California Professors Unveil Proposal To Attack Asteroids With Lasers

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday's twin events with invading rocks from outer space — the close encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14, and the killer meteorite over Russia that was more than close — have brought the topic of defending mankind against killer asteroids back into the news. The Economist summarizes some of the ideas that have been bandied about, in a story that suggests Paul Simon's seventies hit "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover": Just push it aside, Clyde. Show it the nuke, Luke. Gravity tug, Doug. The new proposal is an earth orbiting, solar-powered array of laser guns called DE-STAR (Directed Energy Solar Targeting of AsteRoids) from two California-based professors, physicist Philip Lubin (UCSB) and industrial statistician Gary Hughes (Cal Polytechnic State). Lubin and Hughes say their system could be developed and deployed in a range of sizes depending on the size of the target: DE-STAR 2, about the size of the International Space Station (100 meters) could nudge comets and asteroids from their orbits, while DE-STAR 4 (100 times larger than ISS) could evaporate an asteroid 500 meters in diameter (10 times larger than 2012 DA14) in a year. Of course, this assumes that the critters could be spotted early enough for the lasers to do their work."

What could go wrong?

[cohomology]

Sorry for being a pessimist, but I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative [wikipedia.org]

Consider a trillion dollar weapon of mass destruction in space.

It will never get through Congress.
There will be construction delays lasting a century.
Your enemies will be able to destroy it, cheaply.
Bright high school students will play with it.

Re:Knee...

[Rockoon]

As long as the project is funded by Californians, I say go for it. They don't seem to mind dismal-looking cost/benefit analyses

Re:People Are Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I call these interesting people Space Nutters. They have a doomsday religion and believe in it fervently. The odd thing is that they think space is deadly, constantly threatening us, but they also think the solution is to leave this planet to go LIVE in space.

Re:People Are Interesting

[MightyYar]

You are right. We've never [wikipedia.org] been hit [barringercrater.com] by anything larger [wikipedia.org]. We should definitely wait until something gets really, really close [wikipedia.org] before we take any action.

It's not the rocks you've got to worry about

[M. Baranczak]

Let's keep things in perspective. There are no verified records of anyone being killed by a falling meteor, ever. There are some sketchy stories that can't be confirmed - but even if we believe all of them, the number is still pretty damn small.

Now consider all the wars, genocides, and random violence that humans have inflicted on each other.