Spinlaunch... Can it succeed?

[DougSpindler]

Time to apply Godwin's law to this post.  Anyone have a good post to transition?

[Nusa]

Time to apply Godwin's law to this post.  Anyone have a good post to transition?

What, you're actually announcing your intent to misbehave in Dave's forum? Remember, conduct yourself as if you were in a public place. It's a forum rule! If you aren't willing to say it in a crowded mall, you probably shouldn't say it here.

Trying to calculate the odds of objects impacting the earth seems pretty silly, given the fact it's about 100% every day, even if we don't count man-made objects. Current estimates are roughly 17 PER DAY that are large enough to impact the earth, although obviously many of them land in the ocean and are never found*. It's the SIZE of the object where odds become more interesting, once you define what size you're interested in.

*My dad picked up a nickel-iron meteorite off the ground during his travels, roughly baseball size and shape, a few decades back. My sister has it now.

[PlainName]

Time to apply Godwin's law to this post.  Anyone have a good post to transition?

Feel free to ignore this thread if it's boring for you, but who the hell are you to dictate what anyone else can talk about?

[AVGresponding]

... besides that, the post appeared to suggest a faster moving earth would reduce the likelihood of a hit.

The opposite is true.

If the trajectory of the asteroid crosses earth orbit at a certain point, the likelihood of a hit is actually increased with a faster moving earth since it's more often at that certain spot during a certain time frame than it would when moving slower.

Glad he missed the speed of earth by a magnitude (although the tiny earth he reckoned with would be a lot harder to hit)...

I agree with you that if the earth move faster, over a long time, it will be at that "right position" more often thus increasing the probability of collision if it is over a long period of time.

But we are talking about an asteroid that will collide with earth (probably=1) if nothing is done.  So probability of hit is not in question here.  We are merely nudging the asteroid a bit to advance/delay the exact time that the asteroid crosses the earth orbit, so at the time it arrives the Earth is not there.  The shorter the time it takes for earth to move out of the way, the less we have to nudge.

Of course intersection time is not the only thing we are changing when nudging the asteroid, we will also be modifying the position of intersection, and that helps also.  So between modifying the time and the position, the result we want is when the asteroid intersect with earth orbit, the earth is not there to hit.

If it could be nudged accurately enough, it would be worth putting it into orbit around the Earth or Moon for potential future resource exploitation.

[Rick Law]

...  ...
If it could be nudged accurately enough, it would be worth putting it into orbit around the Earth or Moon for potential future resource exploitation.

Step one is we learn enough to nudge a killer asteroid to miss us so we get to play another day.  Then we learn how to manipulate those object's orbits to make them "near by" resource depots.

After a few millions of years of technology development, we should be able to move much large object and use those large object's gravity to alter Earth orbit.  Around Pluto, huge asteroids are aplenty.  So a spinlaunch here, a sling launch there, and a rail launch here and there, we got a collection of large objects in solar orbits of our own design.  As the Sun get bigger and bigger, our own Earth orbit expands because of the gravity of the objects we put there to shape our orbit by design...  Now we get to watch the red Red Giant at a safe distance.  We get to continue playing our game instead of roasting in the Red Giant Sun's atmosphere.

So, now that we survived the red giant phase, next thing we worry about is how do we shield ourselves from the Sun going NOVA...

At about the 1bn year mark, Andromeda Galaxy would be joining ours.  That may put our solar system adrift - even before our Sun goes red giant.  We will have to play that one by ear.  Let just say we go with the probability that our solar system will stay intact.

If we shielded ourselves from the danger of our Sun going nova, we are still in the game then.  We need to find some way to get resources from outside our solar system.  That white-dwarf that was our Sun isn't going to give us much.  But we will suck up as much as we can from our Gas Giants.  That will keep us in the game a while longer.  But sooner or later, we live or die by if we can unchain ourselves from our solar system.

Note: Bolded text highlights the fact that I have to stray away from main topic - spinlaunch.

[DougSpindler]

Time to apply Godwin's law to this post.  Anyone have a good post to transition?

Feel free to ignore this thread if it's boring for you, but who the hell are you to dictate what anyone else can talk about?

He's applying Godwin's law by controlling what one can say and not say.

This entire thread has been hi-jacked and is now talking about the moon and killer asteroids which has nothing to do with BS science for Spinlanuch and if they will succeed.  We already know the answer, it's just going to take them a few hundred million to figure it out.  As for the killer asteroid "Cosmic Conundrum" and vacuum energy will save the Earth from a collision.   

[fourfathom]

Doug, the way I see this thread working is that by discussing barely-related topics we are just keeping the lights on.  If there is any new Spinlaunch news or insight then the thread is still here and available.  There might be better ways to organize these divergent conversations, but incorrectly invoking Godwin isn't the way to accomplish that.

[DougSpindler]

Doug, the way I see this thread working is that by discussing barely-related topics we are just keeping the lights on.  If there is any new Spinlaunch news or insight then the thread is still here and available.  There might be better ways to organize these divergent conversations, but incorrectly invoking Godwin isn't the way to accomplish that.

Fair enough, till then, let's get back to the killer asteroids to keep the advertisers happy.

[fourfathom]

Fair enough, till then, let's get back to the killer asteroids to keep the advertisers happy.

I can't vouch for the technical accuracy, but *THIS* is a killer asteroid:


And the movie "Melancholia" is quite good, but more about people than asteroids:

[fourfathom]

Here's astronaut/physicist Ed Lu discussing the detection, tracking, and deflection of asteroids:


From this presentation: Asteroids are nature's way of saying "How's that space program coming?"

