An interesting article on a proposal to have NASA place a radio tracking beacon on an asteriod that is 320m in diameter with a high probability of striking the Earth in 2029. The purpose of the beacon would be better establish the asteriod's orbital parameters in order to decide if it should be deflected. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=17666 P.S. - Patrick, I didn't see this one flow through your news emailer. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
This rock is 320 (m)eters in diameter, right, not (m)iles? Wouldn't it be just as easy (technically) to vaporize it completely than deflect it with certainty? --- Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
An interesting article on a proposal to have NASA place a radio tracking beacon on an asteriod that is 320m in diameter with a high probability of striking the Earth in 2029. The purpose of the beacon would be better establish the asteriod's orbital parameters in order to decide if it should be deflected.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
This rock is 320 (m)eters in diameter, right, not (m)iles?
Per Schweickart letter's to NASA Administrator Griffin, "Based on current data, the asteroid (320-400 meter diameter) will pass approximately 7,000 km inside the geostationary orbit and will be an easily visible naked eye object to observers in Europe and Africa early that evening [on 4/13/2029]." http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=161 If it were miles, the title to this thread would have been "Should 2004MN4 - be named the 11th planet Xena - or just 'The End of the World?" and I'd have already quit my job for extended period of debauchery. -:)
Wouldn't it be just as easy (technically) to vaporize it completely than deflect it with certainty?
Finally, a use for all that Cold War hardware! Considering the track record of Star Wars tests, do you really want to trust DARPA? I mean, this asteriod isn't going to have homing beacon on it like the Star Wars mock-ICBM test targets - to make sure the test goes well. Opps, well, er --- maybe Schweickart does have a point. Maybe we do need a homing beacon on it. - Canopus56(Kurt) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Seriously, Kurt, I'm not a mathematician, programmer, engineer or scientist by trade, but it seems to me that you need higher precision to hit the center of mass for an accurate deflection, than a "good enough" hit with an old-fashioned, '60s era mega-nuke warhead (or two, or three, or ?). "Close counts in horseshoes and atom bombs" or something like that, didn't the phrase go? But more likely is that the bomb will be soft-landed. (What was that remarkable little spacecraft that soft- landed on an asteroid recently?) We certainly don't need to hit it at closest approach. Let's pop that baby when it's WAY out there, to let the fragments disperse more widely if it's not completely vaporized. Remember "Here come the whale chunks!"? Heck, I'll only be 71, still lots of life ahead of me... --- Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
This rock is 320 (m)eters in diameter, right, not (m)iles?
Per Schweickart letter's to NASA Administrator Griffin, "Based on current data, the asteroid (320-400 meter diameter) will pass approximately 7,000 km inside the geostationary orbit and will be an easily visible naked eye object to observers in Europe and Africa early that evening [on 4/13/2029]." http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=161
If it were miles, the title to this thread would have been "Should 2004MN4 - be named the 11th planet Xena - or just 'The End of the World?" and I'd have already quit my job for extended period of debauchery. -:)
Wouldn't it be just as easy (technically) to vaporize it completely than deflect it with certainty?
Finally, a use for all that Cold War hardware!
Considering the track record of Star Wars tests, do you really want to trust DARPA? I mean, this asteriod isn't going to have homing beacon on it like the Star Wars mock-ICBM test targets - to make sure the test goes well.
Opps, well, er --- maybe Schweickart does have a point. Maybe we do need a homing beacon on it.
- Canopus56(Kurt)
____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
[B]ut it seems to me that you need higher precision to hit the center of mass for an accurate deflection, than a "good enough" hit with an old-fashioned, '60s era mega-nuke warhead (or two, or three, or ?). "Close counts in horseshoes and atom bombs" or something like that, didn't the phrase go? But more likely is that the bomb will be soft-landed. <snip>
LOL! I agree on all counts but Schweickart's approach is probably the most politically realistic.
(What was that remarkable little spacecraft that soft-landed on an asteroid recently?) <snip>
NEAR 2001 http://near.jhuapl.edu/ - and in the future, the ESA mission, currently in route, to land on a comet in _2014_ - Rosetta mission to land on Comet 67P http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMJUZS1VED_index_0.html http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/ESA38F7708D_0.html - Canopus56(Kurt) ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
Chuck Hards wrote:
(What was that remarkable little spacecraft that soft- landed on an asteroid recently?) We certainly don't need to hit it at closest approach. Let's pop that baby when it's WAY out there, to let the fragments disperse more widely if it's not completely vaporized.
