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Nukes Against Earth-Impacting Asteroids
TopSpin writes "Flight International reports that scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have developed designs for an array of asteroid interceptors wielding 1.2-megaton B83 nuclear warheads. The hypothetical mission for these designs is based on an Apophis-sized Earth impactor 2 to 5 years out. According to NASA, 'Nuclear standoff explosions are assessed to be 10-100 times more effective [at deflection] than the non-nuclear alternatives analyzed in this study." On April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass closer to earth than geosynchronous satellites orbit.
extinction-level-event nuke-shielded overlords!
-WtC
*please insert sig*
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
If it's not going to hit Earth, will Skynet or the terminators even care?
with an alternate reality gateway, and a crack commando team consisting of a linguist with allergies, a wise cracking Colonel, a brilliant astrophysicist, and someone with a horrible gastronomical infection. Also some grenades.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
In case you were wondering, Apophis is the Greek form of the name for the Egyptian Demon Apep.
Otherwise known as the personification of all that is evil.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I think I'd be pretty hard for them to miss so badly that they somehow manage to hit the earth, since they'd be trying to hit it in space.
Get Ben Affleck's spacesuit ready.
Apophis was lowered to 0 on the Torino scale sometime last fall. I'm not sure why it even warranted a mention in this particular context..
exploding nuclear weapons from a distance only works if the asteroid is fairly solid, like the metallic [M-type] asteroids. The more porous asteroids [there seem to be many] don't seem to respond as well to such explosions. As for the Armageddon-type way of dealing with asteroids, you just made a single asteroid into a hail of dangerous shrapnel. Although if we exploded a nuclear charge [a smaller one] that only tosses up a part of the asteroid and direct the shrapnel away from Eath, the shrapnel would go in one direction [wherever your plan dictates] and the asteroid generally goes in the opposing direction, knocking it off course. over a period of several years even a small orbital change will result in Earth being safe for now. [hopefully we have that much time if not start sipping your favorite alcoholic beverage :) ]
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
April 13, 2029 is indeed a Friday. Look it up yourselves if you don't believe me. Luckily, we'll all be dead in December 2012, so this asteroid's simply to finish off the rest of the life on the planet.
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Couldn't we simply send a small spacecraft to intercept the asteroid? Say, a small craft, probably with one primary weapon that has plenty of ammo... probably shaped like a triangle, I think. It could use this "weapon" to then shoot at any incoming asteroids.
Of course, the weapon wouldn't be as powerful as a nuke, and would probably split the asteroid in, say, half. The ship would then have to shoot both halves, breaking them again into half, creating four asteroids where just one was originally. The pilot would repeat this process until the asteroid is broken into such small pieces that they'll be deflected by earth's atmosphere.
I'm still working on how the ship and asteroid fragments would warp to the other side of the field when they hit the edges, though... probably why NASA decided against this approach. That, and they wanted to avoid ripping off The Last Starfighter too much.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
edit: Would an explosion in space even function in the same manner?
Because I don't want to miss a thing!
I have to wonder if you where just kidding or are don't know anything about nuclear weapons.
From the 40s up through I think the 70s many nuclear weapons where detonated in the atmosphere. While it was a really bad plan life pretty much kept on living. A miss would probably not hit the earth and a launch accident wouldn't cause a nuclear detonation. A common method of safeing a nuclear weapon involves filling the pit with a neutron absorbing wire. Once the weapon leaves the atmosphere a motor will pull the wire out of the core and only then the weapon will be capable of nuclear detonation. Not only that most modern weapons are much cleaner then the bombs of the 50s.
So I wouldn't to see them launching them daily I think risk to benefit ratio is pretty good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...always wondered what happened to them after their big radio hit ""Keep Your Hands to Yourself".
It would go off but would look nothing like an atmospheric burst. It would be a really bright spherical event that mostly produced an incredibly intense flux of gamma rays, with some neutrons as well. The only actual matter to heat up would be the bomb itself, so the size of the visible explosion would be small, but unbelivably bright. The idea is to cause this really intense light and gamma ray burst to heat the surface of the asteroid enough to cause vaporization and ablation. That would cause a small thrust that changes the direction of the asteroid enough to miss the Earth.
