Originally posted by one4all
Lets get real here as well,my x-box 360 could probably power a rocket module,its NOT THAT EXPENSIVE OR DIFFICULT TO GO BACK INTO SPACE SO WHY ARENT
WE?
Expensive to put mass into space?Most of the cost used to be developement and research,its all done and is cheap now,as opposed to mass extinction I
think its fairly cheap.
X-box ? Are you on crack ??
I dont think you have even fathomed what you talking about with any foresight. If you did, you would realize how
ridiculous it is!
X-box may have more than adequate computing power required to control the launch vehicle but it also weight much more than what is actually required!
The computer code and processors required to control the rocket would be a small fraction of its total weight and this hardware and software already
exists in plenty and would be the easy part! You do realize that an asteroid would have be many hundreds of thousands of tonnes to be of any real use
right? Do you know the weight of the average satellite ? About 4 tonnes and it costs millions to get that into orbit. The average launch cost for a
simple satellite is anywhere between $50 million to $400 million depending on orbit and mass of the satellite. The cost of fabricating the satellite
is extra! The Space shuttle launch which is nearly 40 years old cost about half a Billion dollars to launch!
NASA -Achieving Affordable Access to Space
Do you know how much Hydrogen, Oxygen and refrigerant is used to power even a single rocket ? How much the rocket engines cost ? Not to mention the
cost of building the engines, generating the fuel ?? And even if all this was done, there is no way to transport a LARGE object weighing in the
thousands of tonnes into Earth Orbit in one go. You'd have to send them bit by bit and then assemble them in space! Now to get all those masses into
space would require many hundreds of large launch vehicles that would take decades to build by all the space faring nations in the world! That is an
extremely cost endeavor! Not to mention, tracking all the masses that you send to space would mean operating a large tracking station that is manned
round the clock and has observatories around the world to constantly monitor the masses to prevent them from colliding against each other or colliding
against satellites or loosing their orbits! You would also have to take into account any launch failures that would either not position the mass at
the appropriate orbit or veer off course inside the atmosphere and required to be destroyed! Also, you have to consider how high exactly would you
want to place all your masses. The higher the orbit, the costlier the launch! Now, even if you find a way to get all those masses to join together
somehow to form a single body you would need to keep in mind the gravity this body would generate and its effect on the Earth, nearby satellites and
even the Moon! Finally, you would need some way to propel this body in the direction you want it to go, that would require IMMENSE amount of fuel
because it would have massive inertia and you would have to overcome that to sling-shot around Earth's orbit and then head towards whatever asteroid
or Comet that you want to destroy or deviate!
Instead of all this ridiculous nonsense and wasted effort. It would be incredibly cheaper to build a few dozen 100 Megaton Nukes and use a couple of
already existing ICBM's to launch these relatively small masses into space and direct them to the desired target ! It would cost a fraction of what
your Mad plan would have cost and the chances of success would be much much higher!
[edit on 14-11-2009 by IAF101]
