What kind of "Asteroid" defense our planet has?

Question

I was watching this show on Discovery channel, and well it said that if an asteroid or comet or something from space hit us, it could wipe out nearly all life on Earth again. So, the scientists there were arguing about what kind of defense would be appropiate to save the world. They were all prototypes and none of them have tested, so my question is what type of defense do we currently have? Do we even have any?

Answer 1

No, we just hope the moon's gravity will draw the asteroid or comet that way. It's a big sky, how will we defend it?

Answer 2

The odds of an asteroid strike significant enough to extinguish all life on Earth are astronomically (no pun intended) small. That said, at the present time, we do not have an effective means of altering the course of or destroying an incoming asteroid.

Frankly, I think we have better things to spend our money on, such as getting back to the moon and establishing more space stations.

Answer 3

None

There are no "long range" smart bombs and you are talking about hitting a target way, way out there smaller than 1 mile across.

You don't know what will happen to it if you blow it up.

If you nuke it it will rain down small pieces of radioactive material.

There is no approriate defense at this point in time.

We can barely navigate a ship to the moon that weights only a ton or so. How do we nagivate a rock that weighs hundreds of tons.

Yes, in space there is no gravity, but there is MASS, there is ANGLE of travel, there is ORBITAL VELOCITY.

You are talking NEWTONIAN physics.

Do you know how many ERGS of power it would take to deflect an asteriod 1 degree adn the DISTANCE from the EARTH dictates how many degrees it must be deflected.

YOu goof up and it could be worse!

Answer 4

Not to worry friend. I've found out that there is a trained team of research astrophysics and astronomers numbering about the same as a McDonald crew of workers, that train their powerful telescopes on the Heavens ever night, looking for possible earth colliding comets and asteroids! So don't worry, . .. be happy!
The best defense in the case of an oncoming asteroid, with very little time to prepare of the assault on earth, is to PRAY in ernest to that GOD, which many scientists these days don't believe in!!! Maybe He will be merciful and SAVE HIS planet He created, from annihilation!!!

Answer 5

We have none. The only real action being taken is a search for asteroids that could hit Earth at some future date. But if one were found, some of those proposed methods would certainly be tried. But no deflection capability exists now.

Answer 6

Luck, it wasn't too long ago that a large asteroid came closer to Earth than the moon. We also dodged a big bullet when there was a huge sunspot that went off on the sun but was pointed in the other direction.

Launching nukes on rockets into space to try and divert an asteroid could cause more harm than good if something went wrong.

Answer 7

Currently, we have very little asteroid deflection capability, but we do have an excellent system of asteroid detection which allows us to at least know a few years ahead of time that we are all going to die...or find a solution such as deflecting the asteroid. The actual answer is simple...Give more money to NASA!!!

Answer 8

We're going to send a little wedge shaped spacecraft to shoot them with little bullets that break the big asteroids into little ones and eventually destroy the little ones. The spacecraft also has to be able to fight off ufo's that will probably come and shoot at it from time to time.

Current technological innovations include a hyperspace function that allows the wedge to teleport away if it gets into trouble and a special warp wrap-around feature that makes the asteroids come back again and again until they are shot (or the wedge is hit).

When the threat approaches, NASA knows there will be no time to train pilots, so they pre-trained an entire generation (the youth of the early 80s) to pilot the wedge craft and fight off the asteroids and UFOs.

Answer 9

Our primary defense at the moment is 'wishful thinking'. We have a handful of people watching the skies, and that's it. The rest is all hopes for the future.

That's why we occasionally hear about near misses, that fly between us and the moon. There ain't a durned thing we can do about it at the moment. Other than prayer.

Answer 10

No--there are currently no defenses against an asteroid strike. And--in the US at least--no funding to develop any--or todevelop the kindof spacecraft we would need.

Answer 11

Chuck Noris