reply to post by one4all
This is wrong. The "rods from god" project would only yield explosions comparable to regular bombs. The point is to penetrate deep into the ground
to destroy hardened bunkers, and to do so without nukes.
It yields less explosive power than the fuel inside the ICBM body that took it into space in the first place.
At the velocities we can reasonably achieve with the engines we have available, nuclear payloads can deliver many times more energy cheaper than an
inert payload, relying on just kinetic energy.
The idea with a nuke, of course, is not to blow up the asteroid, but to alter it's course so it doesn't hit the earth.
Also, the amount of material it would take to block an asteroid through sheer momentum would probably cost more than canada is worth just to get it
into space. It would make much more sense to send robotic probes to take one of the asteroids that are already out in space and bring it to earth. And
even then, it's not really a good plan for stopping asteroids. It would make quite a mess.