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Two Space Missions Planned To Look For Killer Asteroids
The Bad Astronomer writes "Today, the B612 Foundation announced it's seeking private funds to build Sentinel, a space mission to find Earth-threatening asteroids. Placed in a Venus-like orbit, it should find a large fraction of these potentially hazardous rocks. At the same time, the NEOCam (Near Earth Object camera) website went live today. This is a separate, publicly-funded space mission also designed to look for these asteroids. While Sentinel will concentrate on finding them and getting accurate positions and orbits, NEOCam will focus more on getting their physical characteristics. While not strictly competing with each other, they are more complementary; with both missions flying (in the 2017 time range) we will learn a huge amount about the asteroid threat from space."
does somebody know something they're not telling us about
no, people are being conditioned by mass media and government to be in a constant state of emergency and looking for something about which to panic. This provides opportunity for profiteering, for control, to maintain power.
When was the last time in recorded history an asteroid landed on people? That's right, never. Even the Tunguska thing flattened a lot of trees but killed no one. That's because the Earth isn't rigged like Coruscant, or Trantor. But if you want to look for rocks which have essentially the same orbit as the Earth, and could be nudged into a double-lunar capture to become a source of raw materials in cis-lunar space, I'll sign up for that one.
no, people are being conditioned by mass media and government to be in a constant state of emergency and looking for something about which to panic.
That's an exaggeration. Mass media thinks they can't sell anything if it doesn't have a sensationalistic headline.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-NkX86uPI0&feature=related
Dinosaurs: "WTF mankind? Where were you during the cretaceous? FML."
Yours is an old platitude with no basis in reality anymore. This hasn't been an exaggeration since the start of the Iraq war.
thank you for providing one motive for the problem I pointed out. And lawmakers can't get noticed without a Cause to push legislation
Use technology designed to find asteroids that could hit earth in order to nudge asteroids closer to earth.
I think your idea is suicidal. This will encourage us to find an adequate method of deflecting or completely eliminating the threats posed by asteroids, which will increase in number if we start playing with their orbits. In addition, if there was a real threat, the whole world might actually wake up and stop killing each other, if only for a short period of time.
Let's first determine threats, and find methods to deal with said threats, before we start creating more of them.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
To put their fears into context... ( and appropriate scale )
Asteroid Watcher: "Oh my god, did you see that? That train nearly hit us. We need to do something about it."
Realist: "What Train? I can't see any trains..."
Asteroid Watcher: "That one in London. According to my timetable, it just left the station."
Realist: "But we're in New York."
Asteroid Watcher: "But it was a near miss. We can't tell if it's going to hit us until it's too late. Let's nuke every train in London just to make sure they can't hit us."
Yep, that's about the scale of it. And what would happen if they really could predict an asteroid was going to hit us? They'd move important and influential people ( ie, Assholes ) to safe places around the world and leave the rest of us to wonder what that incredibly loud noise was, if we were still able to think about it at all.
Might as well be now. Could spur space development, new technology, all kinds of interesting stuff. Plus, you know, stop the next bolide.
See Chicxulub Crater. It is 2012.
I'm not sure about the rules involved but doesn't the IAAA (or something) allow the "discoverer" (which in this case I guess will be a corporation) to name minor bodies and maybe even other things like comets.
So they should allow their sponsors to name these bodies in their stead. They're going to find thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands depending on the sensitivity of the instruments.
I won't donate money to save the world but to have my own private Idaho, I mean asteroid, would be cool! Especially if I knew it would wipe out all life on earth! I'll be famous (for a short time at least).
Even better would be a U.N. treaty saying that for objects up to say 1km in size, the first person to characterize a body's orbit would get to OWN IT! Not only would this make a lot of people into asteroid hunters but it would really promote the development of technology to exploit them, especially if such ownership would expire in say 20 years if no landings were achieved. It is been said that the best way to get undeveloped countries in like Africa to develop would be to get clear and effective (supported by government) title to land; this provides the incentive to invest. (I don't know what the current laws are, presumably there is something in place to allow the Google guys to profit from their asteroid venture).
