Technically, this is just a plan to detect asteroids, not stop them.

Autoplay video in link.

Oops, didn't see the post under the giant Martian.

Sybarite: KarmicDisaster: TFA has nothing to do with stopping asteroids, subby, just better detection.


So you're saying they don't want to miss a thing?

Horrible, just terrible

I still laughed

even if the can detect them earlier, i still wonder if they'll tell us about them.

Riche: 3.  The shiathead Republicans in Congress will likely block the proposal, because, well, they're shiatheads.

If volcano monitoring is clearly ludicrious, asteroid monitoring doesn't stand a chance.

KarmicDisaster: TFA has nothing to do with stopping asteroids, subby, just better detection.

What do you think the point of detecting them is?

KaBoom is short for Ka-Band Objects Observation and Monitoring project.

My radar detector is going to go apeshiat.

meanmutton: KarmicDisaster: TFA has nothing to do with stopping asteroids, subby, just better detection.

What do you think the point of detecting them is?

Not to stop them, currently, because nobody is implementing plans to do that.

Sybarite: KarmicDisaster: TFA has nothing to do with stopping asteroids, subby, just better detection.


So you're saying they don't want to miss a thing?

+1 Internets to you!

This is clearly just fear mongering on NASA's part, in an attempt to get more funding.  No better than common hooligans.
"Nice planet you've got here.  Be a shame if something happened to it.  I mean, WE'LL be okay; we've got rockets.  But the rest of you..."

Riche: 1. REALLY stupid name.

2.  Good idea in general, I certainly hope the project is or can be adapted to doing something scientifically useful.

3.  The shiathead Republicans in Congress will likely block the proposal, because, well, they're shiatheads.

Nah.. Republicans generally like handing out tax money to pay someone to do something.  Its the pay them to do nothing that they don't like.

dletter: Scientists have been concerned that it was only picked up by high-tech equipment monitoring near-earth-objects a few days before it spectacularlycrashed to Earth.

Did I miss them announcing this, or was this basically kept quiet and only known by a few scientists?  I assume they knew it would hit earth but not where, so, it could have hit anywhere (as was mentioned, this happens every few years, but, considering 70% +of the earth is wide swaths of water or very unpopulated land, it would get little notice).... but, still seems like we should have heard 2-3 days before "Hey, same day as this other big rock is going to be near earth, a smaller one might blow up over a populated area".  Obviously, we are all to be kept in the dark about these.

I was going to ask the same question. My thinking is that the public would not be informed when an event like this or more over a much larger impact is going to happen since there is no affective defense a person in the area could take. The logic being that a fruitless panic would result if the public was informed over an area greater than the expected impact site.

meanmutton: KarmicDisaster: TFA has nothing to do with stopping asteroids, subby, just better detection.

What do you think the point of detecting them is?


Earlier warning, so we can have more time to go nuts/spend a little time with family and friends/burn civilization to the ground/do bucket-list stuff/party your ass off/go on a multi-state ______-ing spree before the big space-rock blows us all to hell.

dletter: As he points out in the next point though... if they roll the detection part in with the standing plans to destroy an asteroid, which would include defense-type company spending, then the GOP (or I should say, the companies that give money to the GOP) are all over it.

Ambitwistor: dletter: As he points out in the next point though... if they roll the detection part in with the standing plans to destroy an asteroid, which would include defense-type company spending, then the GOP (or I should say, the companies that give money to the GOP) are all over it.

[www.smbc-comics.com image 384x1500]

This. Sometimes you need a carrot and stick to get the job done.

Treygreen13: Seems like the stuff I've read about asteroid planning don't intend to "destroy" the asteroids so much as they intend to simply alter their course slightly.

Which requires early detection.

dletter: if they roll the detection part in with the standing plans to destroy an asteroid, which would include defense-type company spending, then the GOP (or I should say, the companies that give money to the GOP) are all over it.

1) Corruption is bipartisan. Companies who get big fat contracts give big fat payouts to keep them.
2) Destroying things in space trends into the space-weapon department, and trips over various treaties.

As much as the schoolboy in my giggles at the prospect, I suspect whoever opposes the politicians trying to get this lucrative contract for their district will bring up the part about the ban on such things.
....Unless its such a big payout that everyone gets piece, in which case it probably wont work.

Maybe this even was enough to wake everyone up to the risks we face, but I'm thinking nothing short of losing a major city will make the money flow without the corrupting influence of politics.

/Hell, what am I saying.   The world could be ending and those jackasses will still be trying to rip us off.

