NASA Might End Up Nuking Bennu: An Earth Killing 174B Pound Asteroid

NASA MIGHT END UP NUKING THIS KILLER ASTEROID
www.syfy.com...

Bennu is an asteroid ironically named after the Egyptian phoenix-like deity of rebirth. The irony lies in the 1 in 2,700 chance that this 174-billion-pound flying object, which orbits the sun at a cool 63,000 mph, will come crashing to Earth on Sept. 21, 2135.

If Bennu came for us, impact would mean a 1.15-gigaton blast of energy that would make hydrogen bombs look like party poppers. Buzzfeed News found out this is why the government now has an official plan to nuke the asteroid before it ever hurtles through Earth’s atmosphere.

Enter the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response or HAMMER, which has the most appropriate acronym ever for this kind of situation. NASA, the National Security Administration, and two Energy Department weapons labs have brainstormed this massive asteroid deflector and destroyer. While it only exists as a design right now, it would either deflect a smaller asteroid with an 8.8-ton impactor or blast the everloving space dust out of a larger one with a nuclear device.


“If the asteroid is small enough, and we detect it early enough, we can do it with the impactor,” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist David Dearborn told BuzzFeed News. “The impactor is not as flexible as the nuclear option when we really want to change the speed of the body in a hurry.”

Having the design for an asteroid blaster floating around doesn’t necessarily mean it will get realized in three dimensions. The best weapon we have against an asteroid is the time to figure out what to do with it, but as interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua proved recently, sometimes objects in space can seem to materialize out of nowhere. The only way to save humanity from one of these if it was zooming straight for our planet would be to give it a nuclear sendoff.

Unfortunately, making asteroids explode would be expensive even by NASA standards. The space agency remains secretive about exactly how much it would cost to make HAMMER a reality, but its OSIRIS-Rex mission, now en route to Bennu, set them back by $800 million.

Well this is something interesting as always finding ways to defend our home planet. But what are the real chances of success if the day comes that NASA does nuke this SOB like they nuked the moon? What would really happen to the space rock? Will it change trajectory or will it smile and continue to head towards us unfazed?

Well...here is what Bill Nye has to say about this....



I would hope that by the year 2135 scientists would have figured that all out unless the Earth already fell apart by a nuclear WW3. Either way, let's see if we can get some space fighter out there...that would be the real war in space.

Cheers

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

Seems like overkill, I was under the impression all we had to do was gently nudge distant asteroids and they would go way off course from a collision trajectory.

But, saying that, let's do it!

Why wait, let's do it now, send a probe to tail the nukes with a GoPro attached.

Thanks for bringing ATS back to the doom porn roots! We desperately need a positive break from the political covfefe .

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

I doubt it would be that expensive in 100+ years.

Nor do I think it will be very hard for us by that time.....


We went from the horse and buggy to the moon in 80 years..


We SOFTLY landed a lander on an asteroid a couple years ago.. which is way harder than hitting one with a few ballistic missles.


If you have ever seen the way ICBM’s work. They use the buckshot approach. One missle will actually launch like 20 mini nukes..

Well mini compared to the size of the rocket initially....


I bet in a hundred years our rocket tech will be so good we hit with every warhead.

a reply to: BelowLowAnnouncement

Only if we start decades in advance.hell, Nuking it might only nudge it because of the lack of gravity and air pressure.

And no body is making ANY attempt at the moment.

a reply to: BelowLowAnnouncement

Also if you notice when those like krauss will say “brute force MIGHT NOT be the best way”.


Might is the important word their lol.. brute force usually works best

Bennu was discovered by the LINEAR Project on September 11, 1999

Bennu was a self-created being said to have been the inspiration for the phoenix in Greek mythology. It was said to have flown over the waters that existed before creation, landing on a rock and issuing a call that determined the rebirth.

L'an mil neuf cent nonante neuf sept mois,
Du ciel viendra un grand Roi d'effrayeur:
Ressusciter le grand Roi d'Angolmois,
Avant après Mars regner par bonheur.


In the year 1999, in the seventh month,
from the sky will come the great King of Terror,
bringing back to life the great King of the Mongols.
Before and after, Mars to reign by good fortune.,

In the year 1999, in the seventh month (suggesting July, although the French word 'sept' might suggest the abbreviation for the English word September)

from the sky will come the great King of Terror, bringing back to life the great King of the Mongols. (suggesting asteroid strike, and the return to the Dark Ages)

By 2135 we'll probably be living in the dirt and worshipping the satellites that pass overhead at night as gods. At the rate we're going now, anyway.

Getting us over to the asteroid is probably the biggest problem. Attach thrusters/Missles and direct it towards the sun. The Suns gravity will pull it in and destroy it with no mess. Easy elimination.

originally posted by: underwerks
By 2135 we'll probably be living in the dirt and worshipping the satellites that pass overhead at night as gods. At the rate we're going now, anyway.

You might be speaking the true true with your yibberin'.

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

What a headline.

NASA drops the HAMMER on Bennu.

Catchy.

originally posted by: Skywatcher2011
But what are the real chances of success if the day comes that NASA does nuke this SOB like they nuked the moon?

Say what?

So, the thing here is.... we have very little data about how a nuke would actually work in space.

If we change the path of that thing, the impact might wind up being in 20 years instead of 100+

orbits are... complicated.

originally posted by: lordcomac
So, the thing here is.... we have very little data about how a nuke would actually work in space.

Er, you sure about that?

Seems to me the US, Russia and others would have a very good idea of exactly what nukes would do in space.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Others may not get the reference, but I did so just wanted to let you know at least one person did, it’s a good movie that doesn’t get the credit it deserves.

So.... when are we sending Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck after this thing?

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

in b4 nasa alters its trajectory to actually hit the earth in multiple fragments so TPTB can have the earth to themselves after they survive in their bunkers

originally posted by: JoshuaCox
a reply to: Skywatcher2011

We went from the horse and buggy to the moon in 80 years..

Interesting way of looking at that, but the horse and buggy have been around since at least the late 18th century. Modes of transportation prior to the "buggy" were pretty much identical except used a less sophisticated carriage device. And that had been the main transport in most the world (for land travel) for centuries to millennia.

It's more accurate that we spent thousands of years using the horse and buggy or animal and carriage method before figuring out something more effective.

originally posted by: Infinitis

originally posted by: JoshuaCox
a reply to: Skywatcher2011

We went from the horse and buggy to the moon in 80 years..

Interesting way of looking at that, but the horse and buggy have been around since at least the late 18th century. Modes of transportation prior to the "buggy" were pretty much identical except used a less sophisticated carriage device. And that had been the main transport in most the world (for land travel) for centuries to millennia.

It's more accurate that we spent thousands of years using the horse and buggy or animal and carriage method before figuring out something more effective.

Which was exactly his point.

Its incredible to think we hugged the ground for thousands of years before suddenly making all huge leaps in science.

a reply to: nightbringr

Not necessarily what nukes do to other bodies in orbit.

Without air pressure.....

a reply to: Infinitis

That’s the point lol...

It took us 200,000 years and we only get to the buggy, then 80 years later we are on the moon.

It’s crazy to imagine what the next 80 years will bring.


We are saying the same thing lol.