Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everybody, and welcomed you. Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, how
Speaker 1: can you just leave me standing alone in the world
Speaker 1: that's so cold? I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: In today, we're going to be peering up into the
Speaker 1: skies with horror, trepidations, with anxiety. Why would we do that? Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: we decided to revisit a topic we've talked about previously.
Speaker 1: So back in August, we released an episode titled It's
Speaker 1: Coming Right for Us, and that was about the dangers
Speaker 1: of space objects colliding with Earth, like asteroids and meteors
Speaker 1: and comets and that kind of stuff. And so we
Speaker 1: large pianos, very large ip really just the majority of
Speaker 1: items that you can find in the ACME catalog. Wiley
Speaker 1: coyote would get um. But we explored the potential options
Speaker 1: of what we might do to deal with an oncoming
Speaker 1: space object. We were specifically looking into things like the
Speaker 1: scenarios of deep impact and armageddon. Would that the answers
Speaker 1: there makes sense, and specifically with armageddon, the answer is heck, no,
Speaker 1: don't blow it up. It makes it worse. Do you
Speaker 1: was Do you remember? Was this the episode where I
Speaker 1: talked about the old movie The Day the Sky Exploded?
Speaker 1: It may very well have been. I honestly did not
Speaker 1: go back and listen to the episodes. So, uh so
Speaker 1: I want to say, yes, listeners can let us know
Speaker 1: if we're wrong. But we wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about this today because I recently actually looked
Speaker 1: into an organization that is dedicated to discovering and ultimately
Speaker 1: deflect doing space objects that are on a collision course
Speaker 1: with Earth. I had not heard of them before, which
Speaker 1: is odd. Or if I had, I don't remember it,
Speaker 1: which is odd. You've heard of everything, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: which is odd because we specifically researched this topic, and
Speaker 1: our research tends to be fairly exhaustive. Sure, it was
Speaker 1: also a couple of years ago, though, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe they hadn't had something big come out in
Speaker 1: a couple of years or something like that. But yes,
Speaker 1: so part of our Hey, scary stuff could fall on us, right,
Speaker 1: So to refresh you about why is it scary that
Speaker 1: stuff could fall on us? Uh? Collisions happen, right, big
Speaker 1: stuff from space has collided with Earth in the past.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't even have to be really big stuff.
Speaker 1: It can be relatively small stuff, right, because it could
Speaker 1: be moving wicked fast. This is a result of relativity. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's basic physics, even if we don't even have to
Speaker 1: get into full relativity to understand that. Uh, that forces
Speaker 1: mass times acceleration. Right, So if you're if you're moving
Speaker 1: at a really high velocity, which is not acceleration obviously,
Speaker 1: but if you're moving in a really high velocity and
Speaker 1: you have a decent amount of mass, you're going to
Speaker 1: you're going to give a lot of force when you
Speaker 1: hit something. I guess that's correct. It's just regular physics.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the proposed space weapons that would
Speaker 1: have just small, regular mass objects moving at relativistic speeds
Speaker 1: to create like nuclear explosion, right impacts. Yeah, just to
Speaker 1: shoot a peanut real hard and yeah at times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of like what we were talking about
Speaker 1: just a second ago, but on steroids. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the collisions. There was one that happened
Speaker 1: around sixty five point five million years ago, sixty six
Speaker 1: million years ago, who's counting really. Uh, that created a
Speaker 1: pretty big crater on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mako, and
Speaker 1: that's believed to be a major contributor to the mass
Speaker 1: extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. Yeah, you'll often hear
Speaker 1: about the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and uh, the
Speaker 1: space object that collided there with the Earth whatever was
Speaker 1: probably does seem to have been a major factor contributing
Speaker 1: to the mass extinction of that time period, but it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't the only one either, Right. That's why I
Speaker 1: say contributing factor as opposed to this killed the dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: because as it turns out, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: different things that play that said, the cards were stacked
Speaker 1: against the dinosaurs. I think the last time I read
