British Company Takes Lead To Stop Asteroids 198
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that following the news of NASA's budget cuts impacting their ability to do things like watch the sky for asteroids, a British company has decided to create a "gravity tractor" ship that could divert asteroids away from Earth if the need should arise. Of course, a gravity tractor certainly isn't a new idea. "Dr. Cordey said the company had worked with a number of space authorities on other methods of protecting the Earth from asteroids, but this one would be able to target a wider range. He said: 'We have done quite a lot of design work on this with the European Space Agency and we believe this would work just as well on a big solid iron asteroid as well as other types.' But the high cost implications mean that before the device could be made, it would have to be commissioned by a government or a group of governments working together."
First things first. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gotta find them first (Score:4, Insightful)
All this relies on finding said asteroid years if not decades out.
I can't confirm, but I remember hearing that between NASA and all the other space agencies we track less than 20% of space inside of Jupiter's orbit. A large dark asteroid out of the Kuiper Belt could be closing on us right now and we wouldn't see it until months before impact, too late to do anything about it.
IMHO, lets work on finding and tracking large asteroids first.
Re:Bad science (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear weapons would be far more entertaining; kind of a near-Earth fireworks display ("ooooh, aahhhh"). Besides, one more used up there is one less that may be used down here.
Budgets cuts (Score:1, Insightful)
Won't matter much if we can divert an asteroid if budget cuts cost us the ability to see it coming.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:2, Insightful)
now how are we gonna get a gazillion tons of water all the way to the asteroid?
Re:First things first. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about their business plan? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm very curious to learn which is their business plan. Could it be "pay us a gazillion dollars or we won't use our technology against the asteroid"?
Any technology that can be used to divert an asteroid away from the Earth can also be used to direct one toward the Earth. I would guess they could get venture capital for a business plan like "pay us a gazillion dollars or we will use our technology to alter the course of this asteroid."
Lots of other businesses have "destroy the Earth" in their business plan. Why should commercial space ventures be any different?
Re:Bad science (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the whole "search for killer asteroids" is fatally flawed. Let's see... the last one hit 200,000,000 years ago. The last time someone won my State lottery was just last week, and typically they hand-out ten of these multi-million dollars prizes a year, so 10 out of 4 million tickets sold.
I have about 500 times better odds of winning my State lottery, than getting killed by an asteroid.
You have a problem with your math and your numbers. Big asteroids hit about every 68 million years. If one hit tomorrow it would kill 6.8 billion people. So on average, we can expect asteroids to kill about 100 people per year. That means you are about 10 times more likely to be killed in an asteroid impact than to win the state lottery.
Re:What about their business plan? (Score:2, Insightful)
I would call their bluff.
If they don't use it, they won't be around either after the asteroid hits.
Re:Bad science (Score:3, Insightful)
...If humans do go extinct,...
I don't think that humans will go extinct, at least not before the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth and then not either. We humans of modern times have come to think that we are in charge of this world even though we did not make it. This world will be destroyed by fire some day, but not until God personally does so. (2Peter 3:7) Contrary to what most people think this day and age, we are not the bosses of this world because this is not our world.
We're discussing science in this thread, not mythology.
Rosoideae Rosa By Alternative Nomenclature (Score:4, Insightful)
The summary seems to imply a "British Company To Pick Up NASA's Dropped Asteroid Ball" slant. "Seems" is used here because rhetorical device is relied on because the facts themselves don't do the job.
One failure is the false dichotomy created by positioning the Near Earth Object program(s -- there's seven http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/ [nasa.gov] ) for detecting and tracking thousands of rocks against a vehicle intended to take one such rock and push it around. A tactic like this is common when the writer has little faith in the intended focus of the piece to carry the story alone, and they present a badly constructed straw man in contrast.
The second problem is in presenting NASA's possible future NEO (a currently operating and planned continued project, mind you) budget crunch as problematic, whereas this British company's announcement of what amounts to grand plans on paper that would admittedly require huge national or international funding to even begin is held up as "taking the lead".
If announcing one has plans that one considers viable is "taking the lead", the team in TFA is taking the lead behind dozens of other "programs" in equal or farther planning stages, some described in a recent Discovery/Science Channel program, many written up in popular media over the years and available to the search engine of your choice, with the Top Ten Ways listed at http://dsc.discovery.com/space/top-10/asteroid-stopping-technology/index-03.html [discovery.com] . Harry Stamper's roughnecks and Spurgeon Tanner's shuttle crew are not among them, which didn't stop me from using them in the obligatory /. inclusion of SF references.
Re:Bad science (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the biggest and most improbable is the existence of Israel against all odds, exactly as it has been foretold thousands of years ago will happen.
Firstly, it is very possible that the people who instated Israel as a state were influenced by the prophesy of it's existence.
Secondly, Asteroids have hit before and will hit again, it is only the size of the asteroid and time from now until the hit that are variable.
Third, The bible is anecdote and not a good historical record. Therefore any "prophesies" within cannot be independantly verified and "The bible is right because it says so in the bible" is very flawed logic.
Finally, the reason that Jerusalem is so contentious is because of superstitious people putting too much faith in a book. There is absolutely nothing special about Jerusalem other than the billions of people who think that it is "holy" and cry out when zoning changes are made.
Do not confuse scientific predictions with mythology, they are not the same thing.
Re:Bad science (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy crap, decimate used with the original definition.
OK, now I've seen everything.