Seti aff •seti neg •Asteroids Aff
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- AT: Nuclear Deflection
- AT: Privatization DA / CP
- Answers To: NASA Tradeoff Disadvantage
AT: Nuclear Deflection[____] [____] [____] NASA’s research shows that nuclear deflection is the best option. NASA Report to Congress, 03/2007, “Near-Earth Object Survey and Deflection Analysis of Alternatives”, http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/report2007.html The study team assessed a series of approaches that could be used to divert a NEO potentially on a collision course with Earth. Nuclear explosives, as well as non-nuclear options, were assessed. Nuclear standoff explosions are assessed to be 10-100 times more effective than the non-nuclear alternatives analyzed in this study. Other techniques involving the surface or subsurface use of nuclear explosives may be more efficient, but they run an increased risk of fracturing the target NEO. They also carry higher development and operations risks. Non-nuclear kinetic impactors are the most mature approach and could be used in some deflection/mitigation scenarios, especially for NEOs that consist of a single small, solid body. "Slow push" mitigation techniques are the most expensive, have the lowest level of technical readiness, and their ability to both travel to and divert a threatening NEO would be limited unless mission durations of many years to decades are possible. 30-80 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs are in orbits that are beyond the capability of current or planned launch systems. Therefore, planetary gravity assist swing by trajectories or on-orbit assembly of modular propulsion systems may be needed to augment launch vehicle performance, if these objects need to be deflected. AT: Nuclear Deflection[____] [____] The only way to deal with asteroids with our current technology is to push them out of orbit with nuclear weapons.Homeland Security News Wire, 6/30/2010, “Scientist says nuclear weapons best bet for saving Earth from asteroids,” http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/scientist-says-nuclear-weapons-best-bet-saving-earth-asteroids In the current state of human technology, the NRC warns, the only way to be sure is to use nuclear weapons to push these threat out of orbit: “Nuclear explosions are the only current, practical means for dealing with large NEOs (diameters greater than 1 kilometer) or as a backup for smaller ones if other methods were to fail.” Page notes that if this is indeed the case, then the current plans by President Obama to strive for “a world free of nuclear weapons” would have to be modified to allow for a few nuclear weapons to remain available for planetary defense. AT: Privatization DA / CP[____] [____] The government must be involved. It is the only entity capable of organizing the search for asteroids. Joshua Keating, associate editor of foreign policy magazine, 9/13/2010 “Why is it America's job to save the world from asteroids?” The U.S. currently spends about $5.5 million per year to track NEO's and less than a million on researching ways to counter them, but is falling far short of asteroid-detection goals. Some might say that's already too much, given the more terrestrial problems the U.S. faces. On the other hand, the United States spends more than $1 billion -- the amount NASA says it needs to meet its goal of detecting all potentially dangerous objects by 2020 -- on far less lofty goals than saving humanity from the fate of the dinosaurs. Even an asteroid just one kilometer in diameter would be enough to cause worldwide crop failures and a shift in the earth's climate. One just a few meters wide could wipe out a major city. But why, in this supposedly post-American world, is the United States expected to take the lead on this? Unlike, say, missile defense, asteroid detection and deterrence benefits all countries -- if NASA does detect a potentially dangerous asteroid, chances are it's probably going to hit somewhere else. And unlike global warming, smaller developing countries can't say that the United States should accept more of the blame for asteroids. (Though Hugo Chavez could certainly try.) Scientists have been urging the United Nations to coordinate international asteroid detection efforts for years. But despite coordinating work by the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs (yes, there is one), progress seems to be slow-going. There are some promising signs of other powers starting to take the lead. The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a conference on international asteroid tracing earlier this year. Russia's space agency has also proposed a joint asteroid monitoring project with the European Union. The good news is we probably have some time. An object big enough to wipe out a sizeable portion of the earth's population only hits about twice every million years. But the international community's recording in coordinating the international response to much more immediate dangers like global warming its not encouraging for those who would prefer not to rely on Bruce Willis or Morgan Freeman when the big one comes some day. Answers To: NASA Tradeoff Disadvantage[____] [____] The plan would save money long term – last minute efforts to deflect an asteroid would cost much more. National Advisory Council, 10/6/2010, “Report of the NASA Advisory Council Ad Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense,” http://www.nss.org/resources/library/planetarydefense/2010-NASAAdvisoryCouncilOnPlanetaryDefense.pdf Our ability to project a NEO’s orbit years into the future is accompanied by considerable uncertainty. The object’s orbital plane will generally be known to good accuracy, such that the intersection of that plane with the orbit of the Earth can be predicted to within a relatively few kilometers. However, except in the case of a NEO observed on its terminal impact trajectory, a threatening NEO’s exact orbital period will generally not be known accurately enough to predict whether an impact many years in the future will actually occur. Decision-makers will thus frequently face the question of how to react to a NEO with a worrisome (but uncertain) probability of impact. For example, a particular NEO may have a 2 percent chance of impacting Earth on a particular day decades in the future. Waiting until ground-based observations improve the impact prediction to, say, 50 percent confidence will make an attempted deflection far more costly, if not physically impossible. Even the prompt launch of a robotic transponder mission to improve our knowledge of the NEO’s orbit will cost several hundred million dollars for each potential impact threat. Decisions of this sort will be very unpleasant for policy-makers. The Task Force recommendations seek to minimize these situations through development and deployment of search and tracking assets that reduce the uncertainty in a NEO’s position, and thus the uncertainty in its impact probability. Reducing the number of such “worrisome probability of impact” situations via better NEO search and track technologies (producing observations that 12 prove the more likely case that the asteroid will miss Earth) will be far less expensive than launching transponder missions or an actual deflection campaign. Parallel efforts to demonstrate cost-effective deflection technologies would help deal with those few objects with impact probabilities that remain too worrisome to ignore. The Task Force recommends that NASA choose search and deflection capabilities that minimize the total combined cost of confronting future impact threats. 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