Excellent idea for where to put Musk when the inevitable falling out takes place...
BTW, what do we do if there is a ~20% chance of a hit? Take the ~80% we're given, or try to nudge it and risk that we could screw it up and *increase* the probability of an impact?
The one higher % asteroid in the small number of years they've been closely tracking was at 2.7% but then fell off to 0% as more data comes in.
I guess the good news is that orbital calculations are incredibly deterministic, so if we get all the needed data, the chance should go to 0% or to close to 100%, unless it's headed right for the atmosphere instead of a direct blow.
Excellent point. By 2028, the probabilities should converge toward either zero or 100%. The other question is what lead time is required for triggering a deflection action should an intervention be required...
"observations have raised the chance of impact to 1.6% and then this week to 1.8%"
The latest says 1.9%.
If you Google the two-word query "asteroid percent" today, to see what pops up, you see a series of articles from the past one week with the numbers: 1.2%, 1.3%, 1.6%, 1.9%.
This reminds me, for some reason, of that often-mentioned alleged series of newspaper headlines in France in 1815, which go from denouncing Napoleon to welcoming him as a world-historical hero over the course of some days, as his chances of returning to power increase.
I wonder whether it took a few weeks for many Republicans to move to Trump in 2015. I supported Trump as soon as he announced in 2015 because he was saying things that were relevant and not irrelevancies that Jeb! and Scott Walker and the rest whinnied. Trump wiped them all out because he talked about things that conservatives really cared about.
Planetary defense sounds like something for the US Space Force. I can see Musk as a 3-star general wearing one of those French Napoleonic plumed military hats.
"[T]he hypothetical impact of Apophis in countries such as Colombia and Venezuela, which were in the path of risk, could have more than 10 million casualties"
Also under potential threat from Apophis was coastal California. I believe several 1990s movies predicted this.
The early-mid-20th-century psychic Edgar Cayce predicted that before long California would be detached from, or "fall off," the North American continent. Maybe he was talking about culturally-demographically (Third Worldization), not a meteor strike or mega-earthquake as often assumed.
True, if one were in the centre of Hiroshima (near atomic dome) at the right time on August 6, 1945, even 10 Kiloton were more than enough. But on balance of probabilities, 10 Megaton is nothing.
I don't care about the asteroid or whatever but it's fun to read you when you're in your oats.
Loved this one: "Donald Trump has been talking loudly about expanding American territory to include Greenland, the former Panama Canal Zone, Canada, and, today, that jewel in the crown, that heart’s desire of every red-blooded American, Gaza."
I laughed out loud just reading it in the text box.
Again, I'm against and above all of the temporal ever-changing stupidities that get the rest of humanity in heat so it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference to me if shithead A or shithead B is in power or what their equally horrible suggestions and solutions are for humanity's problems.
I really am above all that, not just stoically but practically. I have better methods and solutions to them all, drawn from a life that encompasses the globe and millennia of experience. Unlike y'all - even you Stevie - I was not born yesterday.
You know it's funny. I kind of expected enough people to pick up on this and to empower me, at least enough to get a hearing from a few million people, without my needing to wear the crown or anything like that. All I need is for enough people to publicly hear what I say and to Q & A with me about it and then to insist that the Trumps and Musks and Netanyahus do it.
"I really am above all that, not just stoically but practically. I have better methods and solutions to them all, drawn from a life that encompasses the globe and millennia of experience. Unlike y'all - even you Stevie - I was not born yesterday.
You know it's funny. I kind of expected enough people to pick up on this and to empower me, at least enough to get a hearing from a few million people, without my needing to wear the crown or anything like that."
To riff on our landsman Nathan Birnbaum, better known as George Burns 'The most important quality is humility. If you can fake that, you've got it made.'
I am very well aware of the fact but, unfortunately, I have not been gifted with the ability to convincingly fake sincerity. A "gifted" salesman I shall never make, just an honest one. And if that doesn't work then we shall all be damned together.
This is totally the sort of thing that would appeal to Musk. I assume SpaceX could also produce the interceptors much more cheaply and more quickly as well.
I am not looking forward to the likely blowup with Trump although Muak may get distracted by a discontent Tesla board in the not very distant future.
he cheated. A more advanced civilization had left them an asteroid deflector in the form of a temple...dumbasses forgot their tradition and couldn't use it any more.
"That reminds me. I figure that it’s pretty inevitable that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, being two very big men, will eventually have a falling out and the President will fire his most important supporter. (I don’t see any evidence o that happening right now, but it just seems like the kind of thing to expect some day.)"
Don Jr. seems to be managing Trump's relationships with his genX and younger team members -- and surprisingly well I might add.
