Congress

House Science Committee to hear about “threats from space” (Updated)

Update 9pm: Wednesday afternoon’s hearing has been postponed by more terrestrial issues. An impending snowstorm (dubbed by some the “Snowquester”) expected to hit the DC area on Wednesday led the House to decide to adjourn for the week by midday Wednesday, prompting the postponement. No new date for the hearing has been announced.

On the day last month that a meteor disintegrated over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and a larger asteroid made a close flyby of the Earth, the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), said he would “expedite a hearing on planetary protection” from asteroids and comets. He is following through on that with a hearing of the full committee tomorrow afternoon titled “Threats from Space: A Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors, Part 1″. The hearing features three key officials: Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Holdren, Air Force Space Command commander Gen. William Shelton, and NASA administrator Charles Bolden. The “part 1″ implies that at least one more hearing (perhaps involving experts on near Earth objects) is planned, although not formally scheduled yet.

58 comments to House Science Committee to hear about “threats from space” (Updated)

  • James

    The biggest threat from space is not from outer space, but the vacuous space that lies inside some of the noggins of our elected officials! Not all of course, many are thoughtful, committed public servants…and some…well,,,,geez.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    I’m guessing that nothing comes of this. No NEO goals, no funding, and no capabilities. Even when their parochial interests are at stake, this committee can’t get a bill through the House. And even if this committee was competent, broken windows in Russia are way too removed from their parochial interests to motivate action beyond hearings theater.

    Maybe Holdren or Shelton are taking some action as a result of the Chelyabinsk airburst that we’ll hear about today, but I doubt that, too.

    • E. P. Grondine

      Hi DBN –

      We’ll see.

      Holdren was supposed to deliver a report to the Congress in December which never arrived. It appears that Lindley Johnson has the elements of that report, but it was never assembled and delivered.

      Many of the people in Space Command have been climbing the walls for years because of what they’ve been seeing from their systems.

      It is interesting to me that the hearing is called on “Asteroids and Meteors”, when it more properly should be on “Asteroids, Meteoroids and Comets”. But as Brian Marsden once told the subcommittee, “that’s not even considering comets”.

      My suggestion for reform is to create a position reporting directly to the AA for Space Science to handle this hazard.

    • Robert G. Oler

      I agree DBN RGO

  • Any bets on which Congresscritter first suggests using SLS to combat incoming meteors?

    • JimNobles

      Maybe SLS to combat Iranian Flying Monkeys.

    • amightywind

      More hysteria pedaling by big government pimps. Just what I want, to be protected by the likes of leftist radical John Holdren. Where does it end?

      My suggestion for reform is to create a position reporting directly to the AA for Space Science to handle this hazard.

      Goodness! What does ‘handling this hazard’ mean? I don’t believe there has ever been an incident of a human being killed by a meteor.

      • E. P. Grondine

        Hi AW –

        What you don’t know about the impact hazard fills several books.

        • amightywind

          My last question stands. Stop misleading people.

          • E. P. Grondine

            It means coordinating the various separate currently existing components for dealing with the hazard, and fixing as many holes in both the detection systems and definition of the hazard as possible.

            It means one individual responsible for finishing the definition of the hazard and for the execution of warning systems, civil defense, and coordinating active defense.

      • JimNobles

        I don’t believe there has ever been an incident of a human being killed by a meteor.

        When I was a kid I saw a picture in a book. It was supposedly a lady that got hit in the lower-stomach/upper-hip area with a tiny one. Hard to tell from the old black & white photo but it looked like a huge bruise with a nasty looking burn or laceration in the middle.

        That’s all I got.

      • Dark Blue Nine

        “I don’t believe there has ever been an incident of a human being killed by a meteor.”

        Unless you’re a Bible-thumping looney that doesn’t understand basic geology and paleontology, the Earth has experienced at least five mass extinction events over the past half-billion years, where half or more of all species died out. The last is tied to a major asteroid impact. There is no reason to believe that our species will be exempt from these events.

        • E. P. Grondine

          Hi DBN –

          And there is the beginning of the problem. The actual number is 1 comet impact ELE every 27 million years, on a stochastically periodic basis, not 1 asteroidal ELE every 100 million years.

          Morrison’s earlier impact hazard estimates, which NASA relied on, were in fact off by 1 to 3 orders of magnitude, as they conveniently did not take into account the Moon’s nearby large companion, the Earth.