Profedius: dletter: Scientists have been concerned that it was only picked up by high-tech equipment monitoring near-earth-objects a few days before it spectacularlycrashed to Earth.

Did I miss them announcing this, or was this basically kept quiet and only known by a few scientists?  I assume they knew it would hit earth but not where, so, it could have hit anywhere (as was mentioned, this happens every few years, but, considering 70% +of the earth is wide swaths of water or very unpopulated land, it would get little notice).... but, still seems like we should have heard 2-3 days before "Hey, same day as this other big rock is going to be near earth, a smaller one might blow up over a populated area".  Obviously, we are all to be kept in the dark about these.

I was going to ask the same question. My thinking is that the public would not be informed when an event like this or more over a much larger impact is going to happen since there is no affective defense a person in the area could take. The logic being that a fruitless panic would result if the public was informed over an area greater than the expected impact site.

No they didn't. Author is confused and article is confusing. No one knew this was out there beforehand.

i suppose that KaBOOM is a dorky enough name to make my Organization of Religious Groups Against Sexual Materials seem pretty legit...

in that picture - that was a the beginning of the articile.


what was that world 'roid lump?

Riche: 4. To protect lives, we're ultimately going to need to develop a capability to launch one or more big nukes at a dangerous meteor on relatively short notice. I don't know enough details to be 100% certain but I'm pretty sure our Minutemans can't do the job.

A nuke might, maybe, possibly work against an asteroid, but nukes (probably) won't work against comets.  Simulations suggest a large, high speed comet's loose gathering of rock and ice would laugh off our largest nukes.

There was a recently discovered comet that is very close to being on a collision course with Mars.  It was discovered just 20 months prior to its possible impact.  This thing is huge,  9 to 30 miles across -  and moving fast, 120,000 MPH, or 34 miles per second.  Were something that size and speed to hit Earth, we would all die.  It would also probably destroy most higher life on the planet  .http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/28/mars_impact_the_ re d_planet_may_get_hit_by_a_comet_in_october_2014.html

Here's the thing, 20 months probably isn't enough time to do anything other than hurl nukes at something like that.  Even getting nukes to it would require an Apollo program level of development.  Worse, they probably wouldn't work.  Sure, they might break up the hunk of ice and gravel, but the mass of the comet would remain about the same, the course of most of the material would remain about the same, and most of the comet would still be moving at about 34 Miles Per Second.  Mass, speed, energy.  Nukes aren't going to do much to stop something of that mass and speed.

There are suggestions that asteroids might be equally immune to nukes.  They may just turn the big rock into lots of little rocks of mostly the same mass, at most of the same speed, mostly still moving right towards us.

If we had 10 years notice, even 5 years, there are lots of mitigations possible.  20 months?  We'd do our damnedest, we'd spend every penny on altering its course, but that might not be enough time to save our skins.  Even getting the rockets to such a beast would be terribly difficult.  Even as close as 5 months, they're still going to be a very long way away and moving, very, very fast.  No nation has generic space craft on the shelf that are capable of deep space missions.  ICBM's don't reach escape velocity, we could use the warheads, but not the rockets.  Only the very largest satellite and probe launching rockets can send meaningful cargo further than low earth orbit, and there are very few of those.

We'd do our best, but 20 months may not be enough time for our best to matter.  Which is why we absolutely farking positively need these detection programs.  Time is money, seeing one of these 10 years out as opposed to 20 months could lower the cost of deflecting it by a million fold.  Could really mean the difference between humanity continuing or not.

busy chillin':

Props for Marvin the Martian.

Are you familiar with 'The Red Green Show'?  Methinks we should have Marvin and 'Local Explosives Enthusiast Edgar K.B. Montrose' as System Architects on the project.

"This will give us a better chance of finding potentially hazardous asteroids," he added. "If we were to find that a NEO (near earth object) might hit the Earth, Nasa and others are exploring ways of mitigating the potential danger."

All I'm reading is that I have time to get to Washington and get some payback on some Congressmen who whined about how we didn't need a manned space program because they wanted to make sure all their constituents had better government free cell phones.

Ka-Band? Great, more false-positives on my radar detector...

Isn't this a United Nations problem and not specifically one that the US taxpayers should have to shoulder to burden for?

/oh wait...

dletter: Yeah... so, while what happened physically in "2012" is scientifically absurd (the core of the planet heating up enough to destroy tectonic plates)... the "Elite Class" response to an known only to them impending calamity is exactly what would happen.

If you read this post just a little wrong it seems like the work of a real nutjob.