Speaker 1: about this issue, there was the belief that there was
Speaker 1: a lot of volcanism and volcanism volcanic volcanic activity, climate
Speaker 1: change around the same time. Sure, but you know, a
Speaker 1: multi megaton event doesn't really help. By megaton, I mean
Speaker 1: mega tons of energy, right, Yeah, Yeah, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: not an assistant. Yeah, that didn't That didn't alleviate the
Speaker 1: volcanic activity. So to bring it up to a more
Speaker 1: modern era, you know, let's let's let's skip ahead. You know,
Speaker 1: sixty five and a half million years or so. Who's yeah,
Speaker 1: who's counting up to nineteen o eight. That's when we
Speaker 1: had an event happened that we can actually look at
Speaker 1: as an example of a relatively small space object colliding
Speaker 1: with Earth. I'm talking about the Tunguska event. Now, unless
Speaker 1: you're one of the people who believes this was actually
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla testing a secret super weapon, it wasn't. The
Speaker 1: Tunguska event was a was a space rock. It was
Speaker 1: a bowl eyed event from space that was not actually
Speaker 1: that big. No, it measured around a hundred twenty feet
Speaker 1: wide or thirty six point six meters, although there I've
Speaker 1: read other measurements that had it as big as forty
Speaker 1: five ms, which you know, that's that's significant, but it's
Speaker 1: still still not huge compared to the Earth, right, the
Speaker 1: Earth is enormous. Something that's just just you know, thirty
Speaker 1: six or thirty seven ms wide, that's nothing. Ten difference
Speaker 1: of ten ms would make a really big difference when
Speaker 1: you consider how fast this thing was going super fast,
Speaker 1: and it hit Uh in Siberia. Uh Uh a relatively
Speaker 1: remote patch where there weren't any people living in that
Speaker 1: immediate area, which is good because if they had been,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be for much longer. Uh. The the blast
Speaker 1: stripped the trees of all of their limbs and bark
Speaker 1: at ground zero, So the trees remain standing directly above
Speaker 1: where the space rock essentially broke apart when it blasted over.
Speaker 1: That's why I meant sorry, directly below. I have problems
Speaker 1: with prepositions because because they believe it exploded in the atmosphere, yes,
Speaker 1: exactly right, they believe it explodes in the atmosphere above
Speaker 1: this region. So the trees directly below the explosion turned
Speaker 1: into turned into toothpicks. The trees around them. Actually that
Speaker 1: that's not fair. That makes it sound like they splintered
Speaker 1: into toothpicks. They were stripped, they were the trees around
Speaker 1: them were all flattened. They all laid down in a
Speaker 1: radial pattern. So actually it's like they all fell backwards
Speaker 1: in a circle, stretching out quite a bit. And like
Speaker 1: like eighty million trees, million trees over eight hundred square
Speaker 1: miles or seven square kilometers. It's that's an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of space for something that again was relatively small, and
Speaker 1: there were some historical accounts from people who were somewhat
Speaker 1: nearby at the time. Oh yeah, there was a story
Speaker 1: about a guy who was essentially out on his front
Speaker 1: porch when this thing happened and the blast when it
Speaker 1: moved through. Uh. He reported that he felt a sensation
Speaker 1: as if all of his skin had caught on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not, He was not. He was not relatively close.
Speaker 1: He was pretty far away. Um. And so we were
Speaker 1: lucky that it happened in such a remote area. There
Speaker 1: were no known deaths as a result of this that
Speaker 1: that have ever been reported from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: So we were lucky. If it had happened over a
Speaker 1: populated area, that story would obviously be very different. And
Speaker 1: clearly a larger or more massive i should say, space
Speaker 1: object would cause even more devastation should collide with Earth.
Speaker 1: And there here's the thing. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: them out there in the Solar system, right. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of of of space objects that are the
Speaker 1: size of the Tunguska Rock or bigger. And that was
Speaker 1: the big concern. That was the thing we were talking
Speaker 1: about in our previous episode, is that we need to
Speaker 1: be able to find them, to track them, and if
Speaker 1: necessary to somehow stop them from colliding with Earth, whether
Speaker 1: that be a method of destroying them, which I think
Speaker 1: we all agreed eventually probably is the least likely approach
Speaker 1: because you're more likely to create a shotgun up. Blowing
Speaker 1: it up is probably not a good option, But usually
Speaker 1: it's how do you move it out of the way.
