Intercepting asteroids from an orbital defense platform would be a bit too close to earth, don't you think?

Not really. If you have a defensive orbital platform, more than likely it has the range of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of miles. Place in high orbit past the moon's orbit even, the platforms could disperse the asteroid and even redirect its momentum else where with a large enough magnitude of energy.

Shattered OUT...

What kind of weapons would such a platform use? Missiles, electromeagnetic guns...?

Originally posted by DaSeitz
What kind of weapons would such a platform use? Missiles, electromeagnetic guns...?

if missiles then nukes(five stage thermonuclear) or railguns then relativistic kinetic projectiles...

possibly ...

lets talk something more realistic about possible space platforms
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how 's my new avatar

[edit on 3-5-2007 by vK_man]

[edit on 3-5-2007 by vK_man]

Mass drivers and gauge cannons. We need something that would hit hard, we are not trying to destroy the Asteroid as much as we are trying to divert its path. Even a little deviation over millions of miles will make a difference.

Shattered OUT...

You meant Gauss connons?
If we would really want to nuke Asteroids we would need enough power to pulverize them, otherwise the fragments would still be dangerous.
Maybe a rocket delivered by a Railgun or Gaussgun, which would the "dock" to the Asteroid and change it's course via the engine.

The only problem with would be the energy required to produce the thrust to move such an object. I think before we start thinking about ships in space and such, we should first think of building a power source to make a ship move in outer space. The fuel we use now is unpractical. We need Cold Fussion or some other source of power. Just my 2c.