NASA unveils plan to test asteroid defense technique

ClickOrlando.com ^ | July 1, 2017 | Dakin Adone

[discostu]

Not nonsense. God helps those who help themselves. It’s like the old joke about the guy on his roof in the flood, keeps sending all these rescuers away because he knows God will provide, then he drowns, he get to heaven and he’s confused as to how God let him drown, St Peter says “well we sent 2 boats and a helicopter”. God’s given us the ability to build rockets for a reason, might as well use them.

[JohnBovenmyer]

The unknowns are what happens 100-200 and more orbits from now when a close encounter now could become a direct hit then.

Yes, big data and supercomputers doesn't equal omniscient. If we can model things inside Jupiter's orbit well 50-100 years out and do enough R&D to elevate the logically proposed solutions from theory to engineering we should be able deflect most of natures challenges and correct most of our own 'oops.' Our history in space shows the last step is necessary, beautiful theories aren't enough. Things incoming from beyond Jupiter become harder to spot, predict and this avoid. Someone needs to deduce where to position sensors to collect useful data on potential impactors that can't be acquired near Earth and send suitable probes there. Prioritize shrinking our bind spots. First nearer and riskier. Eventually further out.

[CurlyDave]

...Someone needs to deduce where to position sensors to collect useful data on potential impactors that can't be acquired near Earth and send suitable probes there. Prioritize shrinking our bind spots. First nearer and riskier. Eventually further out.

I have long felt that the way to do this was to allow commercial ventures in space.

For instance, the right to name new objects belongs to the discoverer. If we changed that to allow the financer of the sensors and telescopes that made the discovery to designate names, we might have to live with comets named Budweiser 2020, but a lot of money would come into the search for new objects in space.

[Paul R.]

Now, in most cases I’d agree with you. But, I’ve been studying this (asteroid impacts on Earth and other bodies) on and off for over 45 years.

Look at the Moon w/ a good telescope tonight, or, for “recent data”, a vid of the Shoemaker–Levy impacts, and tell me it’s “imagined”.

[Paul R.]

And the orbit will change just enough that, somewhere in its journey around the Sun, it will collide with another rock in space, that it would have missed if left alone, and one or the other (or both) will have their orbits altered to a rock-Earth meeting point.

That is highly unlikely (I would guess on the order of millions to one against being hit by a sizeable altered-by-humans-in-this-manner orbit object, if not more, in the next 100 years or so) because space, even Solar System "space", is so big. Given more time the odds get worse (for Earth) but if by then we don't have VERY good detection and deflection tech, we DESERVE to be smacked!

Now, the chances of some human agency deliberately directing a sizeable object into the Earth, 50 to 1000 years down the road, are much higher, and the chances there will be a nuclear war on Earth, initiated by a 2nd tier power, that kills between a few million and a billion people, in the next 50-100 years, is around 1 in 2, IMO.