Speaker 1: The smarter option is to deflect its trajectory right that
Speaker 1: way you're you're pretty sure it's not going to hit you,
Speaker 1: and and also you know, the further out you can
Speaker 1: do it, the less you have to move the space
Speaker 1: object right. So if the space object is if you're
Speaker 1: detected that this thing is going to collide with the Earth,
Speaker 1: but it won't be for another forty years, and you
Speaker 1: can start your plan right now. You can go ahead
Speaker 1: and launch a spacecraft to get there in a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time and deflect it in some manner. And
Speaker 1: we talked about a lot of those in the last episode.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll concentrate on a specific approach the gravity tractor
Speaker 1: in this one um and you don't have to pull
Speaker 1: it very far, so you don't have to use as
Speaker 1: much energy in the actual towing event. It still takes
Speaker 1: a lot of energy to get there, but you don't
Speaker 1: have to do as much when you're actually towing the
Speaker 1: object out of the way. You just have to get
Speaker 1: it off by like a degree and you're good. So
Speaker 1: now it's time to talk about the Little Prince. And
Speaker 1: this is why I chose that particular lyric for the
Speaker 1: because he's the littlest Prince. Um, so we're the little
Speaker 1: Prince is uh, have you read The Little Prince Joe?
Speaker 1: Actually you haven't. Have you read Oh my gosh, guys beautiful.
Speaker 1: You have to go and you have to read it
Speaker 1: and then you have to cry. That kinda is part
Speaker 1: of the deal. Um. That's a very sad, sweet story.
Speaker 1: And generally speaking, I'm gonna just give a big overview.
Speaker 1: This story is told from the point of view of
Speaker 1: a pilot who has crashed in the Sahara Desert and
Speaker 1: he comes across a little boy who says that he's
Speaker 1: from an asteroid. He lives on an asteroid, and he's
Speaker 1: had these various adventures going to different uh asteroids within
Speaker 1: the Solar System and encountering different people before coming to Earth.
Speaker 1: And and through his adventures you you learn about very
Speaker 1: common follies and flaws, things like being so self absorbed
Speaker 1: that you never notice anything outside of yourself. Essentially, it
Speaker 1: was a kind of commentary on the sort of traps
Speaker 1: a fall into, but children tend to be free of
Speaker 1: because they have their childhood innocence. And it's almost like
Speaker 1: a warning tale in many ways. Um In fact, I
Speaker 1: would argue it's as relevant for adults as it is
Speaker 1: for kids. So the pilot kind of guesses that the
Speaker 1: Little Prince's asteroid is one that has specifically been identified
Speaker 1: and has been named B six one two. Now, the
Speaker 1: reason why I give you that whole lead up is
Speaker 1: that now there is a private nonprofit organization called the
Speaker 1: B six one to Foundation, and it is dedicated to
Speaker 1: creating a real solution for possible Earth collisions with space
Speaker 1: rocks or or space objects, comets, asteroids, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And and here the thing that they're warning against is
Speaker 1: giant things slamming into Earth at incredible speed. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're specifically saying, you know, we can't ignore this. We
Speaker 1: can't fall into the trap that the adults fall in
Speaker 1: in the novella The Little Prince. We cannot be those
Speaker 1: But we have to open our eyes because otherwise, by
Speaker 1: the time we realize there's a problem, it'll be too
Speaker 1: late to do anything about it. So we've got to
Speaker 1: be proactive. And they they hope to avoid catastrophe by
Speaker 1: adopting new ways to detect and deflect space objects on
Speaker 1: collision trajectory. And they got started back in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: Now that was a year after NASA had held its
Speaker 1: first workshop at the NASA Johnson Space Center dedicated to
Speaker 1: the concept of asteroid deflection. So two thousand one, NASA says,
Speaker 1: you know, we really have to talk about this. And
Speaker 1: a year later, UH, former astronauts, some astrophysicists, and some
Speaker 1: other people all got together and created this organization B
Speaker 1: six one two Foundation, And they get their money for
Speaker 1: their projects through philanthropy. It's nonprofits, so they depend upon donations.
Speaker 1: They actually say one of the most important UH things
Speaker 1: that they're doing is they're set up a new means
Speaker 1: of funding space work like that they're doing this through philanthropy,
Speaker 1: that they're doing this through UH privatized space to to
Speaker 1: use the the rockets from companies like SpaceX. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're doing something that that hasn't been done before,
Speaker 1: UH in the space industry, and we're setting a precedent,
Speaker 1: and that could be just as important in several ways
Speaker 1: to the work that we're planning on doing with detecting
Speaker 1: and perhaps deflecting space rocks. So in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: the Foundation published a paper about creating a gravity tractor,
Speaker 1: and we talked about this a bit in our previous episode.