          His low estimate for cometary impact is particularly telling when looking at sub ELE sized impacts.

          Ooops.

        • DCSCA

          “I don’t believe there has ever been an incident of a human being killed by a meteor.”

          There are records of peple being hit- but not killed.

          “Unless you’re a Bible-thumping looney that doesn’t understand basic geology and paleontology, the Earth has experienced at least five mass extinction events over the past half-billion years, where half or more of all species died out. The last is tied to a major asteroid impact. There is no reason to believe that our species will be exempt from these events.”

          In short, no, no human has been killed by getting struck. =eyeroll=.

          • Dark Blue Nine

            “In short, no, no human has been killed by getting struck. =eyeroll=.”

            You’re being an obtuse idiot. The point is not whether one person has ever died in a meteorite strike. The point is that human civilization or our species could not survive a major asteroid strike of the kind that caused mass extinctions in the fossil record.

          • Paul

            There are records of peple being hit- but not killed.

            A manuscript from Tortona, Italy, records the death of a monk in 1677 due to a meteorite. While you may question the veracity of such an old record, it is a record.

    • DCSCA

      Any bets on which Congresscritter first suggests using SLS to combat incoming meteors?

      Maybe they’ve been briefed on something you haven’t. ;-) Screen Deep Impact. LOL

    • I don’t take sucker bets, Stephen.

  • Dave Huntsman

    Hi, EP –

    While Lindley and the NEO project office at JPL are doing a great job, a sustained, more serious effort is best not left to the Science Directorate; which tends to treat things like they are, well, science projects. The priority for NEOs should be: Planetary Defense, first; Space development (ie asteroidal resources), second; and pure science, third. While there obviously is considerable overlap between the three, there are still differences in emphasis. You’ll never have those priorities adequately served if they remain buried in the Science Mission Directorate.

    • E. P. Grondine

      I’ll have to disagree with you, Dave.

      The reasons for that are far beyond the scope of a post here.

      • common sense

        EP,

        So you disagree with Dave? So here goes. The method that has been used so far does not seem to be successful in any way to help mitigate the problems associated with NEOs. Not one bit. I don’t know whether Dave has the right answer for sure but he is proposing an alternative to the current process. Again I don’t know if he’s correct but I know how scientists think. And what Dave is describing is perfectly valid, i.e. “tends to treat things like they are, well, science projects”.

        Now I would rather ask Dave: What is and where is located “Planetary Defense”? Is it another agency? NASA? I don’t know that there is any such office (http://www.space.com/9356-planetary-defense-coordination-office-proposed-fight-asteroids.html).

        Then I don’t know what the asteroidal resources have to do with it except maybe for industry support.

        However I do tend to agree with him about science and scientists.

        • E. P. Grondine

          Hi CS –

          I would be delighted if Part 2 of the hearings focused on a GAO report on Griffin’s contempt of Congress, and who else he consulted and who joined with him in that act of contempt.

          • common sense

            This is not a response to my post nor to Dave’s.

            If you have an axe to grind with Mike Griffin then do as you please but in what way will that enhance our planetary “defense”?

            Once again worth repeating. Scientists do not do planetary defense they do science. So why would they be charged with planetary defense? What means do they have to effectively provide planetary defense?

            Is it possible your approach be totally wrong?

            • E. P. Grondine

              Hi CS –

              The Congress asked for a report. JPL assembled it. Griffin (and parties unknown) intentionally committed contempt by not forwarding that report to the Congress.

              The members did not ask the Administrator for his opinion on what the role of NASA in planetary defense should be.

              They did not ask the Administrator on what he though he could afford.

              They asked for a report on what was needed to deal with the hazard, and some cost estimates, from NASA’s specialists.

              Did it ever occur to you that some members of the Congress may know more about this hazard than you do?
              In fact, anyone who served with George Brown Jr?

              Did it ever occur to you that some members of the Congress may hold a different opinion on Administrator Griffin’s actions than you do?

              • common sense

                You are still not answering the question and if this is your strategy with Congress it may explain a lot.

                “The Congress asked for a report. JPL assembled it. Griffin (and parties unknown) intentionally committed contempt by not forwarding that report to the Congress.”

                Not the question.

                “The members did not ask the Administrator for his opinion on what the role of NASA in planetary defense should be.”

