Posted on 12/15/2016 11:08:50 AM PST by billorites
Exactly!
Seems reasonable.
Funniest line in the whole movie:
“What’s going on Harry... NASA find oil on Uranus?”
I would think that there is no consequence of nuking it that is worse than NOT nuking it.
What do you think they’ve been doing with the $10Trillion obama spent?
I'm not a physicist, so maybe space behaves differently than I think, but I would have a pessimistic attitude toward deflection in general.
On earth, a big explosion pushes earth and debris and air molecules -- and these all push more earth and debris and air molecules. We've all seen blast waves from nukes and whatnot. You can knock down a building a mile from the blast site.
In space, there is no dirt, no debris, and no air molecules. I don't know how much "pushing" can be affected in a vacuum.
If the explosion takes place on the surface of the asteroid, I think Newton's Second Law would move it significantly. That would be good. But, if the explosion takes place "nearby" I would worry that it might have almost no effect.
So instead of a world killer or continent killer we get a gaggle of city or town killers, unless the nuke is sufficient to vaporize it completely.
At least one - Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean.
“What could possibly go wrong? “
I don’t know....
a giant EMP hitting half the planet?
Thousands of radioactive micro asteroids?
The screams from the environmentalists?
On the other hand, there might be a fantastic light show
Me too, but it's a "pick your poison" option - either lose your electronics, or become a giant hole in the ground.
Surest way to stop an asteroid strike would be to just land a few bureaucrats on it and let their inertia change it’s orbit.
I would trust this more if it came from Billy Bob Thornton
I suggest launching Michelle Obama’s big butt at it
I suggest launching Michelle Obama’s big butt at it
Actually, there's quite a lot of it, and we can make more if we need to.
So let's say you pop off your nuke 'near', but not in contact with your target asteroid. You are right that there will be no atmospheric blast wave, on account of there being no atmosphere. You will, however, bombard your target asteroid with three things:
1) The vaporized remains of your spacecraft
2) a bunch of alpha, beta and neutron particle 'radiation'
3) A huge amount of electromagnetic radiation from gamma rays out to microwaves.
I'll concentrate on (3): Your target asteroid will absorb a lot of that energy. You'll blast into vapor any dust and debris on the surface, as well as some not insignificant depth of the 'solid' surface itself. The vapor will depart company with the asteroid at high velocity, and Newton will have his way. What you DON'T want to do is explode your nuke inside the asteroid, and blow chunks in all directions.
The explosion would likely have to be well outside the Van Allen belt which would deflect or absorb even the largest man-made EMP with ease.
For Pete’s sake.
Let’s send Bruce Willis and an oil rig crew instead,
The only concern I have is that the nuclear armed missiles would need to already be in Lagrange Point orbits. Launching from the surface of the Earth would require too much time to reach an asteroid on short notice. Incredible boosters to reach escape velocity but much smaller boosters if already in Earth-Moon stable Lagrange orbits. Having nukes in such orbits would be tough to maintain and be sure they were in working order, possibly requiring a manned space station with maintenance personnel.
These warheads would also need to be absolutely huge yields compared to anything ever contemplated for use against Earthbound enemies. Hundreds of megatons is not really that much energy when compared to the mass of a dinosaur killer sized asteroid.
“That cartoon thinking, a nuke wouldn’t do jack, NASA needs to be defunded.”
Agree. Nukes destroy by creating an enormous pressure wave. The wave needs to be propagated in something. A space explosion would need to be inside the asteroid or strategically placed and then only a fraction of the force would go through the asteroid.
Add plastic or other materials to absorb the bombs energy and produce a shock wave. Detonate at enough distance to give enough shove without breaking it up.
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