In the current level of technology, what would stop a impact event?

[ReptilianGameplays]

I was watchin' some of Danny's videos then in one of them, S.A. Kirrim stops Gilly from impactin' on Kerbin.

So I've thought:

In real life, what could stop a impact of such?

Share your thoughts.

[lajoswinkler]

Nothing...

[OtherDalfite]

My first bet would be using nuclear blasts to either split the rock or to throw it off course. I've heard a theory (possibly fact) that if you pained the sun facing side white, it would push itself away, but I still think nuclear blasts are cheaper and more effective. It depends on how much risk the Earth is thrown into.

[BostLabs]

I think with our current technology we would be stretched pretty thin.

Our Nuclear weapons don't have a delivery system that could reach such a target. Given enough time we could probably cobble something together to get Nukes to an intersect. It would probably take a lot of those puppies though.

Our laser weapons are no match for something like this.

A huge solar sail (if we could build it that big, get it there and deploy it) would not only have to deal with the velocity of the object but it would have to deal with the tumble of the object as well. Dicey at best.

Heck, what am I going on about? All we really need is Chuck Norris.

[Awaras]

It all depends on how much time we have to work with. If we were to detect an asteroid that we know is going to hit the earth in 30 years time, than there would be time to plan a mission to divert it. Over such a long period of time even a tiny change of course might be enough to make it miss the Earth. It might be enough just to fly a ship close to the asteroid and let the ship's gravity alter the asteroid's course a tiny bit.

If we find an asteroid that is going to hit us in a few days/months time, there is probably not much we can do about it... :/

[magnemoe]

Easiest way would be to set off an series of nukes some distance from the asteroid, main effect would be that one side would heated a lot and the outgassing would generate trust. Another possibility had been to use something like an orin nuclear drive bomb, this has an cone of tungsten I think who would be vaporized and both give heating and an push in itself.

Main benefit of this method is that you don't need to match speed, just come at an suitable distance and side of the asteroid. As you would use multiple charges it has an good redundancy, an modified deep space probe should work.

Downsides the probe+bomb would not be very heavy, you could probably just replace the science instruments with the bomb but you would need an number of them.

While the shocks should not break up the asteroid even if its pretty much an rubble pile, it would kick up plenty of dust who the next bomb might hit so you have to armor it like the probes who passed trough an comet tail.

[Orree]

I was watchin' some of Danny's videos then in one of them, S.A. Kirrim stops Gilly from impactin' on Kerbin.

So I've thought:

In real life, what could stop a impact of such?

Share your thoughts.

There is actualy asteroid heading to Earth right now called 99942 Apophis due to hit earth in 2036.

I suggest you watch this -

If that gets you interested I suggest you watch anything you can about what Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say.

He is most awesome astrophysicist in the world.

[ThirdHorseman]

You don't want to blow it to pieces. You then have lots of big chunks smashing into you which doesn't help any. As was said, the best method is to detect it early enough and use simple current-gen chemical engines to slightly alter its course over time. And as was also said, this entails you detecting it early enough and given the current NEA detection budget, and the fact that several large asteroids gave us surprises lately, we would have to get very lucky.

Perhaps you should re-define your original question. Are you talking about having a few years advance notice, such as "We have analyzed asteroid 238843's trajectory and there is a 95% chance it will hit us in 5 years", or "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?? IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!! OMGOMGBBQ!!!11!"

And what size are you talking? Couple hundred tons? Moon size?

[Anton P. Nym]

If we had a few years of warning we could do something, though I don't know if it'd be enough. It'd break a lot of international law, though, so the consequences would have to be pretty dire (more than just losing a city) to even try.

The ORION nuclear pulse drive is buildable with today's technology, unless there are show stoppers lurking beyond the point research was ended back in the '60s. A craft with ol' Bang-Bang on it could get to an asteroid in pretty much any conceivable orbit.

If the impactor is a nickle-iron rock, then you could use versions of the ORION propulsion charges to divert it. If it's a more fragile rock or a comet, I guess we could put something like VASIMR on the craft as a secondary drive and use it as a gravity tractor.

