Fighting Fire with Fire
This might actually work:
It sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster. A potentially deadly asteroid is heading for Earth, and scientists mount a mission to intercept it – using another asteroid. But that is exactly what two French researchers propose in a plan to capture and "park" a small asteroid near the Earth for just such emergencies.
But my immediate response is this: if we could divert the course of an asteroid such that we could capture and park it, wouldn't we be able to do something similar with a threatening one? Just send it along its way, perhaps?
Comments
Well, seems to me an advantage of capturing and parking an asteroid is there's no doomsday clock ticking as you set it up...
Posted by: Joshua Macy![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 09:39 AM
The linked article talks about diverting an asteroid by slamming a spacecraft into it. Why do that when you can nuke it? H-bombs have a highly customizable yield. Theoretically we could build bombs many times stronger than any thus detonated.
Posted by: Michael Anissimov![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 07:05 PM
*sigh*
Every time this concept comes up people want to blow them up or divert them. Somebody out there is shipping trillions of dollars (yes, many zeros) worth of raw materials right to your doorstep and all any can think about is nukes! :)
Honestly, with 10-30 years forewarning it should be relatively easy to send a mining/refining system to the asteroid, tear it apart and ship the valuable parts back to Earth using the less valuable stuff as reaction mass.
Of course, we might want to start looking into the details before we see one headed our way, but maybe that's just me. And once you have the technology to do that there's really no point in waiting for an asteroid to be headed toward Earth. I mean, pick one, any one, there's plenty out there.
Check out my link for my rough draft of an idea...
Posted by: AndrewS![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 09:26 AM
Let's go for the win-win, here, Michael. Couldn't we use nukes to break the asteroid open to get at the goodies inside?
:-)
Posted by: Phil Bowermaster![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 09:35 AM
My link doesn't seem to have come through: http://members.cox.net/salamon/Tech/Space/Asteroids/index.html
Ah, I see. You lose the URL field when you click on the Preview button.
Posted by: AndrewS![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 28, 2006 09:56 AM