71–80 of 374 posts
Working link: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20Y... 8.1 megatons of kinetic energy. According to the Torino rating, only risk of “localized destruction” (less than “regional devastation”): https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/torino_scale.html
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So you're calling it a "crisis" that people will be better informed of the risk they've always faced? Seems to me we should use that media coverage to build political support for a real asteroid defense system.
If the media does not contextualize risks correctly, as it never does, it's absolutely a crisis—a crisis of a poorly-informed, panicked society lashing out and doing irrational things. It's not a costless error if a warped illusion of risk drives countries to, i.e., deploy nuclear-tipped space weapons for asteroid defense, which then precipitate a genuine crisis. It's not obvious that having more defenses is obviousl…
The Sagan paper concerns much larger asteroids, which are correspondingly more rare. For asteroids in the 8MT impact range, it doesn't make much military sense to launch deep space missions to divert them years in advance, rather than delivering nukes directly with ICBMs in minutes. Given any competent asteroid defense system, an asteroid diversion would be detected immediately and countered, and the perpetrators would face consequences.
In fact, since we already have rockets that can reach asteroids, I'd say the possibility of malicious diversion makes a defense system more important.
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1 million Americans died in the first 4 months of the COVID epidemic. That was not normal, nor anywhere close to normal.
You're undercalling it, that would actually be completely normal. About 1 million US citizens die every 4 months (technically the number of American deaths would be quite a bit higher). The anomaly was that there were about 0.7 million surprise deaths over 12 months (some minority of which would have been caused by the COVID response itself, mind) You can look it up here - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of…
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If the media does not contextualize risks correctly, as it never does, it's absolutely a crisis—a crisis of a poorly-informed, panicked society lashing out and doing irrational things. It's not a costless error if a warped illusion of risk drives countries to, i.e., deploy nuclear-tipped space weapons for asteroid defense, which then precipitate a genuine crisis. It's not obvious that having more defenses is obviousl…
In this case, the context is "we face the same risk all the time, from asteroids we don't see." I'm not convinced that's reassuring. The Sagan paper concerns much larger asteroids, which are correspondingly more rare. For asteroids in the 8MT impact range, it doesn't make much military sense to launch deep space missions to divert them years in advance, rather than delivering nukes directly with ICBMs in minutes. Giv…
That's a fair distinction—the paper predates the modern telescope surveys that are discovering all the small ones.
- "rather than delivering nukes directly with ICBMs in minutes"
You'd still need multiple years for those nukes to have a useful effect. (The change in velocity is instant; the change in position is not). They wouldn't be ICBM's, either: we'd need a new type of deep-space delivery vehicle, far larger than a suborbital ICBM. That'd probably trigger a new type of nuclear arms race.
Working link: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20Y... 8.1 megatons of kinetic energy. According to the Torino rating, only risk of “localized destruction” (less than “regional devastation”): https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/torino_scale.html
Comparable in energy to a B-53 nuclear bomb, minus the radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb
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In this case, the context is "we face the same risk all the time, from asteroids we don't see." I'm not convinced that's reassuring. The Sagan paper concerns much larger asteroids, which are correspondingly more rare. For asteroids in the 8MT impact range, it doesn't make much military sense to launch deep space missions to divert them years in advance, rather than delivering nukes directly with ICBMs in minutes. Giv…
- "The Sagan paper concerns much larger asteroids, which are correspondingly more rare." That's a fair distinction—the paper predates the modern telescope surveys that are discovering all the small ones. - "rather than delivering nukes directly with ICBMs in minutes" You'd still need multiple years for those nukes to have a useful effect. (The change in velocity is instant; the change in position is not). They wouldn…
One possible reason is plausible deniability, but that goes away if we have a good asteroid defense system with an emphasis on early detection.
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- "The Sagan paper concerns much larger asteroids, which are correspondingly more rare." That's a fair distinction—the paper predates the modern telescope surveys that are discovering all the small ones. - "rather than delivering nukes directly with ICBMs in minutes" You'd still need multiple years for those nukes to have a useful effect. (The change in velocity is instant; the change in position is not). They wouldn…
Sorry, what I mean is: why would I use my rocket and nuke to divert an asteroid years in advance, when I can drop an 8MT nuke on you directly in 30 minutes with much more accurate targeting? One possible reason is plausible deniability, but that goes away if we have a good asteroid defense system with an emphasis on early detection.
For one thing, you could weaponize asteroids as a second-strike response, if there's an imbalance where one superpower has asteroid deflection and one does not. Even if it's delayed by months, the certainty that the asteroid will eventually hit establishes a deterrent against attacking the asteroid-controlling country. If there's defenses against ballistic missiles, this circumvents those.
For another, the asteroid-deflecting nukes are dual-use as weapons themselves. A nuclear warhead in deep space defeats conventional ballistic missile defenses. If that warhead is turned towards Earth, that (first-strike) attack's not visible to the adversary until a few seconds before impact—unlike an ICBM launch, which has tens of minutes of warning, enough to launch (conventional) interceptor missiles.
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That's not what they asked
That would create far more objects, many on the same rough direction, thus increasing the chance of an impact
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Comparable in energy to a B-53 nuclear bomb, minus the radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb
So a 14 km blast radius it seems.
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That's not what they asked
It would definitely increase impact probability though.