The Outer Space Treaty and Planetary Defense: A Discussion That Doesn't Exist

[Rileymanrr]

You aren't going to get the "birdshot scenario" by nuking an asteroid.

You are if it is a gravel asteroid. That is actually exactly what you want to happen. If you don't have enough warning to divert it with a series of near-bursts, you actually decrease the predicted damage by shattering the asteroid so that when it hits earth it is at it's largest diameter, before gravity pulls it back together:

Here is some actual science as opposed to baseless speculation:

That is a computer simulation done by Los Alamos national labs with a one megaton 'energy source' on the short side of a long asteroid. Park that 'source' in the middle of a long face as opposed to a short edge and you can get a much different effect. They said that they needed 'a few months' to properly intercept, with a prepared launch vehicle.

[Rileymanrr]

So the problem with your theory is that all of the nations that could develop this technology already have atomic weapons. The number of nukes that currently exist is well above the number needed to seriously disrupt the environment and societies on earth. The UN has had next to nothing to do with the stabilization of the world with atomic weapons, the individual states that have them have done a perfect job. Personally I would rather leave the UN out of it because most of the member nation's opinions don't have the ability to actually do anything on either the space development or atomic weapons deployment.

Using asteroids as weapons by using *nukes* to move them around is extremely dicey, you can only get rough directional adjustments with atomic weapons, but to miss earth rough is perfect. To hit a point on earth you would much rather use something like a gravity tractor or solar reflector or a laser, something with fine control.

If a nuke changes an asteroid's velocity by 10 m/s it doesn't matter what direction you do it in, it is going to miss earth. If you park a gravity tug and slowly coerce the asteroid's impact point around the surface of the earth, that is a problem. Let's just say that the communications goes out just as the aimpoint passes over Beijing. Opps. With a nuke there is little doubt because of the yield of the warhead. As long as you don't use a dial-a-yield warhead there is no chance of 'accidentally-ing' a giant crater in the earth.

[Rileymanrr]

Obviously, missiles should be built now rather than when needed! I just think they should be kept in silos, where inspection and maintenance are easy and international legal issues few, and so launched as to never orbit Earth.

I mentioned ICBMs because this treaty ignores them like it would ignore my proposed weapon, which would be super-orbital.

Clever-enough planetary defenders therefore could comply with the Outer Space Treaty--in letter and spirit--by having their weapon not stop once launched.

-Duxwing

That isn't really how it works. At some point you would be in an orbit around the sun. That is why they used such broad terminology. The second you break the sphere of influence of earth you enter the orbital domain of the sun. Unless you achieve solar escape (42.1 km/s) within the sphere of influence of the earth you are not going to skirt the limits of the treaty. You want to develop a launch vehicle with (11 (earth)+ 42.1(sun)=53.1 kilometers of delta V? Ok, I think it would be easier to just get the OST signing nations to agree on something. Or just run the thing into the asteroid. With a mass of 1500 kilograms it is going to land like a half kiloton nuclear weapon. Without the nuke.

Edit: you can't use a gravity turn during launch either. You would have to launch straight up and just go straight for the asteroid.

[AndrewBCrisp]

Okay, I think I need to clarify some things here. Fair warning, this will be LONG.

Re: asteroids as weapons. The question of whether or not it is feasible is not the point. What matters - and what will prove to be the legal elephant in the room - is that it is possible. Using an asteroid to destroy a nation in one fell swoop (generally by wrecking enough infrastructure to cause that nation to collapse) will prove tempting to nations that can develop the capacity - and frightening to any nation that can conceive of the notion.

For a more down-to-earth example, take a look at discussions over the past few years concerning geoengineering. Deliberately altering our planet's climate to offset global warming has been proposed - as have a number of methods, from space-based sunshades to stimulating plankton blooms to seeding clouds, and so on. One of the arguments used against geoengineering is the possibility of it being weaponized. Imagine being able to shut down a region's food supply by altering rain patterns, just to name one possibility. Note that there are no experiments to prove whether such weaponization is feasible, but the possibility has resulted in calls for banning geoengineering entirely. Best not to develop the capacity at all, say some.

