[FPSPACE] Caves on Mars

[E.P. Grondine]

Jens -

It is not the Representatives and Senators.  They passed the law - in this 
case the Brown Ammendment.

It is the executive's responsibility to carry out those laws.

Thus the failure lays with President Bush's NASA Administrator, Mike 
Griffin, enabled to a large degree by David Morrison's rationalizations.

Once again, the bulk of the impact hazard appears to be COMETS and their 
fragments, not asteroids.
The Brown Ammendment specifically states that NASA is to deal with the comet 
impact hazard.

If you want to deal with the real hazard then you need space based assets.  
If those assets are located on the Moon you get 6 months more warning.

The Venus orbit IR scope will undoubtedly detect multiple carbonaceous 
chondrite comet fragments.

Ed

>From: "Jens Kieffer-Olsen" <dstdba at post4.tele.dk>
>Reply-To: dstdba at post4.tele.dk
>To: <FPSPACE at friends-partners.org>
>Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Caves on Mars
>Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:12:02 +0200
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: DSFPortree at aol.com [mailto:DSFPortree at aol.com]
>Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 11:40 PM
>
> > I wonder - could these space-based asteroid detection
> > observatories be justified in terms of other astronomy
> > they might do? Like SOHO and sun-grazing comets? Or would
> > they be so specialized that they'd be unable to do much else?
>
>  Good question. Like asking 50 years ago, if hydrogen bombs
>  could be justified in terms of other tasks than keeping
>  Russki commies in check.
>
> > The LONEOS search program at Lowell Observatory uses a
> > dedicated 21-inch telescope, though there doesn't seem
> > to be any reason that it couldn't do other things.
> > It has captured a number of comets and many Main Belt
> > asteroids in addition to the NEOs it seeks. I suppose
> > that the data might include things like eclipsing
> > binaries and variable stars, though I don't think anyone
> > has used them that way.
> >
> > David
>
>  Generally speaking unmanned observatories need not be
>  starved of funds, since we probably agree that the drain
>  on the budget owes to us dispatching alive-and-kicking
>  astronauts into outer space - and bringing them back home
>  in the same condition.
>
>  I have extracted three paragraphs from the NASA report
>  on NEO Survey and Deflection. Shame on those congressmen
>  who don't adhere to the message.
>
>  "Observatories located in a Venus-like orbit are the most
>  efficient at finding NEOs inside Earth's orbit, a population
>  which has the most uncertainty yet still poses a hazard due
>  to gravitational orbit perturbations."
>
>  "Table 11 shows that the options that exceed the goals of the
>  Survey program also provide other benefits. The middle column
>  of the table shows that systems that operate in Venus-like
>  orbits are more efficient at finding Aten and Interior Earth
>  Objects, a potentially underrepresented population of PHOs."
>
>  "The second objective of characterization is to "inform
>  mitigation." Depending on the mitigation strategy selected,
>  this objective may require information beyond the size and
>  orbit of PHOs. This information may include the structure,
>  porosity, rotation rate, material composition, and surface
>  features of the object."
>
>  The last paragraph points to the need for transponders to
>  be placed on a few asteroids, those that we cannot determine
>  by observation alone whether will hit Earth. Apart from
>  Apophis, which the NEO community is of course fully aware
>  of, 1950 DA falls into that group. Let's get started then,
>  because the extended Spaceguard program is likely to add
>  a few more to the NEO group begging for transponder missions.
>
>--
>Jens Kieffer-Olsen
>Slagelse, Denmark
>
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