Paintball Pellets As a Tool To Deflect Asteroids 153
A reader sends this quote from an article at MIT's Technology Review:
"In the event that a giant asteroid is headed toward Earth, you'd better hope that it's blindingly white. A pale asteroid would reflect sunlight — and over time, this bouncing of photons off its surface could create enough of a force to push the asteroid off its course. How might one encourage such a deflection? The answer, according to an MIT graduate student: with a volley or two of space-launched paintballs. Sung Wook Paek, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says if timed just right, pellets full of paint powder, launched in two rounds from a spacecraft at relatively close distance, would cover the front and back of an asteroid, more than doubling its reflectivity, or albedo. The initial force from the pellets would bump an asteroid off course; over time, the sun's photons would deflect the asteroid even more."
Too tenuous (Score:5, Funny)
That's a long shot plan right there.
I think sending Bruce Willis with a thermonuclear device and a boatload of family drama might work even better.
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It certainly would, for turning the equivalent of an FMJ round into a shotgun shell. My vote is for a big-ass chemical thruster, those still have the greatest specific impulse we can muster on short notice.
Re:Too tenuous (Score:4, Informative)
Rockets have *terrible* specific impulse, around 450s for a complex bi-propellant liquid rocket, and 250s for the stable, reliable solid rockets.
Ion engines have specific impulse up in the thousands to tens of thousands of seconds.
Rockets have a lot more thrust per unit of engine mass, but getting enough propellent up there to give an asteroid sufficient delta-V would be all but impossible - for every big-ass rocket, you'd need a 10x bigger assed rocket to get it there in the first place.
Re:Too tenuous (Score:5, Interesting)
You could avoid half the delta-V by not slowing down-... just have the rocket speed up to max speed and slam into the asteroid. Calculate the engine size and fuel amount to be okay for the range you need it at, then make a few rockets to stand ready for various ranges. Crumple zones would let all the impact go into pushing, rather than shattering the thing. Even use some kind of internal room full of tiny airbags if you must. One-way valves (with a tiny air-hole for letting them deflate on impact and not burst prematurely) on all of them, inflate them the usual way or use a small amount of rocket exhaust that you cool down somehow. Simple, really.
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just have the rocket speed up to max speed and slam into the asteroid.
But that "max speed" would not be very high. Rockets only make sense if you need a LOT of thrust in a very short period of time (say, to get off a planet's surface). But if we are going to deflect an asteroid we will need to do it when it is still months or years away from hitting the Earth. Which means you will have months or years (rather than minutes) to get up to speed. So an ion engine would make more sense. They provide little thrust, but they can keep it up for a very long time. For a given amo
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If you leave it until the PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteroid) is a few hours travel from Earth, then you're going to need large forces and you've got no time for a plan 'B'. If you get it wrong, millions or billions will die.
Most PHAs are going to be in an orbit with approximately the same period as the Earth (they can have different phase, inclination, argument of perihelion and
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The issue with any type of engine is first you have to arrest the asteroid's spin.
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You could also some sort of a mass driver, only firing it when it's pointing in an appropriate direction.
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My vote is to shoot moon rock at it from said moon.
As far as I can see, the only thing that is slightly hard to do, is getting enough energy on the moon (which would have to be produced or transported there).
Of course, we would also have to build a catapult that is able to launch moon rock precisely enough.
And a mining facility.
Then again, we'd pretty much want to do comparable things anyway (for multiple reasons).
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The precision of aim would have to be high. For a 100m asteroid in the nearest 10'th of it's orbit ... I make it between 5 microradians and 100 nanoradians.
What is the likelihood of particles that miss the target coming back on their orbit to impact Earth (or the gun) a year later?
Hmmm.
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I would suggest many smaller projectiles. It matters less if one misses that way and if it comes back around, it can burn up with little damage.
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That last term is the important one. Is your "short term" a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, or a century. Only the last couple of those are noticeably different from "instantaneous" in my working environment.
