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United Nations to Adopt Asteroid Defense Plan

57 points by Libertatea 13y ago

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
This is how the International Fleet begins. First asteroids, next Buggers.
- tgb 13y ago
  I was more thinking about the opening of "Rendezvous with Rama": "Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947, yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly invented uranium bomb. In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the lst random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twety-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice. The human race had spread from pole to pole and so, inevitably, at 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer fo the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke. Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussion so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones."
  - ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
    Rama and "Hammer of the Gods" both were evoked for me during the Chelyabinsk event. Another world-shattering celestial event that could have altered human history if only it's million year journey had been off by just a few seconds.
Avalaxy 13y ago
Finally! It always frustrated me that this threat was never taken very serious, even though it could wipe out humanity.
- swalsh 13y ago
  Talking out of my ass here, but I'd assume the problem is one of resources. While unemployment may be high, demand for "smart" people (which you'd need to work on anti-human threats) is way to high. Combine that with technological feasibility, and the resources could probably have been spent elsewhere better. Today though, the technology is probably "common" (relatively speaking) enough to spend some resources on the problem.
- BillyMaize 13y ago
  Considering the fact that in billions of years of evolution only a few meteors have caused mass extinctions I have always been confident that we will not just happen to live in a time when one of the big ones hit. Human civilization has only existed for a very short time and I think it really would be like winning the lottery to get hit by a civilization ending meteor even in the next 10,000 years (although I'm no expert in the topic, simply looking at Earth's past).
ekianjo 13y ago
This is a bit ridiculous, knowing that the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat such as conflicts killing tons of unarmed civilians, now who seriously expects them to have anything robust in place to protect the whole planet? Besides, it does not matter if "NASA has not been appointed" to deal with this - the day we notice a large object, it's pretty obvious one country or organization, somewhere, is going to try something about it if it means human race survival. There's no need for the UN at that level. Moreover, the article mentions colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid to deflect is orbit, but this is actually not very efficient. There has already been other propositions such as orbiting a small spacecraft around a large asteroid to deflect its orbit in a much more effective way over time.
- dukerutledge 13y ago
  Any opportunity for international cooperation should be taken, even if you believe it is frivolous.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    International cooperation already exists, and outside of the UN scope as well.
- fintler 13y ago
  There has already been other propositions such as orbiting a small spacecraft around a large asteroid to deflect its orbit in a much more effective way over time. Any citations on why this is more effective? I don't think they're guessing on how to mitagate. The US has spent some effort to simulate exactly how to get rid of asteroids. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOcNbAV6SiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOcNbAV6SiI
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > Any citations on why this is more effective? From what I remember, it's because you change the center of gravity of the whole system, not just once at impact, but constantly since it continues orbiting around it.
oleganza 13y ago
Nice way to allocate money extracted from taxpayers. Asteroids almost never visibly hit Earth, it's impossible to seriously protect yourself when it hits you or your neighbor, and it will sure take hundreds of billions of dollars to build some space equipment to "deflect" asteroids. It's way more profitable than the war with mythical terror. Suggestion for UN, Obama or pretty much any government: go with your awesome idea on Kickstarter and spend your donations on presentation, video, blueprints, prototypes etc. If people like it, they'll send you money to implement it. If they don't, then please shove your rifles down your totalitarian ass instead of pointing them at the peaceful citizens. Edit: downvoters are invited to explain how exactly UN earns money. Who has the freedom to give or not give money to UN based on its performance and where does this money come from?
- thesis 13y ago
  I didn't down vote you. Nor do I think people are down voting you because of what you said in your edit (about where the UN gets their money). I think you're being down voted because you said Asteroids almost never visibly hit Earth. It might be true as far as extinction events, but when (not IF) it does happen and it's the right size we'll all vanish. IMO it's prudent to at least have these discussions and have something in place. If the UN is capable of the undertaking is a different story.
- rwallace 13y ago
  If we see it coming in time, deflecting an asteroid requires a nuclear bomb mounted on a rocket of the kind we use for launching space probes; not petty cash, but nowhere near hundreds of billions of dollars either. The "if we see it coming in time" part is the key.
davidw 13y ago
Apparently, a few reporters were able to lay their hands on some early sketches of what the system may look like, which had previously been under wraps due to the obvious potential for offensive warfare, rather than just asteroid defense: http://bit.ly/VmUtoj http://bit.ly/VmUtoj Edit: I guess you had to be born before 1980 to get it.
- eksith 13y ago
  I'm early 80's, while I get the cheek ;) I can't see that working on a serious level. Neil de Grasse Tyson has a great view on this problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o Edit: And more detail on methods that may actually work... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc
uglycoyote 13y ago
Interesting to do a thought experiment on what it would have been like if humanity had known that the Russian meteor was coming a few months in advance. maybe they would have said there is a 20 percent chance of it coming down and causing major death and destruction. governments would have invested millions in trying to stop it. will smith would have been sent up in a rocket to stop it. everyone would have had big parties and said their last goodbyes.
