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B612 Foundation and 2004 YD5 Asteroid Capture? 164

Posted by michael from the long-arm-of-the-law dept.
aisnota writes "The B612 Foundation hopes to alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015 and seems ready to do the obvious and capture 2004 YD5. Slice it up, put the pieces into aerobrake containers like a simplified version of the Mars landers. Then just sell the pieces on EBay to fund more ambitious projects."
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B612 Foundation and 2004 YD5 Asteroid Capture? More

B612 Foundation and 2004 YD5 Asteroid Capture?

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  • Perhaps lobbying would be more effective (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SIGALRM ( 784769 ) * on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:04PM (#11201300) Journal
    From the B612 Foundation [b612foundation.org]:
    Our conviction is that there is nothing more powerful to convince the public that this audacious challenge can be met than to actually do it
    Governments around the world are not spending money on mitigating against this probability, to whatever extent they have considered the issue.

    Whether taking the matter into their own hands, privately funded B612 will have an uphill battle to begin the process with such limited funding. Perhaps they would be better suited as an international scientific lobby, making the case and such apologetics as to attract attention to the issue.

    Also, in case you're wondering, B612 is the asteroid home of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's protagonist in The Little Prince.
    • Didn't the little prince catch comets to travel around?

      I only remember it as the gayest (in the literal sense) thing ever to air on the publicly funded TVO. I remember pulling my hair wondering "WHERES THE BEAR CALLED JEREMY WHO CAN DO MOST ANYTHING!?!"

      Ah the joys of growing up in rural Ontario, with only CBC, TVO and Global (on a really clear day) to watch.
    • Perhaps it's because governments have a long history of doing things inefficiently and ineffectively. I think this project is exactly the kind of innovation and ingenuity that governments lack. Best of luck to them in proving that scientific progress can thrive without government shackles.

    • Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shokk ( 187512 )
      Maybe they can test this theory by catching one and deorbiting it over Mars just to make sure their plan is sound. We don't want to find out that it's not going to work right as it's entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic as one giant chunk. It figures we would kill ourselves off by our own stupidity. All this time the planet has been trying to keep the asteroids away with that nice moon of ours to deflect them, and we go and bring one right in.
      • Well, this certainly sounds like a candidate for a possible future Darwin award winner. Let's just hope they don't take the whole planet out with them. :)

  • Extortion for fun or profit. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:04PM (#11201304)
    If they can alter orbit that much, perhaps they could threaten to crash it into earth and hold the world ransom for one meeeelion dollars.
  • Hm... high hopes. Why not just slice it up into good shapes for dropping?

    • Re:MORE ambitious projects? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jdray ( 645332 ) * on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:25PM (#11201479) Homepage Journal
      I'm curious how they plan to "slice it up." The technology for deflecting an asteroid is generally understood, as it's the same that we use to move satellites around. The "docking" or attachment mechanism still needs research, but it doesn't seen insurmountable.

      On the other hand, after gracefully flying this big space rock into Earth orbit, then intend to, what, cut on it with high-powered lasers? Try getting any government to allow civilians control of a high-powered laser, meant for cutting through whatever you point it at, to be orbiting the Earth. And, even if they cleared that hurdle, what keeps them from accidentally shooting down some randomly passing communications satellite while they're cutting through an arbitrarily-sized rock?

      I laud these people's desire to actually go do something like this, and I'd love to work on a project like this. But the idea of slicing it up and dumping it dirtside seems to be a little bold based on things we know now. How about bagging it, grinding it up, and processing the ore for resources (iron, nickel, oxygen, water, etc.) that can be used in space. Heck, it would be way more amazing to put a package of ground-up asteroid in a tug and deliver it to the space station for examination than it would to wrap it in airbags and deliver it to a bunch of glam junkies down here. And scientists would probably pay more per kilo of ore than consumers would, particularly if it had never come in contact with our atmosphere.
      • > what keeps them from accidentally shooting down some randomly passing
        > communications satellite while they're cutting through an arbitrarily-sized
        > rock?

        A modicum of planning, coupled with an extremeley low probability of disturbing anything other than what's being aimed at.
      • I'm curious how they plan to "slice it up."

        People have known how to slice up rocks for millenia. Egyptian pyramides are build from sliced up rocks, pre-Columb Peruvian cities build from sliced up rocks, and even Great Chinese wall is build from sliced up rocks.

        And in XIX century one guy have invented much better tool to slice up rocks. He got so rich that he have established an annual prize for advance in science. His name was Alfred Nobel.