Re:Too tenuous (Score:5, Funny)
Spaceballs ?
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Oh shit. There goes the planet... (surprisingly less off topic than one would suspect!)
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It would be better to give this to the Mythbusters crew. They seem to be particularly adept at blowing things up. The myth would be, "Humanity can be saved from an impending asteroid collision". It would suck if it gets busted.
Or now that we can make Higgs' Bosons in CERN, can't we shoot Higgs' Bosons at the asteroid, or something? Or if we untangle Superstring Theory, can't we just shove the asteroid into another unseen dimension?
Please be creative with your answers, Hollywood is monitoring this thre
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That one's actually been done already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorath [wikipedia.org]
The year is 1982, and the film opens with the launch of the JX-1 Hayabusa spaceship into outer space. The ship, originally sent to collect data on Saturn, has its course diverted to investigate the mysterious star Gorath, reported as being 6000 times the size of the Earth. It is feared that the star's path could come dangerously close to Earth. The JX-1 reaches locates Gorath and it's much smaller than earth but with 6000 times the gravity.
The United Nations band together to discover a solution to the problem, and decide that their only solutions are to either destroy Gorath or move the planet out of the way. Back on Earth, the UN decides on the plan to move the Earth out of the way of Gorath, the South Pole Operation. The plan is to have atomic energy channeled through huge atomic furnaces 500 meters below the surface, then fed though enormous pipes called thrusters which will all fire in unison. But for this to work they will need an area 600 kilometers producing an atomic force equal to that of 6,600,000,000 megatons to move the Earth 400,000 kilometers way from Gorath.
That sounds like a great plan doesn't it? But there's always a catch . . .
The atomic engines are completed and fired up, moving the earth out of the way of Gorath. But the heat from the engines awakens and frees a giant monster walrus, called Maguma, that attacks the South Pole base.
So, your idea was good enough for a movie. If you have any other ideas, please send them to Japan or Hollywood. The world needs to be saved with better science fiction than they have to offer.
Re:Too tenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a long shot plan right there.
I think sending Bruce Willis with a thermonuclear device and a boatload of family drama might work even better.
Modded funny but is actually insightful. What would happen is that the chance of the giant asteroid actually hitting the earth will start out less than certain, so the large expense of sending a mission to deflect it far from earth using a gentle push would result in debate and delay. Then the odds of impact will increase, but the expense of the mission will still be high. We will piss and moan, and a loud minority of self-anointed space experts who begin to say that the rock is actually going to miss, that it is all a liberal/conservative/alien conspiracy, that there is really no asteroid, etc. will get a lot of press. Finally the thing will be visible from earth and the shit will hit the fan but by then it will be too late to use mild persuasion, and we will have to send up whoever passes for Bruce Willis with a crapload of nukes. We will blow it into chunks, maybe even into gravel whose kinetic energy strips away the atmosphere.
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Action has been taken without the voter consent plenty of times.
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That's a long shot plan right there.
I think sending Bruce Willis with a thermonuclear device and a boatload of family drama might work even better.
Paint ball, 357 magnum, rail gun, asteroid; see the ever increasing progression of feeble stupidity?
why not a simple rocket (Score:1)
with enough advance warning would simply landing a rocket on the asteroid and having it provide a constant thrust be enough to have the asteroid miss ?
at a great distance it would take very little course adjustment which could be provided by a very low thrust.
the obvious complication being if it's tumbling. even then it seems that such a scheme would still work as the rocket could align itself under guidance or using the stars and provide force at the proper time.
not sure why this is never mentioned as an
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Not really. Photons carry a lot of energy, but hardly any momentum. It is much more efficient to use the energy collected from a solar array to power a thruster of some sort (which ejects reaction mass, i.e. propellant) to generate the momentum change, rather than relying on the miniscule momentum imparted upon the array directly.
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Would be cool if that propellant could somehow be mined out of the asteroid itself. Kinda like pressing pellets of the asteroid soil and hurling it into space.
