Asteroid Day On June 30 Aims To Raise Awareness of Collision Risks

benonemusic writes: International organizers--including Queen's Brian May, an astrophysicist--have organized the world's first Asteroid Day on June 30, as a means to raise awareness for future collision risks and encourage actions to minimize the threats from such events. "If we can track the trajectories of asteroids and monitor their movement in our solar system, then we can know if they are on a path to impact Earth," former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart told the organizers of Asteroid Day in a statement. "If we find them early enough, we can move them out of Earth's orbit, thus preventing any kind of major natural disaster."

Comments

Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

These primitive apes can't even stop polluting their own atmosphere.

Re:Oh please.

[Maritz]

Yes. Our assessment of risk, as a species, utterly sucks balls. We obsess over terrorism and child car seats. We are unconcerned about heart disease even though that will always kill a thousand times more people yearly. Similar with AGW and asteroids. Too vague, too remote, don't care.

Re:Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar with AGW

Your political agenda almost slipped in under the radar, there, matey.

Close, but no cigar.

Re:Oh please.

[AchilleTalon]

Don't let this confuse you. It's just Bruce Willis is growing old.

Re:Oh please.

[GLMDesigns]

Or is it you with the political agenda?

Re:Oh please.

[Maritz]

He's been a ghost all along, silly.

Re:Oh please.

[Maritz]

Funny how I can be almost certain that you're an American by politicising this scientific issue. Everybody else in the world accepts the science, you don't, because you don't like it. Yeah, childish as fuck, but what can you do. That dark hippy conspiracy sure is pervasive eh? lol

Re:Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I plan to live forever. Don't know why you carry on about car seats and heart disease.

Re:Oh please.

[whitroth]

Now just one minute: us superannuated hippies understand global warming being human-caused. It's the antihippie, fascist Christian/petrochemical industry folks who are paying for it to be denied....

                    mark

Re:Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing about an asteroid in my interpretation of the Book of Revelation, so I got no worries

Re:Oh please.

[s122604]

Revelation 8:10-11English Standard Version (ESV) 10 The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 11 The name of the star is Wormwood.[a] A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.

Re:Oh please.

[arobatino]

Actually, it makes good sense to not worry much about asteroids - almost all of those that could cause extinction (1 km or greater) have already been detected.

Re:Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to remention that Venus is the only planet of the proper size with gravity close to that of Earth, that ever has a chance of any solar system object to become a full 2nd planet with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and whales. Space stations might be able to take on giraffes and kangaroos, but whales need huge oceans to roam about, and huge gravitational forces for that, possibly something a structural steel walled rotating cylinder giga mega space station spinning for centrifugal artificial gravity is not able to hold because of material strength. So for whales Venus is the only chance for a second home, thousands or millions of years from now.

Mars is never gonna be a candidate because it's too small to hold a decent atmosphere that holds liquid water unboiled under the required pressure/temperature with clouds/rain washing nutrients into the oceans - which, I'm guessing, Mars being too small, its core may not be molten either, vs. Venus being proper size, should have lava and tectonic geological plate movements and internal stirring and recylcing of minerals that fall to the bottom of the ocean and mountain erections that in turn get eroded by wind and rain washing nutrients into the ocean.

Team of scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

tries desperately to instill a fear of nature because goddamit if we aren't afraid of anything we're gonna keep digging this grave so yeah, asteroid threat, fine, just please holy shit can we have something that makes these dum-dums remember that nature can kill us so maybe lay off with the spitting in its face. But headlines are notoriously hard to write: I'm not being critical.

no we can't

[Anonymous Coward]

With current technology we can't do much more than try to blow them up Armageddon style.
In order to move something significant from a collision course, we would need to find it far in advance, send a spaceship out there to meet it, and deliver enough thrust to make it deviate from its path.

Re:no we can't

[Skapare]

or steer a black hole in front them

Re:no we can't

[Rei]

It is not only possible, but the easiest option, to "blow them up Armageddon style" (minus the drilling and the like). There's a lot of simulation work going on right now and the results have been consistently encouraging that even a small nuclear weapon could obliterate quite a large asteroid into little fragments that won't re-coalesce, while simultaneously kicking them out of their current orbit. A few years ago they were just doing 2d calcs, now they've gotten full 3d runs.

