European space agency considers smashing spacecraft into asteroid

Hi all
sry if this has been posted I searched and didnt see it
This is a pretty cool idea. seems the European space agency is thinking about slamming spacecraft into asteroids to see if they can alter their course.. I hope they do it. I think it will be very interesting to see the results..
www.rawstory.com...

European space officials are considering sending a spacecraft to smash into a small asteroid — one of the pair of orbiting rocks, named Didymos, that will sail closely past the Earth in 2022 — to see if they can throw them off course,

reply to post by goou111


European space officials are considering sending a spacecraft to smash into a small asteroid


I'd think they would have more luck smashing a few Euros into it...some things have more mass than necessary.

sounds like a great thing to waste money on... oh oopps it changed direction... towards earth now we all die.. thanks EU for taking it upond yourself to smash things into asteroids.

Originally posted by dc4lifeskater
sounds like a great thing to waste money on... oh oopps it changed direction... towards earth now we all die.. thanks EU for taking it upond yourself to smash things into asteroids.

hmmm did not even think anout that.. maybe its not a good idea lol

Originally posted by dc4lifeskater
sounds like a great thing to waste money on... oh oopps it changed direction... towards earth now we all die.. thanks EU for taking it upond yourself to smash things into asteroids.

Of all the things to call a waste of money, this is not it. Developing planetary defense techniques should be one of our top spaceflight priorities. There really is no excuse for us as a species to not develop and test effective methods of deflecting asteroids. The day will come that we need that ability. It's a matter of when, not if.

reply to post by ngchunter


who cares.. how about feeding all of the starving people and taking care of homeless first then if there is leftover crash things into space... we have been here for quite some time without smashing things into things in space I would thing that you would have a better chance messing things up then just leaving things alone and letting things work the way they do.

Why do we deserve to keep on living anyway if we cannot even help our fellow humans live even the simplest of lives and be happy, what is the point.

also ever hear the expression.. if it aint broke dont try to fix it...

reply to post by goou111
Not really sure this is such a great idea.Even if they run computer simulation programs that show if the asteroid is actually knocked off course and it's not projected that when it orbits back around it would collide with Earth just how reliable is that data? It would only be reliable if when the ship collides with the asteroid it is knocked exactly as they project. Problem is that no simulation is 100% perfect- so how could they be sure? It would be my hope that they take every minute detail into account before trying something like this. The tiniest mistake could possibly be devastating.

these dangers are very real, and there is proof on this and other planets nearby with the scars of impact. life changing impact, yes, even ELE. this type of thinking has been hashed out by several govts and the brightest minds for some time, from one extreme to the other, but with caution, it must start sometime soon. the bug hitting the windshield, to the particleizing and subsequent damage, how much is just enough? You may not think much of this now....give it a few months.

Originally posted by dc4lifeskater
reply to post by ngchunter

 

who cares.. how about feeding all of the starving people and taking care of homeless first then if there is leftover crash things into space... we have been here for quite some time without smashing things into things in space I would thing that you would have a better chance messing things up then just leaving things alone and letting things work the way they do.

Why do we deserve to keep on living anyway if we cannot even help our fellow humans live even the simplest of lives and be happy, what is the point.

also ever hear the expression.. if it aint broke dont try to fix it...

edit on 18-1-2013 by dc4lifeskater because: (no reason given)

I wonder if the dinosaurs thought along similar lines...

If Piers Morgon is gonna pilot the craft, then I'm all for it.
Otherwise I think its a waste of time and money.

There are other theories on how to alter the course of an asteroid. I don't think slamming a space craft into one is going to do much.

How big are those asteroids? They should try it on a small scale first, with small craft and small asteroids.

reply to post by goou111


I am far from being an expert on this BUT can't math tell them THIS?

I mean, they can know how much mass an asteroid has, they can know how much mass an earth made object has and at what velocity it would travel at so as to change the trajectory of the asteroid.

I know people who in HS could solve this problem.....

I say they just want to waste money....

Originally posted by dc4lifeskater
reply to post by ngchunter

 

who cares.. how about feeding all of the starving people and taking care of homeless first then if there is leftover crash things into space...

When I first started reading this I thought you were being sarcastic; spaceflight is a tiny fraction of a percent of the national budget here in the US for another thing (and it's probably even a smaller percentage in Europe). Of all the things to spend money on, this is one of the most worthy. I would rate it higher than government welfare.

we have been here for quite some time without smashing things into things in space

If the dinosaurs could have talked some 65 million years ago they probably would have said the same thing... right before an impact wiped them out. That's a very short sighted perspective. It may be an unlikely event in any given year or even generation, but there is no higher consequence than this and it is simply a matter of time. One day it will be on our doorstep and we will have either squandered our time that we could have spent developing spaceflight capabilities, or we will be prepared and deflect the object.

Right now the list of potential impact threats is considerably long (neo.jpl.nasa.gov... ) and those are just the ones we know about. The one's we don't know about are potentially even more dangerous. Right now there is a rock out there somewhere that will hit earth eventually, it's simply a matter of when. If we don't find and identify it with enough warning (right now it would require years of warning) we will not be able to do anything about it. If we don't test and improve our ability to deflect, then we will not be able to mount a defense if we don't get enough warning. If we don't spend money on space, we're not going to get hardly any warning at all, and then all we can do is sit around and look like fools as we "feed the homeless" right before they're all annihilated along with the rest of us.

I would thing that you would have a better chance messing things up then just leaving things alone and letting things work the way they do.

No. Setting objects on collision courses is hard work in orbital mechanics, even when we do it with deliberately controlled spacecraft it requires careful planning and mid-course corrections. By selecting a safe velocity vector for impact you can eliminate the possibility of accidentally inducing any future collision regardless of how much or how little delta-V you end up imparting. Finding out just how much delta-V you imparted is important to improving and refining our ability to deflect future objects that actually do present an impact threat.

Why do we deserve to keep on living anyway if we cannot even help our fellow humans live even the simplest of lives and be happy, what is the point.

I'm all for charity and I do whatever I can to help those around me who have less than I do (and I don't have much), but I will not waver in my support for spaceflight development so that we may one day deflect any rock headed our way just because not everyone is happy in life. We will NEVER reach the point that everyone is well taken care of, but that is not an excuse to just sit idly by and allow any future impact to happen.

Originally posted by zedVSzardoz
reply to post by goou111

I mean, they can know how much mass an asteroid has,

How? It may sound like a cheeky question, but it's quite serious. Very few asteroids give us the opportunity to actually know how much mass they have (asteroids that orbit each other are a rare exception). We can make estimates based on the general spectral type of the asteroid and its brightness, we can make better estimates if we can nail down the size precisely with radar measurements, but at the end of the day our estimate of its mass is still just an estimate until we can either hit it or orbit it with something.