Can NASA, Air Force, and Private Industry Really Mitigate an Asteroid Threat? 151
coondoggie writes "There has been much chatter about the threat of an asteroid or significant meteor strike on Earth — mostly caused by the untracked meteor that blasted its way to international attention when it exploded in the sky above Russia injuring nearly 1,200 people in February. It was one of those amazing coincidences that on that same day an asteroid NASA had been tracking for months — asteroid 2012 DA14 — was to harmlessly cross Earth's path. Those events and the topic of mitigating asteroid and meteor or Near Earth Object threats to Earth prompted a couple congressional hearings by the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the latest of which was held this week. None of the NEOs found to date have more than a tiny chance of hitting Earth in the next century. Thus the near-term risk of an unwarned impact from large asteroids, and hence the majority of the risk from all NEOs, has been reduced by more than 90%. Assuming none are found to be an impact threat, discovering 90% of the 140 meter sized objects will further reduce the total risk to the 99% level. By finding these objects early enough and tracking their motions over the next 100 years, even those rare objects that might be found threatening could be deflected using existing technologies."
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, while we haven't managed to deal with protecting the occupants of automobiles when they plunge off cliffs, we have managed to either protect occupants or reduce their injuries with other fairly simple technologies that have dramatically reduced casualty numbers.
We've had two significant events in about 100 years. I think that it's a good idea to both improve detection and to figure out how to nudge or deflect asteroids. The further out we know of their paths the less costly it is to deflect them.
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You're chances of dying by being struck by lightning i far, far bigger than death by asteroid.
Well, yes. The problem is that the chances of all of us being killed by an asteroid is far, far bigger than extinction by lightning.
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:5, Insightful)
"You're chances of dying by being struck by lightning i far, far bigger than death by asteroid."
That's what the teacher was saying to her class of juvenile stegosaurus, when the big one hit.
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Try convincing the public that an asteroid that has a 99% chance of hitting the earth in 150 years is worth spending trillions of dollars on today to launch a probe to deflect it.
Convincing the public to spend the money isn't the problem. The US congress, however, is. Just 39 years ago congress so wanted more control over the budget they passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and easily passed it because Nixon was tied up with the Watergate scandal. Fast forward to now and the senate has just recently passed its first budget in four years. But I'm sure it will die in the house, if it even gets that far. If these fucker can't even do something so basic as pass a yearly budget, there is little hope of them looking ahead far enough to worry about anything 150 years in the future. After all, their constituents will be long dead. China is fast becoming a better hope for something like this. At least they still have goals that stretch past the next election cycle.
Just do the convincing 75 years from now... It'll be easier to do then, too.
There's the problem with the public. Keeping their attention for such a project in today's sound bite, two minute news clip attention span. The MBA's would get involved and it would all come down to the quarterly returns and then we're screwed.
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:0, Insightful)
You apparently only paid attention to undergrad business class. Risk = probability * consequence. However, if consequence is total destruction of mankind, then that definition of risk doesn't work well.
what "threat"? (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been no serious asteroid impacts in millennia, if not millions of years. That tells you that these events are extremely rare, and calling them a "threat" is just not justified.
If anything, space travel and the ability to steer asteroids raises the risk that humans will try to steer asteroids towards earth and use them as gigantic kinetic bombs (fortunately, very slow moving).
The blind leading the blind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello morons. NASA didn't know about the rock that exploded over Russia until it was too late. None of these bastards can be trusted when they start gibbering on about risks. The truth is THEY ARE FUCKING BLIND. A mole has a better time finding its way in broad daylight than we do seeing crap in space.
They give us highly detailed pictures of very small parts of the night sky. Great. Awesome in fact. However, we actually DON'T have the kind of wide scale whole sky studying system required to make ANY reliable risk assessments -- Based on... What?! The TINY patches of sky we have studied with great detail, and some other images from murky underfunded telescopes -- Which didn't even detect that we had A DAMN DWARF PLANET called Eris (more massive than Pluto) orbiting our Sun until Just 8 years ago -- they're making risk predictions? Don't make me laugh. Seriously. That's why Pluto's not a planet. If it were we'd have to own up to the fact that there was another PLANET there all along and we didn't see it.... Grr.
THINK people. The geologic record shows we're over due for a mass extinction event. Might not be an asteroid, maybe gamma burst or volcanic eruption, etc. The point is that we really don't have much of any information at all in any of these respects -- Not the kind we'd need to kick back and rest on our laurels like dinosaurs proclaiming, "Yeah, a few little rocks fell, but no harm really, the sky's not falling..." Right before the sky did fall right on their big ignorant heads.
I'm not saying we should panic. I'm saying we need to make a concious decision as a race to not become extinct -- To not let our light go out of the Universe just because of greed. We need to swap the budgets of the armed forces and the space programs until this shit is sorted. Once we have more space infrastructure to ensure we're not going to be extincted by the next big rock, THEN we can worry about fighting over petty shit on this planet. All our eggs are in one basket here on Earth. That's moronic. We NEED a self sustaining off-world colony of humans just to ensure the survival of our species. Until we have at least that, then YES, we are in SUPREME DANGER of becoming extinct; In fact, it's a 1:1 probability that our extinction will occur at present.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled not giving a damn about anything beyond your own lifespan. Screw you humans. You'll get yours.
Wish for a city to be destroyed by a meteor (Score:2, Insightful)
I think if the United States was hit with couple game changer meteors NASA would have no problem with funding.
Re:The long-period comet problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll give you 3 to 1 odds that 6 out of 10 people probably don't care about statistics ;)
Re:This IS a mass extinction event (Score:4, Insightful)
And we're very arguably evolution's finest production to date with our advanced thought, art, music and vision. Not all life is equal.