You are a group of Top Men (Indiana Jones joke) hired to advise the United States Government on the threat of a huge asteroid heading right to Earth. What do you recommend?
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Rarebear (
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October 13th, 2011
This asteroid is as big or bigger than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. If you do nothing, we will all die.
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Unless we already had some large device in space that could shoot rockets at the asteroid, breaking it into smaller pieces, we couldn’t do shit anyway. I would literally say “Well, we had a good run, guys.”
We have a couple of years.
@Rarebear Oh, then we’re good. Nuke it. I guess nukes did end up having some benefits.
I would so advise the President to hire a Top Woman or two, also, or risk annihilation by female voters, no matter how the asteroid thing works out.
And then we’d fix the problem.
Go with something crazy and unrealistic, like a mass amount of engines attached to the moon, firing them up at the right moment to block the meteor impact.
(Then you realize right after doing it that our moon completely absorbed the blow, only to then be knocked back towards Earth, causing us to all die, and then some.)
A Kegger, lawn chairs a sign that reads “Sit, relax, it’s time… Good beer too, Guinness on TAP! None of that green shit, it’s nasty
Duck and cover, boys. Duck and cover.
I would recommend we send a crew of highly paid actors in a shuttle to drill into its center and…
I would recommend that all our best and brightest be put into shelters which shield them from the blast and provide them a haven for the repopulation of the planet
I would make a series of predictions about the timeline which would all turn out to be waaaay too optimistic, then duck my head and try to survive the aftermath
I would recommend the immediate evacuation of select members of the population to a space station or another planet that is not in the line of impact.
I would put in my two weeks notice, go to a corona-commercialesque island and spend my last minutes getting sloshed.
I read about one idea that would involve shooting drilling robots at it, which would break up and hurl away bits of the asteroid to generate some weak thrust, nudging the rock out of Earth’s path. Given a timeframe rated in years, I’d say we could actually pull it off from where we are now, technologically.
I would advise against blowing up the asteroid, as the most likely outcome would be for it to break up into smaller (though still massive) asteroids.
Accept that a lot of people and animals in a region will die. Then start building some huge fucking filters that could fly around sucking in the dust ejected into our atmosphere upon impact. The dust blocking sunlight is where the real damage would be done since it would kill off most plants.
They are pretty good a predicting where things will hit so there could be a massive evacuation.
If there’s plenty of lead time, send a robot mission to assemble a solar-powered mass driver on it that mines material from the asteroid and shoots it out as reaction mass. The more lead time, the smaller the delta-v needed to make a hit turn into a miss. (Essentially what @Nullo recommends.)
With less lead time, send out a mission to deploy a steel pusher plate and anchor it to the most solid part of the surface. Detonate small nukes at a standoff above the plate. Basically, a variation on @Imadethisupwithnoforethought‘s Orion plan.
I’m thinking a huge solar sail might be useful to deflect it… though our ability to come up with such a thing and get it there in time is probably not much.
Nukes will probably not do much, but having more top men and their computers research other deflection attempts seems the thing to do.
If impact isn’t avoided, some survival facilities could be developed, I think. Need to develop sustainable communities that can survive the atmosphere being filled with dust for a very long time, and massive temperature changes.
Oh and if we’ve still got the Ark of the Covenant in Area 51, that might be worth dusting off.
Broadcasting a distress signal asking for Captain Kirk to come help couldn’t hurt, either.
May as well signal for Doctor Who as well.
I’d recommend to the government that it give everyone tax breaks, no work, and free money, so that people can enjoy the few years left on earth doing what they want, when they want.
Construct a lot of nuclear powered rocket engines on the asteroid and change its vector by a few degrees.
(j.k. I would tell them there is no threat and then watch with glee from orbit as everyone dies.)
Construct a giant catchers mitt out of all the “big gals” bras & toss that sucker right into uranus.
Ahh, any excuse to use the old uranus gag.
Hire Bruce Willis? He seems to be able to solve this sort of problem.
Alternatively, get together with the Chinese and the Russians (and anyone else who has a space program) and get them all to take a concerted approach to shoot missiles at the thing. Bit like playing pool and deflecting it away from the earth.
Still think Bruce might be the best bet though.
I’ve read about this. We send up a probe to a specific orbit around the asteroid. The gravity of the probe slowly nudges the collision path away from the Earth, and if we do it right, it’ll miss completely. Disaster averted, and no explosives necessary.
I guess, politics being what it is, and all…
One of the things that I would do is advise the President to blame all of the lack of ability to fully address and handle the problem on the other Party in Congress. That would be first.
Next would be to propose a massive tax increase to fund all sorts of crash programs intended to make sure this sort of thing never happens in the future.
Certainly we would need a Department of Space Junk to oversee all of the efforts being made in this direction, and to funnel the money to politically righteous (or lefteous) organizations and to MAKE JOBS, which of course is the primary endeavor of every political administration. (Well, primary after its own re-election, of course.)
While that Secretary of Space Junk is feuding with the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security over jurisdiction, and each of them is withholding vital resources and information from the other, we’d advise the President to appoint a Space Junk Czar to actually get something done (which translates into “stopping anyone else from getting anything done”).
The asteroid? Pfft… we were never in danger from that. But for God’s sake don’t let the voters get wind of that fact.
Build a large spacecraft that lands on, then lifts off of, the asteroid. When it lifts off, by Newton’s third law the asteroid accelerates slightly in the opposite direction. Repeat as needed to knock the asteroid out of orbit. Alternatively, achieve the same end by shooting a lot of stuff at it really hard.
Well, certain members of Congress will deny that it is a threat, so will veto all efforts unless the cost can be taken from some other program.
@RocketGuy
Deny that it is a threat?
They will claim that it is a far left wing conspiracy to turn american into a “socialist dicatorship”.
@ragingloli – excellent!!! esp. since a nationally unified (Socialist) effort would be required.
The military might push for some action though, since they have nuclear toys that they have always been itching to play with.
@RocketGuy There are non-partisan initiatives, you know. Protecting the Earth from devastation would be one of them.
The military would probably be the first bunch tapped for the job.
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