Once again, if there is no global oversight over asteroid diversion, just as there is no global oversight over geoengineering, then once the possibility of weaponizing asteroids is taken seriously by politicians and lobby groups, calls for banning asteroid diversion technology will be made. With global oversight to guard against such abuse - real or imagined - we can move forward and develop the technology.

Re: who has an interest in asteroid deflection? Generally speaking everyone has - or should have - an interest in this, not because they reside in nations that can develop the technology on short notice, but because any region on Earth can become a target.

This is why, in my initial reply, I raised the question about regional devastation of areas considered "unimportant". To use an example in the news, how many of us in the Western World really cared about the Ebola epidemic in Africa? The World Health Organization did its best, but the richer nations gave only tepid support. It was only when isolated Ebola cases popped up in the West that people here actually sat up and took notice.

So, apply this to an asteroid impact. Say Columbia is the projected impact zone for a 300 m rocky asteroid ten years from now. The Columbians would certainly take an interest, but can they develop the technology themselves? Not without help. The major spacefaring nations could help - but why would they? Why spend the money to help what to them must be a backwater nation? Or maybe some of them might want to make it "worth their while". "We can save you," they would say, "but you have to give us something in return." They could just ask for money, but they might ask for more - like military bases on Columbian soil, favorable trade treaties (or cancelling trade treaties with nations the superpower doesn't like), all the way up to ceding some or all of their sovereignty over to the superpower. If the Columbians can't - or won't pay up - the asteroid is not diverted. Substitute any other second or third world nation in for Columbia. I trust you see the problem?

If we are going to have security from asteroid threats, it must be security for ALL. The UN already has the basic framework for such actions in place (to wit, how peacekeeping missions or enforcement actions are handled), which can be bent to fit the needs of the moment, or which can be built upon for a more stable solution. It's not perfect, but no government or organization created by man has ever attained such a lofty status. Plus, it's better than building a new global organization from scratch - or allowing the arms race scenario.

[Hal]

"The use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration

of the Moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited."

Hmmm. I wonder if you could argue that, in order to peacefully explore the moon and other celestial bodies, it is necessary to send a nuclear weapon to destroy an asteroid, as a crippled human civilization wouldn't have a chance. Alternatively, it could possibly be said that, if sent up with absolutely no intent to harm anything living (in fact the opposite) the nuke wouldn't count as a weapon.

Those are both some pretty extreme stretches, but if there's one thing politicians are good at, it's stretches of logic. I imagine an agreement to break the treaty or amend it would be easier and give less leeway for weapons in future cases, though.

[Duxwing]

That isn't really how it works. At some point you would be in an orbit around the sun. That is why they used such broad terminology.

Orbiting the Sun is OK: the treaty bans nuclear weapons orbiting only "the Earth".

Or just run the thing into the asteroid. With a mass of 1500 kilograms it is going to land like a half kiloton nuclear weapon. Without the nuke.

Now there's an idea! We could also avoid the issue by using antimatter--positrons alone should 'nuclear' include any weapon exploiting atomic nuclei.

Edit: you can't use a gravity turn during launch either. You would have to launch straight up and just go straight for the asteroid.

A gravity turn would be legal because the letter of the treaty forbids only "to place in orbit around the Earth" (italics mine) any nuclear weapons; whereas one would not "place" a planetary defense weapon but fire it at once. Moreover, the treaty's spirit would permit the weapon's launch were even gravity turning a deflector considered "in orbit": the treaty exists to protect Earth from such devastation as both extra-planetary nukes and impending asteroids would wreak.

-Duxwing

[Bioman222]

One thing about Duxwing's hypothetical device you would have to wait up to 24 hours for the rocket to be in the right window to launch towards your asteroid, where as with a orbital device it would take up to 90 minutes to get to the Periapsis and perform the burn to get to said asteroid. Time counts.

