Okay, Rusty, so it’s a colosal game of ping pong, but consider the alternative.
Every other “solution” involves intricate tricks of trying hook the asteroid, deflect it with nonexistent rockets, ion drives, nuke drives, solar sails, etc, etc, etc.
They pretend those are solutions - but NONE have been tested, nor sent into space on intercept missions.
NONE of those magic devices exist: NONE are designed, built, tested, rigged up, attached to missiles, or even of a SIZE that can be attached to rockets.
NOBODY has actually come up with a tested design to hook onto a spinning irregular mass only slightly smaller than a good sized hill EXACTLY on its center of gravity and on its axis of rotation and “pull” with some nonexistent mount, eyebolt, and pivot: all by remote control of course, and from a mission that far exceeds ANY previous manned flight.
But the same people who can’t pull a mountain in space away from its course denigrate through elaborate theories disposing of the residue of a simple H-bomb blast - that will have pulverized much/some/all of the original rock.
The problem is that these same research simply hate the idea of blowing nuclear bombs in space to protect the earth - so they are forced to come up with theorectical problems.