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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit ridiculous, knowing that the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat such as conflicts killing tons of unarmed civilians, now who seriously expects them to have anything robust in place to protect the whole planet?

Besides, it does not matter if "NASA has not been appointed" to deal with this - the day we notice a large object, it's pretty obvious one country or organization, somewhere, is going to try something about it if it means human race survival. There's no need for the UN at that level.

Moreover, the article mentions colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid to deflect is orbit, but this is actually not very efficient. There has already been other propositions such as orbiting a small spacecraft around a large asteroid to deflect its orbit in a much more effective way over time.

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"knowing that the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat such as conflicts killing tons of unarmed civilians"

This is an example of what is known as "false-consensus bias" - you believe people agree with you (without any evidence that they do) because you believe in your own argument so strongly.

At least until a couple of years ago, the approval rating of the UN was pretty good globally, especially in places they act directly - http://www.gallup.com/poll/147854/gets-approval-disapproval-...

> At least until a couple of years ago, the approval rating of the UN was pretty good globally

Oh, like in Rwanda ?

Well that survey is very choice in its terms. As another posted, there are more than enough countries where the UN has an active role where they are not high on everyone's list. Haiti comes to mind very quickly to me.

Remove countries where the UN is not serving in some capacity and I wonder how many approve of it. Its easy to approve of the UN until a) your putting up with them in your backyard, b) your country pays most of their bills.

There was no implied consensus in what you quote. It wasn't even about approval or people's opinions of the UN. I think you read this statement as something like "everyone believes that the UN is mostly incapable" (which would be about popular opinion) rather than "the UN is mostly incapable" (which can be measured, in this case, by reduction of deaths after the UN gets involved (or lack thereof, if that's the case)).

The following bit -- "now who seriously expects" -- makes clear the author's intent. The expected answer is "no one", in conflict with reality.

The "false-consensus bias" pretty much describes this the modern internet we know today. There's always a few other people who believe the same things you do. And finding them on the internet is way to easy.

The WHO is pretty damned good at preventing the outbreak of new contagious diseases, so much so that people make jokes about how overhyped things were.

This. Also, remember that infectious disease called smallpox?

yet, for some reason the WHO is really sucking at finishing off polio.

It's not entirely their fault. The places where polio still exists are very isolated, and often actively hostile to Western medical teams. Matters have not been helped by the CIA (and others) using vaccination operations as cover for their spies.

eh, it's taking a lot longer than they expected, but they've done pretty well so far.

http://www.unfoundation.org/what-we-do/campaigns-and-initiat...

> Polio, which can cause lifelong paralysis, can be prevented with a vaccine that costs only $0.50. In the 1980s, polio paralyzed at least 1,000 children every day all over the world, but today, after international efforts to immunize every child everywhere, 5 million people are walking who would otherwise be paralyzed and the world is almost polio-free.

> Since the Initiative’s inception in 1988, the number of polio cases has dropped by 99 percent.

isnt that the desease that basically only exists in Northern Nigeria and the Gange Valley ?

They have a lot more to fight than the desease to win in those places.

> how overhyped things were.

It's rather because of mainstream media that the hype occurs.

Playing Devil's Advocate here: what UN entity, besides WHO, has a track record of accomplishing something positive?

Off the top of my head: IMO, ITU, UNESCO, UNICEF, Chemical Weapons Ban Org, IAEA.

Also there is the no world war 3 thing, which is obviously over-simplifying but the UN probably should get some credit for.

The UN is a mess but it does do a lot of good, the world needs a forum for international multilateral discussions and coordination, it ain't perfect but it sure could be worse.

FAO, UNHCR

UNFPA - http://www.unfpa.org/public/

United Nations Population Fund is doing good work to reduce obstetric fistula, and other poor outcomes from giving birth; also about FGM.

The UN is an interface that allows willing governments to interoperate.

It fails when various governments fail to reach an agreement.

That being said, I believe it would be a good idea to have cooperation on that matter via the UN considering that it could mean deploying weapons in space which is quite controversial.

The UN is what it is, not what you want it to be.

The individual countries which you expect to stop an asteroid get a free pass for not intervening in genocides, while the UN gets the blame.

And suddenly you're also an expert in asteroid mitigation. Your knowledge is so shallow that the only one impressed is yourself.

> The individual countries which you expect to stop an asteroid get a free pass for not intervening in genocides, while the UN gets the blame. And suddenly you're also an expert in asteroid mitigation. Your knowledge is so shallow that the only one impressed is yourself.

