MADMEN to Protect Earth from Asteroids!

Posted 20 May 2004 at 02:20 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Space.com has an article about space robots to hunt space rocks to protect earth. Movies like Meteor, Asteroid and Armageddon help us to imagine blowing up space rocks with nuclear missles, and saving the Earth, but neuclear robots really are being developed to save Earth from Asteroids. Called MADMEN (Modular Asteroid Deflection Mission Ejector Node), these swarm robots will attack an asteroid and try to deflect it away from the earth. MADMEN will work by drilling bits of rock and throwing them away pushing the asteroid in the other direction. Over time the asteroid will move faster and faster in the opposite direction and away from Earth. SpaceWorks Engineering, Inc. (SEI), the maker of MADMEN has won a NASA award to study Near-Earth Objects (NEO) and an approach to defend against asteroid impactors. Perhaps it's just in time to keep the Earth from being destroyed in 2019!

It's the one you don't see that'll get ya, posted 20 May 2004 at 14:21 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

It's the one you don't see that will get you.

I think that it'll come as a complete surprise when a large object impacts the Earth. There are a lot of these things that we haven't seen, found, located or tracked yet.

As I understand it many comets aren't really all that visible until they get almost to Earth Orbit.

Then you have those objects that have passed the sun already and are on their way out again. We don't even know how many of those there are.

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