' but still cheaper

Re:Bad science

[highbulp]

I'd angle the deflector shields, but that's just me.

Re:Bad science

[DerekLyons]

Ah yes. As always, the random Slashdot poster is smarter and knows better than whole legions of physicists and engineers.

Re:Bad science

[SlashV]

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?

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally. A PhD in physics and engineering, among other subjects, is required before one is allowed to post on Slashdot. How the hell did you get in?

Re:Bad science

[El Torico]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single space scientist has ever had that thought. Good research.

Re:Bad science

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:Bad science

[SilverHatHacker]

Except for, you know, the fallout from the blast.

Re:Bad science

[hort_wort]

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

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, actually, for an asteroid big enough to knock out a city, we'd probably have ten years or so notice.

Re:Bad science

[Brian Gordon]

I'm not worried about radiation exposure from this sample. The odds of one of those atoms decaying is infinitesimal!

Re:Bad science

[Fluffeh]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Nyeerrmm]

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).

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. This sounds like something based on a business plan written by the average teenage slashdotter before they learn much of anything about anything.

Re:Bad science

[SETIGuy]

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.

Re:Bad science

[SilverHatHacker]

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.

Re:Bad science

[SETIGuy]

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.

Re:Bad science

[mhajicek]

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.

Re:Bad science

[LandGator]

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

Re:Bad science

[ppanon]

The problem is that a number of the objects of interest

1. may be particulate agglomerations that aren't solid enough to have something push at them,
2. are likely to be spinning, so that you would first need to stop their spin, otherwise see this
3. are likely to be of irregular shape and mass distribution that would make it difficult to push them efficiently in the direction you want without getting unwanted spin resulting.

Sure you could solve each of these problems individually, but a gravity tug bypasses them all at once, at the expense of needing either

1. more time to operate
2. a larger attractive mass requiring more energy to move both it and the target object

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.

Re:Bad science

[murdocj]

You're not supposed to inject reality into the "omg killer asteroids are coming" discussion.

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, actually, an asteroid big enough to knock out a city is about 10m in diameter...

The only answer: Sharks with lasers.

Re:Bad science

[iron spartan]

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?

Re:Bad science

[rossdee]

"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.

Re:Bad science

[DerekLyons]

Actually, he doesn't have to be smarter than legions of physicists and engineers.

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.
 
 

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

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.)
 
 

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.

I think I've adequately demonstrated that you haven't a clue what you are talking about. Your opinion are irrelevant, uninformed, and meaningless.

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

...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.

Re:Bad science

[Nyeerrmm]

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.

Re:Bad science

[__aajfby9338]

...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.

Re:Bad science

[Fluffeh]

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?

Re:Bad science

[Kagura]

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...

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

.We're discussing science in this thread, not mythology...

In this case there are people who believe, that is have faith, that there is a significant probability of the earth being destroyed by an asteroid. This mythology and belief not science. Nobody KNOWS whether this will happen, it is all conjecture. As someone else posted on this thread, there is 500 times bigger likelihood of winning the jackpot of the lottery.

Historically, all the prophecies without a single exception written in the Bible have so far come true. 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. It did happen in 1948 and Israel has become a thorn in the flesh for all the surrounding nations. That this would happen has also been foretold, specifically concerning the city of Jerusalem, that it would be a thorn in the flesh or stumbling block for the nations, all nations. Can you think of another city on the whole face of the earth, where a zoning change makes headlines in the world's cities newspapers and other media? What other city in the world would it make a difference if they decide to build a hotel or a few apartment houses or not? Because of the contentious nature of Jerusalem, this is exactly what is happening today.

This is not myth, but current events. An asteroid hitting the Earth is a myth or at least highly improbable, where's this is real and written about in every newspaper of Earth.

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people did the last one kill? Zero? Then we're safe!

Re:Bad science

[emjay88]

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.

Re:Bad science

[emjay88]

gravity is the only purely attractive force

Not necessarily...
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
/Pedant

Re:Bad science

[Nyeerrmm]

Fair enough. In my view \vec{f}=-(GMm)/r^3 \vec{r}... none of your fancy physics for me.

Re:Bad science

[Hognoxious]

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.

Re:Bad science

[nedlohs]

Holy crap, decimate used with the original definition.

OK, now I've seen everything.

Re:Bad science

[Hognoxious]

Historically, all the prophecies without a single exception written in the Bible have so far come true.

All of them? I don't recall seeing a seven headed dragon anywhere.

Re:Bad science

[Hognoxious]

The fragments would continue on exactly the same course, at exactly the same velocity? Don't think so.

Re:Bad science

[selven]

That doesn't include being killed by small asteroids. Or winning secondary prizes in the state lottery.

Re:Bad science

[selven]

What if we use thousands of nukes, ie. the ones the anti-proliferation people want us to decommission?

Re:Bad science

[Hognoxious]

None of those restrictions would prevent you nuking it.

Re:Bad science

[mlush]

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

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

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..

Re:Bad science

[Bakkster]

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!

Re:Bad science

[commodore64_love]

>>>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

Re:Bad science

[commodore64_love]

>>>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.

Re:Bad science

[Gilmoure]

What, no X-Ray laser pulse ships?

Am seriously jonesing to see Footfall's space battle made in to a movie.

Re:Bad science

[Gilmoure]

Don't forget to divert the anti-matter particle beam and re-calibrate it to frapé.

Re:Bad science

[nasor]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Nyeerrmm]

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.

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

...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.

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

.... 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.

Re:Bad science

[Tetsujin]

Amateur.

Everybody knows you've got to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

Re:Bad science

[stubob]

I've seen the same head seven times. Does that count?

Re:Bad science

[Cedric Tsui]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Phoenixlol]

It's never cloudy when asteroids are falling. Haven't you ever seen an apocolyptic movie?

Re:Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

never was that impressed with europe

Re:Bad science

[ppanon]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Keen Anthony]

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.

Re:Bad science

[bronney]

But that would overload the flux capacitor conduit thereby inducing a catalytic tachyon space-time channel, and that has nothing to do with HBO.

Re:Bad science

[xkcdFan1011011101111]

there is a non-zero probability that anything can happen.....

Re:Bad science

[bhiestand]

"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...

Re:Bad science

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:Bad science

[Keen Anthony]

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.

Re:Bad science

[emjay88]

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.

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

.....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.

Re:Bad science

[emjay88]

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

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

... 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.

Re:Bad science

[emjay88]

Ok, you have clearly failed to fully read my post.

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.

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

....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.

Re:Bad science

[emjay88]

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.

Re:Bad science

[arminw]

...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.

The only question is....

[popo]

Smart Bomb or Hyperspace?

Re:The only question is....

[alexborges]

Those technologies don't even exist.

We should get some psychics and move it by telekinesis, duh.

Re:The only question is....

[Spy der Mann]

Don't worry, the time travelers will give us the technology JUST IN TIME.

First things first.

[AltGrendel]

We need to take care of the Yellowstone Caldera first. I think that's more likely to erupt before an asteroid hits.

Re:First things first.

[Opyros]

Sure, but at least we have some idea what to do about an asteroid impact. How would we prepare for a supervolcano? The only way to survive is by being somewhere else when it erupts.

Re:First things first.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean SCO Linux?

Re:First things first.

[Nyeerrmm]

Can't we do both at once?

My backgrounds in space mission design, not geology.. pretty sure the cost to benefit ratio is going to show I'm better off working on asteroid deflection while the geologist down the street gets to work looking at mitigating supervolcanoes. And of course the automotive engineers over there on the other side of town are probably best off developing newer, more efficient cars, and my friends in aerodynamics should working on more efficient aircraft and better wind turbines.

