A Plan to Save Mankind

[Skyler4856]

A dwarf planet the size of Moho is hurtling through space, on a direct collision course with earth. Mankind has 30 years until impact, how do you respond?

My plan: Send a series of probes to every possible habitable world with the goal of figuring the possibility of human habitation. Once we have a list of possibilities we begin to send missions to the top 3. On the closest world we send a base system to develop the capabilities to launch missions from that world, while simultaneously sending modules for life support and long term habitation. We then branch out from that base world and set up similar infrastructure for continued colonization of the solar system.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Skyler4856

[NASAFanboy]

If I was the world...

Abolishing militaries, and throwing funds together into a massive colonization/terraforming project on Mars.

Along the way, I'm going to cut aid to other countries and focus them on the colonization efforts, while giving up the ENTIRE concept of money for this massive effort to get people to Mars.

[Krosulhah]

Send a spacecraft to intercept and push it away from us, and just if that fails, make a Craft that does that spinning thing to create gravity, and getting as many people on as possible.

[Skyler4856]

If I was the world...

Abolishing militaries, and throwing funds together into a massive colonization/terraforming project on Mars.

Along the way, I'm going to cut aid to other countries and focus them on the colonization efforts, while giving up the ENTIRE concept of money for this massive effort to get people to Mars.

I would personal utilize several worlds, for the purposes of the scattering man across the solar system.

[Skyler4856]

send a spacecraft to intercept and push it away from us, and just if that fails, make a craft that does that spinning thing to create gravity, and getting as many people on as possible.

it's the size of freaking moho!!

[DaveofDefeat]

Alter the orbits of as many large asteriods as I can and preform gravity assists on the Moho like object.

[Krosulhah]

it's the size of freaking moho!!

Who said the craft was too small to stop it?

And on to my second plan,

How about we blow it up while its still way off? i know that will probably make it worse, but hey i will send up a second ship to pick off all the tiny bits

[Vaebn]

How big is Moho anyway?

[ElJugador]

Roughly 250km.

My plan: slam it with fifty-megaton warheads until it's either destroyed or no longer on a collision course

[J.Random]

I would probably sit tight and do nothing. Body of this size should have a mass of at least 1/10 of the Moon, so such an object (also, its collision with Earth) would screw up not only Earth, I think. If Jupiter won't save solar system, it's back to its chaotic childhood, with planets changing their orbits, colliding and being recreated from the scratch.

[Drunkrobot]

30 years of humanities total technological fury would be poured onto that little space-rock. I would guess a fleet of manned and robotic spacecraft would descend on it, and mine it into into a cloud of gravel, to enter the atmosphere and burn up harmlessly. Depending on what it was made of, trillions of dollas of raw materials might be added to the biosphere.

[Nuke]

Roughly 250km.

My plan: slam it with fifty-megaton warheads until it's either destroyed or no longer on a collision course

poor man's orion drive?

[CpPolar268]

Call Jebediah and Bruce Willis to teh rescue!!

[Bobhendly]

Actually, A Nuclear weapon is not a bad idea at all! 8 Tsar bombas.. Drill them In there...

Boom, Lil moho is so spread apart that most fragments would likely miss earth.

[Gojira]

I dunno

I'd possibly try and divert it enough that it doesn't hit Earth.

That or start a massive terraform Mars program and get as many off of the planet as possible.

[NGTOne]

30 years of humanities total technological fury would be poured onto that little space-rock. I would guess a fleet of manned and robotic spacecraft would descend on it, and mine it into into a cloud of gravel, to enter the atmosphere and burn up harmlessly. Depending on what it was made of, trillions of dollas of raw materials might be added to the biosphere.

I like this idea. Turn disaster into massive profits for all

[Nuke]

Actually, A Nuclear weapon is not a bad idea at all! 8 Tsar bombas.. Drill them In there...

Boom, Lil moho is so spread apart that most fragments would likely miss earth.

you dont even need to drill. just detonate it near the surface or in a natural indentation. the ablation of material will produce thrust. just send a constant stream of warheads in to do that spaced out enough so they dont harm other incoming warheads when they go off. like i said poor mans orion drive.

[Vaebn]

250km is way too big to talk about nukes. (And believe me, I am a huge fan of Nuke-It-Lots plans).

However and somewhat contrasting with the first statement, 250km, isn't -that- big.

I mean. Make no mistake, it's an extinction event for the unprepared. It's 25 times the size of the dinosraur killer asteroid, and 10x times the size of Phobus.

However, even so, it is only about the size of... Scotland.

At reasonable speeds I think thats far from planet disintegrating. Earth would absorb the mass and add it to its own, but would still remain as a planet, nice and spherical.

The Moon-Earth system would remain pretty much unchanged, and going around the Sun as usual.

This means that we might not have to make it much further than the moon, which might be about possible. I guess, someone would have to try to make some sort of closed loop ecosystem/biosphere underground, send a couple of construction equipment that eat lunar regolith and spit stuff and send a couple of colonists and tell them that they are soon are going to be the only surviving humans in the universe and somehow must learn to colonize the moon and then system, with naught but a couple of rocks and 3d printers from the sounds of it. Also that after the impact there might be a bit of a fragment rain and that the moon has no atmosphere to stop them. No pressure.

However, that would actually be my plan "B".

Much more worth looking into, would be plan "A" which would be surviving... right on Earth!

As I said, 250km isn't -that- big. It is not going to turn the entire crust into lava or something.