Yet, if 90 minutes to 24 hours really mattered, we'd probably be screwed anyways...

Edited October 22, 2014 by Bioman222

[Bioman222]

Orbiting the Sun is OK: the treaty bans nuclear weapons orbiting only "the Earth".

Did you read anywhere past the first sentence?

objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass

destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in

outer space in any other manner.

WMDs CAN'T BE IN SPACE.

(Unless they're ICBMs, aparrently)

Edited October 22, 2014 by Bioman222

[Rileymanrr]

You forgot the rest of that requirement: "any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner." It is literally everything but you read is why you can't do that. You are stationing an atomic device in outer space. The part that the treaty has a problem with is in direct conflict with the "...in any other manner..."

Article IV if you were wondering.

[*Aqua*]

If the impact zone is in a spacefaring nation, we can be rest assured that said nation will do anything it can to defend itself. Getting the UN to bend the Outer Space Treaty becomes more problematic, as some nations - particularly those with Security Council vetoes, might decide it is not in their interests for such self-defense to succeed. If the US was about to be hit, would Russia be willing to sign off on a resolution? Or would they play politics in hopes of getting concessions? Likewise if the scenario was reversed - would American politicians (and the voting public) be willing to aid Russia when the US itself is not threatened?

Or what if the impact zone of a Torino 3 to 5 threat is in an "unimportant" or "hostile" region? If Syria, or Chile, or Madagascar faced such a threat, would the great powers intervene? Would they do nothing to divert the asteroid but evacuate the zone? Or would they do nothing at all but wring their hands at the "tragic state of affairs" once the asteroid hits? After all, its their treasuries that would pay for the mission - and its not their people at risk.

No country has the interest to shatter its enemy into the ground. They need each other to stabilize themselves or they will crumble. A common thread will always unite the people whereas the lack of it will give rise to unrest. The USA wants a stable Russia the same as Russia wants a stable USA.

Furthermore the globalization ties all the countries. Even if only a smaller country is in danger it will have an effect on all the other countries. The question is not "Why should I care about them?", instead it goes like "If I don't help this poor guy, will I go down, too?"

Evacuation is out of the question. Sure, you can evactuate a small country but at least half of the affected continent will be on the run and nobody can handle that.

The third point: An impact which can destroy a country is never small enough to be only a regional problem. It will always be a global problem. The shockwaves will reach every corner of the Earth. Read about the Tunguska event. They could measure that the shockwave went around Earth 3 times. People in London could read a newspaper at midnight - 6,000 km away! Scientists calculated an explosion in the scale of 2 to 50 megatons. That's miniscule compared to what will happen if a real thread hits the Earth.

[Brotoro]

WMDs CAN'T BE IN SPACE.

(Unless they're ICBMs, aparrently)

Can't be STATIONED in space. As in: put there, waiting for future use. No bombs waiting in orbit. No nuclear missile bases on the Moon.

Shooting a nuclear demolition charge out to nudge an asteroid is not stationing a weapon in space.

[magnemoe]

You are if it is a gravel asteroid. That is actually exactly what you want to happen. If you don't have enough warning to divert it with a series of near-bursts, you actually decrease the predicted damage by shattering the asteroid so that when it hits earth it is at it's largest diameter, before gravity pulls it back together:

Here is some actual science as opposed to baseless speculation:

That is a computer simulation done by Los Alamos national labs with a one megaton 'energy source' on the short side of a long asteroid. Park that 'source' in the middle of a long face as opposed to a short edge and you can get a much different effect. They said that they needed 'a few months' to properly intercept, with a prepared launch vehicle.

Ok so it work a bit like kicking an rubble pile, most will move in the wanted direction but in an wide cone, most will miss earth. Another option is to use the nuke to heat one side and let the out gassing and boil off give trust, this will be more gentle but also less powerful.

To set this off you need an deep space probe with the nuke as payload, you would also have to launch it on an intercept trajectory.

