Nukes Against Earth-Impacting Asteroids 491
TopSpin writes "Flight International reports that scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have developed designs for an array of asteroid interceptors wielding 1.2-megaton B83 nuclear warheads. The hypothetical mission for these designs is based on an Apophis-sized Earth impactor 2 to 5 years out. According to NASA, 'Nuclear standoff explosions are assessed to be 10-100 times more effective [at deflection] than the non-nuclear alternatives analyzed in this study." On April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass closer to earth than geosynchronous satellites orbit.
I, for one, welcome our... (Score:5, Funny)
-WtC
*please insert sig*
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:5, Funny)
A good use for enhanced radiation devices (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure there are problems with the idea, but it seems logical to me.
This is actually the same thing (Score:3, Insightful)
When a nuclear reaction occurs, energy is released primarily in two ways:
1.) Kinetic/thermal energy carried away the reaction products and free neutrons and electrons.
2.) Radiation (mostly x-rays and gamma rays) emitted directly or by secondary effects like Bremsstrahlung (collisions of particles from method 1).
If there's a lot of extra matter around, like an atmosphere, it absorbs
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Perhaps it's also the right day -- after all, nuclear bombs in this case are being used to save rather than slaughter.
-b.
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:4, Funny)
*picks up phone and calls PETA. Or something.*
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Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan was not going to surrender in two weeks, they were via diplomatic back channels suing for peace, this is not the same as offering unconditional surrender. In the end the Japanese still insisted that they be allowed to keep their Emporer, and the allies agreed to this demand, instead of being belligerent. I don't know where you got this myth that the Japanese were willing to surrender unconditionally, but the whole point of further increasing the size of their armed services during and after Okinawa was to make taking the islands of Japan as much like the battle for Okinawa as possible. That would have resulted in extreme causalities on both sides. The idea was that by a few tens of thousands of casualties the Americans and their allies would agree to more favourable terms than unconditional surrender. Heck if it had been like Okinawa they might even have managed to force those terms, which would have been a disaster.
The Japanese were determined to fight on to get a better peace deal. They had already lost the war so of course they were suing for peace. The only question remains, is it right to target military installations in the cities of your enemy during a time of war to force his surrender, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die. If you believe the allies were right to demand unconditional surrender (which I do), and if you believe that the Americans should have kept their nerve conducting the invasion and no accepted a lesser peace, then one is forced to ask the following question. Which course of action would cost more civilian lives, more destruction of infrastructure, and more military lives. The answer to all three is invasion. Dropping the bomb saved lives, civilian, military, and preserved what little remained of Japans infrastructure.
It is to my mind, the only time in history dropping the bomb would be acceptable, because of the unique set of circumstances at the time.
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:5, Informative)
I dunno... Lets ask what the Allied High Commanders and Staff thought:
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
So yeah... According to some of the major members of the US military and those who took part in the Manhattan project, the bombs were unneeded.
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I will answer some of the quotes you present. Ei
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:4, Interesting)
The sad truth is you wanted to test the bomb as well as show to the Soviet Union that you have some big guns.
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
I firmly believe that Hitler was helped by the fact that he was able to convince many Germans that the treaty of Versaille was unfair because the 'November Criminals' had signed it while Germany still had some effective military and could still fight the war. Coupled with the fact that the terms of the treaty were humiliating themselves (full blame for the war placed on Germany, reparations, Sudentenland handed over to the new Czechoslovakia, splitting Germany in two). Unconditional surrender is not about humiliation. The requirement of unconditional surrender existed because the conduct of those states with which the allies were fighting required wholesale removal of thier leadership and replacement by an authority that would be cast iron allies of the West. Unconditional surrender was just another way of saying to the militarist leaders of Japan "we will dismantle your government, and you will be tried for war crimes".
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:4, Informative)
MacArthur supervised the occupation of Japan, and made sure that the Japanese food network was the first thing reconstructed; he even forbid the US forces from eating any of the scarce Japanese food. Democracy flourished, and MacArthur and emperor Hirohito became friends.
Please do not accuse the United States of attempting to humiliate Japan, because there is simply no credibility to that statement.
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm certainly not glorifying the killing of civilians. However, if I presented to you a choice. Kill a quarter of a million Japanese now, or kill half a million Americans and 4 million Japanese over three to four months of bloody combat, what would you choose? If you choose to kill four million more people just because you don't like the word nuclear or because you think in some way being shot is better than dieing in giant fireball, then I believe you to be a cold heartless bastard.
Hell the United States is still handing out purple hearts of 1945 manufacture because of the anticipated casualties of the Japanese campaign were higher than the sum total of wounded or dead servicemen in every war since.
