Nukes to Stay for At Least Another 117 Years

NASA, in association with NNSA and several other departments, have just announced an official governmental plan to use nuclear heads to "protect against asteroids". They are citing Bennu, an asteroid that has a possible (but highly improbable) chance of hitting Earth in September 2135, as support to build a spacecraft capable of delivering nuclear explosions at any point in space.

on Sept. 21, 2135, there is a 1 in 2,700 chance that it will hit us. What would we do?

Government scientists now have an official plan, just in case: They’ve designed a spacecraft to hit any large oncoming asteroids with a nuclear explosion.

The Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER) spacecraft — a collaboration between the National Nuclear Security Administration, NASA, and two Energy Department weapons labs — would either steer its 8.8-ton bulk (called an “impactor”) into a small asteroid, or carry a nuclear device to deflect a big one.

NASA plans to use nukes to deflect asteroids

This has me rather very concerned. I can understand the eventual need to possibly deflect an asteroid, but I was hoping mankind to start working on denuclearization, and to stop producing radioactive waste for various reasons.

Radioactive waste aside, the creation of a spacecraft capable of delivering nuclear heads at any point in space sounds alot like something that could be weaponised, and used against other nations or even against future off world colonies.

Although a bigger bomb would be better, current US nuclear warhead sizes would be sufficient to deflect a very large asteroid that comes out of nowhere

So basically, an excuse to keep nuclear warheads and possibly even produce more.

I wonder which is truly the most likely Apocalyptic scenario - Earth getting hit by an asteroid, or humans suddenly deciding to use its nukes (ironically made to "protect" against "asteroid") against one another?

I wonder which truly is the most imminent threat to Earth?

a reply to: swanne

Nope, the banks keep that show running. Pretty much all of them.

This report, produced by PAX a member of the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN) is the only report detailing the global investments by financial institutions in companies producing nuclear weapons.

www.dontbankonthebomb.com...

Bennu was discovered on 9/11/99, which is kinda interesting. And the collision-study is from 2009, I've got a hunch on why it surfaced again...

a reply to: PublicOpinion

Hmm, thanks for the link. Pretty deep stuff. I really want to post this from your article:

$525 Billion invested
329 investors made $525 Billion available to nuclear weapon producing companies between January 2014 and October 2017. They assisted with share and bond issuances, owned or managed shares and bonds or outstanding loans or made credit facilities. This is a decrease in the number of investors, but an $81 billion increase in the total amount invested. Find out who invests.
Most investors are from the US, and US$110 billion came from just 3 US financial institutions: Blackrock, Vanguard and Capital Group, all from the United States.

ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn: “If you have been wondering who benefits from Donald Trump’s threats of nuclear war, this report has that answer. These are the companies that stand to profit from indiscriminate mass murder of civilians. We grow less safe while they cash in on chaos by banking on Armageddon.”

Banking on Armageddon, eh? Does that not sound familiar in the light of NASA's new plan?

The US is not alone in this however.

Asgardia (a micronation founded by a Russian defense contractor) is planning on doing the same.

As you may know, Asgardia is planning to have nuclear weapons to protect Earth our mother planet from asteroids impact and cataclysms

asgardia.space...

If Asgardia actually is a proxy of Russia, then it becomes evident that the nuclear arms race is going to continue into space, in the pretense of "protecting from asteroids".

And be of a much bigger immediate threat than actual asteroids.

I couldn't count how many times I've read prophecies about that and it's happening now.

a reply to: swanne

So what would you recommend for negating any asteroid threat?

Realize that most other methods of pushing or moving an asteroid so that it's orbit does not threaten Earth, requires literally years and years of advanced knowledge that it is a threat to Earth, and that same amount of time to move said thread with all other very low impulse devices.

a reply to: eriktheawful

It's a very tricky question, since most methods that are currently realistic are also methods which can be weaponised. Nuclear bombs, impactors, etc.

But then, we are not about to get hit by an asteroid anytime soon. We can foresee threats several decades in advance, in fact, over a century in advance in the case of Bennu. So we actually do have time to develop smarter methods. It's a question that require much more than 5 minutes of thoughts, but right on the top of my head I'd personally would explore spraying water on the asteroid so that the water pushes the asteroid upon vaporizing in the Sun's heat. Or attaching rockets unto the asteroid to steer it. Doing something as simple as adding velocity to it would actually move it to a wider orbit.

