Seti aff •seti neg •Asteroids Aff
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Inherency Extensions[____] [____] There are not enough resources currently allocated to asteroid detection and we are not ready to act if we do find one.Nancy Atkinson, University Today Staff Writer, 1/22/2010, Universe Today staff writer, “Asteroid Detection, Defection Needs More Money, Report Says” , http://www.universetoday.com/51811/asteroid-detection-deflection-needs-more-money-report-says/ Are we ready to act if an asteroid or comet were to pose a threat to our planet? No, says a new report from the National Research Council. Plus, we don’t have the resources in place to detect all the possible dangerous objects out there. The report lays out options NASA could follow to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could potentially cross Earth’s orbit, and says the $4 million the U.S. spends annually to search for NE Os is insufficient to meet a congressionally mandated requirement to detect NEOs that could threaten Earth. “To do what Congress mandated NASA to do is going to take new technology, bigger telescopes with wider fields,” said Don Yeomans, Manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office, speaking at the American Geophysical Union conference last month. However, Yeomans said work is being done to improve the quality and quantity of the search for potentially dangerous asteroids and comets. “We have a long term goal to have three more 1.8 meter telescopes,” he said, “and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with an 8.4 meter aperture in 2016. Once these new facilities are in place, the data input will be like drinking from a fire hose, and the rate of warnings will go up by a factor of 40.” But getting all these facilities, and more, online and running will take continued and additional funding. [____] Even if funding has been increased telescopes in orbit are key, which do not exist in the status quo. National Research Council, Committee to Review Near-Earth-Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies, 2010, “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth-Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies” The pursuit of NEOs as small as 140 meters in diameter requires that more advanced telescope systems be constructed and used to detect these objects. Required- for ground-based telescopes for example, are larger-diameter telescope mirrors to increase light-gathering power in order to observe smaller (therefore fainter at a given loca tion) objects: imaging instruments with larger fields of view on the sky in order to maximize sky coverage for the surveys: more advanced observing strategies for optimizing NEO detection in the areas of the sky that are searched; faster operating detectors; and large data-storage capabilities. Because of the rate of motion of asteroids across the sky, exposures are limited to about 30 seconds. A telescope needs to be able to gather sufficient light from dim objects in that short time in order to achieve the goal—a smaller telescope using longer exposures to reach that magnitude will not suffice. Multiple smaller telescopes imaging the same field to make up the aperture will work, but smaller telescopes imaging fields nonsimultaneously will not. There are cost, schedule, and technical performance risks involved with the construction of any large-diameter mirror or large detector, although the risk for such ground-based telescopes is less than that for space-based telescopes. The new systems described below are examples of ones that could contribute significantly to the detection of NEOs that could impact Earth in the future. Such systems thus could support efforts required to meet the mandated goal. Inherency Extensions[____] [____] There are no status quo programs with enough money to deal with asteroids.US News, 3/7/07, “DIRECTOR OF ASTRONOMY LAB PROGRAM AT UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS COMMENTS ON CONFERENCE EXAMINING THREAT FROM ASTEROIDS” A conference underway this week in Washington D.C. is focusing on the potential threat of an asteroid striking the earth. The director of the astronomy lab program at the University of North Texas says the threat is real, but the problem is there's no money for any tracking efforts. Ron DiIulio says asteroid searches are going on all the time. But he adds to deal with the problem requires a two-step approach. He says, "First, we have to identify the potentially hazardous asteroids. Far too often, we see them when they pass away from the earth, but we didn't know they were coming. Secondly, we have to deflect or alter their path. NASA has plans and methods to do this, but what happens is we need to develop interest in it. An asteroid the size of a football field could take out the entire DFW area." The "Planetary Defense Conference" is specifically concentrating on the threat posed by the asteroid Apophis, which could pass within 18,000 miles of Earth twice between 2029 and 2036. NASA predicts it would cost $1billion to find 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020. DiIulio says UNT is already using telescopes at the Monroe Robotic Observatory near Gainesville to track asteroids. "We are using four of our telescopes at the Monroe observatory to look for asteroids. Just last week, we identified three known asteroids." DiIulio hopes that within a year, UNT will be able to take part in the Telescopes In Education program to help track these asteroids. Impact Extensions – Prefer High Magnitude Impacts[____] [____] Prefer our impact because it is the only one that results in extinction. Even a war that killed 99% of humans is very different than an asteroid because there is still a slim chance of survival. Jason G. Matheny Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University 2007, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction” Risk Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 5, 2007 Even if extinction events are improbable, the expected values of countermeasures could be large, as they include the value of all future lives. This introduces a discontinuity between the CEA of extinction and nonextinction risks. Even though the risk to any existing individual of dying in a car crash is much greater than the risk of dying in an asteroid impact, asteroids pose a much greater risk to the existence of future generations (we are not likely to crash all our cars at once) (Chapman, 2004). The “death-toll” of an extinction-level asteroid impact is the population of Earth, plus all the descendents of that population who would otherwise have existed if not for the impact. There is thus a discontinuity between risks that threaten 99% of humanity and those that threaten 100%. [____] [____] Prioritizing a high probability impact assumes that it is okay to be wrong. One asteroid could cause extinction, which means it is not worth the risk. Brent W. Barbee, Aerospace Engineer and Planetary Defense Scientist with the Emergent Space Technologies company in Greenbelt, Maryland, teaches graduate Astrodynamics in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The University of Maryland, 4/1/2009 “Planetary Defense” It is generally accepted that statistics and probability theory is the best way to handle partial information problems. Gamblers and insurance companies employ it extensively. However, one of the underlying premises is that it is acceptable to be wrong sometimes. If a gambler makes a bad play, the hope is that the gambler has made more good plays than bad ones and still comes out ahead. This however is not applicable to planetary defense against NEOs. Being wrong just once may prove fatal to millions of people or to our entire species. If we trust our statistical estimates of the NEO population and our perceived collision probabilities too much, we risk horrific damage or even extinction. This is how we must define the limit for how useful probability theory is in the decision-making process for defense against NEOs. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2011 2011 -> Voices of the Old Sea Norman Lewis 2011 -> Malevil Robert Merle 2011 -> The Elephant Keeper’s Children Peter Hoeg 2011 -> Jv packet •Mars Colonization Affirmative •Mars Colonization Negative 2011 -> Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) omb no. 1024-0018 2011 -> All America Looks Up to Virginia;” Virginia and the Declaration of Independence 2011 -> Rao bulletin 2011 -> Christopher Columbus was born between 25 August and 31 October 1451 in 2011 -> The Battle of Frenchtown (1855), Washington Territory: the Political and Demographic Context rev 9/4/11 2011 -> The harmony society Download 2.75 Mb. Share with your friends:
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