Engineers say a bee can't flap its wings and fly; and it cannot. A bee (and for that matter, flies) remain airborne because their wings trace an s-like path through the air, allowing them to move through the air in much the same way as a shark.
Think of it like a ceiling fan that goes back and forth. If it didn't have the ability to turn back on itself, it wouldn't do much to the air. However, if the blades bent in different directions for each direction, it would be able to produce a downdraft.
The best magazine in the universe.
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OK, think how far that damn warhead will be after 2-5 years worth of travel? that asteroid will be moving a helluva lot faster than that warhead, so the distance they are thinking of is extreme. You probably wouldn't be able to see the explosion with a terrestrial telescope.
Add to that distance the fact that the radiation, well... radiates in all directions, and the very small peice of that radiation that would reach the earth is going to be, in whole, less than that coming out from the diode in your TV remote.
The thing will be so large and so fast, and so far away, even knocking it slightly off course will likely steer it farther away!
Space is really, really, really big, and things move really, really, really fast.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This isn't the conspiracy you're looking for.
They can go about their business.
Move along.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
You won't have time to die of radiation...if they miss the asteroid, it's gonna get you first.
rj
That's true. The potential damage from getting hit is very, very large though - and the probability isn't quite small enough to completely discount. Major meteor impacts have occurred with some frequency on a geological time scale - it seems prudent to actually do the risk assessment and take appropriate action if necessary.
As for the foreign energy independence issue, sure that's important. That doesn't mean that astronomers who specialize in asteroids should drop their careers for it any more than you should drop your career (whatever it is) to worry about potential meteor impacts.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
You've just proven that you don't understand statistics. Your odds of being killed by an asteroid are much less than by lightning, because it is so much less likely to happen. Just because something kills lots of people when it extremely rarely happens doesn't mean it's more likely to happen. In fact, it's likely that no human has ever been killed by an asteroid.
People with actual ability to use statistics know that it's unlikely that anyone will be killed by an asteroid for hundreds of years, if not thousands or even millions.
--
make install -not war
Even assuming that you are joking, this is a non-issue. The atmosphere and magnetosphere shield us from a metric butt-ton of solar radiation. Space is not pristine, and at risk of being damaged. Space is trying to kill us all, whether by pulling us atom from atom (vacuum), freezing us solid, radiating us 'til we're crispy, or throwing large rocks at us. Just offa the top of my head, my guess is that you could probably fly through the location of a thermonuclear blast in space minutes after the event.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
They claim 10-100 times more effective than other methods. First of all they dont define more effective. Second of all, they seem to dismiss ideas like a gravity tug out of hand as not developed enough.
The idea of throwing nukes at an object of potentially unknown size bugs me, especially when much more controlled options exist. All that needs to be done is to nudge the NEO out of small zones known as "keyholes" that are small, finite portions of space where the pull of the Earth will push the object into a collision course on its next orbit rather than another random non-intersecting orbit.
A fairly massive object (something a Delta IV Heavy could launch) would be perfectly capable of handling an Apophis sized object with enough lead time (on the order of years, but certainly less than decades), by flying in formation with the object in the right location to shift its orbit slightly. This is a lot easier than Apollo, which we pulled off in less than 10 years, so to dismiss it as too difficult is ridiculous, and it seems a lot more responsible than launching nukes at an object we dont fully understand.
Just my thoughts anyway.
Or, you can use the Doomsday Algorithm.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
April 13, 2029 is a Friday.
I'd also like to know how the shark moves through the air.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
"If we were spending this money on actual threat priorities, we'd be spending it getting out of the crosshairs of foreign energy suppliers."
But the money being spent on this research and all active missile defense research absolutely pales in comparison to what we are spending in Iraq. Yes, we should get out of Iraq - out of the "crosshairs of foreign energy supplies" - but that doesn't mean we can't also continue to pursue missile defense technologies, and secure our borders while we're at it.
In my opinion missile defense is precisely the sort of national security policy that should be supported by someone interested in limited government or interested in limiting U.S. imperialism around the world.
If we have a mature, comprehensive air and space defense solution, we don't have to worry about policing the world, and we don't have to have talk about nuclear first strikes against sovereign nations.
It would be completely different.
The first destructive effect is caused by the radiated energy itself, but most of the destructive power of an atmospheric nuclear detonation comes from the quick heating and displacement of huge quantities of air that creates the explosive shock-wave.
In space, only the radiated energy of the detonation remains. While it would be sufficient to deflect an asteroid, a nuke is nowhere near as destructive in deep space than it is on Earth.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
There is no need to keep nukes in space. You can always launch the interceptor when needed. A ground launch only adds a couple minutes to the trip, so, in the end, its influence is irrelevant. Not only that, but weapons on the ground can be much more easily upgraded and serviced than weapons in space.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Perhaps it's also the right day -- after all, nuclear bombs in this case are being used to save rather than slaughter.
-b.
The radiation from the nuke isn't the problem with that. The main effects are (a) EMP and interfering with electrical equipment, and (b) fucking up the magnetosphere, and possibly reducing the Earth's shielding from cosmic radiation. Neither of which are good, but better to risk those effects than the certainty of a large asteroid hit.
-b.
Instead of destroying what will be a huge supply of mass and resources why dont we put it into orbit between the moon and earth. One of the major issues with space exploration is "mass and fuel" as it costs a fortune to put it into space. I think we are wasting a huge opportunity here to accelerate space exploration while making it 1,000 times more cost effective.
>I'd also like to know how the shark moves through the air.
Obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion
Nuke explosion high in the orbit was tested as a radiation shield in antibalistic missile experiments (Operation Argus, by Nick Christofilos of Lawrence Livermore fame) and it was found ineffective for the defense purpose. A side-product of these experiments with artificial radiation shields was discovery of Van Allen radiation belts.
It was later found by accident that multimegatonn explosion high in the orbit can dump lots of charged particles (mostly high-energy electrons) into Van Allen belts where they persist for many weeks during which time they gradually degrade solar panels and electronics of satelites - this happened in 60s (after operation Starfish Prime about 5 satelites went silent...)
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
My 51st birthday. If it does hit, at least I will have some student loans left when I die.
The large damage from theoretically possible asteroid impacts doesn't make it any more likely that they will happen. That's a statistical fallacy.
Huh? Of course the damage it would do doesn't make the event more likely, but it makes the event more serious.
If one event is likely, but has minimal impact if it occurs, it might be worth ignoring, in order to concentrate on a less likely event that has disastrous consequences.
Since a large asteroid impact could be a mass extinction event, something capable of wiping out our entire ecosystem -- not to mention civilization -- even if it's unlikely, it's worth working to prevent. Compared to that, everything except the possibility of nuclear war (or equally disastrous environmental collapse) pales in comparison.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It is not true at all that "most modern weapons are much cleaner than the bombes of the 50s. In fact the fusion yield of modern weapons accounts for less than 40% of the total yield, most of the yield actually comes from fission of the uranium container that doubles as a reflector. "clean weapons" can be produced by using non-fissionable reflector like lead, this causes at leat 40% increase in total weight of the weapon design while reducing the total yield approximately to one half. The example of a super-clean bomb is Tsar Bomba that exploded at about 52MT, a lead-reflected test of a 100MT design.
For military the intense radiation from fission of the uranium reflector is an "added bonus". The premium in thermonuclear warhead design is on light weight and narrow diameter (long narrow-cone re-entry vehicles have much better precision than fat ones) in compromise with low cost (low consumption of expensive materials like tritium and plutonium) and high reliability.
The clean weapon was a temporary fad in 50s and early 60s, it was used by rival weapon design team to justify existence of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and was oversold, being seized upon by politicians it got disproportionate coverage in print - but it never resulted in a weaponised design. The reality is that even a "clean" bomb designs are still an order of magnitude dirtier than Hiroshima and don't offer any military advantage so they are not stockpiled. The peaceful uses of clean nukes like digging harbors and re-livening natural gas and oil fields never materialized as it turned out that produced crater (or gas) was unpleasantly radioactive (because of neutron-induced radiation, with long-lived radioisotopes like C-14 and tritium)
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
I think the words you want to use are "expected outcome," which allows you to conclude that a somewhat unlikely disaster is worth avoiding more than a possible problem. Your rebuttal to Doc Ruby is correct, however (as I've said in a sibling post) why is the government ignoring global warming? - according to scientific consensus this is much more probable than a meteorite impact, and could be nearly as devastating.
I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about asteroids, but rather that this suggests that the government may have some other motive for funding such research.
