

Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid - edw519
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_asteroid_encounter

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snorkel
"NASA had put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 as 1-in-45,000.
In October, after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path, the agency
changed its estimate to 1-in-250,000."

So this could end up being history's most notable example of premature
optimization.

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NathanKP
Its nice that they are taking the initiative to experiment despite the low
risk of the asteroid actually hitting Earth. However, I sure hope that they
are careful and don't accidentally knock it into an orbit that causes a
guaranteed Earth hit.

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Fixnum
Given the type of rhetoric coming from Perminov, I suspect that the driving
force behind this announcement is merely resurgent Russian nationalism, if not
an explicit political directive to distract Russians from the economy, the
continuing failures of the military's new submarine-launched balistic missile
program, and the destruction of civil society.

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skushch
I think another angle to this is if actually successful it will be a public
demo of space warfare capabilities. Sort of like the Chinese anti-satellite
missle test.

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cema
Everyone I know is just laughing at it. This is just a way for them to get
(or, as they say in Russia, "saw off") more money from the government's
coffers.

Apophis has been studied quite closely by astronomers, and the chance of
impact has been reduced from tiny to minuscule.

An old story too. Why Perminov decided to choose this time to go open with
this idea I do not know.

Now, there may be good reasons to launch a probe towards Apophis, for
scientific or technological research. If eventually something like this
happens, more power to them.

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rbanffy
After we learn to steer asteroids, it would be interesting to make one dip
into Earth's atmosphere to de-accelerate and to enter LEO. A mountain of raw
materials in low orbit would be a very interesting resource.

You would, of course, have to pick one that is solid enough to withstand this
torture or melt its surface to make it a solid blob of something before it
fragments and hits something you would rather not hit.

I really like this idea.

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jsz0
This would be a great opportunity to land a probe with some serious drilling
equipment. I bet there's a lot of interesting material in that asteroid. I'm
not sure changing the trajectory is a great idea though. Seems kind of risky.
What if it breaks into smaller pieces? At least do it after it has passed the
Earth this time around.

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dirtbox
There would be nickel, iron and rock. I think our time would be better served
building bomb shelters. I trust NASA's prediction far more than Russia's
attempts at "diverting" it.

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Dilpil
If the Expected Value in human lives is 6 billion divided by 330,000 (18,800),
it might be a worthy project.

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Semiapies
It's not expected to be an extinction-level impact even if it were to hit.

