As asteroid whizzes by, surprise meteor
makes an impact over Russia
By Brian Vastag, Will Englund and Joel Achenbach,
The larger asteroid missed by 17,000 miles, as expected, but
the Russian meteor stole the show Friday, fireballing across the Ural Mountains
in spectacular fashion and exploding into fragments, creating a powerful shock
wave that blew out windows, collapsed roofs and injured 1,200 people, mostly
from broken glass…”
Cassi Creek: “ Definition: (DOD, NATO) In artillery and naval gunfire
support, information in a call for fire to indicate that friendly forces are
within 600 meters of the target.”
An
indication that the unit calling for support was in desperate straits. They were willing to risk casualties from
their own artillery or TAC Air in order to put the incoming rounds onto the enemy
forces. The extreme case was indicated
by the call, “Danger Close – Drop on my smoke!”
This meant that the unit in trouble was marking their position with
smoke grenades, indicating little or no separation between the two forces.
We’re not at quite that point with
meteors and asteroids. We can track them
if we can find them. The object that hit
Russia yesterday was entirely undetected until it entered the atmosphere. The angle of approach and the position of the
sun relative to the telescopes tasked to detect such objects prevented prior
notice.
Even if we develop and deploy better
detection systems, the manner in which we will act to destroy or redirect
incoming objects away from the planet’s orbit remains to be determined. We have no single or combined agency capable
of deflecting or destroying a large meteor or asteroid. The cost of such projects will rival all
satellite launch vehicles relative to heavy lift capacity. There will need to be multiple backup launch
vehicles available and multiple backup destruction/deflection payloads
available and capable of being deployed at extremely short notice. We have the capability to build and launch
such vehicles but we don’t have the payload systems.
The kinetic energy
of such objects is unimaginable to most of us.
Even comparing them to nuclear and thermo-nuclear devices is a poor
comparison. The last two impacts in, or
above, Russia produced damage over hundreds of square miles. Compared to these events, the bombs detonated
over Japan in WWII were miniscule.
Further
concern must be considered at a more local level. Any launch vehicle capable of lifting an
anti-asteroid system could easily be used to deploy a nuclear weapon against other
nations. This may prove to be an even
more difficult problem to solve than the potential objects impacting from
space.
Closer to home, the material falling
is snow. We have a light ice-layer under
the snow on the decks and steps. I’ve
scraped them down about an hour ago and all the flat surfaces have at least
another inch of snowfall now. I’ve
hauled in two loads of wood for tonight’s consumption. Travel may be ill-advised today. There is no winter storm forecast for our
location. However, there is a winter
weather advisory in effect for the eastern side of our Appalachians. The demarcation line is the state border with
NC. We are three miles west of that
demarcation line. We are supposed to
have a 30% chance of snow today. Totals
later. Possible film at 2300, but do not
hold your breath.
Last item this morning, Gloria got
some good pictures of the turkeys feeding on the snow-covered back yard.
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