Can NASA Protect Earth from Catastrophic Asteroid Collisions? (scientificamerican.com) 92
An anonymous reader quotes Qz:
NASA is not going to be able to find all the asteroids big enough to cause serious devastation on Earth by 2020 -- or even 2033. Also: For a hypothetical attempt to send a spacecraft to divert an seriously dangerous incoming asteroid, we'll need a ten year heads-up to build it and get it to the asteroid.
The good news? They're working on it. "If a real threat does arise, we are prepared to pull together the information about what options might work and provide that information to decision-makers," Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, told reporters.
But NASA's methodology is now being criticized by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold -- in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus. An anonymous reader quotes Scientific American: Since 2016, Nathan Myhrvold has argued that there are fatal flaws in the data from NASA's NEOWISE mission to hunt space rocks... NASA is working to develop a follow-up space telescope that would use the same scientific approach to fulfill a mandate from the US Congress to discover nearly all of the space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth.
After 18 months of peer review, and plenty of acrimony on both sides, Myhrvold's latest critique appeared on 22 May on the website of the journal Icarus. Among other things, he argues that NEOWISE estimates of asteroid diameters should not be trusted -- a crucial challenge, because the size of an asteroid determines how much damage it would cause if it hit Earth. "These observations are the best we're going to have for a very long time," says Myhrvold. "And they weren't really analysed very well at all."
NASA hasn't responded in detail to Myhrvold's criticism, though a June 14th statement said their team "stands by its data and scientific findings," noting that they'd also been published in several peer-reviewed journals.
The good news? They're working on it. "If a real threat does arise, we are prepared to pull together the information about what options might work and provide that information to decision-makers," Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, told reporters.
But NASA's methodology is now being criticized by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold -- in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus. An anonymous reader quotes Scientific American: Since 2016, Nathan Myhrvold has argued that there are fatal flaws in the data from NASA's NEOWISE mission to hunt space rocks... NASA is working to develop a follow-up space telescope that would use the same scientific approach to fulfill a mandate from the US Congress to discover nearly all of the space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth.
After 18 months of peer review, and plenty of acrimony on both sides, Myhrvold's latest critique appeared on 22 May on the website of the journal Icarus. Among other things, he argues that NEOWISE estimates of asteroid diameters should not be trusted -- a crucial challenge, because the size of an asteroid determines how much damage it would cause if it hit Earth. "These observations are the best we're going to have for a very long time," says Myhrvold. "And they weren't really analysed very well at all."
NASA hasn't responded in detail to Myhrvold's criticism, though a June 14th statement said their team "stands by its data and scientific findings," noting that they'd also been published in several peer-reviewed journals.
/. seems on a mission to prove Betteridge's law (Score:1)
n/t
Re:No. It can do "something" but ultimately no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably true. On the other hand, working toward a solution is probably better than saying "well, we can't stop one now, so no point in looking." It's not like a solution will be easier to come by if we wait till the last possible minute to start developing one....
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Currently the answer is "no" whether they detect it in advance or not. I suppose if they found that something was on a collision course in 5 years they *MIGHT* be able to do something, but given current knowledge the something they could do would be as likely to make things worse as better.
If there were 15 years warning, and goals didn't change with each election, then something reasonable could probably be done.
Error bars? (Score:3)
The real problem it seems to me is, how accurately can you predict the trajectory and the collision, 5 or 10 years out, or even a year out?
Would we spend the trillion-ish dollars to attempt to counter something that has according to calculations, say, a 1 in 10,000 chance of striking Earth in 5 years. Or say a 1 in 1 million chance. I'm guessing that the error bars might be at least that big.
Anyone know the facts on that math and measurement and extrapolation capabilities?
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That was my point.
Note that for the probability of impact to be 1 chance in 10,000, you have to be able to measure the relative position with an error less than about 100 Earth diameters.
Your error in the angle of approach of the asteroid, added to your error in Earth orbital position extrapolation, has to come to less than that amount. Very unlikely (impossible probably) to be that accurate years back from the possible collision.
So political decision making would fail to allocate sufficient funds and time
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Actually the question is really really simple... do we focus on the immediate threats to our survival (nuclear war, climate change, etc)? Or do we worry about much lower probability threats?
