NASA nuke-bot to tackle space boulders of doom NASA plans to deal with killer comets or asteroids on collision courses with Earth are more advanced than many analysts had thought. Flight International reported on Friday that the agency's Marshall Space Flight Centre has developed designs for an asteroid-buster spacecraft which could be launched using the future Ares V cargo …
Because we trust robots with massive nukes a lot more then we do humans..
I can just imagine the shocked look on the face of some NASA Mission director as the asteroid hurtles towards earth, closely followed by frantic robots crossing their fingers for human annihilation, while hurtling a barrage of missiles after it, just to add some insult to injury.
I do hope to see this article come up again tomorrow, but then under the correct 'Rise of the Machines' chapter.
Surely a 270 Metre meteorite passing close enough to earth to take out a few communications satelites should be cause for concern? Has the possiblity of it hitting the moon or at least altering its orbit (and therefore on tides) been calculated?
I must admit the idea of pushing out of the way sounds preferable to the earth being showered with the radiactive remnants, don't you think?
mmm... first they say it's going to smash us and now the chance is extremely small.
Makes me wonder why the panic in the first place if the trajectories are so widely different and if THEY are telling us the full story?
Anyway's, fingers crossed it'll be Astra, or it's successor, that will be one of the satellites pulverised.
God knows it's passed time Sky had a regulator.
A long time ago, I read somewhere that some boffins came up with the idea of constructing a land bridge between North America and Great Britain by reshaping the Earth using nuclear bombs. Thank God they weren't taken seriously. I sincerely hope someone double-checks the calculations before allowing several megatons of nuclear explosives to detonate in the close vicinity of Earth.
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So the asteroid is going to miss us this time around, and the next time around, and so on for the "foreseeable future". But, so as to save a few, well actually, ONE BSkyB satellites, we're going to use nukes to push it slightly off course this time around, and have no idea where it's coming back next time...
Great idea, folks! Glad you have the priorities right. I can just see in 2036, NASA turning around and delcaring "Folks. You know that slight "correction" we made last time? Can we do that, but like, 1,000 times more? It seems like it's coming straight for us this time..."
Or even better, they end up buring off the wrong side of teh asteriod and correct the flightpath INTO Earth... "Oops. That was a +90 degrees, not a -90 degrees..."
I'll hold off having children for a while...
Of course, as any fan of Stargate: SG1 knows, Apophis was a real threat to the Earth, but he's now dead. First he died on base and was shipped to Anubis, who used a sarcophagus to revive him. Then SG1 nuked the planet, which appeared to kill him for good. So Apophis is no longer a threat and NASA is wasting their time and my tax dollars.
There's one little problem with the asteroid 'nuking' schemes - something called the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963...
Salient part of the text:
Article I
1. Each of the Parties to this Treaty undertakes to prohibit, to prevent, and not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion, or any other nuclear explosion, at any place under its jurisdiction or control:
(a) in the atmosphere; beyond its limits, including outer space; or under water, including territorial waters or high seas; or...
Full text can be found at:
http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/4797.htm
Detonating a few megatons right outside the earths atmosphere is unlikely to do anything at all to the people on the surface*, given that we spend every day with something just as hot and radioactive shining down at us. (Though perhaps looking up at the explosion would be a bad idea.)
And this plan calls for the nukes to be detonated when the asteroid is still a year, or years, away, read, out by mars.** (The Martians may take exception to this of course, their atmosphere is a lot thinner than ours.)
It's a comforting thought that had Apophis been a real threat***, we would have been prepared.
*Except disrupt the communication satellites.
**Not really mars, but you get the idea.
***I have a sneaking suspicion that Apophis is a very very real threat, and that everybody is lying to us to avoid panic while NASA quietly goes about handling it. Mostly because I wouldn't tell people in that situation either. We are of course, all going to die as a result of this plan, because NASA is going to get its funding cut off at a critical moment by some idiot group of senators that don't know what's going on.
Damn... so those pesky humans have finally developed the technology to deflect incoming asteroids! There goes my dream of seeing humanity smashed by a multi-million tonne chunk of orbiting rock... Oh well, I still have my dream of seeing humanity destroyed by a nice chunky black hole or neutron star passing through the solar system and ripping the Earth out of orbit...
Naaah. More likely the humans will destroy themselves before the Universe does. Forward the Lizard Alliance!
Sheesh! The good ol' US/NASA offers to be our saviour from being hit by an asteroid and all we can do is moan about how they'll get it wrong. I think we should be eternally grateful for them saving our hides, and offer to help foot the trillion dollar bill.
I reckon they should practice by deflecting the moon first. Or better yet, a sky satellite.
<removing tongue from cheek now>
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