Trump's got a huge ego, but he's old and mellowing out with age. At this point I don't think his relationships will be quite as volatile as they were before.
Additionally, JD Vance raises the level of competence and professionalism in the administration considerably, and he's good friends with Don Jr. The two of them can work together to smooth out differences between Trump and other big shots.
"That reminds me. I figure that it’s pretty inevitable that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, being two very big men, will eventually have a falling out and the President will fire his most important supporter."
I think they both know this, and that is why DOGE times out at 18 months.
By then, the Trump term is effectively over, because all anyone will care about is the midterm elections, and after that, all anyone will care about will be the all-in knife-fight to succeed Trump. So, in the middle of next year, Musk goes back to running businesses full time, and that head off a full scale conflict.
Some readers will know of the Canadian mining engineer and climate sceptic Stephen McIntyre (see under Michael Mann, Hockey Stick Diagram, statistical malpractice). His X feed @ClimateAudit has the measure of both Trump and Musk.
Canada caves in to Trump on fentanyl? The new measures were announced weeks ago. Gaza? Watch the West Bank. Trump demands Ukrainian rare earths? There aren't any.
But as for Musk, just wow. One after another globalist NGO, neocon think tank and respectable news source turns out to be funded by USAID, including just about the entire Hungarian opposition to Victor Orban. And Russian collusion, January 6th, Al Qaida in Syria...
Excellent idea for where to put Musk when the inevitable falling out takes place...
BTW, what do we do if there is a ~20% chance of a hit? Take the ~80% we're given, or try to nudge it and risk that we could screw it up and *increase* the probability of an impact?
Indeed, that's a concern.
The one higher % asteroid in the small number of years they've been closely tracking was at 2.7% but then fell off to 0% as more data comes in.
I guess the good news is that orbital calculations are incredibly deterministic, so if we get all the needed data, the chance should go to 0% or to close to 100%, unless it's headed right for the atmosphere instead of a direct blow.
Excellent point. By 2028, the probabilities should converge toward either zero or 100%. The other question is what lead time is required for triggering a deflection action should an intervention be required...
And give Musk a secret laboratory buried in the Himalayas.
kinda ruining the secret aspect of it
It won't actually be in the Himalayas. That is just the cover we are giving it. The secret laboratory will actually be in the Mexican jungles.
"observations have raised the chance of impact to 1.6% and then this week to 1.8%"
The latest says 1.9%.
If you Google the two-word query "asteroid percent" today, to see what pops up, you see a series of articles from the past one week with the numbers: 1.2%, 1.3%, 1.6%, 1.9%.
This reminds me, for some reason, of that often-mentioned alleged series of newspaper headlines in France in 1815, which go from denouncing Napoleon to welcoming him as a world-historical hero over the course of some days, as his chances of returning to power increase.
The version of 1815 Parisian headlines about Napoleon's approach is a parody but the actual headlines being parodied are almost as funny.
I saw 1.9% too, but then I saw 1.83% to three decimal points. I like to play it cautious.
In 1975, Jimmy Carter was probably at 1.9 % in the polls and look what happened the next year.
Meanwhile, forty years later (June 2015), The Dernald started at 10%+ in the polls, I believe.
I wonder whether it took a few weeks for many Republicans to move to Trump in 2015. I supported Trump as soon as he announced in 2015 because he was saying things that were relevant and not irrelevancies that Jeb! and Scott Walker and the rest whinnied. Trump wiped them all out because he talked about things that conservatives really cared about.
Planetary defense sounds like something for the US Space Force. I can see Musk as a 3-star general wearing one of those French Napoleonic plumed military hats.
True believers in the Apophis Meteor may still be holding out for Friday, April 13, 2029 or Easter Sunday, April 13, 2036.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis
"[T]he hypothetical impact of Apophis in countries such as Colombia and Venezuela, which were in the path of risk, could have more than 10 million casualties"
Also under potential threat from Apophis was coastal California. I believe several 1990s movies predicted this.
The early-mid-20th-century psychic Edgar Cayce predicted that before long California would be detached from, or "fall off," the North American continent. Maybe he was talking about culturally-demographically (Third Worldization), not a meteor strike or mega-earthquake as often assumed.
10 Megaton is nothing. Tsar Bomba, the project overseen by Sacharov, was 60 Megaton. If it were 10 Gigaton, would be a different matter.
nothing...depending on where I happen to be at the time ;)
True, if one were in the centre of Hiroshima (near atomic dome) at the right time on August 6, 1945, even 10 Kiloton were more than enough. But on balance of probabilities, 10 Megaton is nothing.
Dude, you're killin' it.
I don't care about the asteroid or whatever but it's fun to read you when you're in your oats.
