Asteroid Forced To Orbit Moon & Miss Earth

[hatt]

Originally Posted By: MolaKule

Much depends on the size (mass) of the asteroid and it's vectorial velocities, but it would be immense.

An alternative approach is to explode a fusion weapon on or near it and break it up into smaller masses, where most of the smaller masses would most likely burn up in the atmosphere before they could hit the Earth's surface.
I've heard that approach would make it worst on a very large asteroid. Instead of one large impact you'd have large numbers of smaller but still significant impacts that would actual do more damage. Unless you have a truly massive weapon of course.

As long as the object is discovered early all you have to do it slightly alter it's path or speed. If it's discovered a month out we're in for a ride.

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
Shrapnel from . . . what? Thermonuclear devices are not designed as frag weapons, the delivery system is absolutely vaporized..

Maybe position the mass of say, small diamonds, near the asteroid and also place mass around the nuclear warhead so that the plasma shock wave hits the diamonds and asteroids. That way you don't have to take the chance of a botched landing and still get the job done by getting close enough to the asteroid. Then the asteroid gets shredded.

 

[Nyogtha]

In ex-atmospheric space, you have to supply all the mass to be converted to plasma.

How much mass are you planning to boost out of our gravity well?

Why is any sort of landing required?

How big do the diamonds need to be and far away do the diamonds have to be to not vaporize to the point of ineffectiveness?

Here's the propulsion system I'd foresee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: bruno
No one knows if any were killed in the Siberian hit so claiming zero is foolish .


No bodies were found. Trying to imply that there may have been deaths is foolish without any evidence. Again, it was a very remote area, they didn't even know about it for months as no one lived in the area. Back in 1908, there were vast areas where no one lived. The claim is that there is no documented evidence of any deaths caused by asteroids in the last 1000 years. To show that it's false would require to you to provided evidence that someone actually died. It is of course possible that someone had been killed by one, but it was never documented so the original statement would still stand as being correct. Logic may not be your strong suit.

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
Why is any sort of landing required?

How big do the diamonds need to be and far away do the diamonds have to be to not vaporize to the point of ineffectiveness?


You said you'd like to make contact with the asteroid, so at least a crash landing is required under your plan, which could miss the target entirely.
My plan would have a broader field of blast, using something like a directed energy device that finishes with an omni-directional blast. Similar to the 1958 "Orion Project" nuclear-pumped shotgun.
Another idea is just to set off a few MIRVs in a ring pattern, maybe multiple rings by multiple missiles, blasting at the same time to be sure something gets near the asteroid.

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Back in 1908, there were vast areas where no one lived. .

And this million-year (NOT) event, you claim, would now be on a planet 5 or 6 times the population it was back in 1908. I think the events in 1908 and 2013 in Siberia-Russia tell all we need to know about the odds. Not a million year event.

 

[bruno]

The same arguments can be used for either case . The area devastated was vast and there is no record of a systematic search . Trappers and hunters lived solitary lives in Siberia and no one kept track of them .
No data so either case can apply .

 

[HerrStig]

Time to impose a Global Asteroid Defense Tax to be paid along with the Global Warming Tax. "Rich nations" only since THEY cause asteroids.

 

[Nyogtha]

Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
Why is any sort of landing required?

How big do the diamonds need to be and far away do the diamonds have to be to not vaporize to the point of ineffectiveness?


You said you'd like to make contact with the asteroid, so at least a crash landing is required under your plan, which could miss the target entirely.
My plan would have a broader field of blast, using something like a directed energy device that finishes with an omni-directional blast. Similar to the 1958 "Orion Project" nuclear-pumped shotgun.
Another idea is just to set off a few MIRVs in a ring pattern, maybe multiple rings by multiple missiles, blasting at the same time to be sure something gets near the asteroid.

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Back in 1908, there were vast areas where no one lived. .

And this million-year (NOT) event, you claim, would now be on a planet 5 or 6 times the population it was back in 1908. I think the events in 1908 and 2013 in Siberia-Russia tell all we need to know about the odds. Not a million year event.


If our current technology can't hit a 6 mile wide dinosaur-killer, it sure ain't up to anything close to the precision your approaches suggest. You know we've landed stuff on Mars where we wanted to for example, as well as much smaller celestial bodies, right?

