Bus-Sized Asteroid Hurtles Past Earth

[Lorizael]

Has anyone ever run the maths on that?

Yes.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I'm aware that some of my resistance to the notion is simply that it deals with effects I can't perceive in my earthly environment and therefore have no experience of - but those maths don't seem to deal with fuel requirements.

I find the whole idea needlessly complicated in place of a very simple solution; if you had that much delta v to spend and control fine enough for a gravity tractor, why not boost the rock directly, assuming it's not a gravel cluster?

[Lorizael]

The assuming it's not a gravel cluster thing is the important part. The reality is you'd have to have extremely precise measurements of the composition, density, and mass of the asteroid in order to put a rocket on it, and getting that information is tricky. The gravity tractor lets you bypass all that, because they don't call it Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation for nothin'.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I don't deny that the notion has infinitely more merit for the gravel piles, which are not rare... It's just that I'll believe the concept is feasible when someone makes it work. We're quibbling about which is more tricky/complex, though, and I'll stand behind the direct boosting for solid rocks.

[pchang]

Gravel globs can be nuked. Small bits will burn up in the atmosphere before they hit the ground. Even if we could find asteroids really far out, trying to disturb their orbits might do more harm than good. It takes us awhile to collect enough data to plot orbits with a high degree of precision.

[Sava]

I say let the asteroids hit.

[Lorizael]

Gravel globs can be nuked. Small bits will burn up in the atmosphere before they hit the ground. Even if we could find asteroids really far out, trying to disturb their orbits might do more harm than good. It takes us awhile to collect enough data to plot orbits with a high degree of precision.

Nuking is incredibly inefficient.

[Lorizael]

...and I'll stand behind the direct boosting for solid rocks.

Even if it is solid, there's still a lot we won't know about it. We won't know where its stress points are, its center of mass, its gas content. There's so much that can go wrong by just punching it in the face.

[pchang]

Nuking is incredibly inefficient.

except that we have a lot of them already built and lying around....

[Ben Kenobi]

I find the whole idea needlessly complicated in place of a very simple solution; if you had that much delta v to spend and control fine enough for a gravity tractor, why not boost the rock directly, assuming it's not a gravel cluster?

Lifting something out to orbit is massively costly. And ineffective given inertia.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

except that we have a lot of them already built and lying around....

Yes, for all the problems that go with nuking. Show me your ion drives up to the job and ready to go.

I'd submit that practicality dictates that we get the nuke option delivery systems up to snuff, and then work out the more complex schemes.

[Lorizael]

except that we have a lot of them already built and lying around....

True. Also, I've just read that the current line of thinking with nukes is vaporizing a bit of the surface, which then acts like a rocket against the asteroid. So it's just another method of course correction rather than a method of total destruction.

[pchang]

It was never about total destruction. It was about knocking off course and breaking up into smaller pieces.

[PLATO]

There is a lot of crap NASA is tracking:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

Fortunately not much of it has much potential to do damage.

[Hauldren Collider]

The likelihood of a catastrophic asteroid strike is vanishingly small. I'm not sure why you guys are quaking in fear.