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Forum Resident
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Aug 2007 at 8:34 AM
Default Armageddon
Senario... large planet killer asteroid is heading toward the Earth, threatening to kill all life. We have roughly 15 years notice of the impending impact to act. What do we do? How well could it work?


Quote:
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has designed a nuclear-warhead-carrying spacecraft, to be launched by the US agency's proposed 's Ares V cargo launch vehicle, to deflect an asteroid that could threaten all life on Earth.

The 8.9m (29ft)-long "Cradle" spacecraft would carry six 1,500kg (3,300lb) missile-like interceptor vehicles that would carry one 1.2MT B83 nuclear warhead each, with a total mass of 11,035kg.

Launched by an Ares V, the spacecraft would leave low-Earth orbit using a 45,359kg liquid-oxygen/liquid-hydrogen fuelled "kick stage".

The spacecraft's target near-Earth object (NEO) is the Apophis asteroid, which will pass by the Earth within the orbit of the Moon in April 2029.

For the study, however, its orbit was changed to bring it into a "dead-centre" collision course with Earth and its mass was assumed to be 1,000,000kg. The spacecraft's possible launch dates were 2020 and 2021.



http://www.flightglobal.com/article...t-asteroid.html



Links to other sites regarding the topic.

http://www.b612foundation.org/index.html

http://www.spaceguarduk.com/

Let's see what we can come up with on this. Maybe I am a bit pessimistic, but I truly doubt that we could truly change the course of a inbound asteroid enough if any to save the planet. Worst case, we cause it to fracture and cause a shotgun effect on the planet instead of a single hit.

Erasing One Big Astounding Mistake All-around
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#2 Old 15th Aug 2007 at 10:39 AM
The idea sounds a bit alarmist... but lets run with it anyway.

Why would we not be able move an asteroid? It's just a matter of applying enough force in one direction to alter it's trajectory. Now if the asteroid proved to be too massive for a nuclear bomb (or several) to significantly alter it's course, that would be a problem. Considering that a 1.2 megaton (1.2 million tons of TNT) bomb is being proposed to move an asteroid that has a mass of a metric kiloton, that seems like it should be plenty of force.
Forum Resident
#3 Old 15th Aug 2007 at 11:09 AM
I took a cosmology course where our professor explained how easy it would be, with existing technology, to tip over an ordinary asteroid that isn't headed towards earth... and to make it head towards earth. He was fairly well convinced that we were much more in danger of that happening than that an asteroid would hit us anytime soon. The whole idea of it scared the bejeezus out of him. Me too, after hearing him talk about it enough.

So, I suppose if we have the technology to destroy the earth (basically to sterilize the whole planet and liquify the entire surface), we might also be able to do the opposite, i.e., to stop an asteroid that is already headed towards earth.
#4 Old 15th Aug 2007 at 11:17 AM
Sounds like they're spending a lot of money on that. Why so, when there are hundreds of other routes to the apocalypse that are virtually untouched upon? What if they want to use it as some sort of back-up nuclear device to fire down at targets on earth? Submarines are getting easier to spot, maybe they want space bombers too... Anyway. I go off on my conspiracy theorising (my title rank thing tells no lie).

If something like 1 Ceres was on track for a collision with us (diameter 960km), we'd be screwed. Thankfully, the bigger ones are main-belt asteroids and will hopefully stay well away from earth.

99942 Apophis has very little chance of striking the Earth, anyway. Three years ago, maybe. It had been put up to Level 4 on the Torino scale, the highest ever. But it's back down to Level 0 now.

Quote:
[Apophis] caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a relatively large probability that it would strike the Earth in 2029. Additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029. However there remained a possibility that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a "gravitational keyhole", a precise region in space no more than about 400 meters across, that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036. This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006. It broke the record for the highest level on the Torino Scale, being, for only a short time, a level 4, before it was lowered.

Additional observations of the trajectory of Apophis revealed the "keyhole" would likely be missed and on August 5, 2006, Apophis was lowered to a Level 0 on the Torino Scale. As of October 19, 2006 the impact probability for April 13, 2036 is estimated at 1 in 45,000. An additional impact date in 2037 has been identified, however the impact probability for that encounter is 1 in 12.3 million.


A lot of money for such a slim probability.
Theorist
#5 Old 15th Aug 2007 at 5:01 PM
So basically we are dealing with the movie Armageddon, except its real...For as many flaws as that movie had, I kind of liked their solution of sending a space shuttle or two with nuclear bombs, to split the asteroid in two, and simultaneously altering its course...the movie was far fetched, but the idea they came up with actually seems reasonable...given 15 years to prepare, not the 2 weeks in the movie.

