Defending Earth From Asteroids With MADMEN 499
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."
Experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
on a day without wind go in a light boat with something like 300 pounds of rocks. Go in the middle of a lake and launch all the rocks in the same direction as far as possible. After a while you'll notice that the boat is moving slowly in the opposite direction (depending on the weight and speed of the launches).
Nice trick that makes lot of sense in vaccum, with hundreds of 'rock launchers' and continous launches over a very long time.
As we say in French, "toute action entraine une reaction".
Re:Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Experiment (Score:4, Funny)
Dolt.
Re:Experiment (Score:2)
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
if you could have an explosion that was only forwards, you'd still get recoil.
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but why wouldn't the explosion push the gun backwards?
Re:Experiment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Once strange thing I've never been able to figure out though, is why shooting downward also makes the boat move downward?!
Re:Experiment (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
=Smidge=
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Funny)
Then it will move somewhat less slighty downward(because you just shot out the back of the boat?)
Re:Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
-B
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe this would be one of Newtons Laws. Something about an equal / opposite reaction.
A nice example of this though is the A-10 Warthog, a slow aircraft used by the marines with a very large gatling gun (rounds size of old milk bottles). The kick back on that gun is apparently close to equal with the thrust of one of it's two engines.
Re:Experiment (Score:3, Informative)
Appropriate acronym (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Appropriate acronym (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Appropriate acronym (Score:5, Funny)
Propelled System Yielding Continuous High Intensity Asteroids To Remove Ignorant Species on Terran Surface?
Maybe I should have wasted a bit more time on that one...
Re:Appropriate acronym (Score:3, Informative)
This is finally some good use of taxpayer money. Science and technology like this is rarely applied directly as intended, but the spinoffs are what give us MRIs, integrated circuits, etc. </preach target="choir">
Am I the only one? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:4, Funny)
DOS an asteroid? (Score:5, Funny)
MADMEN? Drilling? (Score:3, Funny)
Please... (Score:3, Funny)
credit ? (Score:2, Funny)
remember we're petty..
look at all the news channels... "when such and such broke, channel 5 was there first.. we rock".
Believe in Jesus our saviour.. the MADMAN from Saudi was the one that caused the asteroid to alter course.. Allah saved us.. so confusing.. might lead to WW III
Sorry bored.. and having a bad humor day.. please don't take this post seriously.
Re:credit ? (Score:3, Funny)
You know its going to be Bush... He'll claim to have saved the planet from rogue asteroids...
MADMEN? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:MADMEN? (Score:3, Interesting)
WIMP = Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
MACHO = MAssive Compact Halo Object
Side effect (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Side effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Think outside the box? (Score:5, Funny)
When is someone going to focus on the important alternative: how about moving Earth out of the way instead?
John.
Re:Think outside the box? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Think outside the box? (Score:3, Funny)
Meanwhile, I will buy a bunch of arctic/desert land for cheap. Then, when they shift the earth ever so slightly the climate shift will make all the paradises of today baren wastelands. And who's left with all the sugar? Me.
I know this will work. I saw something similar on Superman a long time ago.
Re:Think outside the box? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Think outside the box? (Score:5, Funny)
Or we could just spin the planet so we can control where the asteroid will land. "Hey France, CATCH!"
All nations, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Russia: We pushed left, why didn't it change course?
USA: Why didn't you check first? we pushed right!
Re:All nations, huh? (Score:2)
Re:All nations, huh? (Score:3, Funny)
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: Ok, Ok, stop it! This is stupid! We're both pushing and it's not changing direction! I saw we both push AWAY, ok?
China: Ok.
USA: You first.
China: You first.
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
USA: towards China
China: towards USA
Re:All nations, huh? (Score:3, Informative)
So really the only way you could get it to hit the "other" side of the earth, would be to delay it AND deflect it to be into the new spot in earth's orbit. If you can deflect it, just deflect it the OTHER WAY.
In addition, an asteroid of any significance hitting the earth (sin
Only in Atlanta... (Score:5, Funny)
Testing should be interesting (Score:5, Funny)
How good will the system be? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, maybe I played too much pool as a kid.
Re:How good will the system be? (Score:4, Insightful)
hm (Score:2)
Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new Madmen-flinging overlords.
