abb3w: Start the basic design process, already. An asteroid redirector is something humanity is likely to need eventually. Worst come to worst, the government can leave the outline on file and update the details periodically until it's actually needed. Sort of like the US plan for invading Canada.

/I wonder what their current counter-invasion plan looks like these days....

Surrender, do nothing but drink Labatt 50 and smoke packs of Du Maurier, constantly complain

/worked for Quebec

Spending billions of dollars on something that has 1 in 625 chance of becoming a problem doesn't seem like very good math to me. Furthermore, a rock that size isn't going to do much damage globally, but I definitely wouldn't want to be in the same country that it hit. Are other countries going to contribute to asteroid deflection? It has a greater chance of hitting the ocean which means coastal cities would be more at risk. Since I live in Denver, I doubt I'll see much flooding from it.

Also, what if we're wrong in our calculations, send some sort of probe or nuclear weapon up to greet it and actually knock it into the keyhole? Wouldn't that be awesome -- our very attempts to save a few million people are the very source of their deaths.

140 meters isn't that much bigger than the one that caused the Tunguska event. At what size does it become economically beneficial to deflect an asteroid? 50 meters? 100 meters? 500 meters? If it's not a global scale event, how are we going to fund a worldwide defense system among other countries?

abb3w: Start the basic design process, already. An asteroid redirector is something humanity is likely to need eventually. Worst come to worst, the government can leave the outline on file and update the details periodically until it's actually needed. Sort of like the US plan for invading Canada.

/I wonder what their current counter-invasion plan looks like these days....

We're creating an army of Bieber fans. One word from us and Bieber will instruct them to swarm! Like millions of bees buzzing out of tune! You have no defense against that type of evil.

theorellior: Raoul Eaton: Can someone please put this into an arbitrary political context, so I can know whether I'm pro-asteroid or anti-asteroid based on my ideological loyalties?

It depends. Do you think that God is preparing this to smite us for allowing homogays to marry, or do you think that this is just a test to see if we can pray hard enough to push it into another orbit?

That's just the question that I need an important public figure to answer for me. Where is Pat Robertson now that I need him?

abb3w: /I wonder what their current counter-invasion plan looks like these days....

We wait for winter then destroy the plows.

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calender for years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived, and all the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts, and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food.


Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food, always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice, difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant, and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

FrancoFile: Felgraf: abb3w: Start the basic design process, already. An asteroid redirector is something humanity is likely to need eventually. Worst come to worst, the government can leave the outline on file and update the details periodically until it's actually needed. Sort of like the US plan for invading Canada.

/I wonder what their current counter-invasion plan looks like these days....

Well, in theory, a *simple* asteroid redirector is just a probe that uses thrusters and some calculator software to maintain a close, but constant distance from the asteroid. (As it gets pulled towards the asteroid, use thrusters to move away from asteroid). Because while it gets pulled towards the asteroid, the asteroid would, *very slightly*, get pulled towards it. However, I suspect this would work best with asteroids that were detected a long ways off?

It might just be easier to try and blow it up, dunno.

Better bet is a probe that sprays reflective dust on the asteroid, thus changing albedo, thus creating a solar sail effect. Takes much less mass than the gravitational method.

Unless it's rotating at any kind of speed, I think. Direct force is a lot more predictable.

On that note, I've never seen why the "hover-and-pull-with-gravity" is any better than just landing and pushing with thrusters directly. All of the energy you're using to stay a certain distance away from the asteroid is coming from your thrusters anyway, and it's at a substantially lower efficiency because you can't thrust directly away from the asteroid - that would push it in the opposite direction you're trying to get it to go in. Why not just cut out the middle man and make contact?

Wait, nevermind, I just realized the answer to my own question. Hovering over the asteroid means that you dont have to worry about the rotation of it at all, and can apply a steady force no matter the particular orientation changes.

Roadogs: make me some tea: Eh, it'll likely hit in the ocean or Africa or somewhere worthless anyway. Why waste money on a deflection campaign?

Because of the tsunami, silly.

[i43.tinypic.com image 640x480]

Just for comparison, the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake had a total energy release of 9,600 gigatons.

What are you doing with a gun in space?

Lou Brown: abb3w: Start the basic design process, already. An asteroid redirector is something humanity is likely to need eventually. Worst come to worst, the government can leave the outline on file and update the details periodically until it's actually needed. Sort of like the US plan for invading Canada.

/I wonder what their current counter-invasion plan looks like these days....

Better yet, build one now and fire it off against an asteroid that's not supposed to hit earth to make sure we can actually do it when it's necessary.

I can tell you exactly how that will go: The asteroid we test it on wasn't going to hit us until after we redirected it.