Hey, how's that more crazy than shooting at it with paintball guns?
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That's the issue. On the other hand, dropping paint on the asteroid provides thrust as if powered by a solar panel the size of the painted area, so paintballs > simple rocket.
Well, maybe so, but there's another problem that nobody seems to have faced. Most of those asteroids are rotating, and they all have surfaces that are irregular at every scale. Unless you have very precise topo maps of the asteroid, down to the sub-millimeter scale, you won't be able to precisely calculae the direction of thrust of the paint splotches. And once a splotch is there, if its position is off by even a few cm, it's likely to produce a thrust in a different direction than you wanted.
A rocket
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Yeah, though it is interesting to contemplate the 3rd alternative: giving a tiny push in the right direction for a long time. Competent engineers can tell you when that'll work. Of course, it does require having the foresight to start pushing a long time before you're face-to-face with a disaster. And people working in large organizations don't have a good history of displaying such foresight.
Various people have observed that we don't need to keep asteroids a long distance away from Earth. In fact, i
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It's been mentioned quite often... probably why it's no longer considered news
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Painting the asteroid, assuming there was a good way of doing it, is probably more reasonable than building an engine to do it. The rocket engine would be more complicated and need to be lifted off Earth and make it to the asteroid in operable condition, whereas all you need to do with the paint is disperse enough of it to thinly cover the asteroid.
There is also the possibility that if you believed that the underlying material of the asteroid was lighter or would outgas, you could set off explosions to dis
Re:why not a simple rocket (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually 'landing' on it would be a huge problem. An asteroid is not typically one large smooth rock, after all. And it will definitely be 'tumbling' in relation to you as well. So it would be a very difficult docking maneuver on an uncertain surface. And remember these things arent large enough to generate enough gravity to notice either. So it's basically all in zero-g.
Spraying a load of paint at it would be orders of magnitutude easier, and still wouldnt exactly be easy.
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The problem is fuel. We don't have rockets that can fire for months. We have rockets that can fire for minutes. They provide a huge amount of thrust during that time, but you would need far, far more thrust than any existing rocket can provide to move an asteroid off-course.
A vague possibility is an ion engine of some sort. These have much lower thrust, but can run much longer off the fuel they carry. The technology still isn't very proven, though - and trying to land an engine, intact, on an asteroid, it a
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Not as easy as it is on the drawing board. First, that rocket would have to be aligned EXACTLY with the center of gravity or all you accomplish is giving it a nice spin. Now, we don't even know for sure just what the asteroid is made of, let alone know the exact point of its COG. Many asteroids are anything but spherical, making the matter even worse. Considering how there is very little gravity acting on it, is it solid in the first place? Or composed of many smaller rocks held together by their gravity?
Bu
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Landing on a tumbling small body is not something you 'simply' do. Doing it to apply significant thrust is even harder due to center-of-gravity issues.
A better way to have the same effect is to use a gravity tractor approach. By hovering away from the asteroid, you can use the gravitational attraction of the spacecraft on the asteroid in the same way. Since you'd need to use low thrust engines to get a significant amount of force over a reasonable time frame, the fact that the gravity tractor limits the
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The more advanced version of this is steering the asteroid into orbit, then mining it.
Do you mean planet Earth orbit ? If yes, it seems that it would require a lot of energy to slow the asteroids down first. I just do not see how it could just be steered into orbit.
Speed is always the same for all objects orbiting Earth at a given altitude without regard for the mass of the object.
Example speeds:
At the Moon altitude 385,000 km: 1 km/s
Geostationary altitude 36,000 km : 3 km/s
Space Station altitude 360 km : 7 km/s
Sea level 0 km: 8 km/s
Asteroid speed is usually around 50 km/s.
http://www.freemar [freemars.org]
Why would increasing the albedo... (Score:1)
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Re:Why would increasing the albedo... (Score:5, Interesting)
...change the number of photons impinging on the asteroid, or increase their effect?