- jccooper 13y ago
  Couple months? You could maybe track it and predict a large impact zone, and evacuate if needed. No chance to move it; nobody has a rocket that can be ready in that timeframe, much less a vehicle to intercept and move the rock. And even if you could, it was such a small rock that it's probably cheaper to let it hit and replace everything on the ground. For launch alone: F9 is $54M, Proton $72M, and SLS $1.5B (should it ever exist). There's not much the Chelyabinsk could have hit that would cost as much as trying to stop it. Even pretty big rocks have to get lucky to cause much damage, as sparse as development is, but since you can't tell where exactly they will hit until quite late, it may be better to move any sufficiently large Earth-interceptor to avoid the possibility of an unlucky hit.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
The United Nations is not a world government. Please keep repeating this until it sinks in. It's a treaty organization designed to prevent another world war. As such, it's worked kinda sorta okay. Not great, but you could argue that it worked, so that's something. It's also provided somewhat of a permanent diplomatic forum, that's pretty good too. There are a lot of technical reasons why the UN is not a world government and can never be. The biggest is that there is no representation of the actual people being governed there. Because it's a treaty organization, it just has the representation of the world governments. Unfortunately, we live in a world where your government's interests and your own do not always align very well at all. It's also bound by treaties. Treaties have a tendency to be interpreted all sorts of ways by the various parties involved. The more parties, the more room for interpretation there is. There's also no feedback loop for the possibility that they might do something wrong. There's no independent judiciary, there's no rule of law. I could go on, but it should be obvious. The UN isn't a world government. Folks can pretend that it is, and the UN itself can labor under the illusion that it is, but structurally it isn't made to be one. So sure, let WHO do it's thing and let various nations pitch in to put those little blue helmets on guys to try to prevent conflict. Lots of good things for the UN to do that kind of fall under the "treaty org to prevent future world wars". But asteroid defense? Not even close. Not unless there's a chance the Russians might start lobbing asteroids at the US or something.
- andrewfong 13y ago
  I'm not sure why, if the WHO falls under the UN's mandate, that asteroid defense wouldn't. They're both collective efforts to monitor and combat things that aren't human. Moreover, there are obvious military applications for certain asteroid defense techniques. For example, if the U.S. was planning a Bruce Willis-style nukes-in-space approach to deflecting an asteroid, I guarantee the Russians would care (and vice versa).
  - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
    I think there are a lot of things the UN ends up doing simply because it provides a somewhat permanent diplomatic forum for nations of the world. That's fine. I'm not saying that the UN won't end up handling asteroid defense, or various other world-government-ish things. I'm saying it wasn't designed to do so. Big difference. I don't know how far you stretch the intent and structure before something breaks. If I had to bet, that's a long way away. But still, people should be aware of what's going on. The results you get from UN programs are not always going to be what you expect, and there's good reasons for that. Or to put differently, if the UN evolves into doing something for everybody, it stands a significant risk of losing focus on its initial mission. Over the next few decades, the organization could easily become a destabilizing force in the world instead of a stabilizing one. There's no corrective action to tell the UN that it's a victim of scope creep, so they could decide to try to do dang near anything, whether it's a good idea, whether the tools exist, whether it's just some half-baked crackpot idea, or whether it's just an elaborate bribery scheme. There's no feedback loop -- one of my initial points. Anything you can imagine, you can imagine the UN doing. That's not a recipe for a healthy future for the world.
Thiz 13y ago
I'm all for private solutions. Leave my money in my pockets. If there are no solutions, so what? face it like a man. If you're so scared to die, then you'll donate YOUR own money. Not mine.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  Private solutions? You think that Asteroid defence has a business plan? How would a private solution generate a profit?
  - dnautics 13y ago
    private != profit.
    - andyjohnson0 13y ago
      Agreed. But given the enormous expense involved in constructing a private Asteroid defence system, what would the motivation be for the private organisation(s) involved?
      - dnautics 13y ago
        i don't know. Living to see another day? And long before the threat of impact - feeling good about contributing to something positive for the Earth? I don't understand this obsession with the neoliberal idea that money is the sole driving motivation for everyone in the world - and I'm worried that it's going to be a self-fulfilling model. Just FYI, there already is a private foundation that is trying to do this very thing: http://b612foundation.org/ http://b612foundation.org/
        nknighthb 13y ago
        Then I'll do nothing, because I know I'll get the benefit of someone else spending their own money to save me, no matter what I do. But certainly I'll not expend my own money or effort to save the world, because I definitely don't want to spend it saving you and your ilk.
officemonkey 13y ago
>International Asteroid Warning Group” for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks. If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. I suggest the "U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space" be immediately renamed to the "Civil Coordinated Committee on Peaceful Outer Space" (AKA C3POs.)
lukifer 13y ago
See also: Ed Lu's excellent Long Now seminar. http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jun/18/anthropocene-astronomy-thwarting-dangerous-asteroids-begins-finding-them/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jun/18/anthropocene-astron... Short version: Stopping an asteroid is more about early detection than anything else.
1337biz 13y ago
I'm sure they are going to send a strongly worded letter to those Aliens just a few month after they have arrive. Just about in time as they are right now only a few month away from condemning the Obama administration for the NSA spy program.
rogerthis 13y ago
Please, close the UN.

