How to destroy an Asteroid...

Ok I was thinking ever since that movie Armegedon how come we didn't just vaporize the thing with nukes like the one guy suggested. Our are nukes powerful and numerous enough to completely vaporize a rock the size of Texas. I would think so. Also do our nukes have enough range to target and hit an asteroid with sufficent distance between it and the Earth. And are there any weapons that were designed to handle this sort of situation. And could our missle shield eliminate a smaller object.

Originally posted by cyberdude78
Ok I was thinking ever since that movie Armegedon how come we didn't just vaporize the thing with nukes like the one guy suggested. Our are nukes powerful and numerous enough to completely vaporize a rock the size of Texas.

I actually started a thread asking if ICBM's had the escape velocity to hit an incomming asteroid. The concensus was nope. However. the concern with blowing it up is that it will shatter into alot of smaller pieces and shotgun the planet. I think the approach would depend on how much time we have to intercept it. If we have time some of the suggested methods include placing an ion thruster to nudge it off course, a solar sail, maybe an close by nuclear detonation to nudge it a degree or two would be enough to cause it to miss.

Maybe not destroying it with nukes but exploding the nukes close to the asteroid so the shockwave moves its course a little but by the time the asteroid reaches earth it has moved so much its not a threat to earth.
Cuz if you try to explode the asteroid we are not sure what they are made out of so if you don't entirely blow it up you have millions of pieces the size of houses or bigger raining down on earth which is just as bad srry i was writing this didnt see your post same idea though.

[edit on 6-7-2004 by WestPoint23]

Originally posted by WestPoint23
srry i was writing this didnt see your post same idea though.

[edit on 6-7-2004 by WestPoint23]

No worries, I just wanted to know if the ICBM's could achieve escape velocity.

No an Asteroid the size of Texas would pretty difficult to destroy or deflect. For example a impact from a 10km asteroid is a extinction level event. Texas is around 1200km wide.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
Cuz if you try to explode the asteroid we are not sure what they are made out

Yeah, their density varies from loose pile of gravel to iron ball... and in fact one asteroid must be nearly hollow because it's calculated desinty is lower than water.


And deflecting require's much time or huge impulse because these objects' kinetic energies are huge.
All impact energy comes from its kinetic energy so this can be used to calculate those:
www.lpl.arizona.edu...
Compare those impact energies to yield of nukes and you notice how small they are.
Deflecting would be really possible if there's just enough time before impact... that time is closer to ten years and decades than couple years.
(which makes comets even more dangerous than asteroids, they give only couple years "warning time")

With all the movies that have come out on this subject are they trying to tell us somthing. With the state the funding for such research in australia is all most nill i can asure you a 10km asteroid could hit most of asia and they and us would not no a thing .

Originally posted by FredT

Originally posted by WestPoint23
srry i was writing this didnt see your post same idea though.

[edit on 6-7-2004 by WestPoint23]

No worries, I just wanted to know if the ICBM's could achieve escape velocity.

Yeah ICBM's can do that but in order for us to have a nuke that could go the distance to deflect or change the path of the asteroid just a little we would need much more powerful nukes with more fuel so they can go the distance.

I dont think a nuclear explosion would do it..
Scientists have thought about it and it is unfeasibly..
I mean you need to consider f=ma...
And then you need to be able to cancel out, or change, the momentum of a hundred+ tonne rock (I'm not sure on exacts, just taking a guess here) travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometres per hour..
Not very practical..
Other ideas include using solar winds.. which is more feasible

If you have hundreds of nukes powerful ones not little Hiroshima bombs I mean the big boys going off right beside the asteroid I think that would disrupt the path of the asteroid plus solar wind what the hell is that?

its caused by particles flying away from the sun.
i believe the thought is that if you have a big enough sail enough particles would continuously hit it to push it along.
i'm sure some one knows more about it than me.

Originally posted by pATTONME
its caused by particles flying away from the sun.
i believe the thought is that if you have a big enough sail enough particles would continuously hit it to push it along.
i'm sure some one knows more about it than me.

I could tell something about that, but I'll have to go sleep now. (have to wake up early)
So you surely find data faster using Google, search words "radiation pressure" and "solar sail".


One of the other schemes is use big mirror like magnifying glass heating one spot of object to vaporise material causing its ejection... and that ejecting material erupts with certain force and every force has equal "counter force" which would push object to other direction than jet of vaporising material.
There has been developed one material which is like plastic film but its shape can be controlled with electric charge. Future space telescopes might well have mirrors made of this and this would really solve problems caused by big solid mirrors.

Why try unproven and unsafe and hard to accomplish ideas when you can just have hundreds of ICBM's flying to knock it out of its path.

Ok well what about solar winds. They haven't stopped meteorites/asteroids from hitting the Earth before. And those were pebbles compared to a texas sized rock. What do we focus them of something. But I would go for nukes as a plan B. But if say this thing did kind of shotgun the Earth but the pieces were small enough to burn up wouldn't the space dust be radioactive from the nukes. Yeah now that I think of that its kind of a problem isn't it. Oh well guess thats the last resort plan.

CD I don't mean hit the asteroid to destroy it I mean have the nukes explode close to the asteroid not to destroy it but so that the shockwave can change it course by a little bit so when it gets to earth it misses.

The problem is detectiung the asteroid early enough. A scientist worked out that if we can get to the rock 80 days before impact, then we could deflect enough with force equivalent to a Reliant Robin (a little 3-wheeler 850cc car, for the Americans among us).

Originally posted by Odd Man
The problem is detectiung the asteroid early enough. A scientist worked out that if we can get to the rock 80 days before impact, then we could deflect enough with force equivalent to a Reliant Robin (a little 3-wheeler 850cc car, for the Americans among us).

Hmmm 80 days out, could be quite the trick. That works out to38 million miles for a medium speed rock. Or 159 times the distance to the moon. Our ICBMs will not do this,Not in time anyway.

Seems that for the time being we are at the mercy of the fates.
One more reason to breed more scientists and fewer politicians.

I think the use of huge magnifying glass in orbit using the sun to burn it up was proposed. I think with enough time and enough of these type magnifying glasses in orbit you could burn it up or maybe deflect it. Of course you would need to figure out how to make a orbiting maginyier that could be pointed.

The problem with ICBM (along with the guidance and range problems) is that a large amount of the energy from the reaction is asorbed by the materials inside the asteriod as thermal energy.

I got it we have to build bases on planets and moons around earth build one in mars one in the moon and one on satyrs moons all of these bases would be remote controlled and each would pack 100nukes so that way our nukes may just get to the asteroid in time to deflect it.