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Ask Slashdot: Best Payloads For Asteroid Diverter/Killer Mission?
TheRealHocusLocus writes: The Emergency Asteroid Defence Project has launched a crowdfunded IndieGoGo campaign to help produce a set of working blueprints for a two-stage HAIV, or Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle. This HAIV paper (PDF) describes the use of a leading kinetic impactor to make a crater — a following nuclear warhead would detonate in the crater for maximum energy transfer. The plans would be available for philanthropists to bring to prototype stage, while your friendly local nuclear weapon state supplies the warhead. This may be a best-fit solution. But just ask Morgan Freeman: these strategies could fail. What — if any — backup strategy could be integrated into an HAIV mission as a fail-safe in case the primary fails? Here is a review of strategies (some fanciful, few deployable) if we have to divert an asteroid with very short lead time. A gentle landing on the object may not be feasible, and we must rely on things that push hard or go boom. For example: detonating nearby to ablate surface materials and create recoil in the direction we wish to nudge. Also, with multiple warheads and precise timing, would it be possible to create a "shaped" nuclear explosion in space?
Why aren't we shooting that stuff into the Sun anyway?
Discovery of an underwater skeleton 'tea party' in the Colorado River provides ample proof that the human race is worth saving.
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the dinosaurs tried everything.
I'd love to see them fly into an asteroid.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
one million tennis rackets.
To stop the bombs, claiming they need one last shot at optimizing the Earth for human habitation.
Then when an killer asteroid is found, just push the moon in the way.
(Yes, I know that can't work. But it won't stop Hollywood from using it in a movie.)
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
In atmosphere, nukes produce blast because of high energy x-rays igniting atmosphere. This won't happen in space.
So how would letting off a nuke near or on an asteroid produce reaction and change the course of the asteroid?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You need a moon base (not manned) to do this right. Then you throw moon rocks at the impending impactor. Doing it from a smaller gravity well means you can sling them into space more easily via something like a magnetic rail gun (yes, you need to put the moon rocks into a container made of iron / steel so it works with a mag solution).
Confetti
?
If you have enough lead time then I think the gravity tug works well. You rendezvous with the asteroid and fly alongside it, using solar-electric or some other slow but mass-efficient drive to hold station on the same side of the asteroid. The gravity of the probe VERY SLOWLY accelerates the asteroid and over a few decades (perhaps with a few refueling missions to bring more xenon or whatever) the asteroid's orbit is changed enough to miss the Earth,.
NASA's current plan it to cover a sufficient amount of the object with a different colored cloth (white or black as the case may be) and let the solar sail effect do the work. So a 30% off coupon to Bed Bath & Beyond would do the trick; even with the discount the manager and staff should get a nice bonus for selling 250,000 white sheets in one day.
sPh
Any chance that you might consider posting "Ask Slashdot" articles in the "Ask Slashdot" section in the future? Please?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Beam enough laser light at the object to heat its surface to the point that it ablates. That will push it onto a different course. We won't even have to leave Earth for that to work. Of course, it does need an awful lot of laser power, but if our very survival is at stake, maybe we could do it. Here's the relevant XKCD what if.
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Czar Bomba, the full power 100 Megaton version!
The throttled down 50 MT device was at only 1/2 power.
Bruce Willis
How about shooting some tethers at it and deploying a counter-weight (rocket-powered?) to the object to swing it out of orbit? Make it into a Bola?
"I drank WHAT?!"--Socrates
Would it be more efficient to launch an impactor from Earth to change the asteroid's trajectory or to launch a rocket (using the same rocket that would launch the impactor) carrying a second rocket that would attach to the asteroid and burn to similarly change its trajectory? An impactor would need to be calculated precisely in advance, while attaching a rocket would allow some room for error since its burn could be controlled remotely. The actual feat of getting the rocket to land and securely mount itself would be a challenge however. I don't think "blowing it up" is a good idea, but diversion if possible seems the least-risky and most-effective method.
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Multiple war heads detonated in a timed fan or "J" shape (asteroid on inside of curve) each adding more angular velocity.
Radioactivity is less of a concern than a large strike on Earth's surface.
I think the concern is moot though, the defrosting of Siberian tundra and other "accelerated" green house gas emissions, the acidification of oceans and the loss of most, if not all, of Earth's rivers will reduce the human population to the point this would not be possible.
Unless a strike is imminent.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Several hundred megatons of newborn kittens with milky whiskers.
Launch a similarly massed object at it made of antimatter.
Maybe a chuck Norris body part, fingernail clipping, chest hair something like that to bring the asteroid to its knees. Or simply beam a chuck Norris TV show at it, make it just not want to come here.
Nullius in verba
... That is the only way to protect human race from cosmic dangers like solar flares and rouge asteroids.
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Solar sails are light payload, the forces involved are modest and cumulative rather than requiring a single controlled thrust under extreme circumstances, and need only modest anchorage or very modest netting to attach to the asteroid. They can provide continuous thrust for the lifespan of the sail, rather than a single high energy event, so they're much safer to build and to handle and much, much safer to test. Attached early enough, they should easily shift an asteroid or comet enough to avoid a crash. And properly constructed, they could be used to guide the object to almost any orbit desired, including guiding it to L4 or L5 to be a resource.
