Manicouagan Crater in Quebec seen from the Space Shuttle.
Posted on 02/20/2016 9:05:26 PM PST by Celerity
“I don’t understand how something not that big causes so much damage.”
The speed is simply UNIMAGINABLE. Tornadoes drive straw into trees, and their top speed is 300 MPH. This rock is coming in at 25,000 MPH.
And 40 meters may not sound big, but try lifting a rock that is just 1 meter - it’s something like 5,000 lbs. This rock is more like 160,000 tons...it’s pretty damn massive and will make one HUGE splash if it hits in the ocean.
I think a 30M "and" would result in a Big *BANG*...
It has been on space weather.com for a few weeks. .o44 lunar distance is roughly 10000 miles. I wonder what the margin of error is..... 11000 miles? 60% chance it will hit water if it hits.
It’s kind of unsettling to think that a fairly small inert object like a rock can cause an explosion bigger than a nuclear bomb simply because it has enough speed behind it isn’t it?
You can’t get more low-tech than throwing rocks.
oh boy.
“F=Ma”
Yeah, F=UrMa buddy.
A kinetic bombardment or a kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert projectile, where the destructive force comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high velocities. The concept originated during the Cold War.
The typical depiction of the tactic is of a satellite containing a magazine of tungsten rods and a directional thrust system. When a strike is ordered, the satellite would brake[1] one of the rods out of its orbit and into a suborbital trajectory that intersects the target. The rod picks up speed as it approaches periapsis and the target due to gravity, picking up immense speed until it begins decelerating in the atmosphere and reaches terminal velocity shortly before impact. The rods would typically be shaped to minimize air resistance and maximize terminal velocity. In science fiction, the weapon is often depicted as being launched from a spaceship, instead of a satellite.
Kinetic bombardment has the advantage of being able to deliver projectiles from a very high angle at a very high speed, making them extremely difficult to defend against. In addition, projectiles would not require explosive warheads, and—in the simplest designs—would consist entirely of solid metal rods, giving rise to the common nickname “Rods from God”. Disadvantages include the technical difficulties of ensuring accuracy and the prohibitively high costs of positioning ammunition in orbit.
The Outer Space Treaty prohibits weapons of mass destruction in orbit or outer space. However, the Outer Space Treaty only prohibits nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Since the most common form of kinetic ammunition is inert tungsten rods, in most cases, kinetic bombardment remains legal.
F=MA
Found an article from 2013 with some asteroid a bit bigger at 45 meters - they said 118 Hiroshima bomb equivilant. Or something like 8 modern-day “typical” ballistic nukes.
excerpt:
“Sadly, none of this means cities are safe against these beasts. Airbursts can be dangerous too, depending on the size of the object. On June 30, 1908, a stony asteroid just a bit bigger than the one about to pass Earth exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, in Siberia, Russia. There was no city near the explosion site—which happened at about 5 to 10 kilometers above the surface—but the airburst obliterated an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles (2,150 square kilometers).
In 2011, the estimated population of New York City were about 8.2 million people living over an area of about 302 square miles (783.8 square kilometers). You do the math.”
So what do you suppose did more damage. The crater shown here or the cyclone shown here? Note, they have not gotten to the outer villages where the people live in thatch huts.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/20/us/tropical-cyclone-winston-fiji/
I lived in Fiji from ‘67 to ‘70 when my father was station manager for Pan Am. I know the types of housing out there and pray that those and those I know are safe.
Just looked it up - we have satellites at 22,000 miles!
I better get the VCR hooked up and tape some shows to last me awhile!
If only some great author like Robert Heinlein had written a book about that idea.
“You can’t get more low-tech than throwing rocks.”See Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for his fascinating application of "throwing rocks" at earth.
Yah, but if it hit you in the nads............
Which one? I read a lot of Heinlein books in the ‘70s but don’t remember that. The Green Hills of Earth was one of my favorites.
I guess that answers my question. And it is one Heinlein book I didn’t read.
Manicouagan Crater in Quebec seen from the Space Shuttle.
Just a reminder that .1 lunar distance is about 24,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. Close but no cigar. Then again, maybe what soldiers used to say about incoming artillery fire could also apply to meteors and asteroids. You won’t hear (see) the one that will get you.
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