I suggested what the Japanese intent was. They believed they could break their 'inferior' American foe. The Americans had plans for Olympic which forecast many more casualties that the Japanese thought the Americans could take. All you have done is prove my point, the Americans would have accepted the high casualties and pushed on, since they planned for them anyway. The bottom line is that while the Japanese hoped to bring the war to an end with tens of thousands of casualties by breaking the American will to fight, that was not going to happen. You are suggesting an option (American capitulation to the Japanese plan) which was never on the table to begin with.
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Even if we had not invaded Japan, any potential non-nuclear outcome would have been MUCH worse.
Japan depended heavily on inland water craft for transport. We had decimated this system and were in the process of finishing it off. The
Re:S.T.U.P.I.D. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know what the result would have been without the bomb. Perhaps the Japanese would have continued fighting until it was clear that the Soviets were preparing to invade Korea, or perhaps the Japanese islands themselves. It is possible that without the bomb the Japanese would have used losing territory to the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip against the Americans to get more favourable terms.
Your point about American B-17 raids on Japan is a good one. It is important to remember these were small nukes. The building directly under the bomb survived the explosion in Hiroshima. This does strongly suggest that the bomb was not, in the military leaderships mind, a deciding factor, considering that the death toll in Tokyo from fire bombing was higher than in Hiroshim or Nagasaki through the atomic bomb. However, the bomb is more than a incendiary weapon. I believe the Emporer said it best in his radio address to the Japanese people:
"The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage."
The key word being terrible. The atomic bomb, more so than any other weapon, was terrifying. It is this terror that gave the Emporer the option of offering surrender (along with the Soviet invasion).
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I'm well aware that the total deaths from dropping the bombs total around a quarter of a million. I also had in my mind the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. However, the fact remains that if Imperial Japan had been allowed to survive that number would be a drop in the ocean, because you c
A near-miss in 2029? (Score:3, Funny)
Apophis should be able to be destroyed... (Score:5, Funny)
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APOP-Whut? (Score:5, Informative)
Otherwise known as the personification of all that is evil.
Re:APOP-Whut? (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks. Because if there's one thing that you can be sure about the average Slashdot reader it's that none of us has ever seen an episode of Stargate SG-1, and thus the name Apophis, and associating that name with evil personified, would be totally new to us all.
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Shouldn't that be apophisd and apepd respectively?
Quick ! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Quick ! (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I've drilled holes in the helmet and emptied the oxygen tank...
FUD alert.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FUD alert.. (Score:5, Informative)
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If someone were to read that without proper background information, they may assume that Apophis is a threat, which has been proven to be false.
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Hey, it could still be a threat to one of those geosynchronous satellites!
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Re:FUD alert.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, it doesn't become a chaotic system at all.
Orbital mechanics and climate simulations are, no pun intended, worlds apart.
this is not armageddon NASA :) (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:this is not armageddon NASA :) (Score:5, Interesting)
Shrapnel == Greater Cross Section
Greater Cross Section == Atmosphere has greater effect on projectile
Atmosphere has greater effect on projectile == Energy dissapated over wider area
Energy dissapated over wider area == No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow.
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Atmospheric heating of the objects, if there are enough of them, can result in a significant increase in the temperature of the atmosphere in general. This is the very, very bad effect of either the "Armageddon" or the endgame in "Deep Impact".
Deflection is the right answer. Probably the only good answer.
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While small pieces are likely to be burned up in the atmosphere, this isn't exactly a joyous event.
Atmospheric heating of the objects, if there are enough of them, can result in a significant increase in the temperature of the atmosphere in general. This is the very, very bad effect of either the "Armageddon" or the endgame in "Deep Impact".
Deflection is the right answer. Probably the only good answer.
Totally depends on the original size of the asteroid/comet and the resulting size of the fragments. The smaller that both are, the better off we would be. Something just a couple hundred meters across like the estimated size of apophis and it might make sense to break it up into as many chunks as possible. Anything less than a few meters diameter in size will not cause much damage. Spread out over a large enough area, or over the ocean and meteors that size will not cause much damage at all. I think t
Re:this is not armageddon NASA :) (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh thats just such a Russian attitude...
Why do we need nukes? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, the weapon wouldn't be as powerful as a nuke, and would probably split the asteroid in, say, half. The ship would then have to shoot both halves, breaking them again into half, creating four asteroids where just one was originally. The pilot would repeat this process until the asteroid is broken into such small pieces that they'll be deflected by earth's atmosphere.
I'm still working on how the ship and asteroid fragments would warp to the other side of the field when they hit the edges, though... probably why NASA decided against this approach. That, and they wanted to avoid ripping off The Last Starfighter too much.