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oh and volcanos are no worries at all. For 1000000s of years they are harmless, and never have destroyed any cities or civs, or islands, or caused mini winters, or tsunamis that went inland 30 km. They are pretty harmless really - we are living on a liquid metal planet with a tiny thin layer of crumbs.
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We went from 4423 known asteroids in 1970 to 685231 known asteroids in 2015 [youtube.com]. So 'tracking what will kill us' is well on its way to becoming a solved problem.
spacex to the rescue (Score:2)
oh im sure $10b, and a rush order, spacex could build 5 FalconHeavys, to send USAs finest 2MT nukes to it.
If push comes to shove, anything can be done as fast.
Probable trajectory (Score:4, Funny)
White House/Congress: What's it going to cost?
NASA: 100 trillion.
WH/C: Fake News!
BOOM!
Re:Probable trajectory (Score:4, Funny)
Bruce Willis charges too much
Re:Probable trajectory (Score:5, Funny)
Bruce Willis charges too much
Nah . . . we'll get Bezos or Musk to do it.
Bezos would probably do it for free . . . because if the Earth was destroyed . . . nobody would subscribe to Amazon Prime any more.
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If not for the magic of movies, we might be relegated to reality-based expectations of human behaviorial outcomes.
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Bezos would probably do it for free . . . because if the Earth was destroyed . . . nobody would subscribe to Amazon Prime any more.
Don't worry -- Beos will surely save us [huffingtonpost.com]. Besides, it'll be a business expense. Hell -- it'll probably end up as a made-for-Amazon movie as well.
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Bezos would tell everyone he's going to do it, then spend 20 years failing to get a rocket into orbit. (Blue Origin was founded 18 years ago and it's safe to say they won't be reaching orbit in the next two years.)
If an asteroid has our name on it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... we're likely doomed. Plain and simple. We won the big lottery and we've had realive "asteroid peace" for a few million years now which had us evolve into quite smart apes but if some solid rock with a diameter of 1000+ meters comes at earth with 50000 kmh it's gonna hurt.
Given, if we'd prepare for this sort of event we'd quickly be in a position to prevent it. But since we - right now - can't even get it down to stop dumping crap into the oceans and poisining the atmossphere, I wouldn't bet on that happening anytime soon. As long as idiots are still caught up in little more than extended tribal wars humanity won't move to that position. I sure hope we survive long enough to make that happen, but some sceptisizm and paranoia is due IMHO.
If humanity does move on to becoming smart, we could also finally make a concerted effort to become a space faring civilisation. Maybe not beyond our solar system, but space faring none-the-less.
Nathan Myhrvold is smarter than NASA? Lol.... (Score:2)
Moreover, I am going to place a heck of a lot more trust in the the nerds as NASA, over a ex-CTO, because...oh wait....they are ACTUAL fucking rocket scientists. I'm sure that Nathan is clever and all, but I don't see anything in his CV that suggests that he is anything more than an armchair quarterback with 'opinions'.
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We might have the technology to put people on the moon for extended periods.
We absolutely do not have the ability to get to Mars. As related above we do not have the capability at this time to deal with the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field. Until that problem is solved no one is surviving interplanetary flight and all our efforts will be in low Earth orbit.
No ... (Score:2)
... that would take science and money.
Sorry.
Re:No ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... that would take science and money.
Congress Critters would waste precious time arguing about which states get the contracts to build the "Asteroiderator Killer".
. . . and then we'd end up with 50 incompatible components built in 50 different states.
"Thanks for all the fish!"
Space Force CAN (Score:1)
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I'd have more faith in a new military branch with a zillion-dollar budget that it needs to figure out how to spend to make progress in space than NASA, which seemingly only exist anymore to get its budget cut (and to virtue signal about its newfound commitment to diversity).
Whatever you think about all the useless billion-dollar fighter planes we piss away money on, you can't deny they're fucking cool as hell. The only reason we ever got to the moon was to win a cold war pissing contest with Russia; give
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NASA--The only organization in existence which can make something like space flight boring.
From the lad with Supesonic Dinos (Score:3)
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For both the formula is E = m * v^2 (m = mass, v = velocity, that was obvious, wasn't it?) ... what else did you miss in school? (Hint: halving the mass and doubling the speed doubles the energy, a bit counterintuitive, don't you think so?)
