White House Releases Strategy To Defend Against Killer Asteroids (vice.com) 135
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On December 30, the White House quietly released its Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy, a 25-page document outlining the United States' plans in the event that a giant asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth. Among the priorities outlined by the strategy are improving Near-Earth Object (NEO) detection, developing methods for deflecting asteroids, and developing interagency emergency procedures in the event of an NEO impact. Given the stakes, it's clear why NASA and the leading US defense and research agencies came together in January 2016 to form the Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN) working group to address the issues associated with killer asteroids. The DAMIEN group is behind the White House's new NEO strategy, and will be responsible for hashing out the specifics of the plan to save Earthlings from killer asteroids going forward. To assist in the search, the DAMIEN report calls for a space-based observatory dedicated to finding NEOs, which will work in cooperation with ground-based observatories. Since a telescope in space isn't limited by terrestrial weather conditions, it would greatly enhance Spaceguard's search capacity. The only plans currently underway for a space-based NEO telescope are being carried out by the non-profit B612 foundation whose Sentinel telescope was supposed to launch last December, but has been delayed due to difficulties securing the requisite $450 million in funding required for the project. NASA has also been considering the NEOCam, a space-based telescope that has received provisional funding for "detailed refinement." Unfortunately, during the latest round of budgeting for NASA's Discovery program, two other satellites were greenlit instead of NEOCam, but NASA said it would continue the asteroid-hunter's provisional funding, so there is still hope that NASA may go forward with a space-based NEO observatory in the future, especially in light of the recent White House strategy. In tandem, the report also recommends updating the capabilities of ground-based NEO observatories by endowing them with more powerful planetary radars and improved spectroscopy instruments (this would allow for more accurate determinations of the composition of an asteroid). But detection is only half the battle. In the event that an asteroid is found to be on an impact trajectory with Earth, NASA is also thinking about ways to deflect the killer asteroid. Some pretty far-out ideas have been proposed on this front, ranging from nukes in space to giant sun-powered lasers, but the most likely method is simply ramming into the asteroid to change its course. Finally, should all else fail, the report also considers what to do in an impact scenario.
Security Leak! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Security Leak! (Score:5, Funny)
Great, now the damned asteroids know how to evade our defenses! Brilliant!
Don't worry, Trump knows more than you about this issue.
Re: Security Leak! (Score:5, Insightful)
He'll ask NASA to name and identify everyone who worked on the discovery and tracking of said "asteroid" and defund the agency? Sounds familiar....
... why now that you mention it, it does sound familiar. Could it be that the final brilliant part of his plan is to solve the problem by denying that the asteroid exists?
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Re: Security Leak! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Security Leak! (Score:5, Funny)
George Soros funds the near-earth asteroids.
Re: Security Leak! (Score:1)
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NO ONE thinks he is our friend
As for Soros funding enemies...name them!
And "Obama not a citizen" is definitely FAKE news, no matter where you got the lie (hint, the liar takes the White house on Jan 20)
Re: Security Leak! (Score:1)
What? No we don't. There are only wild accusations coming from corporate media based on outlandish speculations about his motivations. If you knew about half of ways corporate has betrayed our trust in recent years, you would have seen right through all the Russian propaganda they've been spewing.
NO ONE thinks he is our friend
Trump? He's a lot of people's friend. If you don't know anyone who voted for him, then you're living in a walled ga
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He's got some buddies in construction, and he can't wait to allocate a bunch of budget to rebuilding the nation from scorched foundations up.
Not *actually* rebuilding it, mind you.
Just taking the money that would go towards doing so.
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Trump's plan: Deport the illegal asteroids.
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There's no such thing as asteroids.
China just made them up to make us waste our money.
Re:Security Leak! (Score:4, Funny)
Great, now the damned asteroids know how to evade our defenses! Brilliant!
Don't worry, Trump knows more than you about this issue.
He'll make a space wall and make uranus pay.