A photon has energy. When a mass absorbs a photon's energy it has two effects: the mass increases in temperature equal to the energy of the photon, and the mass is accelerated in the direction of the photon's path equal to the energy of the photon. This seems like we're using the photon's energy twice, but it isn't so because thermal energy of a mass is kinetic energy shifted into the time domain. All objects in the solar system suffer this "solar wind" effect. The closer they are to the sun the more its radiated photons push them away. Obviously, the sun is emitting a LOT of photons.
When the mass radiates the photon again it cools and is thrust again in the direction opposite the direction of the escaping photon. Depending on the rotation of the mass and the average time a photon is held before being emitted again (albedo), this can impact the course of the object. By changing the time factor you can cool the object and impact its trajectory. This is called the Yarkovsky effect [wikipedia.org]. Dark or fast-spinning objects hold the photon's energy for so long that they are radiated in directions that are relatively random and have zero impact on course but they are hotter. Bright objects have more measurable impacts on course because the energy is released in a predictable direction that is relative to the input a vector related to the object's direction of spin but they are cooler. Believe it or not, you can use colors of paint to impact the period between absorption and emission, and use that to align the thrust opposite to the objects orbit around the sun, or in synergy with it. Our understanding of this effect has grown so great that we can tell an asteroid's mass, density, axis and rate of spin based only on its temperature and changes in its course.
Derivatives of this feature are helpful in explaining the normal expansion of the universe (not inflation), as photons push masses on each end away. When we observe some galaxy 12 billion light years away, we're absorbing its photons and it's pushing on us ever so slightly.
The difference can be illuminating. Radio Shack and others used to sell a heliotrope device that was a fan with reflectors on one side of the fins and black on the other. The relative difference in albedo would cause the fan to spin in any normal light.
Better off using marbles (Score:2)
For the same weight, you'll transfer a lot more KE to the asteroid with a marble.
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The KE is only a small part. The paint will increase the albedo of the asteroid therefore the thrust from the sun.
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Is that weight under Earth gravity, weight during acceleration to the asteroid, weight during cruise, or weight while it's being fired at the surface?
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The immediate transfer of kinetic energy is a small effect. The larger effect is a change in the albedo, particularly on a rotating asteroid, because that allows you to affect how the Yarkovsky effect is applied.
When you change the Yarkovsky effect, it changes a force that is applied along the velocity direction, causing it to speed up or slow down: this is the most effective way to change the orbit in a way to avoid an impact. Because the force is applied for a very long period of time, it can avoid both
And a near miss? (Score:2)
We need better tracking first (Score:4, Informative)
We've known that incoming (and outgoing - the Yarkovsky effect) radiation can alter an asteroid's trajectory for ages. But such a solution needs to be implemented far in advance of any pending impact. At present, we don't know the trajectory of potential impactors, like 9942 Apophis, to sufficient precision to make a deflection strategy like this useful. While it's true the odds are exceedingly small, accidentally putting an asteroid into a dangerous orbit would be disastrous. Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart proposed putting a tracking beacon on Apophis in order to further refine its orbit, which would allow us to use such gentle deflection strategies as the one outlined in the article. NASA turned him down. Fortunately, the Russians are currently planning a mission to Apophis; so maybe it will end up getting deflected via a generous application of paint.
Long shot entrepreneurialism (Score:2)
I'm getting into the paintball manufacturing business on Monday. Look for my Kickstarter project, peoples.
Momentum transfer (Score:2)
In any case, it seems like a very impractical proposal. Shouldn't students be given more useful topics to make studies of?
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I'm not sure if I'm right, but my first thought was "surely the colour doesn't matter, since the momentum of the photons are transferred whether they are absorbed or reflected?". Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the relevant physics can answer.
In any case, it seems like a very impractical proposal. Shouldn't students be given more useful topics to make studies of?
I'm not a physicist, but if the overall momentum of the system is constant, and we consider the original state of the system where a photon is headed towards the asteroid, then the alternate resulting states of the system are:
1. photon is absorbed by the asteroid.
