How To Deflect Asteroids And Save Earth

How To Deflect Asteroids And Save Earth

www.sciencedaily.com

French, a doctoral candidate in aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, has determined a way to effectively divert asteroids and other threatening objects from impacting Earth by attaching a long tether and ballast to the incoming object. By attaching the ballast, French explains, "you change the object's center of mass, effectively changing the object's orbit and allowing it to pass by the Earth, rather than impacting it."

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so hopefully one problem is solved. there is only a "small one" still to be considered - we need to find a way to detect the objects dangerous for Earth. pretty hard task but in fact it is only the matter of cash and time. so sooner or later I belive we will say that the fear of apocalyptic asteroid hit is no longer valid.

I hope that some of you will be like that news.

www.sciencedaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'd say there's a harder problem to overcome.....who's going to draw straws to attach the "tether"?

Even if it's shot at the asteroid from a distance...how fast do those things travel?

Reminds me of the movie about the bunch of guys who landed on one to plant a bomb....crazy eh?

btw...we all know how great NASA is with tethers don't we..

Hopefully we won't need to do this (soon... fingers crossed)

Cheers for the link.

Brilliant. But how do you get the tether to the asteroid, not even counting the part about lassoing it, Monsieur doctoral student? It's not as if there are a fleet of space vehicles you can just fire up to shoot off to Mars or thereabouts to go bronco busting asteroids with.

Really.

I don't see how this is such a ridiculous idea really - about as feasible as nuking an asteroid anyway.

The cable could be made of carbon on a nano scale, the counterweight iss no real problem - that could just be most of the delivery vehicle, NASA has landed at least one lander on a (comet? asteroid? asteroid I think).

As for getting these things to the asteroid, well they could have a few units and launchers built and ready on the Earth - give it a week and they could rush a launch... A better idea could be to have them loitering in an orbit (the Earth.. Moon maybe?) with a booster and they could then be tasked as and when needed.

I'm not saying if the big one was detected in the next 10 years this would be a viable option - but we do need options... And there are plenty of non dangerous asteroids to play with and perfect the system.

And remember that would be very good practice for other things... Docking and rescue efforts for space vehicle mishaps for instance - mining operations to get 'free' minerals just cruising around space... Loads of things.

If you do this, you do not change the orbit, but he is correct in saying that you change the center of the mass. About all you will do is make it wobble in its orbit. I don't know why all these people come up with all these ideas to use some kind of mass to change orbits other than to run it into the body to speed it up or slow it down, anything thing else is a waste of fuel getting it up there.

Come on now this is ATS! We all know that first the Reticulans will shoot our space shuttle down, but the intergalactic Federation will rush in to shoot the Reticulans down...but before they can blow up the asteroid the Greys will rush in and shoot them down, but fear not the smurfs from Cygnus X1 led by Alf will arrive just in time with Mork and Mindy and save the day!

Yeah!

[edit on 20/4/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

We should use this technology to divert them to a Lagrange point instead, and mine them.

A metallic M-type nickel-iron is worth literally trillions in metals.

And the entity controlling it would be effectively in control of global precious-metals markets.

[edit on 4/20/09 by xmotex]