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Well, of course he does. He has Bruce Willis's and Ben Affleck's number ready just in case NASA finds something.
yeah, tax break if they hit Venus instead (Score:2)
and a heckuva yuuuge border tax if they hit here. that'll fix it!
Re: Security Leak! (Score:1)
Or, we could stop pushing people toward racism with bad immigration policies that threaten our nations from within.
Let me tell you something about killer asteroids (Score:2, Funny)
Killer asteroids are a Chinese conspiracy to make America weak, I know because my national security advisor and Russia Today co-host told me.
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Well, all the recalled Note 7s need to go SOMEWHERE, don't they?
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Make Armageddon Great Again (Score:5, Funny)
OLD PLAN: Send a team of oil workers led by Bruce Willis into space with nukes, and wait until the last possible second before detonating the bombs.
NEW PLAN: Build a space wall around Earth, and make the aliens pay for it.
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OLD PLAN: Send a team of oil workers led by Bruce Willis into space with nukes, and wait until the last possible second before detonating the bombs.
NEW PLAN: Build a space wall around Earth, and make the aliens pay for it.
So, do the aliens have to apply for H1-B visas first?
Also, where does Chuck Norris fit in? I'm pretty sure we'll be breaking the laws of physics somehow if we don't...
Re:Make Armageddon Great Again (Score:5, Funny)
Chuck Norris never breaks the laws of physics. They're smart enough to get out of his way.
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Re:Make Armageddon Great Again (Score:5, Funny)
When the universe sends its asteroids, they're not sending their best. They're not sending Pyornkrachzark. They're not sending Geodude. They're sending asteroids that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with them. They're causing fireballs. They're causing craters. They're causing extinctions. And some, I assume, are good asteroids.
Probabilities (Score:2)
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That's not the way to do that though
It's IF( P(Asteroid Smash)*Cost(Asteroid Smash) -Cost(Asteroid Defense)) >0 then Build_Defense(Asteroid)
Nuclear conflict is harder as that's profitable for defense contractors and nobody really wants to stop it. This really screws up the cost benefit calcs
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Maybe, but that's hardly a reason for not being at least minimally prepared for both possibilities. And there is another classic, of course, to keep an eye on. A global deadly virus outbreak is probably the biggest threat among those three.
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https://slashdot.org/~butzwonk... [slashdot.org]
It is a bug, not sure why his name shows as blank, but he has a name.
It's mostly the same preparedness. Zombies (Score:2)
Whether the cause is an asteroid, nukes, or even a virus, the preparedness is mostly the same - be ready to provide medical care to a million people, have your lines of command and communication ready between leaders and to the public, etc.
One popular drill in emergency preparedness is zombie apocalypse - not because zombies might actually happen, but because it's a generic scenario that exercises all aspects of response. Zombies are contagious, like any virus or bacterium, they are mobs, they're violent,
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What are you going to do about the other billion or several casualties? Oh yeah - just let them die. You can always breed more people using unskilled labour.
I think "scenario" is the word you're ook
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Why restrict yourself to worying aout virus outbreaks. We're doing a pretty good job of reeding up lots of bacteria resistant to all presently produced families of antibiotics.
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Asteroid Billiards is a new idea.. interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
We could double or triple down by bringing multiple asteroids into orbit. First to mine for minerals. Second as a cheap scaffold for a space station. Third as an earth shield provided that the rockets used to bring it into orbit are powerful enough or have been upgraded so that it can be moved to the right location within 3 weeks. It can absorb energy from the impact and will probably have bombs perfectly set in place to self destruct just in case it's gets deflected at earth.
Very good idea. Having half a dozen large asteroids in orbit along with the multiple uses will make this very practical.
Re:Asteroid Billiards is a new idea.. interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
We could double or triple down by bringing multiple asteroids into orbit. First to mine for minerals. Second as a cheap scaffold for a space station. Third as an earth shield provided that the rockets used to bring it into orbit are powerful enough or have been upgraded so that it can be moved to the right location within 3 weeks. It can absorb energy from the impact and will probably have bombs perfectly set in place to self destruct just in case it's gets deflected at earth.
