A Plan to Save Mankind

[Winter Man]

Thing is with Mars, you don't need to terraform it. You just need to build large domes on the surface as a starting point for digging underground and creating radiation-protected habitats - terraforming can come later. As for how much can be done towards that in 30 years, quite a bit. Once the Falcon 9-R is operational (assuming you build more than one), you could feasibly launch a great number of colony ships a year. You'd expend all of Earth's useful resources (http://what-if.xkcd.com/7/) and destroy the biosphere in the process, but that soon wouldn't be a problem. Also, if you ban reproduction between coming up with a plan and actually finishing it on Mars, you only have to lift ~5 billion people or so.

[lajoswinkler]

A 250 km rock will not melt the whole lithosphere.

You underestimate the energy involved and overestimate the thickness of the lithosphere. The planet would pretty much end up looking like how I'd like Moho to look like.

In fact, the surface would be invisible because the atmosphere would contain all the oceans so Earth would look like Venus from orbit.

The heat involved in the impact is enormous, and it would end up in the ejecta. Together with the stress waves, it might not melt the whole lithosphere, but it would crumble it and lots of volcanic eruptions would start. The world would be sterilized.

[Spica]

What about launching giant space-lasers or mirrors to cause the object to violently outgas. Since this dwarf planet would collide with us in 30 years, it would have to be from outside the solar system. Otherwise it would have been discovered long ago. That means it will just be a giant comet. Or we could paint the entire thing white, and let the Yarkovsky effect do its job. Or, hope the moon is in the way, and hope no baby-moonlets hit us.

[rpayne88]

Lets see, Texas is 1125Km wide (according to Google Earth.) The asteroid in Armageddon was "the size of Texas." I would send a team of crack oil drillers (and Bruce Willis) to land on the surface, drill into it, drop a nuke down the hole, and get off the thing. This should be easier than that thing since its only a quarter the size.

Don't know what I would do that hasn't already been mentioned if this were real, though.

[mdatspace]

snip

The thinnest part of the lithosphere is oceanic crust. I could see something like a lunar mare forming, but if your are talking about continental crust, it would be more of a crater. The continental crust would be fractured, however, and those fractures are perfect conduits for rising magma. But a 250 km rock would completely destroy life, and I agree on that.

Moho should be a hellish world. Make its orbit smaller and more eccentric, and tidal heating will do the work.

@Skyler: Even if a Moho-sized body just passes by, it would stretch the earth. The area of stretching would simply melt due to tidal heating.

Edited November 3, 2013 by mdatspace
Shortening my post. EDIT 2: Reply to starter of topic.

[czokletmuss]

I assumed it has a density comparable with this of Mercury and that it hits the ocean with its avarage depth.

8000 km from the place of impact is roughly the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In other words, if it hits Japan and you'll be standing in Moscow that's what would happen:

Data from: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

Edited November 3, 2013 by czokletmuss

[lajoswinkler]

The thinnest part of the lithosphere is oceanic crust. I could see something like a lunar mare forming, but if your are talking about continental crust, it would be more of a crater. The continental crust would be fractured, however, and those fractures are perfect conduits for rising magma. But a 250 km rock would completely destroy life, and I agree on that.

Moho should be a hellish world. Make its orbit smaller and more eccentric, and tidal heating will do the work.

Yes, a lava mare would form, with the least direct damage between the impact point and the anti-point on the globe, where horrific tectonic destruction would occur.

Ejecta would cover the region between these two points.

I assumed it has a density comparable with this of Mercury and that it hits the ocean with its avarage depth.

8000 km from the place of impact is roughly the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In other words, if it hits Japan and you'll be standing in Moscow that's what would happen:

http://i.imgur.com/BNiE1D4.jpg

Data from: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

Purdue's simulator accounts for flat terrain, where an observer can look directly at the impact point, so if you have Japan-Moscow between which a significant curvature is observed, you wouldn't be able to witness that much direct radiation. However the radiation of ejecta would ignite even the forests of northern scandinavian countries after it rises up, so when it falls down, it would fall on already fried ground.