Think for a second about what nuclear weapons can do on Earth. Here's the crater of a 100kt nuclear weapon test. It's 100 meters deep and 320 meters wide. You could nearly fit a sizeable asteroid like Itokawa inside the hole. And that thing had Earth's intense gravity field working against it and was only 1/10th the size of weapons being considered here. In space you don't need to "blast out" debris with great force like on Earth, you merely need to give it a fractional meter-per-second kick and it's no longer gravitationally bound. And the ability of a nuclear shockwave to shatter rock is almost unthinkably powerful - just ignoring that many if not most asteroids are rubble piles and thus come already pre-shattered. Look at the "rubble chimneys" kicked up by even small nuclear blasts several kilometers underground (in rock compressed by Earth's gravity). Or the size of the underground cavity created by the wimpy 3kT Gnome blast - 28000 cubic meters. Just ignoring that it had to do that, again, working against Earth's compression deep underground, if you scale that up to a 1MT warhead the cavity would be the size of Itokawa itself.

You of course don't have to destroy an asteroid if you don't want to - nuclear weapons can also gently kick them off their path. Again, you're depositing energy in the form of X-rays into the surface of the asteroid on one side. If it's a tremendous amount of energy, you create a powerful shattering shockwave moving throughout the body of the asteroid. If it's lesser, however, you're simply creating a broad planar gas/plasma/dust jet across the asteroid, turning that whole side into one gigantic thruster that will keep pushing and kicking off matter until it cools down.

The last detail is that nuclear weapons are just so simple of a solution. There's no elaborate spacecraft design and testing program needed - you have an already extant, already-built device which is designed to endure launch G-forces / vibrations and tolerate the vacuum of space, and you simply need to get it "near" your target - the sort of navigation that pretty much every space mission we've launched in the past several decades has managed. In terms of mission design simplicity, pretty much nothing except kinetic impactors (which are far less powerful) comes close, and even then it's a tossup. Assuming roughly linear scaling with the simulations done thusfar, with enough advance warning, even a Chicxulub-scale impactor could be deflected / destroyed with a Tsar Bomba-sized device with a uranium tamper. Even though it was not designed to be light for space operations, its 27-tonne weight could be launched to LEO by a single Delta-IV Heavy and hauled off to intercept by a second launch vehicle.

Re:no we can't

[kuzb]

Do you really want your asteroid behind a bookshelf?

Re:no we can't

[AchilleTalon]

As long as they don't use a SpaceX rocket.

Re:no we can't

[CrimsonAvenger]

its 27-tonne weight could be launched to LEO by a single Delta-IV Heavy and hauled off to intercept by a second launch vehicle.

I find this an interesting statement. Running the numbers, I find that you'd have to be using a rocket burning something rather better than H2/O2 (we're talking Isp >500 just to reach escape speed, much less to reach the target rock) to allow two launches of a delta-IV heavy.

And this entirely ignores that noone actually has a Tsar Bomba sized nuke available to be detonated.

Oh, and you didn't allow for a backup - if your delta-IV heavy blows up on launch (no it won't be a nuclear explosion, much less a tsar bomba sized nuclear explosion), getting another Tsar Bomba put together with a launch vehicle in your now shorter window (and it'll require more deltaV, since you'd presumably do your first launch attempt at the point that minimizes deltaV requirements)...

In other words, it'll be a bit more difficult than two delta-IV heavy launches, even if things go perfectly. If they don't it'll be a lot more than two...

Re:no we can't

[Rei]

I find this an interesting statement. Running the numbers, I find that you'd have to be using a rocket burning something rather better than H2/O2 (we're talking Isp >500 just to reach escape speed, much less to reach the target rock) to allow two launches of a delta-IV heavy.

Huh?

The fact that a Delta-IV Heavy has a LEO payload of over 27 tonnes is a fact. You don't need to "run the numbers". As for the kick stage, I didn't specify a propulsion system - for all we care (since we haven't established a timeframe), it could be an ion drive and not even take a rocket so large as a Delta IV-Heavy.

Meanwhile, the Falcon Heavy is to make its first launch this year, with double the payload of a Delta IV-Heavy. And as was mentioned, the Tsar Bomba was not optimized to be as lightweight as possible.

