[meteorite-list] Group Seeks To Zap Asteroids

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:34 2004
Message-ID: <200310221942.MAA15333_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1714277,00.html

Group seeks to zap asteroids
By Diedtra Henderson
Denver Post
October 22, 2003

Hulking masses of rock lurk outside our solar system, threatening to
obliterate cities, spawn massive tsunamis and end civilization, were
they to strike Earth.

While the odds are tiny, the devastation such killer asteroids could
cause lurches off the scale of human imagination.

What to do?

Tow the thugs safely out of harm's way, says a coalition of
scientists that includes a Boulder- based researcher.

The team makes the case for its tugboat theory of protecting
Earth's inhabitants in next month's issue of Scientific
American.

An asteroid "with a diameter bigger than 1 kilometer would strike Earth
with the energy equivalent of 100,000 megatons of TNT, far greater than the
combined energy of all the nuclear weapons in existence," wrote the
authors, led by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart. "Impacts of this size and
larger have the potential to wipe out human civilization, and there is a
chance of perhaps one in 5,000 that such a strike will occur in this
century."

For as little as $1 billion, technology already in the works for upcoming
NASA missions could be cobbled together for a craft that would jet into
space, attach itself to a killer rock, and scoot the asteroid off its
rendezvous path with Earth.

The project would start with just a few million dollars in private funding to
create a detailed study. That project would include enough specifics for
NASA to take the tug concept seriously enough to fund the bulk of
the $1 billion price tag for a 2015 demonstration mission.

"At the moment, a mission of this sort is not on NASA's drawing boards. Or
the European Space Agency. Or any other space agency," said Clark
Chapman, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in
Boulder who is part of the B612 Foundation. "A number of people have
tried to get NASA, in particular, interested for some years about
dealing with the impact hazard."

Apart from spending $3 million a year finding and cataloging potentially
killer rocks, NASA hasn't funded such prevention efforts.

Scientific American editors chide the space agency for its
"penny-wise, planet-foolish" stance. "(K)iller rocks are a fact
of life on our planet. Doubters can ask the dinosaurs for their
opinion," wrote the editors in a perspective piece.

Most space debris that rains down on Earth is as small as
grains of rice. It burns with pretty sparks as shooting stars. But
Earth - like the Moon, Mercury and Mars - has been battered
by hulking asteroids as well. In Earth's early history, at least
four asteroid impacts were sizable enough to cause mass
extinction.

Smaller, far-flung rocks are just as worrisome. The Eltanin
Impact event, a crash into the southern Pacific Ocean 2 million
years ago, was less than half the size of the object that ended
the Age of Dinosaurs.

"Had that impact occurred a few hours earlier, it would have
been in southern Africa and wiped out," man's ancestors, said
Gary Byerly, a geology professor at Louisiana State University.
"So, timing and location are just as important as size in trying
to understand the effects of impacts."

The B612 Foundation, named after an asteroid made famous in
"The Little Prince," has created snazzy graphics, snagged
501C3 status for tax-free donations and will appear in an
upcoming CBC/BBC documentary.

Chapman said the public response spans the gamut.

Some, more concerned about down-to-Earth risks, say it's
"completely ridiculous" to worry about odds that can rise to one
in a million. Others recognize such rare strikes imperil all of
human civilization.

"If you think about the effect that 9/11 had on our nation and on
the world, that was merely 3,000 people and a few buildings,"
he said. "The same number of people die on the nation's
highways in the month of September as died in the World Trade
Center, yet the impact on society was totally enormous.

"So, it doesn't necessarily take a civilization-destroying
asteroid to have a profound effect."
Received on Wed 22 Oct 2003 03:42:17 PM PDT