I'm definitely following this story! (Score:5, Funny)
The Geosynchronous Satellites (Score:2, Funny)
Margin of error? (Score:2)
Ad impact! (Score:2, Insightful)
What about other options? (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of throwing nukes at an object of potentially unknown size bugs me, especially when much more controlled options exist. All that needs to be done is to nudge the NEO out of small zones known as "keyholes" that are small, finite portions of space where the pull of the Earth will push the object into a collision course on its next orbit rather than another random non-intersecting orbit.
A fairly massive object (something a Delta IV Heavy could launch) would be perfectly capable of handling an Apophis sized object with enough lead time (on the order of years, but certainly less than decades), by flying in formation with the object in the right location to shift its orbit slightly. This is a lot easier than Apollo, which we pulled off in less than 10 years, so to dismiss it as too difficult is ridiculous, and it seems a lot more responsible than launching nukes at an object we dont fully understand.
Just my thoughts anyway.
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Re:What about other options? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you rather the object remained trackable and predictable, or became unstable and maybe whangs into us a few orbits later?
worse yet ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool (Score:2)
Great Idea (Score:2, Funny)
Classic (Score:2)
April 13, 2029 (Score:4, Funny)
Summary of the charts in the full study.... (Score:3, Informative)
Nuclear, Subsurface: 11.9
Nuclear, Surface: 11.5
Nuclear, Standoff - Neutron: 10.3
Nuclear, Standoff - X-ray: 9.9
Kinetic @50km/s (avg): 9.0
Kinetic @10km/s (avg): 8.5
Surface Thruster (non-rotating asteroid) @10 years: 8.1
Surface Thruster (rotating asteroid) @10 years: 7.7
Gravity Tractor, @10 years: 6.9
Conventional Explosive, Subsurface: 6.8
Conventional Explosive, Surface: 6.4
Momentum change [in log10(kg m/s)] required to deflect the following:
Hypothetical long-period 1km comet with 9-24 months to impact: 12.8
Hypothetical 1km asteroid 15yr ahead: 10.5
VD17, a 500m asteroid for 2088: 9.6
Apophis after 2029 approach, assuming a 2036 a collision prediction: 9.4
Hypothetical 200m asteroid 10 yr ahead: 8.7
Apophis by 2029 (with current orbit knowledge): 8.5
Apophis by 2029 (with highly accurate orbit knowledge): 6.3
The point of the distinction between the last two is that the probability window we have to push out of the earth's path becomes much smaller the more accurately we know the orbital parameters of the object. So the more accurately we can calculate it, the less we have to actually push it (up to a point, of course). Also, it looks like very little is gained by exploding things underground as opposed to on the surface. So we apparently aren't going to need a crack team of good-looking drilling experts after all.
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But why Ares V as launch vehicle? (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of carrying six weapons on a single platform it would be better to have smaller vehicles that can be launched on Atlas, Delta, Ariane, SpaceX falcon, etc.
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On the other hand, it could take a good couple million years.
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Re:what if they miss hteir shot (Score:5, Informative)
From the 40s up through I think the 70s many nuclear weapons where detonated in the atmosphere. While it was a really bad plan life pretty much kept on living. A miss would probably not hit the earth and a launch accident wouldn't cause a nuclear detonation. A common method of safeing a nuclear weapon involves filling the pit with a neutron absorbing wire. Once the weapon leaves the atmosphere a motor will pull the wire out of the core and only then the weapon will be capable of nuclear detonation. Not only that most modern weapons are much cleaner then the bombs of the 50s.
So I wouldn't to see them launching them daily I think risk to benefit ratio is pretty good.
Re:clean nukes are just old propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
For military the intense radiation from fission of the uranium reflector is an "added bonus". The premium in thermonuclear warhead design is on light weight and narrow diameter (long narrow-cone re-entry vehicles have much better precision than fat ones) in compromise with low cost (low consumption of expensive materials like tritium and plutonium) and high reliability.
The clean weapon was a temporary fad in 50s and early 60s, it was used by rival weapon design team to justify existence of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and was oversold, being seized upon by politicians it got disproportionate coverage in print - but it never resulted in a weaponised design. The reality is that even a "clean" bomb designs are still an order of magnitude dirtier than Hiroshima and don't offer any military advantage so they are not stockpiled. The peaceful uses of clean nukes like digging harbors and re-livening natural gas and oil fields never materialized as it turned out that produced crater (or gas) was unpleasantly radioactive (because of neutron-induced radiation, with long-lived radioisotopes like C-14 and tritium)
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Do not unsafe the weapon until it clears the magnetosphere. They will be launching the weapons when the target is still years away so there is no need to unsafe the weapon until it is a long way from the earth.