If we had enough advanced warning, I saw one proposal to send paintballs up to hit the impactor on its sunward side to change the rock's albedo and use the additional momentum transfer from the light reflection to divert it. I don't think that has any show-stoppers either, but it relies on having more warning because the diversion itself would take years to happen.

-- Steve

[running]

Maybe it's better to look at how to change our own trajactory and do some climate modding at the same time.

(Just rying to not follow the obvious path.)

[MBobrik]

what would stop an asteroid ? it depends much on the dV needed, mass of the asteroid, and the time we've left. Most efficient of course would be nuclear pulse propulsion applied to the asteroid. Aka "keep clobbering it till it moves out of the way" It is pretty much the most powerful thing we've got, we've got already more of the 'propulsion units' than we need, the only part that is not tested yet is how to find the optimal detonation distance that maximizes thrust w/o breaking the asteroid apart. But this is more or less irrelevant because we've got a lot of nukes so we can be quite conservative here ( and in the case that the asteroid is so big/fast/near that we will need most of them, no other method will be efficient, so we would have to do it anyway ).

.

The only tricky part is, whether our species would actually have the resolve to use them ( or to do anything at all ).

[SargeRho]

The answer is as for damn near everything: Lasers.

[Kryten]

There is actualy asteroid heading to Earth right now called 99942 Apophis due to hit earth in 2036.

No it isn't. Even the initial estimate was 3% to impact, and it only went down from there.

[vetrox]

To push the boat out a little bit. Depending on our level of rocketry and the state of debris in our orbit> Maybe we could put some sort of object in orbit around the sun and time it to collide with the asteroid?

Depending on what the object is and all the reletivve speeds the asteroid and object are doing then maybe a collision far enough away from us would cause the asteroid to miss us completley?

If say the asteroid collided with our asteroid moving object near the edge of our system then maybe it would force the asteroid somewhere cool like jupiter.

My physics is pretty poor but it seems like something that is do able. Hell, a 1 ton object impacting it at a bajillion m/s has got to do something. Isnt there a mission planned somewhere to measure the affects of a small impact on an asteroid? Would save us sending heeps of nukes through a debris ridden orbit. Can you imagine the fallout that could be caused by multiple nukes being detonated in low orbit?

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quijote_(space_probe) Answered my own question

Edited September 26, 2013 by vetrox

[czokletmuss]

It depends.

If we can predict the collision 30-40 years before it happens, there are plenty of solutions, the easiest being to spray white paint on its surface and let the Yarkovsky effect take care of it. It's doable in 5 years, including building the probe, sending it to the asteroid and painting it.

If we're talkin about a just discovered comet coming for the first time from the Oort cloud in retrograde with 50.000 km/h velocity, there's probably nothing we can do but die

[Vaebn]

Just nuke it 'till it goes away

Orion thingies having already been mentioned, I'd like to note that you wouldn't actually need a properly build orion engine, with a pusher plate and stuff. The asteroid would be the "pusher plate". So basically you'd just have to lob nukes at it one after the other.

I suppose either some sort of standardized, cheap, booster section for existing ICBMs would have to be quickly made and mass produced, or bigger rockets carrying many warheads at once, and releasing and spacing them out with tiny rockets of their own, before impact. Preferably both.

[lajoswinkler]

The best chance we have is early detection and pushing it away using passive methods (radiation pressure) if it's applicable, and chances high are it won't be.

Blasting it into pieces or blasting it sideways won't work.

Face it, if there's a few kilometre wide killer lump of rocks coming our way, we should start making shelters.

Subkilometre asteroids would destroy a whole country the size of France, but would not present an ELE.

Edited September 26, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Knowing how country's reacted to being threatened in the past...

Nukes

[lajoswinkler]

And what would the nuke do? Nothing. Kinetic energy of an asteroid is enormous compared to our whole arsenal on the entire planet. Calculations are a piece of cake.

Stupid movies have taught us that humanity can deal with these threats "if we try very hard". Truth is that we're powerless against a dinosaur killer which would certainly wipe our civilization from Earth.

If there was a smaller lump going our way, bombing the **** out of one side might deflect its orbit enough, but it's impossible to determine what would happen after the closest encounter with Earth. It might just be postponing the impact.

