Killer Asteroids Abound. NASA Is Ready to Do Something About It

msn ^ | 11-22-2021 | Justin Bachman

[Main Street]

On a winter morning in 2013, a meteor the size of a four-story building screamed across the country, exploding near the city of Chelyabinsk and injuring more than 1,600 people amid widespread property damage.

The chunk of rock and iron, which was 60 feet across, served as a violent reminder that Earth, bombarded daily with tons of space-going debris, periodically intersects with large planet killers—and a significant portion of those remain undocumented.

After years of study and discussion, NASA is ready to launch its first effort to spare Earth the kind of calamity that extinguished the dinosaurs, crashing a space probe into an asteroid to alter its speed and course. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) launches Nov. 23 local time aboard a SpaceX rocket from California and will cruise for 10 months to a binary asteroid system.

The idea is that if humans have adequate time to react—decades of notice being preferable—enough energy can be transferred into a speeding rock to alter its trajectory and make it miss Earth, avoiding catastrophe up to and including an extinction-level event. (Though a popular subject in science fiction, it’s worth noting that NASA’s current toolkit of asteroid-nudging techniques does not include Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis or nuclear weapons.)

Given the critical nature of the work, it’s “not a stretch to suggest that DART may be one of the most consequential missions ever undertaken by NASA,” Casey Dreier, an analyst with The Planetary Society, wrote in a November memo to members.

[Main Street]

We better get it right this time, because this is probably the last generation that will be able to give it a serious try. The way the Left is dumbing down education, and replacing the great achievements of white Western Civilization, with 3rd world dependency; society in 150 years will be technologically regressed back to the Stone Age.

They turned our once great public education system into a laughingstock of brainwashed, dumbed down students and pedophile teachers. Where testing is becoming passé, and knowing how to read, write, and do arithmetic, is no longer a worthy goal, and no longer a requirement for graduation. Not exactly the building blocks in which inventive scientists are made who could save the world.

The Liberal Progressive movement has never created anything positive, useful, and good. Their policies have never built anything! All they know how to do is destroy and tear things down.

They "Progressed" our major cities that once represented the zenith of modern technology and civilization into 3rd World decaying cesspools of drug use and debauchery, welfare dependencies, open toilets, and violent crime ridden 'No Go Zones'.

Averting giant asteroids will be far beyond a corrupt, fractured, chaotic, dumbed down, low IQ, welfare dependent society, to do anything about it, let along successfully run and maintain a working modern infrastructure. We'll be lucky if they can keep the streetlights on.

[markman46]

Because the leftist want to destroy western civilization.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Very good summary of the marxist / progressive / liberal program.

“We’ll be lucky if they can keep the streetlights on.” With their headlong drive to eliminate all fossil fuels, that will be true within a few years.

[digger48]

They’ll bring back NASSA, The Old Negro Space Program

(I just watched that again recently)

[Mr Ramsbotham]

They’ll bring back NASSA, The Old Negro Space Program.

That's a hilarious bit of satire/comedy!

[SunkenCiv]

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

Lots of interplanetary and perhaps interstellar stuff is going to get done using ion upper stages. Manley's a Demagogic Party fan, apparently, but ignore his snarks.

Next Week NASA plans to launch its Double Asteroid Redirect Test Mission on a Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base. The DART mission is a technology demonstrator which will test the operation of various new technologies in spaceflight, and ultimately crash the spacecraft into a small asteroid to demonstrate the ability to change the orbit of an object using a kinetic impactor.

NASA's DART Mission Will Move Mountains In Space | November 18, 2021 | Scott Manley

[stars & stripes forever]

RE: We better get it right this time, because this is probably the last generation that will be able to give it a serious try...

https://patburt.com/

[bagster]

Killer Asteroids Abound. NASA Is Ready to Do Something About It

[dsrtsage]

[jmcenanly]

spaces is going to launch the probe, so the idea of using a commercial firm to deal with the asteroid is not that far off.

[PIF]

Because the leftist want to destroy western civilization.

—
They want absolute power and absolute control - destroying western civilization is just a side effect.

[Cowman]

Pew. Pew pew

[oldasrocks]

Since these rocks coming in are mostly iron why can’t we just install a giant magnet in DC to solve 2 problems at the same time?

[centermass_socrates]

“We'll be lucky if they can keep the streetlights on.”

Well here in America you're right of course. However, remember Biden wants to providing lighting in Guatemala to cut down on the important reasons the foreigners are invading our country. Combined with Obama's sidewalks to nowhere "shovel-ready" projects, these may be the only two things left on earth after we're all killed by asteroids, comets, and the residual effects of forced covid-19 inoculations.

[centermass_socrates]

Thanks for my next screen saver, lol. I love the early days!

[markman46]

yes true, so they want power and control over the ruins eh...
so i guess we need to fight back anyway we can

[Yollopoliuhqui]

If conservatives would actively begin hammering on the asteroid impact threat, it could save the space program AND kill the global warming hoax which is the leftist key toward a global socialist overthrow.