Speaker 1: So let's give a quick overview. Okay, I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the most interesting proposals on on how
Speaker 1: to deflect body and coming for Earth, and and it
Speaker 1: relies on the fact that this is something people often
Speaker 1: forget about. All objects with mass exert a pull on
Speaker 1: one another. So it's not us that the Earth pulls
Speaker 1: you toward it. You also pull the Earth toward you,
Speaker 1: just not by enough to matter. Yeah, not not by
Speaker 1: very much. And gravity is a relatively weak force. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the weakest of the the four forces. That's why
Speaker 1: we tend to look at things like astrophysics when we
Speaker 1: want to talk about it. But but, but this actually
Speaker 1: comes through in astrophysics and astronomy a lot. Like one
Speaker 1: of the ways we can look for stars very far
Speaker 1: away that have planets orbiting around them is to look
Speaker 1: and see if the planets orbiting the stars are actually
Speaker 1: making the stars wobble a little bit, because as much
Speaker 1: as the stars pull on the planets, the planets also
Speaker 1: pull on the star just a little bit. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: here on Earth, obviously we don't notice that we happen
Speaker 1: to be exerting this gravitational pull on the objects around us.
Speaker 1: The Earth's gravity pretty much, uh, it drowns all that out, right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: for instance, on the table that's in front of us
Speaker 1: here in the studio, we have a little box of
Speaker 1: tiss shoes. I don't feel a pull toward that box
Speaker 1: of tissues. That tissue, that box of tissues, if it
Speaker 1: could feel, would not feel a pull towards me. The
Speaker 1: Earth has pretty much got that downpad. But in space,
Speaker 1: you can have two bodies to two bodies of mass
Speaker 1: having this gravitational effect on one another. And of course
Speaker 1: distance is important, right. The greater the distance, the less
Speaker 1: effect they will have on each other. So you want
Speaker 1: to have things to be close to one another in
Speaker 1: order to affect them through gravity. Yeah, Jupiter has a
Speaker 1: stronger gravitational pull than Earth does. But we're attracted to Earth,
Speaker 1: not Jupiter because it's closer. Yeah. So if uh so,
Speaker 1: when you think about this. You think gravity tractor, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. You you create some form of spacecraft that
Speaker 1: has a great deal of mass to it, or it
Speaker 1: can get mass in some creative way once it's out
Speaker 1: in space, because obviously the more mass something has, the
Speaker 1: more effort we must make to get it out into
Speaker 1: space in the first place. Share, But we launched like
Speaker 1: a like a cottam r a ball and just let
Speaker 1: it roll up a few things into its life, then
Speaker 1: yes it can. Yeah. Or if it were to steal
Speaker 1: part of the incoming object, yes, yeah, which NASA has
Speaker 1: a plan about that and I'll talk about that towards
Speaker 1: the end. Or maybe we just launch an enormous magnet
Speaker 1: and just hope it grabs some of that space junk
Speaker 1: that's orbiting Earth right now, or maybe someone else's communication satellites,
Speaker 1: not ours, but maybe someone else's now. But seriously, seriously
Speaker 1: to have enough mass so that you move the gravity
Speaker 1: tractor close to the near Earth object or INDEO, and
Speaker 1: then uh, I guess the idea is that the gravity
Speaker 1: tractor goes into orbit around this object. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: that the gravity that it exerts, the gravitational pull it
Speaker 1: exerts on this object is enough to move it out
Speaker 1: of that trajectory that it was in and thus move
Speaker 1: it into a safe zone where it will not end
Speaker 1: up colliding with Earth. So it's kind of like if
Speaker 1: somebody shot a bullet at you, and you could go
Speaker 1: into bullet time, like in the matrix, and shoot out
Speaker 1: a little mag knit to follow the bullet along and
Speaker 1: just throw it off course so that eventually misses you
Speaker 1: by the time it gets to where you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, the further away the shooter is from you,
Speaker 1: the less you need to move that bullet for that
Speaker 1: to happen. Right, Um, same thing here, Like the further
Speaker 1: away the the object is, the less you need to do,
Speaker 1: the less work you need to do in order to
Speaker 1: to get it into a safe trajectory. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: it's a pretty clever idea. It's not something that we've
Speaker 1: really put into practice, but it's something that that there's
Speaker 1: no reason why it shouldn't work. I mean, obviously you'd
