Asteroids = Excuse for Nuclear Weapons

Asteroids = Excuse for Nuclear Weapons

The threat of an asteroid provides an excuse to deploy nuclear weapons—causes accidental launch

(Michael & Anna, Asteroids and Comets: U.S. and International Law and the Lowest-Probability, Highest Consequence Risk, New York Univ. Environmental Law Journal, http://www1.law.nyu.edu/journals/envtllaw/issues/vol6/1/6nyuelj4.html)

Perhaps the biggest threat that asteroids pose to mankind today is the excuse they provide for continuing to deploy nuclear weapons. In 1996 there were two stark examples of this. In April, China refused to sign a treaty with Russia banning nuclear weapons testing, on the stated grounds that such weapons might be needed to combat the asteroid threat. 68 In September, a "Space Protection of Earth" conference was held at the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Snezhinsk, and the sole American scientist to attend reported that the Russians are considering building a system of nuclear-armed missiles that could be readied for launch in ninety minutes if an incoming asteroid were spotted. 69 It seems obvious that the deployment of a nuclear weapons system in China, Russia, or anywhere else poses a threat of accidental or malevolent mass destruction that dwarfs the odds that such a system will be suddenly needed to beat back a long-period comet or another atypical threat that arises with too little warning for us to develop a defensive system from scratch. Some U.S. scientists today advocate a testing program for nuclear explosions at remote asteroids to determine the parameters under which defensive measures would work best. The most visible proponent of this approach is the eighty- nine year old Dr. Edward Teller, who is better known as the "father" of the hydrogen bomb. 70 Representatives of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization have also recently advocated an accelerated program of testing (not necessarily with nuclear warheads) utilizing some of the several hundred Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that must be destroyed by 2002 in accordance with the START II treaty. 71 One physicist who has studied the issue, *19 while not explicitly advocating the testing of nuclear devices, has written: Clearly, the NEO hazard threat cannot be used as a pretext for rearmament and appropriate safeguards must be taken to minimize the threat of misuse. If mitigation methods and devices are to be developed, safeguards and rigorous controls against their misuse must play a dominant role at every state of design, development, testing, and deployment. However, in the absence of specifically developed mitigation technology it would be prudent to have available that technology and hardware which can most effectively deal with an Earth threatening NEO. We must and can establish the appropriate custodial mechanisms that allow us to maintain those options which can best protect the Earth. 72

NWs Fail – Porous NEOs

Nuclear weapons fail to deflect porous NEOs

What makes some of these alternatives promising is what scientists have come to understand about asteroids. Many of them, the scientists say, are rather loose agglomerations of stony fragments that have stuck together over time in the cosmic rock tumbler that is the solar system. They are not giant solid boulders. "Maybe something like a popcorn ball is a better way to describe it," Dr. Holsapple said. Such porous objects would be hard to obliterate or move with a nuclear blast, even one some distance from the surface, he said. "But pushing a little bit for a long time would work equally well whether an asteroid is porous or not," he added.

Most NEOs are porous

Housen ‘3 (Kevin and Keith Holsapple, Physical Sciences, MS 2T-50, The Boeing Company and Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 352400, U of Washington Impact cratering on porous asteroids, Icarus 163 (2003) 102–119)

Although asteroids have long been suspected of having porous interiors (Chapman et al., 1977; Watson, 1978), compelling evidence of porosity has come only recently. Results from spacecraft missions and major improvements in ground-based optical and radar observation techniques have now provided reliable bulk density estimates for 23 asteroids (Britt et al., 2002). Ten of these objects have density less than about 2.0 g/cm3, and five are below 1.5 g/cm3, which suggests that much of their interiors could be void space. Flynn (1994) noted that many interplanetary dust particles have high porosities, suggesting that the asteroids that they sample may be porous as well. Quantitative estimates of porosity have been made by associating various taxonomic classes of asteroids with analogue classes of meteorites. The bulk porosity of an asteroid, i.e., the fraction of an asteroid’s volume that is void, is estimated from the known bulk density of the asteroid and the measured density of mineral grains in the corresponding analogue meteorite type. Such calculations show that many asteroids have significant pore space (Consolmagno and Britt, 1998; Flynn et al., 1999; Wilson et al., 1999; Britt and Consolmagno, 2000; Wilkison et al., 2001). For example, Britt et al. (2002) found porosities as high as 75%, with a clustering of objects in the range of 25–55%. Comets are also thought to have highly porous structures. Empirical and theoretical data on the density of meteors, along with modeling of interstellar dust grain formation and aggregation indicate that cometary nuclei could have as much as 60–80% void space (e.g., Greenberg, 1986; Sirono and Greenberg, 2000). Spacecraft observations of asteroid Mathilde strongly suggest that porosity has an important effect on the collisional evolution of asteroids. Mathilde, a C-type asteroid 66 _ 48 _ 46 km in size, has a measured bulk density of _1.3 g/cm3, and an estimated porosity of _50% (Veverka et al., 1999; Britt et al., 2002).

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