Posted on 06/22/2015 12:28:27 PM PDT by Red Badger
Illustration Of A Planetoid Crashing Into Earth
In 2013, a 60-foot-wide meteor exploded over Russia, and no one saw it coming. The Chelyabinsk impactor was relatively small by interplanetary standards, but the blast injured about 1,500 people and damaged 7,000 buildings. If a larger rock were headed for Earth, how would we defend ourselves? The short answer is, scientists arent really sure, but one solution sounds a lot like the plot from a 1998 Michael Bay movie: just nuke em.
In hopes of averting a space rock calamity, The New York Times reports that NASA has just sealed a deal with the National Nuclear Security Administrationa branch of the Department of Energy thats responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.
Both branches have been independently researching how to use nukes to deflect comets, asteroids and meteors; the new partnership should make it easier for the rocket specialists and nuclear specialists to pool their knowledge. The plan is to characterize potential threats and find ways to deflect them on short notice.
Of particular interest are medium-sized asteroids and comets between 164 and 492 feet in diameter. Large dinosaur killers have been pretty well mapped and dont pose a threat to Earth in the foreseeable future, while small rocks dont cause catastrophic damage.
Computer simulations suggest that we could successfully blow up a medium-sized space rock. However, the resulting rock fragments could potentially make the situation worse, depending on how far the asteroid is from Earth when it explodes. A better solution might be to use the bomb to deflect the asteroid instead of blowing it to smithereens.
Other (non-nuclear) proposals include gravity tractors, using sunlight to boil off parts of the Near Earth Object, and using lasers or high-speed spacecraft to nudge the object off of its collision course with Earth. However, a 2007 NASA study indicated that nuclear solutions may be the best weapon weve got when it comes to fighting killer space rocks.
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..."
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.
Nah, why waste a good nuke.......................
WHY BOTHER?
I’d settle for a six meter wide asteroid on Mecca.
You cannot destroy an object that is seven (7) times the size of the Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Planet7X
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?
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.
Didn't they used to call that "imprisoned at hard labor"?
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................
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.
The tiles, not the O rings.
Thanks for the correction, mine didn’t seem right even as I was posting it.
I think that vaporizing it, before the asteroid strike, would just be overkill. But each to his own.
Dumb idea. There would be millions of little pieces of it heading towards unpredicted locations. (And some heading out to space.)
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.
And Stamper. . .
Nuke it in orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
You forgot:
And whose Agency profile is now ‘Muslim outreach’
Yep, sleep REAL well now
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.
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