Speaker 1: have to come up with a clever way to make
Speaker 1: sure that anything you used to move the space rock
Speaker 1: didn't have another force pushing against it. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to have thrusters on this spacecraft shooting
Speaker 1: in the same direction that the the rock is in,
Speaker 1: because then you have not just the gravitational force acting
Speaker 1: upon the two objects, but you have the thrust sting
Speaker 1: force that could act upon the space rock, and then
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get the effect that you wanted. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've seen some interesting things where people actually talked about
Speaker 1: using spacecraft using solar sales, and so they would actually
Speaker 1: use a solar sale to help pull the spacecraft along
Speaker 1: and tow behind it the space rock. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: sort of similar to one idea I remember reading about
Speaker 1: in the past. I don't know if it's still on
Speaker 1: the table, but it would be to essentially put a
Speaker 1: large reflective surface on the sunword facing side of a
Speaker 1: moving object that would allow the solar wind, over a
Speaker 1: long period of time to blow it off course. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of other proposals that are similar
Speaker 1: to that in various ways. Right. So, anyway, the gravity
Speaker 1: tractor is an important part of the strategy that B
Speaker 1: six one two has come up with, But just as important,
Speaker 1: or perhaps even you could argue more important, is coming
Speaker 1: up with a way to identify and track more of
Speaker 1: these large rocks and other types of space objects that
Speaker 1: are in the Inner Solar System because we are working
Speaker 1: on it, but we're not very far along. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: according to Ed lu who is a former astronaut and
Speaker 1: he's the CEO of B six one two, there are
Speaker 1: around half a million asteroids in the Inner Solar System
Speaker 1: that are larger than the space rock that hit Tunguska.
Speaker 1: And we've identified a map about one per cent of
Speaker 1: all of them. Well good, yeah, Well that's that's sure.
Speaker 1: That means we need to do like a whole lot
Speaker 1: of homework to get that other. So that's where that's
Speaker 1: what brings us to their Sentinel project H. On June twelve,
Speaker 1: the Foundation announced it would fund the development, construction, and
Speaker 1: deployment of a new infrared space telescope called Sentinel, and
Speaker 1: Sentinel will actually orbit the Sun. It won't orbit Earth.
Speaker 1: It will be put in its own orbit around the
Speaker 1: Sun pretty much in the same orbital path as Venus.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna shoot it out into space once it's done, uh,
Speaker 1: and it will get a little gravity assist slingshot from
Speaker 1: Venus to put it into its final orbit around the Sun,
Speaker 1: and then it will position itself so that it's rear
Speaker 1: end is always facing the sun, and that its telescope
Speaker 1: side is always facing out. It's not blinded by the sun,
Speaker 1: not blinded by not blinded by the light, wrapped up
Speaker 1: like a deuce, another runner in the night. So yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: So it's pointing out into space, and the idea being
Speaker 1: that it could actually map out the entire night sky
Speaker 1: in this way uh multiple times, because you need to
Speaker 1: do it just to identify what stuff out there are
Speaker 1: space rocks, but you also need to do it multiple
Speaker 1: times in order to figure out where are those going,
Speaker 1: what are their trajectories, where are they moving in comparison
Speaker 1: to everything else. So what is the idea about why
Speaker 1: will this be better at looking for small near Earth
Speaker 1: objects than whatever kind of telescopes we currently have looking
Speaker 1: for them. Well, we don't have the problem of atmospheric
Speaker 1: UH distortion. Obviously, when you have a telescope orbiting the Earth,
Speaker 1: there are going to be times where it cannot look
Speaker 1: out outward into the inner Solar system. It's going to
Speaker 1: be looking towards the center of the Solar system, which
Speaker 1: means there's going to be downtime, right Like, there will
Speaker 1: be times that you would not be able to effectively
Speaker 1: get information either because the Earth is in the way,
Speaker 1: the Moon is in the way, or the Sun is
Speaker 1: in the way. Having it on this other orbital path
Speaker 1: further into the Solar system gives the telescope kind of
Speaker 1: a wide angle view of what's going on in our
Speaker 1: solar system, and it can detect teeny tiny objects within
Speaker 1: its field, like a single pixel might represent a space object.
