![]() ![]() In the end, of course, this is not just America’s problem, as an asteroid strike would be felt around the globe. Second, the laws of probability say we would be struck by such a large asteroid only once every 200,000 years - that’s a long time to keep a standing arsenal of nuclear asteroid-blasters, and raises all sorts of possibilities of accidents or sabotage - the old “cure being worse than the disease” phenomenon. Why the concern? First, even with good intentions, launching a nuclear-armed missile would violate the international agreements by which all weaponry is banned from space. But for the overwhelming majority of potential deflection cases, using a nuclear warhead would be like a golfer swinging away with his driver to sink a three-foot putt the bigger bang is not always better. It is possible that in some cases - such as an asteroid greater than a third of a mile across - the nuclear option might be necessary. But for some reason NASA seems to have opted for a federal form of civil disobedience.Īnother problem with the report was that, while it outlined other possibilities, it estimated that using a nuclear-armed missile to divert an asteroid would be “10 to 100 times more effective” than non-nuclear approaches. It was a left-handed way for the Congress to say to NASA that this is our priority. But in this case, Congress not only directed NASA to provide it with a recommended program but also asked for the estimated budget to support it. Why did the space agency drop the ball? Like all government departments, it fears the dreaded “unfunded mandate” Congress has the habit of directing agencies to do something and then declining to give them the money to do so. An object that size could devastate a small country and would probably destroy civilization. In 1998, Congress gave NASA’s Spaceguard Survey program a mandate of “discovering, tracking, cataloging and characterizing” 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than one kilometer (3,200 feet) wide by 2008. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t seem to have any clear plan to put this expertise into action. On the promising side, scientists have a good grasp of the risks of a cosmic fender-bender, and have several ideas that could potentially stave off disaster. Last week two events in Washington - a conference on “planetary defense” held by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the release by NASA of a report titled “Near-Earth Object Survey and Deflection Analysis of Alternatives” - gave us good news and bad on this front. What few probably realize is that there are thousands of other space objects that could hit us in the next century that could cause severe damage, if not total destruction. It's a hidden gem, and free.AMERICANS who read the papers or watch Jay Leno have been aware for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility - about 1 in 45,000 - that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth with catastrophic consequences on April 13, 2036. Warning, the graphics are pretty uncomfortable and outdated, but it's a good, solid program and does lots of things. The free program Astrolog lets you animate. You can also install Bluestacks (free) on a desktop and use Astro Gold there, when that's better than doing it on a phone. You can set the time increment to minute, hour, day, month or year, and then set it to 1, 2, 3, etc, to jump by more than "1" minute or hour, etc. The Astro Gold app (my personal fave) has a great animation feature, where you can create a chart, save it, then use the animation arrows to move quickly and easily backward or forward in time. Just start by changing in 2-hour increments til you find the rising you want, then you can finetune from there. It's pretty quick, but that's the only way. On, when you are viewing the chart, just hit the Edit Birth Data link just above the chart, change the time and hit Enter.
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