        This was long before first laser was even thought of.
        • The problem with the brute force methods of slicing rocks is that you tend to spin in the opposite direction unless you have a decent anchor, such as gravity. And as for Nobel's invention, blowing it up is probably going to piss off a large number of other space users...

          A better way would be to get some of those green "weapon grade" lasers [nyud.net]

      • I'm curious how they plan to "slice it up."

        I'm curious as to why this bullshit was posted, since NOWHERE ON THEIR SITE does the foundation mention this. I think the submitter just made it up to get a catchy tag line.

    • It takes a huge amount of energy to get stuff up into space. Why waste it by putting it back on the ground when all that mass makes excellent construction material.

      The scary part is that it would double as a "clean" weapon of mass destruction. Just drop it on an annoying enemy and make a big crater.

  • You can do it EEEeeebay (Score:4, Funny)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis ( 629047 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:07PM (#11201325)
    Heh, I tried selling pieces of an 'asteroid' on ebay before, too!

    When the buyer found out that it was just rocks from my back yard, he was pretty heated! Damn you B612 for stealing

  • Good to know... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jacobcaz ( 91509 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:09PM (#11201350) Homepage
    That B612 is a 501(c)(3)
    • warning, I didn't RTFA.

      Why would this be a non-profit company? This seems like it would be the first instance of asteroid mining. Wouldn't they want to profit from the chunks they get? I mean, it's mining. When has that ever been done for anything but earning money off the stuff being mined?

      Perhaps they plan on giving all the money to some charity but I don't think regular companies are restricted from spending profit whoever they want.

      Getting tax breaks is the only thing I can think of. I hope some
      • Why would this be a non-profit company? This seems like it would be the first instance of asteroid mining.

        Because the whole "slice it up and send it back to earth" is something the submitter made up. There's nothing about that on the foundations's site. Their aim is to so "significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015" as a proof of concept for defence against colliding asteroids. That's all. No doubt they've thought about minig, but it makes sense in early stages (decades pr

    • a B612 is a 501(c)(3) ? l337 5p34k?
    • That means this corporation is filed as a "tax-exempt organization".

  • feeling of dread (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AviLazar ( 741826 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:11PM (#11201362) Journal
    Why do I have this ominous feeling of dread when I think of some overzealous people trying to prove they can do something as destructive as messing with an asteroid. I am sorry, but I like that asteroid nice and FAR from us. Blowing things up has a habit of spreading pieces in a chaotic fashion - pieces that might fall our way. I hope there is a more practical application - like say if one day an asteroid is going to hit us they will use these techniques to divert Earth from mass devastation (would render many movies to pure fiction...oh wait)
    • Well, I think that it is important to prepare for the eventuality of an ansteroid being on a collision course with us. It wouldn't be fun to test new technology right when an asteroid is heading this way.
      • true true...i just hope that something like this has a heavy hand of oversight by disinterested and knowledgable groups. I would not want the gov't to run this necessarily (probably because it would cost us thousands of times more and be of poorer quality) but I would like for the gov't to make sure these guys are checking, triple checking, and then checking their stats again before launching a big bomb (probably nuclear)

    • Re:feeling of dread (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rob Carr ( 780861 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:29PM (#11201515) Homepage Journal
      Asteroid 2004 YD5 is about 5 meters long. Had you read the article, you'd know this.

      A five meter asteroid, should it impact the Earth, would do little damage. Yeah, if it hit someone, that would suck, but the odds of that are small. This is the perfect size to practice on - especially if you're carving it up into parts for recovery.

      We need the practice in case we have to do it on a much larger asteroid to prevent it striking the Earth.

      The scientific benefit from the pieces of the asteroid would be immense. As a meteorite collector, I know I'd be bidding on chunks of it on eBay just to add to my collection.

      The piece of a Mars rock I've got is pathetically small. Having a 10kg rock in the collection would be fun.

    • If we assume for the moment that they aren't actually going to intentionally aim an asteroid at the planet, bumping the orbit of one increases the odds of it striking Earth so infinitesimally that it doesn't even matter.

      We have a hard time hitting Mars with a rocket whose every vector change we control when we're trying. Not to mention that, if they did somehow put it in an orbit that would strike Earth, they also of necessity have the ability to alter its orbit again so it wouldn't.

      As far as blowing up t

      • While you may be correct in some of your arguements, (I won't argue those since I *know* I am not expert) you are wrong in your final point - "leave well enough alone". My argument is check, double check, triple check, and god dammit check it again - cause I would rather a mistake NOT be made.

