Chelyabinsk meteor . . . Holy Carp!

Another picture of the Chelyabinsk Oblast

 

"....until it was too late!" ????

Any idea of how much more warning time would have been available if it came from an easier direction to detect? Two seconds, maybe three?

(Actually, I don't know the answer, so my humor can backfire on me.)

 

Ya Think Bra...

 

Try to as little as possible... it hurts.

 

..

 

Good stuff, Bob.

Let us realize that the big rocks are much fewer, more dangerous, and easier to detect. The 10 to 100 meter class are much more frequent, fragment in the atmosphere, and throw glass shards in our faces via the sonic boom. The 'sub-10's' are simply entertaining.

Now, NASA etc. say they have 95% of the big rocks mapped, which of course I doubt . Infrared scopes, orbiting above the atmosphere, are the best way to infill any gaps because lotsa rocks have low albedo. Also such scopes would be well situated to look for atmospheric oxygen (life) signals from nearby exoplanets. Two benefits from such scans. I wholly reject the idea of looking for sub-100 m rocks. Our outward-looking resources are few and very costly. The larger rocks should be the focus.

I really don't know if y'all have got the idea that an important 'big' and an ignorable 'low-middle' zizzed the Earth on the same day. It is like in poker, that you drew the royal flush two hands in a row. Or maybe 4 hands. But it is pushing the line on remote improbablity!

 

Seriously, does anyone want to spend (substantial) money to look for more rocks? We may be in a 'chicken little' phase now, like those earlier for which environ-whatevers have been trashed. Choose your battles (money sinks) carefully.

 

Shades of Armageddon! "Bogies are breaching the atmosphere..."

 

The Marsans are here!!! Quick call MIB Headquarters before we are takened over by the alien invaders.

DBCassidy

 

I think this was explored as a concept in SciFi literature by Arthur C. Clarke in his "Rendezvous with Rama" back about 40 years ago. Iread the book instead of focusing on my algebra homework

 

No Korea missile lost it's way?

 

pfffft. It's just money when it run's out we borrow more from you guys or simply print more.

BTW: Russian meteorite 1,000 times larger than first thought.

Russian meteorite 1,000 times bigger than originally thought | Fox News

 

Great link to Fox 'doing what they do'. It is certainly one for the textbooks.

We are still stuck with the small (and more numerous) rocks being very costly to detect and track. Now we see that (at least with low entry angles) they are but window breakers. Um, more or less.

If you want to use one of these as a directed weapon, choose one with very low content of volatiles. They tend to jet out unsymmetrically and make it uncertain that you can hit the city you're aiming for.

I would re-aim them to miss the Earth and hit the moon instead. Big target, and you avoid their future looping around the sun and maybe lining up for another Earth strike later. This is the traditional function of the moon (well, there are others) as a rock dump. Anybody interested in colonizing the moon or mining 3He there would probably disagree

 

I disagree.

I think we can divert some of our military coins to a new mission... it may well save the planet.

 

An article of interest > Kinetic bombardment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

So who has the earth under siege?

 

What does Fox have to do with it?