57 points by Libertatea 13y ago

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago

This is how the International Fleet begins. First asteroids, next Buggers.

tgb 13y ago
I was more thinking about the opening of "Rendezvous with Rama": "Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947, yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly invented uranium bomb. In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the lst random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twety-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice. The human race had spread from pole to pole and so, inevitably, at 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer fo the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke. Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussion so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones."
- ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
  Rama and "Hammer of the Gods" both were evoked for me during the Chelyabinsk event. Another world-shattering celestial event that could have altered human history if only it's million year journey had been off by just a few seconds.

Avalaxy 13y ago

Finally! It always frustrated me that this threat was never taken very serious, even though it could wipe out humanity.

swalsh 13y ago
Talking out of my ass here, but I'd assume the problem is one of resources. While unemployment may be high, demand for "smart" people (which you'd need to work on anti-human threats) is way to high. Combine that with technological feasibility, and the resources could probably have been spent elsewhere better. Today though, the technology is probably "common" (relatively speaking) enough to spend some resources on the problem.
BillyMaize 13y ago
Considering the fact that in billions of years of evolution only a few meteors have caused mass extinctions I have always been confident that we will not just happen to live in a time when one of the big ones hit. Human civilization has only existed for a very short time and I think it really would be like winning the lottery to get hit by a civilization ending meteor even in the next 10,000 years (although I'm no expert in the topic, simply looking at Earth's past).

ekianjo 13y ago

This is a bit ridiculous, knowing that the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat such as conflicts killing tons of unarmed civilians, now who seriously expects them to have anything robust in place to protect the whole planet? Besides, it does not matter if "NASA has not been appointed" to deal with this - the day we notice a large object, it's pretty obvious one country or organization, somewhere, is going to try something about it if it means human race survival. There's no need for the UN at that level. Moreover, the article mentions colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid to deflect is orbit, but this is actually not very efficient. There has already been other propositions such as orbiting a small spacecraft around a large asteroid to deflect its orbit in a much more effective way over time.

