China Hopes To Redirect a Nearby Asteroid Within the Next Four Years (gizmodo.com) 20
The global effort to protect Earth from dangerous asteroids is set to become stronger, as China has announced its intentions to test an asteroid redirect system as early as 2025. Reader InfiniteZero writes: Speaking to China Central Television on Sunday, Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), described China's preliminary plans to embark on the planetary defense project, according to Chinese state-owned news agency Global Times. Wu's comments coincided with Space Day, an annual event that commemorates the 1970 launch of China's first satellite, Dongfanghong-1, in 1970. For the proposed test, Wu said a probe would closely survey a near-Earth object prior to smashing into it. Known as kinetic impaction, the idea is to alter the orbital trajectory of a threatening asteroid by directing a large, high-speed spacecraft into the object. NASA is currently running a similar test, known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which seeks to deliberately crash a space probe into Dimorphos -- a tiny asteroid -- later this year.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Score:5, Insightful)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: "What are we going to do, throw rocks at them?" "Yes."
While it would be awesome if humans could steer asteroids away from the Earth, it would also imply that humans could steer asteroids toward the Earth, and that would be a lot less awesome. Can't have one without the other.
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The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is such a great story by the way. Certainly one of, if not the best hard sci-fi story ever imho.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is such a great story by the way.
I heard years ago that it will be made into a movie.
Whatever happened to that?
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In 2015, it was announced that Bryan Singer was attached to direct a film adaptation, entitled Uprising, in development at 20th Century Fox.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There was an announcement seven years ago and then nothing.
It appears that the project is dead or at least stalled. That is too bad since it would make a good movie.
A good story, but implausible now (Score:2)
The reliance on technology on par with a telephone switch board made the story a little weird. An updated version of the story would mostly work if it was video based instead of audio bug based. Maybe with some hand waving excuse that the Luna regolith would prevent WiFi from working so easily as it does in the real world and thus require tunnels and cables between the colonists.
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Gee, maybe all of that was because the novel was written in the mid-sixties, and they RAH couldn't foresee wifi all over the place?
And, of course, wifi sucks compared to wired. And yes, I'm a sysadmin, and our computers at home are *wired* ethernet.
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Steering asteroids toward Earth takes orders of magnitude more precision than steering them away from Earth, because the fraction of the universe comprising "not Earth" is a much part of the universe (and hence easier to hit). If you're off by a factor of two or three in steering an asteroid away from Earth, it still misses Earth. If you're steering it toward Earth, it's may or may not hit Earth, and may or may not hit the target on Earth you don't want it to hit.
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Excuse me? It should take a lot *less* precision, depending on how close the asteroid is, given that Earth is this tiny dot, and the rest of the universe is, to quote Doug Adams, "big, really, really big".
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You seem to be agreeing with me? Right: it's harder to hit the Earth than "anywhere other than the Earth", since "Earth is this tiny dot, and the rest of the universe is, to quote Doug Adams, "big, really, really big"."
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They have too many nuclear weapons for that to make a difference. Asteroids are much more expensive to move and the lead time is too long to be useful in war. They're also not hard to block either. Any asteroid small enough to divert towards a target is small enough to deflect, and anything too big to deflect is suicidal.
Footfall (Score:2)
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I doubt it will be a big problem. Spacecraft are obvious and easily tracked. Any kind of a redirect mission would be even easier to keep tabs on, and any redirecting has to be done years in advance. Also, your targeting is probably going to be good to +- a hemisphere or so. Nukes are easier.
In the book they were chucking moon rock with a rail gun launcher. That's a lot faster, easier to target, and doesn't have handy rockets marking the trajectory.
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Who said anything about steering asteroids away from Earth? They're going to redirect them to Taiwan.
It seems fitting... (Score:3)
It seems fitting to see this headline under the Musk Twitter announcement.
>ducks
I have that T-shirt! (Score:2)
"Giant Meteor for President. Just end it already."
I really do have a T-shirt that says that. Maybe China will accidentally fulfill the words found on at least one T-shirt. I've also made a mental note that if enough disaster movies are made, at least one of them will eventually "get it right."
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Either that, or the inherent perversity of the universe will note that every remotely plausible scenario (and several frankly impossible ones) have already been done to death, and so the world will end in a manner so ridiculous and inane that nobody ever even considered making a story about it.
Let's practice redirecting asteroids (Score:2)