Note that all my methods are those that add a constant force onto the asteroid. I feel that, though good in theory, impactor strategy is very risky in practice - like trying to hit a spinning pool ball, you could actually make its trajectory worst, or even shatter it into a cloud of projectiles.

a reply to: swanne

NASA, in association with NNSA and several other departments, have just announced an official governmental plan to use nuclear heads to "protect against asteroids".

Thats not a viable option. The object may fragment, come at us in shotgun spread pattern, actually increasing the odds of something hitting us, not lessening it.

The announcement is cover to build more nukes. As if there ain't enough of those around already.



Image source

a reply to: swanne

Hate to tell you this but:

We don't know where everything is.

While we do pretty much know where the big boys (over 1 mile in diameter) are, the smaller ones are a lot harder to detect and track.

Indeed: we end up not knowing about some, until they've already passed us

And while the smaller ones may not hurt us on a global scale, it would be pretty damn devastating to have one impact on or near a city or in populated areas.

About 50,000 years ago, one the size of a house did this:



It was about twice it's original size (still quite small) when it entered the atmosphere.

Energy release upon impact was about 10 megatons.

a reply to: swanne


We didn't see the Chelyabinsk one coming.

a reply to: eriktheawful

You make a good point.

But to me those are all the more reasons to investigate into more methods to deflect asteroids. The asteroid you mention was much, much smaller than Bennu. Asteroids of these kind should be even easier to accelerate and their trajectory changed using some kind of propelling force.

To put it a bit bluntly, I really don't think there is any need to produce nuclear weapons just for the sake of asteroids.

a reply to: oldcarpy

I actually did, but that's for another topic involving the Gray Area.

Seriously though: in the case of super small bodies such as Chelyabinsk, so small that you can't see them until they actually make atmospheric entry, nukes are thoroughly unnecessary - deploying a nuke for it as it enters the lower atmosphere might actually be more dangerous than the asteroid itself, because of nuclear fallout.

a reply to: swanne


Go on - do tell!

a reply to: oldcarpy

Incorrect topic.

The current topic involves the question of nukes and whether nuclear disaster *or* asteroid is the most imminent danger.

I personally believe that the biggest threat to Earth right now is not asteroid impact but actually mankind's own nukes.

a reply to: swanne

Then you're going to have to invent some completely new technology that has very high energy release in short amounts of time (high impulse).

We only know of two ways to do this right now: Nuclear detonations and Anti-matter detonations.

Chemical rockets, ion drives, light sales, etc, all those would work, but again, require long term knowledge of an incoming asteroid, and also requires us to use them when it's quite far away, with very long thrust time.

Nukes are here to stay. It's a genie that you're not going to get back into a bottle.

The good news is: there are actually a couple of useful things you can do with nuclear detonating devices -

1) Pushing asteroids out of the way.

2) As a propulsion system for space craft (look up Orion Project).

As was discovered decades ago, they're not very good for mining or changing the landscape because of that pesky radioactivity they leave behind.

While I don't want to see space weaponized, it's going to happen. In fact: It needs to happen.

Any large structure we build in space is subject to bombardment of material located in our solar system, meaning each structure would need a point defense system to keep those objects from impacting with the structure (for the really small ones), or a way to push things out of the way so they don't hit (with the larger ones) and it's more often than not that we only get very short notice on these objects.

a reply to: swanne


Spoil sport.

Me, I think both are cause for worry. Along with AI, pandemics and all the other doom stuff.

What happened to "let the chips fall where they may"?

We get hit, we get hit, Nothing can be done about it.

But 1 degree of deflection far out can save our collective asses.

Go science! YAY!

Don't let God kill us all!!

a reply to: intrptr

They could sack the information concerning all global nuclear programs the way they did the Library at Alexandria?

originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: intrptr

They could sack the information concerning all global nuclear programs the way they did the Library at Alexandria?

History is written by the Victors.

The written record will reflect that the US was helping the world by destroying it.

We got a few options.

1. Shoot a bunch of nukes at an object traveling at thousands of miles per hour with unknown composition.

2. Launch Team Bruce Willis to fly to one and drill baby drill and detonate one from inside.

3. Create solar powerd rail gun satellites and blow them suckers to smithernes.

4. Meet at the worlds end for a snip load of drinks.

You must choose, but choose wisely.