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If such a project was ever going to take place then maybe
they just need to think in dollars. Put a $10+ million reward/grant
for the first institution to discover and certify a NEO posing a very
serious or imminent risk to Earth. There might be plenty of people willing to
invest in the program then!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 8:44
AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] 'Paul Revere'
Scientist Suggests Unusual Asteroid Warning System
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1103/asteroid_warning_system.asp
'Paul
Revere' scientist suggests unusual asteroid warning system
Jewish World
Review
November 2003
Just last month, a meteorite slammed into a
village in eastern India.
Eleven people were injured and two homes were
destroyed by
fire.
Perhaps more unsettling, in 1908, a space rock
screamed into
Earth's atmosphere, exploding in the sky over a remote
Siberian
forest with a force greater than a 10-megaton nuclear
blast.
Fires started, wildlife perished and trees fell for miles in
every
direction.
These days, efforts underway to detect comets and
asteroids on
a potential collision course with Earth include an
unassuming
scientist from Ridgewood, N.J., with an idea for a better
method.
William A. Hoffman III doesn't have a company, or investors
for
his detection system, called "Looking out for you." But he
received
a patent (U.S. No. 6,452,538), and some distinguished
astronomers say his
idea is intriguing.
Hoffman wants to place telescopes on the
outer-space side of
telecommunications satellites where they can
continuously scan
the heavens, free from cloud cover that often hampers
earthbound
telescopes, to look for what astronomers call NEOs, or
Near
Earth Objects.
The data would beam down to a ground station and
be sent - for
a fee - to schools or institutions or individuals who could
use it
to pinpoint the rocks' orbit.
"I can't speak for NASA, but
personally I think it's a great idea if
he can make it work," said Dan
Mazenek, an aerospace engineer based at NASA's
Langley Research Center and
director of a study on how best to search for large comets
and asteroids
that might strike Earth.
"If he can get the money to put telescopes up
there then I'm interested in the results,"
said Lucy
McFadden.
McFadden was one of thirteen scientists and researchers who
signed an open letter to
Congress in July warning of the threat from space
and urging the government to invest
in some kind of system to help guard
against a significant hit.
Hoffman is an unimposing man with a polite,
professorial manner who acknowledges
with good humor that many people might
find his idea sort of, well, pie in the sky. And
he's also realistic enough
to know he'll have to make a lot of noise to get any
investors
interested.
"If I have to fund it myself it's not going to
happen at all," he said.
He believes colleges and universities without
an astronomy program might be willing to
pay for the telescope
data.
And individuals could access it via the Internet, where
subscription fees and advertising
might bring in revenue.
"There are
lots and lots of people that would buy into the idea of helping protect
the
Earth by signing onto a program like this," said Kelly Beatty,
executive editor of Sky &
Telescope magazine. Whether they would pay
for the privilege is another question, he
added.
Beatty and others
also raised numerous questions about technical aspects of
Hoffman's
idea.
Would the telecommunications companies that own the
satellites agree to the plan?
Would cosmic rays interfere with the
images?
How exactly would the raw data be processed into pictures of
the heavens?
And perhaps the biggest issue: cost.
"We always
ask, could this be accomplished from the ground?" said Neil deGrasse
Tyson,
an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the
American
Museum of Natural History. He was skeptical of Hoffman's plan, he
said, because "it's
more expensive to do anything in space."
But
Tyson, who also signed the July letter to Congress, agreed there was a need to
get
something in place to identify dangerous space rocks.
"There is
no organized effort to monitor the sky continuously," he said.
Hoffman,
a graduate of Wayne High School who attended the Air Force Academy
and
received his doctorate in organic chemistry from Stevens Institute,
acknowledged the
challenges but welcomed any scrutiny.
"The more
people that start paying attention to this idea, the more likely it's all
going to
work," said Hoffman, who spent his career working for a number of
chemical companies
including Union Carbide before becoming a chemical
industry consultant.
Hoffman said the beauty of his early warning
system is its relatively low cost.
He estimates putting the first
telescope up might fall in the range of $2 million to $3
million, much of
which would pay for the extensive testing needed to make sure
the
piggybacked telescope wouldn't interfere with the satellite's primary
job of sending
phone or TV signals down to earth.
The communications
satellites are perfect, he said, because they are geo-stationary.
That is,
they stay in one spot, moving as the earth moves so the telescopes would
be
positioned around the planet and could watch wide areas of
space.
"You're watching all the time; you're seeing a movie of the
stars," said Hoffman.
As for actually seeing his dream become real,
Hoffman acknowledges many hurdles.
"Somebody's got to agree that it can
go on their satellite and somebody's going to be
involved in the collection
and distribution of the data," he said.
Several satellite operators,
including PanAmSat and Loral Skynet, couldn't find anyone
to comment on
Hoffman's plan.
Hoffman said he approached a number of large
corporations, including Disney, Time
Warner, and Kodak, to gauge their
interest.
The corporate interest hasn't exactly been high, he admits,
although he's contacting
some companies again in light of the scientists'
July letter to Congress.
The 58-year-old amateur astronomer also said
that although he'd enjoy reaping
financial benefits from his project, he
wouldn't mind if the government paid him
something nominal for his patent
if they promised to put the system in place.
Astronomers point to the
1994 collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter as
an example of
the force and devastation that can occur when one of a swarm of comets
and
asteroids in our solar system slams into a planet.
The massive blast
created a dust cloud larger than Earth itself.
"You don't want to say
`Gee, we missed that one,'" said Hoffman.
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