2. photon is reflected by the asteroid and is now moving in the opposite direction
and state 2 must have the asteroid moving slower relative to the direction it was hit by the photon to conserve the total momentum of the system.
Of course photons tra
Asteroid deflectors will get FREE advertising! (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine your company logo emblazoned across the surface of an asteroid.
Not only will your company have done something great for all mankind, but mankind will be reminded of it in perpetuity.
First we paint the whole thing white and then get computer controlled pain ball guns to splatter, like an inkjet printer, your company's logo all over the asteroid.
Think of watching a Papa John's ad every time you look up in the sky and having to say a little prayer that you can actually enjoy a large nutritious Papa John's pizza instead of having been reduced to a smokin' crater . :-)
Issues. (Score:3)
Timing;
According to the article the paint would have to be applied 20 years before the asteroid approach. Add to that the time to get the craft to space, load up with paint and get out to the asteroid. That may take another 20 years. That may mean a 40 year lead time at launch to be remotely viable.
Control
Paint is not a guidance system. Sure it may be able to move the rock around but it will just be in an indefinite direction. It is just as possible to move the rock closer to earth as away. Sure it moves the rock away from earth but into a trajectory that interacts with a planet that pulls the rock back toward earth.
Other celestial bodies.
As other asteroids impact or come close to the "rock on question" they will alter the path. As the rock enters the Sol system planets will exert gravitational pull on the rock. The part or all 20 years of movement may be wiped out by interaction with another object.
To me the only viable option would be to land thrusters on the rock. Use them to stop the rotation (if any), re-position to one side of the rock and apply constant thrust to alter the course. The thrusters would have to be ion based (low fuel, long duration) and probably powered by solar satellites. A solar sail could be added for additional thrust once the rotation has stopped. The issue with icy asteroids can be dealt with by limiting the thrust of the engines so as not to break the asteroid.
If the rotation was not stopped it would require many more thrusters as they could only fire part of the time.
This "proposal" sounds like "paint and pray".
Society Of Protection of Asteroids (Score:3)
The Society Of Protection of Asteroids (SOPA) will not stand for this. Anything that stands in the way of an asteroids natural path is against nature and against God.
We're going to have to move the Earth out of the way instead... how much paint is that going to take?
energy content (Score:2)
Remember (Score:2)
When playing Paintball in space, you will be pushed backwards by the recoil too
Frozen Paintballs (Score:2)
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Among the many other problems already listed is whether or not paintballs will pop at 2.7 degrees kelvin.
If you are going to apply the paint that far away from the Sun then yes, it will be a concern. Obviously, liquid paints will not work since only liquid Helium will be still liquid at that point. So you will need powder paints. The next question is how do you hold the paint there. Electric charge would be one interesting method, but will it last? Without some sort of adhesion the only force you have is
What's Wrong with the Standing Solution? (Score:2)
Paintballs, eh? The big brains who work on this think that the best thing to do is to launch an ~2-ton spacecraft with an ion engine, position it near the asteroid, and let them do their gravity tango while the spacecraft very slowly changes the orbit of the pair. If it's a nice asteroid, that orbit is one that parks it in Earth's orbit for mining operations.
As compared to painting the asteroid, if the asteroid tumbles at all (space dust, uneven heating, evaporation, etc.) the entire plan doesn't fall apa
If it worked... (Score:2)
If this worked other civilizations would have used it and every once in a while we'd see a painted asteroid go flying by. Right? RIGHT GUYS!?
Re:Why worry (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true, but there's something more unnerving about losing the entire human race.
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Re:Why worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Your point is valid, except that the problem with estimates like that is while they are useful for estimating the risk, they don't say much about whether an asteroid of the required size is actually on its way. In other words, we don't get a do-over if the rock shows up earlier than we thought it would. Not to mention that rocks of the necessary size could be generated by the effects of a collision with another body which then suddenly expels a rock on a collision course with Earth. In that situation, we may well not see it coming until just before the window in which we need to take action to deflect it.