Probe Lands On Comet

I'd rather vaporize as much of the object as possible, while scattering any remaining solids on vectors away from a direct impact. Minimum mass to get out of the gravity well. One or more Ivans bigger brothers.

http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/abombs.html

I really don't think you understand how MIRV works: sub-1 megaton warheads delivered by a system that depends on 1G gravity from the target against a dinosaur-killer asteroid with no contact?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle

The "R" is for "re-entry"

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: bruno
The same arguments can be used for either case . The area devastated was vast and there is no record of a systematic search . Trappers and hunters lived solitary lives in Siberia and no one kept track of them .
No data so either case can apply .


That's where you don't understand logic and arguments. The original statement is that there's no documented case of anyone being killed in the last 1000 years. To show that argument as incorrect would require that there be a documented death. If there are none, then that statement stands as correct until proven otherwise. If you have no proof that anyone died, you can't say that the statement is incorrect. No data so the original statement stands and it only goes one way. It's a binary result, either it's true or it's false. If you have no data indicating otherwise, then it's true and not either way.

Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Back in 1908, there were vast areas where no one lived. .

And this million-year (NOT) event, you claim, would now be on a planet 5 or 6 times the population it was back in 1908. I think the events in 1908 and 2013 in Siberia-Russia tell all we need to know about the odds. Not a million year event.


I don't think you understand the magnitude of the asteroids involved. The 1908 and 2013 ones were much smaller ones than the million year events. Those life ending ones or ones that can do a lot of damage are much rarer. Also keep in mind that 71% of the earth is covered by water so even though we have a much larger population now than before. Also keep in mind that there are various projects out there looking for asteroids that may impact the earth and although several raise alarms, when they map the path, they usually end up missing. Some "near" misses pass beyond the orbit of the moon just to give you an idea of how vast space is and how unlikely we are to get hit. I think at this point, they've discovered over 90% of the asteroids that may hit the earth and in a couple of years they may come close to finding the rest of them. They actually reactivated a project to look for them since the 2013 asteroid, I think at that point they may have found over 80% of them but missed that one. The smaller ones are harder to detect than the bigger ones.

 

[bruno]

You don't seem to understand the concept of ' not proven ' .

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
.If our current technology can't hit a 6 mile wide dinosaur-killer, it sure ain't up to anything close to the precision your approaches suggest. You know we've landed stuff on Mars where we wanted to for example, as well as much smaller celestial bodies, right?.
I kinda know that. I worked on a Mars project doing TCM.

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
I really don't think you understand how MIRV works: sub-1 megaton warheads delivered by a system that depends on 1G gravity from the target against a dinosaur-killer asteroid with no contact?
There is no 1-G requirement. F=MA still applies in space just fine to form the ring pattern.

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus

.If our current technology can't hit a 6 mile wide dinosaur-killer, it sure ain't up to anything close to the precision your approaches suggest. You know we've landed stuff on Mars where we wanted to for example, as well as much smaller celestial bodies, right?.
I kinda know that. I worked on a Mars project doing TCM.

Wanted to add something to that: I worked to clean up the mess that Jim Chapel (Lockheed-Martin) and David Cwynar made in the Mars Climate Orbiter of 1999 where it missed the target. It only took 2 engineers screwing things up badly to inject the errors in the system, and I arrived to make sure the next mission wasn't influenced by those two people or any culture they instilled. You can't take the chance that a couple of incompetent people like Cwynar and Chapel can miss a target. They also were responsible for the failed Mars Polar Lander crashing into Mars instead of landing.

So don't lecture me on reliability of spacecraft.

 

[Nyogtha]

I see no lecture, but clearly there's some in your eyes by posting links to real-world accomplishments.

How big a ring and how far away from earth are you planning to use MIRV vehicles which only have tiny maneuvering thrusters to release an object on a ballistic trajectory (1G provides the attraction force, not the maneuvering thrusters, for warheads released by MIRV vehicles).

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
I see no lecture, but clearly there's some in your eyes by posting links to real-world accomplishments.

How big a ring and how far away from earth are you planning to use MIRV vehicles which only have tiny maneuvering thrusters to release an object on a ballistic trajectory (1G provides the attraction force, not the maneuvering thrusters, for warheads released by MIRV vehicles).


I think MIRV's are usually on ICBMs which don't have the power to leave earth orbit. You'd have to design a different delivery vehicle to put a MIRV warhead on it. MIRV's are also meant for multiple targets and to defeat ABM systems, but an asteroid would be a single target. Plus I think that would also break a lot of international treaties on not using nukes in space. Just a pointless non starter discussion.

