Future Space War

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message . ..
"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...
Or just that an asteroid was in route to hit earth? How would we deal
with it, other than to take it in the chin?

The basic way seems to be to get several-many nuclear weapons out there
as fast as possible.
The more weapons and the more time you have, the more it can be diverted.
Having years is good.
Centuries is great.

The basic idea is to blow up the bomb around a radius or so from the
asteroid, and flash-vapourise the surface of the asteroid.
This then boils off almost instantly, and pushes the asteroid the other
way.
Repeat until course misses earth.

What if it were discovered that a Moon sized asteroid were on a collision
course with Earth, and would arrive in 25 years? Would we have enough time
to evacuate anyone? Could we establish a sizeable O'neal colony jin that
amount of time?

.
There are no asteroids that big, but a 25km diameter KBO deflected to
us would do the job.

I estimate an O'Niell colony would take 30 to 40 years from when we
get serious about space and have a HLV production line.

In sci.space.tech Ami Silberman wrote:

What if it were discovered that a Moon sized asteroid were on a collision
course with Earth, and would arrive in 25 years? Would we have enough time
to evacuate anyone? Could we establish a sizeable O'neal colony jin that
amount of time?

There are no moon sized asteroids. The largest asteroids are about 1/10 the
moons diameter. The largest earth-orbit crossing asteroids are about ten
miles in length. Still a very bad thing if it hits.

That thingy that was just discovered, could concievably have friends
that could be refidected by pluto/neptune into the earth.
Not real likely.

In sci.space.tech Gordon D. Pusch wrote:
"Bootstrap Bill" writes:

What if it were discovered that a Moon sized asteroid were on a collision
course with Earth, and would arrive in 25 years?

Then everything on the Earth would die.


Would we have enough time to evacuate anyone?

Not enough to form a viable population, let alone a civilization.

Biologically viable population is one woman and a freezer full of sperm.
(you probably want at least 3 or 4 young women who have had one pregnancy
with no complications for reliability.)

What the human race could technically manage (say euthanise all the
non-productive population as soon as discovery is verified, and everyone
works on minimum rations with no food variety and no entertainment...) and
what is politiclly managable is vastly different.

Technically, I suspect a colony of a million or so on the moon is
possible.
Hundreds of large orion launches, with food for 20-30 years, and lots
of resources.
Entire orion launches with little but Ammonium Nitrate and all the
rare (on the moon) elements.

You want to be dug in REAL deep when the earth gets hit.

If something that large hits the earth, then the earth when it cools will
not resemble earth as we know it.
Most of the atmosphere and hydrosphere will simply have boiled away, and
blown out into space, and what will be left will certainly not support
life.
It may be possible to recolonise the surface after a few thousand years,
but Mars may be easier.

In sci.space.tech Gordon D. Pusch wrote:
"Bootstrap Bill" writes:

What if it were discovered that a Moon sized asteroid were on a collision
course with Earth, and would arrive in 25 years?

Then everything on the Earth would die.


Would we have enough time to evacuate anyone?
Not enough to form a viable population, let alone a civilization.

Biologically viable population is one woman and a freezer full of sperm.
(you probably want at least 3 or 4 young women who have had one pregnancy
with no complications for reliability.)

What the human race could technically manage (say euthanise all the
non-productive population as soon as discovery is verified, and everyone
works on minimum rations with no food variety and no entertainment...) and
what is politiclly managable is vastly different.

Technically, I suspect a colony of a million or so on the moon is
possible.
Hundreds of large orion launches, with food for 20-30 years, and lots
of resources.
Entire orion launches with little but Ammonium Nitrate and all the
rare (on the moon) elements.

You want to be dug in REAL deep when the earth gets hit.
If something that large hits the earth, then the earth when it cools will
not resemble earth as we know it.
Most of the atmosphere and hydrosphere will simply have boiled away, and
blown out into space, and what will be left will certainly not support
life.
It may be possible to recolonise the surface after a few thousand years,
but Mars may be easier.

In sci.space.tech Roger Moore wrote:
"Ami Silberman" writes:

There are no moon sized asteroids.

Only because anything that big in orbit around the sun is called a planet
rather than an asteroid. I'll agree, though, that it would be very
difficult for something the size of the moon to hide well enough that we
wouldn't see it until it was just 25 years away. FWIW, NASA has just
announced the discovery of a new object in the Kupier belt that is
estimated to be significantly smaller than the moon and several times
further away than Pluto. I'd expect that we would have caught anything
bigger and closer than that already.

Things can have been further away than pluto for the entire history
of photographic astronamy, and still have periapsis closer in.
It's not inconcievable that something large could have a very long period
and interact with Pluto/Uranus to turn it into a large impactor with only
a few years warning.
Vanishingly unlikely, yes.

Have there been any proposals to stare at Uranus/Pluto/Jupiter/Saturn
looking for gravitational interactions?

"Master and Owner, Beryl J. Turner III" wrote in
message om...
[snip]
Remember, the Imperials in Star Wars were British, not American....

There is a good reason why Hollywood casts British actors as the
villain. To successful pay a bad guy you have to be able to ACT.
Since in real life any one that evil would be in jail. Also the actor
needs the moral fibre to handle being hissed and hated. A lot
of "actors" just want to be loved.

Andrew Swallow

"Dirk Bruere at Neopax" wrote in message ...
A megaton nuke exploded in space will wipe out every bit of unshielded
electronics for around 800 miles around the ground zero.
That means computers, car ignition systems, telephones, radios, TVs etc
It would wipe out a modern nation's economy overnight.

Many backup generator systems are unlikly to be affected. Wipe a
modern nations economy--i doubt it. Unless the economy was already in
big decline and fall. Life would go on.

Note that many space based sats will *not* be affected ie
geo-stationary sats

Greg

"Andrew Swallow" wrote in message
...
"Master and Owner, Beryl J. Turner III" wrote in
message om...
[snip]
Remember, the Imperials in Star Wars were British, not American....

There is a good reason why Hollywood casts British actors as the
villain. To successful pay a bad guy you have to be able to ACT.
Since in real life any one that evil would be in jail. Also the actor

On the contrary.
Quite a few who are that evil are very influential people in the real world.

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millennium
http://www.theconsensus.org

"Dirk Bruere at Neopax" wrote in message
...


"Andrew Swallow" wrote in message
...
"Master and Owner, Beryl J. Turner III" wrote
in
message om...
[snip]
Remember, the Imperials in Star Wars were British, not American....

There is a good reason why Hollywood casts British actors as the
villain. To successful pay a bad guy you have to be able to ACT.
Since in real life any one that evil would be in jail. Also the actor

On the contrary.
Quite a few who are that evil are very influential people in the real
world.

And as an aside, I'm suprised nobody has a pic of OBL stroking a fluffy
white cat with a diamond collar.

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millennium
http://www.theconsensus.org

In article ,
Roger Moore wrote:
There are no moon sized asteroids.

Only because anything that big in orbit around the sun is called a planet
rather than an asteroid. I'll agree, though, that it would be very
difficult for something the size of the moon to hide well enough that we
wouldn't see it until it was just 25 years away...

The joker in the deck is the possibility of extremely large long-period
comets. There is some evidence that such things do occasionally wander
in from the outer reaches.

The Kreutz family of sun-grazing comets are individually small and
insignificant, but there are so *many* of them -- SOHO finds a new one
every few days -- that the parent body (their orbits are all very similar
and they're thought to be the result of the breakup of a larger object)
must have been huge.

And Comet Sarabat of 1729 was a naked-eye object for several months,
despite never coming far within the orbit of Jupiter. Unless its
composition was very unusual, it must have been very large to outgas
enough to be visible despite such low temperatures. Whipple estimated it
at 10^18kg, which at a specific gravity of 1 (dirty but somewhat porous
ice), would make its nucleus 125km across.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |