ANOTHER Near-Hit By Asteroid - Almost Zero Warning

[Mr. B1ack]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/01/25/newfound-asteroid-rerun-zips-harmlessly-by-earth.html

A newfound asteroid about the size of a bus zipped safely by Earth
late Tuesday, just days after its discovery.

The asteroid 2017 BX buzzed by Earth at a range of 162,252 miles,
about 30 percent closer than the distance between the Earth and
the moon, at 11:54 p.m. EST, according to online Slooh observatory,
which tracked the object late Tuesday in a live webcast at Slooh.com .
The asteroid was first discovered Friday. You can see an animation
of the asteroid's orbit here.
.
.
The asteroid's relatively dim brightness and its speed, a
whopping 17,000 mph, made it difficult for Slooh telescopes
to spot.

. . . . . .

Slooh only has a half-meter telescope. I think you can buy
bigger ones online. This is pretty shameful for a facility
that's trying to give us a heads up about the sky falling.
Maybe a crowdfunding effort ... ?

There was another, slighly larger, rock that came REALLY
close just a week or so ago - and again was only noticed
at the last minute.

This is a PROBLEM. Falling asteroids in this size range
can produce multi-kiloton blasts. The last one in Russia
was calculated to produce a half-megaton explosion.
If things are "tense" in the world - like Obama had made
things with Russia - or somebody just has a twitchy
trigger-finger very BAD things can result from large
surprise explosions. The first assumption is gonna
be "Nuke !".

What if the thing had fallen on N.Korea or near one of
those military island China had built ? What if it had
fallen in eastern Poland ? Jerusalem ?

Oddly, the #1 proponent of a good global asteroid
detection and intervention program has been
Vladimir Putin ... but few others seem enthused.

Sorry, but it HAS to be done, even IF it was Putins
idea. Wouldn't be terribly expensive ... a small
donation from the ten or twenty richest countries ...
and the US and Russia and maybe China could
just dedicate an ICBM or two for interception
purposes if that was the advisable course. For
smallish (under 50 meters) visitors you might
not even need a warhead - just crash into the
thing at high speed and spread its energy over
a wider area ... the bits might never reach the
ground at all.

We need 360-degree surveillance of our planetary
neighborhood ... and maybe some good AI software
dedicated to spotting even small rocks so we won't
have to hire hundreds of mostly-bored humans.
The first heads-up about something headed towards
a global hot-spot and it'll all be worth it.

Oh yea :
http://www.obsessiontelescopes.com ... half-meter+
http://planewave.com ... ditto $37k

[First-Post]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 18:01:46 -0500, Mr. B1ack <now...@nada.net>
wrote:

Well, what do expect after Obama concentrated all of his effort
regarding such things in the last 8 years in trying to push the AGW
agenda?
Not to mention that there probably hasn't been much in terms of grant
money for extraterrestrial research and study.
After all, you can't really justify an asteroid tax can you?

[Mr. B1ack]

Um ... yes, you can. It's "defense".

As I said, if even this 'little' rock had fallen on
Jerusalem out of the blue a lot of VERY bad
things could have been set in motion before
anyone realized what'd actually happened.

Preventing such scenerios makes an 'asteroid tax'
worth it. Oh, and a decent program wouldn't really
cost much at all. Most of the hardware would be
a one-time purchase and then be good for decades
afterwards. Using AI to scan the skys would cut
way back on human expenses (and errors). We
WOULD want humans to decide whether to do
nothing, issue warnings or try to smash the thing.

Most are gonna be harmless and/or land way out
in some ocean or underpopulated area. But some
WILL head towards places we really MUST be
aware of. Even a few extra days of knowing what's
coming can make a BIG difference.

Oh, and there are some BIG rocks we already know
are gonna come VERY uncomfortably close ... some
within the cone of error for actually smacking us.
These are continent-killers or worse. NOW is the
time to send out something to deflect their paths.
Even a tiny change far out adds up to a big change
later on. Wait too long and there's nothing to do.
"Hoping" just don't cut it.

[First-Post]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 23:25:42 -0500, Mr. B1ack <now...@nada.net>

If Obama had tried to push that as any kind of agenda then he would
have been expected to actually do something tangible with the money.
Plus he wouldn't have been able to penalize any sort of businesses
like he did coal and oil because he wouldn't be able to blame
asteroids on any made up evil such as big business.

The asshole would have probably loved such a thing hitting in the
middle of the country as he would have been able to do all kinds of
crap like declaring marshal law over an entire region.
"Never let a good crisis go to waste".

[Mr. B1ack]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 22:35:25 -0600, First-Post

Well I'm sure Hillary wouldn't mind seeing Kansas smacked
by a rogue comet right now ... she'd probably go religious and
say Gawd was smiting the 'Deplorables' :-)

ANYway ... a decent anti-asteroid program can be set up
quite cheaply - note the price tag for a telescope even
better than Slooh owns - and automation would keep the
continuing costs extremely low. The only "expensive" bit
is having a few missiles on hand in case some rock
busting is required.

Thing is, numerous nations have such rockets on standby
ANYWAY - pointed at their enemies. It's more a matter of
being able to re-target one of those quickly, maybe some
quick-change fittings for the warhead part. They'd still be
usable to smite China or wherever so it's a zero-loss scenerio.

[First-Post]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2017 11:44:43 -0500, Mr. B1ack <now...@nada.net>

From the description given, I had a Tasco when I was 11 that was a
better scope than that one. LOL
It was a "deluxe" by the way. :-)

[Mr. B1ack]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2017 11:16:49 -0600, First-Post

I had one of those too. Very interesting toy ... made
more interesting by the space-race environment.
Always wanted to get one of the newer S-C scopes,
nice and compact with decent capability - but now
where I live has become horribly light-polluted. There
are filters for the smeared sodium lines from HPS
streetlamps but nowadays white LEDs mean it's
economical for everybody to leave some lights on
*everywhere* ... so yesterdays pink glow is now
milky-pink ... full-spectrum.

Anyway, a half-meter (about 20") telescope would be
something a dedicated amateur might buy online these
days. I'm sure the asteroid-spotters have some extra
good cameras and such attached to theirs, but a 20"
scope is VERY limited when it comes to spotting
fast "little" rocks heading in.

Merely upgrading to one meter scopes ... let's see,
pi-r-squared ... 314 square inches of mirror -vs-
1256 square inches = a 4X increase in light-gathering
plus a resolution boost. "Borderline dim" becomes
"very seeable" - or to put it another way you'd roughly
double how many days you'd know a rock was coming.

So ... let's say three or four observation stations in
both the northern and southern hemispheres so we
get close to an all-around view (plus a little overlap
in the critical "in-plane" area) ..... all could be put
at existing astronomical sites and automated ....
we're really not talking much money. AF-1 probably
spends that much gassing-up after flying to Tokyo.