Russia Considers Rocket to Deflect Asteroid Apophis 2029

It begs the question as to the severity of the near collision. It also begs the question as to how much the Space Agencies of the world are relaying accurate information to the public if this was considered just a "Monitor Only" Asteroid in 2004. And how nice of Russia to invite us to join in on the effort. Its all I can do to not vomit every time I hear of Russia, I have this wonderful picture of Putin's harry chest riding his horse.

[edit on 30-12-2009 by minigunner]

Well they know it poses a very real threat to Earth. Better they start eliminating the ideas NOW that won't work against this asteroid such as this Rocket Deflector idea. I think a study has already been theorised that a Rocket would not be enough to alter the course of this ROCK.

My idea is to pile weight onto one side of the Asteroid to alter it's trajectory, or another idea would be to "thaw" the ASteroid enough so that it would be altered.

You can't do anything that would fracture it, as you'd have lots of asteroids instead of just one to deal with...

[edit on 12/30/2009 by Brainiac]

If this scenario was real then why the f__k are we wasting time talking about AGW. This would be far more serious than a few millimeters higher sea level.

Sounds like total BS just like AGW.

ps where is this thing, can it be seen on google sky ?

Last time I checked, the likely strike would be in California - a land strike.

can we get past 2012 safely first of all...


spirit

Originally posted by Aeons
Last time I checked, the likely strike would be in California - a land strike.

cant we make a big hole there so it will go through, we could nuke california and make a hole im sure the E.Ts will want to phone home befoure that day comes

reply to post by JIMC5499

This is a concern of mine too. I mean if you bump it one way you have to consider what other planetary bodies it might impact and you have to take into account the gravitational fields of other planets and bodies and how they will influence the asteroid on it's new course. If you bump it the wrong way, then you may very well put the asteroid on an impact course with Earth.

It will be a complicated matter and I am glad to see that Russia is publicly reaching out to international space agencies and showing interest in forming an international collaboration to work on this project.

Originally posted by MOTT the HOOPLE
In a strange sorta way I hope Apophis does hit the earth, yer that would be interesting to see what happens!

Well, you know Apophis isn't a particularly large asteroid, less than a quarter-mile at its largest dimension.

Watch this fantastic clip from the BBC docu-drama End Day to give you an idea of a "small" impact:

End Day: Meteor Strike

First time I saw this, it was about 2:00 AM, I had just awakened, was kind of groggy, and I caught the very end sequence in Berlin. Had nightmares thereafter.

— Doc Velocity





[edit on 12/30/2009 by Doc Velocity]

reply to post by Aeons


OMG all that dope will be destroyed! Oh I don't meant the people not the marijuana!

Originally posted by lpowell0627
An 800-foot wide asteroid that smacks into the Earth, after passing through our atmosphere, is certainly NOT going to produce "a small tsunami".

You have no idea, for one thing.

A typical ocean-floor earthquake — the type of event that causes typical tsunamis — is thousands of times more powerful and displaces thousands of times more water than would a mere 800-foot asteroid traveling at Mach 20.

— Doc Velocity

Originally posted by MOTT the HOOPLE
Na Man I wanna see it land in the ocean and send up a thousand foot tidal wave that sweeps across the land and sweeps it clean and all the politician drowned !

That's another clip from the BBC docu-drama End Day:

End Day: Giant Tsunami

Fairly excellent special FX (better than 2012, in my opinion).

— Doc Velocity






[edit on 12/30/2009 by Doc Velocity]

Text My first thought, that this is another excuse to weaponize space, i mean star wars to stop a missle threat from say russia, now an asteroid threat, next ET threat, i think the main goal is to covince the population we need weapons in space. But what the million dollar question is, Why do we really need weapons in space??? riddle me that. It does make sence to have a system in place to stop any asteroid, comett or space junk wtv, but the chances of that event taking place are very minor and we are talking thousands of years in between, seems a massive effort for just a slight chance of a catastophic event, smells fishy especially with their secret meetings, i mean if it was just asteroides great oppertunity to bring the world together on a common cause, but secrecy makes me think there are other factors...

Come on now people. This is ATS. Certainly the race of benevolent aliens amongst us must know of this renegade rock and will save us all.

The answer is simple. They need more money to fund the clandestine space program they've been hiding for the past 60 years at least. They could already most likely stop a asteriod impact with some haarp like technology. This is just all apart of the disinformation agenda to keep everyone blind from realizing the truth behind events like the norway spiral and don't forget the pyramid over the kremlin.

I think that NEO's like this are potentially valuable real estate. I would not want to spend money to push it away I would spend the money on making it a home and colonizing the thing.

That is my opinion anyway.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
So what happens if instead of deflecting this asteroid away from the Earth, they deflect it towards the Earth?

We sue the Russians?

I have several responses to this entire discussion.

Originally posted by traditionaldrummer
Come on now people. This is ATS. Certainly the race of benevolent aliens amongst us must know of this renegade rock and will save us all.

From What I read, Most of the ET's follow a star Trek Prime Directive. They ain't helping unless one race has an interest in us joining the galactic community.

Originally posted by MOTT the HOOPLE

Originally posted by Aggie Man

Originally posted by MOTT the HOOPLE
In a strange sorta way I hope Apophis does hit the earth, yer that would be interesting to see what happens!

I'm down for that, so long as it lands in Russia. Preferably in Anatoly Perminov's back yard

[edit on 30-12-2009 by Aggie Man]

Na Man I wanna see it land in the ocean and send up a thousand foot tidal wave that sweeps across the land and sweeps it clean and all the politician drowned !

