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Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by bnjemian on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:18PM (#27575025)
I say we catch that sucker, tow it into our neck of the woods as a second moon, and use it as a space port. Are there a million problems with this proposal? Yes. But would it be totally rad to do this? Also yes.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by dzink on Sunday June 20, 2021 @09:12PM (#27575327)
Love the creativity! That said, the moon stabilized earth’s rotation angle, giving us the seasons, and it also drives huge chunks of life ecosystems and weather with the tides. So adding a second body in rotation to Earth with such superpowers would muck with a lot of stuff along the way. Maybe put it around Mars instead?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by krasin on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:25PM (#27575685)
The diameter of this asteroid is estimated to be ~160 km, which is 21.7 times less than Moon with d=3474 km. Assuming similar density, the mass of the new asteroid is 10000 less than Moon and it's unlikely to affect much.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by rob74 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:45PM (#27576109)
Ah, ok, good to know! When I read "dwarf planet", I automatically assumed it to be bigger than (or at least comparable in size to) the moon, which is a mere sattelite of a small planet. Then again, even Pluto, which was considered for a long time to be an "actual" planet, is smaller than the moon...
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by cbkeller on Monday June 21, 2021 @12:58AM (#27576437)
Earth's moon is freakishly large by moon standards, as it turns out!

> At about one-quarter the diameter of Earth (comparable to the width of Australia), it [the Moon] is the largest natural satellite in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet, the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System overall, and is larger than any dwarf planet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by niyikiza on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:15PM (#27600030)
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by raxxorrax on Monday June 21, 2021 @07:40AM (#27578229)
Crash it on mars to revive it's geologic activity. Poor man's terraforming, just have to wait a few million years for it to cool down.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by PhasmaFelis on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:20PM (#27575976)
I'm gonna level with you, I stopped reading at "superpowers" and as a result this sounds like a great idea.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by monkeycantype on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:58PM (#27575252)
Is it a comety composition? Crash it into mars for some ocean and atmosphere?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by lumost on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:13PM (#27575620)
I'm not sure how the mechanics of a 200 km wide comety like object hitting Mars at ~25 km/s would work out, but I'm reasonably certain that it would result in a major resurfacing event. I'd venture that the majority of the gasses would retain escape velocity following impact.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by tshaddox on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:15PM (#27575626)
Well, since we’re just assuming we could meaningfully change it’s trajectory we might as well also assume we could slow it down!
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by hodgesrm on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:41PM (#27575756)
Slowing it down would take way more energy than just nudging in a different direction. You might be better off trying to break it up into smaller pieces.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by monkeycantype on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:23PM (#27575996)
Taking notes.... Small pieces... uh ha, yep got it,.. Slow it down... yep. What else?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by Scarblac on Monday June 21, 2021 @02:17AM (#27576762)
Make sure they hit at a safe distance from our Mars rovers, I like them.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by monkeycantype on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:14AM (#27576514)
how would we aerobreak it in mars's atmosphere into a decaying orbit, so instead of slamming into mars, it breaks up and rains down on mars? What can we tell about the composition - a solid rock or icy rubble?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by lumost on Monday June 21, 2021 @09:37AM (#27579016)
The martian atmosphere will have a negligible impact on a 200km wide object. Tidal forces would likely shred the object and the surface of Mars if an aerobraking maneuver was attempted.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by avaldes on Monday June 21, 2021 @06:19PM (#27585280)
Shouldn't break by itself with Mars' tidal forces alone?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by minitoar on Monday June 21, 2021 @02:42AM (#27576881)
You get it into an orbit that will have several close encounters with Mars or other planets with atmosphere and you do a bit of aerobraking/thrusting on each pass.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by XorNot on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:10PM (#27575608)
I keep hoping we'll get lucky in my lifetime and something big like that will just hit Mars on it's own.

It would be a hell of a world to go from "desert" to "so we've got all these new oceans to name and also you can't breathe it but ground level pressure is one atmosphere".

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by tmp538394722 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:27PM (#27575690)
I think seeing something world changingly large randomly smashing into our next door neighbor would leave me feeling something other than lucky.

But sure if it’s gonna happen, let’s get the neighbors a pool! Just let me uh… change my shorts.

