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The Underfunded, Disorganized Plan To Save Earth From the Next Giant Asteroid
New submitter citadrianne sends a story about the beginnings of our asteroid defense efforts, and how initial concern over an asteroid strike wasn't sustained long enough to establish consistent funding: Until a few decades ago, the powers that be didn't take the threat of asteroids very seriously. This changed on March 23, 1989, when an asteroid 300 meters in diameter called 1989FC passed within half a million miles of Earth. As the New York Times put it, "In cosmic terms, it was a close call." After this arguably close brush with total annihilation, Congress asked NASA to prepare a report on the threat posed by asteroids. The 1992 document, "The Spaceguard Survey: Report of the NASA International Near-Earth-Object Detection Workshop," was, suffice it to say, rather bleak.
If a large NEO were to hit Earth, the report said, its denizens could look forward to acid rain, firestorms, and an impact winter induced by dust being thrown miles into the stratosphere. ... After reports from the National Research Council made it clear that meeting the discovery requirement outlined in the Congressional mandate was impossible given the lack of program funding, NEOO got a tenfold budget increase from 2009 to 2014. Yet it still faces a number of difficulties. A program audit released last September described the NEOO program as a one-man operation that is poorly integrated and lacking in objectives and oversight.
If a large NEO were to hit Earth, the report said, its denizens could look forward to acid rain, firestorms, and an impact winter induced by dust being thrown miles into the stratosphere. ... After reports from the National Research Council made it clear that meeting the discovery requirement outlined in the Congressional mandate was impossible given the lack of program funding, NEOO got a tenfold budget increase from 2009 to 2014. Yet it still faces a number of difficulties. A program audit released last September described the NEOO program as a one-man operation that is poorly integrated and lacking in objectives and oversight.
Is that one man Bruce Willis? I think we're safe if it is.
A plan to save us from NEOs would require some ability to actually reach an NEO before it hit.
Since we're not working to develop that capability, pretty much anything else we do is irrelevant....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
TLDR: Government program commissions its own audit to ask for more money.
Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is going bye-bye!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
But we don't live in cosmic terms; we live in human terms, and 425,000 miles is really far away!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
NEOO got a tenfold budget increase from 2009 to 2014. Yet it still faces a number of difficulties. A program audit released last September described the NEOO program as a one-man operation that is poorly integrated and lacking in objectives and oversight.
He got a 10x increase in salary, but doesn't have a boss.
Given that these sorts of events have consequences on a planetary scale and that little things like nation-states mean absolutely nothing if we lose the species, why the hell isn't this an international effort? Why does the USA have to do all the grunt-work? (I'm not a yank BTW). This really is something I could get behind the UN for actually doing something useful lately. (The UN has done SFA of use since eradicating smallpox).
The answer by the way, is "not much".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"...how initial concern over an asteroid strike wasn't sustained long enough to establish consistent funding..."
I would be much happier if we could sustain concern over our infrastructure like roads and bridges and forget about something that will probably never happen in our lifetimes or our great grand children's lifetimes.
If there's any major threat to humanity such as a global nuclear war or an asteroid, aliens will intervene and save us from ourselves or from the asteroid.
So I suppose that regular impacts by small asteroids would cool the planet and, if we do it right, exactly cancel global warming? If they added this to their program, they'd get tons of funding.
That is just over the top.
I just hope it's big enough to kill us all without leaving those who will say it was a false-flag operation..
*One-man* government program writes his own audit to ask for more money.
From TFA it seems that we have "3.5 full time employees" (wow, so much for protecting the Mother-Earth!) and gazillion management morons who issue useless "audition reports". If half of those morons would be fired and the money directed to actual people who try to do at least something...
>> *One-man* government program writes his own audit to ask for more money.
You laugh, but in ten years, if this went through as a US Government program I'd fully expect to see:
* Undersecretary of NEO Defense ...and still only one man actually doing any work.
* 2 Directors of NEO Defense (Homeland and Foreign)
* 5 staff assistants for Undersecretary and Directors
* 5 NEO Program Managers and a $20M technology budget
* 2 NEO Project Managers to handle the implementation (and expected missed deadlines)
* Full salaries, benefits and pensions for everyone, plus the original guy who has now retired
*
You laugh at that, but with private corporations, sometimes things aren't much better. At one point in time, for about 4 months, I was the only person managing all the systems for around 250 branch banking offices in Japan for Citigroup. 1 person. This included the servers, diskless clients, and printers for them all. Across 3 data centers for load balancing and redundancy, so, counting spares, nearly 1000 servers. Stress level was increased until I quit.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
We'll just put lasers on the heads of space sharks.