And this entirely ignores that noone actually has a Tsar Bomba sized nuke available to be detonated.

Oh, and you didn't allow for a backup

It's almost as if I didn't add "with enough advance warning" for that scenario and leave what "enough advance warning" is unspecified. But if there's another rock the size of the Chicxulub impactor out there and we don't see it until the last second, we deserve to get hit - we're no longer talking about a 50 meter spec (Tunguska-sized), rather a rock with a cross section 30% bigger than the island of Manhattan. We're talking about an impact of a scale that happens once every hundred million years or so.

Re:no we can't

[whitroth]

In general, yes, we can. If we see it passing, and compute the orbit to be next time or so around the sun, there's a lot we can do. If we see it enough time in advance, NO, BRUCE WILLIS IS AN IDIOT. You want to hit it so that it *doesn't* break up, but nudge it faster or slower in its orbit, and it misses by a lot (and I'm considering beyond the moon's orbit plenty).

If, on the other hand, you're in the US, and think the Invisible Hand of the Market (tm) will create a company with zero possibility of return, other than perhaps one shot to try to knock one out of collision course, you might as well be figuring on the FSM moving it.

                  mark

Colliding with Leap Second Day

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I can't attend because I've got to mitigate the risks of Leap Second Day. We are doomed!

(Why on earth captcha said "manpower"?)

360 Video of all the known asteroids

[oobayly]

Scott Manley: If You Could See All The Asteroids, What Would The Sky Look Like?. It's interesting to see the few that are out of the ecliptic plane.

Re:360 Video of all the known asteroids

[Mike Sheen]

That is pretty cool. I look forward to the day we can pick an asteroid in such a display and easily get information such as mass, velocity, projected paths over time - minority report style. I don't think that will be too far away.

Re:360 Video of all the known asteroids

[ihtoit]

Kerbal Space Program.

(I mean, how hard can it be to enter a few random elements into the game and play "Nuke The Rock" in a sandbox?)

((Asked then answered: it is bloody hard considering the physics of the game means that any given offrails object is under precisely one sphere of influence at any given moment, which means that until the SOI changes (from the Sun to Kerbin, for instance) you know where the rock is and where it's going - but the second the SOI changes, all those napkin calculations you just did for an unguided nuke shot just went right out of the window))

Re:360 Video of all the known asteroids

[tlhIngan]

((Asked then answered: it is bloody hard considering the physics of the game means that any given offrails object is under precisely one sphere of influence at any given moment, which means that until the SOI changes (from the Sun to Kerbin, for instance) you know where the rock is and where it's going - but the second the SOI changes, all those napkin calculations you just did for an unguided nuke shot just went right out of the window))

Well, the math gets really hairy otherwise once you have more than two bodies to consider.

Newton's gravitational formula is only specified for two objects. If you have more gravitational bodies, the math turns into a really nasty set of differential equations which practically speaking can only be solved numerically.

So depending on the simulation, either they'd try to do it numerically (which imposes resolution limits since now your time step is very important), or you simplify the physics and try to avoid the issue.

Re:360 Video of all the known asteroids

[ihtoit]

nbody physics is a piece of piss. It only gets complicated when you stop talking about point sources and (as you get in KSP) differential tidal forces acting on each different component of the craft depending on its position relative to every other body and to the parts it's attached to. KSP solves this by cheating it: local physics limit is 2.5km radius from observer and tidal stresses are cancelled by assuming that what gravitational influence acts on one end of the craft is precisely equal to the influence on the other end.

It also doesn't help that the only way Squad could reduce the whole shebang to 2-body physics model was to put the planets on rails and fudge their orbital elements. I'll bet if you popped those rails those planets would fly off in a straight line or fall into the sun.

If there ever is a real collision risk...

[gweihir]

Humanity will perish squabbling over who pays and who is responsible and and the cheapest contractor will keep reporting additional delays because the bean-counters there noticed that they will not actually have to deliver anything if they miss the deadline.

Whenever I see such discussions, I get the very strong impression that as a group humanity does not deserve to survive. Swarm-stupidity at work.

Re:If there ever is a real collision risk...

[sys64764]

Exactly.
It will be known among intergalactic circles as "Man's Final Fiasco". Boards and committees of useless heads will be created to 'go over the science and verify the numbers', some nut jobs will claim it's a hoax while others will get upset if the interrogated scientist wears the wrong shirt.

