NEO CONFERENCE - Analysis of proposed NEO mitigation methods

Agnieszcka Lukaszczyk presented on the subject of "Move On Asteroid 2008 Competition" sponsored by the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC). Lukaszczyk was an Executive Officer of SGAC before working for SWF as a Space Policy Consultant, but continues too represent SGAC at various functions.

Lukaszczyk focused on the legal and policy implications of the technical entries to the Move On Asteroid 2008 Competition. In order to do this, a Legal Degree of Difficulty (LD2) was developed, a metric from 1 to 5, with 5 being very difficult to implement from a legal standpoint. A Lincoln Scale was also developed, focusing on the public willingness to support a given mitigation solution (1 to 100, with 100 being total support). Lukaszczyk also introduced the Move on Asteroid 2009 Competition.

SGAC also pursues surveys conducted on a regular basis. Its surveys, conducted via Internet, reveal a bias toward industrialized nations with Internet access, with over half of the respondents considering themselves space professionals. Most surveyed know what NEOs are, and most are concerned about NEOs.The surveys also reveal that about two out of three respondents believe the NEO threat to be "Medium." Again, most know that there are many options being considered for detecting and deflecting NEOs, with the overwhelming majority having a desire to actively remove a NEO threat. Finally, about 75 percent of respondents knew that there was no international regime for handling NEOs, with the majority of the total pool believing that NEOs are a global problem requiring international cooperation.

Dr. Lou Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society, mentioned that a recent poll conducted by his organization revealed a very strong interest aomng members in dealing with NEOs. Apparently, such strong interest was not apparent in past polling.

Ben Baseley-Walker, SWF Law and Policy Consultant, discussed different institutional models for NEO response, including key questions like organizational proliferation (strong move in political community to counter this proliferation) and legitimacy (concern for credibility and relevance, a special challenge for NEO-related mitigation efforts). Other issues regarding how the international community should deal with the NEO threat involve "majority rule" or consensus, approaches which have strengths and weakness and becomes more an issue of appropriateness of application.

Baseley-Walker also highlighted the need for "branding" the NEO threat problem; that this is a crisis situation in which those who decide to deal with the crisis will not be technical experts but will instead by politicians. This means the NEO threat community will need to be well-versed on matters of politics and diplomatic sensitivities. Key political questions include: What if mitigation effort goes awry? Will the effort result in armed conflict? If a key State is on a collision course, do we run the risk of unilateral action being taken? Should the matter be handled by the UN or some other organizational structure? Baseley-walker also suggests that the international humanitarian law arena might provide insight on such matters.

Finally, Baseley-Walker generally assessed the ASE NEO Report recommendations in terms of international policy challenges, including definition of "space-faring States," consensus versus majority decision-making and mitigation sensitivities (such as use of nuclear detonators), among other concerns.

Bottom line, according to Baseley-Walker, "How do you make the NEO issue relevant?" This is an especially salient point during a time of global economic and political difficulty.