Alternative methods (Score:5, Interesting)
What kind of goofy people come up with this stuff?
My second favorite is to put rocket engines on lots of little asteroids and crash them into the big asteroid coming for earth. Some lucky bastard would get paid to sit in his chair at NASA with a joystick and play asteroids.
Imagine the pressure!
Re:Alternative methods (Score:3, Informative)
Even so, the considerable problem of detecting a small, dark object at a very great distance with enough time left to be able to deploy countermeasures is not solved. This might require deploying a network of passive sensors across the solar system...
Re:Alternative methods (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Alternative methods (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure why people seem to think that you only need to paint half. I'm also not sure why other people think that because asteroids rotate this doesn't work - it is actually *because* the rock rotates that it does work.
This relies on a phenomenon called the Yarkovsky effect. It can be thought of this way: Imagine you're standing on the asteroid where it's "asteroid high noon". Light is being absorbed throughout the "asteroid day" and heats the surface, particularly if the asteroid is darkly colored (e.g. a carbonaceous asteroid). After a while, the asteroid rotates and the sun sets. The asteroid then reradiates this heat in the direction of "asteroid evening". As it rotates more, by the time "asteroid morning" rolls around, the area your standing on has cooled down enough to radiate much less. Ergo, there is a differential radiation pressure on either side of the asteroid, which results in a net force over time. If it rotates with the same spin orientation as its orbit, its orbit will get wider. If it rotates with the opposite spin as its orbit, its orbit will get smaller.
By painting the rock, you change this force - the brighter the paint, the more light is reflected, the less thrust, thereby changing the path.
One last comment - the effect is subtle, so it would need to be applied early. It also preferentially favors diversion for small asteroids, since the Yarkovsky effect is a surface phenomena. The larger the asteroid, the smaller the surface-area-to-volume ratio, and the less deflection this thrust will do.
That is so weird! (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, a good sized asteriod could clear up a lot of this country's problems in a snap!
Look out congresswhores! Mama needs a new box a' cooties, and she is mad!
Hmmm, let's think about this for a sec. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Proliferation was great for the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
All the members of the nuclear club increased the size of their nuclear arsenals without regard to their treaty obligations. And the USA won. The USA is the pre-eminent super-power now because it won the Arms Race. It wouldn't be the pre-eminent super-power if the smart bombs were not backed up by a nuclear arsenal. It wouldn't be the pre-eminent super-power if the B2 wasn't backed up by a nuclear arsenal.
Oh yeah, there was another clause in the non-proliferation treaty. Part of the Quid Pro Quo was that the nations with Nuclear power were supposed to make sure the nations without Nuclear power shared in the benefits of Nuclear Power. We haven't see much of that happening, have we?
Re:Hmmm, let's think about this for a sec. (Score:3, Interesting)
Where did you get "thousands of nations" from "thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations"?
SB
QUESTIONS... as AC to protect clearance ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
1) With such a system in place, would the United States be morally or legally bound to intervene if an asteroid was destined (for example) Cuba, or North Korea?
2) Can such as system also be used to DIVERT or even AIM such a projectile as a weapon?*
*(If it helps you sleep, you can answer this to yourself as "it saved millions of lives and cut short the war by several years". You know what I am talking about)
Posted AC, because I work for The Man sometimes.
I have a better idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you Corn Fed? [ebay.com]
Swarm good (Score:3, Insightful)
--Mike--
Sagan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sagan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sagan (Score:4, Insightful)
-B
One wonders... (Score:4, Funny)
Sure they do! (Score:2)
Re:One wonders... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, of course they do. The Best Retired Alumni Implimenting NASA Symbolism group (BRAINS).
Re:One wonders... (Score:3, Funny)
> Yes, of course they do. The Best Retired Alumni Implimenting NASA Symbolism group (BRAINS).
Or perhaps the Wasting Taxdollars Foundation (WTF).
Movie? (Score:3, Funny)
Use a more realistic model of politics... (Score:2)
Better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Better idea (Score:5, Funny)
scifi meets country..... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry, but (Score:3, Funny)
Aren't a LOT of nations already producing thousands of mad men already? Do we really need any more?
Still though, this would make a great plot device for a James Bond movie.
