| Issue 5 | Volume 145 | Tuesday, February 23, 2016 | theavion.com |
Russia Wants to Shoot Asteroids With ICBMs Micah Knight Managing Editor
Michael Nisip/The Avion Newspaper Daytona Beach Police Department and Embry-Riddle Campus Safety Department officers escort a juvenile to a patol car. The suspect was involved in an attempted robbery and fled to the ERAU Student Village, forcing authorities to lock down the area for approximately half an hour.
Student Village Lockdown Michael Nisip Business Manager It’s Friday afternoon, 48 hours before the 58th annual Daytona 500, and Daytona Beach is roaring with activity. USAF Thunderbirds are performing unrestricted climbs, stock cars are practicing on the speedway and NASCAR fans are congesting International Speedway Boulevard. Even life on campus was bustling, as students were taking exams and getting ready for their weekend. That is, until everything came to screeching halt on Richard Petty Drive. Students were suddenly advised to steer clear of the Student Village shortly after
2 p.m., as the Daytona Beach Police Department (DBPD) were actively pursuing two juveniles believed to be involved in an attempted strong-arm robbery at the Regions Bank adjacent to Corsair Hall, just beyond the Student Village. The victim had just made a withdrawal and was counting her money in the bank’s parking lot. While counting her money, the juveniles ran towards her at which point she immediately stuffed the money into her pockets. Once the suspects made contact with her, they were unable to retrieve the money from the victim’s pockets, and soon fled the scene of the crime. One suspect was caught fair-
ly quickly near the Yeager parking lot. However, the other suspect eluded Daytona Beach’s finest by seeking refuge in the labyrinth of Student Village, comprising of three different residence halls, each housing hundreds of students. Needless to say, the manhunt quickly escalated to finding a needle in a haystack. At this point, the search instantly developed into a joint operation, with ERAU’s Campus Safety and Volusia County Sheriff ’s Office (VCSO) rapidly providing additional manpower for securing the Student Village and protecting all of its residents. DBPD set up an impenetrable perimeter, with countless
Michael Nisip/The Avion Newspaper Volusia County Sheriff ’s Air 1 Helicopter was part of the manhunt on Friday.
patrol cars, vans, SUVs and motorcycles, and radioed in for several K-9 units. Meanwhile, VCSO assigned Air One to provide aerial support for the manhunt. Once the perimeter was established, a top-to-bottom building-wide search commenced, with Campus Safety, DBPD, and VCSO checking every dorm room. It wasn’t long before the suspect was apprehended by Campus Safety’s Lt. Kenaiou and DBPD in the ground-floor bathrooms of Tallman Commons. The suspect was then taken to the police department for questioning, and Campus Safety issued the “all clear” promptly thereafter. Attempted strongarm robbery is a felony in the third degree. Campus Safety believes the suspect gained entry by “piggybacking” behind a student entering the Student Village’s main entrance. Just a friendly reminder to all student residents: please do not let anyone you do not know piggyback behind you into any of the dorms on campus. Unless you personally know them, it’s better and safer for everyone to just have them use their EagleCard to gain access to the building. And as always, if you see something, say something. You can always call Campus Safety to report a suspicious person by dialing (386) 226-7233.
According to Russian news source Tass, Russian scientists are planning to modify Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) to destroy near-earth asteroids that might pose a threat to Earth. It sounds like a reallife version of the movie Armageddon, but the Russians are hoping to test it on asteroid 99942 Apophis when it flies very close to the Earth in the year 2036. Asteroids are a potentially Armageddon-scale threat to Earth. An asteroid a kilometer in diameter would be a world-wide catastrophe that would end life as we know it. Smaller asteroids, around 20-50 meters in diameter, can be harmful to people within hundreds of miles of where they enter the atmosphere, such as the Chelyabinsk meteorite in 2013 which injured over a thousand people when it entered the atmosphere over Siberia. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an entire website devoted to Near Earth Objects - http://neo.jpl.nasa. gov/ - including information on each Near Earth Object, Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Object, and the probability of each object striking Earth. According to this website, nearly 14,000 NearEarth objects have been discovered, and 1,677 have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids – asteroids whose orbits come within 4.5 million miles of Earth’s orbit and are larger than 500 feet in diameter. NASA’s website also states that, though there are many asteroids classified as hazardous, there is an extremely low probability of any asteroid striking Earth – a 0.01 percent chance that one will impact Earth in the next 100 years. NASA indicates that there is no threat to Earth from any asteroid. Despite the extraordinarily small potential for a hazardous asteroid to impact Earth, smaller asteroids enter
the Earth’s atmosphere with higher frequency, such as the Chelyabinsk meteorite in 2013 and the Tunguska meteorite in 1908 which flattened 2,000 square kilometers of forest. These objects were too small to pose any serious threat to Earth – estimated to be about 20 and 200-600 feet in diameter, respectively. Such asteroids can devastate a small area near where it enters the atmosphere. Objects smaller than 100 feet are too small to be identified or tracked until they are very near Earth – if they impact the planet, there would only be hours of warning. The threat of asteroids has been a subject of thought for decades, even enough for Hollywood to pour millions of dollars into the most epically scientifically inaccurate movie ever (Armageddon), but none of these ideas have been put into practice. Perhaps it was the Chelyabinsk meteorite that prompted Russian scientists to begin looking into the idea of asteroid deterrent, but the Russians may actually begin development on a deterrent. For a last-minute threat, ICBMs, by the very nature of their design, are the natural choice for a last-minute deterrent. Most rockets use liquid fuel, which requires several days to prepare and load the fuel. ICBMs use solid boosters, enabling them to be constantly ready for launch. They are also already carrying weapons of mass destruction which would have a great impact on any sufficiently small Near-Earth object. The only modifications required for an ICBM to go into an asteroid intercept rather than ballistic trajectory is a reprogramming of the guidance and possibly navigation system of the missile, which is a relatively cheap, easy, simple change. It seems the Russians are just some programming away from giving Earth a reasonable defense from small threats the solar system presents. Continued on B3 >>
Billy Nguyen/The Avion Newspaper Artist’s Concept of a missile launched at an asteroid