Speaker 1: But because it's using this infrared telescope technology, it has
Speaker 1: to do is pick up that reflection to figure out,
Speaker 1: well that's one UM. So they're actually partnering this. This
Speaker 1: is really happening. This isn't just a plan, this is
Speaker 1: actually going forward. There's a company Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1: They're designing and building the actual telescope, and they're using
Speaker 1: the same team of experts that worked on stuff like
Speaker 1: the Kepler space telescope. So the projected date of completion
Speaker 1: is sometime around or eighteen, and they expect to use
Speaker 1: a space X Falcon nine rocket to launch the telescope
Speaker 1: into space, so again relying on private space industry to
Speaker 1: get there. Um Now, every twenty six days, the sentinel
Speaker 1: will complete four pairs of observations of the night sky,
Speaker 1: and by kind of making a flipbook almost of these
Speaker 1: different pictures, researchers can see where these objects, you know,
Speaker 1: what are their trajectories, what are their orbits? Are there
Speaker 1: any that could potentially become into a collision course with Earth?
Speaker 1: And according to the folks over at the Foundation, they'll
Speaker 1: be able to project pathways as far out as a
Speaker 1: hundred years. So that's that's great because if you can
Speaker 1: really again I mean, we keep stressing it. If you
Speaker 1: detected early, it gives you way more options on how
Speaker 1: you deal with it and you don't have to use
Speaker 1: as much uh energy to actually move it out of
Speaker 1: the way in order to get safe again. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess my fear, though maybe this is just being cynical,
Speaker 1: is that if we did know enough ahead of time,
Speaker 1: we would be locked into arguments about who's going to
Speaker 1: pay for the gravity tractor and nobody would I would
Speaker 1: think that you would get I would like to think
Speaker 1: that that would not happen. If it does happen, I
Speaker 1: would like to think I would have an opportunity to
Speaker 1: go to Mars. Let's let's just kickstart that. Come on,
Speaker 1: we can we can put on Let's put on indie
Speaker 1: go go that way, we don't make our goal, we
Speaker 1: still get to keep some of the money. Um so,
Speaker 1: so that we can go to Mars right exactly, like
Speaker 1: what We'll just set the goal insanely high and that way,
Speaker 1: even if we just get halfway there, we're good. Uh So,
Speaker 1: this this telescope is gonna send data back through NASA's
Speaker 1: Deep Space network to get back here to Earth. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool too. And they're gonna limit that
Speaker 1: amount of data obviously, Like if they just kept sending
Speaker 1: full pictures of the entire night sky over and over,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of information. It would be real pretty,
Speaker 1: but yeah, not not useful necessarily. And and this is
Speaker 1: depart that right, Yeah. Yeah, it's so much a lot
Speaker 1: of computer power and energy wasted there. And this is
Speaker 1: a part that I thought was really cool. The computer
Speaker 1: is going to know, is it's going to be able
Speaker 1: to identify moving objects by by seeing where they have
Speaker 1: moved from one photo to another, and only send back
Speaker 1: the photos of the ones that are moving, Like if
Speaker 1: nothing in the frame is moving, then the satellite just
Speaker 1: tosses it out. It makes me think of the old
Speaker 1: days of film cameras where you would go and get
Speaker 1: your film developed, and you'd sit there, you would actually
Speaker 1: open up your your pictures at the place where they
Speaker 1: were developed and go through them to see like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not we need to keep this one like it's
Speaker 1: only got it's only got a strand of hair in it.
Speaker 1: You can't even tell who belongs to blurry blurry blurry
Speaker 1: from print blurry. Yeah. So this would be the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing, except essentially saying, look at this sector
Speaker 1: that was photographed at this time, are there any space
Speaker 1: rocks essentially out there? No, don't bother sending that back then,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna do any good. So I thought that
Speaker 1: was a very clever way of trying to increase the
Speaker 1: efficiency of the system. And uh, this should really give
Speaker 1: us a good idea of any potential threats that we face.