I think it is worth spending money on. We can control to a large extent, whether we destroy our planet. We cannot control the course of asteroids traveling through space. Its the Armageddon we do not have control over that scares me more than the one we do. We can prevent MAD by simply not doing anything. However, we would have to take an active role in the prevention of our extinction in the scenario Nick laid out. We would have to do more than simply not pushing a button...and its something that every nation on the planet have a vested interest in. Perhaps cooperating on this would lead to more understanding. The US, UK, China, Iran, Korea, and every nation have the same at stake with the asteroid scenario, which in theory, would lead to cooperation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Obama on ABC's This Week, discussing Obamacare
What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore
umm...Isn't having other people carry your medical burden exactly what national health care is?
#6 Old 15th Aug 2007 at 7:32 PM
I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
Watch you smile while you are sleeping
Far away and dreaming
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Well, every moment spent with you
Is a moment I treasure

I don't wanna close my eyes
I don't wanna fall asleep
'Cause I'd miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing
'Cause even when I dream of you
The sweetest dream will never do
I'd still miss you, babe
And I don't wanna miss a thing

If it hits, it hits, i'll be waiting!
Scholar
#7 Old 16th Aug 2007 at 12:06 AM
As attractive as nuclear weapons are...wait, they're not attractive. Seriously, the comparatively short range of delivery platforms, the sort of radiation and aftermath that comes with a multi-hundred-megaton nuclear weapon (which would barely be enough in the case of a larger asteroid), and the outcome: you've turned one large killer piece of debris into several smaller killers.

I'm a fan of the "mass-driver" theory--land a nuclear-powered mass-driver on the surface of the asteroid as long in advance as possible, and have it hurl chunks of stuff into space--physics dictates that the asteroid will, slowly, change direction.

There are plenty of variations on this theory (such as landing a factory to burn up part of the asteroid and produce a tiny amount of thrust, mirrors, etc.), and if memory serves, we've already landed probes on asteroids before.

Of course, as Doofus pointed out, there is a "reverse" of this little idea--leading to some fantastic Dr. Evil-class shenanigans ("Oh, hell, let's just steal a few spacecraft, hijack an asteroid and hold the world ransom like we always do"). In light of that, I leave you with this: Yuna singing the theme from Armaggedon, produced by yours truly back when I played around with Premiere Pro.

"We're on sob day two of Operation Weeping-Bald-Eagle-Liberty-Never-Forget-Freedom-Watch sniff no word yet sob on our missing patriot Glenn Beck sob as alleged-President Hussein Obama shows his explicit support sniff for his fellow communists by ruling out the nuclear option."
Forum Resident
#8 Old 16th Aug 2007 at 5:46 AM
You don't need to blow it up. You can distract it with gravity. If you put a spaceship (manned or robotic, doesn't matter) in close proximity to an asteroid or any other floating object, they will attract each other through gravity. Thus, you can change the trajectory of an asteroid without even touching it, much less blowing it up. And because of the enormous distances that are involved in any kind of asteroid-Earth collision, even such a very, very slight changes in trajectory would be enough to deflect it from a head-on collision.

F = G m1 m2 / r^2

And, likewise, that's how little it takes to destroy a planet.
Test Subject
#9 Old 16th Aug 2007 at 6:08 AM
burn it. make a huge solar collecter in the sky, aim it at astroode, astorde becomes nothing.
Scholar
#10 Old 16th Aug 2007 at 5:56 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Doc Doofus
And, likewise, that's how little it takes to destroy a planet.


On the bright side--considerable more precision is needed to steer an asteroid into a course with Earth, rather than out of it. Earth remains one of the smaller bodies in our solar system, with one of the weaker gravity footprints.

Not to say it'd be impossible compared to saving the Earth, but it would take a lot more precision and effort--plus, a continued effort to compensate for sudden changes in trajectory (which could, by contrast, save the Earth).

"We're on sob day two of Operation Weeping-Bald-Eagle-Liberty-Never-Forget-Freedom-Watch sniff no word yet sob on our missing patriot Glenn Beck sob as alleged-President Hussein Obama shows his explicit support sniff for his fellow communists by ruling out the nuclear option."
Forum Resident
#11 Old 17th Aug 2007 at 3:33 AM
More precision is needed, but that's not a bottleneck problem at all. The ballistics of bodies in outer space holds no mystery anymore.

Sidenote bragging... My uber-genius first cousin Dickie was one of the guys at MIT/JPL who devised the sling-shot method that was used to launch the Voyager space probe out of our solar system, back in the 60's. That was probably the single coolest act of ballistics calculation that mankind has ever achieved. And that was before laptops! My family is so much cooler than all of yours. Yay!
 
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