Slashdot Mirror
NASA Forms New Planetary Defense Office To Manage Asteroid Threats (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: NASA has set up a new Planetary Defense Coordination Office to detect and track near-Earth objects. CNN reports: "The department, which includes the position of Planetary Defense Officer, is managed by the Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. And its mission includes the early detection of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) — asteroids and comets which get within 0.05 Astronomical Units of Earth's orbit around the sun (7.5 million kilometers) and are large enough, greater than around 30 — 50 meters (98 — 164 feet), to reach the Earth's surface." Bruce Willis had no comment on his level of involvement in the new agency.
Eventually, we'll also want to have capability to deal with them...
of impact of a really dangerous one
in time to expend a lot of money on an active defense launch?
(e.g. a launch of an ION thruster which would sit on the object and when at correct orientation, would fire to push it slowly into a safe trajectory)
1. The farther out the object is, the less certain the prediction of Earth impact is.
but
2. The object has to be quite far out for active defense to work.
Has anyone run the numbers on this?
We seem to have a lot of trouble investing in EFFECTIVE levels of action on a certain unnamed problem that science is, say 97% certain is going to affect us.
Assuming we had built one just in case,
wouuld we send a $100 billion defense system out on a 1% chance of asteroid impact?
10%? 50%? 90%? 97%? How about a 1/1000 chance? or 1/1000,000 chance of catastrophic impact?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
No authority, no resources to do something about it. It's just another "Hey look! we're doing something" office to soak up tax dollars. The feds are excellent about creating departments and positions that don't do anything.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Do we get to wear slick white body armor and talk through a gizmo that makes us sound like Jack-In-The-Box ordering stations?
Table-ized A.I.
Look on the bright side. We'll all have high schools named after us.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Planetary Defense Officer ranks right up there with China's Director of Climate Manipulation on the bad-ass job titles list.
The UFO defense clause gets added later, if it hasn't already been included into the charter.
just turn the laser the other way and we can wipe out anyone we want.
Yeah, but it's a profit center. There are people literally willing to pay to work in exchange for the official title of "Planetary Defense Officer".
You can walk into a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and tell them to pipe down, you're not working on national defense, you're working on planetary defense.
Wouldn't "Planetary Defense" include defense from alien life forms as well as large rocks wandering in space?? Maybe it should be called "Planetary Object Defense" instead??? Unless the dept. will defend us against the Dark OverLords as well.....
Didn't they do something like this before? I get the impression they are making a coordination office, so that the ones that make the budget (Congress) can say they are doing something, but doing it as cheaply as possible.
Out of all the organizations that get federal funds, NASA might be the one that is in the worst shape. Gets the least, can't finish a project because they cut funding for it to push another, and gets their budget scrutinized the most.
I'd really love it if NASA could break free from the control of Congress, like the Postal Office can theoretically do (if Congress would let them).
It reminds me of the ad by LifeLock where the guy in a bank in a security officer uniform tells people lying on the floor that he's not a security guard, he's just a security notifier. "I'm just here to tell people there's a robbery. There's a robbery".
"I'm not here to defend you people against asteroids about to hit the earth, I'm just here to tell you to duck. Duck."
Imagine in ten years this morphs into the Planetary Security Agency, with PSA agents and x-ray machines and anyone who jokes about an asteroid gets his asteroid inspected as a terrorist.
"They're saying an asteroid is coming just so you will spend a lot more money on big government. But what if the asteroid isn't going to hit? I mean like tons of them have passed by us without incidents since the beginning of time (~4,000bc)"
just turn the laser the other way and we can wipe out anyone we want.
Werner Von Braun made comments about this while working at Fairchild in the 70s. You are not far off.
The most dangerous asteroids are coming from the vicinity of Uranus. I hope they investigate them first.
Yeah, because you totally wouldn't be able to fight the chicks off with a shit-smeared falchion.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...who needs a laser? Just make sure the thing is big enough to obliterate The Enemy(tm), but small enough to not significantly wipe out Earth's ecosystem.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yeah, but it's a profit center. There are people literally willing to pay to work in exchange for the official title of "Planetary Defense Officer".
I was just thinking how cool that would sound at parties.
I like the "asteroid versus asteroid" concept: to move one asteroid out of the way, just hit it with another (smaller) one.
