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Specifying the odds of particular hypothetical impacts has very little meaning. Impact odds can only be assessed when an object is detected and its trajectory calculated. Otherwise one is left with trying to predict the likelihood of an impact based on historical evidence. Given that criteria, it seems K-T type impacts occur less frequently than 1 every 65 million years.

There are nontrivial risks related to deflecting a potential impactor with explosives. There is some possibility the object will shatter and one impactor becomes many or there is the risk of actually increasing the impact potential by altering the trajectory into a more favorable (and destructive) path. Probably the greatest problem to overcome is early detection. Early detection of killer objects is rare so advanced warnings are likely to be minimal. Perhaps a tug boat approach to pushing rogues off course is the most viable solution, but it requires sufficient advanced detection, launch readiness, a tested vehicle and public willingness to finance such a project.

public willingness to finance such a project.

Good point, Monk, but we can't seem to agree on funding much of anything these days.

Forum Monk wrote:Perhaps a tug boat approach to pushing rogues off course is the most viable solution

Didn't NASA, just last year land and anchor a probe on/to a comet or an asteroid? I saw that as a real life test of that tugboat scenario. Would it be possible to intercept a fast moving piece of cosmos debris, land on it, stay anchored (in zero gravity), and do scientific robot work?
It was!

The next thing to test, of course, is whether they can land not a scientific package, but a propulsion package on a big rock, and make it meaningfully change that rock's trajectory in a controlled way.

NASA conducted two missions which could be precursors to intercepting potential impactors, although they had other scientific objectives. The first was NEAR-Shoemaker which successfully orbited then touched down on Eros (asteroid) in 2001. The second was Deep Impact in 2005, in which NASA crashed a spacecraft into comet Tempel 1. Time flys. I'm not sure about anything last year.

Yes, it comes back to me now. Thanks, Monk. Well, in that case you can't quite accuse NASA of ignoring the subject IRL, now can you? And how much money was sunk into those two missions? Doesn't really matter, but I know deep space missions are not quite on sale at WalMart! They cost a pretty penny. Dozens of millions, minimum.

Forum Monk wrote:Specifying the odds of particular hypothetical impacts has very little meaning. Impact odds can only be assessed when an object is detected and its trajectory calculated. Otherwise one is left with trying to predict the likelihood of an impact based on historical evidence.

EXACTLY! The models of mechanics, and the nature of what hit, asteroid or comet, are so poorly known that the only way of estimating the hazard is by field work. Quite frankly, the theoretical models are really cr*ppy.

Recovery of the smallest impacts (Tunguska class - 15 megatons) is done with the historical/archaeological record. For larger impact events, historical/archaeological/geological work.

Forum Monk wrote: Given that criteria, it seems K-T type impacts occur less frequently than 1 every 65 million years.

Actually, for the last 6 million years, impacts that nearly extincted man occurred at the rate of 1 per million years. That we're here at all was a very near thing several times during our evolution.

Forum Monk wrote: There are nontrivial risks related to deflecting a potential impactor with explosives. There is some possibility the object will shatter and one impactor becomes many or there is the risk of actually increasing the impact potential by altering the trajectory into a more favorable (and destructive) path. Probably the greatest problem to overcome is early detection.

EXACTLY! And that's why NASA's abysmal performance in taking on their responsibilities here is so frustrating, annoying, angering....

Forum Monk wrote: Early detection of killer objects is rare so advanced warnings are likely to be minimal.

But it does not have to be that way, if NASA will simply step up to the plate and do what it should be doing.

Forum Monk wrote: Perhaps a tug boat approach to pushing rogues off course is the most viable solution, but it requires sufficient advanced detection, launch readiness, a tested vehicle and public willingness to finance such a project.

If we can just get 45 minutes warning of the small ones, we can get people into shelters, and get nuclear electric generating plants shut down, and provide warning to military forces so they don't mistake impact for attack.

For larger ones, 2 to 3 days would provide for warning of impact mega-tsunami and evacuation of coastal areas.

For the even larger land impacts, a few years warning would allow food supplies to be stored.

By the way, the odds of there being an impact in the future are 1.

Rokcet Scientist wrote:Yes, it comes back to me now. Thanks, Monk. Well, in that case you can't quite accuse NASA of ignoring the subject IRL, now can you? And how much money was sunk into those two missions? Doesn't really matter, but I know deep space missions are not quite on sale at WalMart! They cost a pretty penny. Dozens of millions, minimum.