This is a representation of a 483 km planetoid impact.

It is not perfect, but it serves a purpose. 250 km would not be much different because the severity of the impact effects isn't exactly linear with the size of an impactor.

There's something most dramatic recreations of impacts forget - the intense light. The impact and the ejecta would look like blinding light. No orange awesome plumes. The temperatures are too high for that.

Anyone who is able to see the ejecta would be exposed to so much radiation that it would look like he's in front of an atomic bomb.

Also the ejecta would not look so symmetrical and neat because the impact would be at an angle, so very complex shapes would form. I'm pretty sure various moonlets would form in LEO.

[czokletmuss]

Purdue's simulator accounts for flat terrain, where an observer can look directly at the impact point, so if you have Japan-Moscow between which a significant curvature is observed, you wouldn't be able to witness that much direct radiation. However the radiation of ejecta would ignite even the forests of northern scandinavian countries after it rises up, so when it falls down, it would fall on already fried ground.

Good point - I stand corrected.

Either way, if there is a body with 125km radius coming at us there is probably nothing we can do. The amount of energy needed to change its trajectory would be unbelievably high - assuming we could even rendez-vous with it. If it coming from the Oort cloud (for the sake of argument let's assume it does) on an inclined or, Kod forbid, retrograde orbit, we can only sit and wait.

"Deep Impact" shows it good although this is just a "tiny" 11km comet:

BTW why is it the New York of all places that always got smashed/frozen/blowed up/bombed/invaded by aliens?

[mdatspace]

Yes, a lava mare would form, with the least direct damage between the impact point and the anti-point on the globe, where horrific tectonic destruction would occur.

Ejecta would cover the region between these two points.

The antipodes would be fractured. But, it depends where said antipodes are. If it is on oceanic crust, it will fracture. On continental crust, it will break a bit, but not so much.

[Kinglet]

Science will find a way. Perhaps steal a battle cruiser from a galaxy far far away...

No, science will find a way. Science gets faster and faster. We may even have warp drives until then. Because sudden science milestones are more and more common.

[impwarhamer]

I think we are forgetting how much the butterfly effect would play into trying to divert moho's course. A difference of a few m/s 30 years away could move moho's course by millions of km at time of impact. However, we don't know enough about the situation, for all we know this could be an interstellar rock that won't enter the solar system for another 25 years.

[czokletmuss]

I think we are forgetting how much the butterfly effect would play into trying to divert moho's course. A difference of a few m/s 30 years away could move moho's course by millions of km at time of impact. However, we don't know enough about the situation, for all we know this could be an interstellar rock that won't enter the solar system for another 25 years.

Is it doable at all? I'm not good enough in math but maybe somebody could provide some calculations. The mass of Moho would be truly titanic, so the energy needed to divert its course would be equally gigantic. Plus we don't have heavy lifters and the probes we sent so far to the asteroides were tiny - for instance, Hyabusa weights only ca. 500kg. So it would be hard to send tens (?) of tonnes of equipment there. And to do it in time. I doubt we would be even able to change the trajectory of ISON, even if we had 30 years.

[Krosulhah]

I assumed it has a density comparable with this of Mercury and that it hits the ocean with its avarage depth.

8000 km from the place of impact is roughly the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In other words, if it hits Japan and you'll be standing in Moscow that's what would happen:

Data from: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

Is it bad that i'm just sitting here playing with that thing on the link, Its quite fun to see how bad stuff can get.

I managed to melt 47.33% of earth!

this made me laugh though "The fireball appears 2380 times larger than the sun"

EDIT: i just destroyed the earth with something only possible during the formation of the earth, like that Really big collision between us and that other planet i cannot remember the name of.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Krosulhah

[lajoswinkler]

Good point - I stand corrected.