The Bugs send another meteor our way!
But this time we are ready!
Planetary defenses are better than ever!
Would you like to know more?
Planetary Defense Office? Really? About the only thing worse I can think to call it is the Planetary Defense Registry of Motor Vehicles..
Here's how I'd sex up the presentation. I'd call it the Planetary Defense Force, issue snazzy uniforms and fund the program by selling T-shirts and caps. I feel certain that would raise far more money than Congress would ever appropriate for this purpose, except possibly in the event we noticed an asteroid that's actually going to hit us next Tuesday.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Are they done with terrorists already? Personally i cant wait to see what their aliens will look like, guess i wont have to wait that long seeing as they are pushing up their timetable.
Manage asteroid threats? LOL!
A moon sized asteroid is hurtling towards Earth an a few hundred thousand KPH. Dafuq you gonna do about it? Call Bruce Willis? LOL
Like the post office that looses billions of dollars a year. The only other company so inept at wasting tax dollars as a "public" company is amtrack. Why not just ditch all of the unprofitable rail lines and keep the one line that makes money on the eastern seaboard.
Trains just don't make sense for hauling people. Cheaper to fly and takes way less time
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
And I Captain Machismo shall be the leader of this new defense league!
Deploy the 2nd Armored 3D Printing Corps!
Trains just don't make sense for hauling people. Cheaper to fly and takes way less time
It really depends on your priorities.
My wife and I took the train from LA to San Francisco (the Coastal Starlight) a few years ago. We didn't have to take our shoes off before boarding, didn't go through metal detectors, and didn't have stand in long security lines while TSA agents screamed at us to make sure everything was put on the conveyor belt for X-raying.. One of the workers at the ticket window saw us with our luggage and loaded it on an electric cart, then told us to hop on and she'd take us to the boarding area.
While the rest of our family were crammed into two cars with all of their luggage, screaming up the I-5 (freeway), we were sitting in recliner seats with as much legroom as you could use, getting up to get snacks and stretch our legs, reading, and going to the observation car to hear a talk about the area we were traveling through by a forest ranger.
We also happened to be traveling on the Fourth of July, and hit Silicon Valley right at 9:00PM. The lights were off in the observation car and we got to watch dozens of fireworks shows happening all around us.
I'd do it again in a heartbeat, if I needed to go to North again.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
It hardly matters if you still don't have a plan for dealing with the objects you detect. At present all you can do is tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
I think "Planetary Defense Office" is a cool name. Someone should invite William Shatner.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I'm wondering how they're going to 'patrol' the galaxy for 'incomings'. I suppose incoming-light imagery wouldn't be enough, and it would take a periodic certain-frequency multidirectional 'wave blast', to pick up its return reflecting from anything hiding out there... great way to announce our presence, too.
Or am I thinking too much again?
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Trains are for the distances where planes don't win. They go city-center to city-center, with planes you have to factor in a lot of time to get to the airport, and to be there an hour in advance to have time for security. Also, trains go a lot of places where there is no airport close by. If you can fly about halfway and have to use trains for the rest anyway, then it is usually faster & cheaper to go by train all the way.
Planes are fine for crossing continents. In my experience, trains are better for trips under 500km.
Terrorism is a threat.
However, we don't nor should we shovel our entire budget at it. I think we have adequate money going against terrorists, if we increased the efficiency of the spending, we'd probably even be able to cut the budget and get the same result.
Bringing some telescopes, studying nuclear delivery systems, and setting up coordination is not a bad use of a few tens of millions of dollars.
If I had a Flash Gordon suit and a ray gun to go with it, I wouldn't be able to keep the women off me.
You know, you shouldn't mind, if your asteroid has nothing to hide, planetary citizen.
The post office isn't in control of the prices it charges. Haven't you noticed how much cheaper it is to send a package through USPS as opposed to FedEx and UPS? This is because Congress controls their prices and refuses to let them raise them to cover cost increases.
Amtrak is in the same spot, congress mandates the unprofitable lines and forces them to run them despite the lack of riders.
Also, it isn't possible to loose billions of dollars, it isn't an animal that you let loose. You can lose money though.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Aren't they tasked with reaching out to muslim nations?