Asteroid killing/deflection Mega Thread (Nuclear Bomb Saving Earth From an Asteroid)

RS-232

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There's no dense air or other gas in space. If you detonate a nuclear warhead, the explosion won't create any pressure. The only way you're going to deflect the asteroid is if you detonate a nuclear warhead at its surface. The rock and ice will melt and get ejected from the asteroid - kind of like propellant ejecting from the nozzle of a rocket engine. Only that will nudge the asteroid off course.





This would be a very bad test, even if you managed to nuke it and not break it apart. Currently we know exactly where the asteroid will fly for quite a long time in the future and its danger to Earth can be accurately estimated. If you deflect it and change its trajectory, we'll have to measure it for a while before we can determine where it will fly. You run the risk of deflecting it into a trajectory more dangerous than the current one.


The best way of deflecting an asteroid is not to nuke it or ram it, but to park a heavy spacecraft near it. The gravitational influence of the spacecraft on the asteroid will be small, but over time it will tug the asteroid out of harms way. The only thing you need to know about the asteroid is a rough estimate of its mass. If you wanted to nuke or ram it, you'd have to know how the asteroid would react to such an event.
Ok thanks for clearing that up for me. Good points. The heavy spacecraft idea I saw something about it on the history channel. :cheers:

EDIT: So if it was heading for us as on a collision course we currently have no defense against it at all?
 
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Codz

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Ok thanks for clearing that up for me. Good points. The heavy spacecraft idea I saw something about it on the history channel. :cheers:

EDIT: So if it was heading for us as on a collision course we currently have no defense against it at all?

Unless we have a LOT of extra warning then there is not much we could do.
 

N_Molson

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Another possibility is to attach a small ionic thruster to the asteroid. It will provide a very low thrust, but over month, it can be enough to deflect the target by an Earth radius.

Of course, the way to attach the thruster is not obvious, that's the main weakness of the plan IMHO... Maybe some robotic drilling, but you have to know the nature of what you will be drilling, and that would be a complex automated mission anyway... :hmm:
 

T.Neo

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Another possibility is to attach a small ionic thruster to the asteroid. It will provide a very low thrust, but over month, it can be enough to deflect the target by an Earth radius.

Won't be as easy as it would otherwise seem, as the asteroid is constantly rotating. You could have to turn the thruster on or off, minimising the time it is able to impart impulse to the asteroid.

And it could also require a fair amount of propellant... :shifty:
 

Wishbone

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Harumph, there should be an asteroid-killing mega-thread somewhere, but with solar sail the same principle applies - how do you steer the rotating asteroid, esp. without contact with ground control? The longer the mission, the higher are the chances of failure (in electronics, mechanical items). Nuke ablation is better understood and takes much less time.
 

T.Neo

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Why don't we attack a solar sail to it, and then paint the asteroid white?

Why don't we reveal two super-secret military space shuttles, crew them with a bunch of moron oil-drillers and Bruce Willis, fly them up to (ersatz) Mir, blow up (ersatz) Mir, fly to the Moon, do a 11-g, free-fall gravity assist around the Moon, fly up to the asteroid which is now a comet which is now a cluster of smaller objects, crash one of the super-secret military space shuttles, land the other super-secret military space shuttles on the asteroid, get out and walk around on the surface in microgravity, reunite with the guys from the other super-secret military space shuttle (who survived), have one of your moron oil-drillers go insane, tie him up, mess around, break your nuclear bomb, put your nuclear bomb into the asteroid, realise your nuclear bomb is broken, realise that you're getting closer and closer to the arbitrary and magical boundary by which time you won't be able to deflect the asteroid, realise that someone will have to stay behind on the asteroid, have a dramatic fight and get Bruce Willis to sacrifice himself, realise your engines are broken, get the crazy cosmonaut you picked up from (ersatz) Mir to fix the engines by hitting them with a hammer, fly off the asteroid, get Bruce Willis to blow himself up, magically make the two halves of the asteroid that have been magically blown apart magically miss the Earth, land the super-secret military space shuttle, and get Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler to marry eachother.