Momentum change [in log10(kg m/s)], given a 9,000kg vehicle launch mass:
Nuclear, Subsurface: 11.9
Nuclear, Surface: 11.5
Nuclear, Standoff - Neutron: 10.3
Nuclear, Standoff - X-ray: 9.9
Kinetic @50km/s (avg): 9.0
Kinetic @10km/s (avg): 8.5
Surface Thruster (non-rotating asteroid) @10 years: 8.1
Surface Thruster (rotating asteroid) @10 years: 7.7
Gravity Tractor, @10 years: 6.9
Conventional Explosive, Subsurface: 6.8
Conventional Explosive, Surface: 6.4
Momentum change [in log10(kg m/s)] required to deflect the following:
Hypothetical long-period 1km comet with 9-24 months to impact: 12.8
Hypothetical 1km asteroid 15yr ahead: 10.5
VD17, a 500m asteroid for 2088: 9.6
Apophis after 2029 approach, assuming a 2036 a collision prediction: 9.4
Hypothetical 200m asteroid 10 yr ahead: 8.7
Apophis by 2029 (with current orbit knowledge): 8.5
Apophis by 2029 (with highly accurate orbit knowledge): 6.3
The point of the distinction between the last two is that the probability window we have to push out of the earth's path becomes much smaller the more accurately we know the orbital parameters of the object. So the more accurately we can calculate it, the less we have to actually push it (up to a point, of course). Also, it looks like very little is gained by exploding things underground as opposed to on the surface. So we apparently aren't going to need a crack team of good-looking drilling experts after all.
Actually, the way the two standoff nuclear explosives they studied would work, is to bombard the asteroid with "highly concentrated and directionally focused x-rays or neutrons," the latter of course being a "neutron bomb." The neutron bomb is the more effective method, presumably because of the momentum transferred directly by the high-speed shower of neutrons.
Almost correct. There is also the superheated high velocity remnants of the nuclear weapon casing and delivery mechanism at the leading edge of the shock wave, oddly enough more significant in space than it is in a planetary atmosphere, missile should rotate and detonate butt first.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Save rather than slaughter? I find your disregard for our alien overlords' lives utterly disgusting!
*picks up phone and calls PETA. Or something.*
No worries, we should be able to come up with an anti-extinction-level-nuke giant laser beam by then.
I would feel much more comfortable with a planetary defense system that does not rely on a single, unbuilt launch vehicle.
Instead of carrying six weapons on a single platform it would be better to have smaller vehicles that can be launched on Atlas, Delta, Ariane, SpaceX falcon, etc.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Yeah, but not unconditionally surrender. This was to prevent the Great War mistakes. Japan had seriously violated just about every reasonable practice of war, and the dropping of the atom bomb shortened the war, and help stop them.
Japan was not going to surrender in two weeks, they were via diplomatic back channels suing for peace, this is not the same as offering unconditional surrender. In the end the Japanese still insisted that they be allowed to keep their Emporer, and the allies agreed to this demand, instead of being belligerent. I don't know where you got this myth that the Japanese were willing to surrender unconditionally, but the whole point of further increasing the size of their armed services during and after Okinawa was to make taking the islands of Japan as much like the battle for Okinawa as possible. That would have resulted in extreme causalities on both sides. The idea was that by a few tens of thousands of casualties the Americans and their allies would agree to more favourable terms than unconditional surrender. Heck if it had been like Okinawa they might even have managed to force those terms, which would have been a disaster.
The Japanese were determined to fight on to get a better peace deal. They had already lost the war so of course they were suing for peace. The only question remains, is it right to target military installations in the cities of your enemy during a time of war to force his surrender, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die. If you believe the allies were right to demand unconditional surrender (which I do), and if you believe that the Americans should have kept their nerve conducting the invasion and no accepted a lesser peace, then one is forced to ask the following question. Which course of action would cost more civilian lives, more destruction of infrastructure, and more military lives. The answer to all three is invasion. Dropping the bomb saved lives, civilian, military, and preserved what little remained of Japans infrastructure.
It is to my mind, the only time in history dropping the bomb would be acceptable, because of the unique set of circumstances at the time.
