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Nukes Not the Best Way To Stop Asteroids, Says Apollo Astronaut
MajorTom writes "Right now, we are not tracking many of the asteroids that could destroy earth. But within the next decade, new telescopes will make that possible, and leave us with the tough decision of what to do about objects with an alarming chance of hitting our planet. Last year, NASA said that the best option is to nuke them. This week, Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, explained that there are far better options, and he has started an organization to prove that they can work."
Then what does he propose that we nuke? Each other? The whales? Martians?
If Edgar Mitchell's involved, then we know for sure that nukes are the best option!
It's the only way to make sure.
Please let one of the options be to send Ben Affleck into space. He has experience.
Find those advanced aliens that the other Apollo astronaut says are in our midst, and arrange for technology transfer briefings on asteroid redirection.
First an Apollo Astronaut says that the government has covered up Alien contact, now this!?
The main problem with nukes is that criminals will be released from the Phantom Zone if a nuclear weapon goes off in space.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
so, let me see if I got this right:
you would have a small triangular ship. Maybe two or three extras "just in case".
we could control it remotely. A rotational control and a forward thruster should suffice.
Then we could "fire" small nukes at the object. That would change their trajectory and break them into smaller pieces.
I think it sounds like a brilliant idea, but where would we be able to find someone who could operate such a machine?
-- Sig under construction...
... asteroids vs duke nukem :D
4. They are fun
Trying to use nukes to deflect the asteroid seems like the more difficult solution to me. The asteroid will be far away and moving fast. Earth is close and (relative to us) not moving at all!
Clearly the more practical way to avoid a collision is to use the nukes to deflect Earth out of the path of the asteroid.
paintball
With mines or with mines?
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, duh! Nukes are second best, only to be used if Chuck Norris is unavailable.
Didn't anyone ever watch Star Trek? This is such a simple problem. Just change the gravitational constant of the universe, thereby altering the mass of the object and making it easy to move. Oww! Where is that doctor?!
No, no ... that was a typo. We send mimes into space.
In space, no one can tell that you're trapped in a glass box or walking against the wind.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
well that would be a great idea for two reasons, firstly the mimes would not be affected by the lack of sound carrying gasses in space, and more importantly, the less mimes on the planet, the better.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
An International Body - you mean like the U.N.? What do you think would happen if we put them in charge? They'd mail a letter to the asteroid explaining that they are very disappointed with its current trajectory, and in the end any direct action would be vetoed by China.
You can rain nukes on that asteroid till it glows, but that won't make much difference. Trick is, in the vacuum of space, nuclear explosion is weak. There is no air to create blast wave and thermal flash, so all you get is some hard radiation and hand-grenade level of blast from vaporized bomb casing. And that's it.
Okay, I confess. We were trying to reduce the crapload of nuclear devices on this planet in a manner that seemed perfectly logical, with no casualties, only slightly technically flawed, but easier to explain. *You* just had to piss on this peacenik'x parade.
/me grumbles
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
After all, they already had asteroid-blasting spaceships in the late 70's.
Don't worry, your spelling is impeccable.
I guess the big question is, with all the weaponry we have lying around, why bet on one? I say machine gun nuke the thing to kind of coral it away from us. Send em up 2 or 3 at a time. One to divert the asteroid and the other two to slow/vaporize the mess the first one made. The wiki says we have somewhere around 10,000 in the US alone, so if an asteroid comes, lite it up!
But what if your nuke doesn't make it and destroys the only bridge out of town?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Why don't we just send up a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses with pamphlets? I have seen even the biggest, strongest men hide behind the sofa when just one of them is at the door; it shouldn't take more than, say, ten to make an average sized asteroid go away.
The best option would be to blow a number of large, couple of thousand cubic miles, of the moon off into space and fit them with engines. Then you'd just have them orbit about the place and whenever a rouge asteroid was detected manuver the nearest large chunk close by to capture the asteroid in it's gravity and then safely drive it off somewhere else.
I'm sure this would be a really simple soloution and free from any dangerous side effects where things could go wrong.