Destroying An Asteroid.

Line

They say if we needed to destroy and asteroid headed for Earth the fastest easiest way is witha nuclear bomb. If we used it it would destroy it but it would create thousands of pieces falling to Earth which would be much worse.

In a special it was said that it would take a bomb on the order of 1,000 megatons to completly destroy an asteroid. It would not only be the biggest bomb ever built but it would need to be put on the biggest rocket ever built. My soloution could be simple. INstead of building one big bomb build about 10 smaller ones. launch 10 smaller nuclear warheads and attach them all to the asteroid. THen at the precise moment they all go off.

SInce there would be 10 each one would be around 100 megatons. And since it not one concentrated into one place they would have a better chance of destroying all the asteroid. I think 100 megatons is well within our bombmaking capabilitites. If we make them light enough we could put 2 on each rocket only requiring 5 launches. This sounds easy and simple. Why hasn't anybody ever thought of this?

DaveC426913

They have. Because it isn't.

There is a wealth of info to read on the shortcomings of any variation of the concept of blowing up an asteroid with a missile.

Astronuc

How does one know that some have not already addressed this matter?

Those who would contemplate such technology do not talk about it openly.

It is more likely that one would divert an asteroid rather than blowing it up. Blowing it up would put a lot of debris near earth, and debris in orbit is something to be avoided. It has the potential to lots of damage to satellites, spacecraft, and space stations.

Line

Yaaay let's blow up an asteroid, that can destroy us,mankind,our history,and all our fututre. But wait, the debris will hit our sattelites..........damn. Oh well.


And the moral is, sattelites are mroe important than mankinds survival.

Astronuc

No quite. Find a way to deflect the asteroid so that it misses earth and avoid damage to satellites, which provide for monitoring of weather and for communication. Perhaps the asteroid could be blown up after is passes earth.

Line

If it's going to pass Eartht here's no need to worry.

Anyhow, it would take some state of the art stuff to deflect it. Unless of course you want to use nuclear weapons. That of course would be if we have time. If we find an asteroid tommorow and finfout it's goign to collide with Earth 2 weeks from now there'd be little we could do but destroy it.

Deflectin take lots of time,planning, and cordination. My favorite is we attach huge rockets to it, slow it down, and mine the thing for minerals.
There's enough raw material in the average asteroid to wipe out the national debt.

LURCH

Setting aside the risk to the satellites and space stations, etc., deflecting an incoming threat is far more desirable than blowing it to bits. A single impact at a single location on earth's surface would be devastating, and if you would survive, but breaking the abject into thousands of impacts over the entire surface would ensure that no one survives. But it just so happens that nuclear weapons are the best tools for deflecting a potential impactor.

I think this is another excellent reason why we need a lunar launch facility. Storing thousands of nuclear weapons mounted on launch vehicles on earth has always been a bad thing; it's inherently dangerous. The same weapons sitting on the surface of the moon (or in orbit around the moon) pose no threat to those of us here on Earth. If the orbit decays, or there is an accidental launch or detonation, the event will go virtually unnoticed. If someone launches a weapon "in anger", there will be almost a week during which to intercept it.

A lunar launch facility for nukes also puts them in a position to be launched with greater velocity, and therefore intercept the object sooner.

DaveC426913

Are you completely ignoring the lessons learned from Space: 1999?

theCandyman

I thought that scientists and astronomers had a pretty good idea of anything threatening that was headed toward earth?

DaveC426913

No way. It is well-known that this is impossible with today's technology and manpower.

Line

Once again ou can destroy an asteroid with nuclear power. YOu could breakit up into piece with a nuclear bomb. Or you can completley destroy it with a 1,000 megaton bomb.

DaveC426913

No. You can't.

- we don't have the sky watch system to see it in time
- we don't have the rocket power to get the payload there at all, let alone in any decent time frame
- we don't have guidance systems that could put it in the right place at the right time (it will be moving quite fast)
- nuclear bombs simply will NOT destroy an asteroid
..- we have no way of controlling what the detonation(s) do in terms of destruction, best we can hope for is to crack it into a few very large pieces, all of which are now on a collision course with Earth
..- even the most ambitious collection of nuclear warheads simply does not vapourize of cubic kilometers of solid rock

(A moderate asteroid is between a thousand and a million Gigatons. Does that put it in perspective?)

I mean, the idea sounds good at first blush, but when you get down to brass tacks, it simply doesn't work on many, many levels.

Line

We can send bombs, if we do smaller ones. If we can fit space telescopes on rockets and send probes to Neptune I'm sure we can get a bomb to just outside Earth orbit.

Guidance should be no problem since we've landed things on asteroids and flown into comets. Once again it would take 1,000 megatons to completly destroy it. If ou think destroying it takes time guess how long deflecting it takes.

And I don't see how a bomb could deflect it. Nukes just let off lots nergy like heat.If heat just travels to the asteroid it should just melt it. The reason nukes blow things up on Earth is because the air expands, moves and knocks things down. IN space there is no air and hence nothing can be blown off course.

DaveC426913

Some of this stuff is pretty basic physics.

There's timing logistics. If we were to blow it up near Earth, we'd be pelted with an asteroid's worth of debris, causing even more damage than a single rock.

Do you know how long those trips take? Years. Decades.


Well, we haven't landed on asteroids, no. We've flown one spaceship into one comet, yes.

I reeally don't know why you keep repeating this, like it's some sort of mantra. Other than a wild guess, do you have any evidence to support this claim?

Yes, kind of a lot like a rocket engine. You do know that rockets work in space without benefit of air, right?

Line

Deflecting it would take more time and there was a special on TV about doomsday. It has been calculated that about 1,000 Megs is needed.

ANd yes rockets need no wind to work. And we have ladned on an asteroid. It wasn't all hi-tech withl legs but I probe was landed on an asteroid.

LURCH

Yes, the NEAR probe landed on Eros.
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2001/news-NEAR.asp

Unfortunately, early detection is still a very large problem. Not too many years ago, a rather large asteroid (the kind that could do damage on a global scale) was detected after it had made a close pass by the earth. I remember hearing that earth had occupied that exact spot only six hours earlier. IIRC, the highly elliptical orbit of the object brought it very near to the sun, and it passed the earth on its way back out to space. This caused it to come at us "out of the sun", like that tactic used by fighter pilots, with its dark side towards us. As a result, we did not see the object until after it had passed, and sunlight was seen reflecting off its rear as if to say, " bite my shiny metal...".

This object is thought to be about a half-mile in diameter, and would have released an energy of about 2000 megatons, leaving a crater anywhere from 5 to 10 miles in diameter. The first warning anyone on earth would have had would be the sprouting of a huge mushroom cloud.

I'm wondering if nukes could be used in a combination of "breaking up" the object and deflection?

DaveC426913

These two methods are mutually exclusive and counterproductive. If you break it up, you now have a zillion unpredictable pieces to deflect. If you're going to deflect it, you want it to be in one piece.