This is as plausible a means of deflecting asteroids with current technology as some of the things already mentioned here. :rofl:

there should be an asteroid-killing mega-thread somewhere

I agree.

Nuke ablation is better understood and takes much less time.

And much less mass launched into space.

But what is not well understood is the chemistry and composition of the asteroid, and how it would ablate. We're not sure how a particular asteroid might react.

That's another reason why we need more missions to asteroids...
 
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Ghostrider

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This is as plausible a means of deflecting asteroids with current technology as some of the things already mentioned here. :rofl:

Ok. We'll paint it pink and, should it keep coming our way, we'll threaten to draw a unicorn on it and rename it "Pretty Pink Pony Princess". It will change course to avoid further embarassment.
 

RisingFury

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Nuke ablation is better understood and takes much less time.

And if it splits the asteroid in two, you now have to evacuate two places on Earth. Nuke ablation should be used as a last resort only, when all the other long term plans fail.

Gravitational tractor is the safest option - but it is a long term one. The only thing you need to know about the asteroid is its rough mass, so you can adjust the mass of the spacecraft to do the job.

The bigger question is:
Are there any "last resort" options that don't involve blowing stuff up? In other words, is there anything other than nuke ablation we could resort to?
 

T.Neo

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And if it splits the asteroid in two, you now have to evacuate two places on Earth. Nuke ablation should be used as a last resort only, when all the other long term plans fail.

:beathead:

Yes. Because the objective is always to split the object in two. :facepalm:

You see, this is where films like Armageddon give the nuke approach a bad rap, because "nuke" is automatically taken to mean "lulz just blow it up".

If the object does split in two (which could be highly unlikely), one or both fragments could miss the Earth entirely. There is no saying that they would both impact the Earth.

One of the "failure modes" of such an attempt would be spallation, but that doesn't mean "split in two" or "gigantic Earth-shattering shotgun lulz". If anything, if the spalled objects are fast enough, they'll be more likely to miss the Earth entirely.

Gravitational tractor is the safest option - but it is a long term one. The only thing you need to know about the asteroid is its rough mass, so you can adjust the mass of the spacecraft to do the job.

It may be the safest, but it is definitely one of the most technologically demanding, inflexible and logistically-challenged approaches.

Simply put, placing a 200 ton spacecraft to escape velocity on demand is not easy.

A Controlled Ablation Through Energy Pulse (CATEP, descriptive and more politically correct than "nuke it") mission could fit on a single Ariane 5 or Atlas V 551 launch. You could even launch multiple devices on a single mission, or launch redundant missions on multiple launchers.

The launch vehicles exist, the spacecraft technology exists, the ablation tools exist. The only thing that doesn't exist is the extensive knowledge of the objects themselves.

Are there any "last resort" options that don't involve blowing stuff up? In other words, is there anything other than nuke ablation we could resort to?

Nuke ablation is not "blowing stuff up". Nobody is seriously suggesting that (other than Micheal Bay, perhaps).

There is kinetic impact, but it will deliver less energy per kilogram (might be better for smaller objects though).

Solar ablation, altering the outcome of the yarkovsky effect on the object, and solar sails would likely be worse off than a gravity tug, mass and practicality wise.

Mass drivers would require a considerably large "mass driver infrastructure" to be placed on the object.

Laser ablation would likely come off worse from a practicality standpoint than nuke ablation.

Cometary aerobraking requires nuclear devices anyway and uses them with less flexibility.
 

fsci123

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The best solution in my dumb mind for dealing with such a threat involves sending a nuke to the asteroid and detonating it a few miles away so the light will vaporize part of the rock so it can miss earth. But alas it only works if it is solid
 

n122vu

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Here's a twist. With all the research going into studies to deflect asteroids away from the Earth, I wonder if any nations are considering how equally easy/hard it would be to deflect an asteroid's trajectory toward the Earth? Would be easy to disguise such a mission as a research effort, I believe.

