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On March 27 2013 02:19 micronesia wrote:This is one of those threats where you can't just look at historical data to determine if action is necessary. If you wait for the first significant loss of life to say 'hm I guess impacts actually do pose a threat worth addressing' it will be too late for a potentially large number of people. For those of you who are interested please read the actual report which goes into more detail. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/report2007.html
6 years later still no action has been taken based on that report. And as far as I know neither the European Space Agency nor the European Southern Observatory has a comprehensive plan to tackle the issue.
It's sad, because if NASA's estimate from the 2007 report are to be believed we are talking about a total cost of 1 - 2 billion USD for solving the issue of detection forever. Just for comparison, that's about the cost of a single launch of the Space Shuttle, 6% of NASA's yearly budget or less than 20% of the ESA's yearly budget. *
It seems like detection will come from general purpose telescopes, like Pan-STARRS, LSST and ESA's Gaia telescope. The good news is that eventually survey telescopes will be good enough to find or rule out impacts from any potentially dangerous object. The bad news is that it might be too late for some people.
The best case scenario is that one of these will find a small or medium sized asteroid that will hit in 20-30 years time. That would give an incentive to solve the problem once and for all.
*I think there are some political lessons in those numbers but I don't want to derail the thread. It might also be argued that NASA's estimate of 950million USD in the report for solving the problem of detection is too optimistic. It might be but probably not to the extent that it changes the overall conclusion.
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The more we invest into something like space exploration, the more our daily lives become intrinsically better so I have no gripe; look at technology today, most of it was spearheaded by the perfect job NASA has almost always done (with a few bumps along the way, usually caused by lack of funding).
If it wasn't for things like this, pushing our boundaries, I fear I'd not have my shiny new Blackberry Q10 :D
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It's an interesting discussion and I'm glad you started it, micronesia.
I think the idea of putting an early warning system in place is not only worthwhile, but paramount. We aren't examining much of the sky, and to steal a phrase from a terrible movie, it's a big-ass sky. Most people just consider extinction-level events when discussing anti-impact countermeasures, and they show up so rarely that it's arguably not worth looking into. However, smaller events (and yes, Tunguska was a small event, cosmologically) happen with much greater frequency, and the only reason people aren't yet clamoring for some kind of defense system is because we haven't yet had a city erased from the landscape by a relatively small rock.
An observatory at a Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Moon is, I think, a really good idea. It requires few corrections, and can be easily maintained if necessary, on a relatively smaller budget.
(It's not actually too expensive, relatively speaking, to send stuff to the moon. It's getting something all the way out there and then back out of its gravitational influence that's the problem, and that's where costs increase tenfold. That's why a one-way trip to Mars is being seriously considered for the future, for example, as colonists wouldn't need an escape plan to get back to earth, and thus would be financially viable.)
Sadly, and to answer one of your closing questions, Norway doesn't have much to contribute towards realizing this goal. With the limited resources of a small country, Norway focuses strictly on the areas in which we can specialize to make it worthwhile. The high latitude of Norway, particularly of Northern Norway including Svalbard, is an ideal place from which to launch rockets that observe the aurora, and we examine the relationship between the Sun and the Earth. It's a very limited space program.
I've also seen a few comments in this thread about how we wouldn't be able to do anything even if we did discover something headed our way, and so an advance warning system wouldn't be of any use. That's not at all accurate. Astronomers and physicists argue that given sufficient advance warning, we would be able to deflect the incoming disaster with the technology available at present time. We just need an early warning system, and it's nice to see one being seriously considered.
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United States24799 Posts
On March 31 2013 09:01 Aylear wrote:
I've also seen a few comments in this thread about how we wouldn't be able to do anything even if we did discover something headed our way, and so an advance warning system wouldn't be of any use. That's not at all accurate. Astronomers and physicists argue that given sufficient advance warning, we would be able to deflect the incoming disaster with the technology available at present time. We just need an early warning system, and it's nice to see one being seriously considered.
This is definitely true, but with current technology there are severe limitations. For example, without a tremendous lead time it would be difficult to strike asteroids/comets coming in from a large angle relative to the eclectic plane due to rocket limitations... of course if we have years to plan planetary slingshots something could be worked out in theory.
In other words, detection is extremely important, but current technology would only be sufficient for certain impact scenarios. We are not so helpless that small advances couldn't be helpful, but not secure, either. At least with better detection we could evacuate impact zones for city-level and below impactors.
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Advances are always made in small steps, and this is no exception. Just putting a telescope up there, specifically for the purpose of observing things dangerous to us, is a good start. And as everyone should know, R&D related to space tends to improve stuff on earth as well.
It's a relatively small price tag for peace-of-mind for everyone on the planet.
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lol. totally preempted the Armageddon (bruce willis) reference. =)
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On March 31 2013 13:46 ThaZenith wrote:
Advances are always made in small steps, and this is no exception. Just putting a telescope up there, specifically for the purpose of observing things dangerous to us, is a good start. And as everyone should know, R&D related to space tends to improve stuff on earth as well.
It's a relatively small price tag for peace-of-mind for everyone on the planet.
Until it misses something and we get this gigantic outcry of "OMG WE'RE WASTING SO MUCH MONEY WHILE AFRICAN CHILDREN ARE STARVING!!!11!!!111"
For the record, I think it's a great idea and I wish we would have done this sooner.
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EPT