So, I know longer have to worry about kermit_the_frog: Link (new window)

An asteroid impact could ruin your whole day...

So, I no longer have to worry about global warming?

Nuke it from orbit the ground. It's the only way to be sure.

Ps: Nuclear explosions don't create shock waves in space.

Raoul Eaton: Can someone please put this into an arbitrary political context, so I can know whether I'm pro-asteroid or anti-asteroid based on my ideological loyalties?

I'll do you one better... (a few Fark perspectives before they post)

1. If I can't see it with my naked eyes, it must not exist, and therefore I'm smarter than all of you mouth breathers out there who believe an all powerful sky rock is going to destroy you in 2040.

2. I believe in the all powerful sky rock and know it's going to destroy us all because homos are having too much gay abortion after worshiping Satan by believing in evolution.

3. This is all O'dumbo's fault and the only way to fix it is elect Jesus riding a Dinosaur in 2012 as President with McCain as Vice President of course.

4. It's Bush's fault.

aphexcoil: Spending billions of dollars on something that has 1 in 625 chance of becoming a problem doesn't seem like very good math to me.

For reference, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, which essentially did this on a smaller scale, cost $330 million. If you want to assume that the hypothetical spacecraft described in the link costs ten times that, it still amounts to less than 1/1000 of our federal budget this year.

At some point, an asteroid of this size is going to hit earth. A pretty good one happened about a hundred years ago in fact. Wouldn't it be better to be prepared for something like this rather than be caught with our pants down when it's too late to do anything?

It's all fun and games until Ben Affleck attempts to act and Liv Tyler purses her enormous lips.

Damn bugs have been shooting things from Klendathu again.

aphexcoil: Spending billions of dollars on something that has 1 in 625 chance of becoming a problem doesn't seem like very good math to me. Furthermore, a rock that size isn't going to do much damage globally, but I definitely wouldn't want to be in the same country that it hit. Are other countries going to contribute to asteroid deflection? It has a greater chance of hitting the ocean which means coastal cities would be more at risk. Since I live in Denver, I doubt I'll see much flooding from it.

Also, what if we're wrong in our calculations, send some sort of probe or nuclear weapon up to greet it and actually knock it into the keyhole? Wouldn't that be awesome -- our very attempts to save a few million people are the very source of their deaths.

140 meters isn't that much bigger than the one that caused the Tunguska event. At what size does it become economically beneficial to deflect an asteroid? 50 meters? 100 meters? 500 meters? If it's not a global scale event, how are we going to fund a worldwide defense system among other countries?

You assume that any money spent on this is instantly lost. This isn't a war, where all your resources are spent in a vacuum and don't come home. The moon landings didn't bring all that much science knowledge directly, but it brought a metric ton of engineering tech with it indirectly. For every dollar you sink into this plan you'll get a whole lot more in return later, it just won't be obvious until afterwards.

And no, it won't do much on a global scale, but on the off chance it lands near civilization you'll be singing a different tune. Tunguska was on the order of tens of meters, across, this is quite a bit larger, and can do a lot of damage if it lands in an unlucky spot. Well worth putting serious thought into.

aphexcoil: Spending billions of dollars on something that has 1 in 625 chance of becoming a problem doesn't seem like very good math to me.

And this is why TFA had a notice to actually read it before commenting.

No one (except you, apparently) is proposing actually making a craft to deflect it. They're not even proposing designing such a craft at this point. The "we should do this now" proposal is merely to look at things like when we'd want to launch, how much delta-V needs to be applied, that sort of thing, in case AG5 emerges from behind the sun in 2013 and we go "oh shiat".

My guess is you're looking at low six figures at worst. And that definitely sounds like a good bet to me... heck, even if you assume we can deflect it after it goes through the keyhole, if the after-keyhole mission would cost more than about $60 million more than the before-keyhole mission, you've statistically won out. And that's not even looking at cost-of-impact.

Jake Havechek: The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calender for years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived, and all the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts, and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food.


Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food, always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice, difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant, and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

Hit to road, jack! And dontcha come back no more no more no more no more!

Loki-L: Lou Brown: abb3w: Start the basic design process, already. An asteroid redirector is something humanity is likely to need eventually. Worst come to worst, the government can leave the outline on file and update the details periodically until it's actually needed. Sort of like the US plan for invading Canada.

/I wonder what their current counter-invasion plan looks like these days....

Better yet, build one now and fire it off against an asteroid that's not supposed to hit earth to make sure we can actually do it when it's necessary.

I can tell you exactly how that will go: The asteroid we test it on wasn't going to hit us until after we redirected it.

Can we make sure it hits New Jersey? If so, I'm okay with this.

