Air Bags for Planetary Defense

Gallowglass writes "The Canadian paper, the National Post, is reporting on a plan to divert asteroids headed towards Earth. According to the story, the proposer, a Dr. Hermann Burchard, suggests deploying an inflatable mylar bag a few kilometers in size, and using it to push the projectile aside. An air bag for earth? The deployment mechanism isn't detailed in the story."

Comments

Easily misunderstood

[El]

The problem the author is trying to solve is: How do you get a grip on an asteroid for long enough for your rocket motors to change it's path without causing the asteroid to break up. He's suggesting using a giant pillow between engine and asteroid to destribute the force.

This is the wrong problem, in my opion; he assumes you've got massive amount of rocket fuel to wast. What we really need to do is figure out how to take some of the mass of the asteroid and accelerate it, using this as the reactant to change the path. Sort of like installing a rail gun on the asteroid, and firing off bits of asteriod like b-b's to get the asteroid to move in the opposite direction.