        A question about the scattershot effect - a 5 meter asteroid - something we could easily obliterate - you don't think that would scatter?

        Do they calculate the return trajectory of any asteroid they hit but doesn't
        • Something like the 5m rock they're looking for, should they accidentally manage to break it up completely, would scatter. Every piece of it would keep its original vector, plus the new one added by the blast. Relative to the Earth, the pattern would appear to form a cone in the short term. It is possible that some piece of the rock would find itself an orbit which intersects that of Earth. Even in that event, the odds of it and the Earth being in the same place at the same time are vanishingly small. Given

    • Re:feeling of dread (Score:3, Informative)

      by danila ( 69889 )
      Why do I have this ominous feeling of dread
      May be because you are stupid? You comment about diverting Earth instead of divering an asteroid certainly suggests that...
      • Or if you read my sub post - (oh wait you don't do that, you would rather just insult) you would see that I commented on how the formatting of my letter was piss poor because I was doing two things at once (on the phone and typing) - which is a no-no to the brain.
        • I just read three replies you made in this thread and I don't see anything about formatting, except something about missing the nuclear part, so I don't know what you are talking about.

          And I noticed that your formatting is poor, but why don't you "check, double check, triple check, and god dammit check it again" if you know it's so? Are you above the rules?

          Anyway, I insulted you not because your post was poorly written, but because it was stupid. Not doing something is not avoiding the risks, it's just ta
    • , but I like that asteroid nice and FAR from us. Blowing things up has a habit of spreading pieces

      No one is planning on blowing up the asteroid. RTFA. Pushing it gently is the idea.

      (How the fuck did this get modded "insightful"?)

      • well i think someone modded it that way. As for "gently" pushing...how do you gently push a big object floating in space with its own trajectory (probably for a lot longer then we have lived) when we can barely even do space walks (they should call them space crawls at the speed we do them)....Aren't they using bombs? There is nothing really gentle about an explosive

    • RTFA! (Score:2)

      by juhaz ( 110830 )
      And stop blabbering about "being on phone", if you skimmed over it while yabbering with some other moron, read it again, really this time, and STOP WHINING.

      Why do I have this ominous feeling of dread when I think of some overzealous people trying to prove they can do something as destructive as messing with an asteroid.

      Partly because you're being stupid in this matter, partly because you didn't read the articles, and partly because the submitter made this stuff up.

      It's also very small, and would burn u

  • Non-effective name (Score:5, Funny)

    by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:12PM (#11201368) Homepage
    How do they expect to be taken seriously with a name like B612 Foundation? I propose the alternative name "`Shit! Shit! The Meteors are Coming!' Foundation" instead.

  • dropping the parts onto Earth doesn't work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:15PM (#11201396)
    Slice it up, put the pieces into aerobrake containers like a simplified version of the Mars landers. Then just sell the pieces on EBay to fund more ambitious projects.

    This is hardly going to work. They put the pieces into (expensive, once you make enough and thet them up there) containers, then drop them to Earth. How the heck do they expect to get them back? A container like this is not a very controlled re-entry device. Do they just expect anyone who comes across one, or anyone who's property it lands on to return it to them? What of the liability of hurling this at someone's property or home or body? It's not a problem on Mars, since Mars is free of pesky lawyers so far, but on Earth - big problem due to the lawyer infestation.

    • Lawyer-seeking containers. Problem solved.
    • How the heck do they expect to get them back?


      Each container has etched into its side:

      Please return to:

      B612 Foundation
      125 Red Hill Circle
      Tiburon, CA 94920

      Postage guaranteed.
    • How do you control the Soyuz space craft during reentry? It's not hard to remote control one of these containers into shallow(less than 100 feet or 33 meters) water. That way even if one did sink, it wouldn't be hard to get at.

      of course aiming for lawyers could be a video game.

      Think of the tickets you could sell for such a game. Think of the throngs of lawyers standing outside waiting for you to target them for a lawsuit. Don't forget to smile.
      • How do you control the Soyuz space craft during reentry?

        The Soyoz is a lot more complex than aerobrake containers like a simplified version of the Mars landers. Heck, it's a lot more complex than the recent Mars Landers, let alone simplified versions of them. You want to build an entire Soyuz type craft, guidance and rockets and all, to get a rock back from space? And do this over and over again, to try to sell the rocks on E-bay? I sincerely hope that the extent of your exposure to business finance is

        • Every Soyuz craft needs to be built. It's not really reusable. So in order to bring home people it's okay to use spaceships once, but to bring back rocks it's not??

