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Laser Treatment For Earth-Bound Asteroids
arisvega writes "A recent publication (for the math-versed) proposing the deployment of a Solar-powered, space-borne fleet of LASER cannons that would deflect Earth-bound asteroids caught the attention of international news agencies. Do you think this ambition can in reasonable time turn into a fair-priced, life-saving (or indeed Biosphere-saving!) project, that will be to the benefit of all mankind? How threatened would you feel from the possibility of this proposed array being hijacked by extremely depraved individuals, ones capable or guilty of great crimes? And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?"
sharks with friggen laser beams in space muahahahaha
I think Bruce Willis might be enough...
Lasers with sufficient energy density to cause gaseous phase change of asteroid surface materials might not be strong enough to do anything impressive on the Earth's surface... lots of atmosphere to get through here.
The idea of a fleet of lower powered satellites is also less likely to be hijacked than a single "super cannon" - though, if you control the whole fleet, I suppose you could "turn up the heat on the Kremlin" if you ever wanted to....
Lets make sure we follow patent laws.
"And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?"
But don't forget, when lives are stake we have to make sure the laser is FCC approved as well.
> How threatened would you feel from the possibility of this proposed array being hijacked by extremely depraved individuals, ones capable or guilty of great crimes?
Not very. And if the array can be abused, wouldn't anyone who has control of the array be capable of great crimes by definition? Come on, if you're going to spread FUD at least put some effort in it. Mention China or Communism or Muslims. I feel scared already.
> And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?"
There isn't any money to be made here. Getting those lasers in orbit is very expensive, and once they're up there you can't go the 'pay up or else!'-route because the world will simply give you the finger and impound your stuff. Why any company would want to patent this idea is beyond me.
Our current ability of detecting asteroids and predicting their course is not nearly enough to interfere with them, there's a lot of development in both detections and simulation that has to be done before we can even think of trying to deflect an asteroid.
Diverting the asteroid means, that 1) we can track it accurately
2) the lasers have enough accuracy to hit the asteroid on the same spot, and not cancel each other out
3) the asteroid isn't spinning (but this might allow it to slow down a bit)
..........FULL STOP.
if you don't give me 100bil I will destroy Washington D.C., and then additional major cities each hour, using a giant "laser"
Put the lasers on the far side of the moon. That way, they could never target Earth. You'd only be able to hit the asteroid for fourteen days out of every twenty-eight, but hey, it's safer, right?
(Actually, put two installations on its equator, both near but not within visible range of Earth, and you'd be able to hit it 90+% of the time.)
you can point them in any direction you like, that doesn't necessarily make them instantly dangerous.
GRASER emitters (gamma ray beam weapons) would be good in space because they have no atmosphere to punch through. You could kill a satellite with one of those pretty much at line-of-sight range. Point one downward, and it wouldn't bother a plane cruising at 37,000 feet - because it has miles of lovely gamma-absorbing atmosphere to punch through first! Laser beams would scatter too much to be any problem by the time they hit the surface (the lunar ranging experiment uses a green laser to bounce off the mirror left on the moon by Apollo. By the time the 10mm-emitted beam hits the lunar surface it's 17km wide - almost entirely caused by atmospheric scatter in the first 14 miles of its journey).
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
We already have the technology we need, it's just that idiots have to be removed from the decision-making process. (This obviously applies to other areas of human endeavor).
Ezekiel 23:20
dr evil only takes cash or check
in all of history, the number of extinction level asteroid impacts are very few and far between. The number of times mankind has come close to using technology in such a way that it leads to an equivalent event are almost too numerous to count, even though we've not been in possession of such technology for more than 100 years. Long story short, I think asteroids are the least of our worries.
Removes unsightly craters! Restores youthful appearance! Look billions of years younger!
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
It's a slightly different analysis of an idea that's been proposed before. The genera idea is to divert annoying asteroids slightly by firing lasers at them from reasonably close range to boil off some surface. This is a long, slow process, taking years. It has to be done from a great enough distance that the stuff being boiled off doesn't mess up the optics, but not so far off that enough energy can't be delivered to a narrow spot to boil rock. The paper is just an analysis of the size and number of spacecraft required, assuming a solar power system driving a solid state laser. (Why not just focus the sun? The mirror has to be too close to the asteroid to get a tight enough beam, and then it gets hit by the rock being boiled off.)
As a weapon system, it's not very useful. It's too expensive and vulnerable for an anti-satellite weapon. The beam might be able to deliver enough energy through the atmosphere to set fires, but the spacecraft would have to be put in low earth orbit to do it.
We get the space privateers out there like Elon Musk and friends to mine some asteroids, and ask them nicely to send some useless iron ones back to the moon. Fuck mining them, send some to the moon, like, yesterday.
The moon will soon have a small ring of asteroids ready to be dislodged from their Lunar orbit like a loaded twirling sling. We can use that mass to tug an asteroid, or smash it and it's fragments until they're no longer dangerous. TADA, we're a lot more prepared for unforseen shit. We might not be able to stop a planetoid that could be careening our way, but we'd at least be somewhat armed... You think we'd have already seen all the things nearly the size of a planet zipping around the what 50, 100, 1000 years ago? Nope.
Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly. It is estimated to be approximately 2300–2400 km in diameter, and 27% more massive than Pluto, or about 0.27% of the Earth's mass. Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown, and its identity was verified later that year. In 2005, we discovered for the first time something five times the size of pluto was orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
We're nearly fucking blind man! If priority #1 isn't solving the "all your eggs are in one basket" problem by colonising other planets or moons around other planets, then we're all doomed. The lasers and lunar asteroid slingshot MIGHT buy us a little time... Think about that next time NASA budgets are cut while we spend trillions in wars against brown people over oil. What the fuck will having the oil do when you're roasted alive by a gama-ray burst, or planet killing asteroid?
"In 2005, we discovered for the first time something five times the size of pluto orbiting between Mars and Jupiter"
That statement is so obviously wrong that it made me want to dismiss the entire post because, well honestly, if somebody's gonna make such a stupid statement it's like when a person makes a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. You know they COULD be an informed, intelligent person but your inner bias says no.
Look, if astronomers discovered something in 2005 that was five times the "size" (Mass? Volume? Diameter?) of Pluto between Mars and Jupiter the entire astronomical community should be ashamed of itself for not spotting it CENTURIES earlier (it should be naked to the visible eye unless painted flat black, with a new coat of paint every week). Shit, the gravitational perturbations alone should have made it discoverable long ago, that's how Neptune and (I think) Pluto were found, much much farther away.
Now that I've got that off my chest, there are some problems with your idea. Why put these chunks of rock (iron?) in lunar orbit? Because of the three-body problem which even Newton (and everyone since) couldn't solve, these orbits may not be stable and may indeed be chaotic (hence the "interplanetary highway"). So after a (very long) period of time, when humanity (if it's still around) may not have a space program, these big (and they've got to be big in order to do serious damage to an asteroid that's already in cislunar space) may come crashing down onto earth. Why not put them in a stable trojan point either earth-moon L4 or L5 or sun-earth L4 or L5? Or, considering all the effort you're putting into doing this, why not just track all the earth orbit crossing asteroids a century or two out and (gently) tweak their orbits. Orbital mechanics IS a science and as long as you're not trying to project very far into the future, we could easily predict what's gonna hit us with much less effort than putting kilotons of rocks in motion.
Now get off my lawn.