Very good idea. Having half a dozen large asteroids in orbit along with the multiple uses will make this very practical.
So, all we have to do is build the worlds largest asteroid whistle? Guess I'm still a little fuzzy on that whole "bringing multiple asteroids into orbit" part, as if we'll just call them over to play like a dog. Good boy, Rocky! Now, stay.
Re:Asteroid Billiards is a new idea.. interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Even if you target a small asteroid, it doesn't change the equation all that much until it's in the 500-ton range. In which case, why bother? Just launch a few Saturn V's full of rocks.
Re:Asteroid Billiards is a new idea.. interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
It should be noted that we're not in a real hurry about getting an asteroid into Earth orbit. So ion drives (Isp a holy hell of a lot higher than 450 - we've already built them in the Isp 5000 range) would be fine for the purpose. Alternately, an Orion model would work - pop a few (dozen) small nukes off next to the rock...
All that aside, this is just an example of the sort of thing that Presidents do to build a "legacy" - if we pay any attention to it, and in a hundred years we deflect a rock, it's all due to the foresight of Mr. Obama. If we ignore it (as we probably should at this point. Maybe in 20-50 years we should start thinking slightly more seriously about the subject), and a rock smacks us, people can point and say "if only we had listened to Mr. Obama!!! He would have saved us!!!!"
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You only use ion drives when you're really not in a hurry - if you have, say, a millennia or three in which to accomplish the project.
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The trick is to nudge it slightly in just the right way to use more massive bodies to cause it eventually (after much ping-ponging) to come coasting into an orbital trajectory. Which, given we are dealing with an extinction-sized chunk of rock, would have to be done very, very carefully with lots of safeguards.
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It's not coming in on an orbital trajectory. If we're precise and patient enough, we can get it coming in to a spot in low Earth orbit (although I'd be nervous about missing this by a couple hundred miles in the wrong direction), but it would be going much too fast to be in orbit. It would slingshot around Earth and head off somewhere else.
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I guess you're talking about putting the "shield" objects into something approaching a lunar orbit and shepherding them into the "Trojan" points (Lagrangian points L3, L4, and L5). Given a 27-ish day (Lunar-ish) orbit, that would leave you with around 9-10 days to get the astrometric measurements done and light the rockets. That sounds rather tight to me - you'll need some seriously fuck-off rocketry to provide the necessary power.
You'd need at least a couple of shields in a polar-ish
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Minerals mined here on Earth are cheap on Earth (minus shared environmental costs, of course). Given the cost to launch them into orbit, they are not cheap in space. Minerals mined on an asteroid would quite likely be much cheaper in space than those lifted from Earth's gravity well. (Also, one might find an asteroid with some rarer elements or chemicals, and "mining" an Asteroid might also be known as "hollowing out an asteroid for use as a colony, base, or port.")
Granted, the up front investment requir
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It's a heck of a lot less [wikipedia.org] energy than liftoff from earth.
You'll note that Rosetta [wikipedia.org] was able to get it's relative velocity to its target comet down to about 775m/s using gravity assist maneuvers This compares to 11,200m/s for Earth escape velocity.
The real question is whether propellant can be manufactured on the mined object (an excess quantity of which, in fact, may be the whole reason to mine) Also the large timescales for efficient transit will make the economics interestingly slow.
Trolley Problem (Score:2)
What if America can't stop the asteroid from hitting the earth, but can stop it from hitting the United States (or close strategic ally)? Other countries may want to invest in their versions of this.
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Be a shame if it landed on the Middle East, huh?
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Very easy to solve, like all trolley problems. Send it to the region where the smallest number of people will die from the impact.
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Incorrect. The solution to the trolley problem is multi-track drifting. [onsizzle.com]
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In both cases, five people will die if I do nothing, while I can kill one to save the five. In either case, I have to take positive action to kill the one guy, if I'm going to save the five. I don't understand how the agency differs.