Speaker 1: So that would then prompt us into the discussion of
Speaker 1: all right, what do we do about? Do we do
Speaker 1: the gravity tractor approach, which I'm seeing more and more
Speaker 1: um support for in actual groups that are planning on
Speaker 1: doing these things. I see alternatives to the gravity tractor
Speaker 1: more from like think tanks that don't directly actually do
Speaker 1: still yeah, they think really hard, but other than that,
Speaker 1: they don't really do anything really hard about nuclear weapons. Yeah, right, right,
Speaker 1: and Bruce and Bruce willis going up there and and
Speaker 1: and Aerosmith and all the sudden, Okay, well we clone
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis. This is the first step. No, no, okay.
Speaker 1: So so right now we've got about one percent of
Speaker 1: the sky covered, right, what are they hoping to get
Speaker 1: up to with this plan? So they're hoping to boost
Speaker 1: that up and map out nine percent of the near
Speaker 1: Earth objects that measure at least a hundred forty in
Speaker 1: size are greater uh, and a quote large fraction. In
Speaker 1: other parts of their their literature, they say fifty percent
Speaker 1: of asteroids that are bigger than the one that struck
Speaker 1: Tunguska um. And this is where I said there was
Speaker 1: some differentiation between the the figure I've seen in some
Speaker 1: reports about the Tugnuska event and B six one two.
Speaker 1: They say that means around forty five, which is larger
Speaker 1: than what I had seen elsewhere, which thirty six points six. Uh.
Speaker 1: This will actually happen over the course of six and
Speaker 1: a half years. I've I've heard that there's a possibility
Speaker 1: the telescope could continue to work for another three and
Speaker 1: a half years for a full ten year lifespan, but
Speaker 1: six and a half is what they have planned. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the other thing is that we might be
Speaker 1: able to use this data for stuff besides just deflecting
Speaker 1: incoming dangerous space objects. We might be able to use
Speaker 1: it to identify potential good candidates for asteroid mining. We've
Speaker 1: talked about that in previous episodes. Two. So that could
Speaker 1: be really cool. Now that's not the primary focus of
Speaker 1: B six one two. That would just be a happy
Speaker 1: coincidence or a happy byproduct of this process. Uh. And
Speaker 1: B six one two is not the only one, you know,
Speaker 1: not the only organization out there thinking about this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: NASA has been thinking about two. They were the ones
Speaker 1: who held the workshop back in two thousand one that
Speaker 1: kind of prompted the creation of B six one two
Speaker 1: in the first place. Yeah, and I think we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about their organization in that episode, the
Speaker 1: Near Earth Observation Program. Yeah, so that's specifically dedicated to
Speaker 1: looking at near Earth objects, as the name would imply.
Speaker 1: And Uh, they initiated something called the Asteroid Grand Challenge, which,
Speaker 1: and this is a quote from NASA, will use multidisciplinary
Speaker 1: collaborations in a variety of partnerships with other government agencies,
Speaker 1: international partners, industry, academia, and citizens scientists to direct, track, characterize,
Speaker 1: and create mitigation strategies for potentially hazardous asteroids. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a really boring way to say planetary defense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's actually under their planetary defense. Uh like that,
Speaker 1: that's the u r L is the planetary defense u
Speaker 1: r L. Uh. And the challenge also has an actual
Speaker 1: contest that there. It's called a challenge for a reason.
