Scientist are wrong...thinking to hard. Nuking Asteroids and Comets is a good thing.

I keep reading and seeing on TV shows that nuking asteroids only break it into more pieces thus making it worse. This is rediculas. Nuke it cause we can, nuke its pieces again cause we can... small asteroids and meteroids when broken into smaller pieces will get destroyed upong entering earths atomosphere. Nukes are out best hope currently.

reply to post by Xeven


what about all the piece that don't burn up. repeatedly nuking them would take time to find the ones big enough to nuke again.

Originally posted by Xeven
I keep reading and seeing on TV shows that nuking asteroids only break it into more pieces thus making it worse. This is rediculas. Nuke it cause we can, nuke its pieces again cause we can... small asteroids and meteroids when broken into smaller pieces will get destroyed upong entering earths atomosphere. Nukes are out best hope currently.

edit on 25-4-2013 by Xeven because: (no reason given)

Just to inform you, since you are not understanding clearly.

Is it better to get shot with a 3 ounce bullet, or peppered with 3 onces of shot from a shotgun?

The law of conservation of energy- energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it may only change form.

In essence, if a meteor were going to give off 2,000 megatons of energy if it hits the earth, and we break it up into many smaller pieces, all of which burn up in the atmosphere, it will still give off 2,000 megatons of energy.

In effect burning temps in the air, over a much larger area, than if it hits land in one place, and a lot of the energy is lost to space, as debris flies back out of the atmosphere.

So in short, it is way better to lose a city to one hit, than half a state to a firestorm on the atmosphere, or many smaller hits.

Jut off the top of my head, I could link data and go into much greater detail if you would like.

reply to post by Xeven


Meh... you got my vote...

It would probably be better to lose a few cities then the entire planet...

Holy Irradiated Rock Rain Batman.

OP has no clue.

Thank god for those dumb scientists.

"But it sounded like a good idea at the time, and billy bob agreed with me." as they douse the flames from the still.

Fragmenting the rock (imo) would send its projectiles over a larger swath of ocean/ land. Yes the energy is still there but that energy would be Spread out, or "dilluted"

I say nuke it. Only way to be safe.

Personally, I'd say the effect of a nuclear weapon on a space object depends entirely on how far away it is when it's detonated. If it's a good distance? The pieces would all be on their own trajectories after the blast and likely miss us by a good % at least. If it's like Armageddon or Deep Impact? I think it's fantasy and we still get hit ...just two different areas of disaster instead of one.

After all, Armageddon's scenario was a asteroid "the size of Texas". Well, thats 700+ miles long by about 800 miles wide in 2-d thinking....in a 3-dimensional space. Even Tsar Bomba would do little more than make it radioactive before it clobbered us anyway, IMO.

Originally posted by canucks555
Fragmenting the rock (imo) would send its projectiles over a larger swath of ocean/ land. Yes the energy is still there but that energy would be Spread out, or "dilluted"

I say nuke it. Only way to be safe.

edit on 25-4-2013 by canucks555 because: (no reason given)

So your for getting shot with 3 ounces of shotgun shot vs a 3 ounce bullet?

I assure you, 1 bullet hole is alot better and easier to deal with and survive than many.

This has been discussed by many over the years, and it has always come down to the same 2 sides.

1) Better to spread it out over a larger area, so an entire state burns alot, than to have an entire city absolutely destroyed.

2) Better to have 1 city wiped off the map in its entirety than to burn an entire state to the bedrock.

It is literally asking if you want one blowtorch burn, or a 2nd degree burn over most of your body.

Or the above mentioned, shot with a shotgun, or shot with a bullet analogy.

I for one would rather see New York absolutely gone, than all of New York state burned down.

What difference does it make if there is not a rather large hole where New York city used to be, if the entire state is burned to the bedrock, the city will be gone anyways. Might as well have the rest of the state in somewhat alright shape, vs it all being doomed.

a city destroyed ? brake it up? you guys are talking smaller stuff .
take back in 1996 shoe maker levy . ooo 7 miles in diamanter say mount Everest sized.
Passed Jupiter broke up then hit it left many earth sized holes .If it had been coming here and we fired every nuk we had it wouldn't have made any difference at all .
ever try blowing up a mountain?
Nuking any thing bigger then say 800 feet or so mite as well be thronging rocks at it..
a nuk would spend most of its energy on the outside of the rock. Assuming its even a rock we are talking about as commits like shoemaker are a mix of gasses ice and rock . I always like the ice-cream version .
take a I/2 gallon OF rocky road ice-cream and scale it up to a 1/2 mile then try nuking it.
Best you can hope for is now a milkshake with nuts .
Can see CNN now hot fudge Sunday hits new York .
Urban renewal SWEET.

you do know the meteor that made the the Arizona creator was about the size of a bus right?
that creator is 1/2 mile wide and 500 feet deep.
And that was a little one.
36000 mph wam makes a nuk look like a firecracker

Originally posted by inverslyproportional
So your for getting shot with 3 ounces of shotgun shot vs a 3 ounce bullet?