Stupid monkeys... (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing you're supposed to do when a heavenly object is about to obliterate you is to pray. PRAY!
What?
Don't you believe in the tennets of your fairy tales? You're supposed to welcome the end of all the unbelievers with the faith and understanding that only the devout will make it to paradise. You're devout and you will be saved.
Riiiight?
That asteroid is nothing short of the HAND OF THE ALMIGHTY/STARK FIST OF REMOVAL.
You should accept it willingly, lovingingly. Even before it becomes a visible-eye object there should be enough songs and stories about it that the armies of the anointed will leave no dry-earth unshadowed as the seas surge and the sky darkens with its approach.
This whole "playing god" thing will just interfere with the destiny issue.
What happens when humanity does avert a disaster which is supposed to render all human life null-o-void-o?!
Why, would anyone want to interfere with that!?
Virgins for everyone?
Constant bliss that makes orgasm seem like a hangnail?
If anything you'd think humanity would just use a laser to sky-write
"SO LONG AND THANKS FOR THE TEMPTATION" moments before impact.
My guess is, a Sky-writing laser is much less expensive than a bunch of godless toys. Whoops, there goes my common sense again...if there's a buck to be made the more expensive option will be selected.
Stupid meat monkeys, you were put here to suffer, to suffer tempation and vice, shucks, you're all tainted...ahahahah! I've got your original sin RIGHT HERE and I'm wearing a fashionable red bow on it.
Smaller pieces.... vaporize it (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider instead a high power microwave source ionizing the mass that would have previously been cut into golf ball pieces, then using a particle accelerator instead of a mass driver. If the ion temperature is kept high enough, you'll only have pure ions to deal with, nice and conductive, and easier to control. You can then ship them out along the thrust vector of your choice, without the headaches of mechanical processing of materials.
Electrohydrodynamic accelleration of mass can be studied in labs on the ground, thus reducing R&D costs. It also offers the advantage of being throttled to any desired rate. In the hard vacuum of space, it should be feasible to keep the ions from contacting, and thus eroding the accelerator.
The mass will eventually condense back to solid matter, but will be quite dispersed by the time that happens, thus creating dust, instead of solid projectiles.
--Mike--
Re:Smaller pieces.... vaporize it (Score:3, Interesting)
Neat idea, but the smaller you want the rock pieces, the more precise (and therefore prone to failure) your mechanisms will be, and therefore your failure rates will go up. Keep the moving parts and the precision of their machining to a minimum.
Any mining company knows this.
In this particular application, "large-bore" EM accelerators would seem to have the lowest overall failure rates, given vacuum "cementing" of moving parts.
Of course this would depend on the type of asteroid. Are we talking nic
I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
2 years later, Aliens invade because we "attacked" their home planet with an asteroid.
That's a way to initiate first contact!
Honestly, I'd rather be incenerated by an asteroid collision than be dissected by thousands of Alien Hordes angry because we threw rocks at them.
Would we know? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the scientific community would let it out first.
Re:Would we know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cooperation (Score:3, Insightful)
We couldn't even cooperate on the International Space Station (still not done). How would many nations work together on a defense system?
Playing the odds (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Money Won't Buy Peace (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why so much negativity? (Score:5, Informative)
If you had RTFA, they address those odds pretty well. The odds of getting another Tunguska sized impact are roughly 1 per 1000 years. That's an *average* people. To break it down, it could theoretically happen tomorrow. Further, if you had RTFA, you would note that an object of roughly the same size as the estimated Tunguska object (150 meters across) which was first discovered this year just passed within 3.8 million miles of our planet. That's roughly 16 times (two bytes) the distance from us to the moon....or pretty damn close.
These are ideas. If they sit around and come up with 1000 bad ideas for every good one, I still don't care. That one good idea might save my ass...or my family's collective ass.
There's always people who won't believe it can happen to them, though. Look at all the folks who insisted that, because of the SF quake in 1906, that they would be safe 'for their lifetime' since it couldn't happen again. Whoops. Tell that to the folks smashed in their cars when the elevated roadway collapsed. Or, 'Well, we know Mt. St. Helens is a Volcano, but it hasn't erupted since we've been keeping track...so it'll be safe as long as I'm alive.' Tell that to those folks who chose to stay and whose bodies will never be found underneath 100's of feet of mud.