                Not the question.

                “They did not ask the Administrator on what he though he could afford.”

                Not the question.

                “They asked for a report on what was needed to deal with the hazard, and some cost estimates, from NASA’s specialists.”

                Not the question.

                “Did it ever occur to you that some members of the Congress may know more about this hazard than you do?”

                No it did not. Especially in regard to what they are doing with our HSF program. And it has nothing to do with the question.

                “In fact, anyone who served with George Brown Jr?”

                Not the question.

                “Did it ever occur to you that some members of the Congress may hold a different opinion on Administrator Griffin’s actions than you do?”

                And finally. Not the question.

                Now instead of going all DCSCA on me you might want to think about what was offered to you above by Dave. Because as far as I know the budget you boasted about went from what? $5M to $20M? If you believe that this is enough for all needed for impact mitigation then be happy. Otherwise I say that your method and that of those like you do not work one bit.

                Does it occur to you that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting new results is not going to work?

                SMD is not the place to work planetary defense. They do not have the budget nor do they have the will. It is not their job. It’s like asking the NASA astrobiologists to cure cancer and implement an international plan to medicate those in needs, after all they are biologists aren’t they?

            • E. P. Grondine

              The problem here is not with my answering your questions, it is with you being able to understand my answers, and the reasons for that have more to do with the science of psychology.

              For example, despite the statements of some here, it has been shown that about 13,000 years ago 95% of the people living in North America were killed by impact.

              • common sense

                “The problem here is not with my answering your questions, it is with you being able to understand my answers, and the reasons for that have more to do with the science of psychology.”

                You know I respect the effort of those who want to get some form of planetary defense system in place, just as much as climate change efforts, etc. But this answer of yours is so plain idiotic. You don’t know who I am and what I do for a living. Yet you are patronizing me. So let me tell you when it comes to psychology you may want to check yourself first. And by the way psychology is not a science. Make an effort. You’re ruining your attempts with obtuseness.

                http://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Is_Psychology_Science
                “It remains true, however, that a human study such as psychology is not a science in the same sense as physics, because whatever it shares with the scientific method, it also receives essential support from the methods of hermeneutics. Faced with communications, we need to establish the background, likely knowledge and personal motives of the communicator.”

                “For example, despite the statements of some here, it has been shown that about 13,000 years ago 95% of the people living in North America were killed by impact.”

                Your example is as idiotic as your answer above since I am not one of them.

  • Hiram

    It’s reasonable to tell SMD to assess the hazard, as in, be responsible for locating threatening objects, but it is not reasonable to charge them with “handling” the problem, when a problem is identified. SMD doesn’t do national defense. Period. I would not trust their culture with being appropriately responsive to the problem. That’s not a criticism. That’s just who they are. Not at all clear that any responsibility for mitigation belongs with NASA. Might be a job for DARPA, at least to validate mitigation strategies, perhaps through USAF Space Command.

    • E. P. Grondine

      What SMD has is a Deep Space Network, and what they have done is run several comet and asteroid intercepting probes.

      • Hiram

        The issue here isn’t interception. DoD knows how to intercept things in deep space quite well. It knows how to intercept things in near space *extraordinarily* well. Clementine was well targeted. The issue is mitigation. SMD has never mitigated anything.

        SMD has DSN? That’s why it’s so well suited to this job? Well gee, DSN represents technology (small signal sensing, RF pointing, etc.) that is better understood by DoD than by NASA. The fact that DoD doesn’t have a big dish is something that is easily remedied. DSN is about vastly more than big dishes.

        SMD has (and funds) lots of people who know something about asteroids and comets. That’s probably their major role in effective mitigation. But it isn’t mitigation.

        Nope, you haven’t come close to making a compelling argument why SMD should be responsible for protecting the planet.

        • E. P. Grondine

          Hi Hiram –

          I prefer to keep DoD focused tightly on more earth bound threats.

          While at some point in the future DoE will likely be responsible for both non-nuclear as well as nuclear means of diversion, the problem now is timely detection and warning, and that is going to require space based sensors.

          I have heard this kind of rationalizing before. What do you have against NASA money being spent on anything useful?

  • E. P. Grondine

    IN general terms, since I started in on this in 1997, what I have seen has been rationalizations. First off, as to the degree of the hazard and what its components are, and this continues to this day. Contrary to what you might believe, the facts are that impacts have killed large numbers of peoples, in areas which are inhabited by billions of people today.

