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

The long-period comet problem

[symbolset]

This year comet Siding Spring was discovered that may hit Mars at over 200000 mph next year. If that was headed for Earth there is nothing we could do except have an extinction party.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[TWX]

Sure, it's possible that nothing can be done about something that size.

On the other hand, while we haven't managed to deal with protecting the occupants of automobiles when they plunge off cliffs, we have managed to either protect occupants or reduce their injuries with other fairly simple technologies that have dramatically reduced casualty numbers.

We've had two significant events in about 100 years. I think that it's a good idea to both improve detection and to figure out how to nudge or deflect asteroids. The further out we know of their paths the less costly it is to deflect them.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[symbolset]

I agree that we should do as much as we can about the asteroid problem. Ultimately though the only cure for the long period comet problem is "don't keep all your humans on the same planet."

Re:The long-period comet problem

[SJHillman]

Personally, I think flying sharks with lasers is a more viable option than most people give it credit for.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

How many nukes would it take to scatter a comment into less-harmful pieces?

Depends on how high it's been modded.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You're chances of dying by being struck by lightning i far, far bigger than death by asteroid.

Well, yes. The problem is that the chances of all of us being killed by an asteroid is far, far bigger than extinction by lightning.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[Runaway1956]

"You're chances of dying by being struck by lightning i far, far bigger than death by asteroid."

That's what the teacher was saying to her class of juvenile stegosaurus, when the big one hit.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[The Grim Reefer]

Try convincing the public that an asteroid that has a 99% chance of hitting the earth in 150 years is worth spending trillions of dollars on today to launch a probe to deflect it.

Convincing the public to spend the money isn't the problem. The US congress, however, is. Just 39 years ago congress so wanted more control over the budget they passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and easily passed it because Nixon was tied up with the Watergate scandal. Fast forward to now and the senate has just recently passed its first budget in four years. But I'm sure it will die in the house, if it even gets that far. If these fucker can't even do something so basic as pass a yearly budget, there is little hope of them looking ahead far enough to worry about anything 150 years in the future. After all, their constituents will be long dead. China is fast becoming a better hope for something like this. At least they still have goals that stretch past the next election cycle.

Just do the convincing 75 years from now... It'll be easier to do then, too.

There's the problem with the public. Keeping their attention for such a project in today's sound bite, two minute news clip attention span. The MBA's would get involved and it would all come down to the quarterly returns and then we're screwed.

Re:The long-period comet problem

[buchner.johannes]

Stegosaurus died out 150 million years ago, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was 66 million years ago. Choose a dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, such as T-rex, Velociraptor, Triceratops or Pterosaur for your example, not one from the Late Jurassic.

hypothesis

[Trepidity]

Big meteors only explode over Russia, if I'm extrapolating correctly from n=2. Therefore they should pay for it.

Re:hypothesis

[Fluffeh]

Oh my goodness, a chance to actualy use a In Soviet Russia joke appropriately!!

In Soviet Russia, Meteor Finds YOU!

Yes, it's pretty straight forward too

[DoofusOfDeath]

When there's an incoming asteroid, use a rocket to place a USB stick on it loaded with copyrighted material.

Within 2 hours, it's trajectory will be altered by the mass of the layers and federal agents swarming it.

better hypothesis...

[NemoinSpace]

Most species becomes space faring, the smart ones like Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal leave as soon as they can. The reason we don't hear from anyone else is because they put up warning signs.
You don't need fancy theories to explain why every other object in the universe is fleeing from us.

The blind leading the blind.

[VortexCortex]

Hello morons. NASA didn't know about the rock that exploded over Russia until it was too late. None of these bastards can be trusted when they start gibbering on about risks. The truth is THEY ARE FUCKING BLIND. A mole has a better time finding its way in broad daylight than we do seeing crap in space.

They give us highly detailed pictures of very small parts of the night sky. Great. Awesome in fact. However, we actually DON'T have the kind of wide scale whole sky studying system required to make ANY reliable risk assessments -- Based on... What?! The TINY patches of sky we have studied with great detail, and some other images from murky underfunded telescopes -- Which didn't even detect that we had A DAMN DWARF PLANET called Eris (more massive than Pluto) orbiting our Sun until Just 8 years ago -- they're making risk predictions? Don't make me laugh. Seriously. That's why Pluto's not a planet. If it were we'd have to own up to the fact that there was another PLANET there all along and we didn't see it.... Grr.

THINK people. The geologic record shows we're over due for a mass extinction event. Might not be an asteroid, maybe gamma burst or volcanic eruption, etc. The point is that we really don't have much of any information at all in any of these respects -- Not the kind we'd need to kick back and rest on our laurels like dinosaurs proclaiming, "Yeah, a few little rocks fell, but no harm really, the sky's not falling..." Right before the sky did fall right on their big ignorant heads.

I'm not saying we should panic. I'm saying we need to make a concious decision as a race to not become extinct -- To not let our light go out of the Universe just because of greed. We need to swap the budgets of the armed forces and the space programs until this shit is sorted. Once we have more space infrastructure to ensure we're not going to be extincted by the next big rock, THEN we can worry about fighting over petty shit on this planet. All our eggs are in one basket here on Earth. That's moronic. We NEED a self sustaining off-world colony of humans just to ensure the survival of our species. Until we have at least that, then YES, we are in SUPREME DANGER of becoming extinct; In fact, it's a 1:1 probability that our extinction will occur at present.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled not giving a damn about anything beyond your own lifespan. Screw you humans. You'll get yours.

This IS a mass extinction event

[PeterM from Berkeley]

We're already in a mass extinction event. We're wiping out species at a pace that, in a geological-time sense, is indistinguishable from a big asteroid strike or massive volcanic eruption.

And yes, humans are moronic. The kind of investment in humanity's immortality probably won't be made until someone has conquered the entire planet and subjugated the people to such an extent that he doesn't need a huge military budget--and then the effort will be made only if that is the world leader's whim, instead of, say, constructing monuments to himself.

--PM