dukerutledge 13y ago
Any opportunity for international cooperation should be taken, even if you believe it is frivolous.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  International cooperation already exists, and outside of the UN scope as well.
fintler 13y ago
There has already been other propositions such as orbiting a small spacecraft around a large asteroid to deflect its orbit in a much more effective way over time. Any citations on why this is more effective? I don't think they're guessing on how to mitagate. The US has spent some effort to simulate exactly how to get rid of asteroids. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOcNbAV6SiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOcNbAV6SiI
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > Any citations on why this is more effective? From what I remember, it's because you change the center of gravity of the whole system, not just once at impact, but constantly since it continues orbiting around it.

oleganza 13y ago

Nice way to allocate money extracted from taxpayers. Asteroids almost never visibly hit Earth, it's impossible to seriously protect yourself when it hits you or your neighbor, and it will sure take hundreds of billions of dollars to build some space equipment to "deflect" asteroids. It's way more profitable than the war with mythical terror. Suggestion for UN, Obama or pretty much any government: go with your awesome idea on Kickstarter and spend your donations on presentation, video, blueprints, prototypes etc. If people like it, they'll send you money to implement it. If they don't, then please shove your rifles down your totalitarian ass instead of pointing them at the peaceful citizens. Edit: downvoters are invited to explain how exactly UN earns money. Who has the freedom to give or not give money to UN based on its performance and where does this money come from?

thesis 13y ago
I didn't down vote you. Nor do I think people are down voting you because of what you said in your edit (about where the UN gets their money). I think you're being down voted because you said Asteroids almost never visibly hit Earth. It might be true as far as extinction events, but when (not IF) it does happen and it's the right size we'll all vanish. IMO it's prudent to at least have these discussions and have something in place. If the UN is capable of the undertaking is a different story.
rwallace 13y ago
If we see it coming in time, deflecting an asteroid requires a nuclear bomb mounted on a rocket of the kind we use for launching space probes; not petty cash, but nowhere near hundreds of billions of dollars either. The "if we see it coming in time" part is the key.

davidw 13y ago

Apparently, a few reporters were able to lay their hands on some early sketches of what the system may look like, which had previously been under wraps due to the obvious potential for offensive warfare, rather than just asteroid defense: http://bit.ly/VmUtoj http://bit.ly/VmUtoj Edit: I guess you had to be born before 1980 to get it.

eksith 13y ago
I'm early 80's, while I get the cheek ;) I can't see that working on a serious level. Neil de Grasse Tyson has a great view on this problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o Edit: And more detail on methods that may actually work... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc

uglycoyote 13y ago

Interesting to do a thought experiment on what it would have been like if humanity had known that the Russian meteor was coming a few months in advance. maybe they would have said there is a 20 percent chance of it coming down and causing major death and destruction. governments would have invested millions in trying to stop it. will smith would have been sent up in a rocket to stop it. everyone would have had big parties and said their last goodbyes.

jccooper 13y ago
Couple months? You could maybe track it and predict a large impact zone, and evacuate if needed. No chance to move it; nobody has a rocket that can be ready in that timeframe, much less a vehicle to intercept and move the rock. And even if you could, it was such a small rock that it's probably cheaper to let it hit and replace everything on the ground. For launch alone: F9 is $54M, Proton $72M, and SLS $1.5B (should it ever exist). There's not much the Chelyabinsk could have hit that would cost as much as trying to stop it. Even pretty big rocks have to get lucky to cause much damage, as sparse as development is, but since you can't tell where exactly they will hit until quite late, it may be better to move any sufficiently large Earth-interceptor to avoid the possibility of an unlucky hit.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