Lots of problems in the world, but also lots of people with lots of different skills

Re:First things first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first thing that comes to mind is fields of geothermal plants.
Downsides are:
1) Ruins landscape
2) Ruins tourism
3) Potential chance of causing a low temperature "point" and causing eruption, almost as if you poked a hole in a balloon.
4) Even more heat being pumped in to the atmosphere indirectly via electrical equipment, or lost due to lack or storage.

In fact, that is the only thing i can think of, the others are unlikely going to work or entirely infeasible.

Re:First things first.

[internettoughguy]

Taupo's worse, last time that shit went off the Romans saw it.

Re:First things first.

[Type44Q]

You mean 'take care of' as in: >makes gun shape with finger and thumb, aims at head... ?? Seriously though, when I read that, the scene in Pulp Fiction where Travolta is telling Samuel Jackson about his upcoming date with the boss's wife. :P

Re:First things first.

[trawg]

Can't everyone just, like, move away from that place?

I don't know if I'm reading wiki wrong but that doesn't look like an end-of-all-life-on-earth sort of event, like an asteroid slamming into it would be :)

(Disclaimer: I just finished re-reading Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle. Well worth a read!!)

Re:First things first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but at least we have some idea what to do about an asteroid impact. How would we prepare for a supervolcano? The only way to survive is by being somewhere else when it erupts.

That's, like, the same rule for all volcanoes....

Re:First things first.

[Gilmoure]

Hmmm... I'm good at looking at porn, wasting time on slashdot and clicking pretty icons on my Mac. I wonder what problem I can solve to make the world a better place?

And if it involves beer, brats and Dr. Who marathons, even better!

World, I'm ready to save ya!

Re:First things first.

[vertinox]

The only way to survive is by being somewhere else when it erupts.

I think that applies to most disasters where being elsewhere is key to survival.

Take California for example... I'm doing pretty good right now living on the East Coast.

Re:First things first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... I'm good at looking at porn, wasting time on slashdot and clicking pretty icons on my Mac. I wonder what problem I can solve to make the world a better place?

And if it involves beer, brats and Dr. Who marathons, even better!

World, I'm ready to save ya!

If you don't mind the long internet latency, we could use your signficant mass in a gravity tractor. Imagine you could help save the world while enjoying all those things you've mentioned!

Re:First things first.

[Nivag064]

Consider the impact of a moderately sized meteor hitting the Yellowstone Caldera - the combination would be far more deadly than a much larger meteor hitting somewhere else.

Ask Ed Logg?

[Anonymous Coward]

He knows something about Asteroids.

What could go wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What could go wrong.

[dkleinsc]

Under those sorts of conditions, I'm fairly certain NASA could (with the support of the president) say "The judge has made its decision, now let them enforce it!" and used the gravity tractor anyways.

Re:What could go wrong.

[Gilmoure]

Could throwing a court house at an asteroid help?

15 years to prepare?

[planckscale]

The time required to make this work seems too long to be practical. I would think we'd have a year at most to find an asteroid on a collision course. Furthermore, I think we should concentrate our efforts on finding the rocks that are a threat.

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.

Re:15 years to prepare?

[LandGator]

A year? A year? With 2008_TC3, we had twenty hours. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_TC3 We need an Project Orion ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion), an Archangel Michael design http://www.up-ship.com/apr/michael.htm to shove the next Dinosaur Killer Rock out of the way.

Re:15 years to prepare?

[MichaelSmith]

For many impactors up to about the size of The Foot it is enough to know exactly where and when they will impact. For objects bigger than that (Lucifers Hammer) is may be easier to move people off the planet than changing the trajectory of the impactor.

Missile Command?

[corsec67]

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)

Simple Solution

[flyingfsck]

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.

Re:Simple Solution

[alexborges]

now how are we gonna get a gazillion tons of water all the way to the asteroid?

