Surprise Asteroid Buzzed Earth Monday

How come looking for asteroids and devising deflection methods isn't something within the normal duties of the International Space Station?

The watch station would probably have a display like this.

Low orbit space stations aren't particularly well suited to observing space - since they whiz around the earth once every 45 minutes.

As far as "devising deflection methods" - the ISS has neither tractor beams nor phasers.

I disagree. They are out of the atmosphere, into the clear. Plus it is not as if a 360 view, is not of value. Obviously ISS does not yet have tractor beams of phasers. However it was ICBM Rockets that got man to the Moon, and there are some shelf things laying about that ought to have application. Maybe I am wrong.

I still haven't figured out why the old space wheel design wasn't applied since it is well known that living in zero gravity conditions is really bad for the bones.

Because the old space wheel concept has to be staggeringly huge in order for the rotation to not cause inner ear dysfunction in the astronauts, and we don't have the capability to build on that scale yet.

And, just for the record, it wasn't ICBMs that got man to the moon. Into orbit, yes, to the moon, no.

"the old space wheel concept has to be staggeringly huge in order for the rotation to not cause inner ear dysfunction in the astronauts"

Couldn't the same thing be accomplished with two stations connected by long arms, spinning around a central docking station? Expended booster rockets could be used to build the arms. Cables would hold it all together. (Multiple redundancy on the cables, of course.)

Thanks for reminding us of that concept.

How does it solve the inner ear dysfunction?

Sorry for not looking up which rockets, did what, suspected I was wrong about something. Thanks for the correction Bhankiii.

Still, any chance we could agree that it would be a legitimate job for the International Space Station to participate in Planet Defense?

Even if for some reason it is impractical for them to be on the lookout for potentially catastrophic Asteroid to Earth strikes, anybody know of any inventions laying around that they could use from that station, or even another, to protect the Planet from these big rocks?

I'm all for planetary defense, I just don't think the ISS is the best place to do it. There's just not a lot of room up there to do anything. Maybe a network of telescopes on the moon, where you can have big solar or nuclear power supplies to drive lasers, or whatever.

There is a simple means of deflecting asteroids. Basically you just send a several ton mass ship up next to the asteroid. The gravity pull of the ship, though small, is enough to deflect the asteroid a tiny bit. The trick is to detect the asteroid soon enough so that it's still far enough away for that tiny deflection to cause a miss.

Other methods use a space based laser to vaporize bits of the asteroid. The vaporized gas acts as a jet to scoot the asteroid over a bit. Again, if the asteroid is very far away, you only need a tiny deflection to make it miss the earth. The problem with this idea is that the asteroids are spinning, and that makes it very complicated to do the calculations required for the jet effect.

Most scientists agree that exploding the asteroid is not the way to go due to the fact that many of them are loose aggregates of rock and you basically turn one threat into a thousand threats.

But for all the schemes, step one is a system of detecting asteroids far away with enough precision to be able to calculate their trajectory.

I've heard of both these proposals, the ton mass ship, and the Laser.

I had also read that the focus time for the laser idea was not likely to work, due to spin, or roll.

This would imply that the most practical method did fall to the Heavy Ship, or we revisit complete destruction of the Asteroid, so fragments are as small as Meteors that are burned up in the Atmosphere everyday.

Then again a Vehicle, of Several Tons does take a good deal of energy to get off the Planet.

Building such a thing on the Moon sounds pretty daunting, and a good deal off into the future.

Could we send at the Asteroid, multiple rockets carried up and stockpiled at either the ISS, on the Moon or just parked in Orbit awaiting orders to go at the Asteroid en mass for a Q Ball Strike that would accomplish the same thing as one Heavy? What about Parked Rockets in L5 zone Orbit with tangle nets, or tails that like bullwhips wrapped at strike, changing just enough the Trajectory of the Asteroid?

What do we have on the Shelf that could be most quickly put up and operational?

I see it as a solvable problem. I also see it as something worthy of International Space Program Cooperative Focus.

Further I can't really see much benefit from simply being able to one day identify a hit is eminent. What good is it to identify a big rock is coming towards North America, or Europe, or Asia? What are you going to do? Tell people there to duck?

There is nothing "off the shelf" that can be used for asteroid avoidance. The chief advantage of being able to find a potentially dangerous asteroid is to generate the public will to spend the $100billion it would take to do something about it

My Annual April Fools Day Speech is coming up and I've got to write it and am starting to think I need to focus on raising money for a Planet Defense System.

You say that there is nothing on the shelf.

What plan ought I attempt in my speech to raise money for?

As a cheap experiment, how much would it cost to put any old missile up at the International Space Station, and shoot it at any old asteroid, to see what happens?

My experiment is: Find any old asteroid. Hit it with a rocket. See what happens.

Frankly I think putting an untested system together, and waiting for the Big One, is not sensible.

Experiments are called for.

Find Asteroids.

See if you can hit them.

See what happens if you do hit them.

Love, Russell

"How does it solve the inner ear dysfunction?"

How large must the diameter of a rotating space station be in order to provide artificial gravity yet not cause inner ear dysfunction?

Bill

Significantly large. I don't remember the number, but I do remember that it's bigger than we could build with current technology.

In a smaller centrifuge, when facing the axis, the spinning I found at 1G, you get a jerking effect in your balance. The Brain tries to track the spinning that the ear senses with the non spinning visuals. Laying on ones back aligned with the axis, it feels like you are in a shallow hole looking out at what ever you can see, that is rotating with you at the axis.

Not a very good description Even crawling is difficult. Your eyes reflexively track the spin your inner ear registers but everything you see is rotating with you.

The balance of bipedal humans is good enough that the rotation has to be large for it not to upset the inner ear and cause an effect much like having sea legs and walking on solid ground for the first time in many days.

Brad

Yeah. When they get that new habitat / bathroom module which has windows, the least they could do would be to keep a lookout while they're on the toilet.

Star gazing to prevent star grazing, eh?

The way is to detect very early then give it a small push. How doesn't matter much as long as it is on a tangent to it's trajectory.

As for tracking, first you have to see though all the space junk. Then our tracking of known objects needs refined. The margin for error gets bigger the longer into the future you look. All work in the world would do little good if done to late or in a direction that puts it on an earth impact orbit.

Too bad we couldn't use the momentum of some of the Apollo asteroids to get telescopes out to where they would do us more good.

Brad