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MADMEN Used To Deflect Asteroids From Hitting Earth

Mr. Anderson

Mr. Anderson

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Nov 1, 2001
22,568
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http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/madmen_techwed_040519.html

Interesting concept, but the images are a little much - looks more like a game or Hollywood. I'd love to see one of these built and sent to space rock for testing :D

h_madmen_asteroid_02.jpg


h_madmen_landing_02.jpg


h_madmen_02.jpg


D
 
i think these "researchers" are living in a world that doesnt exisit like Star Trek or something, could make a cool game though
 
Mr. Anderson said:
Interesting concept, but the images are a little much - looks more like a game or Hollywood. I'd love to see one of these built and sent to space rock for testing :D
Click to expand...

I agree, this concept is a little far fetched considering the number of units and the cost for each of these "MADMEN", and their effectiveness. NASA would probably be better off using a couple of well placed thrusters to move a big rock out of harms way. By the way is it just me or did they try too hard for that acronym? "Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Node"? Common, mission and node are a pretty big strech. :rolleyes:
 
Raid said:
"Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Node"? Common, mission and node are a pretty big strech. :rolleyes:
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sure its a stretch - and you're right about the price. This thing looks ok, but that one image has 100s of them on the asteroid.....when was the last time we launched 100 of anything at once :D

D
 
Raid said:
I agree, this concept is a little far fetched considering the number of units and the cost for each of these "MADMEN", and their effectiveness. NASA would probably be better off using a couple of well placed thrusters to move a big rock out of harms way. By the way is it just me or did they try too hard for that acronym? "Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Node"? Common, mission and node are a pretty big strech. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

This is essentially a thruster that uses the asteroid itself for propulsion. I am not sure how many would actually be needed to move something though. The thing is all you really have to do is nudge it a little bit. I would be surprised if one wasn't enough if you could get it in position inside of a year.
 
MongoTheGeek said:
This is essentially a thruster that uses the asteroid itself for propulsion. I am not sure how many would actually be needed to move something though. The thing is all you really have to do is nudge it a little bit. I would be surprised if one wasn't enough if you could get it in position inside of a year.
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depends on a lot of variables. we could have anywhere from decades to days to make an attempt to shift the asteroid. Obviously, longer is better here.

One really elegant solution is to "paint" one side of the asteroid a lighter color so that it gets pushed by the solar wind. Only thing is getting enough paint into orbit :p

D
 
That was a movie, starring Bruce Willis.... though what did they try, to drill it?
 
big said:
That was a movie, starring Bruce Willis.... though what did they try, to drill it?
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drill a hole and place a nuke in the middle to blow it to smaller bits....

The sad thing is right now we're able to see and track these things, but it one comes along that's going to hit, we're all toast. We have nothing to defend against it. True the odds are slim one would ever hit, but given enough time it will happen unless we protect against it. Hopefully a decent plan comes together eventually and we'll never have to use it.

But things like this that require huge funds usually only get funded after we've been hit once. Lets just hope that if that happens its a small one :D

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
drill a hole and place a nuke in the middle to blow it to smaller bits....

The sad thing is right now we're able to see and track these things, but it one comes along that's going to hit, we're all toast. We have nothing to defend against it. True the odds are slim one would ever hit, but given enough time it will happen unless we protect against it. Hopefully a decent plan comes together eventually and we'll never have to use it.

But things like this that require huge funds usually only get funded after we've been hit once. Lets just hope that if that happens its a small one :D

D
Click to expand...

Or they get funded when they confirm one will hit. A lot of the question of success lies in how much lead time we have. If we find it 2 weeks out even if we had a solution in place there would be nothing that could be done besides controlling the riots.

If we found out 1 year our we might be able to deflect it if we had something operational in orbit and could definitely stock up on supplies for the coming apocalypse.

If we found out 5 years before hand we could probably build something from scratch.
 
A lot of these Near Earth Objects cross the Earth's orbit regularly - so predictions on when they'll hit are sometimes tricky, planning for a hit years ahead of time might look good 5 years out, but subtle errors from gravitational interaction with the moon or Earth can change the course. One or two levels of course changes are much easier to predict than 5 or 10 ahead of time :D

And then there are the ones we don't know about, that haven't ever been seen or recorded before. Those might be the ones to worry about...

D
 
big said:
That was a movie, starring Bruce Willis.... though what did they try, to drill it?
Click to expand...

Yeah it's a pretty good example of hollywood fiction and physics not agreeing with eachother. In the movie they drilled a hole to the centre of the meteor (800 metres as I recall) dropped a nuke in the hole and blew it up. The idea was that the nuke would cause a fault in the meteor to split and the two halves of the meteor would go sailing by the earth on either side.

Sound cool doesn't it? But the problem is that the nuke would probably send chunks flying in every direction (including a fairshare still heading earth bound). Yeah you could argue that with the fault the majory of the meteor would miss the earth, but you're still left with tens of thousands of city destroying chunks crashing into earth. Causing huge tsunamis in ocean hits, and massive explosions and shockwaves when hitting dry land.

The utter chaos it would cause is a far cry from the cheering crowds shown after the meteor was blown up in the movie.

p.s. Another thing that bugged me about that movie was the lack of continuity with the time zones around the world. It's not going to be daylight everywhere on the planet all at once.. :rolleyes:
 
Yeah, that was one of his worst films, and just a bad one in general. That is aside from the one where Willis was in that other space odyssey. He must have been looking for some quick dough.
 
Raid said:
I agree, this concept is a little far fetched considering the number of units and the cost for each of these "MADMEN", and their effectiveness. NASA would probably be better off using a couple of well placed thrusters to move a big rock out of harms way. By the way is it just me or did they try too hard for that acronym? "Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Node"? Common, mission and node are a pretty big strech. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Where is common used?
 
big said:
Yeah, that was one of his worst films, and just a bad one in general. That is aside from the one where Willis was in that other space odyssey. He must have been looking for some quick dough.
Click to expand...

You mean Fifth Element? That one was far from a bad film. Especially the superbit version from what I hear.
 
Kid Red said:
You mean Fifth Element? That one was far from a bad film. Especially the superbit version from what I hear.
Click to expand...

The Fifth Element was great! :D But what's the superbit version?

As for the other movie, Apocalypse, they did have some good lines. Especially the list of things they wanted if the succeeded and made it back to earth.

"They don't want to pay taxes......ever." :D

D
 
Frohickey said:
Click on the picture... we already have a prototype even! :D :D :D
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But how many trillions of dollars is that going to cost and how long will it take till we get the thing in space :p

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
But how many trillions of dollars is that going to cost and how long will it take till we get the thing in space :p

D
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Oh, but you forget. It will pay for itself... one quarter at a time. :p

Oh... one crucial detail that I forget, we need space folding/tessera technology first, to go from the left edge to the right, etc. :D
 
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