Slashdot Mirror
Laser Treatment For Earth-Bound Asteroids
arisvega writes "A recent publication (for the math-versed) proposing the deployment of a Solar-powered, space-borne fleet of LASER cannons that would deflect Earth-bound asteroids caught the attention of international news agencies. Do you think this ambition can in reasonable time turn into a fair-priced, life-saving (or indeed Biosphere-saving!) project, that will be to the benefit of all mankind? How threatened would you feel from the possibility of this proposed array being hijacked by extremely depraved individuals, ones capable or guilty of great crimes? And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?"
how did the comments get this far without somebody quoting Billy Bob Thorton: "That'd be like shooting a bb gun at a freight train doc"
"In 2005, we discovered for the first time something five times the size of pluto orbiting between Mars and Jupiter"
That statement is so obviously wrong that it made me want to dismiss the entire post because, well honestly, if somebody's gonna make such a stupid statement it's like when a person makes a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. You know they COULD be an informed, intelligent person but your inner bias says no.
Look, if astronomers discovered something in 2005 that was five times the "size" (Mass? Volume? Diameter?) of Pluto between Mars and Jupiter the entire astronomical community should be ashamed of itself for not spotting it CENTURIES earlier (it should be naked to the visible eye unless painted flat black, with a new coat of paint every week). Shit, the gravitational perturbations alone should have made it discoverable long ago, that's how Neptune and (I think) Pluto were found, much much farther away.
Now that I've got that off my chest, there are some problems with your idea. Why put these chunks of rock (iron?) in lunar orbit? Because of the three-body problem which even Newton (and everyone since) couldn't solve, these orbits may not be stable and may indeed be chaotic (hence the "interplanetary highway"). So after a (very long) period of time, when humanity (if it's still around) may not have a space program, these big (and they've got to be big in order to do serious damage to an asteroid that's already in cislunar space) may come crashing down onto earth. Why not put them in a stable trojan point either earth-moon L4 or L5 or sun-earth L4 or L5? Or, considering all the effort you're putting into doing this, why not just track all the earth orbit crossing asteroids a century or two out and (gently) tweak their orbits. Orbital mechanics IS a science and as long as you're not trying to project very far into the future, we could easily predict what's gonna hit us with much less effort than putting kilotons of rocks in motion.
Now get off my lawn.