Re:If there ever is a real collision risk...

[Anonymous Coward]

The risk of an asteriod strike is still less than the odds of me dieing as a result of gay sex. If people would simply, as a matter of culture, and dogma, declare that it is against our religion to die by meteor strike we wouldn't have this problem. But we don't. Do we? No. Why is that?
Personally, I think we better concentrate on the task at hand and make every effort to ensure I don't wake up on day and decide to do unatural things with my penis. In the end it's all about priorities and perspective.

Re:If there ever is a real collision risk...

[GLMDesigns]

Maybe the stupid ones are those who think that the bean counters (as you put it) would win the day?

"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Nutria]

The awareness they are raising is that they want to waste our tax dollars on Yet Another Irrational Fear.

If they *really* care about saving the Earth from civilization-killer asteroids, lobby for the funding of Much Bigger Rockets.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Skapare]

space will correct planet Earth this way. why interfere?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Gravis Zero]

The awareness they are raising is that they want to waste our tax dollars on Yet Another Irrational Fear.

asteroid impacts are not an irrational fear, they are an inevitability. if we do nothing to protect ourselves, an asteroid will wipe out mankind... eventually.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Nutria]

asteroid impacts are not an irrational fear

I am afraid of getting hit by lightning, and getting bit by a shark, but not so afraid that I won't walk in the rain or swim in the ocean. I just take reasonable precautions.

That's the difference between a rational fear and an irrational fear.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[MitchDev]

You say that like it's a bad thing...

What are we going to do, build huge rockets to move Earth out of the Asteroid's way?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[KeensMustard]

asteroid impacts are not an irrational fear, they are an inevitability. if we do nothing to protect ourselves, an asteroid will wipe out mankind... eventually.

Really?

Do you have the numbers on that?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[drinkypoo]

The awareness they are raising is that they want to waste our tax dollars on Yet Another Irrational Fear.

It became a rational fear when we began to get the technology to deal with it. If you can't do anything about it, then you just go about your business. Once you can, then it's worth worrying.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Nutria]

Once you can, then it's worth worrying.

Right. And you get that capability by building Much Bigger Rockets, which is why I wrote, "lobby for the funding of Much Bigger Rockets."

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[cyberchondriac]

I'd say yes, we do. We've seen at least one major asteroid impact before that precipitated an extinction event, or at the very least, greatly contributed to it. Statistically, it's likely enough to happen again, even if it's hundreds, thousands, or millions of years from now... or it could happen in our lifetime. Space is large, even in our own solar system, but there are also a lot of asteroids out there.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[danlip]

But what is the reasonable precaution here? You say "Much Bigger Rockets" a few posts ago but what do you do with them? Do you build them and just leave them sitting around and hope we can knock an asteroid out of the sky with one? If instead we build the capability to detect all killer asteroids 20 years out (which seems reasonable with today's technology (it will be expensive, but less so than our wars)) then we would have 10 years to build a big rocket and get it to an asteroid and give it a tiny nudge, and a tiny nudge would be all it takes if you do it when the asteroid is still 10 years away. A detection network probably involves an array of space based telescopes and supercomputers to crunch the data, and we probably get a lot of good side uses out of that. There are lots of good side uses for big rockets too, but they don't help you deflect asteroids if you can't detect them years in advance.

Also regarding you comment on lightning and shark attacks, those kill individuals, not humanity. Big difference.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. And you get that capability by building Much Bigger Rockets

That's just one possibility among others for getting the capability.

Is it ok with you if we spend a little of your precious tax dollars exploring other possibilities? Or should we just dive in head first with your big 'ol bottle rocket plan?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Nutria]

Aren't we already scanning the sky for asteroids?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[danlip]

Not at the level we need to be to detect all killer asteroids 20 years out. Not even close.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Anonymous Coward]

asteroid impacts are not an irrational fear

I am afraid of getting hit by lightning, and getting bit by a shark, but not so afraid that I won't walk in the rain or swim in the ocean. I just take reasonable precautions.

That's the difference between a rational fear and an irrational fear.