Given that they know when and from which direction the impact would be in 2040, shouldn't they have a decent idea of roughly where on the Earth this would hit (at least which hemisphere would face it)? It would seem silly for the US to borrow money from China to deflect this if it's going to hit the other side of the world.

it's ok, i've been playing asteroids since 1984.

gimme the joystick

Roadogs: make me some tea: Eh, it'll likely hit in the ocean or Africa or somewhere worthless anyway. Why waste money on a deflection campaign?

Because of the tsunami, silly.

[i43.tinypic.com image 640x480]

Sooo? What if I lived in Denver?

//I don't live in Denver.

That's 28 years after the end of the world. Clearly the scientests are WRONG

My best guess would be to either slow it down, or speed it up. It's not a super huge amount of mass, and trying to hit it and cleanly break it up wouldn't make sense if we'd cause more debris. Slowing it down might involve something as simple as putting something massive in it's way and having the asteroid plow into it giving up enough energy to slow it down (A small man made debris field, man made asteroid cloud, giant ball of dirty garbage etc). Speeding it up, I don't know. The only thing I can think of is ion rockets.

I was child of the race to the moon. But as time has worn on I've changed my views on manned exploration. The dangers of space travel and the sheer time it takes to get anywhere make it seem unlikely; and unmanned space flight seems as scientifically productive and infinitely more efficient. We've got billions of years to work on exporting life for survival.

But diverting asteroids seems like a reasonable and more immediate goal for space research.

evaned: aphexcoil: Spending billions of dollars on something that has 1 in 625 chance of becoming a problem doesn't seem like very good math to me.

And this is why TFA had a notice to actually read it before commenting.

No one (except you, apparently) is proposing actually making a craft to deflect it. They're not even proposing designing such a craft at this point. The "we should do this now" proposal is merely to look at things like when we'd want to launch, how much delta-V needs to be applied, that sort of thing, in case AG5 emerges from behind the sun in 2013 and we go "oh shiat".

My guess is you're looking at low six figures at worst. And that definitely sounds like a good bet to me... heck, even if you assume we can deflect it after it goes through the keyhole, if the after-keyhole mission would cost more than about $60 million more than the before-keyhole mission, you've statistically won out. And that's not even looking at cost-of-impact.

I did read TFA. Low six figures at worst? You've obviously never been involved in a large-scale government operation. Let's say they decide to spend (at the very least) ten's of millions of dollars and find out that it will impact Italy. Does the US continue on it's project or do we sent a postcard to Italy wishing the best?

Also, if you're going to do this the right way, you can't just build an asteroid deflection system based on KNOWN threats. What good is it if you design a system where only 15% of the known risks are cataloged? In order to do it correctly, you need to design a system that will be able to now only find all known threats, but also find them with enough time to spare to do something about them.

Again, it makes no sense to single out one 140 meter wide asteroid when a few 400-500 meter wide asteroids are on a collision course towards Earth within the next 1,000 years and yet we don't have a clue as to where they are right now. That's great if we spend the resources to deflect one asteroid, but what we really need are the resources to find and catalog all threats so that we know exactly how much we really need to invest in an Asteroid Deflection Program.

Gabrielmot: Raoul Eaton: Can someone please put this into an arbitrary political context, so I can know whether I'm pro-asteroid or anti-asteroid based on my ideological loyalties?

I'll do you one better... (a few Fark perspectives before they post)

1. If I can't see it with my naked eyes, it must not exist, and therefore I'm smarter than all of you mouth breathers out there who believe an all powerful sky rock is going to destroy you in 2040.

2. I believe in the all powerful sky rock and know it's going to destroy us all because homos are having too much gay abortion after worshiping Satan by believing in evolution.

3. This is all O'dumbo's fault and the only way to fix it is elect Jesus riding a Dinosaur in 2012 as President with McCain as Vice President of course.

4. It's Bush's fault.

They all look so tempting . . . it's just so hard to choose!

Sir Vanderhoot: On that note, I've never seen why the "hover-and-pull-with-gravity" is any better than just landing and pushing with thrusters directly. All of the energy you're using to stay a certain distance away from the asteroid is coming from your thrusters anyway, and it's at a substantially lower efficiency because you can't thrust directly away from the asteroid - that would push it in the opposite direction you're trying to get it to go in. Why not just cut out the middle man and make contact?

Wait, nevermind, I just realized the answer to my own question. Hovering over the asteroid means that you dont have to worry about the rotation of it at all, and can apply a steady force no matter the particular orientation changes.

