So what would be the actual contingency plan in case a 10-mile wide comet were expected to collide with the Earth?
Would they send probes or manned ships with nukes to blow it up like they do in da movies?
>>8038512
We'd know about it for at least what, 50 years? SpaceX would probably get contracted to nuke it into oblivion.
>>8038515
Damn, Musk would make a killing.
>>8038512
>the actual contingency plan
Looking at the sky in amazement. Wondering what the hell is go….*BLAST*
> the end.
>>8038512
> nuke
for what? it would just turn the comet into fragments and the damage would be the same.
The best way to solve this would change it's orbit with massive engines and send the fucker to an orbit around the sun.
>>8038515
>depend humanity on a meme.
no.
>>8038515
Would we also be able to detect smaller things that go way faster aswell?
With fast I mean relativistic speeds.
>>8038512
How hard would it be to change the orbit of this planet slightly over a 40 year period so the comet misses us instead of the other way around?
>>8038568
much harder than changing a 10 mile wide comet's orbit.
>>8038538
If they used a 50 megatons bomb, they would have a 6-mile wide fireball that would turn atoms into particles, and then the blast and heat that would destroy the ice and rock of the comet completely, leaving nothing but dust behind.
May I ask what kind of fragments are you talking about? Even a much smaller bomb would do the job.
>>8038586
> leaving nothing but dust behind
> cloud of dust with the same mass of a 10 mile comet heading towards earth
> now it's impossible to change it's orbit
> also we the space radiation issue
well at least you tried anon, let's wait another 4 billion of years to evolve into huge faggots again.
>>8038601
>cloud of dust being any threat to the Earth
top lel
>radiation issue
they wont blow it near the earth's orbit, dumbfuck but millions of miles away
>>8038538
>what is burning up in the atmosphere
>>8038568
Yeah and fuck up the entire planets ecosystem while youre at it
>moons orbit changes relatively
>weather and tidal forces now out of control
>not to mention the effects of changing the orbit slightly
Exactly why would you move a whole planet instead of a mountain sized ball of ice?
>>8038601
>implying that the mass is the same makes it as deadly
Do you know how pressure works
Protip: try hammering a nail upside down and see if it goes as far into the wood as right side up
>>8038609
> implying implications
kys
>>8038512
The best thing to do would be to attach small retro thrusters to the comet that will work over an incredibly long period of time, or to continually smash small projectiles into it to adjust its orbit. When it's super far away, that small impulse delivered by every projectile, or the small thrusters would make a significant difference.
>>8038602
Even a cloud of dust with the same mass as a 10 mile wide comet would still impact the earth. Even if it's in particulates that will burn up in atmosphere, there would be so many particulates that you would heat up the Earth's atmosphere about 100 degrees celsius for a radius of about a thousand miles.
>>8038692
a cloud of dust with the same mass as a 10 miles comet would be hundreds of thousands of miles wide are you fucking serious
>>8038696
> huge cloud of dust covering sun light for all eternity
and that's how we all died
maybe we should've let it hit earth, at least some of our evolution cousins wouldn't die from starvation.
>>8038539
The meme actually works.
>>8038539
Humanity has always been dependent on memes. At first they were called ideas and they meant something.
>>8038702
Movinggoalposts.jpg
If you really think a cloud of dust would do anything near as catastrophic as a 10 mile wide asteroid you need to go back to school
>>8038740
>be not him
>remember in school they taught us about these huge animals that ruled the earth
>dinosaurs
>went extinct because something from outer space hit the earth and changed its climate
How do you think that happened?
>idk, big cloud of dust?
DING DING DING!!!
>so a big cloud of dust cooled the earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs
>cloud of dust
>caused
>extinction
>dinosaurs
yeah nah, i'm sure that cloud of dust won't hurt us you fag
That was atmospheric dust kicked up by the impactor, not space dust which will be burnt up as soon as it contacts the atmosphere.
Most of the dust came from the ground last time, not from whatever hit Chixuclub.
>>8038764
You're fucking retarded, the asteroid kicked up dust within the atmosphere when it impacted the earth. It didn't enter as a cloud of dust, and it would burn in the atmosphere if it entered. Otherwise it would float off into space.
A 100,000 mile wide dust cloud would of course miss most of the earth. It would definitely miss the earth due to the change in momentum and trajectories anyway.
I would say even a 100 mile wide comet we'd be fine with just nuking it. 1000 mile would be a challenge that I don't think nuking alone would work.
NASA is supposed to test a method of deflecting an asteroid in like 2020, but I think the mission is going to get canned. I believe they were going to test whether their spacecraft can act as a gravity tractor.
>>8038803
that was a very stupid idea to begin with
you need a lot of mass to disrupt the orbit of such a massive object and it costs 11k dollars to send one pound of material in orbit
they put 2 and 2 together and realized "whoa, using a spacecraft as a gravity tractor was a really dumb idea!"
Ya'll fuckers are missing a huge thing here, nukes would do fuck all to vaporize an asteroid.
Without an atmosphere, the majority of the nuke's energy will be radiated as heat and radiation, not as a big ol' boom like you normal think of when you think of a nuke.
Plus even the biggest nuke ever detonated couldnt vaporize 10 cubic miles of mass even in an atmosphere.
>>8038810
I agree
There is only a possibility: perforating the thing and detonating nukes inside its weakest points, if we find them.
You are all wrong, I know people at NASA and this nuke talk is pure nonsense. Our best bet would be a fast terraforming on Mars and the total relocation of all of our ecosystem to there, like a neo Noah's Ark. If we were lucky we could send the last humans just before the comet fuck up Earth.
>>8038810
Dude like just drill the surface and plant the nuke deep inside the asteroid.
>>8038568
We can use laser to super heat the surface enough to make it eject its own material. This ejection could possible knock the body off course due to Newtonian law
>>8038512
We paint it bright white.
We fire 1000s of small heavy pieces of stone at it the entire time.
We attach solar sails to it.
We bombard it with as much laser/maser power as we can point its way.
Set rockets on it to blast it off trajectory.
We explode nukes on one side to blast it off trajectory without blowing it into pieces.
Pretty much throw everything at it including the kitchen sink in order to nudge it off trajectory as much as possible. Everyone with an idea would get a turn.
>>8038512
Re-direct it. If we get to it while its still quite far away its very doable
>>8038850
The only thing a nuke would be good for is if you used it as a thruster, like orion
>>8038512
If a comet was expected to collide with earth we would just die.
Now if a extinction level meteor was expected to collide with earth I understand the best plan would be to shoot it with lasers to slow it down, the earth continues its orbit so that the meteor orbit doesn't intersect it. Nukes wouldn't have enough power to slow it down appreciably, not to mention destroy it.
It's really simple.
Use nukes to propel it away from Earth.
Like Orion. It will mate with the body and start blasting nukes against its pusher plate.
Can someone please calculate the numbers?
Hit it with a nuke to change it's course slightly, as long as we hit it a few days before it would hit us we should be saved.
>>8039997
>Like Orion. It will mate with the body and start blasting nukes against its pusher plate.
You don't need a pusher plate, you just use the surface of the asteroid.
Probes with nukes
Comet weighs about 1 000 000 000 tones. Rockets empty are about 100t and are actually built to be as light as possible. Let's just send a few, to crash directly into it. Even if we decrease the speed for literally fractions of percent, it's enough for comet to miss us a lot.
+ e.g. different position of other planets would stack up the effect.
>>8038568