Yes, it is entirely possible to create a nuclear shaped charge. The Orion project was going to use quite a bit of them to launch a spacecraft with a payload of 6100 Tons to 300 Mile Low Earth Orbit.
It is very difficult to 'shoot something into the sun'. You first need to get it out of the Earth's gravity, and then you need to decelerate it by 20 km/sec.
This is, frankly, impossible. You might be able to put a small payload to the sun if you used a very big rocket, and did a Venus fly-by. This way you could dispose of a few kilograms at a cost of a few hundred billion dollars.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Lawyers. Then we can get down to the business of building something to save us.
NASA already has the answer. Glitter filled Super Balls are the best thing for the job. As we all know, they are infused with magic energy. A 10kg payload traveling at 11.2 km/s could deflect an object the size of the moon.
It does have risks though. Once set in motion, the Super Balls would be set loose on the universe, potentially disrupting entire galaxies.
For the sake of the universe, I hope we never have to deploy such a weapon.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Computers got better, therefore physics is malleable, if we wait for technology to get better we'll have tractor beams and gravitational-constant modifier beams too.
Right?
I like this idea better.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Why bother with Morgan Freeman or Indiegogo for asteroids when there is real information out there.
What are asteroids (90 minutes with a NASA expert):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
What can we do against asteroids (again 90 minutes with an expert):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Form your opinion after you see these.
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A gentle push, over a long enough period of time, can impart a Lot of Delta-V. And given that IONs are very small the beam could be very uniform and tuned to be very wide or very narrow to custom "Fit" the object like a Glove. It would effectively be an "Upgrade" to the Van Allen Belt only targeted to effect change very quickly.
A shaped Nuclear charge runs the risk of "One-Shot-Errors" an ION beam over a longer period of time could adjust and correct for changes due to an off kelter center of mass.. or a shift in the centroid since we don't know what its made of.. a Slushie Comet for instance might melt and throw jets after impact.
You also would not want to just fire a gas cloud at it.. since it could go in many directions or disperse too rapidly. A NERV nuclear hydrogen engine for example, or parking an engine on a Ball of rocks that could disassociate wouldn't be very effective. An ION beam however can be very finely tuned and mantainted.
Don't carry payload into orbit - it's phenomenally expensive. Instead, gather mass that's already up there using lightweight automata. Then accelerate it, and keep it in a parking orbit. Rinse & repeat. The best way to shift mass is with mass. It doesn't really matter what it is. It's also far safer to manipulate mass than it is to manipulate nuclear charges.
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Or at the very least only raises more.
1. How big is the asteroid?
2. What is it made of?
3. How fast is it traveling?
4. How far away from the Earth was it when first detected?
I would say we would need to have many different strategies in place based on a mix of those variables.
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Rendezvous and land a small robot with several kilowatts of solar cells for power, and legs for grasping the asteroid (small ones like Comet 67P will have very small gravity). Break small rocks off the surface, say, 1 kilogram each. Toss the rocks away from the asteroid at its escape velocity or more. (Philae had a hard time landing on Comet 67P because its escape velocity is only 1 meter/second.) An energy budget of 125 watts will be enough to launch 10 kilograms of rocks every second away from the asteroid at 5 meters/second. The rocks will be in similar orbits to the asteroid, but a 1-kilogram rock will burn up in the earth's atmosphere and not be a threat. A year's time would be enough to disassemble 300 thousand metric tons of asteroid. Surprisingly, asteroids less than 60 meters in diameter would likely be smaller than this. Such a robot (or better, a couple for redundancy) would turn a threatening asteroid into a meteor shower.
It seems NASA did fund this concept... for a while, see citation here. Why did they stop this effort? Because of budget priorities? Politics? Or maybe it was a bad idea?
Bruce WIllis and a motley crew of oil riggers
Smart, asteroid about to impact earth. So break it up so many parts impact earth.
The smart way is to move the rock, slowly over time. In space slow steady course changes work miracles. So visit the rock with a drone robot, encase the rock in carbon fiber and attach a constant thrust engine like nasa is busy developing.
The real issue then becomes watching for future events, not the general foolishness of bureaucratic, struggle at the last minute. Perhaps a United Nations Space Watch agency could be set up for early, like decades ahead, detection.
the hot air coming from that gasbag would send the asteroid into a different direction
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Everyone thinks along the same path: moving the asteroid or trying to blow it up. Might it be easier to move the Earth? Sure that'll cause a lot of issues, but so does getting wiped out by an asteroid.
But in reality we don't have to worry about it. Have NASA leak that they think there's a lot of rare minerals on it and a bunch of greedy rich people will mine it to dust before any government can decide what to do.
If the space craft delivering a nuke were going fast enough, and had a shield strong and large enough, it could be used to direct the energy of the blast in the desired direction, altering the body's path. Calculation would be needed though to ensure that the projected change in orbit doesn't simply set us up for a later collision next time around.
some solar panels and an electrical catapult or something to hurl the rocks away for some dv without fuel.
Say goodbye to family and friends. Listen to favourite music. Say a prayer.
That's the only thing going to work without prep time.