My first thought is Underground, fully sealed cities, with nuclear reactors and stuff. Someone could definitely do that in a much larger scale than the moon, and cuts off the super hard "escaping the damn gravity well" bit.

"Underground" is probably a terrible idea tho, since small as it might be, the impact would probably create the MOTHER OF ALL EARTHQUAKES. So perhaps floating city-ark things instead. If the ejecta rain is calculated to be very bad, then perhaps that could be, submersible float city ark things!

There is going to be a redunkulous amount of heat released from the impact, so all the more reason to make them submergible in fact. Heat amounts so great, a good chunk of the oceans would probably evaporate. So all the more reasons to be nice and cosy inside your water cooled, submergible city arks. (this actually makes for an awesome sci-fi universe)

At that point humanity would be split into two factions.

Epic city ships, roaming the dark oceans, under a dark sky, which would remain so for over a 1000 years. Wither the atmosphere would remain breathable, or wither the oceans would fully evaporate would make a huge difference. Interestingly, after the heat wave, they'd basically have to deal with a total ice age. Everything is going to be concentrated around the warmth of the nuclear reactor hearts of the city ships.

And much smaller, tinier, population on the moon, with a great view. And hardly anything else.

But at least they can put a solar panel up and don't run the risk of forgetting that stars exist.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Vaebn

[lajoswinkler]

Object the size of Moho? 250 km?

You people have no bloody idea what you're talking about. Humanity would be ****ed even with a 5 km object.

250 km, that's like island of Sardinia, or Sicily. Or Denmark.

That would be a planetoid similar to Juno. Nothing could be done. It could not be moved, and such impact would completely incinerate the whole biosphere because it would peel away some of the litosphere and even parts of asthenosphere thousands of kilometres from the impact point, as well as wreck havoc on the opposite side of the planet when the stress waves circle the globe. Lots of material would be thrown into suborbital trajectory in the form of a plume of debris hot as the surface of the Sun. It would envelop the planet. The oceans would boil away. Not only the water. All the salts would turn to gas and the whole lithosphere would probably melt.

This event would effectively throw Earth back into Hadean era. Complete restart of a planet's surface.

Teraforming Mars in 30 years? WTF?!

Nothing could be done and the civilization would fall into violent anarchy and global war before the impact.

Edited November 3, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[Killerdude8]

in 30 years from now?

Nothing much we could do, We currently don't have the know-how to get Human beings beyond Earth's SOI, so, I'm not sure how We'd manage to get to another Star System and land on a potentially habitable world.

We are close though, But, Still, we'd probably need a few more decades to develop the Tech to get a significant number of People off Earth and heading towards wherever need be.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Killerdude8

[qeveren]

I invest in a cool powered tech-monocle.

Basically, this:

Edited November 4, 2013 by qeveren

[mdatspace]

Object the size of Moho? 250 km?

You people have no bloody idea what you're talking about. Humanity would be ****ed even with a 5 km object.

250 km, that's like island of Sardinia, or Sicily. Or Denmark.

That would be a planetoid similar to Juno. Nothing could be done. It could not be moved, and such impact would completely incinerate the whole biosphere because it would peel away some of the litosphere and even parts of asthenosphere thousands of kilometres from the impact point, as well as wreck havoc on the opposite side of the planet when the stress waves circle the globe. Lots of material would be thrown into suborbital trajectory in the form of a plume of debris hot as the surface of the Sun. It would envelop the planet. The oceans would boil away. Not only the water. All the salts would turn to gas and the whole lithosphere would probably melt.

This event would effectively throw Earth back into Hadean era. Complete restart of a planet's surface.

Teraforming Mars in 30 years? WTF?!

Nothing could be done and the civilization would fall into violent anarchy and global war before the impact.

A 250 km rock will not melt the whole lithosphere. Edited November 3, 2013 by mdatspace
Specifying.

[ANWRocketMan]

My bet: mars will become our Lifeboat. It should technically be possible to create the technologies to move large amounts of people to Mars and construct necessary infrastructure there. Then, once we are there we all watch the fireworks and watch Earth be destroyed, then the terraforming of Mars can start(which will take a couple thousand years I suppose).

There are social nd economic problems to overcome first. But hopefully many Abrahamic religionists would not want to come along, so that makes it easier.

[Zaeo]

Well...One thing we could do is force open a rift in space to which the object drifts into never to be seen again...though...Not quite sure how realistic that may be.

Get the heak out of dodge, and don't look? I hear the moon is nice this time of year...Those martian lava tubes look to be a cozy home...

30 years isn't enough time to do a gravity tug, so that is out of the question...not to mention, 30 years isn't long enough to construct such a gravity tug in the first place due to the mass requirements, AND launching it to space bit is somewhat void...

Nukes will only serve to make it a flaming ball of rock rather than a rocky rock...

Mining its mass away While constructing a gravity tug in orbit is an option, But somewhat difficult to pull off with current technology...

Land Chuck Norris on it, and have him roundhouse kick it into the sun....That's always an option!

[NASAFanboy]

It's amazing how much we can do, if we feel threatened.

The moon landings? In 1960, no technology even EXISTED to get a human into orbit. But because we felt threatened, we went to the moon in ten years.

In thirty years, I'm going to come up with several options for such an event that would likely be considered by the world goverments at the time.

First of all, option one. Hollywood Style. We blast it with nuclear weapons.

Option Two. We abandon Earth.

Option three, also known as the option of instanity. We blast it into a stable orbit around the Sun, then proceed to colonize the new planet.