So to make your statement true you need to cherry pick nice values for m and v
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Any incoming projectile with enough energy to cause global devastation is more than likely large enough to make it through the atmosphere mostly unscathed. That's because it's highly unlikely that an incoming solid object will have a velocity above that of high-speed comets relative to the earth, around 70 km/s.
If you could find some natural process that accelerates macroscopic objects to much higher speeds than that, then maybe your argument would have some relevance.
The problem today is: NASA probably isn
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If an asteroid/meteor explodes depends on many things. ... :P https://physics.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]
I gave you the energy formula. Now google yourself.
Whether a meteorite hits the ground depends mostly on its size
Here e.g. is an interesting read, not sure that you comprehend it, though
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If an asteroid is big enough to worry about hitting us, all those considerations are probably moot.
So, where to place your trust? (Score:3)
NASA, an organisation with decades of experience with space-related matters, and decades of data from manned and unmanned missions, some fuckups but mostly glorious successes, or the ex-CTO of a company with a reputation for, well, a reputation like Microsoft's?
Microsoft have been known to produce some good products, but they should *never* be first port of call when seeking technical solutions, or considering software.
He probably wants counter-asteroid systems to all be running some version of Windows.
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"Microsoft have been known to produce some good products, "
They've been known to buy some good products, stick their name on them, and then ruin them after a few years. They even managed to run windows 7 for the average user by turning Windows update into a malware delivery platform.
Ten years (Score:2)
For a hypothetical attempt to send a spacecraft to divert an seriously dangerous incoming asteroid, we'll need a ten year heads-up
I am certain it would take less than a few weeks to decide a nuclear strike against an asteroid.
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You better know the composition and structural strength if you're going to decide that a nuclear blast would do more good than harm.
If it were largely methane type stuff, then a nuclear blast off to one side would likely be better than direct impact. If it's iron, you'd better think of another approach.
P.S.: Breaking it into fragments doesn't reduce the impact energy. It may cause it to spread, but it won't reduce it. (Of course, some of the fragments may have their orbit altered enough to miss us this
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Yeah, and depending on the size that might be significant. With a really large one, though, impact energy is the problem unless you can REALLY spread things around, probably to the extent that most if it will miss us this time around.
A prior respondent suggested that this might be done with multiple nuclear explosions, and "maybe". The problem is you only get one chance to change the velocities of the pieces, so the follow on has to count on vaporizing them. You're after heat rather than explosive force,
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That's why you have to send Bruce Willis and his boys to do the drilling.
Of course the radiation will kill them after they get the job done. Still bet you'd find people who would do it, just for the cred.
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You better know the composition and structural strength if you're going to decide that a nuclear blast would do more good than harm.
I do not know if a nuclear blast is the right approach. I am just confident this is the one that will be chosen.
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Breaking up an asteroid spreads out the energy over multiple incidents. If you make the fragments small enough they might all burn up in the atmosphere rather than making groundfall. Maybe turning an extinction level event into a bunch of city killers. That's a good trade.
Just call the Space Cowboys (Score:2)
What do the Las Vegas oddsmakers think? (Score:2)
If we use our understanding of the past as a predictor, we could estimate that such an extinction event might occur every 1,460 billion days (4 billion years). There has only been one such event thus far and many life forms survived, including many mammals. We may have to wait even longer for the next one. But hey, we have nothing else to worry about so have at it!
A simple, DO-ABLE response: Moon Base + Kinetic (Score:2, Interesting)
It is nice to see that the Obama-era plan has been fleshed out and in the current plan [whitehouse.gov] the real rubber-hits-the-road moment is,
3.4 Identify, assess the readiness of, estimate in the costs of, and propose development paths for key technologies required by NEO impact prevention concepts. This assessment should include the most mature in-space concepts --- kinetic impactors, nuclear devices, and gravity tractors for deflection, and nuclear devices for disruption -- as well as less mature NEO impact prevention methods. Technology assessments should consider contemporary work, including potential synergies with relevant private industry interests (e.g., asteroid mining). They should also consider NEO impact scenarios that may have received insufficient attention thus far (e.g., binary asteroids, high-speed comets). [Short term; NASA, NNSA, DoD]
Asteroid interception is where the goofiest ideas emerge to monopolize discussion and take debate away from practical ideas that would give us a chance of survival in all cases. When you interrupt geeks talking about their favorite solution, something like deploying solar sails to nudge asteroids, to point out their scenario is for an extremely narrow case and it would be irresp
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What a rude little reply. I assume you're talking about 'threats' to Earth from such missiles while the threat from asteroids is... God's will? I'll put more effort into mine than you did, just quote a relevant bit from my letter [scribd.com],
It is time for a global showdown between two major personality types of our time: those who are prepared to act quickly and decisively to mitigate this existential risk, and those who will oppose on many fronts... and it will be a showdown, for the opposition will attempt to 'quantify' the existential threat to a level where it could be passed over for this and the next generation, as has already happened, or dismissed altogether. They will call this 'logic, statistics and science' though it is none of those.
