Nukes to Stay for At Least Another 117 Years

a reply to: eriktheawful

The bigger the asteroid, the more we see it coming, though. So though they take the most effort to deflect, they are also those who allow us for the most planning time.

But you are correct in pointing out that shorter window of time would necessitate more of a detonation than a constant force. Well, until we find something better.

Antimatter would be the ideal impulse, because its power surpasses that of nuclear. Unlike nuclear, the only byproduct is light. But then it could also be weaponised, and, in addition, it is very hard to produce in a meaningful quantity (not to mention storage).

You may be right about the fact that weaponisation is unavoidable. That is a realistic approach.

However I am guilty of being idealistic. Reality will only grow more and more grim unless effort is made by idealist people to make things better.

I do think there is much validity to the Outer Space Treaty banning any weapon of mass destruction from space. I realize that it means we'd have to find other ways than nukes to protect space stations and stuff, but then, I also believe space should never become a battlefield. The minute weapons of mass destruction tread space, we are sure to see the end of the civilization below.

originally posted by: neo96
We got a few options.

1. Shoot a bunch of nukes at an object traveling at thousands of miles per hour with unknown composition.

That's NOT what you do.

You detonate the device(s) near it to push on it, to move it.

Sheesh y'all watch way too many movies..........

a reply to: eriktheawful

Sheesh y'all watch way too many movies..........

I know.

The church of cosmology would never hear of it.

We got to save the solar system after all.

a reply to: swanne

Nothing wrong with being idealistic.

The problem stems when everyone is. We need the paranoid, the grim doom sayers, etc.

I've always thought it would be very silly of us to end up back in the stone age or extinct when we had the means to prevent it from happening.

It would be silly for us to end up back in the 1800s because we decided to get rid of exploring and paying attention to space so that we could "solve all our problems here first", when that next Carrington Event happens and destroys the world's power grids, which will take many years to repair......and could have been mostly negated by shutting things down and getting ready for it.....if only we'd been looking out for it to happen.

Or some time in the future, some alien race shows up to say hi to us.....only to find humans gone:

Alien Captain: What do you mean they're all gone Number 1?

Number 1: Looks like their planet got hit with a large asteroid that they didn't see coming for some reason.

Alien Captain: Say what? But they had the technology to do something about it! We'd seen their broad casts...

Number 1: Oh, yah, they did, but they decided to get rid of that stuff. Too dangerous you know.

Alien Captain: But that's natural. The more advanced your technology, the more dangerous things can be. It's wisdom that keeps you from using it on yourself!

Number 1: Well it looks like they also stopped hunting something called "whales", some aquatic creature...

Alien Captain: Ah! So they did have some wisdom and-

Number 1: Whales are all dead because of the global climate change from the asteroid impact.

Alien Captain: Arrrrhhggg! Just shut up about the stupid humans. Good riddance!

a reply to: eriktheawful

Lol Well put.

Wisdom... I hope mankind still has some.

Your argument applies not just to nukes, but even futuristic stuff like warp drive and such. Could you imagine the damage if a ship would crash onto a planet at "full warp"? Kamikaze on steroids...

The more mankind evolve, the more its tech WILL become devastatingly dangerous. And for now, I just am not sure mankind is ready to use it wisely yet. But then, I hope I am mistaking. It'd be good for me to be wrong on this one.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: swanne

So what would you recommend for negating any asteroid threat?

Realize that most other methods of pushing or moving an asteroid so that it's orbit does not threaten Earth, requires literally years and years of advanced knowledge that it is a threat to Earth, and that same amount of time to move said thread with all other very low impulse devices.

Good day.... I've understood lasers can intensely pinpoint medically and materially...

Given their precision and accuracy.. Let alone speed... I wonder why we still talk rocket-fuel-propulsion driven-propelled nuclear diverting of trajectory?

I'm thinking $$$ and corporations when it's not really necessary...

originally posted by: swanne
NASA, in association with NNSA and several other departments, have just announced an official governmental plan to use nuclear heads to "protect against asteroids". They are citing Bennu, an asteroid that has a possible (but highly improbable) chance of hitting Earth in September 2135, as support to build a spacecraft capable of delivering nuclear explosions at any point in space.

on Sept. 21, 2135, there is a 1 in 2,700 chance that it will hit us. What would we do?

Government scientists now have an official plan, just in case: They’ve designed a spacecraft to hit any large oncoming asteroids with a nuclear explosion.

The Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER) spacecraft — a collaboration between the National Nuclear Security Administration, NASA, and two Energy Department weapons labs — would either steer its 8.8-ton bulk (called an “impactor”) into a small asteroid, or carry a nuclear device to deflect a big one.

NASA plans to use nukes to deflect asteroids

This has me rather very concerned. I can understand the eventual need to possibly deflect an asteroid, but I was hoping mankind to start working on denuclearization, and to stop producing radioactive waste for various reasons.

Radioactive waste aside, the creation of a spacecraft capable of delivering nuclear heads at any point in space sounds alot like something that could be weaponised, and used against other nations or even against future off world colonies.

Although a bigger bomb would be better, current US nuclear warhead sizes would be sufficient to deflect a very large asteroid that comes out of nowhere

So basically, an excuse to keep nuclear warheads and possibly even produce more.

I wonder which is truly the most likely Apocalyptic scenario - Earth getting hit by an asteroid, or humans suddenly deciding to use its nukes (ironically made to "protect" against "asteroid") against one another?

I wonder which truly is the most imminent threat to Earth?

Eventually there will be a nulcear accedent, like we have never seen before. If not an accedent, an attack by a rouge country. It will be bad.

I mean I live in So Cali, and the Nuke plants are close to the Ocean, we are OVERDUE, for a massive quake. If we have one and there is a tsunami, well you can see what I am saying.


With all of the Uranium that has gone missing, (long before the Clintons) somebody out there has the capeablities of bulding nukes.

Or we could have someone in power, who feels a war is the only way to distract, is to start a war.

originally posted by: neo96
We got a few options.

1. Shoot a bunch of nukes at an object traveling at thousands of miles per hour with unknown composition.

2. Launch Team Bruce Willis to fly to one and drill baby drill and detonate one from inside.

3. Create solar powerd rail gun satellites and blow them suckers to smithernes.

4. Meet at the worlds end for a snip load of drinks.

You must choose, but choose wisely.

I choose 1,3,2 and perhaps 4 if necessary

Methinks they're probably secretly more worried about two-legged "asteroids" (with goofy accents) than anything else. That's probably wise.

a reply to: Spacespider


We should take no chances and go with option 4, immediately.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Impulse.

A light beam can push something....but it does so very, very slowly. You can theoretically accelerate something extremely fast using light. But it will take a very long time to do so.

That's also how the ion drive works.

If you don't have the time for that, you'll need something that can accelerate an object fast (rockets....or nuclear explosions).

The thing about nukes and asteroids is: yah, we don't actually need the nukes....IF and I stress that word, IF you are able to detect the asteroid that is going to collide with us very early and have lots of time. In that case, you only need to push it a little bit and can do so with non-nuclear means. A small push when it is far away will cause a large course change over time.

a reply to: swanne

There you have it, it's another great fefe link anyway. Share away!
Something else came to mind with Chelyabinsk. Remember this strange shoot-down clip?



Which leaves me with the impression that the real threat already resides on this planet, gaining profits from the most nefarious kinda sabre rattling imaginable. This is the reason why you folks should lable Antifa domestic terrorists ASAP!
Their anti-war stance is really bad for business in this nuclear empire of ours.

Reminds me Of the the book by Arthur C. Clarke called The Hammer of God.Great read.

I was thinking - I wonder what would be the feasibility of using smaller asteroids or man-made asteroids as impactors against other asteroids.

How large is Bennu? 500 meters? How hard could it be to build a body of rocky material into orbit far around Earth? Stick a few rockets in there and you'd get a pretty decent impactor to move around and intersect any possible Earthbound asteroids.

We could even capture smaller asteroids and combine them into bigger asteroids so to multiply our protection angles. Basically, the more we'd be visited by asteroids, the more protection we'd be forming around Earth. (By "we" of course I mean "mankind").

It would be the most efficient method possible - using asteroids against themselves.

a reply to: swanne

I'm not a big fan of impactors to move asteroids around, mainly because the majority of asteroids that we know of in our system are loosely packed debris. They might look solid, but they're not as solid as you think. Those types, solid rock or metal ones, do exist, but are much lower in number than the conglomerate ones.

Impacting with a conglomerate might make it just fracture, and continue on it's way, so instead of a bullet at Earth, we now have a shotgun effect.

I think about the safest way to move one, is either with light (lasers, light sails, etc) or with gravity (you've got another captured asteroid that you're able to move around, you could use it to influence the orbit of the incoming asteroid). Both of these methods take time though, and we don't currently have anything built to do this.



On the note of weapons in space, some of you might find this video by Isaac Arthur interesting, it's on Interstellar Warfare:

originally posted by: neo96
We got a few options.

1. Shoot a bunch of nukes at an object traveling at thousands of miles per hour with unknown composition.

2. Launch Team Bruce Willis to fly to one and drill baby drill and detonate one from inside.

3. Create solar powerd rail gun satellites and blow them suckers to smithernes.

4. Meet at the worlds end for a snip load of drinks.

You must choose, but choose wisely.

ARMAGEDDON IT lol.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Hmm, good point.

Thanks for the video!

Though I must clarify that I wasn't suggesting using the impactor for a full-on impact, but actually on the side of the asteroid, quite similarly to what NASA is planning.

However I must say your suggestion about gravitation also opens up another possible method: add weight to the asteroid. We could basically stick something like cheap cement unto it (it doesn't really need to dry, just to stick) onto the asteroid, increasing its mass and forcing it to readjust its orbit to be smaller.

The cement substance doesn't necessarily need to be launched from Earth; collecting dust from space or even from the Moon (which has lower escape velocity than Earth).

But then again, a method that, as you point out, only works if we have a lot of time.

Just because these plans now exist does not mean the spacecraft will ever get built. NASA scientists declined to give a cost estimate for a mission, citing the sensitivity of pricing information

While they having a bright Idea.. we could get blown to bits..

Get to work NASA !

I dont see nukes as the best solution to suck a problem...

What would be wrong with a space craft that could attach itself to an incoming body and with thrust alter it's path?

Or we could be even fancier have several small craft with high energy lasers in formation forming a laser grid which would splice large bodies into smaller ones that would be of no concern burning up on entry...

I'm sure there are all kinds of better solutions than nukes sounds more like a convenient excuse to keep producing them...