How does your "rational" fear of lightning/sharks prove that asteroid impacts are an irrational fear for everyone else? If you stand out in the open during thunderstorms often enough, the likelihood of you getting your ass fried goes up significantly as time goes by. If you live long enough, you will almost certainly be struck.

That is what is happening now with the Earth. We're out in the open and these little things that whiz by have caused a lot of shit in the past, and there is ample reason one will impact the earth in the future. If your solution to this situation is build much big rockets, why don't you step away from your computer and let the adults have a conversation?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Gravis Zero]

I am afraid of getting hit by lightning, and getting bit by a shark, but not so afraid that I won't walk in the rain or swim in the ocean. I just take reasonable precautions.

what reasonable precautions are we taking? with our current program, we'll be lucky to see a killer asteroid coming much less do something about it.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Nutria]

what reasonable precautions are we taking?

Scanning the sky. But not building large-enough rockets.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[thinkwaitfast]

Without that, humans wouldn't be here. Humanity would live through a similar impact today.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"if we do nothing to protect ourselves, an asteroid will wipe out mankind... eventually."

How do you know this, for a fact? The planet Earth could remain "lucky" for the rest of the life of the solar system. Asteroids big enough to destroy Earth might get shot out of the solar system, their trajectories could change "miraculously", etc, etc. It is not inevitable, just like the fact that there is a chance you could be hit by a car while crossing the street does not mean it is inevitable that you will, one day, be hit by a car. It is not inevitable that you or your child, or your grandchild, and so on, one of you will be hit by a car. The fact that it's possible, and that it has happened from time to time in the past, does not infer that it is inevitable that it will happen. It's just likely that over time, it could.

And in 10,000 years, if no asteroid has hit the planet, keeping one from wiping out mankind may be the simplest of procedures. Without devoting massive amounts of resources today, the simple advancement of the species and technology could make it a simple procedure tomorrow. Knowing of the risk of an asteroid impact during the 1600s, would you ask that they devote considerable resources to prevention? Or wait for the day that it becomes an easier issue to address? Today, why don't we take reasonable precautions with the tools we have (nukes, searching the sky, brainstorm ideas) and hope (with a good amount of certainty) that it probably won't happen soon enough for us to worry over-much?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[SpankiMonki]

I just take reasonable precautions.

That's the difference between a rational fear and an irrational fear.

what reasonable precautions are we taking?

Scanning the sky. But not building large-enough rockets.

What makes you think that our current rockets aren't big enough, and what makes you think we're not currently building bigger ones?

In any event, you seem to think we're currently taking at least *one* reasonable precaution (scanning the sky). How many more precautions do we have to take before you'll no longer consider asteroid strikes to be "Yet Another Irrational Fear"? When we reach your magic number, would you then consider it appropriate to devote public money to the effort?

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[SpankiMonki]

Humanity would live through a similar impact today.

Ah, an optimist. Nothing wrong with hoping for the best, but it's foolish not to plan for the worst.

The survival of humanity is not the same as the survival of human civilization. Doing nothing may not cause human extinction, but it will certainly expose our civilization to great risk. And in this case, being prepared for the worst is a relatively low cost proposition when compared to the cost of re-building civilization from scratch.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[crunchygranola]

Depends on what the term "killer asteroid" means. For a once-in-five-hundred-thousand-year civilization destroying asteroids larger than 1 km we have already identified all of them. Possible threats from this population can be projected developing centuries in the future.

For the less extreme threats in the ranges from 100 meters to 1000 meters (which covers impacts in an energy range from 100 megatons to 100,000 megatons) we do have a good way to go, but we are closing in on a 90% detection rate for the larger members of this group.

A 100 meter, 100 megaton asteroid can destroy a city, if it hits it, but is only a localized threat. The large majority of such impactors will cause little or no loss of life since only about 1% of Earth's surface is urbanized. Unless the target is a city the most practical means of dealing with the threat will be local evacuations. For this size a month's warning should be sufficient to deal with the situation. This size can also be completely destroyed by a nuclear explosion, so that a ready-for-launch strategic-sized nuclear warhead could be employed.

A significant fraction of severe threats can never be handled by an Earth-surface survey program - the threat posed by long period comets. This represents as much as 20% of the total threat, but these can only be detected effectively by space-based infrared telescopes, and the warning we will get will only be a couple of years in advance as they approach from the outer reaches of the solar system.