[magnemoe]

So the problem with your theory is that all of the nations that could develop this technology already have atomic weapons. The number of nukes that currently exist is well above the number needed to seriously disrupt the environment and societies on earth. The UN has had next to nothing to do with the stabilization of the world with atomic weapons, the individual states that have them have done a perfect job. Personally I would rather leave the UN out of it because most of the member nation's opinions don't have the ability to actually do anything on either the space development or atomic weapons deployment.

Using asteroids as weapons by using *nukes* to move them around is extremely dicey, you can only get rough directional adjustments with atomic weapons, but to miss earth rough is perfect. To hit a point on earth you would much rather use something like a gravity tractor or solar reflector or a laser, something with fine control.

If a nuke changes an asteroid's velocity by 10 m/s it doesn't matter what direction you do it in, it is going to miss earth. If you park a gravity tug and slowly coerce the asteroid's impact point around the surface of the earth, that is a problem. Let's just say that the communications goes out just as the aimpoint passes over Beijing. Opps. With a nuke there is little doubt because of the yield of the warhead. As long as you don't use a dial-a-yield warhead there is no chance of 'accidentally-ing' a giant crater in the earth.

yes, the only way an asteroid makes sense as a weapon if you could make it look like an natural impact.

Good look doing that today or in the near future, as you say an nuke is inaccurate, other ways will be to slow to be practical and would require meeting up with the astroid and manipulating it trajectory over long time, naturally everybody will be watching this.

Now you could do some tricks, say you lost control over it just as it was in the right trajectory. Two downsides, one you would be responsible anyway, second is that the other might use an nuke to redirect it, you will probably be billed for that mission.

[magnemoe]

That isn't really how it works. At some point you would be in an orbit around the sun. That is why they used such broad terminology. The second you break the sphere of influence of earth you enter the orbital domain of the sun. Unless you achieve solar escape (42.1 km/s) within the sphere of influence of the earth you are not going to skirt the limits of the treaty. You want to develop a launch vehicle with (11 (earth)+ 42.1(sun)=53.1 kilometers of delta V? Ok, I think it would be easier to just get the OST signing nations to agree on something. Or just run the thing into the asteroid. With a mass of 1500 kilograms it is going to land like a half kiloton nuclear weapon. Without the nuke.

Edit: you can't use a gravity turn during launch either. You would have to launch straight up and just go straight for the asteroid.

The interceptor is not stationed in space more than an ICBM, its launched, follow an trajectory towards the target and explodes.

An ICBM also used gravity to tilt it back towards the target, the perform correction burns once in space even to send warheads towards various targets. The interceptor have an more complex trajectory and use longer to reach target.

yes if it misses it would be stationed in space unless detonated.

Anyway this would just be an legal fig leaf, the excuse might help a small bit in the US. As I understand international treaties become part of national law in the US so unless you find an legal excuse you might have to repeal the law. This is not common, for most countries international treaties only affect the relationship between countries, breaking them has an political cost, no legal issues.

Note that none of the scientists working on asteroid redirection mention it at all, their main objection to using nukes is the lack of fine control, fragmentation and radiation.

[Rileymanrr]

Pretty much. The mission would be almost identical to the Deep Impact mission except with a nuke instead of a kinetic energy payload. That is why it is an attractive option, because we are already most of the way there technologically.

[AbortButton]

As I understand it, the treaty forbids nuclear weapons. Using a nuclear device to divert an asteroid away from earth wouldn't really be a weapon.

[AngelLestat]

As many said, it all comes down to time and size. With more time, the chances to divert an asteroid grows exponentially, but with more size, the chance to fail also grows exponentially. A little difference in diameter means a huge difference in mass.

There is no better book to remind me this than "The light o other days" from Arthur Clarke & Stephen Baxter.

Here there is a little extract of that chapter.

http://www.ebook2u.org/sf/Clarke09/30330.html

The books main topic is about a new technology which makes microscopic wormholes, but it also talks about the discovery of an asteroid so big, than even with 500 years to the impact, there is no foreseeable technology which can avoid the collision if that happens.

