Marrying asteroid defense and asteroid mining

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Don Davis

> A major concern Carl Sagan had about obtaining the ability to
> move asteroids was the same the initial atomic bomb scientists
> had about their 'baby', the malevolent use such abilities would
> one day be put.

There was a major logical flaw in Sagan's scenario which James Oberg
pointed out. I daresay more people have read Sagan's warnings than
Oberg's rebuttal to them.

In a pre-911 era, Sagan knew people would argue that the crew sent to
the asteroid would never divert it toward the Earth, because they
themselves would be killed. Sagan's counter to this was that a madmen
might dispatch the crew with the cover story that their mission was to
prevent a collision, and then send them data which would cause them to
instead create a collision which wouldn't have occurred otherwise.

The assumption Sagan seemed to be making was that arranging a collision
and preventing one were pretty much the same operation, only with
different numbers. But being a space rendezvous expert, Oberg knew that
preventing a collision would be a matter of thrusting until one had
sufficient vector change, and then stopping. On the other hand,
arranging a collision would involve a vector change, waiting for minor
course deviations to accumulate, thrusting again to correct course, and
repeating this for most of the way back to Earth. Thus it's unlikely a
crew expecting to prevent a collision could be duped into doing the
opposite.

Of course we now live in a post-911 world, and I suppose we need to be
more open-minded about an asteroid crew dedicated to destroying
themselves along with a portion of the world. To that, I would say that
the irrational kinds of belief systems which result in such a death-wish
tend to produce incompetent individuals and societies. Major manned
space operations require very high levels of competency, both at the
individual and societal levels. The 911 hijackers succeeded by
redirecting Western aircraft which their native culture could never have
produced on its own.

And besides, I'm reasonably certain the real reason Sagan was against
moving asteroids was not the one he gave, but instead a dread that those
evil, oppressive old corporations might figure out a way to make a
profit off of other celestial bodies.

Regards,

Mike Combs