Either way, if there is a body with 125km radius coming at us there is probably nothing we can do. The amount of energy needed to change its trajectory would be unbelievably high - assuming we could even rendez-vous with it. If it coming from the Oort cloud (for the sake of argument let's assume it does) on an inclined or, Kod forbid, retrograde orbit, we can only sit and wait.

"Deep Impact" shows it good although this is just a "tiny" 11km comet:

BTW why is it the New York of all places that always got smashed/frozen/blowed up/bombed/invaded by aliens?

Yes, sit and wait, and the waiting would be very interesting. Some think people would forget about their problems and the civilization would perish peacefully. I doubt it. If we knew inevitable death would come in less than third of a lifetime, many of us would just stop caring for anything.

If we knew impact would be in a more than one lifetime, we'd probably live on, and then, as the deadline approaches, wars would break out.

The number of people would drop because of microbes. Vaccination would stop, systematic health care would perish. There are more than 7 billion of us on Earth at the moment, and most of us would die before the End.

Deep Impact was a really great movie, way better than Armageddon. Very realistic, though not completely. However the impactor in that scene was a smaller piece from the original comet. They tried to drill in it and break it in two pieces using a nuclear device. The smaller one was 2.4 km wide.

Why New York? Because no one wants to spend money to see the destruction of Boston.

Science will find a way. Perhaps steal a battle cruiser from a galaxy far far away...

No, science will find a way. Science gets faster and faster. We may even have warp drives until then. Because sudden science milestones are more and more common.

Warp drives are fictional crap from a TV series. We will not have warp drives or magic wands. If there was a planetoid coming our way, we would die.

No happy endings. No stupid Armageddon teams. No "nukes". We would die like vermin in a house fire.

Edited November 3, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[NASAFanboy]

Warp drives are fictional crap from a TV series. We will not have warp drives or magic wands. If there was a planetoid coming our way, we would die.

No happy endings. No stupid Armageddon teams. No "nukes". We would die like vermin in a house fire.

Every warp drive is a fake, unless it's something like cosmic strings or the acclubierre drive. And even these probably will not work.

If there was a large planetoid coming our way, we wouldn't exactly die. More likely last-minute all-out colonization missions to Mars and the Jovian moons and maybe Ceres and notable large asteroids, most of which will likely fail due to technological limits. We won't die.

It's just that our species will go down to a couple hundred in a oversized tin can on Mars.

[WestAir]

Party like its 1999, because we're screwed as a collective ecosystem.

[Seret]

I think we are forgetting how much the butterfly effect would play into trying to divert moho's course. A difference of a few m/s 30 years away could move moho's course by millions of km at time of impact.

Sure, it'd be about a million km per ms^-1. The trouble is a rocky object 250km in diameter would weigh about 8x10¹⁸kg. You'd need a lot of energy to even begin moving that bad boy, and you'd have to somehow get all that energy up into space and have it act upon the target at as far a distance as possible. We just don't have any way of directing that much mass or energy over that kind of distance, and we aren't going to be able to develop it in only 30 years. The only way we'd stand a chance is if we harnessed something with some serious power like the sun, maybe paint half of it white?

[WestAir]

Let's be absolutely clear here: There is zero possibility of a 2013 society moving a dwarf planet out of an impact trajectory with Earth.

That established, our efforts must (and I'd assume will) be made to move our ecosystem (The food chain we rely on, from the bacteria we desperately need to the algae to what have you) from Earth to elsewhere. The easiest location would be in orbit of a planet like Mars. [i would say Earth, but the debris field would tear a colony station apart).