Exactly. Even if a superpower, or even suitably-armed power, wanted to launch a nuclear strike against the US, a sea-launched nuke-carrying cruise missile would do the trick. Flying low and fast, space-based anything won't help. And if that's out of the budgetary question, a container with a nuke in it would be just as acceptable. Taking out just one large US port will harm the US in so many different ways it's not even funny.
Alright Woodrow Wilson, if thats what you want to believe.
I firmly believe that Hitler was helped by the fact that he was able to convince many Germans that the treaty of Versaille was unfair because the 'November Criminals' had signed it while Germany still had some effective military and could still fight the war. Coupled with the fact that the terms of the treaty were humiliating themselves (full blame for the war placed on Germany, reparations, Sudentenland handed over to the new Czechoslovakia, splitting Germany in two). Unconditional surrender is not about humiliation. The requirement of unconditional surrender existed because the conduct of those states with which the allies were fighting required wholesale removal of thier leadership and replacement by an authority that would be cast iron allies of the West. Unconditional surrender was just another way of saying to the militarist leaders of Japan "we will dismantle your government, and you will be tried for war crimes".
The estimated American casualties alone for the invasion of Japan are around two to four times that. Now consider that they are better equipped and supplied than their conscripted Japanese adversary who would have suffered far worse. In addition most of the Japanese casualties would be civilian.
I'm certainly not glorifying the killing of civilians. However, if I presented to you a choice. Kill a quarter of a million Japanese now, or kill half a million Americans and 4 million Japanese over three to four months of bloody combat, what would you choose? If you choose to kill four million more people just because you don't like the word nuclear or because you think in some way being shot is better than dieing in giant fireball, then I believe you to be a cold heartless bastard.
Hell the United States is still handing out purple hearts of 1945 manufacture because of the anticipated casualties of the Japanese campaign were higher than the sum total of wounded or dead servicemen in every war since.
I suggested what the Japanese intent was. They believed they could break their 'inferior' American foe. The Americans had plans for Olympic which forecast many more casualties that the Japanese thought the Americans could take. All you have done is prove my point, the Americans would have accepted the high casualties and pushed on, since they planned for them anyway. The bottom line is that while the Japanese hoped to bring the war to an end with tens of thousands of casualties by breaking the American will to fight, that was not going to happen. You are suggesting an option (American capitulation to the Japanese plan) which was never on the table to begin with.
I read a novel, I can't remember which, where the author made a great case for using enhanced radiation weapons against asteroids instead of conventional nuclear devices. His argument was that a non-impacting explosion using an enhanced radiation device might be able to divert even a fragile asteroid without necessarily breaking it up. The radiation from the weapon would transfer it's energy evenly to the surface of the asteroid. (Not exactly, but way better than a regular nuke) That would blow away the top layer of the asteroid on the side facing the blast, pushing the asteroid in the opposite direction. A series of such blasts might be able to divert the asteroid without causing it to break up.
I'm sure there are problems with the idea, but it seems logical to me.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
EMP depends a lot on how high up the blast is. Again not hard to prevent.
Do not unsafe the weapon until it clears the magnetosphere. They will be launching the weapons when the target is still years away so there is no need to unsafe the weapon until it is a long way from the earth.
The simplest way to safe the weapon is to fill the core with wire that absorbs neutrons. You just pull the wire out to arm the bomb. as long as the core is filled a high yield event is impossible. No high yield event no EMP.
Plus the launch would be from the Cape. Most of the flight would not be over any large cities. It would be over the Atlantic and equatorial Africa.
No it isn't 100% safe but nothing is. It would beat the heck out of getting whacked by a big honking rock.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I dunno... Lets ask what the Allied High Commanders and Staff thought:
General Dwight D. Eisenhower "In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman "The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Report from the post war United States Strategic Bombing Survey "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." And my favorite from the guy who actually encouraged Einstein to write FDR, Leo Szilard "Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?" Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_H
So yeah... According to some of the major members of the US military and those who took part in the Manhattan project, the bombs were unneeded.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you simply wanted to stop the Japanese, why didn't you simply drop the bomb on Fujiyama (for example)? I think that the sight of a giant volcano being blown to smithereens would have been just as effective as dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The sad truth is you wanted to test the bomb as well as show to the Soviet Union that you have some big guns.
