Asymmetrical Information

And just think, who will the world look to if this stuff does happen?

I don't suppose this will get me out of mowing the lawn, but I definitely don't have to clean out the garage. Bring it on!

and worrying about THAT is what's been keeping your from posting?

Once again, Bush's failed environmental policies have come home to roost. Instead of developing a comprehensive anti-asteroid strategy with the assistance of our vital friends in Europe and elsewhere, our selected-not-elected leader has cut taxes for his superwealthy oil company buddies.

His unilateral behavior has led the country in the wrong direction - that is, straight into a giant space rock. Of course, by the time the asteroid destroys the Earth - inevitably leaving working families hardest hit - Bush will be back on his ranch in Texas with his fatcat pals leaving some future administration to clean up the mess.

See you at the Dean Meetup!

This rock hurdling towards us is a wake-up call in the hotel of politics, and next we will read the shocking express check-out bill that has been slipped under our door, detailing the gigantic room service tab (the deficit) we have run up, while the housekeeper (John Ashcroft) keeps pounding on the door, demanding entrance, because we forgot to hang the Do Not Disturb sign out. Distracted by the bill and startled by the housekeeper pounding on the door, we drop the hairdryer into the sink, which drains slowly, due to inadequate maintainence of the hotel's plumbing infrastructure, which results in an electric arc which sets the towels on fire. As smoke fills the room, we will discover that we cannot read the diagram on the door telling us where the stair well is, because we haven't had a prescription eyewear benefit passed by Congress yet. Despairing, we then crawl to the telephone dial "0", and are then informed that all help has been outsourced to India, and therefore will not arrive for at least 24 hours.

This asteroid is a stern reminder of why a second Bush term is necessary. None of the Democrats are adequately strong on what the American public demands: A forceful record on asteroid defense. Imagine how many more asteroids might at this very moment be descending on our vulnerable cities and children if a Democrat were in the Oval Office!

Only by getting tough on asteroids can America be safe from the asteroid scourge; only George W. Bush can deliver that toughness. How many Democrats supported the War on Asteroids? None of them: they are all out of touch with the new post-September-11 astronomy.
--G

Tomorrow's New York Times Headline:

"World to End: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit"

Impact Day's Boston Globe headline:

"Local lawmaker injured; asteroid strike also kills billions"
--G

WSJ headline: "Does the end of the world mean a bear market is around the corner?"

Hmmm! @_@

Y'know, this might be a nice time to see about going a bit faster on developing a decent SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit) vehicle, dusting off the plans for a decent Lunar settlement, amending certain portions of certain UN Treaties to permit human settlement in Space, planning some settlements in L-4 and L-5, and maybe debating about whether we'd rather double or triple the budget of both NASA and the U.S. Space Force. ^_^

After all, the odds are only 89,000 to 1 that anything comes of this so why take unnecessary risks? ^_~

Just remember, no one wanted Star Wars technology when Reagan was around. Maybe it couldn't hit a missle, but a rock this big should be easy!

Condi Rice say that it is not out of the realm of possibility that Saddam may be responsible for the asteroid.

Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying, "I tried to tell you about the unknown unknowns, but you wouldn't listen."

Bush said, "God told me that He was going to stop terrorism and I believe Him."

Clinton said, "It is my hope that the asteroid brings a lasting and just peace to our increasingly interdependent planet."

Even worse news, guys: in 5 million years, the sun is going to run out of hydrogen, swell up into a minor red giant and swallow up Mercury and Venus before charbroiling the earth's surface; then it'll blow most of its matter off like chaff to leave a cold, dim, superdense white dwarf. Life will be like Christmas Eve from a cave in northernmost Finland every day.

Oh, did I say 5 million? It's 5 billion. Cancel alarm.

And remember, we've still got eleven years to practice.

How can we let The Children grow up in a world where asteroids can strike?

Ah, that reminds me, must find where I left my umbrella........

Maybe it couldn't hit a missle, but a rock this big should be easy!

1) [soapbox]It's missile. Boy, it really chaps me when people get the spelling wrong. That said, my IE header says "Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by Missles[sic] and Fire Control."[/soapbox]

2) Hitting a missile with another missile can destroy both missiles. Hitting the earth with a missile only destroys the missile. Hitting a sufficiently big rock with a missile will only destroy the missile.

3) Using a nuke to divert the rock is not only untried, but it requires some rather precise fuzing of the warhead that is also untried. Also, if you consider that this rock will be moving at a rather substantial relative velocity, we'll have to do the diverting rather far away. We don't have anything in stock that goes much outside our atmosphere.

4) Ah, what's the use?

If this story gets much play, I see a whole new area of metaphors opening up for Tom Friedman.

Also, I guess we should start worrying about the 2012 elections, since we want a strong anti-asteroid President in office on March 21, 2014. I guess right now it's between Bruce Willis and Robert Duvall.

Why worry? It seems the rock has already hit:

"The Centre issued the warning about the asteroid after the giant rock was first observed in New Mexico by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Programme."

Unless the rock is expected to make a round trip to New Mexico with return in 2014?

