Superman will save us.
Where is Bruce Willis when you need him?
excerpts
Matt Genge, a space researcher at Imperial College, London, has calculated that something with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75 days.
Gianmarco Radice, an asteroid expert at Glasgow University, said the best approach would be to land a device to dig into the object. "You could place something on the surface to eject material that would push the asteroid in the other direction."
Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course. In 2005, Nasa's Deep Impact mission tested a different technique when it placed an object into the path of a comet.
Dr Radice said robots could do the job just as well, doing away with the need for a risky and expensive manned mission. Last year Japan showed with its Hayabusa probe that a remote spacecraft can land on an asteroid.
But with manned missions to the moon and possibly Mars on its to-do list again, Nasa is keen to extend the reach of its astronauts.
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Europe has its own efforts to tackle asteroids. Its planned Don Quijote mission will launch two robot spacecraft, one to tilt at a harmless passing space rock, and a second to film the collision and watch for any deviation in the asteroid's path.
'Not if, but when...' Hits and near misses
At Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, scientists monitor all "potentially hazardous asteroids" that might one day end up on a collision course with Earth. So far they number 831. The next close-ish shave - at a mere 17 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth - will be asteroid 2004QD14 on November 29.
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A near miss, when asteroid QW7 came within 4m km of Earth in September 2000, led Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik to declare: "It's not a case of if we will be hit, it is a question of when. Each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery."
Which is probably one among many things that has started the push for space tech. in the last couple of years.
Science education has failed there also.
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people should be armed where they will, with wits and guns. NRA KMA
I would like to volunteer my ex husband for this mission.
Chuck Norris would just have to give it a nasty look.
Years ago in the '70s, there was a project called "Project Icarus" that studied it.
Net result is that if we know long enough in advance, a couple well placed nukes could nudge the orbit.
But we can't be blindsided by something and only have a weeks time to work on it.
John Kerry has already weighed in on the issue with this statement, "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in on a killer asteroid."
Reagan's Star War technology looks pretty tame compared to this. The Dims will not fund this. Homeless people et al are in need now, not 2036. But wait, maybe George Lucas can talk them into it.
I will go if selected! I have no fear of anything, for my LORD will guide and proect me!
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Apophis? Call in Jack O'Neill.
I can't wait for the sudden arrival of "space environmentalists" who will get upset at human beings upsetting the natural order of things out in space akin to dumping toxic chemicals into a river, and blowing asteroids into pieces as target practice akin to something like deer hunting.
What the heck......I'll go.
We need a Terminator to meet the Destroyer!
Apophis the Destroyer- coming soon to a planet near you!
(One bet - the agencies monitoring this thing or theres of similar threat capability will be very nonchalant and dismissive of its threat until the obvious is staring us in the face)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,1660485,00.html
Bush's fault.
Why should the USA save the rest of the world?
We have a better chance if an astronaut "sort of poke one with a stick, but not with a "50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion"