Why do I get the feeling this would be easier to get done than the Fiscal Cliff crap?
Forget the White House beer recipe — what the American people really want is a Death Star.
Well, 495 of them anyway.
A petition on the White House’s “We the People” website calls for the United States to find funding and begin construction on a Star Wars-style Death Star by 2016.
“Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016,” the petition reads.
A Death Star at the ready to vaporize incoming asteroids would be a good thing…… assuming the software could tell the difference between an asteroid and Mother Earth.
If I was a hacker….. I would accept all the petitions for secession. THEN, in order to accept readmission, I’d make every Teabagger give meaning to that expression.
I have to admit . . . that’s a hilarious picture.
And in 2020 we will have the War of the remotely controlled Death Stars between all countries.
Must be a size limit where space junk collisions make it impractical? Besides being insane, of course.
I’ve always thought, why not put up and drag (or just leave stationary) a huge miles wide space junk Kevlar layered net through space to pick up the junk.
After using it, just drop it back to earth and watch it burn up.
Ok, it may be an understatement to say it’s just not that simple!
I guess The Hill can’t recognize satirical humor when it trips over it.
The safest way to deal with incoming bolides from space is to deflect them years earlier, because we know where they are and are tracking them all, by altering their course with gravitational assists so they fall into the sun.
(Talkin’ about Cesar!)
Building anything that huge, without it being a weapons platform, would be a 100% waste of money. That said, there are world treaties (the US signed them too) that forbids weapons in space. So all these ideas of energy weapons to protect us from asteroids and meteorites, is bogus. The space treaties never allowed for any defensive weaponry. Probably because it could so easily be retasked as offensive weaponry. And it’s completely unnecessary to blast meteors approaching earth. Because the vast majority of them are small and insignificant. And anything big enough to do real damage, could be seen months before. And a nudge, out in deep space, would send it toward the Sun, Venus, Mercury, whatever. Blasting, just creates scores of meteor shrapnel, still headed toward earth.
So meteor redirection is both, far more effective, and permitted by treaties. And can’t be reprogrammed to kill people back on earth, any better than ground based missiles. So why waste some deep space, booster rockets, on a war? Just have a small fleet of them, out near Mars’ orbit. To catch up to anything large, on an earth approach. And nudge it off course, long before it get near earth. But they should be a hardy design. Because they’ll be out there waiting a very long time, for anything rouge to come along. And get the signal from earth to chase it away.
But the pro-space based weapons fiends will always keep trying to sell powerful lasers and nuclear warheads, as the answer. Even the Hayden Planetarium’s famed director, fails to call for a weapons-free solution to space dangers. So as far as I can tell, he’s part of the aerospace weaponizing agenda. Some humanitarian, he is. Phony bastard.
Actually I may have to retract what I said about N.D. Tyson. Because I found this clip from a 2008 talk, on Youtube, I hadn’t heard him say on national news. He just seemed to be concerned about spending the money, more than how it was spend. So this sounds more like him being rational, for a change.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc
The problem with Tyson, is that the rest of what he says is a huge load of bull crap.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o&NR
There’s no way to calculate any asteroid’s approach to earth, that accurately, decades in advance. The mass of everything it passes, along the way, effects its course and arrival time. Just as Halley’s Comet’s course isn’t 100% predictable, every 75-6 years. (see Computation of Orbit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_comet
The exact mass of the asteroid is not known now, or what it will be in 2029, if stuff falls onto or off of it. And the solar winds effect it too. So what the sun will be doing then, is unknown. You could list a hundred unknown factors, that will effect the approach. And have only been guessed at. So Tyson and his fear-monger colleges are a bunch of liars. If they claim they know exactly when and where it will impact earth.
But he is right about not blowing it up. Just tow it off in the right direction. But I’ll bet they put nuclear power cells in the rockets, anyway. Just to be sure.