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A few days ago I described a novel idea of cooling
the earth in sci.space.tech. The idea is cheap (less than $1 billion) and simple: drill a hole in the moon, place a big nuclear bomb at its bottom and detonate the bomb. If you aim the detonation towards the earth, millions of tons of regolith, much of it fine dust, will either orbit the earth or it will plunge into the earth's atmosphere. sci.space.policy is not the best place to discuss technical aspects of this idea, but it is probably the best place to discuss its political fallout. I am not claiming that the idea of dumping millions of tons of moon dust into the earth's atmosphere and orbit is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This idea may be a disaster for most earthlings, but, like all the other bad ideas (spam, computer viruses, etc.) it will be implemented if it can benefit someone. Arabs and Iranians would benefit from this idea because it would improve their climate, raise petroleum prices, and, if overdone, it would freeze Western infidels. Of course, the Iranians are not stupid enough to ask the UN for permission. They will do it in secret so that they can celebrate great Islamic victory afterwards. It will be impossible to sue them for global cooling, just like it is impossible now to sue anyone for global warming, or for polluting outer space with man-made junk. (There are already 2000 tons of man-made junk in low earth orbit.) I realize that this a dangerous idea, but I am posting it here so that my fellow earthlings realize that outer space must be policed. (The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee is a toothless tiger -- it has no power to police anything.) If I were the space cop, I would prohibit launching any payload into an earth orbit other than circular-equatorial or circular-polar orbit because these other orbits are unstable (due to precession) and the space junk in unstable orbit is difficult to remove and it may collide with other space junk producing lots of shrapnel size junk. |
#2
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In article ,
Andrew Nowicki wrote: ...cheap (less than $1 billion) and simple: drill a hole in the moon, place a big nuclear bomb at its bottom and detonate the bomb. If you aim the detonation towards the earth, millions of tons of regolith, much of it fine dust, will either orbit the earth or it will plunge into the earth's atmosphere. sci.space.policy is not the best place to discuss technical aspects of this idea... Okay, then I will skip discussing how ridiculously ineffective it would be and how ludicrous the cost estimate is. :-) ...be implemented if it can benefit someone. Arabs and Iranians would benefit from this idea because it would improve their climate, raise petroleum prices, and, if overdone, it would freeze Western infidels... As is often noted in regard to global warming, such a change typically will *not* show up as a uniform drop in temperatures everywhere. The effects will vary greatly between places and over the year, and are not that easy to predict. It could easily hit them worse -- for example, in the form of drought -- than the West. the Iranians are not stupid enough to ask the UN for permission. They will do it in secret so that they can celebrate great Islamic victory afterwards. They're going to keep a program involving large lunar landings secret? Yeah, right. It will be impossible to sue them for global cooling, just like it is impossible now to sue anyone for global warming, or for polluting outer space with man-made junk... Hint: sufficiently annoyed Western countries don't necessarily go via the courts to extract compensation for such things. The Iranians have not forgotten what happened just over their eastern border a few years ago, when the Taliban made a similar error. ...If I were the space cop, I would prohibit launching any payload into an earth orbit other than circular-equatorial or circular-polar orbit... And this has what, exactly, to do with preventing Iranian moon-dust climate-changing missions? You do realize, I hope, that there are good reasons for using a wide variety of other orbits, which is why essentially nothing is in either type of orbit you describe... -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
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