Re:"as a means to raise awareness ..."

[SpankiMonki]

How do you know this, for a fact? The planet Earth could remain "lucky" for the rest of the life of the solar system.

Remain lucky? You've got to be kidding. The Earth has never been lucky. Giant space rocks have been hitting the Earth on a regular basis since it came into existence. What makes you think that will somehow magically change? Have we run out of asteroids already? The chance that the Earth will never again be hit by a large extraterrestrial body is so infinitesimal, that for all practical purposes it is zero.

So yes, it is inevitable that another giant space rock is going to fall out of the sky at some point.

Knowing of the risk of an asteroid impact during the 1600s, would you ask that they devote considerable resources to prevention?

What do you mean by "considerable"? Would 1% of one year's worth of the world's economic output in the 1600s be "considerable" in your mind? Does 1% meet your definition of "massive amounts of resources"?

Today, Gross World Product is currently around 75 trillion dollars per year. Let's say the cost to build and test an asteroid defense system is two billion dollars over ten years, or two hundred million dollars per year. Two hundred million dollars is what, 0.0002857% of yearly GWP? Have I got that right? Someone better check my math on that.

Assuming my math is correct, do you really think 0.0002857% of the world's economy for ten years would be so damaging that it would cause hardship for...well, anyone?

I'm super aware

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm super aware. I try my darndest every single day to try and not collide with any asteroids.

Re:I'm super aware

[Skapare]

so how much success have you had?

Re:I'm super aware

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've collided with one so far and I'm kinda stuck to it. In terms of total duration it's been a disaster, but in terms of quantity I'm doing rather well I think.

Re:I'm super aware

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've collided with one so far and I'm kinda stuck to it.

How do you know you didn't simply collide with birdshit?

Hear Hear!

[rmdingler]

Since it's a question of when, rather than if, a rock large enough to extinguish human life arrives at our doorstep, I'd venture this is a neat cause to get behind.

I mean, it's very likely to be more productive than what you are going to do this week to better the habitat.

Sigh... slackers with barely the energy to complain.

No 'awareness' necessary... FUND THIS SHIT. NOW.

[TheRealHocusLocus]

EADP HAIV Funding campaign has only 12 days left. Only 177 people and $8,475 of $200k raised.
C'mon please. For short notice impact threats this mission is/would be the ONLY thing on the table.
Please, just go there and read what they have to say, what the plan is. Only 12 days left.
I am so extremely fucking embarrassed for my species right now.

The take-away talking points of the threat are no duh. Grab any kid and ask 'em how the dinosaurs died, you'll probably get the right answer. Ask the kid, could it happen tomorrow? They'll probably say, yeah I guess. Now, release the kid.

Now grab some BULLSHIT STATISTICS-ABUSING disaster apologist, you know, the ones that keep repeating with glee that "on average 100 people die every year" from something that could/might/will kill EVERYONE, as if that statistic means anything at all. Now release the apologist, letting 'em fall on their head.

We don't need to raise 'awareness' or make a special flag to wave or make a Youtube video or put a "I made fun of Armageddon on Slashdot" feather in your cap. So many feathers in so many caps around here, thought you'd all be flying around by now. I'm kinda sorry for venting but I've brought up this topic around here and have seen too many answers that translate to, "I dunna give affuck, it's God's Will". I hope the vast bulk of you who haven't commented on this topic at all are open on the idea of weaponizing space for our planet's defense.

If I had wealth or mortgageable assets I'd have ALREADY funded the damned thing.
All by MYSELF in one shot.
That is embarrassing to me...
I really thought that after 50 years on Earth I'd have played my cards better.
Now I am reduced to begging, to help raise $200k
for a cause I believe to be as 'verdant' and 'just' as any on Earth.
And being reduced to begging strangers for money on behalf of this mission
makes me even more angry and resentful.
I'm a real mess.

Distributed environment?

[chrysrobyn]

Every now and again, we read about some average Joe who discovers a new object. If I could cough up $300 and have my computer watch my telescope every night, all night, and compare objects to known objects, I'd do it. If there were 1,000 systems throughout the US, 10,000 throughout the world with cheap $300 telescopes, I would think there would be some progress toward making sure big objects were seen.