I don't know. Blowing it up could open a huge can of legal worms. Right after NEAR landed on Eros, NASA received a bill for a parking fee from some guy who claims to own Eros ( http://www.orbdev.com/010216.html ). And then after Deep Impact made a crater on Temple 1 NASA was sued by some woman who claimed making a hole in the comet had messed up her horoscope ( http://www.nightly.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/10/36580.html ). Can you imagine the trouble NASA would be in if rather than just sitting on or burrowing into the asteroid, they actually obliterated it? I mean, just think what it might do to our horoscopes? :-) Patrick
You're probably right. We better let it just hit us. Hopefully it will hit a law school somewhere. --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
I don't know. Blowing it up could open a huge can of legal worms.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
--- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
Can you imagine the trouble NASA would be in if [NASA] actually obliterated it? I mean, just think what it might do to our horoscopes? :-)
I check with my astrologer. She said that if the asteriod is destroyed, the chances of me and diveboss getting dates will go up immeasurably! -:) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Quoting Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com>:
I check with my astrologer. She said that if the asteriod is destroyed, the chances of me and diveboss getting dates will go up immeasurably! -:)
I had Mel interested until I told her I was broke. ;) Of course I left out one minor detail... the wife. ;)
Chuck Hards wrote:
This rock is 320 (m)eters in diameter, right, not (m)iles? Wouldn't it be just as easy (technically) to vaporize it completely than deflect it with certainty?
Since the license plate on my car reads METRIC I'll pipe up and assure you that it does indeed mean meters. I was just reading an article on this in the Planetary Society's newsletter. Basically they said the current thinking is to put a transponder on it and use that to get very accurate astrometry. Then, if that lead them to believe an impact was going to happen they'd look into landing a small ion thruster on its surface. They figure that the thruster's small (~2 kg) thrust applied over many years would move the rock just far enough to not be a hazzard. And, BTW, it's not the 2029 pass that has them worried. Everyone seems to think it will be close (just inside the 40,000 km geostationary orbit) and at third magnitude, bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, but it will not hit us. However, that close pass could alter its orbit such that a few years later it could hit us. Patrick
Yep, I read about the later pass too, in the online piece Kurt posted. I wondered if he'd even live through a debauche protracted out for that long! If the ion thruster had such small thrust, you could probably get similar results by just painting the appropriate face white- let it act like a 'solar sail'. --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote:
And, BTW, it's not the 2029 pass that has them worried. Everyone seems to think it will be close (just inside the 40,000 km geostationary orbit) and at third magnitude, bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, but it will not hit us.
However, that close pass could alter its orbit such that a few years later it could hit us.
__________________________________ Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html
Quoting Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net>:
Chuck Hards wrote:
This rock is 320 (m)eters in diameter, right, not (m)iles?
Since the license plate on my car reads METRIC I'll pipe up and assure you that it does indeed mean meters.
And since the license plate on my truck reads WEAPONS, I'll pipe up and assure you that we can blow that thing into a gazillion bite size pieces... ;) And if we hold our fire until it's a few miles out, we could have that meteor 'storm' Daniel mentioned... maybe something along the lines of a few thousand per second. Now we just need someone with a license plate that reads METEORS to check in. ;)
Since the license plate on my car reads METRIC I'll pipe up and assure you that it does indeed mean meters.
And since the license plate on my truck reads WEAPONS, I'll pipe up and assure you that we can blow that thing into a gazillion bite size pieces... ;) And if we hold our fire until it's a few miles out, we could have that meteor 'storm' Daniel mentioned... maybe something along the lines of a few thousand per second. Now we just need someone with a license plate that reads METEORS to check in. ;)
I think I'll look for a license plate that says "DUCK!"
That's my neighbor; the one with the camoflaged, flat-bottomed boat and golden retriever... --- Michael Carnes <MichaelCarnes@earthlink.net> wrote:
I think I'll look for a license plate that says "DUCK!"
____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
--- Michael Carnes <MichaelCarnes@earthlink.net> wrote:
I think I'll look for a license plate that says "DUCK!"
That's a good one!
Quoting Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com>:
That's my neighbor; the one with the camoflaged, flat-bottomed boat and golden retriever...
You can never go wrong with a Golden Retriever... But them I'm partial to them. goto <www.utahastronomy.com> for a peek at mine.
