NASA Simulates Asteroid Mission

[MikkRees]

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-simulates...124907508.html

So they're doing simulation for an asteroid mission in 2025.. Isn't there an asteroid coming nearby around that year that's suppose to come so close it could hit earth? And even if it doesn't hit, there's a "fairly high" chance it'll swing by the sun's gravity and come back and hit us in like.. 2036 or something.


But I think if they continue with this, we can get a better understanding on asteroids which is really cool! We could use them to mine minerals for resources. Maybe even build some spacecraft durable enough to actually land on them, and use them to take us to far distant worlds that we normally wouldn't be able to reach in a manageable time frame. So for example, what would take the Mars Curiosity Rover eight months to get mars. We could get there in about a week with the speed of an asteroid, and even preserve fuel for when it's needed to jump off the asteroid, and go in a different direction.

The possibilities are endless!

What are your thoughts on the whole doomsday thing. Do you think it'll be possible to actually push an asteroid off course if and when the time actually came?

And, what do you think we can learn from asteroids?

[bekilrwale]

Mining asteroids for minerals with our current technology sounds like an absolute waste of money. I imagine the costs of just getting to the asteroid would outweigh the profit made from the minerals, and then getting back would be risky and expensive as hell. Just doesn't sound logical to me.

[kartmanlol]

Mining asteroids for minerals with our current technology sounds like an absolute waste of money. I imagine the costs of just getting to the asteroid would outweigh the profit made from the minerals, and then getting back would be risky and expensive as hell. Just doesn't sound logical to me.

Its expensive now sure but they gotta start it somewhere and this does seem like a good opportunity to test out new technology that will eventually evolve into something more feasible.

[bekilrwale]

Its expensive now sure but they gotta start it somewhere and this does seem like a good opportunity to test out new technology that will eventually evolve into something more feasible.

The way corporations are today, I don't see them saying "lets invest billions upon billions of dollars so that one day we will have the technology to create a marginal profit." It seems like corporations would much rather create shapes and then sue other companies for billions of dollars when they use the same shape.

[Wikiy]

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-simulates...124907508.html

So they're doing simulation for an asteroid mission in 2025.. Isn't there an asteroid coming nearby around that year that's suppose to come so close it could hit earth? And even if it doesn't hit, there's a "fairly high" chance it'll swing by the sun's gravity and come back and hit us in like.. 2036 or something.What are your thoughts on the whole doomsday thing. Do you think it'll be possible to actually push an asteroid off course if and when the time actually came?

1) The asteroid in question, called Apophis, has a 1 in 250 000 chance to pass through a gravitational keyhole in 2029, which will guarantee it to hit in 2036. If it doesn't pass through the keyhole, it wont hit for millions of years. Either way, if we wanted to divert it, we'd have to do it before it passes through the keyhole, which is only about a mile wide. If it passes through, though, and we decide to divert it then, we'd have to divert it by a full Earth radius. Either way, if we don't manage to divert it, it'll hit in the pacific and the tsunamis will only go about 250 meters in land. No one has to die.
2) Mining asteroids for resources is useless, the cost to get such operations started would outweigh potential benefits by a clear mile. There aren't any minerals asteroids usually have that we could use but don't have anyway.