Apocolypse narrowly averted last night

Anyone know what is our plan if an asteroide heads directly at earth??

What would we do if something like that actually happens, hold on and hide...lol

john

 

How exactly could we harness it? Kinda scary that we did nothing

 

If something were done, and a chunk of "we blowed it up real good" asteroid with altered trajectory hit Earth, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

I'm pretty sure this question can be answered rather simply : Bruce Willis. Hasn't anyone seen "Armageddon"? It lays out a clear solution for us, we send Bruce Willis and a crazy russian to space with a nuke, and they make it go away. We'll then replace our national anthem with an Aerosmith song....

 

Duck and Cover.

 

id rather use ducks for cover

 

Have a huge party and await the inevitable

I thought you meant actually bringing it down to earth. Silly me. Thats a pretty good idea. I think nasa is more worried about getting the Shuttle back in 1 piece right now

There was so much wrong with that movie. That could NEVER happen. I assume you're joking, right?

 

ROFLMFAO!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the laugh man! I needed that!

 

That is correct - and why nothing should have been done.

If course was altered, potential for all hell breaking loose would have increased exponentially.

It harmlessly passed by on a known trajectory.

 

"Duck and Cover. "


haha....were screwed if something like this happens...

john

 

So tell me, will duct tape fix it?

In all seriousness, my level of awareness has increased about this situation due to this thread. I've always questioned what our plan would be if this happened, but I never knew we DIDN'T HAVE ONE. Scary!

 

Let's see, we could spend the entire GDP of the world (not that we can get two people to agree on anything lately) to develop and build something that may not work to protect us from something that hasn't happened in the last 5 billion or so years and is unlikely to happen in the next 5 billion...

 

Unfortunately, it's a bit more likely than that.

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/intro_faq.cfm

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

Within our lifetime, there was a huge event categorized on the scale of "once in millions of years". There were direct multiple hits by Comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter in 1994 that were so huge they were visible from Earth.

http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/sl9/sl9.html



We don't quite have all the pieces yet for asteroid steering, but we're thinking about it.

Note that we've had recent successful attempts at comet/asteroid landers which is one of the building block technologies we need.

Having said the above, I'm not frantic by any means. There has been increased awareness of this issue (what do you think were the seeds for the movies being made?) and more resources are being spent tracking as many objects as possible so that we are aware of any significant NEO events that may happen in the next hundred years; so far none are imminent. The major risk today seems to be an object small enough to fall below observability but large enough to do local/regional damage.

 

The reports say that this asteroid is comming back several more times within the next 100 years. Next time it's in the neighborhood, I'm heading to the strip clubs with Roy Cats.

 

Ohhhh...an asteroid.

I figured Mr. Slutmobile drank a little too much sauce last night and almost went home with a 200 pounder.

 

If we'd just all buy Al Gore's book, and feed him more, he'd get so big, the asteroid would just bounce off, and save his internets and us too.

Christ, and W wants us to get a man on Mars when foam keeps a shuttle on the ground?

And FYI she was 300 from what I heard

The code of many moderators the world over...the quoted excepted
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No one knows what it will cost until someone builds it, launches it, and (and this is the kicker) gets it to work.

I live < 5 miles from where they build the Space Station, any number thrown around is pure BS until it flies.

 

How'd you know that was my next avatar?
__

I would simply liken doing something to an otherwise harmless asteroid to teasing a pitbull in a truck - window rolled down low enough for me to reach in and pet it, only to have it tear my arm off.

 

BTW - I don't think it shows any such thing. The object you're apparently referring to is 2006 MB14 or 2004 XP14. Each was just outside lunar orbital distance (1.1 to 1.7 LD's) and were known and tracked. Even if an object is inside 1 LD, the probability it will hit the Earth is 10K^2/385K^2 or 1 in 1500.

Nothing needs to be done if we know an object is going to miss. The question is do we have enough resources applied to tracking possible objects?

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

BTW - bad as SL9 was, at least we knew it was very likely to hit well before hand. It was not a "suprise" event.

 

Thanks for the "Heads up! You can bet your asteroid we'll be ready for the next one!

What if it hit the Vatican? Ohh the irony!

 

/armflap
/run in circles

The sky is falling down! The sky is falling down!