There is considerable debate on this issue as far as I know. Militarily the Soviet Union posed far more of a threat to the short and long term security of the civilians of Japan (it's not like what happened to Berlin was a secret, or what would happen to eastern Europe wasn't known). There is however one thing that is clear. The atomic bomb gave Emporer Hirohito (and to some extent Togo) the excuse he was looking for the push for an end to the war on all fronts. Civilians would understand surrender faced with this new terrifying weapon. The coup attempt that resulted from the repeated attempts to surrender was probably far smaller than it would have been without the bomb. The terms of the surrender were sufficient for the allies. The last one is the key. Without the bomb, would the Japanese have accepted unconditional surrender (with the exception of the retention of the Emporer) if the allies did not have the bomb? Maybe, but we know four of the big six wanted to reject the Potsdam declaration out of hand until the extent of the Soviet attacks became known, and the attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then it was split 3-3. Without the intervention of Emporer Hirohito (who certainly considered the bomb important) this deadlock may have lasted.
I don't know what the result would have been without the bomb. Perhaps the Japanese would have continued fighting until it was clear that the Soviets were preparing to invade Korea, or perhaps the Japanese islands themselves. It is possible that without the bomb the Japanese would have used losing territory to the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip against the Americans to get more favourable terms.
Your point about American B-17 raids on Japan is a good one. It is important to remember these were small nukes. The building directly under the bomb survived the explosion in Hiroshima. This does strongly suggest that the bomb was not, in the military leaderships mind, a deciding factor, considering that the death toll in Tokyo from fire bombing was higher than in Hiroshim or Nagasaki through the atomic bomb. However, the bomb is more than a incendiary weapon. I believe the Emporer said it best in his radio address to the Japanese people:
"The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage."
The key word being terrible. The atomic bomb, more so than any other weapon, was terrifying. It is this terror that gave the Emporer the option of offering surrender (along with the Soviet invasion).
I'm not American, I'm British. And I agree with most of what you have said. The American military reasoning for dropping the bomb was reprehensible. Doesn't change the fact that the 'excuse' they gave for doing so holds water.
I'm well aware that the total deaths from dropping the bombs total around a quarter of a million. I also had in my mind the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. However, the fact remains that if Imperial Japan had been allowed to survive that number would be a drop in the ocean, because you can bet your arse that the Soviet Union would have found an excuse to restart the war at a later date if Japan didn't essentially become a satellite state of the United States.
A demonstration would not suffice. For a start it would tell the Japanese that the Americans had the bomb. The Japanese were not intercepting lone bombers at this stage because of a lack of fuel. If they know that they were carring the atom bomb that might have changed that. Besides, a demonstration would appear weak, like the Americans were unwilling to use the bomb.
I believe the US military has been responsible for many immoral acts. The Vietnam war immediately springs to mind. The premature invasion of Iraq in the second gulf war. The premature exit from the first gulf war without forcing unconditional surrender, leaving thousands of Shiite insurgents to die in a rebellion the Americans encouraged.
It is not a question of inability to admit the failing of my own (or in fact your country), but rather my capacity to way evidence without becoming overwhelmed by the horror of the facts.
What purely military base should they have targetted? You know of a naval base not inside a city?
Osama bin Laden is not leader of a sovereign state. Nor was the intent of the 9/11 attacks to target military infrastructure in the case of the World Trade Center. Nor did the people delivering the attacks wear a uniform marking them as combatants. There was no declaration of war (at least in part because you have to be a sovereign state to declare war). If the West was at war with Saudi Arabia and they fire bombed Washington to get to the pentagon, that would be a fairer comparison.
The actually reasons for using the bomb are morally reprehensible, but the excuses given hold. All I am saying is you put me in Harry S. Truman's shoes and give me the two choices he was faced with, I would in good conscience make the same decision he did.
While your opinion with regards to humiliation is admirable, your knowledge of this specific history is nonexistent. After being given unconditional surrender, we went into Japan and helped them in every way possible. We spent billions of dollars helping them rebuild, created a newer and more efficient infrastructure and shared most of our technology with them. We did not humiliate them--we treated them like equals. To quote wikipedia, "MacArthur and his GHQ staff helped a devastated Japan rebuild itself, institute a democratic government, and chart a course that made Japan one of the world's leading industrial powers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Japan/
MacArthur supervised the occupation of Japan, and made sure that the Japanese food network was the first thing reconstructed; he even forbid the US forces from eating any of the scarce Japanese food. Democracy flourished, and MacArthur and emperor Hirohito became friends.