Remember, it's far easier to modify and control a space station colony than it is a Mars or extraterrestrial colony. We'd have a LOT more space and volume to work with that we can expand on. We don't have to worry about storms and geographical errors. The Delta V required to do anything with the colony is tremendously small compared to a planet colony. It also has the same downsides: Hazardous environment (Vacuum, radiation), lack of available resources (water, oxygen), etc. The problem is easier maintained in a station, however. As such, were I in charge of Earth's Survival Plan when Moho is first spotted, I'd put all of our resources into constructing a super-modular station in orbit of Mars, and focus all future I.S.S research on how to keep the food chain alive in a small, controlled, high-radiation zero-G environment. Health risks are a mute point when your 3 realistic choices are: Mars, Mars orbit, or Lava Planet A. [Earth]

[Nibb31]

Look at our current emergencies: climate change and overpopulation. We can't even agree on a global level to reduce CO2 emissions, although it's simple common sense. There is no way we could agree to direct resources to emigrate thousands of people to Mars or the Moon in an emergency. There would be naysayers disagreeing that the asteroid problem is real, religious fruitcakes claiming that it's God's will so be it, and the rest would never agree on a solution or the path to take. Even we, as a small group on a forum, can't agree on that.

But even if we could, we simply don't have the technology to divert a massive asteroid on short notice or to emigrate hundreds of people to other planets in short notice. Our best bet fir survival would be to dig deep, stockpile food and supplies, and brace for the impact. At least a few million should be able to survive, which would be enough to start all over again

[NASAFanboy]

Look at our current emergencies: climate change and overpopulation. We can't even agree on a global level to reduce CO2 emissions, although it's simple common sense. There is no way we could agree to direct resources to emigrate thousands of people to Mars or the Moon in an emergency. There would be naysayers disagreeing that the asteroid problem is real, religious fruitcakes claiming that it's God's will so be it, and the rest would never agree on a solution or the path to take. Even we, as a small group on a forum, can't agree on that.

But even if we could, we simply don't have the technology to divert a massive asteroid on short notice or to emigrate hundreds of people to other planets in short notice. Our best bet fir survival would be to dig deep, stockpile food and supplies, and brace for the impact. At least a few million should be able to survive, which would be enough to start all over again

When we felt threatened, we landed on the moon in ten years when no technology existed for such a feat.

Yes, there will be these religious nut cakes who claim that it's gods will (Though frankly, they should be shot at dawn), but many sane people will support a crash colonization project of another planet.

[magnemoe]

Let's be absolutely clear here: There is zero possibility of a 2013 society moving a dwarf planet out of an impact trajectory with Earth.

That established, our efforts must (and I'd assume will) be made to move our ecosystem (The food chain we rely on, from the bacteria we desperately need to the algae to what have you) from Earth to elsewhere. The easiest location would be in orbit of a planet like Mars. [i would say Earth, but the debris field would tear a colony station apart).

Remember, it's far easier to modify and control a space station colony than it is a Mars or extraterrestrial colony. We'd have a LOT more space and volume to work with that we can expand on. We don't have to worry about storms and geographical errors. The Delta V required to do anything with the colony is tremendously small compared to a planet colony. It also has the same downsides: Hazardous environment (Vacuum, radiation), lack of available resources (water, oxygen), etc. The problem is easier maintained in a station, however. As such, were I in charge of Earth's Survival Plan when Moho is first spotted, I'd put all of our resources into constructing a super-modular station in orbit of Mars, and focus all future I.S.S research on how to keep the food chain alive in a small, controlled, high-radiation zero-G environment. Health risks are a mute point when your 3 realistic choices are: Mars, Mars orbit, or Lava Planet A. [Earth]

Problem is that your space station would not be able to repair itself, that is manufacturing the parts it need to work so it would only give say 20 years to the people in it. Only exception would be if you build something like the L-5 cities. And it this case redirecting something with 250 km diameter become easier.

[OrtwinS]

Let's be absolutely clear here: There is zero possibility of a 2013 society moving a dwarf planet out of an impact trajectory with Earth.

That established, our efforts must (and I'd assume will) be made to move our ecosystem (The food chain we rely on, from the bacteria we desperately need to the algae to what have you) from Earth to elsewhere. The easiest location would be in orbit of a planet like Mars. [i would say Earth, but the debris field would tear a colony station apart).

