Meteor Is Headed For Earth And Will Hit In 7 Days... What Could Be Done?

There are many great thinkers, problem solvers and out of the box minds here on ATS... but most of all, many of you are knowledgeable about what I am going to ask.
Say a meteor is heading straight for earth. Its wing span is five miles wide and two miles high and will arrive in one week. We have a general area, say the central Atlantic that will be its target. Is this ANY WAY, with what we humans have on hand, to either slingshot it away from us or destroy it completely? This may seem like a silly game to some. I just want the interested ones to give some answers and thought to this predicament I propose. A meeting of the minds I will say. Because God forbid this would actually occur... We would need many fine minds to come up with answers. As I said, ATS has very, very inventive and learned minds as members. Thank you for your considering to post real proposals and not jokes.

If you choose to answer with something, thank you for your time and thought... KP

Just do what they did in that movie with that one guy and just blow it out of the sky.



I think that this is the only way.

we have Jesus..not ?


on a serious note...i dont think there's anything that could be done

I wonder what our past civilizations did?

Originally posted by Frankenchrist
I wonder what our past civilizations did?

I would think we'd have found more stuff digging than old clay pots, oil and natural gas if a really intelligent and inventive civilizations with WMD's like we have now existed. I would think they would have tried to blown it up as well. Or maybe the willed it away? Your thoughts?

Deflect it with a nuke
If there are rockets that can make the trip
that far out

Originally posted by kennvideo
. Its wing span is five miles wide

It has wings? We could try adding some right trim or just make a movie about it.

There maybe a few things that could be done. A lot depends on the range and speed.

You would need to fire atomic weapons near it to alter its trajectory. You can aim to fire in front of it to slow it down so it falls behind the planet so to speak. You can fire to one side to make it veer off.

As a last resort you can fire to break it up. Much of it would then miss, much would still hit but as smaller fragments.

So much depends on its composition.

To answer your precise question, 1 week is not enough time to do anything other than to break it up, if we could get our collective # together within that time frame.

P

We build a huge trampoline at the expected point of impact. The meteor hits trampoline and bounces back off into space.

With seven days notice, we could not do anything about it other then try and relocate populations.
It takes them longer then that just to put together a rocket and move it to the launch pad, let alone plan a mission, configure a payload, etc...

We could try and slow it with some ICBM's, but they are not really designed for leaving earth orbit, so I am not sure they have enough delta-v to intercept it.

I was hoping the clowns and chuckle getters wouldn't show up... I am really let down that when putting forth a question and specifically requesting no jokes some members must act like buffoons.... That's really sad...

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few possible scenarios. Obviously, I am not able to guarantee the likelihood of any of these methods being anything remotely close to successful. With that said we could try...

1) Focused Solar Energy - Using a large array of "magnifying glasses" to focus a solar beam on the object, resulting in opposing thrust via vaporization.

2) Kinetic Force - Simply slamming large objects into it, altering it's course.

3) Nuclear Weapons - Detonating nuclear explosions near/on (depending on it's composition) the surface of said object, changing it's trajectory.

4) Rocket Motor - Perhaps attaching several rocket engines to the object would be enough to push it out of an impact trajectory.


Just a few possible theories. I'm sure there are plenty more out there. I'm interested in seeing what others have to say.


Cheers

With 7 days warning nothing could be done.

Governments would attempt to hunker down as best as possible in their most fortified locations and hope for the best.

Most of us would perish.

reply to post by Nostalgic


Observe, it's these members I am looking for... thank you for being serious.... KP

We would need a bit on notice (years) to fully understand trajectory and estimated impact zone etc.
But a few theories that exist are:
PROJECT ICARUS

This technological fantasy, the product of the MIT Students System Project and the inspiration for the 1979 film "Meteor," presents a plan for avoiding a hypothetical collision between Earth and the Apollo asteroid, Icarus, which sweeps by every nineteen years within a few million miles (a near-miss in astronomical terms). Collision with a four billion-ton rock would create a catastrophe equal to the destructive power of half a trillion tons of TNT.

ION BEAM SHEPHERD

An Ion Beam Shepherd (IBS) is a concept in which the orbit and/or attitude of a spacecarft or a generic orbiting body is modified by having a beam of quasi-neutral plasma impinging against its surface to create a force and/or a torque on the target. Ion and plasma thrusters commonly used to propel spacecraft can be employed to produce a collimated plasma/ion beam and point it towards the body.

There are a lot more theories, but the above are a few examples.

If all else fails, find a cave and play cards with the spiders and insects.

I say we break it up into two differing problems, One for NORAD the other for the EU, if it's broken in twain the EU can smash it smaller and scatter the pieces over the Sahara here for NORAD we might be able to take our half and smash it smaller, scatter it into the arctic.

Both areas aren't too close to the Atlantic but they diverge at a certain equidistant point that may or may not make it easier for one supranation to take care of its side of the problem, depending on what angle the meteor will take on its approach.

The best part of splitting it with the EU/NORAD is that NATO will jump at the chance to split it, however North African nations might not be too happy diplomatically about being the 'dumping' ground for the stones.

With the rocks falling into a sparsely populated desert or tundra it should be almost a good idea only to use smaller weapons to blast chunks apart when it's just too far and let only the largest sized threats to the Earth get blasted as they start to fall through the atmosphere. Once the big rock turns into smaller particles of dust it should be enough kinetic energy dampening it to make the blow so soft that the Earth only moves like a feather dropped form an angel.

It's a long shot, can the EU and NORAD really work together to save NATO or are we just going to evacuate the coasts and hope no one calls in their insurance?

reply to post by kennvideo


None of which would be possible to achieve in 7 days. Your question itself is simply too strict in nature to elicit anything but the attention you did not want.

Perhaps posing it in a different manner would have garnered more responses to your liking, such as "What could we do to effectively direct a Meteor away from Earth should we detect one on a collision course?"

Not that it would have prevented people like me from piping up with a "eat a large curry!!!" response, but it would have limited people like me

There is pretty much nothing we can do, 7 days is not enough time to logistically plan anything. Let alone get it into action, and that even includes the simplest of strategies, moving populations..

I'd get me a supply of disassociates, grog, pizza and a boat to go float around where it impacts, get completely blitzed and just enjoy the last 6.5 days of life on earth...

Well we could ignor it like we did that warning we got the other day where the earth was going to tilt 5 degrees and we were all going to die from earth quakes

We are in $hit big time, follow the money, buy gold.

I'm one of the feeble minds out here, not a great one, so I cant think of a solutuion But i can point out that we have a crapload of satellites up there. Is there any way to put them to use to deflect or destroy a meteor of that size?

Originally posted by defcon5
With seven days notice, we could not do anything about it other then try and relocate populations.
It takes them longer then that just to put together a rocket and move it to the launch pad, let alone plan a mission, configure a payload, etc...

We could try and slow it with some ICBM's, but they are not really designed for leaving earth orbit, so I am not sure they have enough delta-v to intercept it.

As you correctly state ICBMs are designed to kill other people on planet earth. Not head into the solar system.

Our current nuclear arsenal would do us no good whatever as we wouldn't have the means to get it out there.

On top of that it could conceivably make things worse, breaking the object into more than one and spreading the damage further.

Unless you detect an object when its months out and you already have the technology developed and trialled we'll be adopting the traditional earth species approach to the problem (extinction).