    The other rationalizations generally have come from manned Mars flight enthusiasts, who think that the NASA exploration budget is theirs, and Cosmologists, who think that the NASA observation budget is theirs.

  • DCSCA

    “The hearing features three key officials: Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Holdren, Air Force Space Command commander Gen. William Shelton, and NASA administrator Charles Bolden.”

    All three bureaucrats have better things to do as sequestration starts squeezing their turf. Cheaper to screen DVDs of When Worlds Collide; War of the Worlds, Armageddon and Meteor. Or maybe just Deep Impact as it has a black president for proper context. When you’re in free drift, you waste time by making much ado about nothing. This is an issue for the UN, not the US House of Representatives.

    • E. P. Grondine

      Hi DCSCA –

      Once again, your ideas about what NASA should be are different than those of the Congress.

      I would be delighted if Part 2 of the hearings took sworn testimony from Griffin on his contempt of Congress, and who he consulted when he committed it, and then sent investigators into the NASA archives to check his testimony.

    • Dark Blue Nine

      “This is an issue for the UN, not the US House of Representatives.”

      The UN has no space capabilities. That organization couldn’t do anything about an asteroid threat, even if they wanted to. They’d be reliant on national or commercial space tracking, launchers, and in-space capabilities.

      • DCSCA

        “The UN has no space capabilities.”

        Neither does a subcommittee in the US House of Representatives. The proper forum for discussing this far-down-the-agenda-of-earth-shjaking-matters is the the United Nations, where any plans for global resources can be brought to the tablevby the internationasl community. The ‘threat’- such as it is from the henny-penny-types, has global implications and not peculiar to the United States hence the UN is a smarter forum for discussion. You just don’t like the Unied Nations.

        • Dark Blue Nine

          “Neither does a subcommittee in the US House of Representatives.”

          You’re being an obtuse idiot. Congress and the White House have multiple space agencies at their command, including NASA, USAF, and NRO. The UN does not.

          “The ‘threat’ has global implications and not peculiar to the United States hence the UN is a smarter forum for discussion.”

          It can be discussed at the UN, but the UN can’t do anything about it because they have no capabilities. At the end of the day, it will come down to national space capabilities, which in the US is a decision made by the White House and Congress, not the UN.

          “You just don’t like the Unied Nations.”

          I do support the UN. But I’m not an obtuse idiot who makes up fantasies about the UN having command authority over national space capabilities.

  • JimNobles

    Just supposing something happened and we discovered a rock heading our way and we needed to do something about it pronto. Getting further data on it but also start getting ready to launch something without delay. Is there an actual body that has the authority and reach to make all that happen? Marshall different resources from different agencies and departments, and possibly from other countries as well?

    Does such a body exist or are we going to have to depend on the Illuminati or something like that?

    • DCSCA

      “Just supposing something happened and we discovered a rock heading our way and we needed to do something about it pronto.”

      So? The planet has been dodging with space rocks for 4 billion years. And suppose this was 1813, or 1913… not 2013… what’s the difference. Nothing could be donwe then and little now.

      Depends on the size of the rock, too. It’s pretty easy to think of several places, if hit, we wouldn’t miss. Like North Korea…. or Texas… or Upper Sandusky, Ohio (had a bad meal there once.) ;-)

      And define pronto. 40 years? 4 years? Or 48 hours.

      If its two days and a dinosaur killer- chances are they’d do what they could to keep it under wraps– not everybody is looking up in their busy days– nothing could be done but induce panic. A longer time frame might still generate a veil of secrecy– and a faux project to deflect it. And give time to construct dicersion system. Something like… SLS. ;-)

      • amightywind

        I don’t know. Seems like meteor defense is the perfect government activity. Huge budget line item, expensive infrastructure to operate, unionized first responders, almost zero chance of ever being called on to perform.

        • Dark Blue Nine

          “Seems like SLS/MPCV is the perfect government activity. Huge budget line item, expensive infrastructure to operate, unionized workforce, almost zero chance of ever being called on to perform.”

          Fixed that for you.

          • amightywind

            I expect SLS and its upgrades to be the flagship of US space capability for decades to come. NASA cannot spend enough on this.

            • Dark Blue Nine

              You need to lower your expectations. In its first three years, SLS has been underfunded by billions of dollars.

