U.N. Urged to Take On Asteroid Threat
By Irene Klotz
Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 18) – An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.
Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.
Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.
“It’s not just Apophis we’re looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue,” Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the earth in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco.
Here is the full article.
Excellent: the primacy of the UN recognised! A set of general principles would be good.
Let’s make sure different countries don’t just try to slow it down just enough to take out the opposite side of the world: now that [b] would [/b] a chess game.
We could use ‘general principles’ rather than ad hoc ‘coalitions of the willing’ elsewhere – to have coherent, global action on such things as climate, poverty and intervention.
g
Ai ai ai! According to the USCF rating algorithm, the chances are better that one of my 720-rated scholastics will beat Susan.
There are real problems, with real risks, that are going unaddressed. It reminds me of the (now old) phrase: If the cure for AIDS was a clean glass of water, most of those infected would not be cured.
>>Excellent: the primacy of the UN recognised!>>
Big deal, so Irene Klotz recognizes the UN. I’ve never even heard of her.
>>It reminds me of the (now old) phrase: If the cure for AIDS was a clean glass of water, most of those infected would not be cured. >>
You know, you can buy it in any store. Distilling water is pretty easy. I don’t guarantee it will cure your AIDS, though.
Much to do about Nothing.
So they talked everyone into spending a trillion dollars to kill people in Iraq. Now they want to get us to spend a trillion to blow up rocks in outter space.
When will we use the money to give everyone a good education and a good job. Let us take our non violent prisoners out of jail and give them a good job and a decent place to live. Teach people to live with dignity.
The solutions to the problems in this world is not to put people into jail and to kill them with expensive bombs. The solution is to love them by giving them dignity and an education and good job.
We have a real true crisis with global warming. This asteroid stuff is phoney. We need to focus on the real problem.
The major central problem in this world is 7 billion people. We need to get that down below 1 billion people. Everything else is just talk.
That’s a laugh: trust a corrupt, unaccountable, incompetent organization with an important mission.
Wait, that could also be the USCF… 😉
Asteroid problem?
Now, let’s see. The last time Earth was supposedly (even that) struck by an asteroid which had a truly huge impact, when the dinos became extinct. That was what….over 100 million years ago? Even that is just an assumption.
I have read about this asteroid. First it was announced a couple of years ago, then it was announced that no, it is not on collision course with Earth. Now suddenly it is, although with a 1:45,000 chance. What does that mean? It means, it can only mean one thing: it is not on collision course with Earth, but somebody created a computer program, which calculated the error probability of calculations and came up with this number. In other words, the asteroid is not heading toward Earth, just to “this direction”.
So, why suddenly this battlecry of yet another potential disaster facing our planet (next to the ozone layer, global warming, species extinction, top soil problem, fresh water problem, swamps, the list is long). About 15 or so years ago (I don’t remember exactly) a couple came on TV on Discovery Channel), otherwise unknown people, who popped the possibility of asteroids striking Earth in the future and asked for money to research this issue. I don’t know what happened after that, but ever since louder and louder voices are now expressing the same thing.
Here is the big question: do we really have the technology to divert a large asteroid? Of course we don’t. We have a difficult time to handle spaceships which fly 220 miles from the surface of the Earth, two out of five already perished. In order to divert an asteroid, spaceship would have to fly way way beyond the Moon and…….no, the technology is not existing to really divert one. This gravity pull sounds like a silly assumption. The gravity a small spaceship, smaller than a 747 to a larger than football field size asteroid would exist only, if such spaceship would be able to apply active counter-power-push in a different direction (otherwise the asteroid would pull the spaceship onto itself). That would require days, weeks of fuel. Right now spaceships can’t carry enough to land themselves, the space shuttle must land totally without fuel, like a glider.
So, the technology doesn’t exist. Yet, some people want to invent it against a 1:45,000 chance. Isn’t it interesting? No, if you understand that the space program is heading nowhere fast. NASA still pushes the “so what?” question about Mars: was there water there or not? So, who cares. What if there was? That is still NO PROOF that life ever existed there. None, nada, zip. Only the mere possibility, without even a reasonable probability. Yet, that’s the “big space thing” these days. Billions are spent for essentially nothing. Beyond the Mars? Now that Pluto got demoted as a planet, NOTHING. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptun are all gas planets. Yes, they have moons, but so what. The -200 degree temperature there makes life extremely unlikely. What else can we do there? Like mining? From hundreds of millions miles away? When all we could bring back from the 360 thousand miles away Moon was a bag of surface rocks?