It would be fun if it hit the Moon. The luminosity would be just incredible, but the debris would form a temporary (probably few thousands of years before decay) ring which would be in the way of colonizing our satellite.

[magnemoe]

You don't want to blow it to pieces. You then have lots of big chunks smashing into you which doesn't help any. As was said, the best method is to detect it early enough and use simple current-gen chemical engines to slightly alter its course over time. And as was also said, this entails you detecting it early enough and given the current NEA detection budget, and the fact that several large asteroids gave us surprises lately, we would have to get very lucky.

Perhaps you should re-define your original question. Are you talking about having a few years advance notice, such as "We have analyzed asteroid 238843's trajectory and there is a 95% chance it will hit us in 5 years", or "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?? IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!! OMGOMGBBQ!!!11!"

And what size are you talking? Couple hundred tons? Moon size?

Never talked about blowing it to pieces, mostly heating it and let the out gassing do the trust. An atomic bomb going off in vacuum would just give off heat, radiation and the charged particles from the bomb and delivery system, this would heat up the side closest to the bomb, heat it to it gloves and it will be plenty of outgassing who result in trust.

Wondered if an orion drive bomb charge would work however it would be more violent as more particles would hit, the benefit of the heating is that its trust over time.

For an asteroid to be an serious threat it would had to be one kilometer or larger, anything of 100 meter or smaller tend to break up in the atmosphere generating an air burst and as 70% of earth is water where it would be no danger, one kilometer and you probably get an tsunami if it hit the ocean.

[MBobrik]

And what would the nuke do? Nothing. Kinetic energy of an asteroid is enormous compared to our whole arsenal on the entire planet. Calculations are a piece of cake.

.

you are talking like we had to stop it completely. In fact we have to change its trajectory only by a very small fraction of % to make it miss. For example dV needed to make an asteroid that is 10 years away miss is approximately 0.02 m/s

[lajoswinkler]

.

you are talking like we had to stop it completely. In fact we have to change its trajectory only by a very small fraction of % to make it miss. For example dV needed to make an asteroid that is 10 years away miss is approximately 0.02 m/s

I know - that's why covering a huge surface of it with something that would increase the radiation pressure would be a better choice. It would last longer.

With nuclear bombs only a tiny surface layer would be heated. I suppose we could send one bomb after another, but I'd rather detonate something that would cover it with some kind of paint and let the Sun do most of the work. We would have to do it a long time before impact. If if comes from the direction of Sun, we will not see it until it's too late. That's what happened in Chelyabinsk with a small boulder.

As for the "a smaller one would just disintegrate" thing I often hear in these kinds of discussions, there's Chelyabinsk and Tunguska.

Airburst of a lump the size of Eiffel tower could probably be capable of setting on fire a small country just by heat radiation. The pressure wave would do the rest. Also everything in the path of it travelling through the atmosphere would be charred because of the radiative heat or reentry.

All these effects are no different from a nuclear weapon, except many times greater and without the radioactive fallout.

Huge asteroids don't scare me. You can spot them from great distances before they come near Earth, so you can accept death and enjoy the society as it breaks down.

What scares me are the small ones capable of sneaking up on you and obliberating the area of several Long Angeles cities. If that explodes above me, I hope it will be quick and painless, preferably during sleep.

[DisarmingBaton5]

Planet Destroyer Lite!

[Bacterius]

What scares me are the small ones capable of sneaking up on you and obliberating the area of several Long Angeles cities. If that explodes above me, I hope it will be quick and painless, preferably during sleep.

What, you don't want to see the fireworks? I kinda feel like I'd at least want to watch that before burning up.

[lajoswinkler]

What, you don't want to see the fireworks? I kinda feel like I'd at least want to watch that before burning up.

I think nobody would be able to see the fireworks for more than like a second or so. Everyone close enough to see the body tearing through the atmosphere would be, in the best case, quickly blinded. Others would experience the effects of radiative heating. It's worse than the worst atomic bomb ever. Basically everyone "lucky" enough to see the fireworks would catch on fire, together with trees and wooden houses.

You might wear a suit made of aluminium foil, though... and thick welder's goggles... but then you can also hide in your basement and buy yourself extra minute before your house gets smeared away from the planet when the pressure wave comes.