Are we technologically advanced enough to destroy incoming asteroids/comets?

I think we are but the secret is being withheld.
So just relax we are in good hands.

Some depending on the size others may still come thru.

reply to post by readerone


Well done, overlooking the obvious bits of editing needed, but well done.

What I find curious about your story is your insight for human presence needed in space. If the laws will read like they have always read, it is inevitable rights to ownership will require human presence.

Also I find the technicals you describe accurate as well. Tethers use the same principle of propulsion and energy production, and it is my understanding are currently in use by robotic craft exploring our solar system. But I am not supposed to know about that on this level

There are three main bodies humans will try to stake out claims on, Mercury, Luna, and Ceres. It will be known as the Hydrogen Rush, a global push for energy resources to expand into the solar system.

Well, as this transpires, the our system's foundation may encounter some instabilities, and require adjustments. But no matter how small, they will always be huge and have long range effects...

And no one will actually care, because it will be far enough into the future where it won't matter as much, isn't that always the problem? Lack of accountability and foresight? Yes, I am afraid we haven't a clue about how much more we can make a mess of things.

reply to post by Matyas

thank you , I agree .

I beleive it may happen sooner than you might think .

humans have the amazining property of leaping into deep water , the moment the rope and tire are tied to a tall tree on the river bank.

the moment we can , we generaly do .

Short answer: no, longer answer: sort of.

We could build robotic craft that could divert asteroids with our current technology, but we haven't, and if we needed to, we couldn't do so fast enough.

How big?

City killer? Yes. Go ahead and nuke it already if it threatens someplace densely populated. (That deep impact test chunk of copper was really convieniently close to the size and mass of a W-88 btw. That's only mere coincidence, right? That couldn't be a proof run with an inert dummy round. Nahhh...) Sure it turns to "buckshot". But most of that should be small enough to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere. Oooh pretty! Spreading it out would be a good thing.

Region/Continent/Planet killer? Nope. We'd be in real trouble. The shrapnel from directly nuking that could still be a heap of city killer rocks.

Best hope would be to have for a big one is that it makes a near pass or two before it's predicted strike and to try and nudge it somehow before then. (Maybe Apophysis is that one? 2012 outside Earth's orbital plane, yet fairly close astronomically speaking. Then another close one in 2029 but on the plane that time. Then 2036... Hope we can do better than dinosaurs if that's the one.)

If it's a straight shot from outside the system or darting around the sun, we're pretty much done.

[edit on 1-10-2009 by pauljs75]

[edit on 1-10-2009 by pauljs75]

what seems to be missed ...

when and if hman kind mines the astroid belt for materials.. we will have just the same problems... with a few others that are reasonable way beyond are current technology ...


but

hey guys... this is a chance towork on a problem we are going to be having for ever and ever...

this is not going away , and it needs to be understood , and it needs to be mastered .

not to save some city from a space rock .
heck no... we need to get 100 million tons of copper into a parking orbit , where it can be processed into re-entery vehicals , or ready for delivery to the moon for habitat , or mars mission landers ....

but first we need to beable to control it ..


baby step one... lets mark them with beacons as they go by

baby step two ... AI/robotic radar stations on the marked ones to find others... like a solar system wide sensor , mapping the stuff thats out there .

baby step three... robotic movers , that get the close ones and park them in orbits for reprocessing into space staion resupply and hard ware .

Originally posted by readerone
what seems to be missed ...

Not by me, I have been studying this for years...

baby step one... lets mark them with beacons as they go by

Check. Towers all over the solar system, go look at the threads yourself.

baby step two ... AI/robotic radar stations on the marked ones to find others... like a solar system wide sensor , mapping the stuff thats out there .

Check. Ibid.

baby step three... robotic movers , that get the close ones and park them in orbits for reprocessing into space staion resupply and hard ware .

Almost check. We have been hitting them (comets) with probes, all in the interest of science of course, riiight...

Seen the contrails on Venus. Figured since deuterium was in the upper atmosphere, they (read we) would use scramjets to mine it, and lo and behold.

