Armageddon-how are we going to beat it?

[talin]

This topic is branch off the KONY2012 thread after it got derailed into a subject regarding how the earth will end and how we should stop it.

At last I checked, we where discussing the implications of launching a nuke at the asteroid scheduled to hit us/near miss us.

Blue said we would need a few nukes to destroy it.
My response: most modern nukes have up to 20 warheads (individual nukes) a piece or more and can do roughly 100x the damage Hiroshima had been dealt.

Blue said there are several other implications with launching nukes at space rocks.
My response: please elaborate.

[BlueLight]

Blue said there are several other implications with launching nukes at space rocks.
My response: please elaborate.

We seem to assume gravity and space it self will work in are favor. I personally don't know much about basic rock technology.
I've got 4 things that I say could be a what if.
1) the moon is directly in the path of the asteroid. What do we do? Go around and waste fuel or use the gravity of the moon to pull the missile along. Do we know if a missile could even do that?
2) Wouldn't the gravitation pull of the moo be enough to change the missile direction by at least a degree after it's out of fuel? If so then that things going to miss it by a mile if you ask me.
3)What if there are rocks in front of the asteroid? Granted the asteroid should have enough mass to pull them in to itself but still.
4) what if the first blast sends rocks shattering away from it self in to the other missiles? Wouldn't that make them explode before they reached it?

Personally all you guys are saying is Earth, big, boom.
Where is this big rock. Would the after math explosion be enough to rain firey hell on us? Is the core made of iron?

[talin]

That's why we launch it using our modern tech to accomplish what our old tech did, only much faster. The guys at NASA are have actually made a living of being able to predict where things will go in space and do so with millions of objects. They have sling shoted various things around the moon and can take into account the different effects space will have. ever heard of the voyager probes? what about the Galileo probe? both are deep space probes sent out into space and used various predictions with small course corrections mid flight to harness planetary gravity wells to gain immense speed and take various pictures of them as they passed by. Granted a probe carrying a nuke would be a much bigger investment, it would also be well worth it to ensure our survival.

[Rooiehaan #2]

How about sending chuck norris in a spaceship to deal with it?

[Gorbaz]

Problem with nuking an asteroid that's on a collision course with Earth - it may explode, but that will only mean that we will have smaller chunks of asteroid raining down over a larger area.

If it does hit, and does to us what it did to the dinosaurs (big dust cloud covering the Earth for years), then we will have to turn to large-scale hydroponics to grow food, meat cloning, perhaps remove a portion of the human population so that there is more food to go around...

Of course, I favour sitting at home, and laughing at everyone when the world doesn't end

[Smackman]

ummm can someone link the info on this asteroid.. i looked it up and apparently it missed us in like 2011

[Zeus Kabob]

Oops, I'm out of date.

Nuking an asteroid with a radius of 1 km won't get us anywhere fast. It would take a lot of nukes to do that kind of damage, and depending on the power of the rockets on those ICBMs, we might have to detonate those nukes much closer to Earth than I'm comfortable with.

It's not really a big deal, though, as we can sit a spaceship near the asteroid to knock it off course with gravity.

[GoRepeat]

Problem with nuking an asteroid that's on a collision course with Earth - it may explode, but that will only mean that we will have smaller chunks of asteroid raining down over a larger area.

That would be the goal; thousands of smaller chunks will get burned up in the atmosphere and never impact. One big one will erode but still impact.

[BlueLight]

Problem with nuking an asteroid that's on a collision course with Earth - it may explode, but that will only mean that we will have smaller chunks of asteroid raining down over a larger area.

That would be the goal; thousands of smaller chunks will get burned up in the atmosphere and never impact. One big one will erode but still impact.

Can't say that for sure. The heat of all those rocks burning up in the atmosphere might be enough and small rocks can still cause damage.

[Zeus Kabob]

I heard once that it's possible to light the atmosphere on fire. I don't believe a word of it, but the only way we could conceivably do so is by turning all of the kinetic energy of a kilometer radius asteroid into heat and vaporized rock.

Also, have you ever tried breathing vaporized rock? Not fun times, I'll tell you that. Making the asteroid miss in one of a few possible ways is much more productive.

Finally, the asteroid would likely stay in one piece, as it's freaking huge. Without impeccable aim and impeccably designed nukes (specifically for the purpose of penetrating deep into asteroids and breaking them into pieces), we'd have to vaporize the majority of the asteroid. We don't have enough nukes for that, and would give cancer to everyone on the planet.

[BlueLight]

and would give cancer to everyone on the planet.

... wait we don't all have cancer? And here i thought the human races was only going to survive Armageddon 2.... Wait but Armageddon was so cute in Sargent frog...


I am right now siding with Armageddon.