The simplest way to safe the weapon is to fill the core with wire that absorbs neutrons. You just pull the wire out to arm the bomb. as long as the core is filled a high yield event is impossible. No high yield event no EMP.
Plus
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Add to that distance the fact that the radiation, well... radiates in all directions, and the very small peice of that radiation that would reach the earth is going to be, in whole, less than that coming out from the diode in your TV rem
Re:what if they miss hteir shot (Score:4, Insightful)
rj
Re:what if they miss hteir shot (Score:5, Insightful)
nukes in the atmosphere (Score:2)
Re:nukes in the atmosphere (Score:4, Informative)
The radiation from the nuke isn't the problem with that. The main effects are (a) EMP and interfering with electrical equipment, and (b) fucking up the magnetosphere, and possibly reducing the Earth's shielding from cosmic radiation. Neither of which are good, but better to risk those effects than the certainty of a large asteroid hit.
-b.
Re:nukes overhead (Score:4, Interesting)
It was later found by accident that multimegatonn explosion high in the orbit can dump lots of charged particles (mostly high-energy electrons) into Van Allen belts where they persist for many weeks during which time they gradually degrade solar panels and electronics of satelites - this happened in 60s (after operation Starfish Prime about 5 satelites went silent...)
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Re:Uh oh... (Score:5, Informative)
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re (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:oh noez! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:oh noez! (Score:5, Informative)
The first destructive effect is caused by the radiated energy itself, but most of the destructive power of an atmospheric nuclear detonation comes from the quick heating and displacement of huge quantities of air that creates the explosive shock-wave.
In space, only the radiated energy of the detonation remains. While it would be sufficient to deflect an asteroid, a nuke is nowhere near as destructive in deep space than it is on Earth.
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Think of it like a ceiling fan that goes back and forth. If it didn't have the ability to turn back on itself, it wouldn't do much to the air. However, if the blades bent in different directions for each direction, it would be able to produce a downdraft.
The best [discovermagazine.com]
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Star Wars Fakeout (Score:5, Funny)
They can go about their business.
Move along.
Re:Star Wars Fakeout (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Star Wars Fakeout (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true. The potential damage from getting hit is very, very large though - and the probability isn't quite small enough to completely discount. Major meteor impacts have occurred with some frequency on a geological time scale - it seems prudent to actually do the risk assessment and take appropriate action if necessary.
As for the foreign energy independence issue, sure that's important. That doesn't mean that astronomers who specialize in asteroids should drop their careers for it any more than you should drop your career (whatever it is) to worry about potential meteor impacts.
Re:Star Wars Fakeout (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? Of course the damage it would do doesn't make the event more likely, but it makes the event more serious.
If one event is likely, but has minimal impact if it occurs, it might be worth ignoring, in order to concentrate on a less likely event that has disastrous consequences.
Since a large asteroid impact could be a mass extinction event, something capable of wiping out our entire ecosystem -- not to mention civilization -- even if it's unlikely, it's worth working to prevent. Compared to that, everything except the possibility of nuclear war (or equally disastrous environmental collapse) pales in comparison.
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I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about asteroids, but rather that this suggests that the
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It's clear that there is a slim to none chance of getting hit by an asteroid, after all the moon is in pristine shape with absolutely zero crater impacts on it.
I think you need to unscrew your tinfoil cap a bit.
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I think you need to remove the blinders from your eyes and notice how much of your money has already been spent on worthless Star Wars boondoggles by capitalizing on paranoia.
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But the money being spent on this research and all active missile defense research absolutely pales in comparison to what we are spending in Iraq. Yes, we should get out of Iraq - out of the "crosshairs of foreign energy supplies" - but that doesn't mean we can't also continue to pursue missile defense technologies, and secure our borders while we're at it.
In my opinion
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Take a math class (Score:2)
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"Ultimately" the Earth will indeed probably get hit by an "extinction asteroid". It probably happened once, 65M years ago, so it can probably happen again. But the odds of it happening sometime in the next 1000 years is so much smaller than all the certain risks we should spend the money on first that I'd like to hear you asking for the right priorities. Even if they
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People with actual ability to use statistics know that it's unlikely that anyone will be killed by an asteroid for hundreds of years, if not thousa
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A better indicator of the possibility of meteor impacts is the fact at least one large one has happened WITHIN RECENT MEMORY. [wikipedia.org] While this wasn't a civilization-ending event, it was only shee
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Proposing conspiracy theories, without any evidence to back them up, is the mark of a delusional mind.
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Well see, it's like a car...
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