The United Nations is not a world government. Please keep repeating this until it sinks in. It's a treaty organization designed to prevent another world war. As such, it's worked kinda sorta okay. Not great, but you could argue that it worked, so that's something. It's also provided somewhat of a permanent diplomatic forum, that's pretty good too. There are a lot of technical reasons why the UN is not a world government and can never be. The biggest is that there is no representation of the actual people being governed there. Because it's a treaty organization, it just has the representation of the world governments. Unfortunately, we live in a world where your government's interests and your own do not always align very well at all. It's also bound by treaties. Treaties have a tendency to be interpreted all sorts of ways by the various parties involved. The more parties, the more room for interpretation there is. There's also no feedback loop for the possibility that they might do something wrong. There's no independent judiciary, there's no rule of law. I could go on, but it should be obvious. The UN isn't a world government. Folks can pretend that it is, and the UN itself can labor under the illusion that it is, but structurally it isn't made to be one. So sure, let WHO do it's thing and let various nations pitch in to put those little blue helmets on guys to try to prevent conflict. Lots of good things for the UN to do that kind of fall under the "treaty org to prevent future world wars". But asteroid defense? Not even close. Not unless there's a chance the Russians might start lobbing asteroids at the US or something.

andrewfong 13y ago
I'm not sure why, if the WHO falls under the UN's mandate, that asteroid defense wouldn't. They're both collective efforts to monitor and combat things that aren't human. Moreover, there are obvious military applications for certain asteroid defense techniques. For example, if the U.S. was planning a Bruce Willis-style nukes-in-space approach to deflecting an asteroid, I guarantee the Russians would care (and vice versa).
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  I think there are a lot of things the UN ends up doing simply because it provides a somewhat permanent diplomatic forum for nations of the world. That's fine. I'm not saying that the UN won't end up handling asteroid defense, or various other world-government-ish things. I'm saying it wasn't designed to do so. Big difference. I don't know how far you stretch the intent and structure before something breaks. If I had to bet, that's a long way away. But still, people should be aware of what's going on. The results you get from UN programs are not always going to be what you expect, and there's good reasons for that. Or to put differently, if the UN evolves into doing something for everybody, it stands a significant risk of losing focus on its initial mission. Over the next few decades, the organization could easily become a destabilizing force in the world instead of a stabilizing one. There's no corrective action to tell the UN that it's a victim of scope creep, so they could decide to try to do dang near anything, whether it's a good idea, whether the tools exist, whether it's just some half-baked crackpot idea, or whether it's just an elaborate bribery scheme. There's no feedback loop -- one of my initial points. Anything you can imagine, you can imagine the UN doing. That's not a recipe for a healthy future for the world.

Thiz 13y ago

I'm all for private solutions. Leave my money in my pockets. If there are no solutions, so what? face it like a man. If you're so scared to die, then you'll donate YOUR own money. Not mine.

andyjohnson0 13y ago
Private solutions? You think that Asteroid defence has a business plan? How would a private solution generate a profit?
- dnautics 13y ago
  private != profit.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    Agreed. But given the enormous expense involved in constructing a private Asteroid defence system, what would the motivation be for the private organisation(s) involved?
    - dnautics 13y ago
      i don't know. Living to see another day? And long before the threat of impact - feeling good about contributing to something positive for the Earth? I don't understand this obsession with the neoliberal idea that money is the sole driving motivation for everyone in the world - and I'm worried that it's going to be a self-fulfilling model. Just FYI, there already is a private foundation that is trying to do this very thing: http://b612foundation.org/ http://b612foundation.org/
      - nknighthb 13y ago
        Then I'll do nothing, because I know I'll get the benefit of someone else spending their own money to save me, no matter what I do. But certainly I'll not expend my own money or effort to save the world, because I definitely don't want to spend it saving you and your ilk.

officemonkey 13y ago

>International Asteroid Warning Group” for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks. If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. I suggest the "U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space" be immediately renamed to the "Civil Coordinated Committee on Peaceful Outer Space" (AKA C3POs.)

lukifer 13y ago

See also: Ed Lu's excellent Long Now seminar. http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jun/18/anthropocene-astronomy-thwarting-dangerous-asteroids-begins-finding-them/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jun/18/anthropocene-astron... Short version: Stopping an asteroid is more about early detection than anything else.

1337biz 13y ago

I'm sure they are going to send a strongly worded letter to those Aliens just a few month after they have arrive. Just about in time as they are right now only a few month away from condemning the Obama administration for the NSA spy program.

rogerthis 13y ago

Please, close the UN.