April 7, 2024
"The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) slammed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, an asteroid 160 metres wide, at 14,000mph to validate techniques and technologies..."
"... that might one day be needed to stop potential 'city killer' space rocks by modifying their orbital path. The mission exceeded expectations, demonstrating the extent to which kinetic energy can be harnessed to deflect asteroids. But it also provided important lessons about the potential for unexpected consequences, according to a study that reveals 37 boulders blasted off Dimorphos by the shockwave could be go on to create meteor storms on Mars — though not for at least 6,000 years...."
From "Nasa mission to blast asteroid off course has unintended consequences/Debris from the Dart mission on Dimorphos, a test for a future ‘Deep Impact’ scenario, is set to slam into the surface of Mars" (London Times).
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28 comments:
"But it also provided important lessons about the potential for unexpected consequences..."
Really? Unexpected? I'm not a rocket scientist but even I would have expected this. This doesn't speak very highly of the people who now work at NASA.
So we would have been fine, but in 50 years we will be obliterated because this rock was barely nudged, but it changed its orbit and hit other rocks it wouldn't have.
Think butterfly effect in space...
Unintended but foreseeable even if unexpected.
Joe beat me to it, but my first thought was the "butterfly effect" too! Personally, I'm glad we are trying to defend Mother Earth from asteroids.
Frank Zappa set it to music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp6LT2MdaPI
"Really? Unexpected? I'm not a rocket scientist but even I would have expected this. This doesn't speak very highly of the people who now work at NASA."
First thought that occurred to me. However- the important question is: Are the people who work at NASA sufficiently diverse?
In 5,800 years, the human civilization on Mars will file a ruinous lawsuit against the earthlings, adjudicated by a friendly moon-based judge who can be trusted to arrive at the “correct” verdict.
Did these guys never play the Atari classic "Asteroids" game?
"But it also provided important lessons about the potential for unexpected consequences, according to a study that reveals 37 boulders blasted off Dimorphos by the shockwave could be go on to create meteor storms on Mars — though not for at least 6,000 years...."
I guarantee that the Engineers foresaw this possibility. I guarantee they spent an inordinate amount of time discussing what to do in case they caused something to come towards the Earth. It would be mathematically nearly impossible but they did it. Engineers are constantly thinking about how things go wrong because in the end we are actually responsible for things going wrong.
It is what engineers do.
The Journalist just stopped talking to the people in the story and started making shit up pretty early on in this article.
William50 said...
"But it also provided important lessons about the potential for unexpected consequences..."
Really? Unexpected? I'm not a rocket scientist but even I would have expected this. This doesn't speak very highly of the people who now work at NASA.
This is bullshit on stilts. The epitomizes the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
Stop believing things you see in the media at face value. 99% of these stories are written by idiot Comms majors who just make shit up.
"Debris is set to slam into Mars."
Now we have done it. Mars Attacks! War of the Worlds!
... according to a study that reveals 37 boulders blasted off Dimorphos by the shockwave could be go on to create meteor storms on Mars — though not for at least 6,000 years...."
We could even now outfit a fleet of drones to slowly nudge the dangerous ones into the sun or out of the system. As long as we spot them I no longer have concerns about space rocks.
If you don't think we can coordinate them that well, look up some YouTube vids about Chinese dragon drone displays. Incredibly intricate.
Actually, bombarding mars with asteroids and comets might be a good idea. if there are no serious negative consequences it means less things to hit us, if enough of them hit Mars that contain water, it might be a good thing. That is, if Elon gets there.
I smell own goal...
Unintended consequences, maybe. Predictable outcome, indubitably. Climate change coming to a planet near you.
We just need Kirock (James T Kirk) go into the ancient alien obelisk and activate the deflector beam: The Paradise Syndrome.
What Achilles said.
Various NASA and other agency proposals for redirecting dangerous asteroids have included concern for stray debris, for many decades.
This is merely typically awful science/tech "reporting" by a typical "journalist".
'It is what engineers do.'
Like the engineers who worked on the Boeing doors and wings and then shit happened?
"Like the engineers who worked on the Boeing doors and wings and then shit happened?"
Engineers designed them, no doubt, but it's likely the people working on the doors and wings were mechanics.
Joe Smith said...
'It is what engineers do.'
Like the engineers who worked on the Boeing doors and wings and then shit happened?
Engineers designed a plane that had a variable plug/door insert. Some airlines wanted a plug rather than a door.
So when a plug was installed a floor tech was trained and had installation documentation on how to install the plug which included adding several restraining bolts to hold the plug in place.
The floor tech failed to install those bolts.
Interestingly the plane had quite a few hours on it despite this obvious manufacturing defect. 1000's of planes that were correctly manufactured have millions of hours of safe flight time.
Somewhere during the investigation several engineers who were a part of the design and documentation on that particular door plug/door frame highlighted the documentation section that they wrote on the correct installation of the door which included the restraining bolts.
"The Butterfly Effect" is not entirely nonsense, but as was made abundantly clear in the book "Chaos" (which popularized the phrase by highlighting it in the opening chapter), the effect of one butterfly is effectively cancelled out by trillions of other effects operating simultaneously.
There is a self-correcting element in the randomness of events, which is why the Earth hasn't spun off into space or been sucked into the sun, and why the global warming "models" are almost uniformly incorrect, etc.
Do asteroids never randomly collide with one another? With planets or moons? I am not an astrophysicist (heh) but I am going to comfort myself with the belief that this sort of thing is a blip in the cosmic radar, and the Martians might be OK for another 10,000 years or so.
I'm willing to bet real money that the majority of engineers are familiar with Newtons third law of motion and made the appropriate calculations.
“ Blogger Oligonicella said...
We could even now outfit a fleet of drones to slowly nudge the dangerous ones into the sun or out of the system. As long as we spot them I no longer have concerns about space rocks.”
Most people seem to have the misconception that sending something into the sun is easy. The sun actually the most difficult place in the solar system to reach because of the energy needed to go there. You have to slow down against the Earth’s velocity arond the sun to get closer to the sun, and the Earth is moving quite fast.
Oligonicella said...
We could even now outfit a fleet of drones to slowly nudge the dangerous ones into the sun or out of the system. As long as we spot them I no longer have concerns about space rocks.
That would be a waste of valuable real estate.
What is much more likely is that they will be brought into a near earth orbit where we can turn them into bio domes.
People keep talking about Mars. Mars is cold and it sucks and it is dark all of the time. You will not be able to grow food there without supplemental lighting. You will be dependent on nuclear power for everything. You will be using electric vehicles there because there are almost certainly no massive fossil fuel deposits.
Moving the asteroid belt further in and building homes closer to the Sun will be the future.
"...according to a study that reveals 37 boulders blasted off Dimorphos by the shockwave could go on to create meteor storms on Mars — though not for at least 6,000 years..."
Or not. Mostly not. The three-body problem is a massive bitch, but manageable compared to the thirty-seven plus one over six thousand years fiasco.
There's more at work than just gravitational force, assuming gravity is a fundamental force and not the geodesics of spacetime (Einstein) or nothing at all (Penrose). It turns out that many asteroids aren't solid bodies but collections of chunks sized from terrestrial boulders down to cobbles, pebbles, gravel, sand, and dust all held together, not by their mutual gravity but by the electrostatic or Coulomb force, which is about 19 orders of magnitude greater than than the attractive influence of gravity, the same force that makes your socks stick together when they come out of the dryer. How the individual chunks of these "astro-clusters" acquire their charges is a matter of current theoretical work, nevertheless, electrostatics has thrown a monkey wrench into the already chaotic Newtonian model.
"Moving the asteroid belt further in and building homes closer to the Sun will be the future."
The Sun will get much hotter before it cools off.
In the series "The Expanse," rebel denizens of the asteroid belt lassoed groups of space rocks in nets, shrouded them in radar-sneaky materials and flung them at Earth. I wonder if such technology could be used to grab smaller asteroids and haul them into safe orbit. Probably not with existing technology, but if something with sufficient thrust could be developed, it could work.
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