They'll blast any NEO's to pieces and eat the debris just as they always have done.
Yesterday on the John Batchelor Show, the proposal by was for the Spaceguard to be formed as the Coast Guard for space, and for space to be governed by the space-equivalent of Maritime Law, which would fly in the face of current space treaties. The Spaceguard would also become sentinels and eyes out into space, having the funds and decision-making authority and hierarchy, as well as arms, like the USGS defending against asteroids and you-name-it. Until the mission into space becomes primarily for colonization rather than exploration, like the government states in public at least, then it will be regarded as unimportant. Also the fact that our governments are so risk-adverse as to allow for reasonable casualties and the necessary risk to be allowed, by the many who would gladly do so and who did so in the past commonly, is holding expansion into space back.
I think it was the author of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Not...
Seems like an efford to distract people from the REAL, IMMINENT and PERMANENT damage that is ALREADY UNDERWAY against which "world leaders" are doing absolutely nothing at all. Oh yeah, they "agreed" on eliminating fossil fuel by 2100 -- which is basically: we don't care now, hey grand-kids this is now your problem.
The real NEO threat is Michael Moore bungee jumping off of the New River Bridge. The impact would wipe out up to 82% of the West Virginia population and fracture the North American Plate. Dead center. If we survive, we could be looking at a 10 mile wide Mississippi river.
Earth and most of its inhabitants would definitely benefit from the removal of humans.
no, I don't have a sig
This particular "existential threat" is gaining a lot more visibility and, slowly, more funding.
Tomorrow marks the first Asteroid Day and it seems to be bringing a great deal of public attention to NEOs...at least amongst members of the public interested in science and museums and who are in metropolitan areas to see some of the events.
The article was OK, and mentioned B612 but didn't really touch on how much of the NEO hunt is going to end up being done by NGOs, small observatories, and other organizations that aren't direct reports to the NEOO.
Look for a big stone obelisk.
There's a guy named Kirok who knows some folks that can get it working.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Let's blast 2034FC once and for all! Our Kickstarter will raise money for, construct, and launch a series of nuclear missiles to knock 2034FC out of its collision course with Earth once and for all. By pledging with us, you don't just get to be a part of saving multi-cellular life on Earth, you'll be eligible for these cool rewards!
* $100 - "I saved Earth. What did you do?" T-shirt
* $200 - As above, plus a poster showing a telescope view of the first detonation.
* $300 - T-shirt plus a series of posters showing each detonation that you can wrap around your room as a panorama. Wow!
* $500 - Invite to a local "We saved Earth!" party on the launch date!
* $1000 - You get to pick the super-motivational song your local party plays while watching live video of the launch.
* $5000 - A flight to the launch site to watch in-person! Holey moley!
* $10000 - As above, but including box seats at the launch site!
* $25000 - VIP access with exclusive T-shirts, complimentary drinks, and a keychain!
* $100,000 - VIP access, plus we laser-engrave your name on the surface of the asteroid as it passes, forever immortalizing you as a savior of Earth!
I was being sarcastic (and well... implicitly critising religion), equivalently to what I understand that the aforementioned anonymous cowards was doing.
Apologies to any sensible and properly-understanding person for having written the current clarification, but I am unfortunately surrounded (better: pursued) by people with serious understanding problems. I usually avoid writing too sarcastic remarks, in order to also avoid having to write these sad clarifications. But this time the original text of the anonymous coward was so good that I wasn't able to refrain myself from writing that a bit more elegant continuation (although has quickly been proved to be too confusing for my "fans"...).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
300 meters -> city goes bye bye
10 000 meters -> dinosaurs disappear
So "total annihilation" was not even near back then. The problem is that with our current monitoring system, we have absolutely no idea if we are still alive the next week or not. Obviously as we don't know which city might be destroyed, even the 300 meter rocks are troublesome and worth investing some money.
What ever happened to an the an anecdote is not data commenters?
What surprises me most about the article is how inaccurate it is about attributing NEO discoveries.
It looks like the lion's share have been found by Pan-STARRS since 2012, not Catalina.
Pan-STARRS' code is F51:
Catalina's code is 703.
Here is Minor Planet Society's statistics: http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/YearlyBreakdown.html
Here is a link to all of the codes (at the bottom of the page): http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/TheNEOPage.html
What do we do if the sun goes into red giant mode?"
The answer by the way, is "not much".
First of all, we have billions of years before that happens. Second of all, we can just move the Earth a little farther from the sun (if we're still living here or it has sufficient sentimental value). This, incidentally, relates to asteroids in that we can use the slingshot effect to transfer energy and momentum from asteroids to planet.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways