
Planetary Defense - cryptoz
http://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense
======
sirtastic
I'm kinda jealous of job titles that would come out of this department...
"Director of Planetary Defense", "Strategic Interstellar Command Coordinator",
"Chief Planetary Defense Officer".

~~~
ashark
My first thought was "I want to work there just so I can tell people I'm with
Planetary Defense when they ask what I do for a living".

The downside is the nagging feeling like you should be wearing oversized
futuristic pauldrons and a ridiculous-looking Space Belt all the time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Depends on the franchise type I guess. MCU's S.H.I.E.L.D. wear and the
Starfleet uniforms from First Contact and later look pretty smart, actually. I
wouldn't be afraid to go out with something like this[0].

That is, I'd have to lose some weight first.

[0] -
[http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121217161450/memoryalph...](http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121217161450/memoryalpha/en/images/e/ee/Starfleet_uniforms,_post-2373.jpg)

~~~
sandworm101
But no pockets? And your cellphone glued to your chest?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Didn't you hear that _wearables_ are the future? ;).

(Also, it's prior art. USPTO, pay attention.)

------
startupfounder
Here is a list of NEO Earth Close Approaches:

[http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/](http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/)

1\. Not a bad ROI to save a global economy with a GDP of $77.609 trillion and
population of 7.095 billion.[1]

2\. The side benefit is understanding how to mine NEOs worth billions.[2]

3\. I would like to buy an insurance policy against an impact. I bet it would
be super cheap as there is very low risk, but would get me to Mars or ISS.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)

~~~
EGreg
_" Based on known terrestrial reserves, and growing consumption in both
developed and developing countries, key elements needed for modern industry
and food production could be exhausted on Earth within 50–60 years.[2] These
include phosphorus, antimony, zinc, tin, lead, indium, silver, gold and
copper"_

Sounds ominous! Why aren't we more worried? Because Capitalism?

~~~
oilywater
Mostly that. But realistically there's no education on any of this stuff.

For example 2017 is the year when some of the most used rare earth elements
will be depleted and should be retrieved through recycling in the next years
(gallium for the LCD displays is disappearing, so either we figure out the
displays or massively recycle). This is not a surprise because the demand for
rare earth elements has been rising exponentially, with the number of
electronic devices produced :D

Although, food production is definitely getting more and more efficient. But
biology of living beings on Earth is too inefficient for the current
production to be sustainable. Just compare the vast amounts of food (energy) a
single duck, chicken or cow needs to maintain body heat, with the weight
(energy value) of meat. This coupled with growing consumption in developing
countries won't really work.

Without Hot Air is an excellent book written by a problem solving pragmatist
and excellent machine learning researcher David MacKay exposing the pure
numbers and limits and extrapolating them carefully, to get the same
conclusions.
[http://www.withouthotair.com/Electronic.html](http://www.withouthotair.com/Electronic.html)

~~~
ridgeguy
Gallium supply: Wikipedia [1] says USGS estimates gallium reserves as > one
megaton. Production in 2012 was an estimated 273 metric tons. I don't see us
running out of gallium soon.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium)

~~~
oilywater
I'm not pulling these numbers out of my butt.

There's absolutely no way that there's one million gallium reserves
economically viable for extraction. If there was, the price wouldn't be that
high.

Hafnium and indium too. 2017-2020.

[https://scholar.google.hr/scholar?q=indium+hafnium+reserves&...](https://scholar.google.hr/scholar?q=indium+hafnium+reserves&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5)

~~~
mapt
I'm sure you're not. The issue is, "economically viable" is a useless phrase
by itself, and is usually used to imply "economically viable at current
prices".

For most non-energy non-renewable resources, humanity can just pour more
energy than they do now into securing the scarce resource, and things will be
a bit more expensive, but less concentrated ores will be targetted and more
expensive extraction methods used and the supply will hold up at a higher
price. Substitutes will be sought and some will maybe be found, if they work
out better than the now-pricier resource.

Finance abhors an inexpensive depleting natural resource it has no substitutes
or emergency supply for: if it is economically viable for one investor to buy
all the world's remaining supply of Technetium, he will stockpile it and
trickle it out to the resource-starved market at ten times what he paid. To
assert that "lack of education" is the problem is ignoring the numbers issue:
it only takes a single smart investor to turn the whole market towards
appreciating reality-mandated scarcity, and he earns a very large profit for
educating the market.

Fossil fuel extraction concerns have a better basis: they have a floor at
which it is mathematically impossible to profit from extraction, EROI<1, so
long as you are using the energy you extracted to harvest more energy. I was
for a period of five years or so an alarmist on this point. Even so, it looks
like there exist enough positive EROI deposits to raise global CO2 by an
untenable amount (an amount which depopulates >10% of the world's presentday
habitation due to high wet bulb temperatures), long before we run out of coal,
oil, gas, & kerogen shales.

~~~
EGreg
I have a question: if squeezing a market results in a guaranteed profit, how
come so few companies were able to do it, even on small markets? Goldman Sachs
did it with bread and steel I think... but failed. Why would pumping cost less
than the dumping makes?

~~~
mapt
Most markets in the modern world are fairly efficient. This means that they
are priced appropriately for supply to meet demand, with all the most
predictive facts about future supply & demand, acknowledged fairly well by the
market price (which will drive expansion or contraction of that supply and
demand next year). If it's possible to squeeze off supply to the market, the
market has likely already been squeezed. There are billions of dollars in
profits waiting for anyone to pounce on a market that is truly squeezable, and
prove the rest of the investors wrong. Most markets are _not_ especially
squeezable, because that element of risk to the supplychain has already been
factored into their asset prices, and substitutes or alternative supply
sources become available for exploration at higher prices, which undercuts
anyone attempting to squeeze supply off.

It's pretty safe to assume an equilibrium between these sorts of processes,
and a lack of "glaring upcoming shortages that Capitalism Didn't Listen To Our
Warnings About".

At least, up to some level - maybe two or three decades - at which uncertainty
about future inflation rates and technologies renders it really risky to make
long bets of any sort.

------
cryptoz
There is some context in this Gizmodo article, "NASA's New Office Is Our
Defense Against Death From the Skies" [1]. I thought HN would prefer the
direct link to the new NASA site, however.

[1] [http://gizmodo.com/nasas-new-office-is-our-defense-
against-d...](http://gizmodo.com/nasas-new-office-is-our-defense-against-
death-from-the-1752280136)

------
souterrain
This is a master stroke. The masses want to cut science funding. Rebrand as
"planetary defence" and the spigots re-open.

------
scrumper
I just finished re-reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, in which he devotes a
chapter to this subject. His conclusion is that, at our current level of
civilizational maturity, we're better off crossing our fingers rather than
learning how to redirect asteroids, since the technology required to save the
planet from a massive impact is _exactly_ the same as that used to conduct
asteroid bombardment.

~~~
ashark
I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where asteroid bombardment makes any
sense in a world where nukes and ICBMs exist. Even factoring in the
inconvenience of radiation it doesn't work. Too complicated, too expensive,
too slow, anyone who could do it now or in the future will either have nukes
or the ability to quickly acquire them.

~~~
adrianN
Even if one insists on non-nuclear city killers, it's probably easier to get
some Tungsten rods into orbit

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment)

~~~
versteegen
Hardly a city-killer. The rods that were to be used in Project Thor would
strike with the energy-equivalent of "11.5 tons of TNT".

------
ack
Not just NASA. ESA is also busy.

[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technolo...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/ESA_s_planetary_defence_test_set_for_2020)

------
jobu
_" A first-ever robotic mission to identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth
asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it
in the 2020s."_

Wow! That's pretty awesome, but I'm hoping they plan this one _very_ carefully
and/or pick a small asteroid.

~~~
ceejayoz
An asteroid of any dangerous size is pretty hard to move. You're not going to
inadvertently tap it into a bad orbit with a hammer.

We're already able to send probes to Pluto within a few kilometers,
calculating an asteroid's orbit is well within our capabilities.

~~~
mschuster91
> We're already able to send probes to Pluto within a few kilometers,
> calculating an asteroid's orbit is well within our capabilities.

Yeah calculating the orbits and movements for a simple small mass might be
fairly easy. But an asteroid is irregulary shaped which makes stuff quite
complex. We have failed with Philae for example...

The only way this is going to work is with a powerful nuclear bomb mounted on
an interstellar rocket to blow said astroid to pieces (and these pieces should
be tiny enough to vanish during atmospheric reentry), should the need arise -
however the EMP would fry at least the satellites in orbit, maybe also on the
ground.

~~~
gizmo686
Calculating the orbit of an irregularly shaped object is not difficult, just
use its center of mass. What is difficult is calculating an orbit around an
irregularly shaped object, unless you are far enough away that you can still
ignore the irregularities.

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Roodgorf
This talk from Ed Lu[1] has a lot of great illustrations and cost/benefit
analysis of NEO defense measures. He is obviously a bit biased as CEO of the
Sentinel Mission, but IIRC, he isn't shy to admit that.

[1] [https://www.astrosociety.org/silicon-valley-astronomy-
lectur...](https://www.astrosociety.org/silicon-valley-astronomy-lectures/the-
sentinel-mission-finding-the-asteroid-headed-for-earth/)

------
CaseFlatline
Dear
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum),
please use this department for your next SyFy B end-of-the-world B movie.

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Splendor
This is a very exciting mission.

Does anyone have a sense of how many potential near-Earth objects have a rocky
surface with large boulders as required by this mission?

------
vacri
Nasa has an entire department dedicated to warning people about Vietnamese
soups?

