International Organization To Assess Earth Defense From Space Dangers

arisvega writes in with a story about an international organization that is trying to come up with options to save the planet from a large asteroid or comet collision. "NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision (PDF) path with our planet. The effort is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, and had its kick-off meeting this week. It will draw on expertise from across Europe, Russia and the US. It's a major EU-funded initiative that will pull together all the latest science, initiate a fair few laboratory experiments and new modelling work, and then try to come to some definitive positions. Industrial partners, which include the German, British and French divisions of the big Astrium space company, will consider the engineering architecture required to deflect one of these bodies out of our path."

Comments

Re:Armageddon!

[loustic]

We just need one more *orginization* to save us from typos and humanity is saved ...

NEOShield? That's all they could come up with?

[Samantha Wright]

Seriously. Fiction is ripe with way better names than that. Next time just swipe one! I'd feel much safer in the hands of the Earth Defense Force.

NEOShield, can just send the

[Dogbertius]

New Avengers, assemble!!!

Failing that, we still have Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, and Aerosmith.

Re:Spelling

[BasilBrush]

"Orginization" (in the headline) should be spelled "Organization"

That's nothing. Look how they misspelled "Space Dragons".

Currently Proposed Defense System

[l0ungeb0y]

The are presently reviewing a Space Defense System that consists of a miles long series of defensive shields protecting a rail-mounted missile platform with gaps between the shields creating launch apertures. The missile platform can be operated remotely, much in the same way as current UAV drones. However, there is no missile guidance control and the display is very pixelated with only 1-bit color depth. if you ask me, they'll need to vastly improve the graphics if they want to see this proposal get accepted.

Re:Looking at the problem backwards.

[ColdWetDog]

You realize, of course, that important backups never work when you need them.

We're doomed.

Re:Armageddon!

[SlippyToad]

I think the nuke idea came from Edward Teller, who was basically a pyromaniac given a government grant.

He was just jazzed to blow up things, and applying gigantic nuclear explosions to meteorites would have given him jack-off material for the rest of his life.

Of course I think he's dead now, so we can do something that a sane person would.