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Removed pointless political diversion from topic. If it goes off the rails again I'll lock it.
Asteroid Death in 2032 1/67 chance
- Thread starter Forest Green
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Thank you. Now we can get back to figuring out the best way to use Musk's launch vehicles to divert the asteroid. A fully functional Starship loaded with nukes modified into Orion pulse units would be a *dandy* way to go. The optimal solution would be to park the thing into high Earth orbit, but slamming it into the moon would be good too. A simple diversion is non-optimal as it leaves it as a threat for the future... unless there is a plan, intention and funding in pace to capture it *next* time.
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2032 gives enough time, if we start now.
If it was a NASA project, not even close. I was at ATK when 2004MN4 promised Interesting Times for 2029, back in 2004. A couple of us started drawing up plans for the use of the Ares V to divert it. Ares V morphed into SLS... and 21 years later, not a chance in hell I'd want to wager the future of the planet on that thing.
Starship and New Glenn, on the other hand, might well be up to the task of launching in time to meet 2024 YR4 with enough nukes to *really* change its orbit. Falcon 9 Heavy could doubtless speed a few nukes to meet it, enough to divert it enough to miss, but probably not enough to put it into orbit, dump it on the moon or send it onto a non-threatening solar orbit.
F9H could chuck a bunch of warheads at it, in order to flash-fry the surface and cause thrust by boiloff. But what you *really* want are Orion-style pulse units. That will, however, take time to develop. But the thing is, once you *have* developed them to shoo off impactors, your arguments against using them to send Orions to Mars and beyond become a lot stupider.
I remember that
www.flightglobal.com
This video seems to show it as a contact binary—yet I thought it was spinning too fast to be a rubble-pile
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8hCbD2i72UM
From the wiki:
en.m.wikipedia.org
If this is solid enough, could a tether be attached to it such that it could tow heavy payloads?
toughsf.blogspot.com
ntrs.nasa.gov
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NASA plans 'Armageddon' spacecraft to blast asteroid
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has designed a nuclear-warhead-carrying spacecraft,...
www.flightglobal.com
This video seems to show it as a contact binary—yet I thought it was spinning too fast to be a rubble-pile
From the wiki:
2024 YR4 - Wikipedia
If this is solid enough, could a tether be attached to it such that it could tow heavy payloads?
Hypervelocity Tether Rockets
A blog dedicated to helping Science Fiction authors create and discuss worlds where a realistic setting can still serve the fiction.
toughsf.blogspot.com
Tethers and asteroids for artificial gravity assist in the solar system - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
Analytical models are defined for gravity-assist trajectory changes for spacecraft passing massive compact bodies. The models are applied in an examination of the benefits of lowering a tether to an asteroid during a flyby in order to gain a trajectory change equivalent to that from a massive...
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In my opinion, the systems proposed to gently deflect an asteroid without doing too much damage to it are not to be trusted when it comes to the survival of humanity. Waiting for several years for a slow device to reach the asteroid to do something with a laser or a small side impact is suicidal. What if it fails, or runs out of fuel to maneuver or is hit by a micrometeorite or simply stops working for unknown reasons? We need a hammer capable of reaching the asteroid in weeks, not years, and turning it into sand at the maximum possible distance.
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If a rock of one kilometer, with solar orbital velocity falls into the sea, the main problem will not be tsunamis but water vapor in the atmosphere whose capacity to create a greenhouse effect is much greater than that of CO2, it is not talked about because it is not politicizable, but it is lethal.
The best option would be a ground impact somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere (as far away from New Zealand as possible)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Islands
If it falls into the sea too far south and the shock wave reaches the Antarctic coast, it destroys the circumpolar current and detaches the sea ice barrier... we will have problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current
The best option would be a ground impact somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere (as far away from New Zealand as possible)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Islands
If it falls into the sea too far south and the shock wave reaches the Antarctic coast, it destroys the circumpolar current and detaches the sea ice barrier... we will have problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current
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martinbayer
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The risks of failure, running out of fuel to maneuver, being hit by a micrometeorite, or simply stopping working for unknown reasons are present for *any* spacecraft, whether it carries a warhead, a surface bumper, or a laser. The proper response to these risks in all cases is redundancy in the form of launching a whole fleet of vehicles that ensures mission success even in a worst case estimated failure rate for whatever the projected flight times are. Turning an asteroid into 100% harmless sand seems way overoptimistic, even with nukes. With high probability there will always be surviving chunks that now may pose multiple threats and may even be accelerated towards Earth by the explosion.
What have all the toys we sent to Mars gotten?
A fleet of sailing ships is not worth as much as a single destroyer, or even as much as a torpedo boat.
Most asteroids are nothing more than a ball of sand and pebbles bound together by means of gravitational attraction, if you burst it in the orbit of Mars how many pebbles would reach Earth?
