🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <720520806snx@syzygy.DIALix.oz.au> cam@syzygy.DIALix.oz.au writes:
>So, we nuke the comet which in turn would cause lots of radioactive
>debris to fall to earth over a large area.

Why do you assume that the debris will hit Earth?

Even if it does, it's not going to be much worse than a few atmospheric
H-bomb tests, of the sort that was common in the 1950s.

>Besides - nuclear explosions in space are currently banned.

The treaty in question explicitly provides for negotiated exceptions for
peaceful applications.

>Anyway, all this talk of nuking comets is fine (if it works).  What about
>asteroids?  They present a rather more difficult problem.

No, only a slightly more difficult one.  They don't provide natural reaction
mass like the comets do.  (I assume we're talking about asteroids which are
not extinct comet nuclei; some probably are.)  But you can still move them
by supplying adequate energy.  Nuclear bombs are a fairly effective way of
supplying lots of energy.  Project Icarus at MIT estimated that a few 100MT
bombs offered a very high probability of successfully diverting Icarus, a
pretty large asteroid (as Earth-approachers go), on quite short notice.
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry