What an Asteroid actually should do.

[Vanamonde]

Please leave the subject of Russian dash cams for another time, and return to discussing asteroids. Thank you.

[Whackjob]

Class "E" is supposedly 18 to 30 meters in diameter. So the Chelyabinsk meteor is in that size class, roughly.

Thankfully we don't have any "planet killers" in KSP.

I would like to see a potatoroid the size of Texas. And then land it on Kerbin somewhere.

Powered landing.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I would like to see a potatoroid the size of Texas. And then land it on Kerbin somewhere.

Powered landing.

I just looked that up.

From El Paso to Louisiana it is almost 1000km which means 1.000.000, right? (Sorry it is almost 2am here )

Kerbins Diameter is only 1.200.000m.

Source:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Map_of_Texas_NA.png

Edited April 5, 2014 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[magnemoe]

The one takeaway from that video is that russians are made of friggin steel. Seriously. They remain so calm whilst observing what very well could be PLANETARY ANNIHILATION. I wouldn't be confident that wasn't going to happen seeing such a streak coming on anyway.

Then again, maybe it's just too unexpected and strange to provoke any kind of reaction quickly

Well if it was planetary annihilation you could just as well stay cool, however it could just as well been an megaton blast like the one in Russia 100 years ago and in that case it would be smart to duck and cower (yes it actually helps if you are some kilometers away and you get hurricane style winds.)

[Kerbart]

Depends on what they're made of. I've heard that a Class E weighs in at about 3000 (presumably metric) tons, with a radius of about 12 meters, so they're less dense than wood.

That makes sense. Aren't they made out of cheese after all?

[vger]

Well what would you call it? Keeping in mind that planetoids themselves are in fact asteroids...

How many asteroids do you know of that have lava flowing on their surface?

[Ascension Islander]

Don't forget, guys and gals, that since the Kerbol system is 1/10th the size of the Sol system, all of the orbital velocities are much smaller. Deorbiting a 'roid from the edge of kerbin SOI will result in hitting the atmosphere at ~3.4km/s, versus Earth's ~11km/s.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Don't forget, guys and gals, that since the Kerbol system is 1/10th the size of the Sol system, all of the orbital velocities are much smaller. Deorbiting a 'roid from the edge of kerbin SOI will result in hitting the atmosphere at ~3.4km/s, versus Earth's ~11km/s.

Exactly, but this Thread is not about realism on this matter but about the educational purpose of an asteroid blowing up in atmosphere while your ship was still attached to it

[ArmchairGravy]

Here's the info from Wikipedia on the Chicxulub impactor (the dinosaur killer):

"The impactor had an estimated diameter of 10 km (6.2 mi) and delivered an estimated energy equivalent of 100 teratons of TNT (4.2×1023 J).[20] By contrast, the most powerful man-made explosive device ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, had a yield of only 50 megatons of TNT (2.1×1017 J),[21] making the Chicxulub impact 2 million times more powerful. Even the most energetic known volcanic eruption, which released an estimated energy equivalent of approximately 240 gigatons of TNT (1.0×1021 J) and created the La Garita Caldera,[22] delivered only 0.24% of the energy of the Chicxulub impact."

So, yeah, go NASA!

[problemecium]

Well let's keep our fingers crossed nobody in NASA's upper management decides to do a Jeb and insist we redirect a 10km-wide asteroid xD

[Ascension Islander]

Exactly, but this Thread is not about realism on this matter but about the educational purpose of an asteroid blowing up in atmosphere while your ship was still attached to it

We were comparing KSP asteroid impacts to the Chelyabinsk meteor. I was pointing out why this wasn't a fair comparison.

[magnemoe]

Well let's keep our fingers crossed nobody in NASA's upper management decides to do a Jeb and insist we redirect a 10km-wide asteroid xD

As in aerobrake it into low orbit? it what an good idea?

[NERVAfan]

I just looked that up.

From El Paso to Louisiana it is almost 1000km which means 1.000.000, right? (Sorry it is almost 2am here )

Kerbins Diameter is only 1.200.000m.

Actually, Texas is even bigger than that. Google Maps gives me 844.6 miles from El Paso to Sabine Pass, which is 1351 km.

EDIT: I believe "the size of Texas" is a reference to the movie 'Armageddon'. Even in our non-scaled-down solar system there are no asteroids that big. Ceres is 900-something km.

On the other hand if you interpret "the size of Texas" as surface area, then ... Texas is a bit less than 700,000 square kilometers, so you get something like 234 km radius, 468 km diameter (bigger than Eeloo, smaller than Moho ... or, in real-world terms, smaller than Vesta and a bit bigger than the next smallest-by-radius asteroid, Hygeia).

Edited April 6, 2014 by NERVAfan