Re:Simple Solution

[mhajicek]

Changing the mass of an object will not alter it's orbital trajectory unless that mass is significant enough to act gravitationally on the body (or bodies) that it's orbiting. The impetus from hitting it with high-velocity water would provide thrust, like how a firehose pushes people back, but it would be far less efficient than an ion thruster.

Re:Simple Solution

[Jeng]

Burning it with a solid state laser to cause out gassing would be simpler and lighter, plus it could also be used on smaller items like space junk.

Re:Simple Solution

[Hognoxious]

You'd need a lot of energy to get that water to a high velocity. Ejecting the water at high velocity would tend to push the "fire engine ship" in the opposite direction. Then you'd need even more energy to run some kind of thruster to resist that recoil.

I'm glad he donated the idea, that's about what it's worth.

Red lighted

[HTH NE1]

British Company Takes Lead To Stop Asteroids

Thank God! That was such a stupid idea to base a movie on that game.

Asteroids?

[MRe_nl]

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)

Not necessarily

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Not necessarily

[FudRucker]

2036 is awfully close to the end of UNIX time, maybe it is a prophecy of the end ;-]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

Re:Not necessarily

[Exception Duck]

This should scare some people.
I actually don't recommend reading this if you obsess about things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_and_planet_Earth

For the rest - have fun and sweet dreams.

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, you need to create a problem to solve another.

Warm regards,
Yahweh

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

> a direct Earth impact in 2036

Hey! If I live the statistical average lifespan of a US male, I will die in 2036. I wonder if that's somehow related.

Re:Not necessarily

[ScrewMaster]

Apophis will make a near pass to Earth in 2029.

Must be a mistake. The Goa'uld already tried that back in 2002 ... we used a hyperspace generator to jump the rock around Earth. Worked like a charm too, although it was a bit touch-and-go there for a bit. In any event, Apophis is only a false god. A dead false god.

Re:Not necessarily

[Spy der Mann]

Screw the asteroids! Just give me a fricking red button.
- Dr. Evil

Re:Not necessarily

[mhajicek]

Correction: through, not around.

Re:Not necessarily

[ScrewMaster]

Correction: through, not around.

I don't think you can successfully pick that nit, given that the rock was transferred via hyperspace. Besides, had it gone through the Earth, there'd have been one goddamn big hole in our home planet.

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

We can afford to lose a billion or so people. Bring it on!

Re:Not necessarily

[d0rp]

99942 Apophis will make a near pass to Earth in 2029

I saw that episode: Carter discovered that the asteroid was composed of mostly Naquadah, and that detonating the bomb would cause a chain reaction and destroy the entire solar system. They managed to use the hyperdrive on the cargo ship to safely make the asteroid pass through to the other side of the Earth and thwart Apophis' latest plan...

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

That asteroid actually makes a fairly close pass in late 2012, but unlike 2029 or 2036 it's comfortably outside Earth's orbital plane that time around. If an intercept probe were launched close to October 2012 or so, it shouldn't have a problem getting to it.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it would be wise to test a gravity tug concept that soon. (Can an adequate mission be set up in 2-1/2 years?) There's always the chance somebody could really screw up and make things worse on the next pass.

Gotta find them first

[iron spartan]

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.

Re:Gotta find them first

[Anti_Climax]

IMHO, lets work on finding and tracking large asteroids first.

Already on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAN-STARRS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope

Re:Gotta find them first

[LandGator]

{snip} IMHO, lets work on finding and tracking large asteroids first.

Agreed. However, http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/ shows ten programs looking for Near-Earth Objects, including a joint Italio-German program and a Japanese project. Despite all of those, 2008_TC3 got within 20 hours of earth before detection. Had its composition been different, its 2 KT explosion would have been a ground burst. Scale the mass up by an order of magnitude, and we're talking Hiroshima. Its diameter and detectability need only be 3x larger, so detection within 60 hours before a town-buster arrives. Scale it up another order of magnitude, and we have less than a week to evacuate from a 200KT city-buster. What will your town look like when a mandatory evac order is declared?

