A Space & astronomy forum. SpaceBanter.com

Go Back   Home » SpaceBanter.com forum » Space Science » History
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

100 megaton bombs atop Saturn V rockets



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old July 7th 04, 08:40 PM
BitBanger
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 100 megaton bombs atop Saturn V rockets


"Elden" wrote in message
ink.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!




  #2  
Old July 7th 04, 10:27 PM
Andrew Gray
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.space.policy.]
On 2004-07-07, BitBanger wrote:

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


(...)

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!


Um. As I understand it, the 1968 study was one of the first attempts to
figure out what to do with an impactor, specifically an impactor at
relatively short notice and without exotic technology; it's a bit silly
to talk about it having "been shown many times before" regarding an
article talking about something that happened thirty-six years ago...
when it hadn't. I believe that, even at MIT, crystal balls are scarce.
Note the use of phrases like "Very little was known about how nuclear
weapons would actually behave in space, let alone how the blast would
affect an asteroid"

Also note that the author noted in their second paragraph: "And the
plan probably would not have worked."

That aside, *has* it been shown it's the "wrong kind of solution"? Other
methods have certainly been suggested, but I'm not aware of where the
consensus lies on deflection methods (though there are clear downsides
to the nuclear-bomb method).

--
-Andrew Gray

  #3  
Old July 7th 04, 11:59 PM
Henry Spencer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In article ,
Andrew Gray wrote:
That aside, *has* it been shown it's the "wrong kind of solution"? Other
methods have certainly been suggested, but I'm not aware of where the
consensus lies on deflection methods (though there are clear downsides
to the nuclear-bomb method).


If you have to do something on short notice, deflection is about the only
option, and nuclear bombs are about the only way to quickly put really
large amounts of energy into deflection. Avoid letting anti-military
paranoia blind you to these facts.

There are likely to be better ways to deal with asteroids and short-period
comets, because given enough advance warning, their orbits can be altered
in less violent ways. However, we may not have the option for long-period
comets, because we simply don't see them more than a year or so out. And
of course, we don't *yet* have the near-Earth asteroids and short-period
comets mapped well enough to be sure we'd have plenty of warning for them.

(There are particularly bad long-period-comet cases where we would get
*very* little warning, because the comet's position in the sky is very
close to the Sun for most of its approach. That can at least be mitigated
by maintaining a comet-watching station well away from Earth, say in one
of the Sun-Earth Trojan points. But we're effectively always seeing
long-period comets for the first time, so this just means the warning is
measured in months rather than weeks.)

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.

We know almost nothing about the internal structure of either asteroids or
comets, and the guesses are all over the map. We speculate that some of
them, perhaps many of them, are fluffy "rubble piles" with very little
strength. Certainly there are hints that way. But the asteroid Eros is
*not* a rubble pile; it is something approximating solid rock (possibly
with cracks) with a bit of regolith on the surface. Similarly, the nuclei
of comets Halley and Borrelly may be rubble piles, but the nucleus of
comet Wild 2 is *not*. Asteroids and comets are very diverse bodies --
just how diverse, we are only beginning to see -- and we'd need to know
rather more about them to make good predictions about how best to do
last-minute deflection.

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.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |
  #4  
Old July 8th 04, 12:04 AM
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

"Elden" wrote in message
link.net...

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/175/1

Every 19 years the large asteroid Icarus swings by planet Earth, often
coming within four million miles of the planet in 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!


Actually, one big bomb is bad... but many little bombs would be much more
effective. George Dyson's book on Orion and the detail on 'thrust unit'
(sic?) design would be very relevant to this discussion.

--
John Bartley K7AAY http://celdata.cjb.net
This post quad-ROT-13 encrypted; reading it violates the DMCA.
Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT.
  #6  
Old July 8th 04, 03:35 AM
Pat Flannery
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default



BitBanger wrote:


What is it with this f*cking infatuation with nuclear bombs!!!


They are basically a American Totem Object; their is absolutely no
problem that can't be solved via a nuclear weapon or two.
Hurricane approaching? An H-bomb or so will take care of that. Asteroid
threatening? We're ready. Need to excavate a reservoir inside of five
minutes? Just push the red button. Things not going well in Vietnam?
Well, if you had just taken MacArthur's advice back in Korea.... Martian
War Machines threatening Los Angles? Okay....they may not work on
everything.
Radiation is sort of like magic...you can't see the stuff, but it can
help you....or croak you pronto.
At least no one ever did that idea I read about of putting nuclear
isotopes into the concrete of highways so that the heat of nuclear decay
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. :-)

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!


Especially given the fact that at the time we knew hardly anything about
what asteroids were made from or how solidly they were put together; so
that trying this stunt might have resulted with a whole pile of
subasteroids being generated from the fracturing of Icarus' into large
pieces by the blasts, and the odds of one of those fragments hitting
Earth actually increase the danger to us over time as their trajectories
spread apart.
We discussed the effectiveness of nuclear weapons against asteroids
her on sci.space.history a while back; they are a lot less impressive in
space than they are in an atmosphere; you basically end up generating
thrust against the asteroid by vaporizing its outer surface with their
radiation flux. About the only way you could really damage a asteroid is
get the bomb down near the core of the asteroid, and let the blast
generate explosive gas pressure from the vaporized rock...and that would
pretty much guarantee that you end up with a cloud of larger and
smaller fragments.
About as smart as hitting a beehive with a baseball bat. ;-)

Pat

  #7  
Old July 8th 04, 04:08 AM
Rusty Barton
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Wed, 07 Jul 2004 21:35:43 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:



They are basically a American Totem Object; their is absolutely no
problem that can't be solved via a nuclear weapon or two.
Hurricane approaching? An H-bomb or so will take care of that. Asteroid
threatening? We're ready. Need to excavate a reservoir inside of five
minutes? Just push the red button. Things not going well in Vietnam?
Well, if you had just taken MacArthur's advice back in Korea.... Martian
War Machines threatening Los Angles? Okay....they may not work on
everything.
Radiation is sort of like magic...you can't see the stuff, but it can
help you....or croak you pronto.