            • Coastal Ron

              amightywind opined:

              NASA cannot spend enough on this [i.e. SLS].

              You’re right, they can’t. Which is why we can’t afford the SLS, and why it will ultimately be cancelled.

              Absent the discovery of some reason why we need to loft 2,600mt of 8m diameter payload mass to orbit next decade, it’s only a matter of how much we are going to waste on the SLS before it’s inevitable cancellation.

            • DCSCA

              “I expect SLS and its upgrades to be the flagship of US space capability for decades to come. NASA cannot spend enough on this.”

              Yep. Windy. And every dollar wasted on commercial by NASA pushes that reality further way. Remember, Windy, in mythology, you slay dragons by cutting off their heads. In reality, you can kill them by cutting off their government contracts. The quicker this chapter is brought to a close and the folly splashed, the faster NASA can press on w/BEO HSF ops. When the ISS is splashed, the dragon is sunk. .

              • Justin Kugler

                What ops? SLS/MPCV development costs so much that there are no “ops” or mission systems in flight development.

            • Neil Shipley

              Prepare to be disappointed.

            • NeilShipley

              This probably comes as a shock but SpaceX is well on the way to becoming the ‘flagship of the U.S. space capability’ and quite likely for ‘decades to come” if they maintain their current organisational ethos. What defines them from the traditional providers is their agile and innovative behaviour which is rooted not in their engineering capability but in the organisation itself right from leadership style through to hiring strategies.

      • Dark Blue Nine

        “And give time to construct dicersion system. Something like… SLS.”

        The SLS upper stage ditches suborbitally. It can’t “dicert [sic]” anything in space.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Jeff – I think you mean Wednesday, not Thursday.

    (And who came up with Snowquester? Seriously? Seriously???!!)

  • James

    Snowquester turned out to be a bust here in DC. All blather, and no action; just like Congress!

  • H. Miller

    Maybe there is more urgency to promote mitigation efforts against NEO’s then has been discussed here or by congress.

    Are any of you commentators aware that maybe those 66 million years between dinosaur extinction by asteroid(s) may not exist? For the evidence view the technical paper published in a book in Italian by the National Research Council of Italy [in Italian]; in English the 20 page technical paper is at http://www.sciencevsevolution.org/Holzschuh.htm which was a news item in late 2009 at http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/12/italy-science-a.html. “Loonies?”

    In 1925 dinosaurs were claimed to have become extinct 12 Ma BP and then later when radiometric dating methods were accepted the extinction was moved up 5x to 65 Ma BP. So, will the real “loonies” please step forward?

    Maybe congress et al. should cross check this latest data by repeating the C-14 experiments on dinosaur bones in bone repositories and fossil wood in magma flows to see who is right. Me thinks that mankind has a right to know and NASA and the NSF have a duty to find out.

  • “Maybe congress et al. should cross check this latest data by repeating the C-14 experiments on dinosaur bones in bone repositories and fossil wood in magma flows to see who is right”
    Reputable scientists don’t use C-14 to check the age of rocks that old. It’s half-life is only 5,730 years, so you can only get accurate ages with that method to around 60,000 after which the amount of C-14 is immeasurable.
    For that reason, no one uses C-14 for dating dinosaur fossils because the much more reliable uranium/lead, Samarium-neodymium, and Potassium-argon methods yield results that are consistent with each other. The only true part of the first paper you cite is that Mary H. Schweitzer et al and other researchers found callogen in dinosaur bones, but she herself and those other scientists state radioactive dating times (NOT using C-14) that are much older than the paper that you cite claims. In the very few cases where C-14 been detected, it has always been shown to come from cross-contamination of the specimen due to sloppy laboratory handling.

    Those are not credible peer-reviewed journals that you cite. Just because those guys say they got accurate radio-carbon dates from T-Rex data does NOT mean they actually did. Again, data from other methods shows otherwise. In fact, the online publication it appears in (www.sciencevsevolution.org) is put out by religious fanatics who cherry pick their facts to manufacture so-called evidence supporting their beliefs. That is not science.

    • Oops, instead of “radio-carbon dates from T-Rex data”, I meant to say “radio-carbon dates from Triceratops and Hadrosaur data”. I’m in such a rush because of my own time-consuming astrophysics research and thus often don’t really don’t have time to respond as carefully as I would like.

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