Existential threats like asteroid impacts are situations that you start planning to deal with as soon as you have the knowledge to do so. There is really no reason not to, since given the extreme consequences, it doesn't seem particularly absurd to maintain those plans in a constant state of revision. We know that an asteroid of sufficient size is going to hit again. It's only a matter of time. Maybe that time is a million years from now, maybe it's a week from now. I grant that we shouldn't be building an expensive specialized asteroid defense grid or mineshaft shelter/habitats right now, but an actual plan that could be feasible in the event that we end up with an unforeseen visitor is the right thing to do. In this case, scientists realize that it is very easy to miss Earth if you poke at the asteroid just a little bit when it is far enough out. It's a reasonable plan that really should not require that much expenditure to make happen, if required.
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We've got more than enough already. It's ok for the herd to be thinned a bit through stupidity and/or poor choices so we can spend a bit more on reducing the chances that everybody is lost.
Re:Why worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, the herd thinning would not be done by brains power but by purchasing power. Now imagine an Earth where only managers and bankers will survive. The living will envy the dead.
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I think davester was implying that we should as a society tackle the threats that pose a risk to all of us rather than convince people to stop smoking or drive safer, as implied by slashping. Your scenario of herd thinning by bankers and managers is actually more like what is happening now with our energy and environmental policies. Today's need for jobs and affordable energy trumps tomorrows need for jobs, affordable energy, or a safe planet that can actually sustain us. And in the end the bankers and m
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Now imagine an Earth where only managers and bankers and politicians will survive. The living will envy the dead.
Fixed that for you.
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We know that an asteroid of sufficient size is going to hit again. It's only a matter of time. Maybe that time is a million years from now, maybe it's a week from now.
Asteroids are a lot like sharks. They're scary and exciting, they're good antagonists for movies, and so we tend to overestimate the danger they pose. Yes, a shark can tear your arm off, and if you happen to run into one while swimming, you should probably head the other way. But the reality is that far more people are killed by dogs, bees, car accidents, choking on food, drug reactions, and soforth.
In terms of natural disasters, the big killers are earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis and floods. Wikipedia has
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See, I think I need to sort of show where I am coming from. I don't fear things that simply kill people. Everyone is going to die sometime. I am more concerned about things that will end civilization and/or humanity.
Asteroids may be movie friendly and rare, but they are actually easier with current technology to deal with than lots of other disasters. It may cost a billion dollars to put some paint on a rock, but if it does the job, that threat is dealt with.
As for the problems you might consider a bett
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Alright, but asteroids large enough to kill everyone in a major metropolitan area come more frequently. Tunguska-sized events might be as frequent as once every 400 years. [spaceref.com] If we address this more immediate, more manageable risk with today's technology, maybe in 1000 years we will have slowly progressed far enough to address larger threats.
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Why? You say that as if it's something bad?
Probability and magnitude are both relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
The chance of getting killed by a car when crossing the road is orders of magnitude larger than the chance of getting killed by an asteroid.
True. However one asteroid can kill all of us, unlike one car.
The probability of an event must be combined with the magnitude of an event when assessing the risk.
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I'm not sure you've thought this through. The likelihood of the Earth being hit by an impactor that's large enough to wipe out humanity is 1 in 1. It's going to happen. The likelihood of humanity being wiped out by all the cars on the planet is somewhat less than that.
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- Rush
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Things that happen after I die aren't important. I don't know why people keep railing on about this "environment" nonsense either, somebody wasted my time with his "endangered species" prattle just this morning - I could eat nothing but Ethiopian wolf every day for the rest of my life. That's not a shortage.
Millions of years have ensured that the surviving genes are the ones that do things to ensure the survival of their offspring.
You, sir, are an evolutionary dead end, so I guess the problem takes care of itself.
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Things that happen after I die aren't important. I don't know why people keep railing on about this "environment" nonsense either, somebody wasted my time with his "endangered species" prattle just this morning - I could eat nothing but Ethiopian wolf every day for the rest of my life. That's not a shortage.