If a nation were in a position to do so, it would make a hell of a bargaining chip. Talk about a weapon of mass destruction. The thought is rather concerning if you give it any credit at all. I hope no nation would consider that, but the possibility exists, however low the chances of success.

Just a random thought.
 

T.Neo

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Here's a twist. With all the research going into studies to deflect asteroids away from the Earth, I wonder if any nations are considering how equally easy/hard it would be to deflect an asteroid's trajectory toward the Earth? Would be easy to disguise such a mission as a research effort, I believe.

I don't think asteroids would make good WMDs. They'd likely either be inaccurate enough to not be targeted properly at your enemy, or they are powerful enough to be so damaging as to hurt you and your enemy equally.

I don't really think it is that easy to deflect an asteroid into the Earth's path. Deflecting it away from the Earth only requires a minor push, so the discussion isn't really about "steering asteroids around the solar system". Maybe if the object was already on a close encounter with the Earth (such as 2005 YU55).

Of course, any mission to deflect an asteroid as part of a scientific excersise would be closely monitored by the international scientific community. It likely wouldn't be something that could be done surreptitiously.
 

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Yeah, the good old reflex. If we don't like it, we should nuke it.

Wouldn't it be much more effective to tie a bagpiper to it. The deflective forces of bag pipes are well-documented and among the strongest repulsive forces in the universe.
 

n122vu

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I don't think asteroids would make good WMDs. They'd likely either be inaccurate enough to not be targeted properly at your enemy, or they are powerful enough to be so damaging as to hurt you and your enemy equally.

I don't really think it is that easy to deflect an asteroid into the Earth's path. Deflecting it away from the Earth only requires a minor push, so the discussion isn't really about "steering asteroids around the solar system". Maybe if the object was already on a close encounter with the Earth (such as 2005 YU55).

Of course, any mission to deflect an asteroid as part of a scientific excersise would be closely monitored by the international scientific community. It likely wouldn't be something that could be done surreptitiously.

Exactly. Total destruction would be the intended result. Premise being, "If you don't bow to our demands, we will deflect the asteroid toward Earth and we all will die."

Idea would be centered around deflecting an asteroid that is already passing close to Earth. 2005 YU55 encounter was what I had in mind.

And of course this monitoring by the scientific community is one possible mitigation of the risk of such an operation being planned.

Sorry if this pulled things a bit off-topic. Didn't really want to get into in-depth discussion on this point, just wanted to throw it out there as a related thought that I didn't feel was worthy of its own thread.
 

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:beathead:

Yes. Because the objective is always to split the object in two. :facepalm:


It's not the intention to split it into bits - that would be a highly undesirable result, but it could happen. Just like the cores of certain comes, some asteroids are loosely gravitationally bound chunks. These things went through some serious collisions themselves and any strain on them could split them apart.

Nuke ablation would provide enough energy to do just that.
 

T.Neo

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Nuke ablation would provide enough energy to do just that.

It isn't only about applying energy, but how that energy is applied (and also other 'secondary' factors- interaction with fragments).

A salvo of less intensive detonations might be preferable to a single more intensive detonation for this reason.

Also, you can't say that it would cause the object to disentegrate, and neither can I. There simply isn't enough knowledge about the matter to say so, and it is very likely to be context sensitive.

Perhaps one way of studying the propensity of bolides to disintegrate when imparted with force, would be to study historical impact events on the object and their effects on the object.

Of course, the intended effect is still achieved even if the fragments separate, as long as enough dV is imparted to them. But there might be reasons that could make it an unwanted scenario.

A more 'common' issue might be particles or smaller fragments 'rebounding' off the object during/after ablation.
 
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T.Neo

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So, more like an Orion drive?

Essentially it would be a form of nuclear pulse propulsion. But I think Orion didn't actually intend to ablate away the pusher plate, just use it to direct plasma from the detonation.

Orion was also supposed to use "shaped charge" nuclear devices to direct the plasma at the pusher plate.
 
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