It is a mental disorder.
Great oratory is called for, stern resolve also.
People who think they have plenty of time find it easy to propose or oppose anything, and language is rich with rhetoric of delay. Deficits grow less than we had feared, progress is made on countless fronts, we are closer now than ever before, love is just around the corner. In our developed world there are as many people able to survive by talking about things as those doing things. To the modern civilized mind global cataclysm is safely ensconced in speculation, early history, sacred text and cinema. Liberal arts education focuses deeply on the 'tabloid disasters' of history, strictly human atrocities that we and our neighbors would never repeat. It's someone else's job to think about such things, even if no one does. Easy to assume we are in the middle-weave of some tapestry between a dim beginning and distant end.
Expect opposition to the idea that erstwhile enemies, even bitter enemies, should all come together to assemble a collective weapons platform that could -- through some mishap or menace -- send kinetic weapons down to places on Earth. A humorous cosmic irony, the ultimate Prisoner's Dilemma, that a whole species would knowingly seal its doom with its failure to trust one another as individuals.
There is NO way to debate this to any unified consensus in the end. Despite the greatest tenets of all world faiths... the human race is experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by. The language of distrust and paranoia has become far more subtle and intricate, more lucrative, more fun, than the language of trust and action.
It is my conviction then, that there can be no round table with talking sticks and common vote. One of the remaining superpowers must step forward to announce that it is committed to resolving this 'existential threat' for all of humanity... to begin immediately without debate. It shall be conducted transparently with assurance that others who come to agree such action is necessary, may join the effort.
That is where America comes in.
Apollo, showing that we could land on the Moon, was the first step.
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, is next. Let us hunt space rocks.
Moon Base + Kinetic == terible solution? (Score:3)
Lunar soil is mass, but without a hard external jacket, it is going to crumble on impact and not behave like a rigid body. You probably want a inelastic collision to occur, not an elastic collision. Most space ships are made of very light material to save cost / fuel / delta V, it will be VERY expensive to ship vast quantities of 'bullets' to the moon with dense enough bodies that will not fragment on impact. The faster they are going
Re: Moon Base + Kinetic == terible solution? (Score:2)
Re: Moon Base + Kinetic == terible solution? (Score:2)
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So aside from the fact your idea probably just won't work, is incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and we already have vast amounts of nuclear weapons already built that are way more efficient in terms of energy deliverable, your idea isn't a bad one. I give you full points for a creative solution to the problem.
I think he missed the fact that we don't have any process to create fuel on the moon so we have to ship it from Earth. TLI -> LLO: 0.82 km/s, LLO -> moon: 1.87 km/s and the same in reverse to launch and break orbit, if you plug 2.69 km/s into the rocket equation you get ~50% fuel. So you can send 4 kg fuel, land 2 kg of it and use that to launch 1 kg Lunar dirt. But it would make a lot more sense to just launch 4 kg Earth dirt.
If Musk realizes the BFR with full refueling it's pretty much the perfect a
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Exactly. You a
I Wonder If It Matters (Score:2)
What Myhrvold's really thinking (Score:2)
“I’ve got a patent on 87% of the likely ways NASA would try to stop an asteroid, and a dozen east Texas lawyers on hot standby. To hell with trolling individuals... the US government has the deepest pockets of all!”
Asteroid Deflector (Score:2)
That's what we need. Just make sure it's controlled by musical notes and only one person on the planet is given the knowledge of how to operate it.