They were small missions, say around $300-350 million a piece, for a total of $700,000,000 or so. CONTOUR to Comet Schwassmann Wachmann 3 blew up due to a defective motor from Thiokol, another $300 million or so. Let's see: CONTOUR,NEAR, Stardust, Deep Impact, Dawn - Thats around $1,500 million plus. With this damn stroke, I can't remember the others.

NASA likes to launch rockets.

BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT EARLY DETECTION IS ESSENTIAL, and NASA's budget for that may be rounded off to $0. To give you some idea of how pathetic NASA's performance here is, Canada is actually launching the first space based telescope to find these things.

PAN STARS and LSST are not funded by NASA, and NASA has budgeted $0 per year for image processing from them.

Speaking of Walmart, one option is to shut down NASA, and buy a planetary defense system from China. In the view of many people in the northern states, since the folks down south were so kind to the northern manufacturers, why should they get treated any differently?

This view gets more widely held in winter, when people in the north up to their *sses in snow have real problems with sending money to people in sunny Florida and Texas.

MichelleH wrote:E.P. Dial it back. A discussion can be held without name calling.

Yeah, min. Actually I'm a really fun guy with a great sense of humor:
2012: WWMD? What Would the Maya Do?

Hello everyone -

What would the Maya (Classic and Post Classic, not today's Maya) do in 2012?

That's easy: sacrifice a lot of people to prevent a ts'oc (tz'uk) impact event from
occuring. I even wrote a piece about it a while back, and I hope you enjoy reading it:

AN EXTREMELY LOW COST APPROACH TO DEALING WITH THE NEO HAZARD

Hello Benny -

In recent weeks we have been greeted with repeated announcements of the
reduction in funds available to NEO (Near Earth Object) programs, as governments
whose revenues are coming under stress due to the economic slowdown seek to economize.
In view of these developments, which trend is likely to continue for at least
the next couple of years, perhaps it is time to re-consider the use of the
ancient Mayan technique for dealing with the hazard of asteroid and comet
impact, specifically that of human sacrifice.

Now many in the scientific community may scoff at the idea and dismiss it
out of hand, but as the Mayan priests pointed out, once they began human
sacrifice, they were never again pounded by the sky gods. So by inductive
demonstration, the technique appears to work. It has the further advantage
of being an extremely low cost scheme to put into operation, as it requires
no payment for any telescopes, electronic devices, computers, or staff, and
even less payment for the bureaucrats who manage these programs.

Of course, one does run into the problem of obtaining human sacrificial
victims. While the Mayan resolved this problem by sacrificing their
unwanted, literally their poor bastards, given the current economic
conditions and the prevalence of extra-marital sex, such a plan may not gain
wide public support today. But perhaps a ready solution to this problem may
lie immediately at hand, specifically, in the use of lawyers as human
sacrificial victims.

To my knowledge I do not believe that anyone in the NEO community has ever
previously considered the use of lawyers for this purpose. What advantages
does the use of lawyers as human sacrificial victims bring, aside from the
fact that there appears to be an over-abundant supply of them? Well, first
off, they seem to be universally despised, and this seems to be true in
every nation. Given the international scope of the NEO effort, it is nice to
find a common point about which the citizens of most nations can agree.

Second, lawyers could easily be captured for this purpose by the simple
technique of placing a newspaper advertisement seeking an attorney for a
lawsuit against a wealthy corporation. Once obtained, my understanding is
that lawyers may usually be sedated by the administration of flavored
alcoholic beverages.

Of course, one problem with the plan may lie in ripping their beating hearts
out out of their living bodies, as it is widely reported that lawyers have
no hearts. On the other hand, it is also widely reported that lawyers have
no feelings, and this may make the entire process somewhat easier to
accomplish, in the case that lawyers can indeed be found who have hearts.

In the case where it does turn out that lawyers indeed do not have hearts,
then that does not necessarily mean that the scheme of using human sacrifice
to fend off the next asteroid or comet impact must be abandoned. It is
still possible that the scheme could be realized by the use of government
bureaucrats instead.

Yours in science,
EP

E.P. Grondine wrote:...EXACTLY! And that's why NASA's abysmal performance in taking on their responsibilities here is so frustrating, annoying, angering....

etc.

