[meteorite-list] 'Paul Revere' Scientist Suggests Unusual Asteroid Warning System

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:27:47 2004
Message-ID: <200311112144.NAA29555_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1103/asteroid_warning_system.asp

'Paul Revere' scientist suggests unusual asteroid warning system
Jewish World Review
November 2003

Just last month, a meteorite slammed into a village in eastern India.

Eleven people were injured and two homes were destroyed by
fire.

Perhaps more unsettling, in 1908, a space rock screamed into
Earth's atmosphere, exploding in the sky over a remote Siberian
forest with a force greater than a 10-megaton nuclear blast.

Fires started, wildlife perished and trees fell for miles in every
direction.

These days, efforts underway to detect comets and asteroids on
a potential collision course with Earth include an unassuming
scientist from Ridgewood, N.J., with an idea for a better method.

William A. Hoffman III doesn't have a company, or investors for
his detection system, called "Looking out for you." But he
received a patent (U.S. No. 6,452,538), and some distinguished
astronomers say his idea is intriguing.

Hoffman wants to place telescopes on the outer-space side of
telecommunications satellites where they can continuously scan
the heavens, free from cloud cover that often hampers earthbound
telescopes, to look for what astronomers call NEOs, or Near
Earth Objects.

The data would beam down to a ground station and be sent - for
a fee - to schools or institutions or individuals who could use it
to pinpoint the rocks' orbit.

"I can't speak for NASA, but personally I think it's a great idea if
he can make it work," said Dan Mazenek, an aerospace engineer based at NASA's
Langley Research Center and director of a study on how best to search for large comets
and asteroids that might strike Earth.

"If he can get the money to put telescopes up there then I'm interested in the results,"
said Lucy McFadden.

McFadden was one of thirteen scientists and researchers who signed an open letter to
Congress in July warning of the threat from space and urging the government to invest
in some kind of system to help guard against a significant hit.

Hoffman is an unimposing man with a polite, professorial manner who acknowledges
with good humor that many people might find his idea sort of, well, pie in the sky. And
he's also realistic enough to know he'll have to make a lot of noise to get any investors
interested.

"If I have to fund it myself it's not going to happen at all," he said.

He believes colleges and universities without an astronomy program might be willing to
pay for the telescope data.

And individuals could access it via the Internet, where subscription fees and advertising
might bring in revenue.

"There are lots and lots of people that would buy into the idea of helping protect the
Earth by signing onto a program like this," said Kelly Beatty, executive editor of Sky &
Telescope magazine. Whether they would pay for the privilege is another question, he
added.

Beatty and others also raised numerous questions about technical aspects of Hoffman's
idea.

Would the telecommunications companies that own the satellites agree to the plan?

Would cosmic rays interfere with the images?

How exactly would the raw data be processed into pictures of the heavens?

And perhaps the biggest issue: cost.

"We always ask, could this be accomplished from the ground?" said Neil deGrasse
Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American
Museum of Natural History. He was skeptical of Hoffman's plan, he said, because "it's
more expensive to do anything in space."

But Tyson, who also signed the July letter to Congress, agreed there was a need to get
something in place to identify dangerous space rocks.

"There is no organized effort to monitor the sky continuously," he said.

Hoffman, a graduate of Wayne High School who attended the Air Force Academy and
received his doctorate in organic chemistry from Stevens Institute, acknowledged the
challenges but welcomed any scrutiny.

"The more people that start paying attention to this idea, the more likely it's all going to
work," said Hoffman, who spent his career working for a number of chemical companies
including Union Carbide before becoming a chemical industry consultant.

Hoffman said the beauty of his early warning system is its relatively low cost.

He estimates putting the first telescope up might fall in the range of $2 million to $3
million, much of which would pay for the extensive testing needed to make sure the
piggybacked telescope wouldn't interfere with the satellite's primary job of sending
phone or TV signals down to earth.

The communications satellites are perfect, he said, because they are geo-stationary.
That is, they stay in one spot, moving as the earth moves so the telescopes would be
positioned around the planet and could watch wide areas of space.

"You're watching all the time; you're seeing a movie of the stars," said Hoffman.

As for actually seeing his dream become real, Hoffman acknowledges many hurdles.

"Somebody's got to agree that it can go on their satellite and somebody's going to be
involved in the collection and distribution of the data," he said.

Several satellite operators, including PanAmSat and Loral Skynet, couldn't find anyone
to comment on Hoffman's plan.

Hoffman said he approached a number of large corporations, including Disney, Time
Warner, and Kodak, to gauge their interest.

The corporate interest hasn't exactly been high, he admits, although he's contacting
some companies again in light of the scientists' July letter to Congress.

The 58-year-old amateur astronomer also said that although he'd enjoy reaping
financial benefits from his project, he wouldn't mind if the government paid him
something nominal for his patent if they promised to put the system in place.

Astronomers point to the 1994 collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter as
an example of the force and devastation that can occur when one of a swarm of comets
and asteroids in our solar system slams into a planet.

The massive blast created a dust cloud larger than Earth itself.

"You don't want to say `Gee, we missed that one,'" said Hoffman.
Received on Tue 11 Nov 2003 04:44:25 PM PST