What's wrong with you ? You have a problem with my comments? Care to come back with arguments instead of shallow "i don't like what you say" void comments?

Of course the UN gets the blame for not intervening in genocides, since the UN was created to avoid conflicts. That's their mission and they have been incapable of showing any authority to prevent or mitigate wars where they occur.

And I never claimed to be an expert in asteroid mitigation, but mind you, I read a lot and I have seen a lot on this subject. Why do you assume I am ignorant? Do I have to show my credentials every time I post something?

sigh

This is not the pub. You can't dismiss something with the wave of a hand just because you heard about an even neater idea. Because we all have Google at our fingertips, and personally I have 'Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids' ( http://www.amazon.com/Mitigation-Hazardous-Comets-Asteroids-... ) on my desk.

Things are just not as simple as you present them, and I hope you'd realize that if you put in the time and effort.

Yeah! It's also ridiculous because of the quote at the beginning: " When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February, the world’s space agencies found out along with the rest of us, on Twitter and YouTube. "

which totally demonstrates how unnecessary this is and how " it's pretty obvious one country or organization, somewhere, is going to try something about it if it means human race survival"

I guess the organizations that will be doing something about it will be either 'Twitter' or 'youtube', my money is on Twitter. Have you tried Bootstrap, they will totally be able to handle this issue.

> Yeah! It's also ridiculous because of the quote at the beginning: " When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February, the world’s space agencies found out along with the rest of us, on Twitter and YouTube. "

It's because an asteroid of that size usually goes undetected and it's not the UN involvment which is going to change that. This was a very small piece of rock, it would have never destroyed the whole human race. This kind of asteroid is relatively frequent. They just don't fall next to populated areas very often, that's all.

However, NASA is closely watching and building a database of the most massive rocks out there (and they are still doing it, if I recall correctly).

Chelyabinsk-type cases are exactly why this is needed. Asteroids big enough to cause mass extinction events are rare, and hardly worth talking about except in the extreme long term.

However, much smaller asteroids that could potentially destroy a city are more common. If it struck in the right place during a contentious period of international politics (say, the Cuban Missile Crisis), it could easily be mistaken for a preemptive nuclear strike. Of course, the radiation pattern would quickly disprove this, but such evidence is not likely to defuse the situation if there's a lot of hot-headed people running around.

In such a case, just knowing ahead of time that it's coming would prevent a catastrophic loss of civilization. That's not even counting the humanitarian effects of evacuating the people in the predicted strike zone.

Any opportunity for international cooperation should be taken, even if you believe it is frivolous.

International cooperation already exists, and outside of the UN scope as well.

  There has already been other propositions such as orbiting
  a small spacecraft around a large asteroid to deflect its
  orbit in a much more effective way over time.

Any citations on why this is more effective?

I don't think they're guessing on how to mitagate. The US has spent some effort to simulate exactly how to get rid of asteroids. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOcNbAV6SiI

> Any citations on why this is more effective?

From what I remember, it's because you change the center of gravity of the whole system, not just once at impact, but constantly since it continues orbiting around it.

But how much further out do you have to detect it to do this?

I'll need to look into that. Obviously not just before impact, this is something you would have to do several months of maybe years before it is expected to hit, I guess. I'll come back when I find it again.

Here's a piece of a paper on this :

Deflecting a larger asteroid would require a heavier spacecraft, more time spent hovering, or more lead time. However, in the special case in which an asteroid has a close Earth approach, followed by a later return and impact, the change in velocity needed to prevent the impact can be many orders of magnitude smaller if applied before the close approach5. For example, the asteroid 99942 Apophis (2004 MN4), a 320-m asteroid that will swing by the Earth at a distance of about 30,000 km in 2029, has a small probability (10-4) of returning to strike the Earth in 2035 or 2036 (ref. 6). If it is indeed on a return impact trajectory, a deflection of only about 10-6 m s-1 a few years before the close approach in 2029 would prevent a later impact (A. Carusi, personal communication). In this case, a 1-tonne gravitational tractor with conventional chemical thrusters could accomplish this deflection mission as only 0.1 newtons of thrust would be required for a duration of about a month. Should such a deflection mission prove necessary, a gravitational tractor offers a viable method of controllably steering asteroid 99942 Apophis away from an Earth impact.

Coming from this article : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7065/full/438177a...

> "the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat"

This is an argument for making the UN stronger, not stopping it ever acting.

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