Summary: the space program is dying. Nobody dares to say, because after the spectacular successes of the 60s, it would be a sacrilege to declare something like this. Yet, the Apollo program was canned, then now the space shuttle program is canned, the ISS is a multibillion dollar boondoggle, carrying 3 people, who spend most of there time fixing what is broken. Assuming it will be completely built, it will carry 7 people to do the same. President Bush announced the return to the Moon.Why? Is there something different there than it was in 1969? I don’t think so. Man on Mars in 2030? Give me break. Yes, they could go there, but how will they return? First they must build a launch pad, like Cape Canavarel. Can’t come back like from the Moon, gravity is far more than that. How will, how can the first mission do that? And for what? It is a dead planet, we already know that.
How come all this related to the asteroid? Well, in my opinion the space program is looking for another goal. Any goal. Just to continue to exist, get a bunch of money and exist for the sake of existing. It is lofty goal to change the flight path of an asteroid, currently not even possible. So, it will take again hundreds of billions of dollars to create such technology. To divert an asteroid, which the last time caused a disaster on Earth over 100 million years ago.
Conclusion: I let you draw it, if anyone will even read this 🙂
gabor said:
Now, let’s see. The last time Earth was supposedly (even that) struck by an asteroid which had a truly huge impact, when the dinos became extinct. That was what….over 100 million years ago? Even that is just an assumption.
~~~~~
You should get some facts, rather than just assuming. The Tunguska hit of 1906 had a pretty big impact.
>>We have a real true crisis with global warming. This asteroid stuff is phoney. We need to focus on the real problem.
The major central problem in this world is 7 billion people. We need to get that down below 1 billion people. Everything else is just talk.
>>
Therefore, global warming is just talk.
You’re a dangerous guy. See the whole world in terms of your agenda. A bit scary, too. You want to get rid of 6 billion people, but are against war. Just what exactly did you have in mind?
I say: give the asteroid a chance!
While, statistically, the odds of any one of us, during the course of our long lives, dying from an asteroid impact are quite low (very loosely estimated to be on the order of 1:50,000) the odds that a large, devastating asteroid impact will occur somewhere on Earth in the future is very nearly 1:1.0. In other words, you and I are not likely to die in an impact but that a great many people will, at some time in the not too distant future, is a near certainty (assuming some other disaster doesn’t befall all of us first). Note that the estimated odds of dying in an asteroid impact are, perhaps, even greater that those from dying from a terrorist attack (if one averages it out over the entire globe) and we, of course, spend a heck of a lot of effort dealing with that sort of thing.
Big rocks hit the Earth all the time, geologically speaking, and the planet is dotted the results of various impacts. The 1 km wide Meteor crater, in Arizona, for instance, is roughly 50,000 and is but one of the most noted examples. The blast and shock would have wiped out all human life within tens of kilometers- and it is not unique in either age or devastation. A previous poster mentioned the Tunguska event of 1906. It is worth noting that had that impact- as powerful as the most horrible nuclear weapon ever devised- occured over even a moderately populated area, the result would have been a huge loss of human life. Scientists (most notedly the late Gene Shoemaker) have estimated, based on cratering rates and projected asteroid density, that a Tunguska-size event occurs on Earth, on average, every 200-400 years. In other words, every 200-400 years there’s an asteroid impact capable of flattening a plot of land the size of greater Mexico City. Eventually, one of those impacts is going to be in a place where there’s a lot of people.
Also, it has been estimated that fairly high percentage of devastating Tsunamis stem from asteroid impacts over the oceans. In other words, a rock does not have to fall upon land to do horrible damage.
The current NASA budget for searching for Asteroids is roughly $3 million per year. Add to that a smattering of devoted amateurs, and that’s it for our “early warning system.” Given that almost every survey finds innumerable new asteroids and that, as we search harder and longer the rate at which we find new ones shows no signs of tapering off- there are undoubtedly many objects out there that remain to be discovered.
It is not uncommon for such an object pass fairly close to Earth before being detected for the first time. Eventually, one of those objects is going to find us in the way.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast20sep_1.htm
To my mind, $3 million is a pittance compared with the potential benefit of learning about, and buying enough time to do something about- a potentially devastating event. The UN decding to draw up plans regarding what should be done if such an asteroid is discovered does not commit us to untold $Billions of investment, it merely allows us to be prepared in the event that we do need to take some action.