CCTV

[ickleberry]

Does this plan involve taking all of Britain's CCTV cameras and pointing them towards the sky?

Re:CCTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if there are knockers and knickers threatening the Earth.

Re:CCTV

[ScrewMaster]

Does this plan involve taking all of Britain's CCTV cameras and pointing them towards the sky?

Yes indeed it does, thereby making one giant CCD imager.

Re:CCTV

[Grim Leaper]

Don't you realise that just pushes the asteroid problem along to the next planet?

Re:CCTV

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Don't you realise that just pushes the asteroid problem along to the next planet?

Nah, asteroids impacts are crimes of passion.

Re:CCTV

[Rocketship Underpant]

Yes. That way, if an asteroid destroys civilization, they have a 0.1% chance of catching it in the act.

what can go wrong?

[Joe The Dragon]

what can go wrong?

Re:what can go wrong?

[ectotherm]

"Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, In all of the directions it can whiz; As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth; And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!" -- Eric Idle

Budgets cuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't matter much if we can divert an asteroid if budget cuts cost us the ability to see it coming.

Re:Budgets cuts

[ScrewMaster]

Won't matter much if we can divert an asteroid if budget cuts cost us the ability to see it coming.

Deep down, nobody really believes it will ever happen, especially Congress, which has no awareness of consequence anyway.

Re:Budgets cuts

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, and if it does, they'll believe it's the Rapture.

What about their business plan?

[dapyx]

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"?

Re:What about their business plan?

[D'Sphitz]

I don't know (i didn't rtfa either) but it's amazing that things that we have the means to do, wouldn't be particularly expensive, and which could save the human race some day, we don't do simply because it's not profitable (like killing Arabs).

Re:What about their business plan?

[master5o1]

(like killing Arabs).

Wait...what?

Re:What about their business plan?

[gijoel]

Nice planet you've got here.....

Be a shame if something happened to it.

Re:What about their business plan?

[SETIGuy]

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"?

Any technology that can be used to divert an asteroid away from the Earth can also be used to direct one toward the Earth. I would guess they could get venture capital for a business plan like "pay us a gazillion dollars or we will use our technology to alter the course of this asteroid."

Lots of other businesses have "destroy the Earth" in their business plan. Why should commercial space ventures be any different?

Re:What about their business plan?

[mhajicek]

I think he means that killing Arabs is profitable (Halliburton, anyone?), while making preparations to save humanity generally isn't.

Re:What about their business plan?

[Jeng]

Perhaps it could also be used for catching asteroids and parking them in orbit for automated mining.

Re:What about their business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

shit i agree on this

with the petroleum money the raise the tuition price of our best university than they leave for some backward ass country

funny captcha fisted

Re:What about their business plan?

[shadowblaster]

I would call their bluff.

If they don't use it, they won't be around either after the asteroid hits.

Re:What about their business plan?

[TheLink]

No point. Plenty of asteroids are already in a parking orbit.

It would be way too expensive to force an asteroid that's hurtling towards the earth to slow down and go into orbit instead of whizzing past.

Re:What about their business plan?

[228e2]

Dr. Evil? Is that you?

Re:What about their business plan?

[BrokenHalo]

Lots of other businesses have "destroy the Earth" in their business plan. Why should commercial space ventures be any different?

Hmmm, let me see... Nothing to do with the fact that they don't have an alternative planet to live on.

Re:What about their business plan?

[stfvon007]

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!

Re:What about their business plan?

[shentino]

Throw killer robots into the mix and you've got a plan...

Re:What about their business plan?

[AmiMoJo]

I think it's more like "give us millions of pounds to develop this thing we came up with on the back of a napkin kthxbai".

They don't have a prototype. No proven or even experimentally tested hardware. They just have a vague idea and a press release.

Re:What about their business plan?

