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Will the world's governments FINALLY act on Meteor/Asteroid defense?
- Thread starter Kimawolf
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Isn't there some 22k nuclear bombs on Earth? Of course, many of them are tactical weapons, no missile warheads.
But nukes are not very good vs asteroids. If the asteroid gets busted to pieces, those pieces may still hit Earth. And do much more immediate widerspread damage.
Of course if the asteroid won't split, then a nuke is okay, though whether it will have enough effect is another thing.
Better to strap rockets to the thing while it is still far away and send it to controlled orbit... maybe even around Earth for future mining and converting it to a space habitat.
Trackin a mere fraction of them. We need to know where they're and how they orbit and then we can plan how to deflect them should that become necessary.
It is the tracking and detection part that is difficult.
Wouldn't the nuke break it into small enough pieces to burn up in the atmosphere? According to NASA, any asteroid smaller than 82 feet will be sufficiently burned up to cause little to no damage. So shouldn't the point be to blow them up into smaller pieces?
Well, how are you going to be splitting, say, asteroid with 1km diameter to that small pieces?
You don't. Not for sure. And this is ignoring that you probably have to drill the nukes deep before detonating them. Going to take time.
It is simply too risky... better to try to vaporize (by blowing up the nukes next to it, not touching it) the surface so that the plasma and gases will push the asteroid to other orbit. And there are better methods than nukes for this, high power lasers, or attaching rockets to the asteroid.
Nukes are no magic solution, they're brute force method.
Insane Metal
Gold Member
We are currently tracking a very small number of the near Earth objects. Even with good support we wouldn't be able to track them all, but I'd like to see some kind of program for that. And I mean a serious program.
About what we could do to avoid impacts, unfortunately nothing, if the rocks are bigger than a few tens of meters.
About what we could do to avoid impacts, unfortunately nothing, if the rocks are bigger than a few tens of meters.
Chuck Norris
Banned
Here is how your average citizen would respond to being taxed for years for a comet defence program:
I ain't seen a comet in my life! Those comet defence bozos ain't doin nothin! Where are the results? Obama is killing the world!
I ain't seen a comet in my life! Those comet defence bozos ain't doin nothin! Where are the results? Obama is killing the world!
I've honestly given up deciding when you're joking or not. I want to say this is humour, but you've made more ridiculous posts about governments before, even if you factor in the Richard Branson comment.
Thug Waffle
Member
I don't think so. People are far too concerned with the now to consider the future. Nobody wants to listen to the smart, foresighted people saying we should invest our wealth and knowledge in exploration and manipulation of objects beyond our atmosphere.
The day the common person gives a fuck about building a warp drive or a meteor-deterrent system is the day I rescind this comment.
edit: by common person I just mean that on average, I think less than half or less than 6/10 people really think those sorts of things are important. Exploration is human nature and we've been taking a dump on that aspect of ourselves for a few decades too many.
The day the common person gives a fuck about building a warp drive or a meteor-deterrent system is the day I rescind this comment.
edit: by common person I just mean that on average, I think less than half or less than 6/10 people really think those sorts of things are important. Exploration is human nature and we've been taking a dump on that aspect of ourselves for a few decades too many.
We can do quite a lot, assuming we have means available. And if serious effort to build detection system is made, well, we might as well make some deflection systems too. The construction cost is going to be rather big but afterwards it won't be a serious drain on resources.
Methods:
-Lasers or other weapons to vaporize an asteroids surface slowly to make it change course.
-Attach rockets or other systems (mass driver) on the asteroid and use them to push it to another course.
-Blow it to bits. Not a good idea but might be the only solution, if the resulting fragments won't be as dangerous as the whole thing. Risky.
The biggest issue with this is that people are idiots and don't understand long term planning. You won't be immortalized in history if there won't be history left. No price is too high for making sure our species survives.
Insane Metal
Gold Member
Yeah I know about all that, but again, those would only work with rather small asteroids. If we were to suffer an impact from rocks that would actually pose a threat to the whole planet, all of those plans would fail.
What works on small ones works on big ones, assuming enough warning time. We'd need more powerful equipment or more equipment but it can be done.
EagleBurnn
Banned
We'll be safe as long as Bruce Willis has children.
CoffeeJanitor
Member
No. Not worth the money.