There are many other ways to move it out of the way, just depends how much time you have. Some have said that just parking a vehicle next to it might be enough to move it because if you're far enough away, just the weak gravitational force of a vehicle next to it would be enough to change it's orbit by just a little bit so that it would miss. Then there's lasers to give it a push, landing a rocket on an asteroid to give it a push, etc.

 

[Nyogtha]

Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
I see no lecture, but clearly there's some in your eyes by posting links to real-world accomplishments.

How big a ring and how far away from earth are you planning to use MIRV vehicles which only have tiny maneuvering thrusters to release an object on a ballistic trajectory (1G provides the attraction force, not the maneuvering thrusters, for warheads released by MIRV vehicles).


I think MIRV's are usually on ICBMs which don't have the power to leave earth orbit. You'd have to design a different delivery vehicle to put a MIRV warhead on it. MIRV's are also meant for multiple targets and to defeat ABM systems, but an asteroid would be a single target. Plus I think that would also break a lot of international treaties on not using nukes in space. Just a pointless non starter discussion.



I agree, lubricatosaurus was the one posing 100 MIRV's, which is why I asked him how far away from Earth he'd plan to use them. MIRV is still a ballistic weapon system.

But then again lubricatosaurus was where ideas like nuclear warhead shrapnel came from, and boosting diamonds into space, etc. came from. I can clearly see I asked a bunch of questions that were never answer - questions, not lecture.

One, or a few, IVAN type devices would use the asteroid's own mass to generate plasma, and since nuclear explosions are spherical, such a detonation could provide a cone of "shadow" as it were that the remaining debris roughly form the walls of the cone. Such warheads are clearly something we already know how to make, we know we can get significant mass outside Earth orbit (the Apollo stuff was 13 tons that went to the moon, and it had to have fuel to come back - without the Rover and part of the LEM). A weapon launched against an asteroid doesn't have to worry about fuel for a return trip.

If the fate of the Earth was at stake from a dinosaur killer size asteroid I hope treaties about the use of nukes in space could be amended for this case.

 

[MolaKule]

Originally Posted By: hatt
Originally Posted By: MolaKule

Much depends on the size (mass) of the asteroid and it's vectorial velocities, but it would be immense.

An alternative approach is to explode a fusion weapon on or near it and break it up into smaller masses, where most of the smaller masses would most likely burn up in the atmosphere before they could hit the Earth's surface.
I've heard that approach would make it worst on a very large asteroid. Instead of one large impact you'd have large numbers of smaller but still significant impacts that would actual do more damage. Unless you have a truly massive weapon of course.



I think I would rather have fist-size objects raining down and burning up in the atmosphere than have VW and larger size objects creating blast waves and atmospheric heating over large radii.



Originally Posted By: hatt
As long as the object is discovered early all you have to do it slightly alter it's path or speed. If it's discovered a month out we're in for a ride.



How much thrust would it take to alter the path just 10 degrees and how would you nudge a massive, rotating object?

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/asteroidfact.html

 

[turtlevette]

Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Originally Posted By: ecotourist
What happens when there is an explosion in space, when there is no atmosphere to push around?
I'd think shrapnel from an energetic nuclear explosion would slice up the asteroid at the high speeds the small sharp masses would have.


No there's just not enough mass to do any damage. They explode nukes several thousand feet above the target as the atmospheric shock wave does all the damage.

Some of these asteroids are solid metal.

 

[turtlevette]

Originally Posted By: MolaKule
[

The heat from the explosion would heat up the internal gasses, turn the ices into steam, and cause an internal pressure rise within the asteroid fracturing it.


I wouldn't bet the future of mankind on that theory working out. You'd have to drill a very deep hole then put the nuke in.

 

[MolaKule]

http://www.planetaryresources.com/asteroids/composition/

Compositions vary, but all types contain a certain percentage of ice in the interstitial spaces.

 

[DeepFriar]

Originally Posted By: turtlevette

Some of these asteroids are solid metal.


There's the real problem. They vary from a loose "rubble pile" to solid nickel for example and you don't know what it is till you start trying to knock it off course or blow it up. I don't know if even a precursor mission could answer the questions. In any event, if it's the size of the dinosaur killer or larger the most scientific approach is probably ... prayer.