Speaker 1: There's a contest involved. So NASA partnered with a crowdsource
Speaker 1: studio called Tongle to create this. And there are twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars worth of prizes. I don't know how they
Speaker 1: break down, Like, I don't know if there's a first price,
Speaker 1: second prize or anything like that, but there's twenty dollars
Speaker 1: worth of prizes. And Uh. In order to get your
Speaker 1: hands on that, filthy luker, what you need to do
Speaker 1: is create a really awesome video that can quote engage
Speaker 1: and excite the public about getting involved in NASA's mission
Speaker 1: to find and characterize asteroids. We can do that, I know, Joe,
Speaker 1: we can do that. It's like we have a whole
Speaker 1: studio set up, literally a studio fifteen feet from where
Speaker 1: we're sitting, where we can do that. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: try to get in on that. I was, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Uh So, NASA is also working on an
Speaker 1: Asteroid redirect Mission or arm a r M, in which
Speaker 1: a robot will deflect an asteroid from's trajectory and place
Speaker 1: it in a stable orbit around the Moon. I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before. Yeah, and this was going
Speaker 1: back to what you had mentioned earlier, Joe, the idea
Speaker 1: of stealing something from the target object in order to
Speaker 1: create greater mass and thus affected more. This is what
Speaker 1: the robot would do. It would end up piloting to
Speaker 1: some near Earth object, capturing a multi ton boulder from
Speaker 1: said object, thus increasing the space craft or the robot,
Speaker 1: I guess the robots mass, and then using that mass
Speaker 1: as a gravity tractor to tow it over into a
Speaker 1: lunar orbit. And then the reason we wanted in a
Speaker 1: lunar orbit is eventually NASA would want to send astronauts
Speaker 1: up there to explore it, take samples, bring it back
Speaker 1: to Earth. The samples, not the asteroid that would remain
Speaker 1: in lunar orbit. Yeah, that would have that would evade
Speaker 1: the purpose of making things not hit. Like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: look look what following me home? Can we keep it? Uh? No, man, No,
Speaker 1: that would be kind of cool if the moon had
Speaker 1: a moon. Yeah, yeah, for the moon, and we could
Speaker 1: watch it. We could watch it transit the Moon at night,
Speaker 1: and then like just a you know, a few millennia later,
Speaker 1: the moon in vinced pink it again. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: um uh. The idea being that we'd send astronauts up
Speaker 1: there somewhere in the twenty thirties. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a very aggressive plan NASA has, and it's part of,
Speaker 1: of course, their long term plan to get humans to Mars.
Speaker 1: The idea being that the technologies and processes we would
Speaker 1: have to develop in order to make this happen in
Speaker 1: order to be able to capture an asteroid and to
Speaker 1: move it into an orbit, and to visit it and
Speaker 1: and essentially do a light mining project and bring stuff back,
Speaker 1: all of that would require us to develop technologies that
Speaker 1: we could then use for a trip to Mars. So
Speaker 1: almost everything we hear about NASA doing these days ends
Speaker 1: up at least in some way contributing to a future Martian,
Speaker 1: you know, exploration mission. Yeah, it would also require us
Speaker 1: to develop all the other technologies that you find in
Speaker 1: total recall. Yeah, we have to have all of those.
Speaker 1: We have to have the have to have the robotic
Speaker 1: cabs that actually have a robot sitting in the driver's seat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the chit chats. Yeah, because why would you ever want
Speaker 1: to have a driver less car that actually allows you
Speaker 1: to sit in any seat in the vehicle. You have
Speaker 1: to have one seat occupied by a needless machine. I
Speaker 1: think the fake talking lady head that Arnold Schwarzenegger wears
Speaker 1: over his real head says two weeks. Yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 1: good one and then just splits apart. Or what about
Speaker 1: uh sinus cavity probes? Yeah, lots of lots of years,
Speaker 1: actually know, just about two weeks. Well. The interesting thing
Speaker 1: again is that NASA is hoping to do this sort
Speaker 1: of mission. Like in the twenty twenties, they hope to
Speaker 1: use a gravity tractor to capture an asteroid. In the
Speaker 1: twenty thirties, they hope to send astronauts to that asteroid.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty aggressive schedule. I'm I am maybe
Speaker 1: skepticals the wrong word. I'm not entirely certain that they're
Speaker 1: going to be able to make at based upon where
Speaker 1: we are today, But there's it could happen. It just
Speaker 1: will require a fairly aggressive investment in space exploration for
Speaker 1: that to work out, I think. But it would be
Speaker 1: really cool. And of course if NASA is able to
Speaker 1: demonstrate that it can move an asteroid in that manner,
Speaker 1: then that is a big win when it comes to,
Speaker 1: you know, figuring out how to deflect incoming space objects.
Speaker 1: So really cool. Glad we were able to look into this. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I was able to educate you about The
Speaker 1: Little Prince. Make sure you go and read that because
Speaker 1: it is amazing. Very sad that the American release of
Speaker 1: the film version has been delayed makes me want to
Speaker 1: take a quick trip up to Canada to see it.
Speaker 1: But it is coming out. So there's also a film
Speaker 1: version of The Little Prints coming out, So if you
Speaker 1: can't stand reading, go watch the movie. All right, That
Speaker 1: wraps this up. If you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of forward thinking, maybe you've always wanted to
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