Can NASA, Air Force, and Private Industry Really Mitigate an Asteroid Threat?

coondoggie writes "There has been much chatter about the threat of an asteroid or significant meteor strike on Earth — mostly caused by the untracked meteor that blasted its way to international attention when it exploded in the sky above Russia injuring nearly 1,200 people in February. It was one of those amazing coincidences that on that same day an asteroid NASA had been tracking for months — asteroid 2012 DA14 — was to harmlessly cross Earth's path. Those events and the topic of mitigating asteroid and meteor or Near Earth Object threats to Earth prompted a couple congressional hearings by the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the latest of which was held this week. None of the NEOs found to date have more than a tiny chance of hitting Earth in the next century. Thus the near-term risk of an unwarned impact from large asteroids, and hence the majority of the risk from all NEOs, has been reduced by more than 90%. Assuming none are found to be an impact threat, discovering 90% of the 140 meter sized objects will further reduce the total risk to the 99% level. By finding these objects early enough and tracking their motions over the next 100 years, even those rare objects that might be found threatening could be deflected using existing technologies."

Comments

Re:The long-period comet problem

[Kjella]

We've had two significant events in about 100 years.

The Tunguska event had one fatality, the Chelyabinsk event had none. That's a total of one for 100 years all across the globe, at least Wikipedia couldn't list any other deaths either. More people have probably died from ingrown toenails. In the same time period we've had seven earthquakes with over 100,000 casualties each. Yes, the really big ones are really scary but our chances of deflecting a dino-killer is bordering on none so is there really a big intersection between what is possible and what is worth doing? If you actually had warning and send people to cellars and bomb shelters we should be able to take considerably bigger impacts with no to minimal casualties. You're chances of dying by being struck by lightning i far, far bigger than death by asteroid.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[reve_etrange]

Sir Arthur Clarke proposed detonating a large nuclear device in space, to light up asteroids with the radio burst.