[Newfie]

My, rather geusome, thought is.,,,it will be about 170 years (give or take) too late to do much good.

[vox_mundi]

Russia's new ballistic missiles to be tested on asteroids

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n a February 11th article in the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, Sabit Saitgarayev, the lead researcher at the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, says Russian scientists are developing a program to upgrade Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) to destroy near-Earth meteors from 20-50 metres in size. Apophis' approach in 2036 would be a test for this program.

Typical rockets of the type that take payloads into space are not good candidates for intercepting asteroids. They require too much lead time to meet the threat of an incoming asteroid that might be detected only days before impact. They can take several days to fuel. But ICBM's are different. They can stand at the ready for long periods of time, and be launched at a moment's notice. But to be suitable for use as asteroid killers, they have to be upgraded.

Design work on the asteroid-killing ICBM's has already begun, admitted Saitgarayev, but he did not say whether the money has been committed or whether the authorization has been given to go ahead with the project. But like a lot of things that are said and done by Russia, it's difficult to know exactly where the truth lies.

It's also unsettling in light of the January 16th TASS article stating that "The international scientific community has asked Russian scientists to develop an asteroid deflection system on the basis of nuclear explosions in space." Taken together, the two announcements point towards a program of weaponizing space, something the international community has agreed should be avoided. In fact, there is a ban on nuclear explosions in space.

The fact that Russia wants to develop a missile system with nuclear warheads, and employ it in space, is not entirely unreasonable. But it should make us stop and think. What will happen if something goes wrong?

[onlooker]

It strikes me as ironic that these ICBM's loom over our planet menacing worldwide Armageddon and now they are going to be used to possibly avert it. Destiny has a sense of humor.

[dolanbaker]

In simple terms, it could mean being rained on by thousands of (radioactive) house sized rocks as opposed to one oil tanker sized one.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', 'I')n simple terms, it could mean being rained on by thousands of (radioactive) house sized rocks as opposed to one oil tanker sized one.

[vox_mundi]

Where 26 asteroids recently hit Earth

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Between 2000 and 2013, 26 asteroids packing at least the energy of 1-20 kilotons of TNT hit Earth or exploded in its atmosphere. That’s up to 10 times as many as you would expect from existing models of the frequency of asteroid strikes.

B612’s visualisation maps each explosion on a 3D image of the globe. “We want to dispel the notion in people that asteroid impacts are very rare, when in fact they’re not,” says B612 Foundation founder and former astronaut Ed Lu. “Nothing brings that home like a visual depiction of the data.”

We have a good idea of where most objects greater than 100 meters are. Objects smaller, though, could be very dangerous to regional areas directly under the impact, but not a worldwide catastrophe.


Los Alamos National - Lab Asteroid Killer Simulation - Video

If time is very short (say less than a month), than there is probably nothing mankind can do. However if the nuclear intercept is far enough away from the Earth and strong enough (say, 1 megaton for an object 500 meters wide) then our simulations show that the asteroid fragments will not re-collect under their own gravity, sending the pieces into non-Earth crossing orbits.

By placing a one megaton bomb on the side of Itokawa, the simulation shows how a shockwave will travel through the asteroid from the detonation point and shake it to harmless rubble.

'As the shock wave moves through, ultimately this one megaton blast will disrupt all the rocks in the rock pile of this asteroid and if this were an Earth-crossing asteroid it would fully mitigate the hazard posed by the initial asteroid itself,' Mr Weaver said.

[Subjectivist]

I used to watch a show about two guys who traveled the world searching for meteorites, one was a collector and the other a seller. Anyhow it seems large asteroids come in several types, one of which is more like a gravel pile loosely stuck together by gravity. If you hit one of those the missile could pass right through, of turn it into a shotgun pattern of shrapnel!

[vox_mundi]

NASA And FEMA Fail To Deflect Incoming Asteroid In Drill

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://i0.wp.com/principia-scientific.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/asteroid.jpg?resize=800%2C316[/img]

NASA and federal emergency responders ran simulations on how to deal with a “city-killer” asteroid coming close to hitting the planet. ... Exercise attendees included representatives from NASA, FEMA, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy's National Laboratories, the U.S. Air Force, and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

Officials simulated what to do if a “city-killer” asteroid with a 2 percent probability of impact neared the Earth on Sept. 20, 2020. As the asteroid got closer, the simulated odds of an impact ultimately increased to 100 percent, with the strike likely to crash into Southern California.

The simulated asteroid was around 800 feet in diameter, with a possibility of making impact anywhere along a long swath of Earth, including the U.S. Such an asteroid could strike with a force about 55 times stronger than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima near the end of World War II. That’s more than enough force to level a city.

In the fictitious scenario, observers continued to track the asteroid for three months using ground-based telescope observations, and the probability of impact climbed to 65 percent. Then the next observations had to wait until four months later, due to the asteroid's position relative to the sun. Once observations could resume in May of 2017, the impact probability jumped to 100 percent. By November of 2017, it was simulated that the predicted impact would occur somewhere in a narrow band across Southern California or just off the coast in the Pacific Ocean.

In the simulation, NASA was unable to launch a deflection mission in time, causing the asteroid to eventually slam into the ocean just off Southern California. Federal Energy Management Agency (FEMA) personnel were forced to coordinate to a mass evacuation of the metropolitan Los Angeles area due to a potential tsunami and impact damage.

[Tanada]

Worrying about this particular asteroid is like worrying about Yellowstone super volcano or the Cascades mega-thrust earthquake. Someday a big bad will happen, but other than trying to avoid the direct impact zone there is not a whole lot you can do about it. Realistically an unexpected impact event that starts WW III is a much more worrisome thing than an impact that will not happen for at least a hundred years or more after I am dead.

[Rod_Cloutier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')orrying about this particular asteroid is like worrying about Yellowstone super volcano or the Cascades mega-thrust earthquake.