Millions of years have ensured that the surviving genes are the ones that do things to ensure the survival of their offspring.
You, sir, are an evolutionary dead end, so I guess the problem takes care of itself.
Given his preference for young boys in the Dominican Republic, I'd say you hit the nail on the head.
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Is you last name Limbaugh, by any chance?
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The likelihood of the Earth being hit by an impactor that's large enough to wipe out humanity is 1 in 1.
Probability is not your strongsuit. Life on Earth has survived for billions of years. Humans are extremely resilient. There is no guarantee that an impactor large enough to wipe out humanity will hit Earth.
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while technically correct I must point out those numbers won already. please provide next week's numbers
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Ah, I see now. That's why some people are so dead-set against self-driving cars!
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Assuming that you care about the survival of the human race. For people who don't, fear of asteroids is irrational.
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Water department ... (Score:2)
The chances of getting killed by an asteroid are orders of magnitude larger than the chances of anyone in the world thanking us if we did manage to deflect one.
I had an uncle who worked for the water department. I don't think anyone ever thanked him for the fact that numerous generations of people in the region have no knowledge of waterborne diseases. However he interpreted the ignorance of the public on such matters are evidence of a job well done, their ignorance was satisfaction in a strange way.
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The odds of winning big in the lottery aren't very high either, but guess what? It happens to someone on a fairly regular basis.
As for an asteroid striking the Earth... maybe not likely in the short term (where it is almost infinitely unlikely), but in the long term the likelihood becomes very high (long enough term and it becomes infinitely probable).
And maybe, jus
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In the long term, we're all dead anyway.
Rationalizing action or inaction with the fact that everyone and everything will one day be dead always fails to convince. The fact of our mortality and the eventual end of everything we know is obvious to anyone who is alive to contemplate reality.
The more interesting course of behavior is to strive even in the face of such facts, precisely as so many of us do.
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On noes! Someone is doing something that I don't think is worthwhile! Make them stop!
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Not really, you only get to decide which crazy project your tax money will be wasted on.
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Depends on where you're walking; if you walk right in front of an asteroid, your chances of getting killed by it go up quickly.
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As soon as an asteroid wipes out the human population, those odds are gonna shift a bit.
True, the odds of anybody getting killed in a car accident will be substantially lower than they are now after an apocalyptic asteroid strike...
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We could all end up in a future like The Road Warrior. Looked to me like everybody in that post-apocalyptic situation died in some sort of car-related accident.
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Not really. Its just white paint, seems kind of boring.
Steve Jobs just turned twice in his grave.
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...and sued the organization staging the project into oblivion, resulting in no money being left to save the human race. But you have to understand, he had to do it to protect the shareholder value.
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first or second order accurate.
Either way I don't feel safe!
If they declare that an asteroid is "headed towards earth" without taking into account the effect of photons in the first place, i'd have to wonder a little. What if they decide that an asteroid is not headed towards earth, but it happens to be "blindingly white" and the photons change its course so it is headed towards earth.
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first or second order accurate.
According to the article we're already too late:
"According to astronomical observations, this 27-gigaton rock may come close to Earth in 2029....From his calculations, Paek estimates that it would take up to 20 years for the cumulative effect of solar radiation pressure to successfully pull the asteroid off its Earthbound trajectory. "
2029 - 20 = 2009, so we're too late.
I still don't understand why the sun's photons are better at shoving a asteroid off-course than a rocket, but i guess if Star Trek u
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In order for paint to splatter and cover some thing it must be kept liquid which in space its ABSOLUTE ZERO. The paintballs will hit like rocks and bounce off.
It doesn't matter, because the amount of CO2 necessary to launch that many paintballs that distance would contribute so much to global warming we'd be better off taking our chances with the asteroid.
What we really need is a giant tinfoil hat to enhance the asteroid's reflectivity and a North Korean missile guidance system to ensure it can't hit anything.