Hell, the odds of being struck by lightning are VERY slim...but plenty of research goes into preventing that, and no one complains. The odds of being shot and killed are miniscule...but look how much money we spend on prevention. But as soon as you begin researching something that could, quite literally, kill millions of people in an instant, you're branded a 'waste of time and money'.
Tell you what. Give me back the taxes I spent that went to teaching your children, and I'll gladly redirect them to fund this type of research.
Serious Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
But how often will one of these things be in the right place at the right time? You would need hundreds if not thousands sitting and digging and waiting their turn.
How much will these things weigh? With a nuke generator, and drilling and launching equipment to handle a pound of rock at a time over and over, say 1000 pounds max.
If that thing isn't going to get the chance to launch 1000 one pound chuncks of rock, due to not being pointed in the right direction often enough, you'd do better to slam the things into the rock to try to move it.
I think the best idea yet is building a bunch of large engines and fuel tanks, going out and capturing some rocks, herding them into stable orbit at L-4, and strap on the engines. If they're ever needed they can easily fall out of L-4, slingshot around the moon, and head out towards the incoming. A properly placed kinetic swat will send it off into a safe orbit whether or not it breaks up.
Re:Serious Problems (Score:5, Informative)
That's physically impossible. In the absence of torque, a rotating object will rotate about precisely one axis. It is possible for objects to "tumble," i.e., continually change the direction of their angular momentum vector, but this only occurs if there is a similarly complex external torque. If the external torque is constant, the resulting effect is called "nutation" or "precession," but it is not tumbling.
For an example, consider the Saturnian moon Hyperion, which is irregularly shaped and thus tumbles chaotically under the influence of the gravity of Saturn and the nearby moon Titan. However, if we removed Hyperion from the vicinity of Saturn and put it out in space far from any external forces, it would rotate quite simply around one axis only.
Asteroids do not "tumble" unless they are A) very irregularly shaped and B) extremely close to a massive body, which can supply a tidal torque.
Re:Serious Problems (Score:3, Informative)
If the asteroid is close enough to Earth for Earth's gravity to cause a tidal pull (and give it significant tumbling), it's going to be hitting earth very shortly. The MADMAN project would be used when the asteroid is still a long ways away, maybe years away from striking Earth, and not close enough to any significant gravity source for tidal forces to be problematic.
Madmen? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:2, Funny)
I saw it in this Simpson's episode once! It's true!
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:65 Million Years Ago (Score:2)
But it does happen
And someone does win.
In this case, it only takes 1 asteroid to hit hard 1 time to wipe out the human species entirely.
I think it's worth some thought and effort. If you go by the spacing between major hits, a lot of scientists say we're about due.
Re:65 Million Years Ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Even a small impact of a cometary fragment such as that that happened over Tunguska would be devastating if it happened in a populated area.
Question: Suppose such an event happened over a populated area today. How long would the authorities of
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted, most space-based weaponry capable of taking out an asteroid would also be pretty effective against ground targets, or other countries' ballistic missiles.
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:5, Interesting)
Our best estimates seem to be this this is likely to happen every few hundred years; given that such an event might kill millions, it seems worth a minimal effort to take out a bit of insurance, and at least as sensible as banning GMOs.
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:3, Funny)
That was almost a million hours ago. That is a lot of time in between strikes.
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:This is a boondoggle (Score:5, Insightful)
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:drilling? (Score:2)
I had the same question at first, but I think I got it figured out. It isn't the drilling that does anything, it is the remains from drilling. Everyone throws the waste (what was in the hold) in one direction. f=mv, they just fling parts of the asteroid off into space in a predetermined direction. This give two results, first it slightly changes the trajectory of the asteroid, and second it gets right of some mass that would need to burn up on entry to the earth's atmosphere.
Re:drilling? (Score:2)
Decreasing its mass won't change its trajectory. However, that's not the idea here. The important part is what they do with the mass that's important. If these little drills dig up rock and throw it in one direction, the conservation laws make the remainder of the rock move in the other direction - ever so sli
LUNATIC?? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It only makes sense (Score:4, Funny)