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by matkoniecz on Monday June 21, 2021 @12:09AM (#27576235)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker–Levy_9

An entire fragmented comet impacted Jupiter in 1994

> Over the next six days, 21 distinct impacts were observed, with the largest coming on July 18 at 07:33 UTC when fragment G struck Jupiter. This impact created a giant dark spot over 12,000 km (7,500 mi) across, and was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (600 times the world's nuclear arsenal).[24] Two impacts 12 hours apart on July 19 created impact marks of similar size to that caused by fragment G, and impacts continued until July 22, when fragment W struck the planet.[25]

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by tmp538394722 on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:04AM (#27576470)
This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

> Although the impacts took place on the side of Jupiter hidden from Earth, Galileo, then at a distance of 1.6 AU (240 million km; 150 million mi) from the planet, was able to see the impacts as they occurred.

We’re getting better at this stuff!

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by rob74 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:51PM (#27576142)
I say, better to have it happen on Mars than on Earth! Such an event would probably even have the positive effect of raising awareness and increasing funding of programmes that monitor asteroids hazardous to earth and technologies to deflect them.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by tradesurplus on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:47PM (#27576122)
Why not tow it into Venus or Mars orbit instead? They could do with the benefits of having a decent sized moon. It would make terraforming and long term habitation more straightforward and likely to succeed as well as providing lots of useful materials feedstock atop the gravity well.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by herendin2 on Monday June 21, 2021 @05:04AM (#27577479)
If this was remotely possible for us then we could also talk about towing the Earth a little further from the Sun to fix climate change

(It's not possible in any reasonable time)

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by sneak on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:45PM (#27575169)
What sort of propulsion mechanisms (even those that are currently physically plausible but entirely outside our technology, so, for example, solar sails or nuclear torchships, but not, say, warp drive) could possibly be used to achieve such a task?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by FiatLuxDave on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:33PM (#27576043)
So, an interesting thing about high eccentricity orbits like 2014 UN271 has, is that they have a much higher ratio of energy (kinetic and potential) to momentum around the sun than a nearly circular orbit like say, Earth has. One can think of an orbit as being a superposition of a purely circular orbit and a purely radial one, with all the momentum around the sun being in the circular one. Any leftover energy above what is needed for the circular component goes into the radial component. In this case, almost all the energy is in the radial component.

What this means is that if do you have a way to move it into a circular orbit around the sun, you could gain energy from the process, rather than having it cost energy. Maybe the best way to gather that energy, and possibly to move it as well, would be through gravitational assists, since they are lossless kinematic interactions. The energy gathered could then be used to build more of whatever is doing the interaction, exponentially speeding up the process.

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by teraflop on Monday June 21, 2021 @02:28AM (#27576823)
Just for fun, I did some ballpark calculations. Let's consider the simpler problem of just putting 2014 UN271 into a circular orbit around the sun at its periapsis of 11 AU.

Calculating the exact path of an orbiting body under thrust is difficult. But the object will be within 1% of the desired orbital radius for roughly a 22-degree arc of its orbit centered on the periapsis, during which time its path will be closely approximated by a circular arc 648 million km long.

Let's say that over the course of this arc, we want to slow it from its initial speed of 12.7 km/s to the required circular orbital speed of 9.0 km/s. That means we need a continuous deceleration of roughly 0.00006 m/s^2 over a period of 2 years.

Assume that we'll produce this thrust by launching material from the object into space using mass drivers. By the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, the smaller the fraction of the object that we want to use as reaction mass, the larger our "exhaust" velocity has to be. If we want to only lose 10% of the total starting mass, we need our exhaust velocity to be about 10x the total desired delta-V -- that is, 37 km/s, or roughly 0.01% the speed of light. This is a tall order, but let's say we can somehow solve the engineering problems and build a linear accelerator that can get rocks moving that fast.

Assume the object is 160 km in diameter and made entirely of ice, giving it a total mass of about 2.0e18 kg. The total required momentum change is therefore about 7.5e21 kg m/s, and the required energy input is 1.4e26 J. If we assume constant thrust for two years, this means we would have to launch about 3.2 million tons of material per second, averaging out to 2.2 exawatts of power required.