Insane Metal
Gold Member
Well, if we found out about a 5 mile asteroid coming to Earth many years beforehand we might have some chance, after all a small change (say, a few meters) in its route would mean hundreds or maybe thousands of miles difference in its destination. Well not exactly destination, in its Earth encounter.
Yeah that would be possible, but as you put it, it would require much money and research, I don't even know if that would be feasible in the next 100 years. But it's certainly worth a try!
Your opinion or what you think is the general opinion?
I say there is no too high a price for making sure humankind survives.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Small change while it is a hundreds of millions kilometers away means it will pass Earth cleanly. At first. Later approaches are an issue but luckily after detecting an asteroid, tracking it won't be a problem. Hopefully.
Basic physics. You simply attach powerful rocket /enough rockets to it, pointin towards Earth, toggle them on. They will slow down the asteroid, which will cause it miss Earth by arriving too late.
Asteroid with 5 mile diameter has enormous mass so it will be costly, in energy and money to slow it down but quite possible. Assuming enough warning time. If less time, even more energy must be expended. But what is money if the alternative is extinction?
Cheapest way would be to make a mass driver, use the asteroids own mass as reaction mass.
This is why a robust detection system is important, identify potential threats years in advance so that we can do something about them.
Technology, feasibility is no problem, all we need are resources.
Pretty much.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
Wow, after watching this fullscreen, everything is spinning. Cool.
My astronomy professor talked about this one day and apparently a popular idea right now is to simply attach mirrors so that they can melt the ice on one side and cause a shift in the orbit.
This of course assumes the thing has ice. And the ice must be melted to gas that actually pushes the asteroid too, right?
Intriguing concept regardless.
Wyndstryker
Member
All this reminds me of Ace Combat's world lol.
An asteroid threatens the planet, a bunch of nations build anti-asteroid systems, not all countries can complete in time so a number of them get ruined by the falling meteorites. Ruined nations complete aforementioned anti-asteroid systems and turn them to other nations.
Given how crazy some world leaders are, a scenario like that can happen in regards to asteroid defense.
An asteroid threatens the planet, a bunch of nations build anti-asteroid systems, not all countries can complete in time so a number of them get ruined by the falling meteorites. Ruined nations complete aforementioned anti-asteroid systems and turn them to other nations.
Given how crazy some world leaders are, a scenario like that can happen in regards to asteroid defense.
Possible. Which is it would be prudent to turn the systems over to UN or some other neutral party. Bureacracy could be an issue... but such things can be solved if people are willing. Unfortunately they're unlikely to be.
Of course most asteroid deflection systems are not giant railguns or lasers or whatever AC did have. And specifically desinged system doesn't really double as a weapon...
Analogy: Consider Hubble Space Telescope. It doesn't really double as a surveillance satellite due to way it is designed, even though the tech in it is not that different from actual surveillance satellites.
Ha no one trusts the UN enough to think they'd be able to remain neutral. I think, i wish it was powerful enough to be able to control such a thing though because we need to think of it, imagine if that happened in New York or Tokyo?
GillianSeed79
Member
I was listening to NPR today and it doesn't sound like the actual theoretical methods to divert a near-Earth asteroid would be that astronomically expensive and a lot of them don't involve space weapons or trying to blow one up (which would make it worse).
We've already shown we can hit an asteroid or a meteor with a probe. They said you could crash a spacecraft into it that does something that causes a punch of particles to hit one that creates a giant gas cloud that would change its trajectory. You could use directional lasers. I even heard one theory that if you simply splashed it with a bunch of white paint it would cause the object to reflect sunlight and the reaction from the particles would ever so slightly change the trajectory.
The problem is that we would need at least a few years advanced warning to plan and implement a mission to intercept and divert one.
We've already shown we can hit an asteroid or a meteor with a probe. They said you could crash a spacecraft into it that does something that causes a punch of particles to hit one that creates a giant gas cloud that would change its trajectory. You could use directional lasers. I even heard one theory that if you simply splashed it with a bunch of white paint it would cause the object to reflect sunlight and the reaction from the particles would ever so slightly change the trajectory.
The problem is that we would need at least a few years advanced warning to plan and implement a mission to intercept and divert one.
Holy crap. You aren't lying. I would be afraid to stand up right now.
The best puns are unintentional puns.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Because we're not trying.
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