I assure you, 1 bullet hole is alot better and easier to deal with and survive than many.

But if the spread causes 2 of the 3 slugs to miss then that is the better option.

Better yet, what if it doesn't break it up but just forces it into a different direction?

Originally posted by daskakik

Originally posted by inverslyproportional
So your for getting shot with 3 ounces of shotgun shot vs a 3 ounce bullet?

I assure you, 1 bullet hole is alot better and easier to deal with and survive than many.

But if the spread causes 2 of the 3 slugs to miss then that is the better option.

Better yet, what if it doesn't break it up but just forces it into a different direction?

You could never guarantee that even one grain of dust would be forced away, this isn't an exact science, this isn't like the movies.

Nukes in a vacuum are little more than expensive fireworks, they are nothing like in atmosphere, where the shockwave flattens giant swaths of land, and the heat persists in the air keeping it trapped long enough to burn everything.

Space is a vacuum, it will gladly eat up all the explosion and ask for more.

Space if very cold, and has no air to hold the heat it, it will be hot for the 1 second of the blast than just above absolute zero again the next, as the void sucks all the heat away.

Your not thinking this through very well at all.

I can tell though that you have made up your mind to believe that a nuke is some all powerful force that can destroy mountains etc... so I will not further argue the point with you.

Just one final thought for you, all our nukes combined are not even as powerful as the Krakatoa volcanic eruption a couple hundred years ago, and it didn't even totally destroy the island it was on, which was not that big to begin with.

What do you think it would take to destroy a rock say the size of Hawaii? I assure you, thousands of times the worlds nukes combined are not enough, not by far.

reply to post by inverslyproportional


Actually Krakatoa energy release was around 200 megatons:

The energy released from the explosion has been estimated to be equal to about 200 megatons of TNT,[4] roughly four times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba (the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated).

1883 Eruption Of Krakatoa

The combined nuclear arsenal of the world is much greater than that.

Space does not "eat up" a nuclear explosion. It's energy, and a sudden release of energy. And yes, it does have force. If it didn't we would never have come up with this concept:

Project Orion (Nuclear Propulsion)

Now, using nuclear bombs to move a space craft is one thing. Moving a large asteroid that will mass much much more, is another.

However, the idea is to use nuclear weapons to push said asteroid, just a little bit, while it's very, very far out. That small amount of motion is enough to make it miss our planet by a wide margin if it's done early enough and far enough out.

Not a new concept, and you can google it.

If it's a small asteroid, say under a mile across, it is possible to break it apart with nuclear weapons. If it's a very large asteroid, the problem becomes having enough nukes, and a way to get them all there while it's far off.

As for the big chunk vs little chunks: if it's a dinosaur killer sized asteroid or bigger, I really don't see what we'd have to loose in trying. It's going to be a ELE for sure if it arrives here in one piece. But it could also still be a ELE even if broken up into smaller pieces. Those pieces would still get here and rain hell on Earth.

Better to find a way to push it if possible.

reply to post by inverslyproportional


Better to have that energy dispersed than concentrated in one area. I'm with the OP on this one. Anyway, we should first send off thermo nuclear weapons to change course of an asteroid or comet. Secondly, if they become such a threat, we should lob off more than one nuke. A singular nuclear weapon is not the answer.

Originally posted by canucks555
Fragmenting the rock (imo) would send its projectiles over a larger swath of ocean/ land. Yes the energy is still there but that energy would be Spread out, or "dilluted"

I say nuke it. Only way to be safe.

edit on 25-4-2013 by canucks555 because: (no reason given)

The energy from a fragmented rock will dissipate but the collision of the remaining fragments will do alot of damage.

If any of the fragments hit the ocean then tidal waves will kill many. If they hit land, they will kill most people within a few miles of ground zero.

A single rock will kill less people than multiple smaller rocks.

reply to post by inverslyproportional

You can tell that about me from 2 measly lines?

No point in posting what eriktheawful has already pointed out.

I would like to say that you are the one that mentioned 3 smaller slugs being worse than 1 big slug then, all of a sudden, it can't even be done so why even bring it up in the first place?

The problem with nukes is that its very inefficient, most of the energy of your explosion disappears away uselessly in other directions. Only a small fraction imparts energy to the asteroid surface. To make it miss you would have to hit it when far away, and probably hit it multiple times in sequence.

Both of the ideas (nuking it) and the options that are more considered require getting it when its far enough away that your plan has a chance of making a difference.

We lack a capability for striking objects the deep solar system with nukes in the same way we lack an ability to get people there to study them. Anybody thinking we can somehow use our existing nuclear stockpile for this purpose is not thinking it through.

Originally posted by Xeven

rediculas

Who to trust? Scientists with decades of experience under their belt as to the physics of space and nuclear fusion - or the guy who can't spell 'ridiculous' properly?