The Los Alamos National lab Is Studying Methods of Deflecting Asteroids

cageymaru

cageymaru

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The Los Alamos National Lab is studying how to deflect asteroids out of their orbital paths by crashing a spacecraft into it. This testing is being done to learn how to prevent an asteroid strike against Earth. A spacecraft named DART will be tested on asteroid Didymoon to see if crashing the spacecraft into it will move it out of the Didymoon system. This action is known as a kinetic impactor technique. The 500 kilogram spacecraft will strike the asteroid at 6 kilometers per second which should change its orbit less than 1%. The mission launch will occur between late 2020 and May 2021.

"DART would be NASA's first mission to demonstrate what's known as the kinetic impactor technique -- striking the asteroid to shift its orbit -- to defend against a potential future asteroid impact," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid."
 
The Mad Atheist said:
Meh, better to let them hit, we're far overdue for a reset anyway.
Or at least, a little spice in our species.
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There's good and bad to that... yeah we're overdue for a reset, most of the survivors are going to be "preppers" and good lord we just fast tracked the movie Idiocracy from fiction to non-fiction
 
the-extinction-of-the-dinosaurs-according-to-flat-earthers-23396349.png
 
If it's death by Asteroid, aka worst-case snu-snu, I want the thing to hit me right on my noggin.

No zombie apocalypse for me, thanks.

I don't want to live like those people in that show that has dragged on way too long, and nobody cares about any longer.
 
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Thought that said "deflecting assholes". Still would have been valuable research.
 
Maybe they could spend a couple billion and figure out how to deflect cancer?
 
The Mad Atheist said:
Meh, better to let them hit, we're far overdue for a reset anyway.
Or at least, a little spice in our species.
Click to expand...

That made me think of a joke by Frankie Boyle... "Scientists have just built the world's biggest supercollider, and they're doing experiments to see what makes up protons. I hope that if the experiment's successful, the whole of our reality will dissolve, and a big sign will up come that says: Level Two."

although in this case it would be "Game Over"
 
Just send Bruce Willis. I saw Glass and it's clear he's not making good movies any longer. Might as well let him try remaking Armageddon as a live action play on a shuttle.
 
is testing this on a real asteroid really a good idea. Seems like this could have unforeseen consequences
 
Nebell said:
Nah, dinosaurs ruled for millions of years. We're just getting started.
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Naw we all know dinos were only here for what 3,000 years? I mean the earth is only 10,000 years old!

In other news this NASA miscalculated the orbital shift due to a failure to convert units properly and this asteroid will now slam into the North Korean capital...or Beijing we arent sure yet.
 
WBurchnall said:
Just send Bruce Willis. I saw Glass and it's clear he's not making good movies any longer. Might as well let him try remaking Armageddon as a live action play on a shuttle.
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Sorry cant happen...we decommissioned the shuttle years ago. We dont have a vehicle capable of carrying him to it anymore. We are all doomed.
 
FTFA:

smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 530 feet (160 meters) in size. DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B
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and there is the FAIL in this. its such a small asteriod, and we simply have no way to deflect an asteriod of a size that would be a general threat
 
katanaD said:
FTFA:



and there is the FAIL in this. its such a small asteriod, and we simply have no way to deflect an asteriod of a size that would be a general threat
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Right now, Jupiter eats most of the baddies, but yeah ... we’re gonna need something significant to deter asteroids of life-on-earth-ending size.
 
Burticus said:
Maybe they could spend a couple billion and figure out how to deflect cancer?
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Spent more than that so far, and although progress has been made, there's still a ways to go. Knowledge won't come just from spending money; it takes time. The other problem is that there are many different kinds of cancer and it is doubtful that a single cure will ever be found. So what we are doing now is looking for dozens of cures all at once. But if a large asteroid or comet hits the planet, then cancer will be the least of our problems, so we need to do both. And we can.
 
Verge said:
is testing this on a real asteroid really a good idea. Seems like this could have unforeseen consequences
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No, they carefully picked one that doesn't come close enough to Earth to ever be a threat no matter what the results of the test are. The delta-V necessary to push this rock into Earths path is way larger than this little spacecraft could ever achieve.
 
Not to get all biblical, but most of the end time "plagues" can all be logically explained as a pk asteroid striking one of our oceans, and the fall out that would occur from that.
 
PaulP said:
No, they carefully picked one that doesn't come close enough to Earth to ever be a threat no matter what the results of the test are. The delta-V necessary to push this rock into Earths path is way larger than this little spacecraft could ever achieve.
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Move it off path... hits another asteroid, alters path of other asteroid, kills all humans.


Not saying it's likely
 
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