Can humans do better than the dinosaurs?
This is one of a string of questions I posed in a Skype chat on Sunday with Russell L. Schweickart, the Apollo 9 astronaut who has become a leading proponent of investing in tools that can spot and deflect earthbound asteroids and other orbiting threats. We spoke shortly after the cosmic coincidence on Feb. 15, when a long-projected close flyby by the DA14 asteroid was upstaged by the meteor that disintegrated over Siberia.
Schweickart, along with former space shuttle astronaut Edward Lu and others, has for years pursued the goal of creating the technological capacity (through a privately financed Sentinel space telescope mission) and encouraging governmental responsibility (through discussions with NASA, the United Nations and other relevant entities) to address this long-understood, but largely discounted, threat.
My first question was whether Schweickart saw the cosmic events last week as changing the equation. He was hopeful but doubtful.
Below you can read transcribed portions of our conversation, including Schweickart?s views on why developing a system for spotting and deflecting near-Earth objects has been a tough sell both at NASA and in Congress.
For a closer look at the planetary-protection efforts of Schweickart, Lu and their allies, I encourage you to read William J. Broad?s recent feature, ?Vindication for Entrepreneurs Watching Sky: Yes, It Can Fall.?
I also recommend Lu?s TEDx talk on the Sentinel space telescope project, and explore background posted by the B612 Foundation, the group co-founded by Lu, Schweickart and others, first to explore deflection options and, since 2011, focused on the telescope mission.
My central question for Schweickart was:
Can we be smarter than the dinosaurs? We clearly have the foresight to recognize this is possible but now can we actually be smarter? Intelligence is taking knowledge and doing something with it.
He replied:
We clearly have both the knowledge and the capability to protect the Earth from these impacts. The bigger question is will we really recognize our shared interest in survival to cooperate internationally to make decisions and protect life on earth?. We?re broken into nations and tribes of all kinds and sizes and whether we can recognize our common humanity to the point where we do better than the dinosaurs, there?s not a clear answer to that.
He laid out the three-pronged approach that?s required:
There are three fundamental elements to protecting the Earth from these things.
Number one is having adequate early warning. That?s what our Project Sentinel infrared telescope is all about.
The second one is once you know something?s coming at you, you have to have a way to prevent it, and that?s deflection. And right now, while we know how to deflect ? and the B612 Foundation was a major cohort in developing those capabilities ? nevertheless it?s never been demonstrated?. Public safety is a fundamental responsibility of government everywhere. And to me NASA needs to be given the clear responsibilty to protect the earth from a predicted impact.
And the third is the most challenging issue: the international coordination?. The easiest way to state it is that you can?t deflect an asteroid without putting temporarily at risk other nations and people who were not initially threatened? that international complexity says there has to be some ultimately we may watch ourselves get hit with the first one that threatens, hopefully in the ocean, while everybody is still debating at the U.N. But hopefully that will only happen once.
I recalled how, in 2004, Schweickart described a Senate hearing on strategies for spotting and deflecting near-Earth objects as a sad affair in which lawmakers were concerned publicly, but privately said there was no way to get the money for an ambitious program. Why is planetary protection seen as a boondoggle, I asked?
He replied:
It?s not officially on anybody?s to-do list in terms of legal requirements. NASA does have a legal requirement to discover asteroids and to do certain research work, track them and catalog them, etc., but NASA does not have responsibility nor does anyone else, to protect the Earth from potential impacts. This is really public safety. This is not science or exploration. It?s always been a sad sister.
He said the Siberian meteor blast might boost prospects, but was doubtful it would have a lasting effect on spending, particularly given other pressures in Washington:
Given the financial situation in the federal government, not to mention the tremendous partisan contention going on, and the sequestration and everything else, this is a tough time for anybody to propose spending money that isn?t already committed.
Schweickart added that?s where the Sentinel mission, for which the nonprofit B612 Foundation is trying to raise $450 million, comes in:
It?s one of the nice things about being a private entity. We can focus on something that?s of very great importance and we can see it through, notwithstanding the rapidly changing political environment.
He concluded by describing how the Sentinel mission could, within a decade, identify a huge number of orbiting objects that cannot be detected now but could have the destructive power of the Tunguska object, which exploded over Siberia in 1908, flattening hundreds of square miles of forest.
If we can get our B612 telescope into orbit by 2018, by the time we get to 2020, 2022, we?ll have something like 50 percent of the Tunguska-size objects ? things like DA14 [the 50-meter-diameter asteroid that passed between Earth and some satellites on Friday]. Having 50 percent is a lot better than what we have now which is less than one half of one percent of objects that size. These are not panic situations, but they can hit any day, as we found out last Friday.
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