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Preventing an Extinction Level Event


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Hi all,

The kerbals in the tracking station brought to my attention an asteroid designated QTM-779 that is on a collision course with Kerbin.   It is due to hit Kerbin within the next 15 days.

 

42293831790_938889946f_h.jpg 

42293836050_a5fc031590_h.jpg

Is this something I could divert?  Do I have enough time? Do I have sufficient technology?  Biggest rocket engines I have are the RE series (Skipper, Poodle and Mainsail)  Don't have the nuclear engine yet.  Trying to figure out how to intercept it, but all the online tutorials about intercepting asteroids I've found so far talk about intercepting at the periapsis, however, the periapsis is deep within Kerbin!  Can I save the Kerbals from extinction, or do i just sit back and wait for the inevitable?

 

Cheers,

John

 

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The main tech you need is the claw; you use it to grab the asteroid for pushing:

Advanced_Grabbing_Unit_(opened).png

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Advanced_Grabbing_Unit

As long as you've got that, yes, you can definitely divert an asteroid from hitting Kerbin, though as you've realized, you'll need to rendezvous before its periapsis.

  1. Build a spacecraft with a claw, a Poodle, and maybe 3000 m/s delta V, give or take
  2. Attach a launch vehicle that can put it into orbit (i.e., so the 3000 m/s starts once you're in orbit)
  3. Launch it to the same inclination as the asteroid
  4. Target the asteroid
  5. Place a maneuver opposite the asteroid's incoming path
  6. Increase the maneuver's prograde component and watch what happens with the close approach markers
  7. Fiddle with the maneuver; eventually you should be able to put your craft into the asteroid's path just as the asteroid is reaching the same spot; that's your intercept!
  8. Burn
  9. Rendezvous with the asteroid (see various docking tutorials for help, this is its own process)
  10. Open the claw and grab the asteroid
  11. Rotate so you're pointing perpendicular to the asteroid's path
  12. Burn and watch the asteroid's periapsis ascend out of the ground
  13. As soon as it's >70 km, you're done!

Also, spoilers:

Spoiler

Nothing happens in-game if the asteroid hits. But maybe you already know that; it's much more fun to make believe.

EDIT: Further note, 15 days might be a little too long to do this conveniently. It only takes about 7 days to get all the way out to Minmus, which is nearly at the edge of Kerbin's sphere of influence, so if this Kerbin-killer is 15 days out, you might be looking at an intercept outside of Kerbin's SOI, which can be harder to plan. If you wait till it enters Kerbin's SOI, getting the intercept should be a sure thing.

Edited by HebaruSan
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Yeah, if you intercept it out around where minmus is now, you won't even have to push on it very hard to significantly change the Pe. The farther from kerbin that you intercept, the more "leverage" you have to change the orbit.

To intercept it is pretty easy, actually -- just so long as you are pretty good at rendezvous maneuvers. Get your ship out near that incoming orbit. Go into target mode on your navball, and push the retrograde/prograde markers on top of the appropriate target markers. Wait for the asteroid to get close, and then burn retrograde to match the orbital speed. Then you will have plenty of time to grab and push the rock. Even a swivel would be a big enough engine to push it around.

 

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I still screw up my gravity burn when launching so went into some of my astroid mover's fuel on lift off.. stopped in at the Kerbin Fuel Station to top up before heading off to divert a disaster

"We're gonna need a bigger fuel station" :D

44103103031_08849c82a7_b.jpg

 

So, what does everyone do with their used asteroids?  The Kerbals sent this one on an escape trajectory...

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Get yourself a BigS rock!!! I found a Class E that was on a collision course with the North Pole.  I launched an intercept mission and, using a really nifty gravity assist from Mun, managed to place it in an equatorial orbit.  That beast fueled my Duna flotilla and still has plenty left over for my upcoming Jool mission :D

Edited by XtraChrisP
Typo
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36 minutes ago, TanDeeJay said:

I'm tracking a few asteroids in my tracking center. But once you start tracking the object size is replaced with the object name, and I cant remember which one was the big one. How do I find an objects size once I've started tracking it? 

Hover the 'i' icon in the bottom right to bring up an info panel while focused on the asteroid:

4RkuSzk.png

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Worth noting that the 15 T asteroid you captured is only about the size of the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk a couple years ago.  That one was probably 1/10 the size of the one that blew up over Tunguska in 1908 (hard to be sure, the Tunguska one might have had a steeper trajectory and thus penetrated lower in the atmosphere before breaking up).  The Tunguska object, in turn, was likely about 1/10 the size of the one that created Barringer Crater in Arizona -- so we're up to around 1500 T now (the Barringer object, obviously, reached the ground more or less intact, but then fragmented so completely that only a few hundred pounds of identifiable fragments have been found since the discovery of the crater).

An extinction-level event would require something approximately the size of the one that hit Chicxulub (on the coast of modern-day Yucatan) 65 or so million years ago.  Estimates of that object's size (10-15 kilometers) place its mass roundly a million times that of your 15 T asteroid.  You could argue that a smaller object would do the same job on tiny little Kerbin, but you're after something closer to the size of Gilly than any of the asteroids in game.

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5 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

 

An extinction-level event would require something approximately the size of the one that hit Chicxulub (on the coast of modern-day Yucatan) 65 or so million years ago.  Estimates of that object's size (10-15 kilometers) place its mass roundly a million times that of your 15 T asteroid.  You could argue that a smaller object would do the same job on tiny little Kerbin, but you're after something closer to the size of Gilly than any of the asteroids in game.

Yes, you've got to factor in that Kerbin is 1/10 the size of Earth.

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Of course, the Kerbin Independent Scientific Studies community were doubtful of the hyped up televised claims about the devastation potential of the asteroid as their study of the asteroid suggested it was smaller than the fridge in the kitchen at the Kerbal space centre. But unfortunately, no one paid any notice to an organisation with the initials K.I.S.S.

 

Edited by TanDeeJay
Changed Kerbal to kerbin
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