[Error404brain]

Space elevator don't orbit the planet they are locked to, don't they. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit

Thus we can mount weapon on them

[Guest]

The most effective way of redirecting an asteroid with a nuke isn't to use a normal, ICBM-type bomb, but a nuclear shaped charge. You could likely pass it off as a propulsion system, actually, since it's pretty much Orion with asteroid's rock working as a pusher plate. If it goes well, the asteroid would go nowhere near Earth. Blowing up an asteroid is only feasible with gravel-type ones. You increase surface area greatly, in turn increasing aerodynamic heating and drag, while spreading the impact energy over the larger area. Even if it doesn't shatter into pieces small enough to burn up entirely, each piece would slow down more, ablate more and do less damage upon impact as a result.

[rdfox]

As a side note, one of the wonderful (for some value of "wonderful") things about treaties is that signatories *can* choose to withdraw from them at any time. What's more, they can be modified, if necessary, so long as all signatories agree to do so. And the only *real* force that they hold is that they're an agreement not to do something--the only penalty for abrogating one is that it frees the other parties to do likewise. A fine example of these is the 1936 London Naval Arms Limitations Treaty, which set a limit on the size of new battleships to attempt to maintain the "curbing" of the naval arms race that the 1921 Washington and 1931 London NALTs had started. New battleships were, under the treaty, to be limited to a size of 35,000 tons; the treaty also included an "escalator" clause which, should the signatories learn of a non-party to the agreement--i.e., Japan--building battleships that exceeded the Treaty limits in size, would allow this size cap to be raised. In 1937, following people learning of the Yamato-class battleships under construction, the escalator clause was invoked, raising the limit to 45,000 tons. However, it appeared that even the raised limit would not be sufficient for the designs that the US was developing for construction starting in 1938, and various "paper" measures were taken to reduce the theoretical weight of the ships "in fighting condition"--setting a nominal ammunition load of two-thirds the actual maximum capacity, similarly limiting the nominal consumables carried versus actual capacity, etc.--to get a "standard" displacement close enough to the limit--within 100 tons or so--that nobody would complain. However, with the outbreak of war in 1939, all parties tacitly agreed to suspend the Treaty, which allowed the Iowa class battleships to be outfitted with equipment that took them far beyond the Treaty limits; even going by the "standard" displacement calculation of the Treaty, about the lowest you could get the ships as actually built was 51,000 tons. Ironically, postwar, the French stated that they considered the Iowas and the Midway-class carriers (which were almost double the 23,000 ton limit for aircraft carriers) to be abrogations of the treaty, and it has been considered discarded ever since.)

In the event of a planet-threatening impact event, as mentioned above, the world community would likely simply ignore the OST and clean up the legal mess afterwards. (As a parallel, when a madman stole an M60 tank from a National Guard armory and went on a rampage with it in San Diego in 1993, the local Marine Corps airbase started preparing a couple of attack helicopters with anti-tank missiles to destroy it; had the driver not disabled his own tank by getting it high-centered on a concrete highway center divider, allowing police to storm the tank, the helicopters would have been sent out, despite a longstanding US federal law called "posse comitatus" that flat-out bans the use of the Federal military for any form of civilian law enforcement--the feeling was that the exigency of someone driving a 50-ton tank through civilian neighborhoods, crushing vehicles, attempting to knock down overpasses, and then driving on the freeway was too critical to allow him to continue to pose a threat, that he had to be stopped by any means necessary, and that they'd find some way to clean up the legal mess once they didn't, y'know, have a friggin' TANK trying to run over rush hour traffic.)