Is this a problem as dangerous as global warming, nuclear war or widespread depletion of resources due to overpopulation or overexploitation? No. Is is something that deserves attention? Absolutely.
Brad Hoehne
Note that just because Asteroid Apophis has a record-breaking 1:40,000 chance of hitting Earth, doesn’t mean that it’s the most likely candidate for a devastating impact. There are countless unkown asteroids out there- and it is much more likely that one of them is the next devastaing blow.
The reason for this is related to the science of orbital mechanics. Apophis is almost certainly not going to hit us. However, it will pass quite close to Earth in 2029 and 2036 (3,400 km from the surface.)
In fact, it will pass so close that were another asteroid to pick a random path through a circle with the same radius as the closest approach of Aphophis, it would, more often than not, find Earth in the way! In other words, if we find another astroid in the future that early indications suggest it will pass as close or closer than Apophis, it will, more often than not, hit Earth.
The reason the odds of Apophis are sow low, is because observations of the orbit have been refined to a point that we’re able to determine very precisely where it will go. That is, it will, very precisely, miss us.
In my last note, I neglected to mentione the European Space Agency’s asteroid search program, the budget of which is roughly that of NASA’s.
Brad Hoehne
To anon 1:
You should get some facts, rather than just assuming. The Tunguska hit of 1906 had a pretty big impact.
It didn’t wipe out civilization, it didn’t cause a single death of humans, it didn’t destroy anything but a large forest. I mean, you are right, if it would have fallen to the middle of New York City, it would have caused a disaster, but it didn’t. And essentially any asteroid striking Earth would have similarly low chance to have any significance.
Wikipedia entry on “impact events”:
“The late Eugene Shoemaker of the U.S. Geological Survey came up with an estimate of the rate of Earth impacts, and suggested that an event about the size of the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima occurs about once a year. Such events would seem to be spectacularly obvious, but they generally go unnoticed for a number of reasons: the majority of the Earth’s surface is covered by water; a good portion of the land surface is uninhabited; and the explosions generally occur at relatively high altitude, resulting in a huge flash and thunderclap but no real damage.”
Sure there are asteroids entering Earth atmosphere, but for an expected disaster it takes much more than that.
————————
To Brad Hoehne:
Is this a problem as dangerous as global warming, nuclear war or widespread depletion of resources due to overpopulation or overexploitation? No. Is is something that deserves attention? Absolutely.
Attention? I have no problem with that. But let’s not put the carriage before the horse. Currently we have no space technology to divert an asteroid. Nor will we have one in 2036. What I mean, we perhaps could have. But just exactly what kind of resources would it take to develop space technology of that degree, to counter a 1:45,000 probability event?
What I fail to see in the article, which generally plagues our space technology: long term reasonable planning. We have now, I don’t even know for how many hundreds of millions of dollars, a probe heading toward Pluto. Which in the meanwhile was declared a non-planet. This is a sad joke, if you ask me. Look at the international space station. What kind of planning was that? From 2010 again only 2 or 3 people will be able to perform meager, low quality experiments in microgravity, since there will be nothing which could maintain the maximum capacity of………..EIGHT people, since without the space shuttle only the Sojuz can swap couple of people at any given time. Forget about large loads of anything. All that for how much? about 200 billion dollars or something?
By 2020 we will be landing again on the Moon. Whoopidoo. So what? Another few bags of Moon rocks? What kind of long term planning resulted that decision? “Apollo on steroids” is the buzzword. Meaning what? Instead of a 4×3 meters cubicle, they will have a 10×5 meters cubicle? Surely they are not serious of thinking about building a Moon base with that technology.
And if yes, for what?
Summary:
Until mankind invents a totally new rocket engine technology, we are stuck to the Earth, and around the Earth orbit. Anything beyond that is not serious.
Gabor
Gabor,
That Tunguska fell in a remote region is sheer luck. A Tunguska event does not have to happen over a London or New York to have disasterous consequences, it simply has to happen over any of the 10% or so of the surface area of the Earth which is cultivated or managed in some way by human beings.