[Hognoxious]

Any technology that can be used to divert an asteroid away from the Earth can also be used to direct one toward the Earth.

Given that Earth is teeny weeny and space is like totally big, it would seem it requires better (by several orders of magnitude) targeting to hit Earth than to hit not-Earth.

Re:What about their business plan?

[selven]

"We will push it out of orbit or, if you pay us well, we'll just redirect it by a few thousand kilometers to the country of your choice..."

Re:What about their business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be a protection scheme. Pay us a gazillion dollars or else we WILL use the technology FOR the asteroid.

Re:What about their business plan?

[tha_toadman]

XENU!? Is that really you!?

Re:What about their business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

XENU!? Is that really you!?

Whoosh!

Hint: Monty Python. Two gangsters, the Fracotti Brothers, who tried to run a protection racket on an Army base, amongst other things. You've got a lot of nice tanks here. Be a shame if some of them got ... broken.

Re:What about their business plan?

[feelbad_feelsgood]

Destroying the earth is notoriously difficult.

Re:What about their business plan?

[Thinboy00]

The Earth has gravity, but ambient space doesn't.

Re:What about their business plan?

[RockDoctor]

Given that Earth is teeny weeny and space is like totally big, it would seem it requires better (by several orders of magnitude) targeting to hit Earth than to hit not-Earth.

My sense of irony would like to be told that you typed that at the bottom of Meteor Crater, Arizona, or in either the city of Sudbury, Ontario or Nordlingen, Germany.
But my sense of irony is used to not getting what it wants.
In case you didn't know ...

• Meteor Crater is a meteor crater ;
• Nordlingen is in the middle of a 20-odd km diameter meteor crater of some 25 million years age (I'd have to go and read one of the fine manuals I got when I visited there to get the exact age, but like meteor Crater, it's one of the locales that Shoemaker took the Apollo astronauts to while teaching them to be something resembling geologists) ;
• Sudbury is in the centre of a several hundred-km diameter impact structure of pre-Grenvillian age - over a billion years ago.

Just because getting hit by large impactors doesn't happen very often on the Earth (in the timescale of historical memory), doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. For reference, it's happened at least twice to Jupiter in my lifetime, that people have noticed. It's probable that the same is true for you.

Kabooommmm

[Mojo01010011]

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?

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the phrase "free market" offend you in some way? Is it sacriligeous to you, does it defile all that you hold to be dear and sacred? Does it drown dolphins and club baby seals to death? Or are a few ACs so incredibly fixated with it merely because a few prominent media figures like to talk about it?

Hmm, let's see now: a few talk show hosts keep using the phrase "free market", so you in turn use every opportunity to work it into any Slashdot discussion that mentions purchasing or funding anything. That tells me two things. One, those talk shows were obviously very effective on you. A talk show host doesn't generally want you to listen to his show and then forget all about everything he was saying; what you are doing is very much like the fixation that gets them the ratings they need before they can laugh all the way to the bank. Two, you're making "your side" look like such obsessive repetitive idiots that anyone who would have been receptive or sympathetic to your views stands a high chance of being turned off by them and refusing to consider them. Good job.

It's such a simple issue, too. If you are talking about regulated government monopolies like electric utilities or telephone companies, "deregulation" just gives them more ability to abuse their customers because all the deregulation in the world doesn't remove the incredibly high barriers to entry that is an inherent feature of those industries (you want to really, truly compete with the phone company, first you need to run wires to every home in your service area - not trivial). If you are talking about industries that are not inherently monopolistic, then you have a couple of choices. You can have the government worry only about actual crimes like fraud and otherwise let it be understood that "you are on your own" so if you as a customer fail to look after your own interests, that's your problem. Or you can have regulations in place to make it much less likely that the average person gets screwed, at the disadvantage of treating adult citizens as though they were incompetent children, expanded government bureaucracy and all the problems that come with it, and the removal of what would otherwise have been negative outcomes attached to poor decision-making (also known as personal responsibility). Those of us who don't need a nanny state government that knows what's best for us prefer that the government only worry about actual crimes. Those of us who are more naive and really want to believe that $multinational_corporation is our bestest buddy and would never take advantage of us in any way because the people in the commercials all look so happy, tend to want government to take on more of a micromanagement role. Because those of us who are capable of good decision-making and can think entirely for ourselves are in the minority, and do suffer secondary effects from the unprincipled impulsiveness and poor decision-making of the majority, a balance between those two is generally desired.