Please do not accuse the United States of attempting to humiliate Japan, because there is simply no credibility to that statement.
I've addressed every point you have made else where. I have already conceded that the reason the Administration had for dropping the bomb was morally reprehensible. However all of the quotes you have given talk of surrender, not unconditional surrender. If you do not believe that a power which has committed copious war crimes and conducted a war in a manner so morally reprehensible as to deserve the title infamous, should be deconstructed, that is your choice.
I will answer some of the quotes you present. Eisenhower was mostly involved in Europe. His pacific counterparts did not agree with his assessment and I choose to believe them because they would know better.
Suing for peace != unconditional surrender. I've already acknowledge that militarily the atom bomb did not determine the outcome of the war. Heck the outcome of the war was known after Midway.
Surrender != unconditional surrender.
Dropping the atom bomb to force unconditional surrender is not the same as dropping the bomb as a last ditch spiteful move to kill civilians. A better comparison might be, what if the Germans had the bomb in 1941 and destroyed Scapa Flo?
The total casualty estimates if we had invaded Japan, based on the island hopping campaign so far in the war, were over 1 million allied and as many as 10 million total Japanese. We were planning on using gas, including captured Nazi nerve gas to cut down on allied casualties.
Even if we had not invaded Japan, any potential non-nuclear outcome would have been MUCH worse.
Japan depended heavily on inland water craft for transport. We had decimated this system and were in the process of finishing it off. Their railway system was very vulnerable to air attack and we were working on that two.
Almost all agriculture in Japan at the time was FAR from most of the population. If we had simply continued to bombard Japan from the air, the Japanese people would have starved to death. The estimates run as high as 60% of the population in less than a year (1944 and 1945 were bad rice years to begin with). The Japanese leadership did not care. This did not take into account the fact that ALL allied prisoners would have died, along with possibly millions in China and other parts of Asia.
Also, the USSR would have invaded more of the northern islands if the war had not ended when it did. If you think Berlin was a mess, think how bad THAT would have been.
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When I was getting my degree at Harvey Mudd College, they managed to get us the opportunity to have lunch with distinguished Physicist Freeman Dyson. Someone asked Dyson a question about blowing up asteroids with nuclear weapons at the session. My recollection of the response was that he said he thought it was a bad idea that would make shrapnel and magnify the problem. Dyson told us that the best solution he could think of was to build a ship to go to the asteroid and then assemble a "mass driver". The mass driver would be a piece of equipment that broke off pieces of the asteroid and hurled them at right angles to the trajectory in an appropriate direction in order to divert the orbit. While Dyson is only one man, I suspect that his opinion on the matter might incorporate more finesse that a bunch of weapons engineers.
It's probably not clear from the submission or perhaps even the article, but the same effect is being described in both.
When a nuclear reaction occurs, energy is released primarily in two ways:
1.) Kinetic/thermal energy carried away the reaction products and free neutrons and electrons.
2.) Radiation (mostly x-rays and gamma rays) emitted directly or by secondary effects like Bremsstrahlung (collisions of particles from method 1).
If there's a lot of extra matter around, like an atmosphere, it absorbs most of this energy, thereby converting it to more conventional effects like a shock wave, and UV/infrared/visible light.
However, in space there's little to absorb and re-emit the radiation or collide with and be displaced by the moving matter, so a far greater amount of the nuclear energy is carried away as radiation. As you said, this heats and vaporizes a thin layer of the surface. The vaporized material flies away, giving an equal and opposite impulse to the bulk of the asteroid. A minor drawback is that most of the energy is wasted, since the radiation is emitted 360 degrees around the warhead.
A similar concept would have a super-powerful laser vaporize small amounts of surface material gradually. This has an advantage of being aimable to get some steering benefit but would require much more forewarning.
I thought it interesting that they proposed six smaller warheads instead of one big one (a 10 MT bomb is not out of the question), but that not only allows them to use existing warheads, but also to have some extra control. I could see them parking the warheads in a safe position a few thousand miles from the asteroid and sending them in one at a time. After each blast, you determine the effect on its orbit, then detonate the next one at an optimized angle and distance to account for uncertainties in the position of the last warhead and the composition and density of the asteroid.
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