To put this number in perspective, it's several million times higher than the average electricity generation of the entire planet Earth. To generate this much power using 100%-efficient solar panels, at a distance of 11 AU from the sun, you would need a solar array approximately half the diameter of the sun itself.

So a direct propulsion approach, at least, doesn't really seem like it's within the realm of feasibility.

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by minitoar on Monday June 21, 2021 @02:44AM (#27576890)
Yeah probably better off with a project Orion type approach.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by hoseja on Monday June 21, 2021 @09:06AM (#27578752)
We could aerobrake it around Saturn.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by peeters on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:04PM (#27575881)
Scott Manley had a recent video talking about the work involved in moving the Earth, that you might find interesting. Basically the most "plausible" approach might be to move the moon and use it to drag the Earth. Similarly the best way to move another large object might be to carefully move other objects small amounts to do precise gravity assists.

https://youtu.be/5StYppuJ_lg

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by smegger001 on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:07AM (#27576481)
wouldn't that require a solution to the three body problem to make such precise gravity assists?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by kbelder on Monday June 21, 2021 @12:01PM (#27580458)
While we can't 'solve' the three body problem, we can make increasingly accurate estimations. Enough to usually get orbital mechanics right in the short-term.

For a setting where we were getting it right until we got it wrong, see Niven's "A World out of Time".

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by ericbarrett on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:36AM (#27576608)
Only if the target was far and we did it in one shot. Otherwise you’d just measure the state of things and make corrections for your next maneuver, the way we do for trips outside Earth’s orbit today.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by messe on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:57PM (#27575243)
Nuclear would do it. Essentially use the dwarf planet itself as reaction mass, accelerating it with either nuclear thermal propulsion or a nuclear powered mass driver.

Highly impractical, and would take centuries to slow it down enough.

Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by Diti on Sunday June 20, 2021 @09:43PM (#27575493)
The Caplan Thruster of this video: https://youtu.be/v3y8AIEX_dU
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by Waterluvian on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:25PM (#27576010)
I want nothing more than for my species to enter the federation of species with a reputation for being the ones who did that absolutely ridiculous prank using 10% of their GDP for a century.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by temp0826 on Monday June 21, 2021 @12:34AM (#27576343)
Reminded me of the game Bungie made pre-Halo called Marathon, which mostly took place on a colony ship that was made out of one of Mar's moons (Deimos)
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by lmilcin on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:29PM (#27575078)
But why? Don't we already have a moon?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by rishav_sharan on Sunday June 20, 2021 @09:38PM (#27575469)
It's like asking, why have 2nd breakfast when you had one breakfast. We must channel our inner hobbits and think big
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by Mountain_Skies on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:52PM (#27575815)
Think of all of the opportunities to write software to calculate the complicated changes required for astrology.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by legostormtroopr on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:30PM (#27575085)
We have moon, but what about second moon?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by throwaway378037 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:47PM (#27575182)
I don’t think he knows about second moon!
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by disillusioned on Monday June 21, 2021 @12:57AM (#27576436)
What if, and hear me out here, we give _our_ moon its _own_ moon? Like letting my dog have a lizard for a pet!
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by Koshkin on Sunday June 20, 2021 @08:36PM (#27575118)
R-right... What can go wrong?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by DiabloD3 on Monday June 21, 2021 @12:25AM (#27576313)
How are you going to deal with the imbalance in charge? It's likely that the to-be-moon has a very large charge differential between it and the Sun, but also likely between us and it.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by loa_in_ on Monday June 21, 2021 @06:52PM (#27585589)
That's true. In extreme cases it could really upset Earth's magnetosphere. And since we don't know we can't assume it's magnetically inert.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by sp332 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @10:00PM (#27575573)
With such a huge difference between peri- and aphelion, won't it be moving extremely fast when it's nearby?
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by peeters on Sunday June 20, 2021 @11:09PM (#27575914)
Well yes, and 11 AU is still further than Saturn's orbit. The asteroid belt contains objects of similar size that are far closer.
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by yinyang_in on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:19AM (#27576527)
All aside, thanks for giving me big laugh :D
Re:A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the ne... by ashton314 on Monday June 21, 2021 @02:03AM (#27576707)
Can we give the moon a moon instead?