The drawback to the "nuke 'em" solution, I think, is that a cloud of radioactive debris would remain in the same orbit, to eventually collide with Earth. Or is that off-base? thanks, Joe
Joe, what I'm reading is that it just won't work, period. If it did, IMO, running into a (very) rarified cloud of radioactive debris is preferable to an 800 megaton impact. --- Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote:
The drawback to the "nuke 'em" solution, I think, is that a cloud of radioactive debris would remain in the same orbit, to eventually collide with Earth. Or is that off-base? thanks, Joe
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com
____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
Joe, I know basically nothing about this, but what I'm trying to say is that I'm reading criticism of every possible idea tied to deflecting an impactor, with no achievable ideas being put forth. If there is no way to do it, why are we talking about it? Why are we looking for them? To await a "Star Trek" future, when some new technology may be able to do the job? --- Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote:
Good point! jb
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com
____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
In this case, the results are not devastating. Even those who have studied this (not me) say that it is not a world ending activity. The food chain will remain. In the case of the radioactive cloud in orbit, I'm not convinced that it would be all that rarefied. I think the answer at this point in human development is that we don't have the necessary technology. The energy required to change solar system order-of-magnitude problems is not at our disposal. All of that being said, if our existence were REALLY threatened, chances are pretty good that someone would come up with at least a modifier to lessen the devastation. BTW, I read that NASA actually looked at placing a netting on the main fuel tank to contain the foam. They considered integral netting, external netting, and encasing it in a thin metallic sheath. Another example of not having the right technology? --- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
Joe, I know basically nothing about this, but what I'm trying to say is that I'm reading criticism of every possible idea tied to deflecting an impactor, with no achievable ideas being put forth.
If there is no way to do it, why are we talking about it? Why are we looking for them? To await a "Star Trek" future, when some new technology may be able to do the job?
--- Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote:
Good point! jb
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com
____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
--- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
In this case, the results are not devastating. Even those who have studied this (not me) say that it is not a world ending activity. The food chain will remain.
Unless you're near ground zero! I think "world ending" needs to be more clearly defined. It will be pretty darned devastating on a large scale, and it is fair to say that life for many will be drastically altered- not for the better. Many institutions of civilization will certainly suffer drastic changes. Standards of living even for those far from the impact area will be affected. It seems to me you are deliberately downplaying the negative side of a mountain-sized impactor.
I think the answer at this point in human development is that we don't have the necessary technology. All of that being said, if our existence were REALLY threatened, chances are pretty good that someone would come up with at least a modifier to lessen the devastation.
So there really is no point in talking about NASA deflecting an asteroid at this point. A collision course in the near future can't be changed with known 'modifiers'. What speculative 'modifiers' do you have in mind? Anybody who's criticized ideas floated so-far, what are your suggestions? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
C'mon guys. It's been 65 million years since the last devastating asteroid and nearly 100 years since that dinky little Tongusta strike. While it's possible that the next impact could be later tonight (that's OK, I've got some Lagavulin), chances are that we've probably got some time. Our detection abilities have improved radically in just the last dozen years or so, and will get better by the year. It seems likely to me that within a very few decades we should be able to plant ion drives or maybe just drop dark or light colored powder to take advantages of solar effects. With enough lead time, a light and consistent thrust should be more than enough to change an orbit without all the fireworks. In the meantime, we're doing quite enough to screw ourselves out of a habitable planet without even thinking about asteroids. -mc
In this case, the results are not devastating. Even those who have studied this (not me) say that it is not a world ending activity. The food chain will remain.
Unless you're near ground zero! I think "world ending" needs to be more clearly defined. It will be pretty darned devastating on a large scale, and it is fair to say that life for many will be drastically altered- not for the better. Many institutions of civilization will certainly suffer drastic changes. Standards of living even for those far from the impact area will be affected.
It seems to me you are deliberately downplaying the negative side of a mountain-sized impactor.
Integral "netting" is an entirely different animal than an external "cargo net" approach. Fiber-reinforced composites have been around for a long time. In retrospect I'm surprised the foam isn't reinforced such already. Probably a mass-saving strategy. --- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
BTW, I read that NASA actually looked at placing a netting on the main fuel tank to contain the foam. They considered integral netting, external netting, and encasing it in a thin metallic sheath.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Integral "netting" is an entirely different animal than an external "cargo net" approach. Fiber-reinforced composites have been around for a long time. In retrospect I'm surprised the foam isn't reinforced such already. Probably a mass-saving strategy. --- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
BTW, I read that NASA actually looked at placing a netting on the main fuel tank to contain the foam. They considered integral netting, external netting, and encasing it in a thin metallic sheath.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Canopus56 wrote:
An interesting article on a proposal to have NASA place a radio tracking beacon on an asteriod that is 320m in diameter with a high probability of striking the Earth in 2029. The purpose of the beacon would be better establish the asteriod's orbital parameters in order to decide if it should be deflected.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=17666
P.S. - Patrick, I didn't see this one flow through your news emailer.
Well, I _thought_ I'd run something on it back when it was first making news late last year but maybe not. Patrick
participants (7)
-
Brent Watson -
Canopus56 -
Chuck Hards -
diveboss＠xmission.com -
Joe Bauman -
Michael Carnes -
Patrick Wiggins