Perhaps, but where to look. There are well over 50,000 square degrees of sky to survey and for early warning the targets are extremely faint. It requires time...lots of time to do proper surveys and then blink test them against previous surveys to look for moving objects. Perhaps the effort can be reduced by concentrating on the regions around the ecliptic as that is where most asteroids roam. But comets can approach from oblique angles and random space junk from who knows where. Many, many telescopic cameras would need to be employed. Computers can do the blink tests, but again, systems cost money and must be maintained.

I'm not saying its impossible. The question is, who will pay the cost and if we do find a rock with our name, can we stop it? Or do we, as you state, execute a survival plan and hope for the best?

We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Armageddonnesque cosmological impacts and collisions. They created the Earth's axis' tilt (hence weather, ocean currents, and the seasons), the moon, the tides, the atmosphere, and the magnetosphere protecting life from destructive cosmological radiation, and they seeded Earth with primordial elements that thrived, recombined, and evolved in that very unique set of circumstances. Into us.
Cosmological impacts and collisions 'created'/catalyzed life on earth. It seems only fitting that they should end it too.

Besides: it is inevitable.
Resistance, as they say, is futile.
It is not a question of 'IF', but only of 'WHEN'.

It makes perfect sense why the ancients would regard celestial bodies as 'Gods' with foul, capricious tempers!

However, when you see an 18-wheeler barreling straight down on you at 100mph you're not gonna bitch about zoning regulations or the police' uselessness. You get the fuck out of the way! As fast as you can!
So if we – humanity – have a successful interplanetary colonization program, and a few more centuries, most of our progeny could perhaps be elsewhere when the shit hits the fan down here! And at least one cosmological life-form – us, humanity – would manage to survive an interplanetary collision by its wits.
There's some poetry in that...

Hah! Noah may sail yet again!

That's why funding Mars exploration on a grand scale makes more sense than funding impact science on a similar grand scale.

"If we had no moon", documentary to provide some perspective on the forces and mechanics at work on the Earth from it's environment. Narrated by Patrick Stewart:
http://www.guba.com/watch/3000120563?du ... 1877f41913

But I'm sure there will be those that will 'expose' the documentary makers as liars.

Rokcet Scientist wrote: So if we – humanity – have a successful interplanetary colonization program, and a few more centuries, most of our progeny could perhaps be elsewhere when the shit hits the fan down here! And at least one cosmological life-form – us, humanity – would manage to survive an interplanetary collision by its wits.
There's some poetry in that...

...That's why funding Mars exploration on a grand scale makes more sense than funding impact science on a similar grand scale.

And thus we get to the bottom line. Is anyone else here appalled at this kind of specious rationalization? Anyone else here appalled at NASA for supporting this kind of specious rationalization?

Does it strike anyone else here as being both immoral and insane?

Forum Monk wrote: The question is, who will pay the cost

NASA already gets $17,000 million per year. The entire search could be financed
by stopping Ares 1, a launcher which won't work, and building the Jupiter launcher instead.

Not only that, more of our highly skilled people would still be employed, we'll keep our technology base, and the total amount spent would drop.

There is no reason for the US to pick up the bill on this alone; other nations must do their fair share.

Forum Monk wrote: and if we do find a rock with our name, can we stop it?

Yes.

Forum Monk wrote: Or do we, as you state, execute a survival plan and hope for the best?

The survival plan I outlined is simply the minimal requirement to avoid certain catastrophe, which again will occur with certainty, a probability of 1.

Stopping them just requires a longer warning, in other words as early a detection as possible.
I don't want to scare you with the cost, but Moon based instruments are the best for this, according to the Comet and Asteroid Protection System study from NASA Langley. Free space based telescopes are less expensive, and not as good.

E.P. Grondine wrote:

Rokcet Scientist wrote: So if we – humanity – have a successful interplanetary colonization program, and a few more centuries, most of our progeny could perhaps be elsewhere when the shit hits the fan down here! And at least one cosmological life-form – us, humanity – would manage to survive an interplanetary collision by its wits.
There's some poetry in that...

...That's why funding Mars exploration on a grand scale makes more sense than funding impact science on a similar grand scale.

And thus we get to the bottom line. Is anyone else here appalled at this kind of specious rationalization? Anyone else here appalled at NASA for supporting this kind of specious rationalization?

Does it strike anyone else here as being both immoral and insane?

No....more like a pipe dream because we can't even agree on National Health Care which is a far more immediate problem.

Phew! One bomb-belt thwarted! That was close!
Fancy footwork!

As we speak there is a god-awful made-for-tv movie on called "Meteor."

They just shot one down with one of those Stingers that you think are for ground targets, R/S.

(I can't make this shit up!)