I understand that big, fancy telescopes with top of the line imaging is where all the deep space science is done, and I know that cheap $300 telescopes won't see any new planets, stars or exoplanets. I'm just thinking that a distributed network wouldn't have cloudy nights and could classify the night sky in near real time.

Re:Distributed environment?

[Anonymous Coward]

$300 telescopes are not the issue. People already can cover the sky every night at that level. Occasionally an "Average Joe" scores but realize that he squeeked his discovery out by virtue of seeing it a few minutes earlier than someone else would have seen it.

About needing "big fancy telescopes" the answer is in the word "big." You need a big telescope to see a small asteroid. They only shine by reflected sunlight and they're about as reflective as a bit of charcoal. Then the overall reflectivity drops with the square of the asteroid's diameter! Then the inverse square law from the Sun kills the reflected light by the square of the distance from the Sun to the asteroid. Then the inverse square law kills the reflected light by the square of the distance from the asteroid to the Earth. It's not a lot of light, and APERTURE on the telescope collects how much light you get.

Sorry, we're in an era where these small asteroids require huge pricey telescopes or space-based IR systems. Neither is cheap.

Re:Distributed environment?

[danlip]

the overall reflectivity drops with the square of the asteroid's diameter

Wouldn't it increase with the square of the diameter, because that's the surface area? Mass of course increases with the cube of the diameter, so the surface area to mass ratio decreases by the power of 3/2 with the diameter. The rest of what you said sounds right, so yes, it does take a really big telescope to detect them a long way off. The "average Joe" discoveries usually happen when they are already very close - too close to do anything about them.

Yet another

[MitchDev]

useless "Hallmark" "holiday".

Hum

[ArcadeMan]

I'm sure there's a Punch Line in there.

Ready the lube, taxes are going up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Give us more money now and we might save you from a 0.00000001% chance of extinction.
Additional taxes to come will help build:
- A giant catapult to counter attack alien invasions.
- Tazers the size of an airplane carrier, that's in case our dimension intersect with the dark lord
- Zombie shelter for everyone, because we're pretty crafty down in them virus labs

Raise awareness?

[ichthus]

Why? If there's an impact, or risk thereof, there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it. Why waste my time and energy worrying about such things?

Re:Raise awareness?

[danlip]

We can, and should, do something about it. It's not that hard to do. It takes lots of big telescopes to detect them a long way off. If you detect them far enough out you only need to give them a small nudge to change their course enough to avoid a collision.

Re:Raise awareness?

[ichthus]

Yes, of course. I was talking about my personal role in the matter. If you're one of the people with the telescopes and nukes then, by all means, pay attention. But, outside of that, if there's ever a "deep impact", we're all going to end up in Heaven, Hell, Sto-vo-kor or oblivion anyway. Why concern yourself with that over which you cannot ever hope to have influence? Strife cannot stem the unavoidable.

Re:Raise awareness?

[danlip]

I vote for the people who fund the telescopes or nukes. What I can do, personally, is vote for people who support funding programs to detect asteroids (and funding for science in general). I don't lie awake worrying about asteroid strikes, but I do try to voice my opinion for reasonable public policy.

SNL Weekend Update

[OhSoLaMeow]

What's all this fuss I hear about Killer Asterisks? Asterisks just sit there on a piece of paper like a tiny little bird doo-doo. What harm can they possibly cause?

oh good, another huge waste of money

[holophrastic]

So, it's been thousands and thousands and thousands of years since the last asteroid strike of any consequence, and there's currently zero no reason to believe that another one is coming any time soon.

And we have diseases, and earthquakes, and deserts, and insufficient water, and insufficient food, and terrible economies, and wars, and we work way too much. But let's start spending money and time on risks we know nothing about.

I'm in full support of spending money and time to research the risks, but not to solve the unknown problem. Let me know when you know what the problem is. For all you know, asteroids are intentionally and maliciously guided by aliens. Let me know when you find out.

HA HA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes an asteroid could take us out.

But I think the money is better spent on avoiding climate change above 2C. That is a *real* disaster that is happening *right now*.

Yesterday was Asteroid Day?

[eric_harris_76]

I did not see that coming.

It went right over my head.

It came right out of the blue.

OK, I'll stop now. (But only because I ran out.)