          Also note if somebody is building hundreds of space craft guidance computers, the price will begin to fall. it might be expensive today, but it will lower the costs, not only for the rocks, but for commercial space flights.

          You are thinking of technology in today's pricing terms, not tomorrow's. Easy reference compare the orginial guidance co
  • So they slice it up and it comes back to Earth, but it doesn't land where they want it. What if it lands in my backyard? Can I sell it? See, they haven't even done it yet and now we need a lawyer!

  • Here is an alternative means of asteroid deflection. Let's park the two remaining USA space shuttles in orbit. We may need to add to their mass by filling them with metal. Then, via remote control, they are ready to set on a collision course with any asteroid that is at risk for a collision with earth. The resulting shuttle to asteroid impact should alter the course of the asteroid or break it up enough to eliminate the planetary threat.
    • Lets ignore the obvious problem of where you're going to get all that extra mass to fill the shuttles. The Space shuttles are basically low Earth orbit devices. They can go up a few hundred miles. That's it. They can't even go and service the communications sattelites in geosynchronous orbit, for example - they just don't carry anywhere near enough fuel to get them there. To deflect an asteroid you need to be able to hit it hard (momentum is based on mass and speed), In contrast to any asteroid that would p
    • Doubtful.. Simple physics.. HUGE FUCKIN' ASTEROID against tiny American Space Shuttle. You would need to get the Shuttle going pretty damn fast to cause any noticable difference. But I guess if the asteroid were small enough.. Alright. I like it for a backup plan.
    • You forget the proportions: The shuttles are in a low altitude orbit. A few 100km height is neglectable compared to the diameter of the earth. Its like 2cm above the surface of a soccerball. If anything is THAT close, you would need to change its direction by 90degrees... which is way harder than just change it by a few arcseconds a month ahead...
  • 1. Alter asteroid orbit 2. Capture asteroid 3. Slice asteroid 4. Sell asteroid 5. Profit!
  • Let's see, a bunch of amatures want to deflect an asteroit [b][i]toward[/i][/b] the earth??? And then they wanna start de-orbiting pieces of it?!

    Argh! Spidey sense tingling! Sense danger somewhere...

    • Let's see, a bunch of amatures want to deflect an asteroit [b][i]toward[/i][/b] the earth??? And then they wanna start de-orbiting pieces of it?!

      No, the submitter made all that up. Read the website, they want to nudge a small asteroid, one that's already safe, to test the technology. Nothing is comeing close to Earth. Nothng is being cut up and sold on eBay.

      Too bad the "editors" don't RTFAs before posting troll articles like this.

  • I'm sure lots of astronomy buffs will snap those up.

    Sort of a DIRECT commercialization of space! LOL
  • ...would be a far off thing!

    http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1339 94 &cid=11184156

  • Why return it to earth? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by j1m+5n0w ( 749199 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:38PM (#11201604) Homepage Journal

    It seems that if they can capture it into earth orbit, it would be more valuable where it is. It costs a lot of money to launch heavy things into space, it may be more valuable as a source of raw materials already in orbit.

    It might eventually even be useful as a counterweight for a space elevator.

    -jim

    • I'm thinking that if they can get up there with enough technology to slice it up and deorbit it in aeroshells, they might be better off taking a pile of solar cells and a damn big induction coil. Assuming there's enough metal content, they could run a melted zone from one end to the other to separate out different elements, then slice it up and sell the fractions. Kinda like the way columns of germanium and silicon are (were?) first purified, then doped with specific impurities to get electronics-grade ma

  • Why eBay? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @02:39PM (#11201619) Journal
    Why sell something like this on eBay and give them profit for practically nothing?

    Obviously this would generate massive publicity, and anyone wanting to buy a piece of this asteroid would go to the project website first. In other words, the people buying these chunks would not be people randomly browsing eBay and looking for something to burn money on. In fact I bet most of them would have to sign up to eBay just to bid on these pieces.

    IMO, eBay is simply comprised of an infrastructure to handle auctions (which implementation-wise isn't that much of a task), and a pool of sellers and buyers. The latter is where eBay dominates and is the sole reason they are successful. However when it comes to something like selling these asteroid pieces, having a large seller / bidder user base is a moot point. In fact it is a detriment because it hurts the signal to noise ratio of legitimate bidders.