The issue is really that simple and all of the "must demonize the free market!" AC troll posts in the world won't change that. End of fascination.

Well, possibly.

[sam_vilain]

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 have a few questions...

[14erCleaner]

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?

Re:I have a few questions...

[ScrewMaster]

And are they going to hire Bruce Willis to drive it?

No, Robert Duvall.

Re:I have a few questions...

[Werkhaus]

No, Robert Duvall.

Or the Leningrad Cowboys.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[MrMista_B]

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!

One stone, two birds...

[pjt48108]

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...

Re:One stone, two birds...

[maxume]

Fuel. The debris occupies a huge volume, and to collect each piece, you have to spend enough time in an intersecting orbit for the piece to come to you.

Re:One stone, two birds...

[pjt48108]

It is dispersed throughout a large volume, certainly. But with an automated craft, provided with ion engines and enough time, it seems you one be able to achieve a considerable collection of debris.

Re:One stone, two birds...

[maxume]

Well, it isn't obvious to me whether the fuel expended on such a task would be less than the mass collected, no matter the efficiency of the engines.

In any case, when facing an asteroid that needs deflection, "Spend an extra $15 billion" is a pretty easy choice (to me).

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad you support the free market!

That sound you hear is people laughing at you, not with you.

When the cost of making this device is equal to or less than the value provided by it, it will be made.

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.

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.

And if there is something headed our way that will literally destroy the entire world, "free market" and all, then so be it, huh?

The Free Market "wins" and "works" again!

FTFY

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[LandGator]

Or, Bill Gates.

I would rather use missiles

[tecnico.hitos]

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.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[camperdave]

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.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this stop the fall of brown nuggets and the flow of golden showers?

Re:Question

[GameboyRMH]

Brown nuggets: it can divert them but not stop them. Golden showers: no, you can't blot out the sun with one little rocket.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Runaway1956]

"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 . . . . .

Sunlight lensing?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What about the flying saucers?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Anonymous Coward]

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/

Brits. Thank you.

[joocemann]

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.

Armageddon II: This Time It's A Heroic Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

OK smarty pants, what about rotation?

[istartedi]

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).

so what do the thrusters act on?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Rosoideae Rosa By Alternative Nomenclature

[DynaSoar]

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.

Why not just..

[Anonymous Coward]

Send out your mom? Afterall she's so big she makes them asteroids orbit 'round her.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[ILuvRamen]

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.

Where are they taking it from?

[Hognoxious]

I suppose it's useful because it's fairly dense but quite soft. Are they taking it off church roofs?

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[icebrain]

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.

Re:The Free Market fixes another intractable probl

[Gilmoure]

I thought the free market was being run by a secret oligarghy of bankers and gyro meat vendors?

Good Enough Solution

[ichbineinneuben]

...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...

Tractor?

[Gunstick]

Something like this?
http://lh3.ggpht.com/tractorpulling.sascha/Rq3MVhNj0pI/AAAAAAAA1IA/C-zpcerQeTA/s576/IMG_6111.JPG

Economics for Evil Geniuses...

[Tetsujin]

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...

Nukes in Space

[Tetsujin]

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...

It's been done a century ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you first re-read Jules Verne's
La Chasse aux Météors

Meanwhile, in Entertainment News...

[LeadSongDog]

Clint Eastwood is rumored to be negotiating a new movie.

They've hired Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell?

[kimgkimg]

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...)