What could go wrong?
20 Oct 2013 23:56:14 UTC
Topic 197227
(moderation:
On CNN today it was announced that NASA is planning to put a satellite around the moon, as soon as they find the appropriate asteroid to use.
Might take some time as they have to find the perfect asteroid; it has to be as big as about 3 pick-up trucks to fit in the net used to capture it, and squeeze it to stop its rotation before it's put into orbit around the (poor) moon.
I wonder if it could happen that the astroid is stubborn and won't stop rotating, but instead continues rotating with the net-thingy attached, fying around it forever into deep space. Can't you just see the bewildered aliens wondering what the hell those dumb earthlings are up to now as it whizzes by their ships?
Bottoms up..
What could go wrong?
)
Doesn't seem to make any sense to me...
All it takes is the Satellite to orbit the moon - it shouldn't need an asteroid to piggy-back on (??!)
That would be this project,
)
That would be this project, also outlined here ?
Well, like most space missions : a million things could go wrong I guess. Seems the idea is to send an unmanned craft to snag a nearby asteroid, when joined ( catch the rock in a net ) null the rotations, then propel both to the moon and insert into an orbit around that. Later on send astronauts out to check it out ie. a manned mission to low lunar orbit.
Now it's not my tax money, but I'd be worried about this bit : "THIS SEGMENT TIMELINE NOTIONAL- SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS MISSION CONCEPT EVOLVES". Is this just NASA inventing 'something to do', riding on the back of the 'motherhood and apple pie' concept of protecting the planet ? How does doing any of the above actually protect life here on Earth ? In particular snagging a light rock with low delta-v relative to Earth is nowhere near the same problem as dealing with a dinosaur killer. While I appreciate that one has to have proof-of-concept type small steps, there is a real risk of confusion here. People might actually think an Armageddon ( the movie ) mission is being tested. The momentum of an ecosystem splatting object ( by definition ) is enormous compared to any capability we are likely to have with current technologies ( even nuclear ).
Putting that caveat aside, this type of stuff does generate spin-offs ( varying degree of utility ) and maybe unexpected windfalls.
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) If for nothing other than a laugh here's a great blog stoush b/w two fairly knowledgeable posters on the up and downs of the mission mechanics. Both make good technical points but alas they suffer from different assumptions, which ( typically for online exchanges b/w effective strangers ) they only discover long after they have upset and offset each other. And so they have been visited by the Four Horsemen of Online Apocalypse : Specious Argument, Intransigence, Quoting-itis and Insult. I also found an NYT article describing the political collision that is predating any actuality.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
There's a website somewhere,
)
There's a website somewhere, if I get a chance will look it up, but I read where the idea of capturing an asteroid is President Obama's idea.
They were to be looking for one to mount, see what it's made of, maybe put some instruments on it, change its course, have fun with it, like a bunch of kids.
I watch History 2 pretty often, and the stuff that's happened to this poor planet makes me wonder how it's still here. Read all of Sitchen's stuff and believe a big part of it, but one thing that bewilders me is that the people of Neburu (sp)didn't bother catching asteroids, so maybe we should scrap that idea. Maybe some giant spaceship will yell out "who took my pet asteroid?" and will be mad as hell. The other thing that bothers me about evolutin is why in the world this species had to trade in beautiful feathers and fur for brains that do nothing that think of war.
RE: .... this species had
)
Amen to that. IMHO : the biggest risk from Apocalypse Hypothesis is the parties trading blows over it. History is littered with ridiculous casus belli and we tend to suffer from the arrogance of the contemporary view ie. we won't be as dumb & as gullible as the last lot was. But mutatis mutandis we too can't get outside of our own heads often enough to reflect .....
[ Human neurology has good innate discriminatory powers - machinery for risk prediction - but in the absence of immediate real threat we habitually invent long-odds scenarios. Alas it is true that the biggest risk to a human being is another human being, so you can see where that inevitably goes. ]
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) For instance : many don't realise that their 'intelligence' is actually rather emotionally weighted, and somewhat irrespective of factual content. See insurance advertising for the peak performance of this approach : in reality you are offering up short-odds money on a long-odds prospect but you think it is the inverse.
( edit ) I ought add that the underlying - indeed barely spoken of premise - for this mission is NOT that asteroids have something unusual to offer, BUT that the material is already up there ie. the energy/fiscal cost of pumping the same stuff from Earth's surface into higher orbit ( the Moon is a reasonable target ) doesn't have to be paid. So you get for free the sum of the kinetic/potential energy of the chosen asteroid .... how you spend that is another matter. What is 'annoying' is that in a conservative system ( no 'friction' to speak of ) going up and down the ladder both cost. Hence one needs to attempt corralling of an asteroid 'high up' in a manner that is less energy intensive than boosting the same mass of material from below. Exactly how energy intensive is the subtlety. One can utilise - via clever timing - the energy/momentum of large celestial bodies ( ie. pinch a bit of it ) to achieve our ends. This is why there is mention of selecting near Earth asteroids with existing retrograde motion.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal