100 megaton bombs atop Saturn V rockets

Scott Lowther wrote:
Henry Spencer wrote:


The big question marks for deflection with nuclear bombs are how best to
turn a massive soft-X-ray flash (which is what you get out of a nuclear
bomb in vacuum) into propulsion,


It is not at all obvious that heating up the comet's surface with X-Rays
is the way to do it. Think Casaba Howitzer.

.... which would deliver less total impulse than vaporizing a thick layer
of asteroid surface. Neutron or gamma irradiation might be even better,
since they will deposit energy to an even greater depth than soft xrays.

Paul

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004 21:40:00 +0200, "BitBanger" wrote:


"Elden" wrote in message
link.net...
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/175/1

Every nineteen years the large asteroid Icarus swings by planet Earth,
often
coming within four million miles of the planet astronomical terms.
Icarus last passed by Earth in 1997. Before that, its
previous approach was in June 1968. We now know that such near-Earth
asteroids are not all that rare and in recent years Congress and NASA have
shown greater interest in trying to track, and even visit them.


What the group decided to do was to take six Saturn V rockets then in
production, and with only minimal modifications to their payloads use them
to carry smaller bombs to Icarus. The first launch would have to take
place
by April 1968, only a year away, and five more launches would have to
follow
at two-week increments.

What is it with this f*cking infatuation with nuclear bombs!!! Why do they
keep wanting to blow up things when it has been shown many times before that
this is the wrong kind of solution. In fact, it could make things even
worse!


What would you suggest?????? A feather pillow???????????????????? Or
maybe that dumbass solar-sail idea like the guy in
Armageddon???????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????
That might work if we had ninety years to alter the friggin course AND
we had the technology TODAY, right NOW to make and deploy solar sails
miles across. We don't. A nuke is something we know how to do and
something we could throw together on short notice. It's the ONLY
thing in the tool box that has a realistic chance of effecting an
asteroid on short notice. There is no need for this unreasonable
terror you have for the word
"nuclear"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!

"Scott Ferrin" wrote an unbelievably large number of exclamation marks ...

"nuclear"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IHNJ, IJWTS unbelievably large number of exclamation marks.

In sci.space.policy Henry Spencer wrote:

The big question marks for deflection with nuclear bombs are how best to
turn a massive soft-X-ray flash (which is what you get out of a nuclear
bomb in vacuum) into propulsion, and how well the object will hold up to a
fairly sudden shove. Even quite a loose object may be okay for *one*
shove if you can deliver the force to more or less an entire hemisphere,
e.g. with an explosion at some distance blowing off a surface layer.
A more localized shove, or multiple shoves, may be practical only for
objects with significant structural strength.


But isn't there a problem that un-even surface - and potentially angular
difference - could translate a large part of that blast into not changing
the orbit much but instead increasing spin?

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Hop David wrote




I'd guessing we'll find quite a variety of different creatures
when we learn more about the comets and asteroids.

Which, ob policy, I wish we'd put more effort into. Having a
half-dozen surveyors wandering among the asteroids at any one
time seems about right.

In sci.space.policy Pat Flannery wrote:

would keep them warm and ice-free in winter. And the Atomic Powered Tank
was also stillborn; which is a pity, as it probably wouldn't have even
needed armor, due to the fact that no one in their right mind would dare
shoot anything at it, for fear of what might happen if they actually hit
it. :-)

Its always fun seeing things designed by peopel to whom "diverse terrain"
means "praire followed by slightly different praire"...


Pat


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

In article ,
Revision wrote:
A recent paper on the asteroid population of our neighbor Tau Ceti
suggests that any planet in the solar system would receive a bio-killer
impact every couple of thousand years, making evolution problematic.

I thought Tau Ceti was supposed to have about 10x the number
of small bodies the solar system does. That would reduce the interval
between 10^24 joule impactors from 100 million years to 10 million.
Annoying, and it might well discourage large non-omnivores, or at
least cull their numbers on a regular basis but not animals below
5 kg who aren't picky about what they eat.

Impacts that can briefly alter climate to the extent a nuclear
winter could would go from once every 500 thousand years to once every
50 thousand years. That might not even stop civilizations from springing
up, if they did it in the interval. Tunguska scale events would happen
once a decade but happily even planets as populated as Earth are mostly
empty and the odds of a city being under such an object are slim.

World killers (big KBOs) would go from one impact every
trillion years to one impact every 100 billion years, which is
still about 20 times more time than the sun has left on the main
sequence.

Interestingly, giant KBO impacts on Jupiter would go up
from 10 to 100 times since the early days of the solar system to
100 to 1000. These sort of impacts are energetic enough to melt
and vaporize a considerable (although negligible compared to the
mass of the moon) depth of moon surface, at least 20 meters on
Europa.

--
"The keywords for tonight are Caution and Flammable."
Elvis, _Bubba Ho Tep_

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

It is not at all obvious that heating up the comet's surface with X-Rays
is the way to do it. Think Casaba Howitzer.

... which would deliver less total impulse than vaporizing a thick layer
of asteroid surface.

*Maybe*. But vaporizing a thick layer of asteroid surface, especially a
layer that is vaguely evenly distributed, using Xrays, gamma rays and
neutrons from a bare nuke is a very iffy proposition. Using a dedicated
propellant will save a hell of a hard step, and make each nuke far more
reliable. A Casaba Howitzer nuke will run much the same every time you
pull the trigger, while asteroids and comets will not only respond
differently from nukes from impactor to impactors, they'll respond
differently form location to location on an individual impactor.


--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Ferrin wrote:

What is it with this f*cking infatuation with nuclear bombs!!! Why do they
keep wanting to blow up things when it has been shown many times before that
this is the wrong kind of solution. In fact, it could make things even
worse!



What would you suggest?(snip) A feather pillow?(snip) Or
maybe that dumbass solar-sail idea like the guy in
Armageddon?(snip)

Solar sail and nukes aren't the only two ways to move an asteroid.


--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...


If we do have to do a short-notice deflection before we have better
information, about all we can do is take our best guess, launch bombs --
smaller ones than the MIT study specified, because we no longer have a
Saturn-V-class launcher handy -- and pray that it works.

I wonder how yield per mass has improved since the study. Perhaps a
Delta Heavy can put in space the same yield as a Saturn V.

What should be improved is guidance. Small bombs could be much better
positioned than a few decades ago.

Also, is it possible to use a tungsten rflector to focus the
radiation? I appreciate the reflector will vapourise, but would it
have any effect.

Apart from that, rather than 100 M Ton boms, it might be better to
explode a 1 MT bomb every hour over several days.