NASA May Use Nukes To Defend Earth From Asteroids

Popular Science ^ | 06-22-2015 | By Sarah Fecht

[Talisker]

What could possibly go wrong?..............................

Especially since we've dedicated NASA to Muslim outreach and use Russian boosters.

"Okay Mohammed, just strap that nuke into the Russky rocket and we'll fire this sucker off at the asteroid... hey wait a minute, this isn't aimed at the asteroid..."

[Blueflag]

Light a firecracker on your hand, you burn your hand. Close your fingers and your wife will be opening your ketchup bottles for the rest of your life.

Need to send up a massive ordinance penetrator armed with a substantial nuke.

[Red Badger]

Nah, why waste a good nuke.......................

[telstar12.5]

WHY BOTHER?

[BenLurkin]

I’d settle for a six meter wide asteroid on Mecca.

[TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed]

You cannot destroy an object that is seven (7) times the size of the Earth.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Planet7X

[Balding_Eagle]

Is this the same NASA that used ‘global warming preventing’ O rings on the Challenger?

The one that blew up because the O rings failed?

[JimRed]

If a larger rock were headed for Earth, how would we defend ourselves??

We'd have to see it first. We have technological stuff looking all over the place but somehow missed that 60 foot rock over Russia. A bigger one coming in from one of the pole ends of Earth might go unnoticed until too late.

[JimRed]

Turning a few small rocks into a bunch of little bitty rocks. ;)

Didn't they used to call that "imprisoned at hard labor"?

[Red Badger]

The same NASA that doomed the Columbia Crew to their deaths by substituting an ‘environmentally friendly’ adhesive for the ceramic tiles instead of the one they had been using for years................

[JimRed]

...A bigger one coming in from one of the pole ends of Earth might go unnoticed until too late.

Reading my own sentence, I realized that I've forgotten our lookouts are not only Earth bound. I assume some satellite or other is watching the pole approaches.

[Balding_Eagle]

The tiles, not the O rings.

Thanks for the correction, mine didn’t seem right even as I was posting it.

[SampleMan]

hypothetically speaking... if a 60m asteroid was on target to impact directly on mecca tomorrow and we had a nuke that could vaporize it before impact, should we?

I think that vaporizing it, before the asteroid strike, would just be overkill. But each to his own.

[TangibleDisgust]

I think that vaporizing it, before the asteroid strike, would just be overkill. But each to his own.

[I want the USA back]

Dumb idea. There would be millions of little pieces of it heading towards unpredicted locations. (And some heading out to space.)

[Nowhere Man]

I remember in one of my old 1970’s era computer books, “David Ahl’s BASIC Computer Games,” you had the simulation where a UFO or asteroid was going to hit the Earth and you had to control the equivalent of a Nike/Hercules missile to intercept it. Good illustration of orbital mechanics.

[Hulka]

And Stamper. . .

[Disambiguator]

Nuke it in orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

[i_robot73]

You forgot:

And whose Agency profile is now ‘Muslim outreach’

Yep, sleep REAL well now

[MrEdd]

3. The biggest thermonuclear device we can deliver turns out to be vastly insufficient to change the objects course.

As it would have been with that Texas sized asteroid that had all the catastrophists in a dither back in the nineties.

Either God is in control, or he is not.