A great example of what the world will be like after (and before too BTW) an astroid strike. Niven and Pournelle have written a classic novel, and well worth the time spent reading it.
You don't need to watch the movie......
Posted on 12/15/2016 11:08:50 AM PST by billorites
Imagine a giant asteroid is hurtling toward the Earth. The killer space rock has managed to avoid detection until a few days or weeks before impact, and our options for saving ourselves are running low. What do we do?
According to some researchers, our best option is to nuke it.
There are tens of thousands of asteroids that could potentially collide with the Earth. NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office is in charge of cataloging all of these potential threats and developing plans to protect ourselves from them. For many of these asteroids, we'd be able to see them coming months or years before they actually impact, and for them, the best option is just to hit the asteroid with something non-nuclear. A small directional impact would divert the asteroid enough to cause it to miss us—assuming we hit it early enough.
But for last-minute asteroid deflection, the only real option is a nuke. This was the conclusion presented by researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last week.
It's not unprecedented for a killer asteroid to sneak up on us. Just a few months ago, astronomers spotted an asteroid just a few hours before it narrowly missed us. It's not out of the question that that could happen again, and next time we might not be so lucky. With only a few hours of warning, we might need to use a nuke.
According to the scientists, nukes are pretty much ideal for asteroid redirection. In addition to the large explosion, nukes release a lot of high-energy radiation, which causes the surface of the asteroid to vaporize. This vapor creates thrust, which further propels the asteroid away from the Earth.
Of course, launching nukes isn't something that NASA can just do, so there are a lot of conversations that need to happen in order to put this plan in motion. But this is a first step toward a nuclear-armed planetary defense force protecting all of us from killer asteroids.
Will Harry S. Stamper please pick up the red courtesy phone, Harry S. Stamper ...
And the number of nuclear weapons which have been exploded in space is...?
This has been my general assumption for 30 years or so.
For one thing, shattering it without sufficiently deflecting the trajectory of the shards.
You don’t need to blow up the whole asteroid. All it needs is just enough explosive force to “nudge” the asteroid to a new orbit to miss the Earth.
The now radioactive shards.
I want the USA to be on the opposite side of the earth when that EMP goes off.
I think this is an agency worried about its mission and its budget.
That cartoon thinking, a nuke wouldn’t do jack, NASA needs to be defunded.
I hear Bruce Willis has experience - he once died doing just that....
Certainly no corrupt administration would ever think of using orbital nukes for any purpose other than asteroid defense, so no need to worry.
A great example of what the world will be like after (and before too BTW) an astroid strike. Niven and Pournelle have written a classic novel, and well worth the time spent reading it.
You don't need to watch the movie......
C’mon, trust them. They’re the government!
But, at least it ensures that all the shards are radioactive.
This whole thing about nuking an asteroid sounds like a side show to strengthen the UN and glowBull governance.
Well Los Alamos agreed and they know a thing or two about nukes.
Several, by the USA and the USSR.
The radiological contamination, if any, would be the very least of our worries.
Some freeper mentioned this in another thread but we should explore living underground in the future. It’s much safer from solar storms and even asteroid impacts.
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