Now that you mention it, this newsgroup could use a neutron bomb or
two.

;-)

- Rusty Barton

  #8  
Old July 8th 04, 05:00 AM
Hop David
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default



Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Gray wrote:

That aside, *has* it been shown it's the "wrong kind of solution"? Other
methods have certainly been suggested, but I'm not aware of where the
consensus lies on deflection methods (though there are clear downsides
to the nuclear-bomb method).



If you have to do something on short notice, deflection is about the only
option, and nuclear bombs are about the only way to quickly put really
large amounts of energy into deflection. Avoid letting anti-military
paranoia blind you to these facts.

There are likely to be better ways to deal with asteroids and short-period
comets, because given enough advance warning, their orbits can be altered
in less violent ways. However, we may not have the option for long-period
comets, because we simply don't see them more than a year or so out. And
of course, we don't *yet* have the near-Earth asteroids and short-period
comets mapped well enough to be sure we'd have plenty of warning for them.

(There are particularly bad long-period-comet cases where we would get
*very* little warning, because the comet's position in the sky is very
close to the Sun for most of its approach. That can at least be mitigated
by maintaining a comet-watching station well away from Earth, say in one
of the Sun-Earth Trojan points. But we're effectively always seeing
long-period comets for the first time, so this just means the warning is
measured in months rather than weeks.)


A lot of our search efforts are concentrated in the ecliptic plane
(because that's where most of the comets and asteroids are). But long
period comets are bad because their inclination is about as likely to be
90 as 0 degrees.

To cover all our bets we'd need 4 pi steradian surveillance (in two
places, as you say, so the sun wouldn't block our view).


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.

We know almost nothing about the internal structure of either asteroids or
comets, and the guesses are all over the map. We speculate that some of
them, perhaps many of them, are fluffy "rubble piles" with very little
strength. Certainly there are hints that way. But the asteroid Eros is
*not* a rubble pile; it is something approximating solid rock (possibly
with cracks) with a bit of regolith on the surface. Similarly, the nuclei
of comets Halley and Borrelly may be rubble piles, but the nucleus of
comet Wild 2 is *not*. Asteroids and comets are very diverse bodies --
just how diverse, we are only beginning to see -- and we'd need to know
rather more about them to make good predictions about how best to do
last-minute deflection.


Yes, some of Wild's cliff walls are quite steep. If it were rubble, the
slopes would be gentler.

Another example is asteroid 1998 KY26
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020919.html
which is spinning quite fast. If it were a rubble pile, it'd fly apart.

Then Shoemaker Levy 9's string of pearls seems to show it was a rubble
pile. I'd guessing we'll find quite a variety of different creatures
when we learn more about the comets and asteroids.


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.



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

  #9  
Old July 8th 04, 05:15 AM
Hop David
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default



Pat Flannery wrote:

Especially given the fact that at the time we knew hardly anything about
what asteroids were made from or how solidly they were put together; so
that trying this stunt might have resulted with a whole pile of
subasteroids being generated from the fracturing of Icarus' into large
pieces by the blasts, and the odds of one of those fragments hitting
Earth actually increase the danger to us over time as their trajectories
spread apart.


I like this MADMEN proposal:
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...ed_040519.html

I've been told it may be possible for the MADMEN's mass drivers to shoot
asteroidal reaction mass in specific directions at very high velocities.

Besides diverting dangerous asteroids, MADMEN may be able to tweak
orbits of resource rich asteroids to make their orbits resonant to
earth (so you wouldn't have to wait decades between launch windows)

We discussed the effectiveness of nuclear weapons against asteroids
her on sci.space.history a while back; they are a lot less impressive in
space than they are in an atmosphere; you basically end up generating
thrust against the asteroid by vaporizing its outer surface with their
radiation flux. About the only way you could really damage a asteroid is
get the bomb down near the core of the asteroid, and let the blast
generate explosive gas pressure from the vaporized rock...and that would
pretty much guarantee that you end up with a cloud of larger and
smaller fragments.
About as smart as hitting a beehive with a baseball bat. ;-)


Seems like there's a news story every two years or so of someone doing
exactly that. Or spraying a hornet's nest with bug spray.


Pat



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

  #10  
Old July 8th 04, 05:36 AM
Scott Lowther
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

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.



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




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
100 megaton bombs atop Saturn V rockets BitBanger Policy 164 September 1st 04 07:07 AM
Astronomical Observations - Parts 1 & 2 Fact Finder Amateur Astronomy 5 August 25th 03 03:52 PM
Incontrovertible Evidence Cash Astronomy Misc 1 August 24th 03 07:22 PM
Incontrovertible Evidence Cash Amateur Astronomy 6 August 24th 03 07:22 PM
NASA artist illustrations and cutaways of Saturn vehicles Rusty Barton History 3 August 24th 03 10:39 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 12:14 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 SpaceBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.