The Social Difficulty of Saving Earth From an Asteroid

mantis2009 writes "When it comes to stopping a cataclysmic Earth vs. asteroid event, social science and international political leaders have more difficult questions yet unanswered than physicists do, according to report delivered at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting. Wired has a discussion of an analysis authored by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who worries that the international community is nowhere near ready to begin the complex and inevitably controversial task of deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Among the questions to be answered is whether to modify the Partial Test Ban Treaty to allow nuclear weapons in outer space. Another possibility to avoid the destruction of civilization would require the international community to choose an area on the globe where an asteroid might be 'aimed.' Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?"

Comments

Re:Simpsons did it...

[arethuza]

I would bet on the Russians - they have an excellent track record of just "getting things done" in their space program and experience in building really really big H bombs.

Sales Job

[DynaSoar]

Rusty Schweickart is not, in this instance, an ex-astronaut, he is the CEO of B612 Foundation, dedicated to promoting their gravity tractor design for asteroid deflection. This design solves the 'problems' which are here hung around the necks of politicians. B612 has been 'solving' these same problems in the same way for over 20 years now. The situations where this design fails are still the same also, most notably short notice. This is no objective analysis of solutions to social and other problems that might arise --- this is a sales job for one of several designs that would need to be developed in order to meet the many possible problems. Yet this and the other designs with potential business backing, do not present themselves are inadequate alone, a social problem itself, in that these 'experts' are not pounding home the truth that no one an tell ahead of time which of these would be needed and/or would work if tried, so several different esigns would be required to be available. Also, these are large scale interplanetary programs, with a good chance of technical failure preventing successful completion, thus making it necessary to have more than one of each design available. Figure the odds of getting funding for more than one copy of one design. Yeah, until the impact table comes out with our names on it.