Remember, it's far easier to modify and control a space station colony than it is a Mars or extraterrestrial colony. We'd have a LOT more space and volume to work with that we can expand on. We don't have to worry about storms and geographical errors. The Delta V required to do anything with the colony is tremendously small compared to a planet colony. It also has the same downsides: Hazardous environment (Vacuum, radiation), lack of available resources (water, oxygen), etc. The problem is easier maintained in a station, however. As such, were I in charge of Earth's Survival Plan when Moho is first spotted, I'd put all of our resources into constructing a super-modular station in orbit of Mars, and focus all future I.S.S research on how to keep the food chain alive in a small, controlled, high-radiation zero-G environment. Health risks are a mute point when your 3 realistic choices are: Mars, Mars orbit, or Lava Planet A. [Earth]

I completely agree on the 0 chance to survive on earth. And moving (a 'terrarium sized version' of) the ecosystem seems to be the best way to build a new future. I'd also attempt to capture as much extremo-philes as possible. These buggers are great at surviving in (for us) terrible circumstances, and might be a good first step to some form of terra forming.

Also agreed on Mars' surface being more a challenge than it's worth, so we move into a space station.

I think we should stick to a Moon orbit though. Survival above the Moon is just as difficult as above Mars (though we can actually go down and back up far easier).

Mars is incredible hard to get to, but getting a 1000-human colony in moon orbit sounds actually quite plausible to me (maybe up to 5k).

Earth is still the best spot in our solar system. How long would it take for the 'dust to settle down'? Lets assume a decade, terraforming Mars sounds harder than rebuilding Earths biosphere.

Earths protective magnetic field is still around, most of the debris will fall back down and eventually the water vapor would condense into liquid again.

Then over the course of another decade we send down the extremophiles, and other primitive plant and animal forms (starting with those that can live of inorganic materials), etc. Slowly rebuilding our basic Oxigen-Nitrogen-Carbondioxide atmosphere and the most essential of the food chains. Soon evolution will be in overdrive to occupy all those free spots (lots of well-mixed nutricients with free energy (sun light) to do something with).

Of course I'd also try building bunkers with 3 decades of supplies spread across the world. It'll give people hope, and it can't hurt to try.

[NASAFanboy]

I completely agree on the 0 chance to survive on earth. And moving (a 'terrarium sized version' of) the ecosystem seems to be the best way to build a new future. I'd also attempt to capture as much extremo-philes as possible. These buggers are great at surviving in (for us) terrible circumstances, and might be a good first step to some form of terra forming.

Also agreed on Mars' surface being more a challenge than it's worth, so we move into a space station.

I think we should stick to a Moon orbit though. Survival above the Moon is just as difficult as above Mars (though we can actually go down and back up far easier).

Mars is incredible hard to get to, but getting a 1000-human colony in moon orbit sounds actually quite plausible to me (maybe up to 5k).

Earth is still the best spot in our solar system. How long would it take for the 'dust to settle down'? Lets assume a decade, terraforming Mars sounds harder than rebuilding Earths biosphere.

Earths protective magnetic field is still around, most of the debris will fall back down and eventually the water vapor would condense into liquid again.

Then over the course of another decade we send down the extremophiles, and other primitive plant and animal forms (starting with those that can live of inorganic materials), etc. Slowly rebuilding our basic Oxigen-Nitrogen-Carbondioxide atmosphere and the most essential of the food chains. Soon evolution will be in overdrive to occupy all those free spots (lots of well-mixed nutricients with free energy (sun light) to do something with).

Of course I'd also try building bunkers with 3 decades of supplies spread across the world. It'll give people hope, and it can't hurt to try.

The moon is risky. Sharpenel from the explosion could destroy/pulverize the moon, which could wreck your station.

If anything, settle on the side of the moon that does not face the earth when the rock hits.

