Astronaut Asks Congress to Investigate Threatening Asteroid

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A former NASA astronaut will call on the U.S. Congress to evaluate an asteroid with a small chance of hitting Earth in 2036 and suggest lawmakers consider a space mission to monitor the object, SPACE.com has learned.

Russell Schweickart arrives here today to make his case. He'll also ask Congress to assign to a government agency the responsibility of protecting the public from space rocks.

The call to action stems from an orbiting hunk of stone that for a few days around Christmas had scientists on the edges of their seats.

The asteroid, named 2004 MN4, was found last year. It orbits the Sun but crosses the path of Earth. In December, preliminary observations showed it might strike in 2029, according to NASA scientists. It briefly had the highest odds ever assigned to a possible collision. Further investigation ruled out the 2029 impact scenario, but scientists cannot yet rule out an impact in 2036.

more: http://space.com/news/050519_asteroid_mission.html

Paging Liv Tyler ... paging Liv Tyler ...

They'll approve money for research inside a week!

:crazy:

Then they'll go lynch it and take away all it's rights.

Nuke it!

if you convince them its a NK outpost, then they'll do nothing at all. you know this administration's 'kid gloves' treatment of NK...

Can't wait to see how Congress responds.

This may be just what we need though. The rapture ready types will be eating this up and obsessing over Revelations...

for star wars.

I'm not saying...

But if they can make us now afraid of a rocks... we are truly ****ed.

I really tend to think it's bullshit... but she was the assistant of Werner Von Braun, the father of the American space programme. And she says he warned her before he died in the 70s: they are going to get weapons in space. First, they are going to use "rogue nations" in the third world as a threat. Then they would use terrorists. Then they would use asteroids. And then, finally, they would use aliens.

Can't you just picture it? "You're either with us or you're with the aliens".

Since he helped design the first one. Of course, it had to be fired into space, then fell in Gravity's Rainbow....

weird-ass convenient coincidences. Kinda stretches credulity, don't it?

:rofl:

:shrug:

Not exactly worth getting too excited about it this time either.

As for weapons in space, I'm not too sure how you could "shoot down" an incoming asteroid. I'm no scientist, but it seems that anything we could do to *safely* change the path of an asteroid would be pretty useless as a weapon.

But I'm bettin the longshot gets a lot of press in the coming months.

Hardware in space is a good way to funnel money to contrators. Hard to audit programs like that.

A small nuke detonated near an inbound asteroid could provide enough of a push to alter its course.

An orbiting satellite with a payload of nukes that can be independently targeted comes to mind. If you can build that, you probably also have the technology to build satellites that carry bunker busters instead that hit targets at hypersonic speeds. BAM, the long-arm of US foreign policy strikes again.

This is one thing whose course you don't want to change until all the facts are in. I'll take 10,000 to 1.

Something of this size can be easily destroyed by moderate-sized nuclear weapons.

:shrug:

The only thing that would hit an asteroid from a nuke would be radiation.

Even if you hit the rock with the bomb and it turns into pebbles, then you have a giant shotgun.

because..when the facts are in on danger it is too late.

Still - if they can 'aim their guns', 'sublimate their testosterone', by scapegoating a rock .. perhaps it will be less dangerous for humanity. Except for the part where all that money goes into fighting a rock instead of foodstamps.

Hey - wait a second... Canada is one big rock...

. . . in person.

Any suggestions as to name and state? :evilgrin:

The current sorry status of manned US space flight and the lack of our ability to do anything about an incoming asteroid is due almost entirely to each and every incumbent Banana Republican sitting in Congress and in the Senate and to the ineptitude of Gee Dubya's Duck Soup Posse.

A country with long coastlines and very large numbers of people living near those coastlines cannot afford to ignore the consequences of an asteroid impact, particularly one that hits offshore.

:shrug:

week or two ago they announced it.

Well I guess in a way it IS a WMD.

Get to it, super troopers!

Like NK OBL is not a high proority target for the US gov.

seriously.

I read that as
"Astronaut Asks Congress to Investigate Threatening A steroid"

:crazy:

On a more serious note, "monitoring it" is all very well but when
it continues to "ask Congress to assign to a government agency the
responsibility of protecting the public from space rocks" ... no ...

I can't see this being a good thing:
1) it gives an excuse to put even more (and bigger) weapons in space
2) there is no point in turning a single bullet into a shotgun blast
3) given recent targetting failures ("missile defence"), the chance
of delivering the correct force to the correct location at the correct
time is pretty close to non-existent.

On the other hand, the world will have changed so much by 2036 that
there's really not much point in "planning" that far ahead with respect
to government projects.

Nihil