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ESA Carries Out Asteroid Impact Drill
Zothecula writes: If there were any dinosaurs around, they could tell you that an asteroid impact can ruin your whole day. But if we did learn that one was actually going to strike the Earth in a month, what would the authorities do? To find out, the European Space Agency held its first ever mock asteroid drill to work on solutions and identify problems in how to handle such a catastrophe.
For the size of the asteroids they are considering, the response would be similar to that of of a nuclear strike, without the radiation. For ones the size of Chixulub, I think the plan should be to party like it was the end of the world.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Don't worry, one of these days tinfoil hats will come back into style. Promise!
The NASA budget is a pittance of the waste in the US budget process.
Yet the value of NASA cannot be justified by any cost/expense formula.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tom-coburn-nasa-is-lost-in-space-1419293303
The meager billion or so budget of NASA should be flatlined and employees made ready for death, cyanide capsules at the dispensary.
Sad but true, it's you.
You could hear the middle east snackbaring on Hawaii!
You had me thinking the lander came back to life.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Duck!
*ducks*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We're all gonna die!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Quick someone get me Bruce Willis and a team of roughneck oil drillers Stat and dont forget a snazzy Aerosmith song or the asteroid will not blow up with out one.
The odds of a significant asteroid impact any time soon seem quite remote, but I think the exercise of having many agencies practice their coordination for a major event might come in handy. Here in Texas we drill all sorts of unlikely scenarios. We probably never drilled a major' fertilizer plant explosion in West, but we were prepared to mobilize anywhere, for any reason.
Come on, we must all have drills for Asteroid Preparedness!
Moderator: OK folks, drill is beginning. ... ... ...
Breathless Lacky: Attention important people! Deep space radar shows that a major asteroid strike is due in less than a week! It is likely to have global damage potential, scouring the seas and filling the skies with fire. All human life, in fact all life on earth is potentially at risk.
VIP1: Thank you. Do we have a spaceship that we can use to get away?
VIP2: No, sir.
VIP1: OK, well then, let's call this one complete. Drill ended after 0 minutes, 28 seconds:, Asteroid 1, Earth 0. Thank you all for your participation. Please join us next year, we're shooting for 30 seconds.
-Styopa
You do realize the European Space Agency has nothing to do with the US...
If Earth is looking to be doomed by meteorite, then just move to Mars. We can live there.
Oh, the Mars colony isn't set up yet?
Well, it will be by the time our governments come up with an alternate plan that would actually be workable.
So, let's just save the time and effort and expense on creating efforts that won't ever amount to anything, and work towards getting interplanetary colonization going sooner.
In a Chicxulub sized impact event my plan is to die. I like to set achievable goals.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Moon being blasted out of orbit by accident detonation of secret nuclear disposal site.
Symposium leader: Ok, anyone have any ideas other than "die" and "call NASA to see if they can launch a few hundred nukes at it?"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
stop mocking our religious headgear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
I don't think NASA are allowed to launch military payloads. You'd be better off asking the US Navy.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
...the somewhat tounge-in-cheek poster from cold war has this covered in its last step:
o Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We can't do anything about Boko Haram: they're Muslims and if you annoy Muslims they could blow shit up and we don't want to die. China? We can't piss off China because of trade and we don't want to be broke. So we'll take it out on some random dude (rigorously caucasian) who can't defend himself. See how brave we Social Justice Warriors are!
It's like a new form of Godwin's Law. Any negative discussion of any country's activities on the planet must invoke and be applied to the US as well, and usually compared even more favorably than the US as well. The one exception might be North Korea.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
"we're all gonna die! we're all gonna die"
I hope they learned a lot. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you are going to be drilling into any kind of stone or masonry (e.g. asteroids), you want to use a hammer drill rather than an impact drill.
Check out the Last Policeman series - 3 books based on knowing the world will end in a year from an asteroid impact. Very bizarre and very good reading.
Actually the ESA does collaborate on programs with NASA-US. The ESA lacks the funding for their own manned space programs so they partnered up with NASA on the Orion manned mission project. Their biggest contribution to date is the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The recent ISRO Mars orbiter program included US-NASA advanced radar and imaging subsystems. So cooperation between agencies go both ways and it is usually better for this cooperation to stay quietly in the background to avoid getting caught up in the usual political and foreign policy bullshit which is why the US-Russian space cooperation has run into problems. NASA-US also provides the bulk of the orbital tracking capabilities while also coordinating data collected by other countries that are vital to tracking the various probes flying around the solar system.
Uh, Navy?
The USAF does all of the US's space stuff and the majority of their missile stuff.
them too.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
the US Navy still operates all the OTH sensory apparatus, as they have since 1983 (officially) and (unofficially) since the switch was flipped on the NSC Headquarters computer centre at Dahlgren in 1961.
You should be more concerned about the lack of control the government will invoke. You know that the president(s) and its family will survive in some shelter. Also, you know that the closest of friends and family will survive in that shelter. But what if one cannot dig themselves out? The outcome will be sardonic comedy.
The only survivable outcome for humanity is to have multiple self sustaining colonies away from earth, and an infrastructure to nudge objects from an intersecting earth orbit, or just plain unfavorable orbit.
Of course some deep conviction in a form of "After Life" will make your on coming end of self awareness; less stressful.
in a desperate attempt to ensure the preservation of some of your DNA?