Also, one cannot confidently state that there were no deaths due to the Tunguska event. It is simply not known how many, if anyone, died in the event, because the Tunguska region at the time was predominantly peopled by isolated bands nomadic herders out of range any modern census. Anyone who died would have perished along with anyone else in their band who could have noted their passing. (The “We will all go together when we go” phenomenon.) Note, similarly, that even the number of people who died in contemporary disasters, like the 2004 Tsunami, the Bam earthquake, or the New Orleans flood, almost always have an uncertainy of several percent or more. If an entire family disappears, along with all the records of that families existence, there is often little way to note their passing. Sad, but true.
I agree with you that human spaceflight is a potential financial boondoggle. Despite the fact that I am very pro-space science, the manned program seems to me to be an endeavour without a current compelling point- given, especially, the fact that our skill at building robots has increased dramatically since the Apollo era negating much of the advantage that human, in situ, study affords.
However, I disagree that *unmanned* projects like the cited New Horizions mission- which are orders of magnitude cheaper- are a waste of money.
Studying the solar system is an indirect method of the most important effort of studying ourselves. Knowing the history, evolution and dynamics of the solar system (and the universe at large) gives us a great deal of information on our home world and ourselves. Pluto, definitionally a planet or not, is likely an excellent, well preserved, representative of the makeup of the very early solar system. Studying it, we indirectly study the very early history of Earth and, perhaps, the conditions that led to the rise of life on our watery world.
More directly, that we are able to discern the existence of things like the hole in the ozone, or Global warming, is directly due to the space program. The study those phenomena (and many other evironmentally related ones) rely heavily on satellite technology- i.e. the space program.
Regarding:
“Attention? I have no problem with that. But let’s not put the carriage before the horse. Currently we have no space technology to divert an asteroid. Nor will we have one in 2036. What I mean, we perhaps could have. But just exactly what kind of resources would it take to develop space technology of that degree, to counter a 1:45,000 probability event?”
It is asteroid Apophis alone that has a 1:45,000 (actually much less than that, now that the orbit has been refined) chance of striking earth. The odds that another asteroid like Apophis will be discovered that will, upon sufficient examiniation, prove to be on a collision course is actually quite high. Apophis is alarming not because 1:45,000 is a high probability, it’s because a pass of under 4,000 km is a very, very close call.
Had Apophis been just 4,000 km off its current flyby trajectory, it would have hit with 1,000 megaton force (more than Tunguska.) Given the rate of new asteroid discoveries, it seems likely that a significant portion of what’s out there remains to be discovered. And given that, within the incomplete portion we have already discovered there was one asteroid that was only a few thousand km from smacking into us, it seems likely that there will, eventually, prove to be one shown to be “the big one.” Say we’ve discovered half of what’s out there in Earth’s neck of the woods (likely an overestimate, given the rate of discovery) – that means that there’s probably at least one more Apophis out there which is more than 50% likely to hit us.
Here’s another metaphor that might help readers understand what I mean. Imagine an expert Knife Thrower- one of those cicus performers who chucks blades at a model on a spinning wooden platform. This guy is very talented, and, despite the fact that the flatform to model ratio in area is roughly 1:1, because of years of practice he is extremely unlikely hit his hapless assistant. This is like Apophis- travelling a trajectory that has been very precisely nailed down by repeated observation. Now imagine a member of the audience being asked to perform the same feat… blindfolded. Given the model to wooden platform ratio, one can expect that, with very high confidence, a disaster is likely to happen. This is like the next “Apophis” to be discoverd- that is, randomly striking at the same small area- half of which is occupied by us.
Regarding the technology issue, I see no reason to launch people into space willy nilly to deflect astroids right now- and certainly not to ridiculously long-shot Apophis (and, as far I can tell, no one is suggesting that.) However, that there is no technology capable of deflecting asteroids should, in my view, be a cause to study the issue intensively. Preparations like sending robotic probes to asteroids to better get a handle on how cohesive they are, and the development of technologies to slowly push them out of the way after we figure out how likely they are to crumble to piles of rubble, seem like sensible steps to me. (Indeed, stuff like this has already been done to a certain extent with the “Deep-Impact” mission- which smashed into a comet, not an asteroid.) A relatively modest investment (especially compared to manned space program, not to mention various US “foreign policy” edeavours of late) would be a global insurance policy of sorts.
Brad Hoehne
Asking or expecting the UN to save us from a menacing asteroid is like asking or expecting the local dogcatcher to save us from terrorism or from global warming.
Those at the UN have their hands full trashing the US, and can’t be expected to do any more than that.
The potential prublem will be solved by the US, or it won’t be solved. Period.