Asteroids: Structure and composition of asteroids
From piles of 'rubble' to complex mixtures of metals, and carbon and silicon compounds, asteroids are not just dull grey lumps of cratered rock...
www.esa.int
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If we are lucky, perhaps any in-bound potential impactor will pass near a smaller, more easily moved asteroid that can be shoved in its path with enough lead time.
AI may help with that---but there may be another option.
In the same way video gamers were looked at to help with protein folding--pinball wizard Robert Gagno may be of use---a person with trajectory analysis as a gut instinct.
In terms of the Ares V borne interceptor packages--it was a good concept...but the B612 took shots at the MSFC proposal (a cottage industry these days) and came up with the laughable "gravity tractor" nonsense.
An Orion style pulse unit is about the same size as Deep Impact 's copper dish--and that allowed a fly-by trajectory.
Gravity tractors demand Rosetta style matching trajectories before they can even begin their mission--with any propellant tank likely slap dry just getting there.
AI may help with that---but there may be another option.
In the same way video gamers were looked at to help with protein folding--pinball wizard Robert Gagno may be of use---a person with trajectory analysis as a gut instinct.
In terms of the Ares V borne interceptor packages--it was a good concept...but the B612 took shots at the MSFC proposal (a cottage industry these days) and came up with the laughable "gravity tractor" nonsense.
An Orion style pulse unit is about the same size as Deep Impact 's copper dish--and that allowed a fly-by trajectory.
Gravity tractors demand Rosetta style matching trajectories before they can even begin their mission--with any propellant tank likely slap dry just getting there.
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Forest Green
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Could maybe capture the asteroid in Earth's orbit and mine some Iridium.... Yep too much TV.
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Well, do I cancel my weekend at Marbella, sorry, Brighton then? It's importrant to know in good time.........
We were very lucky with Tunguska, if it had fallen on Baikonur during the Cuban missile crisis no one would have thought of a meteorite. Can you imagine a trembling astronomer telling Khrushchev that the destruction of Manhattan was a mistake?
Out there is a murderer a hundred kilometers in diameter who has the name of our world written on it, if we fall back into the Middle Ages we are lost.
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
There is nothing of that size within a billion miles of earth that has not already been catalogued. In the port cloud perhaps, but of little chance of crossing earth orbit, and certainly not without some notice.
The Solar System is not a Swiss watch, there are collisions, orbits change when interacting with each other, not all asteroids are visible and Oumuamua-type bodies from outside the system are not only unknown to statisticians but are much more destructive because of their greater speed, there are also rocky remains of dead comets in solar orbits that cross the path of the Earth and living comets that can change easily steering when crossing the orbits of Jupiter or Mars. Even small odds become significant when you add them all up. There are a lot of bad things out there and we only know a small part of them.
Archivo:Oumuamua-solar system 2018.png - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
NASA has identified almost every single menacing asteroid more than 140 m wide: which was a treshold not picked at random but specifically for the devastation it would bring. Every single potential big killer has been identified and its impact probability calculated. Nowadays it can be reasonably affirmed that no dinosaur -like cataclysm will happen for a very long time. Same story for much smaller impacts.
I note that this peculiar asteroid is way below the 140 m treshold and, accordingly, the destruction it would bring would not be an extinction or climate-wrecking impact. Still it could do a lot of damage: a bit more than Tungska 1908.
Mercifully the basic rules with asteroids are
- the most devastating ones are statistically rare and big enough to be identified (job done by NASA, that 140 m treshold)
- the smaller they are, the more of them : but they also brings much less devastation.
The real menace obviously are the 100 m -wide asteroids falling between the two "cracks": just small enough not to be fully catalogued by NASA; still big enough for a devastating kaboom. That 2024 YR4 is a case in point... and still, it was detected 7 years ahead of a potential collision. A good trial for the asteroid detection watchdogs.
I note that this peculiar asteroid is way below the 140 m treshold and, accordingly, the destruction it would bring would not be an extinction or climate-wrecking impact. Still it could do a lot of damage: a bit more than Tungska 1908.
Mercifully the basic rules with asteroids are
- the most devastating ones are statistically rare and big enough to be identified (job done by NASA, that 140 m treshold)
- the smaller they are, the more of them : but they also brings much less devastation.
The real menace obviously are the 100 m -wide asteroids falling between the two "cracks": just small enough not to be fully catalogued by NASA; still big enough for a devastating kaboom. That 2024 YR4 is a case in point... and still, it was detected 7 years ahead of a potential collision. A good trial for the asteroid detection watchdogs.
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martinbayer
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Somehow Rumsfeld's "Unknown Unknowns" come to mind...