There are differences of course. Consider Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative: always act as if your action could become a rule. It really doesn't apply to the trolley situation, but in the transplant situation nobody who might be an organ donor would
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What if America can't stop the asteroid from hitting the earth, but can stop it from hitting the United States (or close strategic ally)? Other countries may want to invest in their versions of this.
To divert it back to you guys?
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Don't be upset about not getting this message at gut level. I didn't understand it until I was examining a 30cm thick bed of
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I think that movie is going to be on SyFy next month.
Re:Nuclear Tsunami (Score:4, Insightful)
In case a 'big' asteroid hits the ocean (70% chance), it 'll create a giant tsunami, and because 100+ of the world Nuclear plants are located close to the oceans ...the indirect long-term after-effects could be devastating.
Yep, just like in Japan in 2011. The tsunami killed around 18,000 people and the nuclear meltdown killed none (well, a couple of workers died in the response and several people died in the evacuation, but none died from radiation). There were massive fires that burned in the debris (both on land and sea) through the night releasing all kinds of nasty shit into the air which further harmed the health of the survivors. Even with all that death and devastation the radiation from the nuclear plant that killed nobody was all anyone could talk about. Yes, it was a massive accident and will cost a shitload of money to clean up and might result in some increased cancer risk down the road (but the most likely cancer, thyroid cancer, is highly treatable) but if your concern is about dying, nuclear plants are not a huge problem. In the kind of event you are talking about (a huge asteroid/comet hitting the ocean causing a tsunami) the major concern is going to be the millions or billions of people dead in the immediate aftermath, not some nuclear plants releasing radioactive material in an area that has already been swept clean of all life. Yes, we should design these plants so that they fail safe and are able to continue to cool themselves without any outside intervention but the actual risk to human health is pretty damn low.
BUILD A WALL! (Score:2)
Build a wall and make the aliens pay for it!
Tomorrow morning (Score:5, Funny)
Paul Ryan will hold a press release where he announces that the republicans are against the plan, that this is too massive an expansion of government and the presidential overreach by trying to impose his will on asteroids without any constitutional right to look up at the sky.
In 20 days Trump will either scrap the plan, or keep it, if he keeps it - Ryan will pretend it was his idea all along.
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Clearly what /. considers "funny" needs to be Made Great Again.
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Maybe Trump will just refuse to believe in the asteroid and it will disappear?
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wrong department (Score:2)
Nonsense like this should be issued by the "rearranging-the-deckchairs-on-the-titanic-dept"
Re:wrong department (Score:5, Insightful)
Detection is the major hurdle. If we can detect an earth-crossing asteroid in time, deflecting it is actually pretty easy. The earlier the detection, the less delta-v is needed to make it miss. For the same reason a slight twitch of a rifle makes it miss a target at 100 yards it would still easily hit at 10 yards.
We've sent multiple spacecraft to asteroids in the past - we can hit millimeter wide targets with one-second accuracy halfway across the solar system with our probes and do it all the time. Plus, the US government has squirreled away a few 20 megaton nukes just for this job. We can nudge a rock easy. But FINDING them is hard.
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The new /. overlords have pretty much given up (or never understood) the dept. thing anyway. It used to be funny/witty stuff, now it's just something more or less appropriate without any wit.
Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll discover a massive killer asteroid and spend a couple of weeks arguing about how to deal with it. Russia will act on its own and launch a couple of nukes which will break it into three smaller killer asteroids. The governments will spend the remaining time at the UN trying to punish Russia for sending the nukes but they keep using their veto.
With hours left for humanity a large two dimensional hollow triangle appears above the planet, shoots the asteroids until they are harmless dust particles, and then pops out of existence.
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With hours left for humanity a large two dimensional hollow triangle appears above the planet, shoots the asteroids until they are harmless dust particles, and then pops out of existence.