[Nibb31]

When we felt threatened, we landed on the moon in ten years when no technology existed for such a feat.

Yes, there will be these religious nut cakes who claim that it's gods will (Though frankly, they should be shot at dawn), but many sane people will support a crash colonization project of another planet.

Not when paying for it means raising taxes or diverting funds from some politician's favorite money sink or corporate interests (real estate, insurance companies, banks...). When that happens, you will start seeing lobbies and interest groups paying for independant studies that will prove that the asteroid threat is a myth so that those corporations can still publish good results for the next quarter. Doesn't that sound familiar?

There would also be arguments about what to do and how to do it, where the priorities would be, who would be in charge of the global effort, who gets saved and who doesn't, who gets to be in charge of your colony, and all that sort of thing. There is no way we could all come together and agree to divert a major part the World's resources into a single project like that. It would take years just to get some sort of general agreement treaty.

Comparison with Apollo is not relevant. It was a single country's effort and it had very little impact on the World economy. It wasn't in response to a threat, it was a demonstration of technological superiority which was chosen because it was considered technically feasible. We've already explained to you dozens of times that building a colony of several hundred people on the Moon is simply not possible with current technology. Let's not have this argument again.

A colony of a few hundred (or even a few thousand) individuals on Mars has less chance of long-term survival than hundreds of colonies in underground bunkers scattered around Earth. Any life support technology that would work on Mars could be built on Earth for much less cost and effort, on a wider scale, and saving much more people. It would be a much more feasible survival technique than developing Orion drives, terraforming Mars, inventing Star Trek teleporters or whatever pet peeve your misinformed imagination has come up with this week.

Edited November 4, 2013 by Nibb31

[NASAFanboy]

Not when paying for it means raising taxes or diverting funds from some politician's favorite money sink or corporate interest. When that happens, you will start seeing lobbies and interest groups paying for independant studies that will prove that the asteroid threat is a myth... Doesn't that sound familiar?

There would also be arguments about what to do, where the priorities would be, who would be in charge of the global effort, who gets saved and who doesn't, who gets to be in charge of your colony, and all that sort of thing. There is no way we could all come together and agree to divert a major part the World's resources into a single project like that.

Comparison with Apollo is not relevant. It was a single country's effort and it had very little impact on the World economy. Also, pretty much everyone agreed that landing on the Moon was technically possible. We've already explained to you dozens of times that building a colony of several hundred people on the Moon is simply not possible with current technology. Let's not have this argument again.

A colony of a few hundred (or even a few thousand) individuals on Mars has less chance of long-term survival than hundreds of colonies in underground bunkers scattered around Earth. Any life support technology that would work on Mars could be built on Earth for much less cost and effort, on a wider scale, and saving much more people. It would be a much more feasible survival technique than developing Orion drives, terraforming Mars, inventing Star Trek teleporters or whatever pet peeve your misinformed imagination has come up with this week.

You've "explained". Yet you've not shown me one example that could disprove that building a lunar colony is impossible with today's technology. Stop being such an down-to-earth pessimist, this world needs more dreamers and achievers to become scientists and engineers, instead is those that berate their ideas and proposals as "impossible and preposterous".

Tell a 19th century man about the ISS. He'll say "preposterous, young chap! It's a lie! It's impossible!". And yet, we built it. Spaceflight is impossible, sure, but it is the spirit of humanity that can conquer it. I'm guessing your one of those older fellows who are burnt out by the lack of progress in the space agency. I can't blame you, I'm pretty disappointed too. Yes, there will be those a-hole religious fanatics and corporations but there's always China , and Congress might find their approval ratings fall if they don't support the international crash-colonization programme.

Being in a bunker, it might work, but how deep will it have to go? Is anyone even going to want to go to a bunker at the Earths core?

Yeah, I'll gladly go on a suicide space mission, but to a bunker at the Earths core with magma all over? Couldn't pay me enough.