[talin]

Wouldn't the nuke toss it off course? Plus one ICBM = 20 nuclear warheads at about 100 megatons a pop. Fuel isn't really a problem as there is no return trip so we can afford to expend the usual half to get out of earth's gravity well and the fact that it's going to be a drone means no wasted space on making the inside habitable so it will probably be lighter than most shuttles anyway (ie less fuel used) heck if we wanted we could make a new agreement with Russia and have ten more ICBMs each sent up for earth defense and controlled by a peacefully neutral country like Australia. It's not like the Aussies are going to do something stupid like bomb us when we have a few thousand on hand still and they're pretty much friendly as it is so the only thing they would target are space rocks anyway.

[BlueLight]

Wouldn't the nuke toss it off course? Plus one ICBM = 20 nuclear warheads at about 100 megatons a pop. Fuel isn't really a problem as there is no return trip so we can afford to expend the usual half to get out of earth's gravity well and the fact that it's going to be a drone means no wasted space on making the inside habitable so it will probably be lighter than most shuttles anyway (ie less fuel used) heck if we wanted we could make a new agreement with Russia and have ten more ICBMs each sent up for earth defense and controlled by a peacefully neutral country like Australia. It's not like the Aussies are going to do something stupid like bomb us when we have a few thousand on hand still and they're pretty much friendly as it is so the only thing they would target are space rocks anyway.

A object in motion tends to stay in motion. Using this law and the fact that we're talking about a object with 5% the mass of the earth... um no I don't think just ICBM is going to change it's course. we assume we can just lunch a ICBM in to space with assuming accuracy but the fact of the matter is, if the missile are off by one degree in a long range attack, they'll miss completely since they weren't design for long distant flights. Sure you can point at the target but you can't really the course corrections if you run out fuel. The problem with doing a full on a attack is in fact hitting thing. I see ICBM quite easily missing the target but if all them were dead on I still think after the first explosion your going to be basically, flying though a asteroid belt with the rest. That would cause the ICBMs to explode prematurely.

And do we even know how powerful a warhead is in space? When i think nuke, I think mushroom cloud of fire and death. Your not going to get much fire with out oxygen, but then maybe a nuke releases heat radiation and not fire and fire a effect of the heat radiation? (Okay I'm a bit clueless on what nukes do. I understand they release radiation, I think it's gammar rays but if i'm wrong i will go with alpha and beta however i don't remember alpha and beta being that deadly.)

[talin]

I think they actually split an atom in such a way that it creates anti-matter and the radioactive and dense materials that are atomically shredded cause the explosion to be much denser. I would go off the assumption that it is the sheer density of uranium and plutonium combined with their highly unstable nature that makes it both easier for them to act in that way as well as making them have a much stronger effect. I don't know the details of a supposed hydrogen bomb that was supposed to be smaller, and did less damage while being MUCH more expensive but I do know one was tested out one some island then was later said to be scrapped due to uranium nukes having a higher yield at a fraction of the price.

[BlueLight]

So basically we're making a assumption on another assumption about a assumption for a space rock that no one knows the detail about.

Theres a joke here.

[Smackman]

a nuke hitting it dead center would probably stop impact, force would send peices outward. assuming the force is greater than the velocity of the asteroid. But there is no asteroid heading for earth, the one that came close was in 2011 and its passed us already and will come back in about 100 years

[Zeus Kabob]

I know how a nuke works. It releases a ton of heat energy, which in atmosphere causes the mushroom cloud and in space creates an extremely bright flash of light that can vaporize many things at close range. Only problem is, there's no direct force on the rock, so all the change in its trajectory would be caused by vaporized rock flying off it from the explosion. Since rock is quite hard to vaporize, that's not very much change in momentum.

ICBM vs. Asteroid --> Asteroid victory. ICBMs won't do very much at all, and would cause more collateral damage than anyone would be comfortable with.

P.S. Bluelight, ICBMs are mad accurate; they can hit a city across the planet, so they can hit a huge asteroid in space. (especially if they only need to get close to detonate)

[BlueLight]

Well I believe they got them a little more accurate than that. I bet if you parked a car in a park and send a ICBM after, you'll roughly be in the ball park of the park.

But the are designed to hit earth bond targets. My think is this. The asteroid will to far out for the ICBM fuel tanks. Okay that's because we can use Newton's laws of gravity.
A object in motion stays in motion. Okay great however now your to have every other gravitation mass pulling the missile off course and you'll have no fuel.
Someone said investing in Probes to carry the nukes.

If we go with that line of thinking, what do you think it will take to blow up a asteroid that's 5% the size of the earth? We're making are own probe design here so we can get a little unreal.

[GoRepeat]

As long as you leave Bruce Willis behind on the Asteroid, it would work

[Zeus Kabob]

As I said, it's not nukes that will stop that kind of asteroid. Maybe nuclear powered ion engines, but not nukes.