Sounds familiar. [youtube.com]
Ramming it??? (Score:2)
The summary says
If you have a 200m asteroid that's the same as 60 times 50m asteroids, each enough to wipe out a large city. You generally don't want to break up an asteroid and turn it into giant buckshot, with pieces covering a wide area. Also in order to change momentum considerably you'd need to find another small asteroid to pull into a collision course because a missile is not going to do anything. So I checked the li
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Also in order to change momentum considerably you'd need to find another small asteroid to pull into a collision course because a missile is not going to do anything.
For Science reasons, the earlier one expends delta-v in an orbit, the more drastic a shift of trajectory is produced down the orbital track for a given amount of delta-v (as every player of Kerbal Space Program knows.) As you say, rocks that are smaller, or far away (preferably both) can be deflected with very small forces applied over very long times - the Gravity tractors, solar sails, ion thrusters - hell, you could even spray-paint the rock to take advantage of the Yarkovsky effect. [wikipedia.org]
If the rock is big an
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If you have some evidence to suggest that two random asteroids (or comets) have similar mechanical properties, that'd make some nice reading. So far, we have two data points and a lot of modelling.
You're sounding dangerously like you want to apply science to the question. This is not a politicially acceptable behaviour these days.
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When you have a measurement, you have a measurement ; when you have two measurements, you have a dis
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I see, that's not much. I thought meteorites would have told us something but I can see now that by their nature they would tend to be the strongest parts left of any larger structure.
On the other hand, and I'm just thinking here, using gravity's pull is attractive(wink) because you need to know little of the large scale structure of the asteroid - and statistics wouldn't be very useful for that anyway. You'd like some info on local structures though in order to mine enough material to increase the mass , a
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Yep - they fall apart at the weak points, leaving the intact things as being the strongest parts of the structure.
Ever seen a really good high-speed car crash - Formula 1, or that oval ring race track they have somewhere in America? Ever seen the engine block or brake discs broken apart? I didn't think so.
Invade them and take the oil (Score:2)
All those snarky comments about Trump - how funny! (Score:2)
The premise is different obviously, but the human panic and destruction would be similar. Nature would provide much more fireworks than humans though. Maybe those SHTF bunkers might be useful after all!
Oh, and if you're in the dark already and can't read: here [youtu.be].
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Maybe those SHTF bunkers might be useful after all!
Only well-hidden secret ones. The rest are just goody boxes.
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Thank you. That's an amazing story. I thought I had read everything by Asimov, but I somehow missed that one.
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Happy you found it, but how did you miss that story if you've read so much else by Asimov?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_novelette_and_novel)
"In 1968, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted Nightfall the best science-fiction short story written prior to the 1965 establishment of the Nebula Awards..."
and some would say it launched Asimov's full time career.
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it's /.'d now...
Lulz. Didn't know this site still generated that much traffic.
This (Score:1)
Impact scenario (Score:2)
Here's the text of the impact strategy:
1. Bend over.
2. Put head between knees.
3. Kiss ass goodbye.
Helios (Score:2)
Somebody better tell them about Helios, or we'll have to be reviving dead people from the future to prevent it.
And the Zombie Apocalypse? (Score:1)
LegacyEradication (Score:2)
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So the Republicans are the political equivalent of SMOD ???
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Pffft what strategy ? (Score:2)
Assuming we ever get a serious budget to deploy instruments capable of spotting these things.
Assuming we even know about it with more than a couple of days notice.
Assuming we even have tech capable of moving such a large mass sufficiently to alter its trajectory at all.
Assuming we have said tech already deployed and standing by in launch capable or ready to fire status.
Without all of the above, the strategy is this:
Die. Horribly.
Either as vaporized matter that becomes part of the ejecta cloud, or a short
"nukes in space"??? (Score:1)
25 pages? (Score:2)
1. Sit down
2. Bring knees to chest
3. Place head between knees
4. Kiss ass goodbye
Why does that take 25 pages?
Looking for a good novel? (Score:2)
If you read the 25-page summary looking for hard details on what would happen were an asteroid impact to be inevitable, you might be disappointed. In that case, I would recommend Ben H. Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy. It covers the work of a detective in the months prior to a meteor impact that's presumed to be civilization-ending.