By the way, what's the LOWER limit for the size of a minor body (I think the upper limit are "dwarf planets"). 500 meters? 5 meters? 5 centimeters?
Hmm, oh, yeah.. well.. at least we'll see it coming. Baby steps, I suppose.
I don't know why you're so negative about it. Even a false alarm would mean Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck will be sent up. It's a plan with no drawbacks!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No,
The cash flush oil industries have been sinking money into alternative fuel sources for quite some time. I am currently working for a company that provides engineering services to the biggest oil and gas pipelines in the US and they are already starting to design non-oil based fuels into their delivery systems. Systems which all the major oil companies currently rely on. Why should the oil companies want to impede alternative fuel delivery systems when they can just include the new sources with the existing? Oil based products will eventually start going down and these companies are the only ones who already have delivery systems in place. If electric or natural gas powered vehicles will never fully take off until they come up with a reliable distribution system. And these systems are expensive to build from scratch but oil companies already have delivery networks for both natural gas and various types of petroleum products in place.
And a program to detect asteroids is just one more space program that everyone is constantly saying we need but when this proposed project is announced all of a sudden it is labeled as some kind of conspiracy to spend money. You can't have it both ways. Who cares if they ever detect an asteroid the main thing is they are still willing to fund new space initiatives.
People are buying phones like mad. RIM didn't keep up with the times - they figured they've got Business Users all tied up, and why would business users want a shiny new iPhone? Well, at ${LARGE_COMPANY} where I work, us peons have been asking for iPhones forever and been told no, never gonna happen. Then the managers started wanting them, and the rest is history.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
NEOCam and Sentinel sound like they're primed for accidental sentience before they come up with the decision that the biggest threat to Earth are it's inhabitants.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I don't know why you're so negative about it. Even a false alarm would mean Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck will be sent up. It's a plan with no drawbacks!
Only for the first one... what about the next? I mean... were will you manage to find another Bruce Willis, Einstein?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
does somebody know something they're not telling us about
Yes.... be afraid, be very afraid (just forget your internets spy on you and unemployment is bad... just give us your money)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Oh Jesus, how about a spoiler alert.
what about the next? I mean... were will you manage to find another Bruce Willis, Einstein?
We can always send up Tom Cruise
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
One kick from Chuck Norris and it's on its way to the Oort cloud.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or Will Smith, who's starred in a couple of alien infestation movies (MIB, ID4).
...are being conditioned by mass media and government...
Excuse me, but what Government? The last time I checked government was all "It's cool, we can do that, we'll figure something out" and mass media was all "END OF WORLD: You all gonna die tomorrow!" and government was still "Naaahhh...we'll figure something out, we're talking right now as a matter of fact...". At least that's the impression I got in the last time. Politicians who scare people do no get voted...but newspapers which scare people get bought.
I don't want to tell these people how to do their jobs but it seems to me like they should also, at the same time, invent tested and working technology to stop an asteroid as well or it sort of defeats the purpose.
I"m not sure of all the implications of killer asteroids attacking from space, but I think that would be a great name for a band.
Sentinel is the name of a mission from European Space Agency GMES program....
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEM097EH1TF_LPgmes_0.html
Is NASA running out of names ?
Let's hope for our sake they don't get to the point of taxing us to death to pay for asteroid/ET protection.
the Government that gropes your crotch because The Terrorist Boogeymen are everywhere. The Government that wars on people who did not attack us while hyping a War on Terror. The government that has our soldiers guard and ship drugs, and protect drug lords, while making anti-drug campaigns and outlawing useful chemicals and equipment because 'only a drug maker would use them'. A government that declares it has the right to kill citizens it suspects are terrorists without trial while hyping a War on Terror because the Terrorsts are Everywhere.