Re: Space Rock 'on collision Course
Posted by Southern Man on Jul 25, 2002 at 08:07
(66.119.34.39)Re: Space Rock 'on collision Course (bobba)
“I still say it's worth trying to figure out. I'm back to my nuclear-tipped bunker busting missiles. Worth a shot - and fun to watch! even if it didn't work. Even though the odds are that’ll end up NOT being on a collision course, it'd still be a great rock to practice on.”
Ever seen the videos of the nuclear bombs we popped off in space in the 60’s? Real pretty but with nothing to push against the bomb casing is about all that creates the expanding sphere of material.
You are totally correct, however, that we need to try to figure this out. And practice, practice, practice! Look how many launches it took to get a man to the moon. Assuming our first attempts should be at least locally observed to reduce the time delay for changing commands of the drilling machine, how long is this going to take? Sure would be nice to practice on something a little closer than Mars. But then if we make a mistake, maybe we shouldn’t try something close first. In any case it took us 10 years to get from basketballs in space to a man on the moon and this is a far larger project. We can expect a large number of people to die because of decreased standard of living because the money was spent on practicing but…
The bottom line is we haven’t a clue how to move something this big as far as it needs to be moved in the time allowed. Let’s figure this out and practice because it is going to take a lot of time to get it right. But don’t expect to be moving anything reliably this century. It would be far easier to put men on Pluto and return them safely to earth than to move an asteroid this size and orbit 4000 miles in 16 years.
The question now becomes, do you want to know for certain that we are going to be hit in 16 years and also know that there is nothing we can do about it? How many people is that going to kill?