Also if you can't figure out the asteroid's inertia (a tensor) then pushing directly on it is likely to waste energy just changing it's angular momentum. Pushing on the surface is not (necessarily) pushing on it's center of mass.

oren0: Given that they know when and from which direction the impact would be in 2040, shouldn't they have a decent idea of roughly where on the Earth this would hit (at least which hemisphere would face it)? It would seem silly for the US to borrow money from China to deflect this if it's going to hit the other side of the world.

Two recent satellites did an uncontrolled re-entry. There was enough uncertainty in the estimates, even an hour beforehand, that 90% of the Earth was still a potential impact site.

That asteroid is traveling much, much faster, and 28 years or so away. There's a reason the odds are 1 in 625. No, they can't estimate which hemisphere.

This isn't a "I got mine, fark you" situation, much as you'd like it to be. It doesn't matter where it hits. If you're alive, it'll be a bad decade.

Raoul Eaton: Roadogs: make me some tea: Eh, it'll likely hit in the ocean or Africa or somewhere worthless anyway. Why waste money on a deflection campaign?

Because of the tsunami, silly.

[i43.tinypic.com image 640x480]

Sooo? What if I lived in Denver?

//I don't live in Denver.

Denver's a special case- Tebow would obviously protect the city against any natural disaster. It's the rest of the world we're worried about.

wildcardjack: I know this might be a bad idea, but can we catch it? Put it in a medium earth orbit as a ready supply of matter to process into space station and space craft. Heck, I bet it would be just right to make the terminus for a space elevator.

Look, it's always going to cost a lot of money to get mass out of a gravity well. It would be better to grab mass that's already out there and process it. We just have to advance our maker bots to matter compilers.

We should get together for a poker game sometime.

aphexcoil: Roadogs: make me some tea: Eh, it'll likely hit in the ocean or Africa or somewhere worthless anyway. Why waste money on a deflection campaign?

Because of the tsunami, silly.

[i43.tinypic.com image 640x480]

Just for comparison, the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake had a total energy release of 9,600 gigatons.



GREAT SCOTT!

Stranded On The Planet Dumbass: The dangers of space travel and the sheer time it takes to get anywhere make it seem unlikely; and unmanned space flight seems as scientifically productive and infinitely more efficient. We've got billions of years to work on exporting life for survival.

a) You can't complete a journey by never taking the first step.

b) What's the point of sending robots if we're not looking to go ourselves?

hudef: If they can calculate with such exactitude that there is a "1 in 625 chance" of it hitting earth, what are the variables that allow for that slight possibility?

FTFA:

At the moment, given the observations we have, the odds of AG5 passing through the keyhole in 2023 are about 1 in 625.

Hitting the keyhole is different than hitting Earth; those odds aren't known yet...

It doesn't matter where it hits. People who see it hit will not live very long to see anything else. Even if you are well out of the fire zones, you're pretty much only going to live for as long as you can scrounge for food.

Jubeebee: dopeydwarf: vpb: If we launch Bruce Willis on a collision course at a high enough velocity would that deflect it?

Yes. Yes he would.

Emergency Bruce Willis Asteroid Deflection Projectile:

Assume Bruce Willis weighs 90kg.

We accelerate Bruce Willis to 15km/s relative to the asteroid (Earth escape velocity is 11.2km/s, and we want to do things right, so we'll go a bit faster than that, plus the velocity of the oncoming asteroid).

Kinetic energy = 1/2 mv2

Kinetic energy for the Emergency Bruce Willis Asteroid Deflection Projectile: 1/2 90*15,000^2 = 10,125,000,000j

1kg TNT ~4200j

Bruce Willis will impact the asteroid with the force of 2,410,714.3kg of TNT, or roughly 1.2 megatons.

The asteroid, and Bruce Willis, will be vaporized in the explosion.

You magnificent Bastard!

Gabrielmot: Raoul Eaton: Can someone please put this into an arbitrary political context, so I can know whether I'm pro-asteroid or anti-asteroid based on my ideological loyalties?

I'll do you one better... (a few Fark perspectives before they post)

1. If I can't see it with my naked eyes, it must not exist, and therefore I'm smarter than all of you mouth breathers out there who believe an all powerful sky rock is going to destroy you in 2040.

2. I believe in the all powerful sky rock and know it's going to destroy us all because homos are having too much gay abortion after worshiping Satan by believing in evolution.

3. This is all O'dumbo's fault and the only way to fix it is elect Jesus riding a Dinosaur in 2012 as President with McCain as Vice President of course.

4. It's Bush's fault.

You had me until point 3. Everyone knows Palin is going to win this next Presidential election.

aphexcoil: 140 meters isn't that much bigger than the one that caused the Tunguska event.

what? Incomplete error trapping of single event upsets in the firmware in Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower caused that.