    Dan East
  • A evil madman has an astrorid in earth orbit holding the world ransom for $10 Trillion dollars or else he deorbits it over Washington DC and wipe out the entire US and Europe. Even evil madmen need to test the technology and raise venture capitial...
  • Raise funding for more ambitious projects by blackmailing the world governments. Make them pay you to keep the asteroid from crashing into the earth on purpose.
  • Perhaps it would be simpler to download Back Orifice and "hack" the asteroid, a la Independance Day.

    After all, it's an ass-steroid, right?
  • Build robot lander to deliver "slow nuke" device to asteroid surface. Melt the little bugger completely, boil off light molecules to vacuum, allow to cool (which will take some time) and then park remaining ball of heavy metals in orbit. Robotic equipment can grab it from there.

    Okay, there is a little slippage technology-wise, but at least it gives us something to do with all those fissionables we have laying around. It might even be possible to but a spin on the critter and get the heavier elements into o
    • You'd get a lot more "bang for the buck" by simply using the sun. Insolation at Earth orbit is pretty high (1.3kW/m^2?), so construct a suitably large mirror for focusing sunlight. Park the mirror so that it illuminates the asteroid, and it will eventually become molten.

      Then you might try zone refining by sweeping the beam of concentrated sunlight down the length of the molten or near-molten asteroid. This should allow the nickel and iron to at least separate.

      There are a great many engineering deta

  • Why was this even accepted? (Score:4, Informative)

    by dmadole ( 528015 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @03:03PM (#11201840)

    The only accurate part of the submission is "The B612 Foundation hopes to alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015".

    Reading the B612 site reveals that everything else was made up by the submittor. The B12 foundation has not picked the specific asteroid, and they have no intention to either "slice it up" nor return any of it to earth.

  • The missing step #2 is:

    2. Cut product up into pieces and sell on ebay.

    Now it all makes sense.
  • B612 Foundation [b612foundation.org] is an example of what I've called earth shielding entities [geocities.com] that will exploit earth-approaching asteroidal materials before they can be used as celestial weapons of mass destruction against earth:

    Before growing far toward being heliocentric, the first biorb will need to begin the defense of Earth against celestial attacks.

    Kinetic energy asteroidal weapons are the most likely technology to represent the greatest threat to Earth [swri.edu] as a result of the growing solar biorb. Once asteroid mining

  • Yea, we just altered the orbit of a large asteroid! 6 months later: The change in orbit of asteroid B612 has in turn altered the orbit of asteroid C257 which has in turn altered the orbit of asteroid B191. Asteroid B191 is now on a collision course with the Earth and will hit in 4 years!
    • A couple things...it's a small asteroid, tiny really. And even a large asteroid wouldn't have a very strong gravity field. It would take a very close pass (near collision) with a very large asteroid to make much of a change in an object's trajectory. Objects in the solar system are very, very far apart, so this happens very rarely. This thing probably doesn't affect anything in the system more strongly than variations in solar light pressure due to sunspots.
  • Rusty Schweickart is the only independent involved in the venture. A quick google query brought me to his homepage [well.com], where there are some very nifty links [well.com] to space stuff.

    Astronauts make good sources for space-related links!

    Rusty Schweickart is the only independent involved in the venture. A quick google query brought me to his homepage [well.com], where there are some very nifty links [well.com] to space stuff.

    Astronauts make good sources for space-related links!

    Rusty Schweickart is the only independent involved in the ventur
  • Almost nothing in the article summary seems to come from the article source, and most seems to be directly contrary to it. I can find nothing on the foundation's website to indicate that they are interested in asteroid 2004 YD5 or that they are interested in returning any part of an asteroid to earth. This seems to be the author's own harebrained idea, and is the source of most of the derision that people are aiming at the foundation.

    To quote from their site:

    "Given the implicit structural weakness of as

  • Don't be silly (Score:3, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @03:45PM (#11202222) Homepage Journal
    The chances of them pulling this off are 1/233.
    Oh wait, now its 1/45.
    Hang on, odds have changed again 1/56000....
  • The site clearly states:

    The NEA that we will choose (we haven't done that yet) will be "representative" of the class of potential impactors, i.e., it will have the key characteristics of NEAs that we might have to deflect later under operational conditions. So what does that mean since there are many asteroid types, sizes, rotation rates, etc.? Here we need to keep in mind our primary objective, i.e., to demonstrate the key capabilities necessary to move ahead to an operational system.

    For example, it i

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