You know, I have been on the boards for years waiting to spot the so called "alien", and decided they (read "alien") would be an agent provocateur. I couldn't figure out what they would be provoking, unless it was already a natural trait ingrained within us. I think we really gave them a bad reception long ago by our reckoning, and memories never grow old in space time, or relative time, so any agenda to keep our potential focused on greed, anger, and stupidity would result in safe heavens for them.

But that is merely speculation, correct? I'll let ya'll draw your own conclusions.

reply to post by Matyas


your pretty good , but i need to back you up a tiny bit .

with all due respect , oxygen .
the single most reactive element in the cosmos ; what brainless visitor , vacationing non-earth being would miss that fact there is a 20% cloud of the stuff surrounding our tiny rock .

kinda like jumping on an air craft , flying to a spa on a island paradice ... and missing the fact that the warm springs are hydrofloric asid ! not likly a place you wanna take a swim in .

no small detail , this place takes a life time to get to , and is not even intresting .

any being stupid enought to want to come here , is to dumb to live ! much less keep their presents unknown to us .

3) ... we don't hear any machine , no communication , we see nothing that hints at anything that might be mistaken for civilization off world ....

what if there is nothing out there... what if we are totly alone?
how could that be posable ( however unlikly )...

may I susgest we are alone . if we are , then either we are alone by being unique , or we are alone by design .

...and...

humans are uniquely design'd to travel in time .

...and...

humans are remarkably violent , war like , and brutal .

.... there fore .... if we could travel into the past and remove all future combatants in wars that might happen in future space conflicts ....hummmm... would we?

where might it stop?

....................................................................

may I suggest , never assume malevionance when ignorance will explain it .

never blaim the victor , when the victum is dead and can not explain .

reply to post by readerone


Well now friend, perchance you could enlighten me as to who my avatar is...

We are not the only violent monkeys out there, and the agent provocateur will be convincing enough to make us believe we are, that this place is so hard to get to, that it is so poisonous and uninteresting, and we are so alone in a quiet universe, all the while overlooking the heretofore hidden potential humans have for their frugalness and inventiveness to exploit the wonders of natural science thereby favoring the quick and dirty trips to the stars...

That we have been there before, and thank you for the hand out when Thera blew, and all the other times we would have done genocide to ourselves. But we can't be kept down forever, I don't accept what George Orwell may say about the state, or what Plato says about the state of humanity, Moses saw the Spirit of Mankind, realized in the Son of Man, an emanation of the Buddha, that humanity is a universal value, and all can be or ultimately are the Buddha.

No one without brains would be traveling the stars, and with them would not need to. It is the place of outer space and gnashing of rocks, where crucibles of fire burn for eternity, and endless void where our co-creator was cast into ere time began...

And all this longing to get out there is merely a pitiful attempt to reunite with his being, which would be not in the interest of any parties involved, in the least of saying.

reply to post by Maddogkull


Destroy I am not inclined to believe we could. Now, deflect? Maybe.

Originally posted by Solomons


To stay on topic though,i remember reading that scientists thought of sending up a very large sheet of material that would somehow stop an asteroid,something to do with the sun also..not very specific i know but it's hard to remember,there was a thread about it on ATS im sure.

Hey, it does sound hair brained, but paper always beats rock.

We're fine, if anything happens, we'll see it coming. And if NASA isn't stupid. They will build a specialized space craft to move the asteroids rather than blowing it into more asteroids. But considering us, we will probably blow it up, and blow up the smaller asteroids.

Im sure with all this money Governments are spending on various military paraphenalia, they'd be able to pull something out of the bag.

But if not, we always have Bruce Willis!

I am reliably informed that the Earth has "Torchwood"

a particle beam weapon system of e.t origin .





However , size does matter , and anything really big ,
could be a problem....

No.

But IMO if enough money was spent on it, then it's possible the technology could be developed.

They could simply put a crew on an incoming asteroid to place some rockets or something just so that it will move a wee bit to the left. With this the Extinction-class asteroid is happy, and we're also happy. Everyone wins.

Then again, last time I heard, the monitoring station was shut down due to lack of funds.