Loved this one: "Donald Trump has been talking loudly about expanding American territory to include Greenland, the former Panama Canal Zone, Canada, and, today, that jewel in the crown, that heart’s desire of every red-blooded American, Gaza."
I laughed out loud just reading it in the text box.
Again, I'm against and above all of the temporal ever-changing stupidities that get the rest of humanity in heat so it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference to me if shithead A or shithead B is in power or what their equally horrible suggestions and solutions are for humanity's problems.
I really am above all that, not just stoically but practically. I have better methods and solutions to them all, drawn from a life that encompasses the globe and millennia of experience. Unlike y'all - even you Stevie - I was not born yesterday.
You know it's funny. I kind of expected enough people to pick up on this and to empower me, at least enough to get a hearing from a few million people, without my needing to wear the crown or anything like that. All I need is for enough people to publicly hear what I say and to Q & A with me about it and then to insist that the Trumps and Musks and Netanyahus do it.
Huh. Dumbass people. Waddayagonnado.
"I really am above all that, not just stoically but practically. I have better methods and solutions to them all, drawn from a life that encompasses the globe and millennia of experience. Unlike y'all - even you Stevie - I was not born yesterday.
You know it's funny. I kind of expected enough people to pick up on this and to empower me, at least enough to get a hearing from a few million people, without my needing to wear the crown or anything like that."
To riff on our landsman Nathan Birnbaum, better known as George Burns 'The most important quality is humility. If you can fake that, you've got it made.'
I am very well aware of the fact but, unfortunately, I have not been gifted with the ability to convincingly fake sincerity. A "gifted" salesman I shall never make, just an honest one. And if that doesn't work then we shall all be damned together.
Musk will not respond well to Trump’s sophisticated, Wharton School of Biz Admin. management style.
He will take this job and shove it, but in a unique Muskian way that is beyond my predictive capacity.
The asteroid will miss.
Musk has a degree from Wharton. Partially financed by hosting parties and charging admission. They sound like soul mates to me.
and they might well share a personality disorder
Then we need a couple of million more with the same disorder.
Musk is getting a lot of headlines but also taking all the incoming attacks so he and Trump are cool for now.
This is totally the sort of thing that would appeal to Musk. I assume SpaceX could also produce the interceptors much more cheaply and more quickly as well.
I am not looking forward to the likely blowup with Trump although Muak may get distracted by a discontent Tesla board in the not very distant future.
Didn't Kirk and Spock handle an asteroid in the episode where Kirk becomes an American Indian named Kurak and fathers a bastard by Miramani?
he cheated. A more advanced civilization had left them an asteroid deflector in the form of a temple...dumbasses forgot their tradition and couldn't use it any more.
(E.g., would hitting it with a nuclear weapon be helpful, useless, or dangerous?)
Only one way to find out, one amazing, awesome way!!!!
Elon to head up newly created Department Of Deflecting Giant Extraterrestrials
Outstanding.
"That reminds me. I figure that it’s pretty inevitable that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, being two very big men, will eventually have a falling out and the President will fire his most important supporter. (I don’t see any evidence o that happening right now, but it just seems like the kind of thing to expect some day.)"
Don Jr. seems to be managing Trump's relationships with his genX and younger team members -- and surprisingly well I might add.
Trump's got a huge ego, but he's old and mellowing out with age. At this point I don't think his relationships will be quite as volatile as they were before.
Additionally, JD Vance raises the level of competence and professionalism in the administration considerably, and he's good friends with Don Jr. The two of them can work together to smooth out differences between Trump and other big shots.
"That reminds me. I figure that it’s pretty inevitable that Donald Trump and Elon Musk, being two very big men, will eventually have a falling out and the President will fire his most important supporter."
I think they both know this, and that is why DOGE times out at 18 months.
By then, the Trump term is effectively over, because all anyone will care about is the midterm elections, and after that, all anyone will care about will be the all-in knife-fight to succeed Trump. So, in the middle of next year, Musk goes back to running businesses full time, and that head off a full scale conflict.
Some readers will know of the Canadian mining engineer and climate sceptic Stephen McIntyre (see under Michael Mann, Hockey Stick Diagram, statistical malpractice). His X feed @ClimateAudit has the measure of both Trump and Musk.
Canada caves in to Trump on fentanyl? The new measures were announced weeks ago. Gaza? Watch the West Bank. Trump demands Ukrainian rare earths? There aren't any.
But as for Musk, just wow. One after another globalist NGO, neocon think tank and respectable news source turns out to be funded by USAID, including just about the entire Hungarian opposition to Victor Orban. And Russian collusion, January 6th, Al Qaida in Syria...
Well worth following.
The movie Don't Look Up covered this topic I think to all of our satisfactions. We need to extract resources from that asteroid.