Chicken Little
We need a planetary defence grid composed of frikkin lasers and nukes ASAP!
The US government has published a report detailing how to prepare for the danger of impacts from asteroids that stray too close to Earth in the next ten years. Classified as near-earth objects (NEOs), these are a group of bodies in the Solar System that are less than 1.3 astronomical units – the distance between the Earth and …
We are going to recycle all those used Falcon boosters, turn them upside down and then we will be able to move the Earth out of the way of any nasty asteroids. The Space Protection Force will be tasked with protecting our planet from the scum of the universe .. and of course separating alien child species from their parental units.
"It called for NASA’s Administrator to “pursue capabilities, in cooperation with other departments, agencies, and commercial partners, to detect, track, catalog, and characterize near-Earth objects to reduce the risk of harm to humans from an unexpected impact on our planet.”
1) What is the additional budget for NASA to perform all of these new tasks? If no budget is forthcoming now, then dont expect NASA to be able to do anything when the big one is incoming later....
2) in cooperation with commerical partners. Right.... Because there are profits to be made spotting asteroids? Funnily enough, I havent heard of any firms doing this previously. How are you going to make it so profitable that firms start building facilities?
A good sentiment, and something that needs to be thought about and prepared for, but I'm reading a lot of hot air and wishful thinking here. I'll believe its being taken care of properly when I see significant funds being given to NASA for this task alone (and not merely being stolen from other NASA missions).
"Because there are profits to be made spotting asteroids?"
Well, if you're into mining them, the ones that are already heading at the Earth will be easy to fly to (and hopefully re-direct).
That said, the only private entity I know of currently tracking asteroids is the B612 Foundation, but they're a non-profit just trying to keep us all safe.
B612 is trying to keep us informed, but there is still a lot of working out to come up with something to push things out of the way.
Perhaps an Earth defense system should be a higher priority than sending a flag planting team to Mars. There are lots of ideas but, so far, no money to try them out. Basing a system on the moon could be a good plan. It takes a much smaller rocket to launch from the moon and the launch site can have a permanently cleared safety zone downrange where it's pretty certain that a random person isn't going to wander across scrubbing a launch.
Asteroids are tough to spot so any defense system is going to need to be able to be deployed very quickly. Comets can be seen further out, but there still wouldn't be time to custom design and build something to deflect it. There would have to be something in the bull pen ready to go. Preferably something that has been tested a few times.
Well General, Sir, Asteriod Redirectors for Saving Earth launches were green, but then some bugger in a row-boat was fishing downrange so we had to scrub our ARSEs.
In missing the ARSE launch window I'm afraid that means humanity is boned, Sir.
Yeah. Not gonna happen.
With regard to "develop[ing] technologies for NEO deflection and disruption missions": this is a potential weapons system of devastating capability and if not done cooperatively with the rest of the world is likely to lead to a new arms race.
Commercial partners will be building everything, of course, but in view of the weapons capability, I can't see how they could be permitted to operate anything.
1) Funding is comming from all that climate change stuff the Washington Wotsit told them to stop investigating.
2) Plenty profit to be made from developing asteroid deflection/destruction tools, will generally have alternate less peacefull applications.
also detection technology will prove quite profitable too - pattern recognition algorithms work great for identifying those terrorists.
However, before then NASA needs to update protocols for notifying the White House, Congress, and the public of potential threats.
Just as long as the protocol only involves notification and not waiting for approval. Can you imagine trying to explain the concept of an asteroid to those in Congress who profess Biblical inerrancy and believe the heavens are a dome of ice supported by the pillars of the Earth?
Not necessarily - I would expect the sort of range the latter is expected to exist at to be utterly "too late" for any kind of attempt to intercept the former (and vice versa - you'd expect a window of opportunity of more than a few minutes for an asteroid, less so for an ICBM). I would also expect a significant mismatch in mass and velocity of the incoming target, so I'm not sure how much of an overlap there actually is...
If you are trying to cross into the US illegally, you have committed a crime. When you are picked up, you are being arrested. In what country are persons being held in jail allowed to have their children with them? (please choose a first world country). The policy of holding the children is a separate facility was a policy put in place during the Obama administration. If was felt that it would be better for the children if they were someplace set up to take care of kids rather than a higher security detention center that wasn't.
The problem of illegal immigration to the US is a big one. Many of the countries to the south haven't had an exemplary past of human rights or opportunities. The US is thought of as a land of gold and it very obviously isn't. It also can't absorb the numbers of uneducated and unskilled people that can't speak English (American) that flood across the borders every year.
There is no perfect solution. The best that can be done is to process people as fast as possible, reunite the families and deport them. People coming across as a family could even get priority. The only positive note with how it's being handled now is that it might be a deterrent.
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@mark 85 Tell the author then - it was their offtopic snide comment at the end of the article being responded to. I'd just as soon leave politics out of all this myself, but...it the author engages in it, it's not unexpected there will be a response to it.
Maybe we should thank the author, actually, for making it clear they are pushing an agenda other than reporting facts or entertaining us....
This crud discredits those who do it, you'd hope they'd learn.
Here's the thing. There are many places to apply for asylum in Mexico (embassy and consulates). Also, you can do so at the border crossing. If you cross elsewhere, and are seeking asylum to the US, you have a year to apply.
Arresting people on the suspicion of illegal immigration is not illegal. People are arrested all the time, in every country, due to being suspects of criminal activity. Then the judicial process goes to work and if asylum is granted, the migrant is released and not deported. It's not rocket science. It's rather close to common sense.
Also, asylum seekers only make up about 1/10th of the migrants to the US. We get about twice as many migrants from Mexico than from the number two 'sender' China. I speculate that the majority of the migrants are simply seeking a better life, which is certainly attainable here.
Speaking of Mexico, their immigration laws are much stricter than ours. They have a similar southern border problem, probably even worse. Yet, where are they in the news cycle?
> how to prepare for the danger of impacts from asteroids
Stick head in sand, I guess?
It's all NASA can afford to suggest anyway, since I guess that new task will come with the required budget cut. Oh, sorry, I forgot; "Work smarter, not harder", that alleviates all budget issues of course.
NASA eggheads draw up blueprints for spotting, surviving asteroid hits
I can't put my finger on why this ungrammatical kind of American English (apparently reserved only for use in news headlines!) annoys me so much. May I kindly suggest the British English replacement
NASA eggheads draw up blueprints for spotting and surviving asteroid hits
NASA reckons there are more than 300,000 objects bigger than 40 metres that could be hazardous to Earth. It is estimated that 25,000 NEAs are at least 140 metres in size. Despite the large sizes of NEOs, they’re difficult to detect more than a few days in advance of a possible impact.
Although the *consequences* of a 40 metre rock hitting the Earth are substantial, on the scale of space, 40 metres is actually pretty small, and that smallness is what makes them hard to detect. Even 140 metres is hard to spot when it's way over there.
Yeah, the UN will prove once more how useful it is... when the UN Space Protection Council (SPOC?) rules something that a member doesn't like, that member won't be able to simply walk away, because the UN resolutions are so binding and it has so much muscle to make the countries comply.
It is not like it just happened with... with... no, I can't recall a super power leaving a UN organization in the last weeks, with the organization being worse than useless to stop it
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1] look up occasionally
2] duck down so they don't hit you
Alternately Plan B
we could mine them all, hence removing them from the area likely to fly by earth.
Miners could push a bunch into their piece of the solar system so nobody else can have them until they have mined all they want, then push the residue into Jupiter.