Defending Earth From Asteroids With MADMEN

jolomo writes "A partner of Atlanta-based NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts is working on a concept they call MADMEN (Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Nodes), which would launch a distributed attack against large Earth-bound objects. Thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations and when launched, each would land on the object, drill into its surface and remove enough material to change its course."

This is a boondoggle

[egg troll]

I'm sorry but worrying about asteroids is downright silly. Instead of spending money on something as fanciful as this, it would be much better to spend our energies on real problems: enviromental degradation, nuclear proliferation and such.

We may as well worry about the boogyman as far as issues that are likely to affect us.

Re:This is a boondoggle

[antis0c]

Yeah its not like Asteroids ever caused any mass extinctions in the past.. .. Oh wait, thats right, Dinosaurs.

Hmmm, let's think about this for a sec.

[StringBlade]

Thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations and when launched, each would land on the object...

How many nations have put rockets (with significant payloads) successfully into orbit? Right, I can count them on one hand too. So where do the other 995+ nations come in and what makes us think that any rouge nation that can lauch a rocket into space has the ability to aim it, much less land it on the surface of the asteriod?

And finally, are we suggesting that we want thousands of nations to have the ability to launch rockets with payloads into outer space (or at least orbit)? I'm not being elitist here, but I think most of use agree that nuclear proliferation wasn't quite the boon we all thought it was going to be.

Re:This is a boondoggle

[SirWhoopass]

You are correct. An asteroid impact is not very likley. If it occurs, however, the cost is very high. This research is only $75,000. Cheap insurance.

Swarm good

[ka9dgx]

I think it's crucial to have redundancy in such an oviously critical mission such as saving humanity. It also offers mission flexibilty, allowing the allocation of resources in response to the threat vectors presented.

--Mike--

Sagan

[leehwtsohg]

I think that Carl Sagan made a very good point, saying that the chance of an astroid hitting earth is increased when one develops a technology to deflect astroids from their path, not decreased.

Re:This is a boondoggle

[Bendebecker]

"I'm sorry but worrying about asteroids is downright silly. Instead of spending money on something as fanciful as this, it would be much better to spend our energies on real problems: enviromental degradation, nuclear proliferation and such.

We may as well worry about the boogyman as far as issues that are likely to affect us."

Flashback 65 million years ago to the the late cretaceous: I'm sorry but worrying about asteroids is downright silly. Instead of spending time on something as fanicful as this, it would be much better to spend out energies on real problems: dropping stegasaurus populations, longer teeth and such.

We may as well worry about another protozoan extinction as far as issues that are likely to affect us...

He who failes to plan is dogmeat. What happens if we do nothing and say five years from now we find an asteroid coming towards us to wipe us out? You'll probably be the first to bitch and moan "why didn't we do something when we had time?"

Re:Experiment

[rokzy]

it's not the explosion pushing the gun backwards, it's conservation of linear momentum.

if you could have an explosion that was only forwards, you'd still get recoil.

Re:Sagan

[mikeee]

Because you may also be able to use it to aim an asteroid towards earth.

Nuclear powered

[Flozzin]

I can imagine the uproar by every earth friendly freak out there. Lets have hundreds of nuclear powered machines all over the planet. What if one malfunctions? Would it not create a dirty bomb? Being that the ammount of nuclear energy would be to o small to create a massive blast. If you are using nuclear power for energy, can it just be stored dormant??

Would we know?

[FreshFunk510]

Maybe I've watched too many movies, but if an asteroid were on direct path to hit the Earth and would likely cause the extinction of mankind, do you think the government(s) would let us know about it before they took a crack at pushing it off course? Or do you think due to civil unrest that they would wait until the problem was solved to tell everyone?

Perhaps the scientific community would let it out first.

Cooperation

[aml666]

Thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations and when launched

We couldn't even cooperate on the International Space Station (still not done). How would many nations work together on a defense system?

Re:Only in Atlanta...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, cos they don't have anything like that attitude in South Central LA. Or any other large city.

Put your South-hatred back up your ass.

Re:This is a boondoggle

[Wingnut64]

Whats worse is it does nothing but give a slight piece of mind.

It's not about piece of mind, it's about the survival of our species. Besides, I'd rather that 5% of the DOD's money go to stopping asteroids then be spent on tanks.

Re:Experiment

[sketerpot]

The way I see it, the explosion is pushing out in all directions. The gun barrel isn't about to change shape, since it's strong. The bullet is pushed out of the gun. The explosion also pushes back against the gun.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but why wouldn't the explosion push the gun backwards?

Re:This is a boondoggle

[Mysticalfruit]

There is someone here on slashdot that has a sig that sums it up

"The moon is covered with astronomical odds".