However, in the event of a lesser threat--say, a regional one--a spacefaring nation that was going to be threatened could choose to simply act unilaterally, ignoring the OST, and choose one of four options when doing so:

A) Argue that the OST does not cover Peaceful Nuclear Explosions, and that attempting to deflect an asteroid from impacting Earth would qualify as PNEs. (There is some precedent for this; the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1962 prohibited nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space, limiting them to deep underground shots only; however, a number of shallow-underground tests that were deliberately intended to breach the surface were conducted as part of American and Soviet programs to attempt to find peaceful uses for nuclear weapons, both in the US Project Plowshare, and the Soviet project of Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. Indeed, the Soviets even made some operational use of PNEs to redirect rivers and create reservoirs.) It would be a questionable interpretation of the treaty language, but it could be argued.

The nation could initiate negotiations to amend the OST to specifically allow missions to deflect asteroids away from Earth. While it might be seen as a violation to carry out a mission to do so while negotiating a change to the treaty to permit carrying it out, it would be politically very dicey to push TOO hard on that issue, if the nation in question is trying to negotiate in good faith.

C) The nation could simply elect to withdraw from the OST and no longer be held by the bounds of it. This might result in sanctions against the nation, but again, in this situation, I suspect that the response from the international community would be muted, since they would be withdrawing for reasons that are clearly not warlike.

D) In what I consider to be the preferred option, the nation could just go ahead and do it and not take any action regarding the OST; if anyone complained, they could politic against any action against them--which would likely be unpopular anyway, given the nature of the treaty violation. Russia might gnash its teeth over an American use of nuclear weapons to deflect an asteroid that threatens the United States, for example, but they would likely find little support, internationally, for bringing any sort of sanctions against the US for doing so.

These options also would apply to the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, both of which prohibit setting off nuclear weapons in space.

Of course, this all assumes the asteroid is found to be threatening with relatively little time before impact and the "brute force" approach is the only deflection option. If it is found early enough, far less-violent means of deflection would be sufficient, since a net delta-V of 1-2m/s would result in an immense change in trajectory after ten years!

Additionally, it's unlikely that even a lower-rated impact threat on the Torino scale would see anything but a full international response, because the imprecision in tracking the object when it's still early enough to deflect it makes it impossible to set the exact GMT time of a potential impact, or its location on the planetary disc, or its exact entry trajectory. These make it impossible to make early predictions as to exactly what nations would be affected, and thus mean that it would be impossible to say, early enough to allow deflection, that a T3-T5 object would threaten, say, Europe, but not Asia or the Americas, and thus would make it difficult to have that sort of unilateral opposition to a deflection mission on the grounds that if it hits INSERT OTHER NATION HERE, it's just too bad...

[Bioman222]

Space elevator don't orbit the planet they are locked to, don't they. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit

Thus we can mount weapon on them

I believe we don't have the ability to make space elevators currently, if ever. I believe we are referring to modern technologies to deflect the asteroid, if I'm not mistaken.

[Nibb31]

Space elevator don't orbit the planet they are locked to, don't they. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit

Thus we can mount weapon on them

Of course they do. They orbit in GEO.

[Error404brain]

Of course they do. They orbit in GEO.

According to wikipedia they don't describe an orbit, "an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space"

A space elevator is not gravitionnaly curved, thus, they don't orbit.

I believe we don't have the ability to make space elevators currently, if ever. I believe we are referring to modern technologies to deflect the asteroid, if I'm not mistaken.

We can. Just not on earth

[Brotoro]

Of course they do. They orbit in GEO.

According to wikipedia they don't describe an orbit, "an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space"

A space elevator is not gravitionnaly curved, thus, they don't orbit.

I believe we don't have the ability to make space elevators currently, if ever. I believe we are referring to modern technologies to deflect the asteroid, if I'm not mistaken.

We can. Just not on earth

The path that the center of mass of the space elevator follows is indeed a gravitationally curved part, since it is in geostationary orbit.

[Error404brain]

The path that the center of mass of the space elevator follows is indeed a gravitationally curved part, since it is in geostationary orbit.

It must at least be geostationnary. but he can be longer. And the movement is curved because the end is locked to the planet, not because of gravitation forces