The Solar System is not a Swiss watch, there are collisions, orbits change when interacting with each other, not all asteroids are visible and Oumuamua-type bodies from outside the system are not only unknown to statisticians but are much more destructive because of their greater speed, there are also rocky remains of dead comets in solar orbits that cross the path of the Earth and living comets that can change easily steering when crossing the orbits of Jupiter or Mars. Even small odds become significant when you add them all up. There are a lot of bad things out there and we only know a small part of them.
Archivo:Oumuamua-solar system 2018.png - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
es.m.wikipedia.org
There are not a lot of 100 km large objects out there. A quick google search indicates ~17, including planets, moons, and dwarf planets. The ort cloud likely hides more, but in very distant orbits unlikely to cross into the inner planets’ orbit, and if they do, likely rather slowly. Though there would in fact be little to nothing that could alter the trajectory of an object that large.
Perhaps original post meant meters instead of kilometers? The only collision of scale of 100 km is likely whatever event made the moon.
Ok, you want some mid-2000's politicain globbedygook ? Try french PM Jean Pierre Raffarin. Doing his best to defend the U.E - infamous - treaty, 2005, with a rather... horrible accent. Also trying to speak in proverbs, but making no sense in the end.
What he intended to say "The yes, need the no, to win, against the no." (because a strong "no" can only make the "yes" victory better: beating the odds like the proverbial underdog. Bad luck: the "no" won, in France and The Netherlands. And it got Raffarin fired, in passing. Facepalm.)
How it sounded "Zeu yesseu nids zeu noo, tou ouinne, ayanne the no. Ouinne zeu yess; niid zeu no. Tou ouinne, ayanne zeu no."
Needless to say, Les Guignols (France very own Spitting image) went hysterical. Reality had beaten fiction ; and their very inept puppets.
Seriously: the inept Raffarin (PM: 2002 - 2005) was a godsend from the heavens - for caricaturists. Not for the country, unfortunately.
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FighterJock
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It all depends on the makeup of the asteroid Desertfox if we can vaporise it with a nuclear missile. That is why we should send a probe out to get information about it when we still have time.
martinbayer
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No, I actually meant to entertain the notion that there may be stuff out there that defies current expectations and neat categorizations in terms of (natural) origin/composition/size/velocity. But on the other hand, I wouldn't worry about it too much, because we'd probably be hosed anyway in case of a most unfortunate intersection of spacetime trajectories/orbits.
A contrarian position would be that your example actually is a statistical likelihood. I don't know what era those bullets are from, but I recall them being from either WW1 or WW2? Given ChatGPT claims around 70 billion bullets were fired in WW2 within limited physical battlespaces and often in streams from automatic weapons, I'd say hits like that pictured are almost inevitable.
(When asked the same question again, Chat GPT claimed "hundreds of billions" of bullets were estimated fired in WW2, with 60 billion manufactured by the USA alone. It's WW1 estimate was 6 billion the first time I asked, then 700 billion the second
. I think it's safe to assume only that it was "lots and lots" and that ChatGPT should not be relied upon for anything.)It’s still the way to bet.
Chiron may go walkabout as time goes on.
Mars had a close shave a few years back with an object initially thought to be larger.
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Shiiiiiiit, just blow the dust of the B41 drawings and send 25 MT of sunshine out there.
Scott Kenny
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K-T has NOTHING to do with volcanism, the proof of that is the Iridium found in that rock layer (which is only sourced from meteorites).Huge Vulcanism episodes are associated with at least two episodes of massive life extinction
Siberian traps Perman-Triassic event
Deccan traps KT event (Dinosaurs extinction)
Not to speak about minor episodes with consequences for Homo like Youngest Toba eruption
Should we consider a different tittle for this thread?
Eh, let's leave a B83 in contact with it before uncanning the sunshine. 1.2 Megatons should be enough to vaporize the entire rock.
Yes, I'd prefer a larger nuke, but all larger nukes have been destroyed, while there should still be some B83s in "Armageddon storage"
Scott Kenny
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Well, if it hits next to Panama, we might get a new Canal out of things.
But it looks like the most likely impact point is Africa.
Not necessarily so. There is a school of thought that the Deccan Traps were a *result* of the impact, or were made substantially worse due to the quakes.
That is incorrect. Even at that size, our catalog is incomplete.
Forest Green
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Or if it hits the Houthis that would help protect shipping in the Red Sea.
Scott Kenny
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We could not possibly be that lucky.
Forest Green
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You make your own luck.
I wish it could be a bouncing asteroid: I have a short list of people I wish would be dead, if possible in a karmic way.
Scott Kenny
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I have read that this asteroid is a gravel pile, not a single solid rock. Those are hard to divert, easy to either shatter or vaporize entirely.
B-83 is still in active stockpile. A handful of B-53 physics packages are reserved for “planetary defense” per budget docs.
A billion miles is slightly more than Saturns orbit, and well short of Uranus. Color me skeptical there are 100 km wide objects floating around undetected in that range. It would have to be something with a highly eccentric orbit that doesn’t come around often.
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