[Red Badger]

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

[Red Badger]

Catastrophism Ping!...................

[BitWielder1]

I certainly hope that when the day comes we HAVE to use a nuke to protect ourselves, we have the brass, and the nukes, to do so.
When we are about to be smashed to smithereens is not the time to play "green".

[cork]

Better call A.J., Chick, Bear and Rockhound.

[JRandomFreeper]

What could possibly go wrong?.

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

/johnny

[Ancesthntr]

I sure hope that we do just that - with plenty of overkill. When a civilization-destroying object is headed toward the Earth, it isn’t time for half-measures.

[2ndDivisionVet]

The same government who let “China” read our personnel files for a year, who couldn’t protect a US Ambassador, doesn’t have enough amphibious ships for the Marine Corps, couldn’t set-up a simple website, lost guns in Mexico and forfeited the Middle East? Well, I’ll sleep better tonight.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Even the “relatively small” Chelyabinsk rock was equivalent to 20-30 Hiroshima bombs. It would have caused a lot more devastation had it not exploded high above the ground.

[Ouchthatonehurt]

What in the world does this have to do with making Muslims feel better about themselves?

[BitWielder1]

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

1. The nuke is a dud.
2. It blows up at the wrong place or wrong time.

Yea I know, someone will worry about terrorism or the environment, but to paraphrase a certain famous person:
"What difference, at that point, will it make?"

[Organic Panic]

Environmentalists would complain if a nuke was successful in deflecting an asteroid.

[RayChuang88]

We’re not talking an over 50 kT nuclear warhead like the W80 warhead on our cruise missiles. A 15-20 kT warhead is enough to “nudge” the trajectory of the asteroid to a different orbit if you drop a soft lander with the warhead on the asteroid and then detonate the bomb.

[TexasCajun]

Send in the Armageddon Team:

[TangibleDisgust]

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?

[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..."

[telstar12.5]

WHY BOTHER?

[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.

[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.