8-)

My Tim Blair Emulation Station reports that a giant asteroid already hit earth, and caused unmeasurable damage in 2002 by producing Bowling for Columbine.

Astroid Strike!!

Damn those unions. The AFL-CIO has already come out in support and has promised to to cross the picket lines.

derf

David,

2. You are overlooking that in such an event it is not necessary to destroy the Asteroid. One need merely divert it. The Newtonian Laws of Physics do not operate for one object and then cease operation for a 2nd merely because the 2nd's an asteroid. ^_~

3. Pragmatically, the fact that something is untried is not a reason to abstain from trying it should a Lucifer's Hammer indeed be heading our way. To grasp for a straw is far better than to just quietly drown, ne? o_O

And if anything the fact that we don't have anything in stock that would go beyond Earth's atmosphere would be a good reason to spend the next seven years *developing* it! If nothing else, the Saturn booster plans that NASA now denies having destroyed might be a good place to start. :P

Kind of takes the edge off that global warming business, huh? And talk about your holes in the ozone layer---oy!

Where's Henny Youngman when we need him?

The place to look is
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/
(the Near Earth Orbit Program)
for 2003 QQ47. The risk has been downgraded
from 1 (where it was earlier today) to 0 on the
Torino scale. See the links for lots of
background.

Will the asteroid be named Wormwood?

Columns in the next few days for the NYT:

Krugman: "Numbers Prove That Impending Asteroid Disaster Due To Bush Lies"

Dowd: "Rummy, Asteroids, and Dry Martinis"

Kristof: "We're Doomed! We Must Cower And Not Offend The Asteroid!"

Nuts.

Typed in a whole treatise on diversion and IE crapped out on me.

Short version:

-Assumed size: 1km.
-Mass, given size: 2e12-4e12 kg.
-Assumed velocity: 20 km/s

Given a reasonable intercept point of geosynchronous orbit (36000 km), we'd have a half hour to divert the object a minimum of 7 million meters. This means we'd have to apply 3.9 km/s of instantaneous delta velocity to the object, which defines the minimum energy transfer requiremnent of 7.8e15 Joules. This is roughly equivalent to all of the energy released in a 2 megaton fusion bomb.

Now, we're not going to get anywhere near all of that energy going into delta velocity. If, for instance, we could implant a nuclear device on the surface of the object (not at all likely in any near-future scenario, because you have to match velocities), then you'd immediately lose at least half of the energy to space. You'd lose another half to cancellation of thrust vectors. Finally, you'd lose some unknown amount due to not getting total efficiency from vaporization of the surface material, and from heating of unvaporized material, and from reflection of the radiation to space. I'm going to arbitrarily set the conversion-to-thrust efficiency at 10%. So, what we'd need is a warhead of roughly 80 MT for a rocky asteroid, if you can plant the device on the surface. Furthermore, I'm going to project that this requirement goes up as some squared function of the detonation distance, so if you could somehow fuze to detonate at 100 meters (which is only 5 milliseconds before impact), you'd lose a larger chunk of the energy to space, and present a much lower energy density to the object, by a factor of at least 1e4.

And now I've exceeded what I can legitimately say about this. Consider also that what I've described is hardly a "giant" rock. There are rocks on the close-approach list that are seven times as big, which makes them roughly 350 times as massive. The math is pretty easy.

The other flipside is I think I was rather generous in assigning ten percent efficiency to the "nudge".

BTW, I read Lucifer's Hammer practically before the ink was even dry on the first printing. My comments regarding destruction of the object were in response to something Gary Anderson said.

Headline in Forbes:

"Doom in 2014, as Alternative Minimum Tax impoverishes millions!"

From the NYTimes Article entitled "Bush Administration Proposes Plan to Destroy Threatening Asteroid" we get the follwoing quotes:

A spokesman of MoveOn.org said: "We are planning a massive worldwide rally against the imperialist Bush plan to destroy the asteroid. We should leave the asteroid alone; I mean, what's it even done to us?"

A spokesman of the Sierra Club said: "We will be filing a lawsuit in Federal District Court to prevent the destruction of the asteroid without a proper EIS having been completed. Asteroids have vary fragile environments that can be seriously harmed if the asteroid is destroyed."

A spokesman of Citizens for Tax Justice said: "We offered a detailed analysis of the Bush plan, which finds that it benefits the rich most, since they will be able to keep all of their wealth after the destruction of the asteroid."

1. I'd be more worried if it was a giant hemorrhoid.

2. I told my mom that years of playing video games wasn't wasted time!

The Quibbler

1. I'd be more worried if it was a giant hemorrhoid.

Improbable. All of them are safely in orbit around Uranus.

The Cato Institute has chimed in as well:

"Had private enterprise not be encumbered under the crushing burden of income taxes, it would have not only funded a more efficient organization that the govenment's Near Earth Object Information Centre, which detected this menace, but also would have developed a market-driven asteroid destroying laser cannon"

that means the is no chance of earth being hit by a asteroid in near future(next 25 years) . can u please answer my question

Which question?

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