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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?"
Lasers with sufficient energy density to cause gaseous phase change of asteroid surface materials might not be strong enough to do anything impressive on the Earth's surface... lots of atmosphere to get through here.
The idea of a fleet of lower powered satellites is also less likely to be hijacked than a single "super cannon" - though, if you control the whole fleet, I suppose you could "turn up the heat on the Kremlin" if you ever wanted to....
Our current ability of detecting asteroids and predicting their course is not nearly enough to interfere with them, there's a lot of development in both detections and simulation that has to be done before we can even think of trying to deflect an asteroid.
you can point them in any direction you like, that doesn't necessarily make them instantly dangerous.
GRASER emitters (gamma ray beam weapons) would be good in space because they have no atmosphere to punch through. You could kill a satellite with one of those pretty much at line-of-sight range. Point one downward, and it wouldn't bother a plane cruising at 37,000 feet - because it has miles of lovely gamma-absorbing atmosphere to punch through first! Laser beams would scatter too much to be any problem by the time they hit the surface (the lunar ranging experiment uses a green laser to bounce off the mirror left on the moon by Apollo. By the time the 10mm-emitted beam hits the lunar surface it's 17km wide - almost entirely caused by atmospheric scatter in the first 14 miles of its journey).
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Removes unsightly craters! Restores youthful appearance! Look billions of years younger!
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
"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.