“What about intercepting an asteroid and destroying it in space before it collides with the earth.”
We no longer possess a rocket with sufficient umph to get out far enough. Also, the thing that makes them so useful for destroying things is the atmosphere. With only vacuum you’d actually have to dig a hole in the asteroid. Then, you’d need a big enough nuke to blow the debris really far away or it would all hit in roughly the same spot anyway. X billion tons of rock hitting in lots of places will be just as bad or worse than the same x billion tons hitting in one spot. (Also, I think Bruce Willis is too old to pull this off. As are all the other “action” stars. So, we have nobody to do it.)
“We no longer possess a rocket with sufficient umph to get out far enough. “
Add more solar panels!
I’ve wondered about that explanation. If you compare one large asteroid vs. a million small ones it seems to me that the small ones would be preferable. As an example, throw a two inch cube of pine into a fireplace and it’ll bounce off the burning logs. Throw a similar weight of pine sawdust into a fireplace and a good bit of it will burn before hitting anything very hard. I think moving the asteroid would obviously be preferable but, failing that, turning it into a million pebbles, each with its own, slightly unique trajectory, might be a decent fallback
What about intercepting an asteroid and destroying it in space before it collides with the earth.”We no longer possess a rocket with sufficient umph to get out far enough.
Build one. Project_Orion