Posted on 04/10/2006 1:11:18 PM PDT by presidio9
We absolutely need a good watch program, and an implementation procedure to deal with what they will inevitably discover.
My Senator favors dumping the Treaty, but there isn't enough interest to make such a move out of the blue. If they see an incoming asteroid it might be enough impetus to get them to think outside their Beltway. I might do the job at no cost to the gov't if they would dump the Treaty and let me register the claim to it. Depends on the size. I wouldn't consider anything less than a mile across. I could find plenty of funding from the usual lending institutions, no doubt about that.
It is interesting that they notice these objects often enough after they have already cruised on by. Somewhat disconcerting. We probably will get no notice at all of the one that gets us.
--I object to the precise meaning of the words. I wouldn't call it "extremely unlikely" at all.
Oops..I mean I wouldn't call it "extremely remote". :)
I'd call it remote or maybe very remote.
Most asteroids that we have detected have a modest amount of their own gravity. They are bigger than we think.
If Alan Sheppard's golf ball came zipping down from the Moon, it would arrive at almost seven miles per second.
Any good sized rock can make it through our egg-shell atmosphere.
So-o-o-o... Anybody care to invest in some Kevlar roof shingles?
The collision kicked up so much dust that heat and light from the Sun were diminished, destroying much of Earth's vegetation and the larger species of land animals that depended on it.It also sent out a shock wave that spread for hundreds of miles, threw ejecta which flew thousands of miles, and set fires at great distances. Probably also heated the atmosphere, and not just locally.
It is a certainty.
< Adopting William F. Buckley Voice > "It is an ontological certitude." < /WFB Voice >
Reason enough to dump the Treaty before it's too late. There should be hardware and mining operations in space already, which would make grabbing one of these wild shots a little easier, not to say a lot quicker.
Then we should teleologically dump the Treaty now.
Our Space Treaty is the equivalent of the residents of Berkeley deciding that they wanted to opt out of any possible Nuclear War.
I don't think the people designating targets would have respected that decision.
Nor will the hostility of the Universe care whether we are so noble in our endeavors as to eschew so crass a thing as profitability.
Private investment in space development has been delayed nearly 40 years by the mere existence of the Treaty. The Treaty will go away, and so will we.
Comet Hyukatake took three months from discovery to closest approach. Even with NERVA rockets and suicide crews, very little could have been done if it had Earth in the crosshairs. Aside from rearranging the deck chairs and two months of opuses on FR.
Right now, the cost of deflecting a rock with two or three years warning is huge, and when you consider that we don't have the capability of manned flight to the moon (a cozy 250 thousand miles away more or less) how would we even consider getting out to where the rock is?
That's why I suggest we should be placing hardware in space now even without immediate threat. The time saved would amount to years. Whether the hardware could get to the body in three months would depend on how much hardware was preplaced. The ESA Venus Express, just arrived in orbit, took five months from launch to destination. To Mars is of the order of nine to eighteen months depending on starting positions. Probably several dozen interceptors would have to be preplaced in the vicinity of Mars' orbit to do any real good. If we are not going to do this, we might as well not bother to begin with.
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