[DougSpindler]

Ed Lu is incorrect at 7:58.  Dinosaurs were not wiped out, it they had there would be no KFC.

Someone needs to introduce Ed Lu to Quantum Metrology to figure to for tracking Earth hitting meteors.

[fourfathom]

Ed Lu is incorrect at 7:58.  Dinosaurs were not wiped out, it they had there would be KFC.

But still, partially correct.  The big ones didn't survive (although there is certainly still dispute as to whether the asteroid bears full responsibility).  The smaller dinos did continue to evolve.  I think we can forgive Lu's use of the common "wiped out" characterization, as it's just a reminder that an impacting asteroid can cause very bad things to happen.

[SiliconWizard]

I didn't watch the whole thing, but just saying, it is now thought that dinosaurs got extinct over a relatively long period, and that an asteroid impacting Earth may have been only partly the reason for that. Large volcanic eruptions (obscuring the sky enough over a long period of time to drop temperatures) are the most probable culprit, and whether those were triggered by an asteroid impact is still not quite certain either, AFAIK.

Just to further debunk the whole dinosaur extinction myth. Making myths pass as "scientific facts" never helps.

[DougSpindler]

Ed Lu is incorrect at 7:58.  Dinosaurs were not wiped out, it they had there would be KFC.

But still, partially correct.  The big ones didn't survive (although there is certainly still dispute as to whether the asteroid bears full responsibility).  The smaller dinos did continue to evolve.  I think we can forgive Lu's use of the common "wiped out" characterization, as it's just a reminder that an impacting asteroid can cause very bad things to happen.

I would think a physicist would be a bit more precise.  Forgive me buy Lu is pretty ignorant about all of this and hasn't give this much thought.  If the asteroid did not hit the Earth and wipe out most of the dinosaurs he/we would not be here today.  From our point of view, wasn't the asteroid a good thing?  And who is is to say if an asteroid hits us it wouldn't be just as good?
 

[DougSpindler]

Someone needs to tell Ed Lu people who drive we already have the technology to survive a meteor strike and live.  (:054)  It's called a Toyota truck.
This is from a UC Berkeley Physics lecture by Professor Robert Muller.  (:054)

[PlainName]

So what you're saying is instead of launching stuff the spinlaunch should be working in reverse, capturing meteorites and feeding the power into the grid?

[Rick Law]

So what you're saying is instead of launching stuff the spinlaunch should be working in reverse, capturing meteorites and feeding the power into the grid?

Who is this "you" saying this stuff?  Can you use the "quote" button here so we can find the reply that has it?

[fourfathom]

From our point of view, wasn't the asteroid a good thing?  And who is is to say if an asteroid hits us it wouldn't be just as good?

You're really on a roll, aren't you?  Can we agree that a large asteroid hitting Los Angeles, or New York or London or Tokyo or Delhi (etc.) would be a bad thing for the people that lived there?  Or that a massive-enough asteroid would be a bad thing for all life on Earth?

Hey, it's all fun and games until one lands on *your* house!

[PlainName]

So what you're saying is instead of launching stuff the spinlaunch should be working in reverse, capturing meteorites and feeding the power into the grid?

Who is this "you" saying this stuff?  Can you use the "quote" button here so we can find the reply that has it?

Whoever you want it to be. Whoever was talking meteorites. Maybe the immediately preceding comment. But mostly it was... <gasp> ...a bit of humour so it doesn't really matter who 'you' is. But feel free to claim it if it makes you happy.

[DougSpindler]

From our point of view, wasn't the asteroid a good thing?  And who is is to say if an asteroid hits us it wouldn't be just as good?

You're really on a roll, aren't you?  Can we agree that a large asteroid hitting Los Angeles, or New York or London or Tokyo or Delhi (etc.) would be a bad thing for the people that lived there?  Or that a massive-enough asteroid would be a bad thing for all life on Earth?

Hey, it's all fun and games until one lands on *your* house!

I agree, a meteor hitting a large city would kill a lot of people, but at the same time it would create enormous opportunities for others.  When the dinosaurs were almost wiped out, it created an environment in lead to human life. Who’s knows, the next meteorite to strike Earth my create an environment in which super humans will evolve.  Would that be a bad thing?

[fourfathom]

Who’s knows, the next meteorite to strike Earth my create an environment in which super humans will evolve.  Would that be a bad thing?

It would be a bad thing for me if it hits my house.  That's one reason why I would like to see progress in asteroid deflection technology.  There may be others.

[PlainName]

The planet could probably do with weaker humans, more easily killed off, rather than super ones!

Or, perhaps better, longer lasting but less fertile ones.

[fourfathom]

Or, perhaps better, longer lasting but less fertile ones.

That's been the trend.  Well, perhaps not "better", but maybe.  Still, I don't think we should count on asteroids to cull the herd.

[EEVblog]

The planet could probably do with weaker humans, more easily killed off, rather than super ones!
Or, perhaps better, longer lasting but less fertile ones.

Isn't that what covid was designed to do? 

[EEVblog]

I agree, a meteor hitting a large city would kill a lot of people, but at the same time it would create enormous opportunities for others.  When the dinosaurs were almost wiped out, it created an environment in lead to human life. Who’s knows, the next meteorite to strike Earth my create an environment in which super humans will evolve.  Would that be a bad thing?

It's interesting to postulate what the societal response would be to say New York getting wiped out completely.
Just watched Don't Look Up last night, it's a satirical take on it.