Nobody wants nuclear proliferation and global degradation (other than GWB). However at the same time, it'll all be mute if suddenly an astronomer goes "Oh Shit, were gonna get slammed with a texas sized rock in 10 years" and we have no plan in place to deal with it. The problem is that nobody will take this kind of threat seriously until our feet are in the fire...

I'm of the mind set that we should ensure humanities survival by sprending ourselves out and working towards colonizing other planets and working on longterm off earth space colonies. Part of that strategy would be that every offworld establishment would have a complete copy of the earths data (world history / theorethical / medical / scientific / mechanical / etc) Basically, everything you'd need to build anything and the knowlege stored so it could be taught.

Playing the odds

[seniorcoder]

It seems that much time has been spent calculating the odds of a killer asteroid wiping out all life on Earth.
Has any time been spent calculating the odds of a killer maniac (or group thereof) wiping out all life on Earth?

As an rough estimate, with the Doomsday Clock [bullatomsci.org] as a reference, I humbly propose that the odds of a maniac killing us all are massively higher than the rogue asteroid issue.

Maybe we should be putting available cash towards world peace as a slightly higher priority.

Re:This is a boondoggle

[i_r_sensitive]

Really?

Ever consider that the dinosaurs might still rule the Earth if they had MADMEN?

Anything even remotely on the scale of another Alvarez event will make any of those "real problems" seem trivial by comparison...

Besides, the Earth has been hit many times in it's history, ample evidence exists. The moon and our other neighbours in the inner system all show evidence of repeated strikes from comets/meteors through their history. The number of nuclear weapons detonated through the last 60 years doesn't even come close to being significant in view of the number of strikes the Earth has taken from other celestial bodies.

Bottom line, it's a fact that we've been struck before, and it is a statistical certainty that we will be struck again. Ever seen shooting stars? How often do those small items come to Earth? pretty common event really. Consider the damage that man made items not even a billionth of the mass of a medium sized asteroid have caused coming down...

I'm not marginalizing the other issues you bring up. Environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation are issues which demand our attention, but they aren't justification to marginalize this issue. Nor would an increase in our presence and utilization of space have anything but a positive effect on those issues.

Moving polluting industries to space is the single best way of keeping those polluting industries that our society depends on, while minimizing the environment they can damage. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is less tangible, but still a positive effect. If you are an emerging nation, which is going to be a bigger return for you on the world stage, possessing nuclear weapons or being part of the exploitation of space? Nuclear weapons may intimidate your neighbours, but have never positively impacted any society's material prosperity. Further, history bears out that those nations which partake in colonization outstrip their contemporaries which do not, and in pretty short order. So if the choice is colonize space, and reap the awards, or garner nuclear weapons, and reap some unproductive holes in the ground...

Re:Would we know?

[beeplet]

I think there are enough amateur astronomers who keep keep track of astroids that even if the government attempted to hide the discovery, the news would quickly spread. And there's a significant chance such an astroid would be discovered by an amateur or academic astronomer to begin with, and the details would be public knowledge almost instantly. But even supposing the government has the power to keep it secret, wouldn't they prefer to have every available person working on possible solutions?

Re:How good will the system be?

[sketerpot]

Playing pool would be a good aid to getting a handle on asteroids bumping into each other, except for two things. First, collisions in pool are mostly elastic, so there isn't that much loss of momentum. You can't expect that from asteroids or the moon. Second, pool balls are, in an honest game, all roughly the same mass. The moon is much bigger than an asteroid, and the forces keeping in in balance with the earth are probably enough to absorb a little asteroid collision easily.

Re:Playing the odds

[bear_phillips]

Has any time been spent calculating the odds of a killer maniac (or group thereof) wiping out all life on Earth?

Yep, its called the war on terror.

Re:Sagan

[Ralph Wiggam]

That would be a tricky weapon to use. You would have to choose an asteroid with exactly the right mass to destroy an enemy without ending life on Earth. Then you would have to both aim and time the asteroid to hit your enemy. Compare the difficulty of that to building or stealing a nuclear weapon. I'd worry about the nukes.

-B

Money Won't Buy Peace

[reallocate]

Sorry, but no amount of money will buy peace.

People will fight and kill for what they want. Peace always takes a back seat to anger, greed, ideology and a belief in inevitable victory.

Re:Alternative methods

[lommer]

Wrong, Wrong and, Wrong. Please Play again.

The trick is you paint the rock white, not black (i.e. you increase its albedo). The act of reflecting light imparts double the momentum of the act of absorbing it, thereby changing its orbit. Further, it doesn't matter that the asteroid rotates as you paint the whole asteroid. And actually, surprisingly, some of the guys at JPL have calculated that the area is actually enough - provided that the paint is applied early enough (several years prior to the predicted impact). The Yarkovsky effect is pretty small, but if you give it long enough, it will change the asteroid's orbit.