The risk of Near-Earth asteroid and comet impacts

"Chances are we're not going to discover one of these before it hits," Boslough says, pointing out that the vast number of small NEOs far outweighs the capabilities of the few surveys currently seeking them. "The good news is most of the Earth is either sparsely populated or uninhabited, so the probability a city or populated area will be hit is small. The big ones, 1 kilometer or larger, are the ones we should worry about."

While space agencies, governments, and individuals worldwide work to develop new means to detect, and eventually prevent, an NEO disaster, the US government—though it provides the global majority of NEO research funding—is mostly paying lip-service to a risk that could threaten the survival of civilization. In 2005, the US Congress built off mandates from the 1990s, directing NASA to catalog 90 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter by the year 2020. Congress also asked NASA to study ways to deflect threatening NEOs. But burdened with completing the International Space Station and replacing the Space Shuttle fleet, NASA has yet to allot funds to the project. Stagnant science budgets also threaten the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the top facility for studying NEOs. Citing budgetary limitations, NSF announced last year it will defund Arecibo's operation after 2010.


http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/04/planetary_protection.php

 

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Hum,
the risk of an NEO impact is currently 100%

 

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Its not something I worry about. What would be the point?

 

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In my opinion, money spent on cataloging and figuring out ways to stop extinction level NEO's is money much better spent than money spent trying to prevent global warming.

 

Simulation of a giant meteor collision with Earth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TdRgpGbbaY

 

Simulation of a giant meteor collision with Earth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TdRgpGbbaY

 

Why is that ?

 

I really think they should use those orion crafts to land on NEO's and try to produce fuel on them it would be a good excorcise for a mission to mars

 

Money spent on global warming may actually place people in danger by reducing harvests. Plant life depends on carbon dioxide. It also tends to sequester carbon, continually reducing the carbon in the air unless humans, animals, or natural forces do something to release it as carbon dioxide.

An impact by an asteroid sets us all back to square one. We really don't know when one might hit and destroy a continent or even worse. We also don't know that an enemy might not try to divert one to try to revert just one part of the world to savagery. It's pretty stupid either way, to be taken out when there is a chance that we can do something about it.

 

And who might that enemy be?
Do you really believe that?

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I do actually believe not only that someone is willing to take out a random country using an asteroid as a weapon, I also believe that someone is smart enough to be able to do it and stupid enough to actually do it at the same time.

 

asteroids only produce small craters and are very dirty. There going to be dust clouds above the country who redirected the comet also besides chuncks would most defenitly falloff before impact and might hit wa
hatever'sx beneath it.


I'm go for the technology because then perhaps they could capture on in earths orbit. It's large amount of hydrogen and near 0 delta v would make it a galactica sized warehouse depot

 

If we have the technology to deflect an asteroid, get it first, and get it better, then we have a defense. An added benefit is the ability to mine the asteroids for resources to use in space.

 

It's a matter of the bang for the buck. I really don't think it would be that expensive to catalog the potential extinction level NEO's out there, at least in comparison with the trillions of dollars mitigating global warming would cost. And the potential return on such an investment could be saving 99% of all species on earth!

 

Hmm but it would be a huge amount of work to catalog them all. And then there are those that we can't catalog; the ones that have huge orbits and come in every few thousand years or so, and new ones.
And even if we do catalog them all, we currently have no defense against them.
I can't remember what your stance was on global warming, but I believe you must be denying it. At least that is what I get from your earlier statement.

 

Not denying it outright. I'm skeptical. And I'm very skeptical about us being able to do anything about it without bankrupting ourselves or returning to stone age technology.

In my opinion, if the climate changes, we should just adapt to it. That's not to say I'm opposed to conserving energy or developing alternative fuel sources. I'm all for that. I'm just opposed to arbitrary caps on carbon output or energy usage in general. We need energy if we are to maintain a modern lifestyle, which I'm quite fond of.

So whereas we can build dikes and move people around if necesary to adopt to climate change, we can't adapt to a giant asteroid hitting the planet that wipes out 99% of all life. (unless you consider dying an adaptation)

 

I'm not sure whether we can reverse the process myself, but I'm skeptical.
I do however believe that people need to look into it seriously and keep investigating it.
I believe that if global warming is real and is caused by humans it may just spell the end of life on earth eventually.
We may be able to adapt for a while, or perhaps indefinitely. I'm not so sure many other lifeforms will be able to. If the gross of life on earth will die out humans will be heavily affected, if not doomed. Not to mentioned that diseases will run rampant. We can already see malaria make it's appearance in Europe.. and chances are that it's advance will continue..

LOL
Seriously though, I rather die quickly by a comet than slowly because of global warming if I had the choice

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The changes of that happening are even smaller then yellowstone erupting

Anyway the developments against the climate change are a sure hit the development of that bio diesel could wreally bring the earths total population down a notch through starvation if only it would have been less polution then oil...

 

Maybe, but this sort of thing would be impossible to hide. You can't really be stealthy in space, and you certainly can't move an asteroid stealthily. Every country on Earth that was paying attention would know about it. So your target country would probably try to stop you. Or, if they didn't have the means to stop you, they would probably just launch an all-out attack on you before the asteroid hit them so as to at least take you with them.

If the country dropping the rock is so much stronger than the target country that the target country couldn't do anything to stop them or mount an effective retaliatory attack, the aggressor country probably wouldn't need to resort to dropping an asteroid on them anyway if it wanted to destroy them.

 

It seems to me that this looking for earth impact lumps of rock is almost a pointless exercise. Whilst you may be able to predict a danger from one during a subsequent orbit, the one that is going to hit you, if previously undetected, you will not see until far too late, if at all.

The method of detecting them is to observe movement against the background of the stars. The one that is going to hit you will be stationery against this background. All it will do is suddenly get larger, and then bang! If it is moving against the background it will, by definition, miss you.

I suspect that if one is found that is going to hit in the next few hours, and that is all the notice we can expect, we will never hear about it.

But then I may be wrong!!