[edit on 30-12-2009 by MOTT the HOOPLE]

The Problem with this is that the Politicians will have a heads up on whats coming and go underground. After all, what close door meetings they have on the intelligence of our current world that we never hear about? No matter where it lands, I attend to be near the impact crater to get a cool view.

Originally posted by drphilxr
reply to post by TypeSH2001

 

TypeSH2001 - can you offer up a link to that bible code worldline #1 and #2

you just mentioned? THAT is the most curious thing said yet, because

I am a strong believer in the graham everett (wheeler) hypothesis of

multiple worldlines, and how each much diverge around 'strange attractor'

(chaos theory) future events - how much our worldline diverges away

from catastrophe is a valuable insight.

I hate to go off topic here for a minute, but this will explain why John Titor's future isn't our own. I believe there was a episode of the History's channel's show "The Universe" which dealt with this. I believe that John titor help our planet out by warning of what was to come and we prevented the y2k bug. Wow, I remembered it.

Now I'm not going to be telling you of the great Scientific chance we have with this asteroid Apothis, named after the first bad guy in the Stargate tv show. SG1 killed him. Well anyway, we know of the orbit sort of, better than any other N.E.O. and its coming to Earth to make a flyby.
Since in the next two generations, we will start venturing to the stars, or in this case in our own little planetary Earth/Moon system, we are going to need raw materials in Space to build new places to live there. It is cheaper to build up there than it is to launch it from Earth.
We have a chance to bring this asteroid into orbit and park it at a Lagrange point. This will be our chance to work out the Engineering problems of bringing N.E.O.'s into earth orbit to be processed into useful things.

Also in the opening episode of Gundam Seed, the O'Neil Colony Heliopolis is attach to an asteroid. This is also seen in Gundam F91 as well in the colonies being attacked.

Here we have a chance to bring some useful materials into orbit. We have a chance to do it first and develop methods of bringing NEO's under control and less of a threat to Earth. But since our world leaders can't think long term, whats the point in making our journey into space alot easier..

Anyway its an Idea and before anybody say's what happens if it is on a collision course with our big blue world, simply blow it up with 4 Nukes at least. Maybe 8 in certain positions around the asteroid to make sure it just burns up in the atmosphere. I don't believe you need a nuke to blow it up, I think conventional explosives should do the job if it is only 800 ft in diameter. TNT anybody?

Originally posted by deenuu
But what the million dollar question is, Why do we really need weapons in space??? riddle me that.

The same reason we "need" weapons of mass destruction at all... To use them on our fellow humans, to control the masses, to prevent certain "ideas" (such as freedom) from spreading out of control.

The best way to intercept and redirect asteroids is also the simplest — land a few thruster units on the surface of any threatening asteroid and gradually thrust it into a slightly different trajectory.

I mean, your typical Space Shuttle weighs about 83 tons empty, and it's capable of carrying about 30 tons of payload, max. Of course, you're not talking about "weight" in the microgravity of space, you're talking about mass and velocity. Still, a few simple orbital maneuvering thrusters can whip the total mass of the Space Shuttle around 180° in a matter of moments in microgravity.

Now with a sizable asteroid, you're talking about a few million times more mass than a Space Shuttle — still, the principles are the same. Mount a few thrusters on one side of the stroid, and you can slightly alter its trajectory.

We've already proven that we can "catch up" to both comets and asteroids or intercept them or even take pot shots at them. Beyond that, we've proven that we can remotely land space probes on the surface of asteroids.

It's already been done. Old news.

It's only one small step to take what we know to the next logical level: Land a series of thruster packages on an asteroid, anchor them, and then fire up the thrusters.

We could even mount thrusters on relatively small asteroids — say, the size of a Space Shuttle — and steer the bastards into collision courses with much larger asteroids.

Of course, the question is not can we really accomplish this? We can. The million-dollar-question is will we have enough time to accomplish it, once we identify an asteroid on an intercept course with Earth?

Probably not.

Judging from recent history, we don't even know where the dangerous asteroids are until they're zipping past Earth within the Moon's orbit. In just the last 20 years, I think there have been at least 3 great big asteroids that came within spitting distance, and one of those was the size of the state of Utah — that was certainly an ELE asteroid, yet we didn't know it was out there until it essentially grazed the Earth.

Alas, spotting these things after the fact is of no use whatsoever.

— Doc Velocity

somebody ready the point defenses... we're going into defcon -3, the time is nigh and our particle cannons have been itching to be fired! prepare yourselves ladies and gentlemen

Originally posted by sirbikesalot06
Since in the next two generations, we will start venturing to the stars...

We'll be lucky if we have a self-sustaining colony on the Moon in the next two generations. Probably won't land humans on Mars until the late 21st Century, around 2070 or later, at our current rate of technological progress.

The biggest challenge is not propulsion or navigation — it's that other third of the project, keeping humans alive in extended space travel, that's going to thwart our manned exploration of space.

It's highly doubtful we could keep a crew of human beings alive through the first leg of a Mars mission — they'd be dead on arrival at the Red Planet unless they abandoned the mission early and returned to Earth.

We just don't know how to keep humans alive in microgravity, which seems to be as toxic to human biology as is hard radiation or absolute zero temperatures or the vacuum of space.

Everything in space wants to kill a human being, it's not an easily-tamed environment.

As for traveling to the stars, you may be looking at another thousand years before we're capable of sending a manned mission to the nearest star.

The only intelligent thing to do — that we know we can do — is to send fleets of robot ships out to construct colonies in advance, making hostile environments livable, constructing deep space way stations with medical and physical therapy facilities to receive the crews and passengers of extended space missions. These robots would build, test and polish planetary colonies and establish agricultural compounds long before humans ever attempted to make the passage themselves.

Robots are the way to go. Period.

— Doc Velocity